Detailed Guidelines
for Group and Individual Reports
for "Middle English Literature" and "Chaucer" classes
The concept behind the Group and Individual Reports is to demonstrate that students can learn how to research a work of medieval literature, and to answer the questions they have through careful reading of the text itself and familiarity with the secondary (or scholarly) literature on it.
Individual Reports
Your report should be about five pages, double-spaced, in length, or about 1200 words.
You should have begun the Research Paper process; have decided on a thesis or main idea; and have identified, obtained, and carefully study at least two scholarly articles on the work you are reporting on.
Guidelines for the Research Paper are here.
You should not spend too much time merely summarizing the articles. You should definitely not use more than two quotes from any one article, and no quote should be longer than three lines in length. That is, I'd like to see your writing and your thoughts and ideas, not someone else's.
You should make a photocopy of both of your secondary source articles and give them to me at the end of the class in which you present your report. I will return them upon request.
You should read your report aloud to the class, taking no more than 15 minutes to do so.
You should email an electronic version of your report to me and to the whole class. I will provide each of you with the class distribution list. Please do this within 24 hours of the date on which you present your report.
You should co-ordinate your research so that no other student in your group uses the same articles that you use. However, you may, if you choose, do the same topic, but make sure (in part by studying different secondary sources) that you take differing approaches to the topic.
Group Reports
The "group" aspect of your report concerns co-ordinating your group presentations. You can be as creative about this as you like, but here are some general guidelines:
Make sure you use different secondary sources in your presentations. No one should use, as a secondary source, a secondary source used by anyone else in your group.
In the event that two students use the same secondary source, I will penalize both students. It is not hard to co-ordinate this simple matter among yourselves.
The point here is to present the class with intelligent, informed reports based upon the widest possible variety of secondary sources.
Make sure your group agrees about the order of student presentations, so that there is no confusion.
http://chss.montclair.edu/english/furr/mel/groupguidelines.html | furrg@alpha.montclair.edu | last modified 11 Feb 98