Assignments

Group Reports and Bibliography

You will have four group reports based on your research. These oral reports will be 15 minutes in length. Each will be 5 percent of your grade. In addition, your group will provide me a selected bibliography of sources that shaped your report. Each of these will be 5 percent of your final grade. Everyone in the group will receive an identical grade on this work. More on this assignment is available in the page of suggestions for group work.

Final Examination

There will be a final exam (30 percent of grade). The exam will be a series of short answer and/or essay questions which draw upon the things we have learned during the semester about these speeches and about researching speeches.

Paper

You should write a paper on one of the speeches we will study (25 percent of grade). I would probably recommend that it be one you researched, but the more important thing is that it be one you are interested in writing about so it need not be one you worked on. Your task in the paper is to do a full analysis of the speech as a response to its situation. That means you need to develop a clear and convincing thesis about the rhetorical leadership displayed in the speech and support that thesis with evidence from your research and the research of others.

I expect that your paper will contain some of the information from class on the speech, but I expect you to contribute to understanding the speech beyond the class discussion and I expect you to be more focused in your paper than we will inevitably be in the class discussion.

The paper should be 2000 to 3000 words (8-12 pages double spaced 12 point font). Due either November 4 or Dec 2 (you may choose the date). Papers will be evaluated based on: (1) the quality of the insight of the clear, concisely stated thesis, (2) the quality of research and support for the thesis, (3) the degree to which the paper captures the conjunction of speaker, history, situation, and response in the moment, (4) the quality of the writing, and (5) the following of proper form. MLA or APA form will be accepted. An “A” paper will be superior in all five criteria.

Attached to the end should be a reference/works cited list. Annotations are not necessary.

Suggestions on Writing from Jefferson Discussion

A group grade

I will ask each student to grade the other members of their group on their contribution to the group’s work. The average of these grades will be five percent of the semester grade.