- summarizing - where you practice identifying, representing and focusing the main points of a reading which are relevant to the focus of your discussion
- arguing - where you practice presenting information so that others can "hear" your point; this goes beyond choosing the right facts and includes writing to the values, interests, and beliefs of your audience, as well as presenting yourself as a believable authority on the subject you are arguing
- (rhetorical) analysis - where you consider the audience, purpose, form, and rhetorical moves of a reading and point out which moves work (or not) and why
After some discussion you chose the following.
Summary: Higher Education
Argument: Fast Food
Rhetorical Analysis: American Dream
Looks good!
Reading strategies and why bother reading essays about "how" to write?
We then reviewed reading stratgegies, and previewed the reading homework for Tuesday. We took a look at the introduction to your text book.
Entering the conversation. The title "Entering the Converstaion" suggests that writing is not just about expressing yourself, or stating your point => it is about making connections to your readers/audience: it is about making your points in a way that anticipates and connects to what your reader expects. This is an important feature of academic writing. When you write essays for school, you are almost always "in conversation" with an assigned reading or a lecture (information provided by the instructor) or some other "text." In the first section, the introduction emphasizes that academic writing is a conversation, and points out that there are set "moves" or ways of saying things to put you in that conversation. These moves = the templates which are the main focus of the first part of your textbook.
As we discussed the focus of the introduction, we made a short (partial) list of ways to figure out the most important points. These "signals" for the reading's focus should also be in your writing!
the title = your single most important clue to what the text is about
headings = should state the focus of each section (your job is to think about how the headings connect to/develop the idea set up in the title)
the introduction (first paragraph) = in academic writing, the first paragraph almost always provides a short overview of what the essay will cover - and it often includes a thesis/short statement of the essay's focus
conclusion = most academic essays conclude by summing up/stating the importance of the main points they made in the essay
topic sentences/concluding sentences for each paragraph = the topic (first) sentence of a paragraph often sets up the point that paragraph will make with respect to the focus; the concluding sentence should usually relate the point made by the paragraph to the focus, or to the next point.
bold or italicized text, quotations, definitions, illustrations = these "markers" set off important information
In addition to paying attention to these features of an essay, it is a good practice to keep the essay's focus in mind as you read (or keep working on figuring it out) - and ask your self how each paragraph or section relates to that focus. (e.g. How does the section on State your own ideas as a response to others develop the idea of writing as a conversation? What points does it make about how to do that?)
Building your portfolio. At the beginning of the second class, you created your portfolio for this class. You will use this portfolio to post all of your work for me to see and respond to. By posting your work to a portfolio, you will have a time-stamped record of all your work for the course. That way neither of us can lose it (assuming the Kean server does not go down permanently, which is very unlikely).
After setting the permissions so that your portfolio was available to "anyone with a link" => you sent me the url for your portfolio. During the next couple of days I will be checking these (to make sure the link works and that you are on the right track for getting set up.
As we were setting up the portfolio I called your attention to the page for the Baseline & Endpoint essays. This page includes the directions for posting your baseline essay and revised baseline essay as an attachment, for posting your evaluation of your essay using the GE Writing Rubric (handed out in class and posted to the right), and for writing a short essay where you discuss what you did well, what you need to work on, and a plan for revising (strengthening) your writing.
General Education Writing Rubric. We spent the talking about the terms (categories) for evaluation in the GE Writing Rubric, and using the Rubric to evaluate several of the sample Baseline essays from last semester. In our discussion, in addition to thinking about what the different categories require of writers, we talked about how we would "weight" the different categories, so we could create a "grade" for the writer. We came to a loose/general agreement (we didn't really have too much discussion, so some of you might still think differently - but we'll start here) to weight the categories as follows:
Genre/Audience: 30% of the grade
Focus: 20%
Development: 20%
Organization: 20%
Correctness/grammar/etc 10%
Total: 100%
When you use the rubric for your Baseline essays, you will first rank yourself (5-1) for each of the categories, and then figure out your grade.
For next class:
Read: TS/IS- Introduction, 1-14; "They Say: Starting with What Others Are Saying," 19-28; and "Why do you think they're called for-profit colleges?" p. 215- 222.
Write: Finish creating your portfolio and set the permissions to "anyone with a link", and send the url to ENG1031@gmail.com.
Post to the baseline & endpoint page:
- your baseline essay (written in about 1 hour);
- the revised baseline (revised the way you would revise your work if you had another hour available);
- the scores you would give yourself for the rubric
- a discussion where you describe what you did well and what you need to work on for your baseline essay. You will also describe what you plan to do to work on the issues in your writing that you identify as needing improvement.
If you have any questions - send me an email!
Have a good weekend, and see you on Tuesday.
