Quotation Analysis Assignment: Comments

The purpose of this assignment was to help you evaluate your ability to understand the reading material.

The quotation analysis was NOT graded. The only thing that affects your grade is whether you turned it in.

The assignment asked you to do 3 things:

1. pick a quotation from the reading
2. explain the quotation in your own words
3. explain how the quotation supports or extends the main argument of the reading. This required you to correctly identify the main argument of the reading, namely:
   

• for Norris: socioeconomic development and technology diffusion are the best explanations for crossnational variations in the extent of parties online
• for Cross: teledemocracy allows for some new types of participation in political process; however the benefits of this participation are limited because of low participation rates; it’s more useful for measuring the intensity of preferences than for getting a representative sample of public opinion.

Here’s what my comments mean:

Check plus: You succeeded in explaining the quotation, and you correctly identified the main argument of the reading.

Check: You successfully explained the quotation, but did not succeed in linking it to the main argument of the reading. There were two kinds of problems:

1. you didn’t refer to the overall argument of the reading at all. NOTE: read your assignment more carefully.
2. you misunderstood the overall argument of the reading. Instead you may have identified:

• the underlying reason for the research (an interest in the potential of participation) instead of the actual hypothesis being tested
• one piece of the argument instead of the whole picture
• in the case of Norris, missing her explanation that democracy was NOT ultimately an explanation – only socioeconomic development and technology diffusion have significant effects on the extent to which parties are online in a given country
  

Check minus: You misinterpreted the quotation itself, usually either by:

1. Presenting the overall argument instead….you need to look carefully at the exact words you are quoting
2. Missing some of the surrounding explanation….sometimes the terms in the quotation were explained in the preceding paragraph. Make sure you understand what the AUTHOR means by these terms, not what you mean.
3. Being vague…just rearranging the words of the quotation instead of understanding it for yourself.