Handout 4

by .

Mrs. Tarnowski

ENC 1101 and ENC 1102

Course Handout No. 4

January 4,  2011

The Annotated Bibliography

            This class makes extensive use of a short composition form called the annotated bibliography.  It serves as a reading and critical-thinking review, writing and synthesizing exercise, study guide and review instrument, and an almost weekly exercise in the fine points of one particular documentation style.

The documentation style for this course is set by the Modern Language Association and is called MLA style.  Other styles abound and short handbooks for the most widely used are included in the Wadsworth Handbook.  Once you learn to use one style well, using other stylebooks and referring to other writing or publication guidelines will come easily to you.  Nearly every business and agency has its own stylebook,  and knowing your way around the granddaddy of them all is a very useful skill.  Your attention to its conventions expresses many fine qualities about your scholarship and willingness to work with details.

A bibliography is indexed information about a book or other research source.  Each book’s information is arranged in a conventional order that’s very easy to arrange and decode once you know the rules.   The annotation is the essayist’s or researcher’s (you, the student) own note, written to be accurate, original, and helpful.  It usually includes a couple of sentences that capture the source’s thesis and support, and may go on to include the student’ s own comment on the   The documentation (author, title, publishing information, medium, and date-of-access for on-line material)  is arranged in four or five sections separated with periods.

The annotation is a short recap or summary you write that reflects the source’s thesis, support, and perhaps your evaluation of the source or a statement of its relevance to the essay or the research assignment.

Where the note begins:  The content of the annotation runs directly after the last period of the bibliographic entry. It is not a separate paragraph.

What the note contains: An annotation is substantial and useful. It identifies the writers main idea and audience, significant ideas and support.  One kind of note is one from which you might write much of an essay or speech.  Another kind of note might point out how the source  information has been used in the essay or useful in the research.  It might document a key quote and page number, a documentation tool.   The best annotations are substantial, informative, and accurately reflect the direction, scope, tone, thesis and support of the source.  The best annotations may be a  polished  paraphrase (your own wording); it may culminate in a brief evaluation of the source’s significance to the research efforts.

Purpose:  An annotation can serve various purposes; the annotator gets to choose.  In general, the annotation should report what is significant and useful about the source. If annotating a short essay, you can paraphrase and quote the writer’s thesis and supporting ideas.  Purpose and tone are sometimes important to note, such as when annotating a satirical essay or other highly expressed writing.   When annotating an entry for an Internet site, include the URL if this does not already appear in the documentation. An annotation for Internet sites must, in some way, indicate the site’s relevance and appropriateness for college-level research. The annotation for a whole book may want to note its overall purpose and audience.

Course Objective: The annotation demonstrates paraphrasing and critical-reading skills.  The exercise requires practice and mastery of Chapters 8 and 16 of the Wadsworth Handbook, “Thinking Critically” (Kirszner and Mandell 105), and “Summarizing, Paraphrasing, Quoting and Synthesizing”  (213).

Annotated Bibliography Using MLA Works Cited Style

Fiero, Gloria.  The Humanistic Tradition:  Prehistory to the Early Modern World.  6th ed. Vol. 1. Boston: McGraw Hill. 2011. Print. This is an example of a bibliographic entry in an MLA style works cited section. See below for more. Notice that the annotation for the video, Out of the Past, states the source’s purpose and gracefully paraphrases its major thesis and supporting ideas.

Kirszner, Laurie G,  and Stephen Mandell, eds.  The Wadsworth Handbook. 9th ed. Boston: Wadsworth Cenage, 2011. Print.

McCuen-Metherell, Jo Ray,and Anthony C. Winkler, eds.  Readings for Writers.  12th ed.  Thomson Wadsworth: Boston, 2007.  Print.  This anthology contains more than a hundred samples of essays, excerpts and short poems that serve as models for college composition and research.  The primary works are accompanied by tutorial sections, including essays by the editors that explain the writing and research process and synthesize ideas associated with topical essays.

Out of the Past. Pennsylvania State University and WQED /Pittsburgh.  Annenberg Media:  Streaming Video.  <http://learner.org/resources/series45.html > 1993.  This is a series of eight 57-minute segments narrated by Stacey Keach, edited by William A. Anderson and Peter Rhodes, photographed by  by Mark Knobil, Allen Rosen, David Skillicorn, Mark Trottenberg, Joseph Vitagliano and Jeff Wolf.  The eight segments use recent excavations at several Maya sites on the Yucatan Peninsula to prompt a discussion of the emergence, development and decline of Neolithic cultures and their social and cultural characteristics.  The program attempts to determine if universal features in human cultural development can be found in Copan’s  archaeological and ethnographic evidence.  Among other theses, the narrative theorizes that several distinct pressures seem to have prompted and influenced the development of writing  in early human culture.  The Maya represent a culture that developed writing as a means of keeping a historical record.  The Sumerians represent a culture that developed writing to record commercial transactions.  The Egyptians represent a culture that developed writing as a means of recording secular events and processes as well as rituals.  Thus the thesis of the film segment is that writing is universally human but its early growth and development seems to have arisen from quite distinct social needs and pressures.