Tuesday, October 25: Rhetorical Analysis

Hi all,

I hope that the workshopping we did in class today gave you some good ideas/directions for any major changes you'll make to your draft before it's due on Saturday. Here is the lesson plan from today: Lesson 9.

Keep in mind, this paper should be fully formed when you turn it in--you are not just submitting a fleshed-out outline or a really "rough" draft. You should have a thorough introduction, body paragraphs with sufficient analysis, a conclusion, and a works cited page at the end of your document.

OPEN TUTORING THIS WEEK:
Tuesday 10/25 and 10/27 in ENG 353 from 5-7pm.  (I will be at the Thursday session).

DRAFT 1.1--From RAIDERWRITER:
After selecting your text and critically reading it, you will determine the writer’s purpose and intended audience for the text.
Once you have determined these elements, you will begin to analyze the text so as to determine the specific strategies (rhetorical choices) the writer uses to achieve his or her purpose and to meet the needs of the audience. For example, you might choose to look at such elements as the types of evidence a writer puts forward and how he or she does so. Ask yourself if the writer uses evidence from sources, or if he or she tells stories from personal experience. Examine the sentence structures and word choice. How do these contribute to the author’s purpose? Evaluate the overall tone of the text, and determine how it does or does not contribute to the way in which it communicates to its audience. After you determine what these strategies or rhetorical choices are, consider how well these strategies (rhetorical choices) actually work. As a result of this assignment, you should be able to take these skills and transfer them to any reading you are asked to do in college, and you should see an improvement in your ability to read and comprehend any text.

Although this is an initial draft, it should be carefully edited and written in a professional tone. Please use MLA format for both your in-text citations and your works cited in this draft.
Your draft should be 1200 words in length.  

Note: You must *ALSO* attach a WORD document to the assignment this week in Raider Writer.  So you will submit BOTH in Raider Writer as always through the text box AND attach a Word document of the paper itself in Raider Writer.

Homework

• Reading: 
• St. Martin's Handbook: Chapter 4a, 4c-e, "Rereading Your Draft," "Getting the Most from Peer Reviewers' Comments," "Learning from Instructor Comments," "Revising with Peer and Instructor Comments"; Chapters 27, 28, 30, "Writing to the World," "Language that Builds Common Ground," "Word Choice" (pp. 27-28, 30, 64-66, 76-79, 354-359, 360-366, 374-385) 
• First-Year Writing: Chapter 6 (pp. 121-125)
• Draft 1.1 due Saturday
• Consider going to Open Tutoring sessions tonight or Thursday (again, 10/25 & 10/27, 5-7pm, ENGL Room 353) or visiting the Writing Center

That's all for now!

Tuesday, October 18: Revision

First off, here's this week's presentation: Lesson 8.

For today's class, we discussed where you are in the writing process for your draft 1.1, and we also discussed how revision is *not* the same thing as editing/proofreading. 

Remember, in revision, you're starting out by giving yourself some distance from your first draft, and then you focus on rereading for conveyed meaning, recalling your own purpose in writing your draft, reconsidering your rhetorical stance, considering your audience, and evaluating your organization. These are big picture issues that you want to get squared away before you work on smaller details through editing (you don't want to do all that work editing only to find you need to change directions on a big idea of your paper, right?). Again, these steps in the writing process basically ensure that you are conveying exactly what you mean to convey about a topic--that you are expressing your argument effectively.

I encourage you to keep looking at the differences in the sample drafts from draft 1.1 to 1.2 in the back of your book (pgs. 471, 478). Look for the author's identification of audience/purpose and rhetorical choices, organization of ideas, adherence to the assignment, etc. (other big picture ideas).

Homework:

• Reading: St. Martin's, Ch. 2 (pgs. 23-39)
• Bring a HARD COPY of your working rhetorical analysis to class next week (Draft 1.1 assignment is on RaiderWriter under the syllabus--take a look at it and make sure that you adhere to the assignment). The due date for your rhetorical analysis is coming up (October 29th), so you need to begin drafting so you have time to revise! 
• You have already done a good chunk of the work here--you have gathered information, identified audience/purpose, structured a thesis statement, and you have even started a bit of analysis here and there. I am asking you to take your first swing at putting this into paper format. 
• BA6

Brief Assignment #6:

Description: To complete this assignment, you will read the initial draft provided on RaiderWriter and then write an initial paragraph in which you discuss the problems that you see in the current draft. 

Next, read the revised draft and write another paragraph in which you discuss:

1) Whether the problems that you saw in the first draft were addressed.

2) Whether the revisions fixed other issues that you hadn’t noticed in the draft.

3) Why the revisions are or are not an improvement over the first draft.

If you believe other revisions should be made to the draft, conclude your assignment with an explanation of what those are and how the revisions should be made.

Your discussion should be 500 - 650 words in length.

That's all for now!

Tuesday, October 11: Integrating and Evaluating Quotations

First off, here's this week's lesson: Lesson 7.

This week is really about finding some support for your paper and thinking about how to integrate that support into your writing. Although you have picked out rhetorical choices (BA#3), here you are looking to connect them to your thesis and to find places in the text that help support your argument (i.e. does the author effectively reach his/her audience through his/her use of these rhetorical choices?). 

Remember, your thesis is saying that the writer is making rhetorical choices in order to make an argument. Therefore, your included quotations should be based on showing *HOW* these rhetorical choices are working on a specific audience, so avoid just picking a quote because it "sounds good."  Instead, look to find quotes that show how these rhetorical choices are working to leverage the audience toward the author's purpose.  

In other words: Everything should point to your thesis.

You can always look at the student samples in the back of the FYW textbook if you need some guidance.

BA5 Instructions via Raider Writer:
1. Begin by writing your working thesis at the top of your assignment. 
2. Select a minimum of five quotations from the article that you will use as examples of particular rhetorical choices.
3. Write a brief assessment of why each quotation would be useful to you in composing your draft. Your assessment of each quotation should include your answers to the following questions:

• Where will this quotation fit in your organization?
• How does it demonstrate the points you are trying to make about the author's writing?

Your analysis, not counting the quotations, should be 500-650 words.

NOTE: You may find that in identifying and evaluating your quotations, you will modify and improve your original thesis statement.  In other words, you may find quotes for rhetorical devices that are stronger than the devices you previously chose to use. 

That's all for now. Have a good week!

Tuesday, October 4: Thesis Statements

Hi all,

Here's this week's presentation: Lesson 6.

Remember, as we discussed in class, thesis statements need...

• An arguable statement
• "Because" statements--reasons for your claim
• Possibly qualifiers (like "may," "might," etc.). Something that amends those assumptions that your working thesis may/may not have been built upon.

For the purposes of a rhetorical analysis, your thesis should include:

• Author's name
• Article title (in quotes)
• Who the intended audience is
• What the author's purpose is
• BRIEF listing of rhetorical choices you are going to discuss

It seems overwhelming, but you can toy with ways to include these elements as you work on BA4.

Homework:

• Reading:
• St. Martin's: Ch. 3f-g (pgs. 54-63)
• FYW: Chs. 18 and 22
• BA4

Brief Assignment #4:

In this assignment, you will continue your preparation for writing your rhetorical analysis by writing thesis statements suitable for it. Using three texts specified by your classroom instructor, or the three texts listed below, you will:

1) identify the audience and purpose of each text and explain what those are in about 75- 100 words

2) create a thesis statement for a rhetorical analysis of each text.

Remember that to successfully create your thesis statements, you will need to read these texts carefully (and, usually, several times) so that you thoroughly understand the audience, purpose, and content of the texts.

Texts for your thesis statements:

• Sam Dillon, "What Corporate America Can’t Build:  A Sentence"
• Karen Cangialosi, "Healing Through the Written Word"
• Mary Pipher, "Writing to Connect"

That's all for now! Have a good week.