The Basics
Your primary goal in this first assignment is to develop an original and arguable claim about a book of your choice and a spreadsheet of features about the book that could be fed into a recommendation algorithm. This book does not have to be something categorized as “Literature,” though it can be. It can be something you read in hard copy, on an e-reader, or online. In fact, you might decide to reject the category of “book” and review a significant piece of writing that is published in a format other than “book” (a magazine article or a blog, for example). I strongly encourage you to review something you chose to read on your own (as opposed to something you were assigned to read in a course).
The Process
Step 1
You will begin by writing a review of your chosen book. I want you to decide on the audience you plan to reach with this review and use that audience to determine for yourself elements that are typically decided for you by a professor, like:
- Length: How long can you keep your audience’s attention? How much time does your show/film? You decide.
- Citations: If you quote or paraphrase from something other than the thing you are reviewing, what citation style will you use? Hyperlinks are fairly common–check out a review at a major newspaper to get a sense of how they work.
- Tone: Will you be formal and offer balanced commentary or snarky with a visceral attack? Will you acknowledge that others will or have responded differently or not?
- Extras: Images? Video? Audio? If you think your review needs something like this, I encourage you to incorporate it.
I will, of course, offer guidance every step of the way. My suggestion is to pick your book, pick your audience, and then just start writing.
Step 2
We will use your review to extract features about the book and explore if/how those features might already be incorporated into a recommendation algorithm (we will focus on Goodreads and Readerly).
After our “feature extraction” exercise, you will work to revise your review and prepare a detailed spreadsheet of features for your chosen show/film to submit to Goodreads or Readerly. You aren’t required to publish your review or share your spreadsheet of features, but you could potentially create an account with Goodreads or Readerly to improve the description of the book in those platforms.
Format
- Please write your review in Microsoft Word and be sure to offer citations when you quote or paraphrase from other authors.
- Please prepare your spreadsheet in Microsoft Excel and follow the template we develop together in class.
Frequently Asked Questions
When is this project due?
The course schedule in our syllabus includes deadlines for drafting, and revision for this assignment. I strongly encourage you to follow this schedule so you can benefit from our class conversations about the writing process.
How can I get feedback on my draft?
You can get feedback on your work at any stage in the process in a variety of ways:
- In class: My absolute favorite way to provide feedback on drafts is by workshopping the draft in class. To do this, make sure you share the most up-to-date draft with me before class.
- One-on-one: Make an appointment with me by e-mailing or talk to me before or after class.
- At the Writing Center: Tutors at the writing center will encourage you to talk through your ideas and read whatever you’ve got written aloud. These 45-minute appointments are a fantastic way to improve your work. You can sign up for an appointment using the online schedule.
How do you grade?
I describe in the syllabus my approach to grading in this course. For this assignment, I provide below a framework for reflection that you can use, alongside detailed feedback from me, to decide the grade you should receive on the assignment. As long as you’ve written a project reflection that signals familiarity with my feedback and the framework for reflection, the grade you give yourself is the grade I will enter in the gradebook for the assignment.
The framework below is based on my observations of students over many years and breaks the writing of a claim-based review down into seven sections, offering descriptions of work within each section. When I used to assign grades, I would select one block for each section and occasionally change the language to better describe what I was observing. This helped my students identify areas of focus for future writing projects. I offer it here in the assignment prompt because it might help you get a sense of expectations for this assignment if you look at it before getting started. We will discuss goals for your spreadsheet as we work through the project together (this is my first time assigning a spreadsheet!) .
Framework for Reflection
Claim
| Writer has not developed a claim that responds to the assignment. The project is a series of observations or attempts at ideas. | Writer has struggled to develop a claim that responds to the assignment. One or more ideas could become the primary claim of the project, but the entire project does not work to support this point | Writer has developed a claim and introduced it to the reader somewhere in project, but that claim is significantly lacking in complexity and originality. | Writer has developed an original claim, but has not accounted for counterclaims as they revised the project. The claim could be more complex by addressing counterclaims. | Claim exhibits complexity and nuance through the writer’s consideration of counterclaims. |
Process
| The writer has turned in a final project, but has not participated in the drafting and revision process | The writer has composed a draft and made surface changes before handing in the final draft. The writer has not participated fully in the drafting and revision process. | The writer has participated in the revision process in a superficial way. The writer has not used the revision process to full advantage | The writer has participated actively in the process and made substantial revisions from rough to final draft, taking full advantage of feedback from instructor and peers. | The writer has participated actively in the process and made substantial revisions from rough to final draft, taking full advantage of feedback from instructor and peers. Furthermore, the writer has continued with this process of revision until the final product is as strong as possible. |
Analysis
| The project does not engage source material in any meaningful way | The project references one or more sources as appropriate for the assignment, but misunderstands the text or introduces sections of the text that are irrelevant to the goals of the project | The writer draws on sources that are implicitly relevant to the project, but does not offer explicit analysis in individual paragraphs to make the relevance clear to the reader. There is a logic to the ideas introduced, but the reader has to guess why they have been chosen. | The writer has demonstrated that they can offer analysis of source material to support their project, but has not done this consistently in the project | The writer has offered thoughtful analysis of all sources introduced and demonstrated how those sections support the goals of the project. In so doing, the writer has offered a truly inventive angle on these sources. |
Organization
| The project reads like a list of unrelated ideas. The writer would benefit from more careful attention to logical arrangement of well-structured paragraphs with transition sentences | The project reads like a list of unrelated ideas. One of the ideas might have the potential to become a primary claim, but it is not presented as such, and the other unrelated ideas do not support that claim. | Ideas are introduced in a logical order, but the writer has not taken advantage of paragraphs with clear topic sentences and transitions between ideas | The writer has demonstrated that they can construct a persuasive paragraph with a clear topic sentence and careful analysis related to one distinct point, but has not done this throughout the project. | The writer has organized their project thoughtfully, offering carefully ordered paragraphs that contain clear topic sentences. Transitions between these paragraphs are logical and the reader is able to understand the purpose of all components of the project. |
Citation
| It is difficult to tell if the ideas in the project are the ideas of the writer or something the writer has read. It does not seem like the errors in citation are deliberate cheating; instead they seem to point to a misuse of sources | Writer references the work of other writers and indicates in some way that those ideas are not the writer’s own ideas, but the writer does not include in-text citations. | Writer includes in-text citations and a works cited page, but struggles to indicate through sentences that the ideas of others are not their own. | The writer has demonstrated that they can introduce the ideas of others clearly, but has not done this with every text referenced in the project. | The writer has introduced all ideas from other writers and has even made it clear how their ideas forward or counter those ideas to say something new |
Clarity
| The project is impossible to understand because of sentence-level issues | The project is difficult to understand because of sentence-level issues | Multiple sentence-level errors make the project confusing in places | Occasional sentence-level issues interrupt an otherwise easy-to-understand project | The writer has expressed their ideas clearly |
