How to Write an Extra-Credit Analytical Paper for Russian 0090

Prepared by: David J. Birnbaum (djbpitt+tales@pitt.edu) and Sarah Slevinski
Last modified: 2009-11-22 by David J. Birnbaum
Location: http://clover.slavic.pitt.edu/tales/paper_guidelines.html

What to Write About
Strict Requirements and Deadlines
Technical Requirements
Plagiarism
Checklist: How Your Paper Will Be Evaluated

1. What to Write About

The extra-credit analytical paper for Russian 0090 should be an original work of approximately ten (double-spaced) pages consisting of the close and careful application of a particular theoretical method to a Russian fairy tale from the Afanas′ev collection that was not assigned for this course. The essence of your paper is your own analysis of the tale you select, and although you must refer to secondary theoretical sources, your paper should not consist substantially of a compilation of facts or of other people’s opinions. Suitable topics include Freudian (Bettelheimian), feminist, or structuralist (Proppian) analyses of tales, but you may also choose to apply theoretical models that were not emphasized as intensively in this course (Jungian analysis, Cashdan’s “self theory,” or something completely different). The tale you analyze must be taken from the Afanas′ev collection used in this course and must not have been included as an assignment in the syllabus. Please write about only one tale; papers written about multiple tales often degenerate into essays about the theory, rather than the sort of detailed applications of the theory that demonstrate an ability to use it originally.

Your paper should open with an introduction that describes the issues or thesis you plan to discuss, and it should end with a conclusion summarizing how the paper has met the goals set out in the introduction. The middle of the paper should consist of analysis and argumentation that supports the conclusion you reach.

2. Strict Requirements and Deadlines

2.1. List of Requirements

Papers that fail to meet all of the strict requirements and deadlines discussed in this section will not be accepted. It is impossible to be fair to the large number of students in this course if we make exceptions in some cases but not others. Accordingly, there really are no exceptions to the following requirements and deadlines; if you want to provide some leeway in case you run into unforeseen problems, such as computer crashes, set yourself an earlier “private” deadline.

You must have discussed your idea for a fairy tale in person (not by email or on the telephone) with one of the instructors by 5:00 p.m. on Wednesday, November 4, and you must complete an Extra-Credit Consultation Form (a checklist that confirms that the instructor his informed you of requirements and resources) together with the instructor at this meeting. This form is available on-line at http://clover.slavic.pitt.edu/tales/extra_credit_consultation_report.pdf, and you may print it out, complete it, and bring it to your consultation with the instructor. If you hand in an extra-credit assignment without having discussed it with one of the instructors and completed the necessary form by this deadline, no extra credit will be awarded. In past semesters some students had to stand in line for over two hours because they waited until the last day for their consultations. We’ll stay on November 4 until we’ve seen everyone who shows up by 5:00, but if you don’t want to wait in line, see one of us before then. You may meet with us to discuss extra credit work as early in the semester as you would like.
Papers must be submitted by 5:00 p.m on Wednesday, December 9 (the last day of lecture). To avoid missing a deadline because of problems beyond your control, please complete and submit your tale before the last minute.
All extra-credit assignments must be submitted by the deadline to Turnitin. Paper submissions and email to the instructors will not be accepted.
All papers must begin with a cover sheet formulated as described at http://clover.slavic.pitt.edu/tales/cover_sheet.html. Papers that are missing this cover sheet will not be accepted.
All papers must use sources and must include a properly-formatted bibliography, as described at http://clover.slavic.pitt.edu/tales/plagiarism.html (section 4). You cannot write an effective analytical paper without using sources, and papers that do not include a bibliography will not be accepted.
In addition to including a bibliography, all papers must refer to sources where they are used within the body of the paper, and references to printed sources must include page numbers. Failure to identify sources within the body of the paper is plagiarism (plagiarism is not just deliberately trying to pass off someone else’s work as your own; it is also failing to identify sources, however innocently, if the result is that a person reading your paper might reasonably mistake someone else’s ideas for your own). Papers with references to printed sources that do not include page numbers will not be accepted.

2.2. Rationale for Requirements

The initial consultation is required because without it students sometimes wind up writing on what turn out to be unacceptable topics, and consultations ensure that the students and instructors have agreed on the topic before the paper is written. If you decide to change your topic significantly after your consultation, you are welcome to do so, but you must meet with your instructor again to discuss the new topic and have it approved. We conduct initial consultations in person because what takes five minutes in person may take half an hour by email, and with several hundred students in this course we would not be able to respond to email from everyone in a timely fashion. (Once your topic has been approved, you are welcome to send follow-up questions by email.)

We are extremely strict about deadlines because it is not fair to other students for us to extend deadlines in some cases and not others, and we cannot reasonably know whether “my computer crashed” represents the truth or an attempt to gain extra time. We cannot accept papers that are five minutes late because then we would have to accept those that are ten minutes late, and then those that are fifteen minutes late, etc. There has to be a deadline, and in this course it is made explicit in advance. Nonetheless, every semester a few students fail to leave themselves time to recover from last-minute problems. Please don’t be among them.

The last three requirements listed above are intended to guard against plagiarism, which is often inadvertent, but which nonetheless constitutes an academic integrity violation.

3. Technical Requirements

All papers need to meet the following technical requirements:

Papers should fall roughly within the length guidelines, which are ten pages (double-spaced) for analytical papers. A page in either direction is not a problem, but papers that are significantly shorter or longer than the suggested length usually have something wrong with them. If you’re having trouble managing the length, please discuss the problem with your instructors before the due date. There is no grade penalty specifically for submitting long or short papers, since the length should ultimately be governed by what you need to say, rather than by a random number, but a paper that is short and that could have benefited from being longer will be marked down for incompleteness, and one that is long because it is padded will be marked down for poor style.
Spelling, grammar, and style must be substantially correct. This means that you should have checked your spelling, grammar, and style before handing in your paper, and you should feel confident that they reflect careful writing and proofreading.

4. Plagiarism

In past semesters a significant number of papers submitted for Russian 0090 have contained instances of plagiarism. Many of these were probably inadvertent, and resulted from ignorance, inexperience, or carelessness, rather than from any intentional or conscious impropriety. Inadvertent plagiarism is nonetheless plagiarism, and we have introduced the following steps to help prevent it:

A separate guide to avoiding plagiarism is available at http://clover.slavic.pitt.edu/tales/plagiarism.html. Even if it would never occur to you to commit plagiarism, the types of citation problems that constitute plagiarism are not always self-evident, and it is important to read this document to avoid inadvertent plagiarism. Inadvertent plagiarism is nonetheless plagiarism.
All papers must begin with a cover sheet formulated as described at http://clover.slavic.pitt.edu/tales/cover_sheet.html. This cover sheet includes a statement that you have read the plagiarism guidelines described above.

We cannot overemphasize that inadvertent plagiarism is nonetheless plagiarism, and the availability of the guidelines at http://clover.slavic.pitt.edu/tales/plagiarism.html means that “I didn’t know this was plagiarism” or “my writing teacher told me this wasn’t plagiarism” is not an effective explanation. Avoiding plagiarism isn’t difficult and it shouldn’t be a cause of anxiety; just read the guidelines, follow them, and ask your instructors (before the eleventh hour) should you have any questions.

5. Checklist: How Your Paper Will Be Evaluated

Substance, Sources, and Style

Is your paper organized around your own analysis of the materials you have studied? Papers that consist primarily of a compilation of facts and opinions from outside sources, without meaningful original analysis, usually receive very low grades.
Does your paper have an introduction and a conclusion that frame the analysis that constitutes its core?
Is your argumentation effective? In particular:
- Assume that your reader is open-minded but skeptical, and will agree with you only if you provide logical and persuasive arguments.
- Support your arguments. The best ways to do this (and your paper should include all of these) are: citing/quoting specific authors, giving specific examples, and explaining how these quotations and examples relate to the argument you are making. Simply stating an opinion that is “obvious” is not adequate; you want to provide evidence to support such statements (taken from real student papers) as “women are exploited in fairy tales,” “fairy tales come from peasant society,” etc.
- Structure your paper and link your arguments logically, so that your reader does not have to reconstruct your train of thought.
Does your paper conform roughly to the length guidelines? If not, is there a good reason for the deviation?
Does your paper make effective use of outside sources? While the focus of your paper should be your own analysis, it is very difficult to write an effective paper that does not rely on outside sources for facts, background, or context that is not self-evident. If you do not know how to conduct research on your own, ask your instructors for guidance.
Have you used appropriate sources? Papers must use at least some sources that have been published on paper (books, articles, etc.), and must not rely entirely on electronic resources. See http://clover.slavic.pitt.edu/tales/internet_sources.html for an explanation of why Internet sources are often unreliable. Typically you will cite the tale you analyze and the relevant Course Pack readings; you may use other sources (print and Internet) if you feel that would be helpful, but the focus of your paper should be on analysis, so we don’t expect significant additional research.
Are your outside sources all listed correctly in a bibliography at the end of the paper, as described in http://clover.slavic.pitt.edu/tales/plagiarism.html? Papers that do not contain a bibliography will not be accepted. The use of sources that are mentioned in the text but not listed properly in a bibliography will incur at least a one-point penalty for each such use (with greater penalties if your instructors are not able to identify the sources easily based on the information you do provide). Omitting one of the required pieces of bibliographic information described on the page listed above will incur a one-point penalty for each such omission. The use of sources that are not acknowledged properly in the body of the paper constitutes plagiarism (see below).
Do your references to printed sources within the body of your paper contain page numbers? Papers that omit page numbers where they are needed will not be accepted.
Have you avoided inadvertent plagiarism? Plagiarism is treated very seriously by both your instructors and the Dean’s office, and the existence of the guide to avoiding plagiarism (http://clover.slavic.pitt.edu/tales/plagiarism.html) means that plagiarism will not be presumed to be inadvertent. Even if you would never knowingly commit plagiarism, take the time to read this document and avoid inadvertent academic integrity violations both in this course and in general.
Is the style appropriate? Have you addressed your topic from a scholarly perspective, avoiding slang, irrelevant context (e.g., “In this course we learned …”), excessive use of first-person statements, and other features that might make your writing sound more like a letter to a friend than an academic paper. Don’t use artificially complicated academic jargon either, though; a good middle ground is to write clearly and directly, imagining an audience that is intellectually interested in your reasoned analysis, but not necessarily in your casual thoughts or feelings. Think of what you are writing as analysis, rather than response or reaction.

Technical Matters

Does your paper contain the obligatory cover page described at http://clover.slavic.pitt.edu/tales/cover_sheet.html? Papers that do not contain this cover page will not be accepted.
Have you proofread your paper for spelling and grammar? Anyone can let an occasional error slip through, but papers with significant spelling and grammatical errors will incur at least a one-point penalty (with greater penalties in more severe cases).