Writing toward your public, well educated audience

I’d like you to take one of the strategies we discussed today and try it out, cultivating an appropriate approach for your public, well educated audience. Working from your responses to the invention exercises that you completed over the weekend, write a paragraph in which you open up a discussion about the issue you’ll be writing about. It could be the beginning of an introduction to your essay, or it might be a body paragraph. Regardless, I want you to begin writing, developing your focus for this paper, keeping your audience in mind.

Defining the public good

Based on today’s reading, how would you define the public good? In what ways might your final essay respond to, incorporate, or in some way relate to your emerging notion of what the public good is (or could or should be)?

Reflecting on your mapping project

Now that you’ve completed the second major project for this class, I’d like you to take a few minutes and reflect on this assignment. First, what was it like to do qualitative research, i.e., observations and interviews, for this project? What distinguishes this kind of research from our first project? What did you learn as a researcher from this assignment?

Second, what was it like to write in this genre, i.e., in the format of a social-science study? What did you do differently as a writer to successfully meet the expectations of this situation? What did you learn as a writer from this experience?

Field Notes III

By the end of the week, please post your final set of fieldnotes here to our course blog as a comment. Make sure and include the same kind of information as in previous fieldnotes. In this final set of notes, though, sketch out any tentative conclusions you are making about your research thus far. What strikes you as significant? Why?

Field Notes II

After you conduct your second observation of your space for your mapping project, please post a second set of field notes here on Tuesday, April 26.

As you make notes from your observations, please make sure you include the following information: 1) Date, time, and place of observation; 2) Specific facts, numbers, and details; 3) Sensory impressions: sights, sounds, textures, smells, tastes; 4) Personal response to your observations—both the act of recording and how others responded to you; 5) Specific words, phrases, summaries of conversations/interviews, and any insider language; 6) Questions that your observations generate for you as the researcher (ones that you might pursue in your subsequent observations).

As you conclude this set of notes, please write a paragraph in which you summarize your observation, paying attention to what you noticed that was either similar to your previous observation or different. What do you think accounts for this?

Reflecting on the rhetorical conventions of a qualitative study

To start class today, I’d like you to reflect on how the study—“Creating Community”—was organized and written. That is, I’d like us to generate a keener sense of the rhetoric of a scholarly study within the field of ethnography. First, how would you characterize or describe the study’s organization? What is the purpose of each section and how do they relate to each other and develop the study’s main argument? What is the study’s main claim and where is it located? What kind of evidence does Amada Armenta draw on to substantiate her claim(s)? How would you describe the voice, level of formality, and other stylistic features of this kind of writing? What do you think you might take from this study when you start drafting your own piece later next week?

Field Notes I

After you conduct your first observation of your space for your mapping project, please post your first set of field notes here before class begins on Thursday, April 21. As you make notes from your observations, please make sure you include the following information: 1) Date, time, and place of observation; 2) Specific facts, numbers, and details; 3) Sensory impressions: sights, sounds, textures, smells, tastes; 4) Personal response to your observations—both to the act of recording and how others responded to you; 5) Specific words, phrases, summaries of conversations/interviews, and any insider language; 6) Questions that your observations generate for you as the researcher (ones that you might pursue in your subsequent observations).

Please note: You are welcome to post the highlights or a summary of your field notes, especially if you take your notes by hand. If you type them on your laptop, then you're welcome to post all your notes, or a substantial section of them (since it's easier to cut and paste).

Generating a focus for your mapping project

Before class on Tuesday, I'd like you to spend some time developing a focus for our current assignment. To that end, please use your comment to this post to explain to the rest of class what you would like to focus your mapping project on. What space will you be mapping? What group(s) of people do you think you'll be observing and interviewing (or those that you'd like to)? What do you think might be significant about this space? What do you hope to learn from this project and why do you think this particular space is an important one to study? As you conclude this part of your comment, please describe how you plan to spend the next few weeks completing the research necessary for this study.

Second, given our work with the library databases today, I'd also like to you spend some time searching for possible sources that might help you with your project. Before Tuesday, please identify one promising scholarly article, read it, and present a brief summary (a substantial paragraph will do) that clearly states its main findings and gives a sense of the evidence it uses to support these claims.

As you complete these tasks, if you have any questions or run into any problems, please feel free to share those with us, too. I'll check the blog a few times over the weekend and get back to anyone who has questions. Thanks!

Writing about your own personal geography

Choose a spot that brings back a rush of sensory details—sights, sounds, smells, textures, and tastes. It doesn’t need to be an enormous natural wonder like the Grand Canyon. Try describing a private spot—a certain tree in your backyard, a basketball court, a relative’s dining room, the corner of a city lot, the interior of a closet, or a window seat that catches sunlight. As you think about the specifics of this place—its details and sensations—you’ll probably remember a dominant impression, a cluster of images, or a person connected to the place. These are all part of your internal landscape. Write a few short descriptive paragraphs using as many details as you can to paint a vivid impression of this landscape.

Reflecting on our first assignment

To start class today, I’d like you to take a few minutes and reflect on what it was like to write your first essay for this class. Describe your writing process and tell the rest of us about how your piece changed from your initial ideas to your final draft. How did your research shape the argument you made about the primary text you analyzed? What observations or feedback did your peers give you about your draft that helped you as you continued drafting and revising it? Ultimately, what did you learn about rhetoric, research, writing, or yourself by completing this assignment?

Analyzing appeals to logos

To make sure you've got a handle (as a writer) on how to analyze a writer's appeal to logos, I'd like you to spent he next 15 minutes or so applying what we've just discussed to your current project and draft an initial analysis of your primary text(s) appeal to logos, paying specific attention to its use of enthymeme and example.

First, if you haven't yet, identify the main claim of the text you're analyzing. Then, work together to understand what kind of reasoning the writer employs (deductive? inductive? from contraries? precedent?) and apply Aristotle's discussion of enthymeme and example to this persuasive argument. What premises underlie this argument? What common values or assumptions does the writer/rhetor presume his or her audience shares with the writer that make the argument possible? If you can re-write the chain of thinking as a more formal enthymeme, do so. If not, characterize how the writer moves from premises to the main claim. As well, explain any use of examples (rhetorical, historical, fictional, or analogy) and how they relate to the overall claim.

When you finish drafting this analyis, post it here as a comment to our course blog.

Drafting your first essay

Before class on Tuesday, I would like you to spend some time working on our current assignment. First, make sure you identify and read your primary text(s) carefully, taking notes and/or annotating them in preparation for your analysis. What claim(s) are these texts making and more importantly, how do they work persuasively? What claims about their rhetorical strategies can you begin to make at this point in your research?

After you engage a bit with these texts on your own, then I'd like you start thinking about what questions you have about them that you need help from other scholars or commentators to answer. I'd like you to find three secondary/scholarly sources before Tuesday and bring them with you to class. What insights do they offer that will help you as you draft your first essay?

Once you've worked through these questions, I'd like you post a comment here that summarizes your research thus far. That is, share with us your tentative claim and explain how you present your analysis in a way that effectively supports your discussion.

Generating ideas for our first essay

Here are the brainstorming exercises from today's class. Please make sure and post your response (including a response to the final question before class on Thursday).

1. What kind of rhetoric, persuasive discourse, or writing interests you (including, but not limited to, the persuasive op-ed pieces in the New York Times)? Generate a list of all the possible kinds of writing that you might focus on for this assignment.

2. Circle or highlight the three kinds of writing or discourse that interests you the most.

3. Pick one of these kinds of writing and make a list of possible primary sources, or individual texts, that you could use as a primary text and analyze for this assignment.

4. Write a brief paragraph that explores why this kind of writing and these texts interest you. What do you expect to learn from analyzing them? Why might this analysis be significant?

5. Share one promising idea for this assignment with the rest of us.

6. Before class on Thursday, post your brainstorm to our course blog. Conclude your initial brainstorm with a brief paragraph that explains how you’re planning to complete our first assignment. Identify your primary text(s) and locate at least one secondary source that you think looks promising.

7. Last, if you have any questions or are struggling with ideas for this assignment, please feel free to include them in your response as well. Thanks!

Responding to classical philosophies of rhetoric

Before class starts on Tuesday, I’d like you to identify a key passage from either Gorgias’s Ecomium of Helen or Plato’s dialogue Gorgias that you think is the most significant passage from the day’s reading. Write a paragraph in which you share this passage with the rest of class, giving context for it (in relation to the rest of the reading) and justifying why you think it is significant. Ultimately, what does this passage say about rhetoric (or oratory), language, and/or power?

Defining rhetoric

Before we start today’s discussion, I’d like you to take a few minutes and explain Covino and Joliffe’s definition of rhetoric in your own words. Recall that they define rhetoric as “a primarily verbal, situationally contingent, epistemic art that is both philosophical and practical and gives rise to potentially active texts” (5). What do you think this definition means? What is interesting or significant about it?

Identifying and explaining rhetorical strategies

Before class on Thursday, select an editorial or op-ed piece from the New York Times that interests you. First, summarize the main claim of the piece and briefly characterize how the writer supports this claim. Then, identify one of the rhetorical strategies—or means of persuasion—that Covino discusses in “What is Rhetoric?” that you see the columnist from the New York Times using in his or her writing. Write a paragraph in which you present a few key sentences or a brief passage that you think illustrates this strategy and then explain how this appeal strengthens the writer’s persuasiveness. Aim for about 250 words and post your response here as a comment to this post.

Welcome to WRIT 1733! Post a profile of your classmate here as a comment.

For your first post to our course blog, I’d like you to get into pairs and interview one of your classmates. Using the questions we generated together as a class, take about ten minutes to ask your classmate more about him- or herself. In addition to the usual questions about who he or she is, where she or he is from, or what he or she does for fun, please pay particular attention to this person's past experiences as a writer. What does your classmate remember about his or her previous writing instruction? What kinds of writing appeals (or doesn’t) to your classmate? Why? What meaningful or significant experiences has he or she had with writing? What hopes (or reservations?) does your classmate have about this course?

Once you complete both interviews, spend the next 20 minutes writing a profile (aim for 250-350 words) that vividly represents your classmate. Whatever issues you focus on, take care with this short piece, for it is our first impression of you as a writer, as well as the first impression of the person you interviewed. Have fun with this piece—make it interesting! Use quotes, brief stories, and any other vivid details you can discover to enrich your profile of this person.