Lessons Learned Memo (R. Gordon, Economics)
Robert J. Gordon, Dept. of Economics, rjg@northwestern.edu
Comment: The most important contribution I make to freshman seminar students’ writing, in addition to detailed rewrites of words, sentences, paragraphs (when necessary, which in this group is only for 5 out of 15 students), is my "lessons learned" memo. In my seminar students learn not just from my comments on their own paper. They learn from my memo about ALL the papers. Thus problems encountered in one student's paper can be conveyed (anonymously of course) to the other students, and this then becomes the point of departure for their second paper. I write "Lessons Learned" memoes for the first three graded (short, 1200-1500 word, papers).
Below is the assignment sheet for the first paper (on the causes of World War I) and the memo summaring my “lessons learned” memo.
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Topic for First Graded Paper (Peer Review 19 Jan, Graded Draft 24 Jan) (word limit, rough guidelines: no less than 1100, no more than 1500)
The causes of World War I have been the subject of endless debate ever since 1914. There are two classes of explanations, general historical forces that made the war inevitable, and actions by particular individuals. In this context cover each of the three questions (listed below) in your paper. Within those general guidelines, you can choose how much space to devote to each question. You should feel free to cover these topics in a different order and with examples that are your own.
1. What were the general factors that some authors believe made the war inevitable?
2. Provide at least two examples of actions by individuals that increased the odds that their particular country would go to war. What alternative actions could have been taken to avoid war? [hints: actions of particular members of the British cabinet form the core of Ferguson's hypothesis, but try to find more examples for other countries].
3. Weighing the general factors and role of individuals, which do you think were more important. Can you see any way that World War I could have been avoided?
While it is possible for you to do the entire first paper from the course packet, without a trip to the library, you should consider going to the reserve room and browsing a few of the many books made available there for you. You might find good anecdotal examples or arguments in such books as Barbara Tuchman=s classic AGuns of August@ or in Ferguson=s APity of War@ (in other chapters besides the single chapter in your packet) or Keegan=s AThe First World War.@ An excellent recent book about the first two months of the war is Holger Herwig, Marne 1914. A full listing of books available in the reserve room is contained in the course syllabus.
Econ 101-6 Freshman Seminar
Lessons from Paper #1
General
This set of papers was distinctly better than the average of past years. Roughly half of the papers required little or no marking up for poor word choices and illogical, unrelated, or dangling phrases. The best three papers were as good or better than anything I’ve seen in previous years. In some cases they raise questions about the nature of historical analysis and probe deeply into what it means for individuals to make choices within the framework of historical circumstances. Because there were relatively few grammatical problems in most of the papers, this memo is able to devote more space to the substantive issues raised by the topic and the range of answers proposed in the papers.
Even those papers which avoided grammatical mistakes could be improved. The best papers rose above a neutral plainness and blandness by using turns of phrase, analogies, examples, and quotations. The best also showed an ability to develop complex sentences with a sense of ease and sureness.
Unlike large lecture classes where students are graded relative to each other and are thus implicitly in competition with each other, in this seminar you are graded on an absolute rather than a relative standard. My aim is for everyone to get a grade of “A” or “A-“in the course. In this group of papers, there were several papers that rose to the criterion of an “A” grade by the standards of previous years. But three papers were better than that and received grades of “A+”.
At the other end of the scale, several papers graded “B” or below were downgraded because they ignored the assignment sheet, which states clearly in paragraph 2 “provide at least two examples of actions by individuals . . . “ At least two papers named individuals only in a single sentence but contained not a single additional sentence explaining why those individuals are relevant. One paper was not a paper at all but rather a literature review that did not go beyond mere paraphrase (“Taylor makes points 1, 2, 3, 4.” New paragraph. “Cowley makes points 1, 2, 3, 4.” etc.)
A sure sign of paraphrase occurs when a paper cites the same author repeatedly and from adjacent page numbers for half a page to a page or more “(Taylor, p. 11) . . . (Taylor, p. 11) . . . (Taylor, p. 12)”. [See more below on reference style].
In past years the most common writing problems were repetition of words and redundancy of sentences and phrases. There were clauses within sentences that didn’t fit together or were unnecessary, phrases that were awkward, and words that were poorly chosen. While a few of the papers suffered from that, most others did not. There were few “ly” words, only a few dangling “ing” participles, only two papers suffered from a mismatch of singular and plural (“Germany . . . they”), and only three or four papers exhibited significant problems of convoluted phrasing.
Compared to prior years, there was not much use of analogies. Spark and powder keg appeared once. A nice if somewhat awkward attempt was “who poured gasoline over the various countries war torches.” The same paper included “Little did Franz know that he was parading himself and Sophie around in a metal coffin.” Nobody used the domino analogy. In previous years other examples were kindling and fire, house of cards, Cuban Missile Crisis, Beirut in the 1980s, and ancient cathedrals crumbling from their own weight. Several clumsy uses of analogies in past years included “tensions snap apart,” “tension was rapidly unleashed,” and “sparks to the gas”. One student last year created a hilarious introduction likening the events of July, 1914, to a saloon shoot-out in a western movie.
All of the papers had a title, and none used the bland “Causes of WWI.” Among the better titles were “Misconceptions Create Massacre,” “Not a Matter of Who but of When,” “How So Few Could Kill So Many,” “And in 1914 God Said, Let There Be War,” and “How Three Men Changed the Century.”
The use of direct quotations often is enough to raise a paper’s style and tone from the plodding to the lively and readable. Almost all of the papers used direct quotations from the assigned reading. Relatively few papers this year went beyond the assigned reading to explore additional sources or quotes in other books or on the web.
Substance
This year the verdict between historical forces and individual decisions was strongly in favor of the historical forces making some kind of war inevitable. Only a few papers concluded that both mattered and interacted. Most of the papers provided a clear preview in the introduction of the general theme of the paper. Only a few of these papers started the introduction with a quote, an analogy, or a dramatic evocation of the horrors of war. Most of the papers made some attempt to connect the conclusion back to the introduction, but several of the introductory paragraphs were too short and too weak (they did not preview the argument or in some cases even explain what was the topic of the paper).
A common weakness of the papers was the failure to distinguish between two separate questions, (1) why did the war break out on August 1, sending millions of men into direct combat? and (2) why did it last so long? Most papers gave a disproportionate amount of space to the weekend deliberations of the British cabinet, but this is relevant only to question (2). The war had begun no matter what the British cabinet decided. A related problem is that the choice of individuals in most papers was limited to Schlieffen and Grey (or other Brits like Lloyd George). While Schlieffen is surely one of the individuals whose actions contributed to the outbreak of war (question 1), Grey had nothing to do with it. The next most popular individual was Princip, but his role as an individual is trivial since the Bosnian rebels and their Serbian allies had long attempted to assassinate a major Austrian figure, and someone else could have achieved this goal with the same result.
Several papers did rise above the usual trio (Princip, Schlieffen, Grey) to examine the role of people whose decisions really did matter. For the first time in years one of the papers provided a detailed analysis of the role of Berchtold, the Austrian foreign minister who was directly responsible both for the ultimatum and for the Austrian declaration of war on Serbia (this was the first domino). In fact Berchtold was such hawk that he favored on July 7 an immediate invasion of Serbia without a prior declaration of war (he was dissuaded by the prime minister [see www.firstworldwar.com/bio/berchtold.htm]). Another paper provided a good analysis of the roles of the Kaiser and Moltke (with Moltke you need to be careful to distinguish his role in advising the Kaiser to go to war as contrasted with his role in weakening the right flank). One paper uniquely highlighted the role of Hungarian Prime Minister Tisza and the German general von Sanders (who led a German military mission to the Ottoman Empire and thus frightened the paranoid Russians). Nobody mentioned the role of Sazonov (the Russian Foreign Minister) whose decision to advise the Czar to mobilize was a crucial step in converting a local Austo-Serbian war into a worldwide conflict.
Only a few papers were perceptive enough to realize that any paper on this topic involves counterfactual history, that is, trying to determine “what course would history have taken if this event had not occurred?” Only one or two papers speculated about what would have happened if a particular key figure had been replaced by someone else or had made a specific alternative decision, for instance what would have happened if Wilhelm had decided to take on the role of arbitrator between Austria and Serbia? What would have happened if Wilhelm had rejected the Schlieffen Plan, allocated to the western front only those troops needed to repel the French Plan XVII, and sent the rest of the army to smash Russia immediately?
The most important substantive quality of the best papers was an ability to place the factors in order of importance, examine them with specifics and quotes, and question the importance of other elements. One reason the best papers ranked above the rest is that they asked basic questions of timing – why after 100 years free from a continent-wide war and 43 years free from any war did 1914 turn out differently? Among the reasons proposed related to timing were the direct impact of the 1908 takeover of Bosnia in exacerbating Serbian nationalism, the fact that the system of continent-wide alliances was not in place until 1905, the fact that the German-Anglo naval competition did not start until 1900, the fact that the race for African colonies was over by 1890 leaving Germany to find another route for expansionism, and the important fact that military spending of European powers increased by 50 percent between 1908 and 1913. No paper mentioned an important reason that war did not break out before 1890, the role of Bismarck in restraining German foreign policy.
In contrast to the best papers which rose above blandness to ask basic questions about the topic, the less impressive papers contained too little analysis and too much historical narrative (“when the Germans violated Belgian neutrality, the majority of the British cabinet shifted toward a declaration of war.”)
The list of general factors in most papers included militarism, imperialism, and alliances. Only a few papers attempted to analyze, much less even to list, a wider range of general factors, including military technology or the symbiotic co-dependence of military needs and large industry (“the military-industrial state”). One of the best papers argued convincingly that the single most important general factor was the post-1870 rise of united Germany which was determined to upset the previous European balance of power. One of the best papers highlighted two general forces that nobody else mentioned either this year or in previous years. One was “jingoism,” a word for excessive patriotic zeal that misguided leaders to ignoring the dangers and potential destruction of war. Another was “panslavism,” the desire of Russia to join with the Slavic people to rid the Balkans of Austrian and German occupation and influence.
None of the papers listed economic growth as one of the historical factors, and there was no reference to the handout on economic growth during 1870-1914. At least one paper did refer to the obsession of the French with the demographic and economic growth of Germany relative to France. No papers listed technology as a factor in the outbreak of war. Only one paper mentioned the precedent of the American Civil war, which included much bloodshed and a form of trench warfare. Only two or three of the papers cited the shortness of the Franco-Pressian war in lulling the political leaders into complacency about the consequences of a new war.
[For a fascinating post-mortem on the topic of your first paper, go to Wikipedia and read the final sections of the long essay on Bismarck, the sections titled “Last Years” and especially “Last warning and predictions”. Here are some of the incredible quotes. In 1894 he wrote “Jena came twenty years after the death of Frederick the Great, the crash will come twenty years after my departure if things go on like this,” a prediction fulfilled almost to the month. A shortly before his death in 1898 (at age 83) he forecast “One day the great European war will come out of some damned foolish thing in the Balkans.”]
There were few factual mistakes. One paper referred to the location of the assassination as “Sarajevo Serbia.” One paper referred to one of the major powers as “England” and the “English” rather than “Britain” and the “British.” One paper implied that Britain and Germany fought a naval war between submarines (the British did not have submarines and carried out their blockade with surface ships). One paper stated incorrectly that Germany had no colonies. One paper referred to Germany’s “vast natural resources” (Germany had coal and iron ore but was dependent on imports to feed its population because its agricultural sector had such poor productivity).
Technicalities
The “writing tips” document seemed to work, because most of the papers were set up well, but there were exceptions. Two papers lacked page numbers, one paper used correct citation style “(Taylor, p. 11)” but forgot to include a reference list. One paper used the obsolete footnote style (with no reference list), demonstrating that this student had not read the “Writing Tips” document. Several papers made the mistake of including the title of a book in the text. You don’t say “As Niall Ferguson argues in his book The Pity of War.” Instead you should quote Ferguson as saying “Without British intervention the twentieth century would have been completely different” (Ferguson, p. 33). Note that you put the period ending the sentence outside of the parenthetical citation. Note that your citation should contain only the author’s name, comma, page number. Do not include the year of publication unless you are citing two different works by the same author. At least half of the students forgot that you always enter two spaces after every period and colon (or sentence ending with a question mark), not one space. There is one space after a comma or semi-colon.
One paper was too short at 3.3 pages. The instructions say 1200-1500 words. At 250-275 words per page, that comes out at 4.5 to 6 pages. All the other papers were the right length, and there is no penalty for spilling over to page 6 or even 7.
In my markup, if your writing style needs improvement I suggest alternative words or phrasing, often cutting out redundant or unnecessary portions of sentences. Sometimes I don’t have time to propose alternatives and use the abbreviations “WW” for wrong word and AWK for an awkward phrase. “Repeats” in the margin means that you have repeated a word, in contrast to “repetitive” or “redundant”which means you are making the same point several times.
Style, phrasing
Many of the following problems can be avoided if you read your paper aloud before turning it in. Read it aloud more than once. Also, reread the Writing Tips document, which was handed out in the first class and is also available on Blackboard.
Your paper should say what it’s going to say, but you don’t “announce” in advance what you’re going to say and you don’t use the word “I”. Example of an announcement: “In the course of this analysis it will become apparent . . . “
Usually the most important style problem is vagueness, a flat recitation of generalities. Avoid vague phrases as in “Tensions arose from various sources.” “Another great source of tensions . . .“
The next most important weakness is repetition, i.e., saying the same thing in successive sentences, with the same often vague subjects and verbs. One paper followed the phrase “killer blow” in one sentence with “the killing punch” in the next sentence. Another paper started a paragraph with “resulted in a chaotic Balkan area” and ended that paragraph with “along with the chaos in the Balkan states.” [“Chaos” is the wrong word and is better reserved to describe the aftermath of the Haitian earthquake.] Another paper in one sentence included “had grown to complete dominance” and in the next sentence “military class had been completely glorified.”
However, in this group of papers there were relatively few problems of repetition or redundancy compared to previous years.
One paper contained two paragraphs each containing only a single sentence. Paragraphs should be arranged to contain at least three separate sentences.
Don’t start two adjacent sentences with the same word. Even worse is to end a sentence with a word and start the next with the same word: “that was a match even for Germany. Germany was forced to invade . . .”
Watch for clumsy phrases best cured by careful editing: “One man whose actions have been highly debated as to whether or not they played a role in World War I is Kaiser Wilhelm II” [replace by “Kaiser Wilhelm’s role in causing World War I has been hotly debated”]
Only two papers contained repeated mismatchs of singular and plural. “Austria Hungary . . . when their intrusion into Serbia. . .” “Germany ensured Austria their full support.”
Watch for unnecessary clauses that can be eliminated. Change “Austria looked to Germany for assistance since they were allies” to “Austria looked to its ally Germany for assistance.” Change “was anxious to increase his empire’s position in Europe and in the world in both militaristic and economic ways” to “was anxious to increase his empire’s military and economic position in Europe and in the world.”
Word Choice
Most papers avoided “ly” and “ing” words. I found only one example of a dangling participle: “When looking at the war as a whole, . . . the general factors were more important . . .”
Watch for the incorrect use of the apostrophe. “. . . compounded by the nationalist’s movement . . . “ “it’s romantic rationale”
Avoid “this” or “they” unless it is clear to what previous subject these words refer. Example: “the Kaiser promised the Austria that if Russia supported Serbia, they would back them.” (who is they and them – four countries are listed in the previous clause).
Avoid vague superlatives, especially when they come out as comical understatement “assassination was a huge threat for the Archduke.” Avoid phrases like “it is certain” and “it is obvious.” Historians would not have debated this topic for the past century if everything were so certain and obvious.
Avoid cliches and overused phrases, e.g. “The truth of the matter is . . .” “Another key factor . . .” “at this point in time” “The sky had no limit” “set the ball rolling”
