Dear Scholars,

We discussed the article on academic writing and plagiarism, “cyber-pseudepigraphy” last week. There have been no comments nor questions. Your comments are welcome.

We discussed research papers and different approaches to them last week. The class is available on WiZiQ.

This week’s class will be online here.

There seems to have been a lack of enthusiasm for the research paper project. We will look at it a bit more and carry that homework over to next week. The homework for this week was:

Suggested writing subject: A short research paper on any subject. This is a practice paper and not expected to be original. You may use existing material and references (look through the Directory of Open Access Journals for papers on subjects that interest you), and be sure to start with the MLA template. The only thing that must be original about this paper is the writing; use your own words. If you are inspired to introduce original content that is fine (indicate those parts if you like). As always, look at what your colleagues are posting, learn from them and make suggestions to help them.

This is an easy project! If you are finding it difficult, you are probably doing too much.

Please take a look at Amanda’s Project which is a very nice example.

This assignment is only advisory. Those of you not ready for research may write other types of papers.

New resources:

A citation engine link has been added to our resources. This automates the creation of research paper references — fill out the form and it creates the references in any of several formats.

Listening:

As always, the listening matter is chosen for its use of language and not for its content! This list was far too big for one week, so we’ll spend another week on it.

It is best to listen to one lecture or part of a lecture many times (after looking up any unfamiliar words). The language of the Eagleton lecture is superb. Please listen to at least parts of it several times:
Lecture: Terry Eagleton on Evil

These others are interesting but of lower priority:
Lecture: Psychology and climate change

Lecture: Nanotechnology, Ethics and Religion

Enjoy the process. Just listen and don’t worry about understanding everything.