Day 3
Tues. Nov. 5
Read responses out loud
History of rhetoric and liberal arts — brief discussion
In-class writing: “They Say”
Begin discussion of Deliberations essays
Homework
➤ Read feedback and save Evernote link
By this point you should have received a link to an Evernote document where I’ve uploaded scans of my feedback on your in-class writing. Please look at the feedback and save the Evernote link in a convenient place. Whenever I give feedback on in-class writing I’ll upload it to this document.
If you've shown me evidence that you're planning to use the words and phrases I gave you, then I've corrected your language and given you more words and phrases. If you haven't shown me such evidence, I've assumed you're only interested in feedback about your ideas. (If this changes and you want me to keep giving you feedback on language, let me know!)
➤ Review TSIS Chapters 1 and 4
Review these chapters — in this essay we’re going to try using Graff and Birkenstein’s approach of framing an essay as a response to others’ ideas.
➤ Write the beginning of Essay 1
Write the actual beginning of your essay. (Consider the paragraph you wrote last time as practice — none of them struck me as working particularly well as the beginning of an essay, so just put it aside and start afresh.) Let’s take Graff and Birkenstein’s approach of “beginning with what others are saying.” So the beginning of the essay will look like this:
First paragraph (or two) — explain what other people are saying (or implying) the most important function of an essay is. These other people could include:
the professors in my mini-documentary, “All About Essays,”
Gerald Graff and Cathy Birkenstein,
Gary Althen and Janet Bennett (authors of “Ways of Reasoning” from American Ways),
your former self
anybody else who’s ever said or implied anything about why we write essays
Next paragraph (or two) — explain what you think the most important function of an essay is, for you, personally speaking. State this as a response to others. (Think: Are you “agreeing, with a difference”? Are you “disagreeing and explaining why?” Are you “agreeing and disagreeing simultaneously”? See TSIS Chapter 4 for inspiration about how to do this.)
➤ Print the other two Deliberations essays, skim them
Don’t read these in detail — just look them over and try to see if you can come up with answers to these five questions, which we’ll discuss next class:
How are these essays similar? What are some of the most important shared features?
What are the most important differences between these three essays?
(For each essay) What do you think the author's motivation was in writing it?
(For each essay) What is the essay "doing"? What's its function?
(For each essay) Who is the audience? (Who do you think the audience could be?)
