Regional Fissures and Efforts to Resolve Them

How to write CC ?

Dear all,

As we head into the second half of the semester, I want to take this opportunity to reiterate guidelines for the critical comments. (If you are unsure as to which week you should be submitting a critical comment, please consult the list of sign-ups that I distributed last night on the Wattle News Forum.)

I.               Basic guidelines

You will already have seen the basic guidelines on the scope of the assignment elsewhere in Wattle, in the section on assessments. But let me emphasize the following:

Please submit your critical comments in Word format (not as PDFs), double-spaced (or at least 1.5 line spacing) with reasonable margins, and with 12-point font. Be sure to proofread your work carefully prior to submission. As these are meant to be springboards for discussion (particularly in the second half of the semester), put your name at the top. In addition, a word count should be provided either at the top or the bottom of your critical comment. I would further ask that you use the following format in naming the file that you submit in Turnitin: Surname.CC[1 or 2].WeekX. Finally, please keep it all within two pages so that we can easily photocopy it as a two-sided single sheet of paper and bring it with us to the tutorials.

II.            “Do I need to cover all the readings for the week?"

The short answer is no, and that's most apparent in some of the latter weeks of the semester in which it would be a major challenge to say something substantial across all of the assigned readings. That said, you are encouraged to cover as wide a range of readings as are relevant to the particular focus of your critical comment.

III.          Guidance on citations

It is not necessary to provide a bibliography for sources already found on the course summary, and there is no expectation whatsoever that you should draw on sources beyond the course summary.

You should, however, provide brief citation in the text (not in footnotes or endnotes) for those written sources from which you have derived major ideas or direct quotations. This is also known as the in-text/author-date system of citation. For example, after a sentence quoting the assigned chapter of Jung-en Woo you should include a simple citation such as this (please note correct punctuation here, with the full stop/period coming after the parentheses): “It is also possible that a bad seed can produce a good harvest” (Woo 1991: 41).

It is very important that the citation include page numbers (as providing just the name of the author and the date of publication does not provide the full details of where you have derived the major idea or the direct quotation)

In addition, you can choose to utilize either of two styles (“......” or ‘......’) in enclosing quotations, but be sure to be consistent throughout 

Finally, if you do want to use any sources that are not from the assigned course readings, it is of course necessary for you to provide full bibliographic details.

Best wishes,

Critical comments. 1200 words total, 20% of final grade. Students will be required to submit written critical comments on readings for two of the twelve weeks of the semester, one prior to the midterm and one after the midterm. Each should be roughly 600 words in length, and each is worth 10% of the final mark.