Part I. Autobiographical Statement Your autobiographical statement is a personal narrative – your personal story – which provides a clear understanding of the person you were when you began this course in January. It will provide your audience with a context in which to read your essays. Up to now, you have been asked to consider your LNG/ESL 3600 peers as your audience for your Extended BioSketch. Now, for your Final Paper, you are asked to imagine that your audience is not limited to LING/ESL 3600, be it instructors or peers. Rather, imagine that you are now addressing an audience encompassing any and all possible readers, whether or not they share any common knowledge or experiences with you. In short, your aim is to engage readers who know nothing about LING/ESL 3600. Your ability to engage such an audience is taken to be evidence of the progress you have made in being able to communicate across cultures. Please refer to “Compilation of Instructions for Final Paper from A7, A7 & A9” for further clarification. Please keep in mind that you are expected to go beyond your Extended BioSketch, both in length and depth. Clearly this will require not only revision, but expansion of your original narrative. In so doing, you will need to pay especial attention to creating a coherent structure to your narrative. The rationale for this coherence is to ensure that your audience can readily interpret your narrative. Here is a hypothetical example of problems that may compromise your Autobiographical Statement’s comprehensibility for any number of readers. Some version of this might be found in a number of Extended BioSketches. I served a mission for the LDS Church in Nicaragua where I became fluent in Spanish. There are several aspects of this simple statement that could benefit from clarification. 1. Assuming that readers are unfamiliar with the notion of a religious mission, they might look up the word in a dictionary. Here are the six majors definitions given for the word “mission” in the The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language .
1. A special assignment given to a person or group: an agent on a secret mission. 1a. A combat operation assigned to a person or military unit. 1b. An aerospace operation intended to carry out specific program objectives: a mission to Mars. 2. An ambition or purpose that is assumed by a person or group: felt it was his mission in life to help the poor. 3. A body of persons sent to conduct negotiations or establish relations with a foreign country. 3a. The business with which such a body of persons is charged. 3b. A permanent diplomatic office abroad. 3c. A body of experts or dignitaries sent to a foreign country. 4. A body of persons sent to a foreign land by a religious organization, especially a Christian organization, to spread its faith or provide educational, medical, and other assistance. 4a. A mission established abroad. 4b. The district assigned to a mission worker. 4c. A building or compound housing a mission. 4d. An organization for carrying on missionary work in a territory. 4e. Missionary duty or work. 5. A Christian church or congregation with no cleric of its own that depends for support on a larger religious organization. 6. A welfare or educational organization established for the needy people of a district.
The appropriate definition for this word in this specific context is to be found in no. 4. Understanding polysemy, i.e., the linguistic term for words that have more than one meaning, is key to recognizing when you, the writer, must provide the reader with sufficient context to properly interpret a given term. 2. The LDS Church, while familiar to people in many parts of the United States, as well as abroad, certainly does not enjoy the same recognition as larger denominations, such as Catholicism, Islam, Hinduism or Buddhism. Moreover, in many cases, the term “Mormon” or “Mormonism” is better known than the term “LDS Church.” For this reason, it is your responsibility to ensure that your audience accurately identifies what you refer to when you write about the LDS Church. 3. The country of Nicaragua may be as mysterious to some readers as are Bhutan or Lesotho to others. For this reason, it is important to situate Nicaragua geographically and culturally. In the case of your Extended BioSketch, it might be sufficient to mention that Nicaragua is a predominantly Catholic Spanishspeaking country in Central America,
bordering on both the Caribbean and Pacific Ocean. More ambitious students may want to include a map that visually situates Nicaragua in Central America. Prompt: Your Autobiographical Statement is to address the widest audience possible in recounting your personal story of who you were when you enrolled in ESL/LING 3600 this past January. Grading for Part I Your grade will depend on the following criteria: ● Your Autobiographical Statement explicitly addresses the prompt ● Your writing is clear, concise and coherent ● Your narrative is well organized and fully comprehensible to the widest audience possible ● Minimum word count of 750 words, include word count in parentheses. Part II. Reflective Essay In preparation for writing your essay, first imagine that ESL/LING 3600 consisted of students who were your clones, i.e., students who were completely identical to you and therefore indistinguishable from you. Of course by now, at the end of the semester, you realize that no two of your peers in this class – or for that matter, no two people anywhere – are completely alike. Taken as a whole, the Autobiographical Statements bring to light both difference and similarity. By (re)reading the Extended BioSketches of your peers (to be found in their Profiles), you will be able to deepen and expand your understanding of and appreciation for the diversity of your peers. You are well advised to go beyond the Extended BioSketches of those peers with whom you are already familiar by reading those of others in order to develop the broadest view of diversity in this class. Prompt: Looking at the range of peer Extended BioSketches, this class can be seen as a microcosm of cultural diversity. As such, LING/ESL 3600 has been designed to allow students to experience firsthand the challenges and benefits of interacting online with a diverse population. In light of this fact, your final task is to write a reflective essay. In this essay, you are to describe in detail the significant changes you have already made and/or envision making in your behavior when communicating with others, both online and facetoface. Examining peer interaction in your Weekly Assignments, speculate how similarities and differences in peer backgrounds condition effective spoken and written crosscultural communication. You are also highly encouraged to integrate any other relevant knowledge and experiences that you have gained outside this course. Minimum length of 750 words, maximum
length of 1000 words, include word count in parentheses. Grading for Part II Your grade for Part II is based on the following criteria: ● Paper explicitly addresses prompt ● Writing is clear and concise ● Knowledge and experiences gained in this course (and other sources where applicable) are well integrated ● Ideas are well developed and supported Overall formatting and submission instructions Please submit both Part I and Part II in a single document (i.e., a .doc, .docx, or .pdf file) with each part clearly labeled AND with the word count listed separately for each part. Please follow these formatting guidelines: ● Use a standard 12point font (e.g., Times New Roman, Arial, Cambria) ● Use 1inch margins all around ● Use single spacing ● Either indent each paragraph one standard tab OR skip a line after each paragraph ● Write the class name (ESL 3600090 or LING 3600090), the semester (Spring 2015), and your full name in the upper right or left corner of the page ● Clearly separate the two parts of the assignment, with the word count written in parentheses at the end of each part ● Carefully proofread your paper before submitting it to catch and correct any typos or autocorrect errors; use the Editing Checklist document in the Final Paper Module to help you with your grammar and mechanics, and use a spellcheck tool or a dictionary for help specifically with spelling ● Submit your final paper through Canvas as an uploaded .doc, docx or .pdf document. Overall Grading ● Ontime submissions that fully meet the grading criteria (including minimum length) for all two sections of the Final Paper are eligible for up to 32 points ● Points will be deducted for any criteria that are insufficiently met, for assignments that do not meet the minimum word length, and for late submissions (see top of instructions) ● Students who engage in any form of academic misconduct, e.g., plagiarizing from fellow students, from the Internet, etc. will at the very least receive 0 points for the paper, although additional penalties may be applied ● A significant difference between the level of writing of your Final Paper and that of your
Weekly Assignments may arouse suspicions of academic misconduct ● TurnItIn, which is a service that instantly checks student work for plagiarism, has been enabled on this assignment
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