English 1121

Paper #2: Call to Action Research Proposal

 

Due Dates:

TBA: Research Memo/Annotated Bibliography

TBA: First Draft

TBA: Final Draft

 

Assignment Overview and Requirements:

 

For this unit, you will focus on inquiry-based research. Your first paper asked that you define and analyze a discourse community that either you’re a part of or that you have seen represented in the stories we have read. Now you are going to write a paper about an issue you’ve identified within a chosen discourse community or in another community that interests you.

 

In short, you are going to identify an issue in a community you’ve chosen to investigate, compile research on that issue, and present that research in a Call To Action.

 

The paper will require a variety of research, until you feel you’ve addressed the question you proposed. You will look at the relationship between your community and certain larger issues or topics that permeate it. This could mean either 1) an issue within the community or 2) the way in which practices or values of your community relate to society in general.

 

The parts of the assignment are as follows:

• Research Memo DUE 

This will be a survey of your sources, essentially a professionalized annotated bibliography. You do not need an argument for this portion of the assignment but you do need to provide and in-depth analysis of each of your sources. This includes a summary of the most important content of the sources, as well as analysis of the rhetorical context and elements of the sources

• Informative Call to Action Due 

In the final portion of the assignment, you will write a “call to action” in which you inform your audience of the issue you chose to investigate. After you have comprehensively described the issue, you will offer research-based assertions as to how your audience can begin to catalyze change surrounding the issue. This portion of the assignment should be 6-8 pages and must make studied use of your research (1500-2000 words).

• Peer Letters and Reflection Due . Just like you did with the Portrait of the Discourse Community Essay.After you have completed the first draft, you will bring in three copies of your essay – one for me, and two for two of your peers. You will share these essays with your group, and, after reading each other’s essays, provide thoughtful, critical feedback. While you should provide suggestions for improvement, you should also consider this an opportunity to take cues from your peers and build a sense of community and solidarity. Note what you think works and what you think could use some work. You will attach a copy of the two peer letters to your final draft.

In addition to the letter you will write a reflection (500 words), after your paper has been graded. In this, you will explain:

1. Why you chose to write the way you wrote
2. What insights you’ve gained from the readings and your peers
3. What you think worked and what you might improve on

English 1121

Paper #3: Call to Action Remix

Due Dates:

Proposal

First Draft

Project Due

In-Class Presentations

 

Assignment Overview and Requirements:

In the last paper, you discovered an issue in the discourse community, and now you are going to take action and get the word out to a specific audience. This assignment asks you all to re-think, or re-envision, one of the assignments you have written previously in the semester and to present it in a totally new genre, perhaps changing modes. For example, a revision that goes from a written essay to an audio podcast, website, graphic, video essay, rap album, or mixed modal. This assignment builds on the generic, rhetorical and audience awareness that students have worked on all semester long, asking them to consider what discourse community they are trying to reach and, not only what diction, but also what mode of delivery would be best for delivering that message. This “translation” is key to transfer, one of the core learning outcomes of this course. If students can take a message and transform it for different audiences and media, then they are well on their way to being able to transfer writing skills across fields, disciplines and discourse communities.

 

You could:

• Create a presentation using Prezi with a specific audience in mind
• Create a series of three or four social media posts (Instagram/Twitter/Facebook/etc.). You must include at least two images.
• Design a poster for an organization somehow related to your topic that could be put up around campus
• Design a flyer that the organization could hand out to students
• An on-video interview with someone who is somehow relevant to your topic/thesis

 

Feel free to work on this as a group project!

 

Remember, what is important is that you are thinking about genre and audience and translating your essay into a genre/mode that is somehow better for your intended audience – that can be a different audience from the one you wrote the essay for. These projects should last about 5 minutes and should be accompanied by an 800-1000 word reflection that you will turn in to me before you leave. In that reflection, you should be writing about the concepts we’ve discussed in the course: rhetorical situation, genre, audience, purpose, etc. Find questions for the reflection below.

 

 

Questions for Reflection:

 

• Who was the audience for this essay? What did you consider about them as you translated your essay from its written form into this multimodal version?
• What are the weaknesses of the written essay genre for this audience? What are the strengths of this new multimodal genre?
• Was it difficult to translate the essay from its written form into this new multimodal version? Why/why not? Reflect on the process of translation.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Hey everyone! Thanks for the meeting today– it was quite useful.  I’m really impressed with everything you guys are doing with your classes, especially in light of the circumstances.  Thanks for being so available for your students and for each other.

If you would be so kind as to share your assignment for 1121 Unit 3 as a new post (the category is…”1121 Unit 3″) it would be really useful for everyone else to see. Thanks!

Hey you guys, here is an assignment I’ve used for Unit 2 in 1121. There are things I might change here to deepen the research, but it might give you some ideas. This could also easily be split into units 2 and 3– that is, in Unit 2, people do more in-depth research than I’ve outlined here.  They develop reports (with infographics, proposals for action, etc.)  In Unit 3, they could then enact some part of that report– write a speech to the city council, a website, a grant proposal, etc…

Community Problems – and working toward community solutions

We have spent some time in this course identifying problems in contemporary America—especially in New York City. In this unit, you will be working in groups of four or five to:

1. Find out as much as you can about those problems
2. Figure out who might be able to impact change on those problems (this will be your audience.) As a group, you may decide that you need to reach more than one audience.
3. Develop a document (or documents) that you think will best reach that audience. This might be a brochure, a speech, a video, a magazine article, or anything else that you believe will impact your audience and encourage them to begin making change toward solving this problem.

It’s up to you to decide if you want to do a big final group project, or if you want to do smaller individual final projects. You should make this decision based on, not only your own needs, but also the problem and audience you’ve chosen. In other words– who do you need to reach and how can you best reach them?

GETTING SPECIFIC

I say “begin making change”  because the problems we have identified are not simple to solve. If they were, they would’ve been solved by now. Too often, student papers are oversimplified: “Racism would end if people just saw each other for who they are” or something like that. What I want you to look for here are CONCRETE steps that ACTUAL individuals can take, even if they are only steps in the right direction. For example, if we are looking at racial profiling among the police in the Bronx, we might want to address a community group to insist on specific practices for hiring a more diverse police force, or a police force that lives in a borough they serve. We might also want to address the police commissioner to ask for police cameras or training for the police.

Whatever the case, your first step is to research the problem. You might think you know off the top of your head what the solution to your problem is, but you will need to back this up with evidence.

STEPS

Step 1: Have a group meeting. Brainstorm together what you KNOW about this problem and what you WANT to know about this problem. Go ahead and do some quick Internet research on your phones. What did you LEARN from this research? What do you STILL need to know?

We’re going to go to the library after this meeting, so you’ll need to be prepared with some questions. What do you need to get a full scope of this problem? How are you going to delegate the research? There are four of you, so you should each have your own separate task. This is important– you don’t want everyone looking up the same thing. That way, you can come together and share the info. You may also want to interview some people in the community! You’re going to have a few days to do this research.

After the library research, everyone should write up a memo for the group. What have you found?

Step 2: In your next meeting, look at your research. Do you need to find out more? Also, WHO do you think you need to reach in order to start working toward a solution to this problem? What do you think will be the best genre to reach them?

Step 3: It’s time to define your own project. That is, what are the documents (or what is the document) that you guys are going to make in order to reach this audience or audiences? What I’m looking for here is a document that is enough work for all four of you—so if you are, for example, making a 20 page informational brochure to present to the City Council, that is certainly enough for all of you. However if you are doing a poster, that’s probably a 1-2 person job. In this case, some of you might do a poster, and some others of you may do, for example, a video essay to accompany that poster.

Your finished project should: explain the problem to your audience in a genre appropriate to that audience, using diction appropriate to that audience. It should look like a finished document (a decent-looking brochure, a well thought-out video essay.) I know you’re not all graphic designers, but you do need to present this document, and every document you write (for all your classes) with care. Also– even if everyone is doing separate parts of the final project, they should all fit together!

How will this be graded?

1. The thoroughness of your research. In other words, how well do you understand the problem you are trying to impact? I will assess this through your research memos (DUE DATE)
2. Your work on audience: have you identified an appropriate audience/ appropriate audiences? Have you identified a genre and tone that will reach that audience?
3. The care you put into your project. Does it seem finished? Is it thorough? I can’t give you a word count here, but this is your biggest project all semester, guys. If you turn in a brochure with 100 words on it, you won’t pass. This is because you can not make a compelling argument in 100 words. You need to have ENOUGH INFORMATION there to make that argument.

Hi everyone, here is the day 2 slide show (scaffolding and research):

Carrie’s Day 2 Slide Show.

I will try to get Jackie’s from her ASAP.

Hi everyone! So here are some links to info about James Paul Gee’s work on Discourse Communities:

“Literacy, Discourse and Linguistics” an article in which he describes primary and secondary discourse communities. I personally find it fairly accessible and really interesting!

HERE is a slideshow that accentuates many of the main points from that same article. Many typos.

HERE is a website that bullet points Gee’s general theory of Discourse communities

For Nov 20, please write a draft of 1121 Unit 2 PLEASE BRING IN THREE COPIES. (the unit description is attached below– I’ve changed it slightly. Changes are highlighted. I will attach more sample assignments shortly. Please remember to keep Unit 3 in mind as you write this unit– that is, you may want to write Unit 2 as research that leads into Unit 3.

Please also read Cheryl Ball’s “Genre and Transfer in a Multimodal Class” (if you can open the file. I’m working on it) at the bottom of this page. So far, it prints in legit gibberish!

Unit 2. Inquiry-Based Research