VALERIE PELL: Hello, students. This is Professor Pell at Wilbur Wright College. And this is for our English 102 research writing course. So we're moving right along. And I can tell that some students aren't quite sure what they're supposed to do now that they have an outline and/or an annotated bibliography. So now that you have an outline and an annotated bibliography, now what? So let's talk about that a little bit. 

So how do you move ahead? There's three goals that you should have right now. The first goal is this. You want to have the first four to five pages of your essay done by the end of week 13. The next goal is you should have a full draft done by midweek of week 15. That's so you have enough time to bring it to the Writing Center to get some feedback on it. 

Goal number three, and this one is really important, you don't want to get overloaded. So how do you get all of this done and not get overloaded, especially when you have lots of things on your plate? Well, if you follow my strategies, you'll be able to manage this load, spread the work out over these next few weeks, and you'll even have time to be able to work on your other assignments and balance your life as well, I'm hoping. 

OK, so some strategies for moving ahead. The first strategy I suggest is don't worry about the beginning or the ending. So when you think about the beginnings, a lot of people get stuck trying to come up with a catchy title and their attention grabber and maybe even thinking about their conclusion way too early on in the paper. And I feel like people get stuck there. And my suggestion to you then is to just forget about that. 

Long papers rarely behave the way you want them to. And although you might have an outline right now of where you want to go, as you continue doing research and looking more deeply into your sources, you might find that your paper starts to misbehave a little bit and that you might go in a direction different from where you began. And you want to allow that to happen. That's part of the research process. 

So when I say don't worry about the beginning or end, I say that because I don't want you to spend a lot of time coming up with something that you'll decide won't work later. So just hold off on this part right now. Just don't worry about the title, and don't worry about the attention grabber yet. And if you're someone who really needs to start off with that, OK, just come up with something very quickly that you will use as a placeholder. And then really don't spend much time on it at all and feel like you're not wedded to it. You don't want to be stuck with one attention grabber or one title, because you might find later that it's going to change. 

The next strategy is I want you to think of your essay as having sections. This is a really long paper, so it's not going to be just five or six or seven paragraphs. Many of your paragraphs are actually going to be longer than that. Your intro and conclusion will probably still only be about a paragraph, but everything else, you will probably have to have multiple paragraphs for that. 

So your final essay should have these sections, in this order-- your revision reflection, your title and your introductory paragraph, the summary section, your first thesis support section, your second thesis support section, your counterargument and refutation section, your last thesis support section, your conclusion paragraph, and then your works cited page. 

Now, I would not recommend trying to write your paper in this order. So I'm going to give you a strategy of how to tackle these sections and in which order. So one thing that you want to be working on the whole time is your works cited page. So every time you add a new source to your paper, add it to the works cited page. If you do it as you go, then it won't be such a burden at the end. 

Then I recommend working on your main argument, the stuff that you say first. So start with your first thesis support section, and really just focus on that. And when you're done with that, then move on to the second. And when you're done with that, then move on to the third thesis support section. It'll really help you to know what you're talking about. Because once you really know what you're talking about, that might change and inform what your counterargument actually is. Because once you realize what you're really saying, then you'll have a better idea of what your opposition would be saying to you. So then you can write your counterargument and refute your counterargument. 

And then once all of that, that whole body part of your essay, is done, where you have the they say and the I say, and you really know where your essay goes, then I recommend writing your summary section because that will allow you to know, what are the things that my readers need to know from that summary section? And what key terms do they need to know? What background information do they need to know? What do I need to put in this section to make them be able to understand the rest of my paper? 

And that's easier to do if you already know what you've talked about. So you can then go back and write that background and summary section with an informed view because, otherwise, you might spend a lot of time writing about stuff that doesn't actually make it into your paper. Then once that's done, then I would think about a catchy title, your two-part title, your introduction paragraphs, attention grabber, and your conclusion paragraph because now you really know the whole lay of the land of your essay, and you can see how that fits together and come up with something interesting that will bookend your essay quite well. 

And then go back through and revise it. And then once you're done with that, probably even after you've gone to the Writing Center for help on your draft, then you can write your revision reflection because that is the reflection over the whole research writing process. 

OK, some more strategies for moving ahead. So I want you to think about writing-- so I've got you thinking about your essay in sections. Now, before you actually start writing the essay, I want you to think about enhancing your outline by each section. So that one, what I mean by this is focus just on one section at a time. So you would focus on your first thesis support section. And then I would say really think about that and try to figure out what robust details you want to put into that section and add that into your outline in the order that you think that is the best. 

And then find the sources that you'll use to integrate into that section and put actually in the outline with your in-text citations. And if you're going to use a direct quote or paraphrase or whatever, put it straight into your outline, and then add that to your working works cited page, the one that you are going to keep updating as you move along. 

This will really allow you a way to shortcut the writing process later because you won't have to be flipping back through books or articles or finding stuff on your computer. The work will already be done there for you. You'll be able to just turn it into sentences and quotation sandwiches and such. 

And then I want you to think about in your outline where your paragraph breaks will be, and add them into your outline. And when you do that, you'll add in your transitional phrases, and you might move around your ideas to figure out what's the best sequencing for those ideas. 

So once you've enhanced that section, then you will draft that section. You'll develop that section you enhanced in your outline into actual paragraphs. And this is good because you already have a plan for it. So the writing part shouldn't take quite as long because you've spent most of your time, most of your thinking process in the outline. And by this time, you really will know what you want to be talking about in that section. So you'll just be writing essentially out in sentences the ideas you've already put in shorthand in your outline. 

And then you move on to enhancing the outline of the next section. So you'll go through that same process then for your second thesis point and then your third thesis point. And then you'll talk about your counterargument. And then you'll go back and say, OK, where have I been? Now I can go back and think about the summary section. And then you'll go through and write the beginning and the end, and you have a draft. 

So the strategy for spreading this out is, I would say, plan to spend at least an hour of really focused attention every time you sit down to work on the paper. So I'm not saying that it will only take you one hour per section, but if you're looking at each section of your paper, you might spend an hour each time you go to sit down to do it. 

So I would really try to get done two sections of your paper between now and the end of week 13 and maybe be on to the third section so that you can spend an hour at a time really focusing on it without the TV on, without anything, because you really need to focus and have some time set aside just to work on this. And then the supplementary things we'll be doing in class are supposed to help you with this, help you develop these ideas. 

And I think that that's it for today. I hope this helps you figure out what to do next in drafting your paper. I know that you can do this. You just have to focus and do a little bit at a time. This will allow it to feel manageable and not overwhelming. I know you can do it. If you have any questions, feel free to email me. And you're welcome to continue to post feedback to each other and ask for feedback from each other and from me in the research feedback forum. 

Remember, this is ungraded. I'm trying to keep up with checking that, and I ask you all to check it as well to give feedback to your peers because sometimes you really learn more from me than you do from them. So if you want to ask me specific things about the paper, feedback questions, please post that in the forum rather than the email because my email is really exploding. But if you have one specific question about the class, of course, feel free to email me. But for feedback, please post in that discussion forum. 

OK, have a great day, everyone. Thank you so much.