Week 2 – Discussion 2

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Your initial discussion thread is due on Day 3 (Thursday) and you have until Day 7 (Monday) to respond to your classmates. Your grade will reflect both the quality of your initial post and the depth of your responses. Refer to the Discussion Forum Grading Rubric under the Settings icon above for guidance on how your discussion will be evaluated.

Performing Literary Research [WLO: 3] [CLO: 4]

Prior to beginning work on this discussion, review the Evaluating Sources (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site. tutorial and the Scholarly and Popular Sources (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site. video.

By now, you have chosen the short story you will write about for your final essay. As you prepare your Annotated Bibliography this week, you may be wondering what secondary sources are and which ones are appropriate to this assignment.The short answer is: scholarly journal research articles.The longer answer is:You need to locate, read, and annotate two scholarly research articles about your short story (this may include research about specific literary elements, themes, or genres involving your story of choice).

This means several things:

• The sources need to be appropriate to the discipline you are working in—literary studies.
• The sources need to come from scholarly journals in that field.
• The sources need to be about the story itself (or about its elements, themes, or genre; i.e., not about a social studies, history, or psychology topic).

Prepare:

1. On the Ashford University Library site, see if you can find a scholarly source about your story. Try a few different searches. It is OK if you do not exactly succeed just yet, but note three different searches you tried, including any search terms or limiters you used, and what you found.
2. Then, open a live chat session (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site. with one of the librarians.

In your chat, ask the librarian to help you start locating a scholarly source for your essay. Note: the librarians are not providing you with sources.

• Tell them what you are doing (a literary analysis essay for ENG 125).
• Ask them for any help you need on the three “The sources need to be” ideas above.
• Ask them to guide you through search term use and database searches.
• Before you finish your chat session, e-mail a transcript to yourself by clicking on the envelope icon below the chat box.

You will need to read the article that the librarians help you search for to be sure it is relevant to the story you are writing about. That is what you will do for the Annotated Bibliography due later this week. The librarians can help you search a source and determine that it is relevant to the assignment. Use what you have learned in your library chat to find your second scholarly article on your own.

Write: In your post, share:

• The short story you are writing about.
• The three searches you tried on the Library website (include all search terms you used).
• The full title of one article you located that might work for your essay, along with the required APA bibliographic entry information (e.g., author, journal, etc.).
• Explain how you determined this article was appropriate to this assignment and your essay topic.
• Reflect on your experience using the Library Live Chat feature. What did you learn from the librarian? What was different about searching using Library Live Chat versus how you initially performed your research?

Your initial post should be at least 200 words in length

Respond to Your Initial Post: 

Your response should be at least 75 words in length and should address the following points:

• After using the Library Live Chat service and reviewing classmates’ responses (either to your own initial post or others), do you still feel that your secondary sources are appropriate to use for your Final Paper? Why or why not?
• How do you plan to adjust your research approach moving forward?