Research Notebook 3

ENGL 101 – ENGLISH COMPOSITION 1

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Week 3
Reading - In your Reader: Elbow “Desperation Writing”

•Remember that you need to purchase a code for this at the bookstore (Cleveland State University.
In Practice: A Reader for Writers. Bedford/St. Martins. ISBN: 9781319212582)
• https://bookshelf.vitalsource.com/#/user/signin
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Read the selected essay above. Summarize it in five bullet points below:

• If faced with writers block , the main objective is to find your useful ideas and develop
them into coherent thoughts
• Use your resources (paper and pencil, laptop, etc.) to help you bring your thoughts to
life, even if they aren't exactly what you're looking for
• Avoid working on only your initial thought, try and write as many ideas down as
possible before beginning so you can work on multiple at the same time
• Just write and keep writing, you can always go back and workshop ideas to fit them
into whatever you may be writing about
• Try and break down big beefy paragraphs of freewriting into main ideas, it will help to
get the essay or paper more into focus, and help organize main ideas and structures of
the final product

(more below)

Reading: A Guide to Rhetoric, Genre, and Success in First-Year Writing

Before you complete this section, you must review Read 5.1 Writing Summaries in
https://pressbooks.ulib.csuohio.edu/csu-fyw-rhetoric/
First, note that this text says your summary should be no more than 10-15% as long as the
original text, but we are breaking that rule for this assignment; I did not want to ask you
to read a novella or book in order to do this assignment.
Second, take note of the structure that is described in this section. Below, identify
several things you need to keep in mind when writing your summary, such as what
should go in the introduction, body paragraphs, and conclusion (if you include one).
If you do choose a conclusion, I am ok with you including your reaction to the summary
you developed (but only in the conclusion).
Your response below should be at least five bullet points.
• Neutrality, Brevity, and Independence are all key factors of a good summary
• Introduce the name of the author, the title, main ideas, and where the text was
presented (all in the introduction)
• In the body of the summary, make sure to understand all the main points throughout the
text so you can accurately portray and elaborate on the main ideas of the text
• Only third person throughout the entire summary, and avoid using my own opinions on
the subject so it remains accurate
 • Tie up any loose ends, restate main ideas, or potentially paraphrase the authors
concluding paragraph in your own conclusion to really bring it all together

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• End of Week 3 Research Notebook. Remember to print a hard copy of this
notebook (at least the first section where you have the bullet points about the Elbow
essay), as you will need it for Week 12.