Week 9:

  • Dates: Wednesday, 10/30 and Monday, 11/4
  • Meeting Info: Each week, I will post an agenda that will outline the week’s work. It will include instructions for you and links to readings, discussion questions, and other work.  We will work on developing community both in our classroom and in our online written community. 

Objectives

  • To draft introductions and conclusions for Project 2
  • To continue Project 2 research
  • To draft citations and annotations for our sources
  • To revise our research questions as needed

To Do Before Week 9

Just in case you haven’t already, please:

To-Do This Week

Wednesday, 10/30

Texts:

Writing:

  • draft citations and annotations for your final two sources for Project 2
  • Begin drafting your conclusion, using the Project 2 details and the sample Reflective Annotated Bibliographies to guide you. Share your draft in a discussion about RAB conclusions.

In Class:

  • reminder about NYTimes account information
  • What belongs in the conclusion to Project 2?
  • Evaluating sources
    • are they recent? is that important for your topic?
    • are they relevant? to your topic/question, and to you
    • are they reliable, both its information and its security?
    • does it add to your knowledge base?
    • is it from a known source/author?
    • can you verify the information?
    • purpose and intended audience, authority and credibility, accuracy and reliability, currency and timeliness, and objectivity or bias
  • What kinds of sources are we finding?
    • how do we know if we want to use a source?
    • genres
    • quality
  • How do we connect to our audience?
  • Summary: This video explains the concepts of ethos, pathos, and logos and how they can be used in an argument to persuade an audience. The speaker explains that ethos has to do with convincing the audience that you’re trustworthy, pathos has to do with connecting to the audience’s emotion, and logos has to do with logic and reasoning–not just data but also facts and organization of information. The video uses examples and graphics to explain each.
  • Rhetorical Analysis: This rhetoric resource video is informative as it breaks down information to explain ethos, pathos, and logos and then brings them together in the end to show how they can be used in combination. It teaches students in English classes about persuasive writing. This video uses animation and text in addition to voice-over to convey information to its audience. It is created by Texas A&M University’s Writing Center, which adds to its credibility and also its relevance for a college writing project. The speaker comes across as an expert, using ethos to convince the audience to value what the video explains, and bolsters that with logos by providing definitions, examples, and a rationale for how to use the three concepts. It’s also entertaining, which helps the audience learn the concepts.
  • Writing/Rhetoric resource video: “How to use rhetoric to get what you want” TED Ed
  • Summary: This video explains Aristotelian rhetoric, explaining that there are three different forms of rhetoric, forensic, demonstrative, and deliberative, that serve different purposes, explaining the different situations in which a speaker might use one of these rhetorical styles. The majority of the video shows how deliberative rhetoric uses ethos, pathos, and logos to persuade audiences. The speaker explains that ethos has to do with convincing the audience that you’re trustworthy, pathos has to do with connecting to the audience’s emotion, and logos has to do with logic and reasoning. The speaker encourages viewers to consider how these appeals are used on them in the texts they encounter.
  • Rhetorical Analysis: This Ted Ed video uses very professional, polished illustration to convey concepts from ancient rhetoric. It sounds calm and informative, bringing in its audience with its expert tone. The intended audience is students learning about rhetoric, but also a more general audience interested in rhetoric since TED Ed videos are a way of a general learner learning information even without being in school. It’s useful for understanding rhetoric and its different types or forms. Citing Aristotle adds to the credibility. It uses ethos when it conveys the history of rhetoric, provides organized examples to convey logos, and conveys pathos through the use of humor.
  • How do we incorporate information evaluating our sources in our annotations? In the rhetorical analysis or in the reflection.
  • Spend some time adding to your annotation to take these new ideas (evaluating sources, plus the three appeals–logos, ethos, pathos) into account.

Monday, 11/4

Texts:

  • texts for your research project–remember you want to read more than 4 to find the best sources for your project.
  • review your draft and your classmates’ drafts

Writing:

  • continue drafting Project 2
  • Draft of Project due in class for peer review
  • How to submit drafts and the finished version of Project 2
  • Write a post (like you did for Project 1)
  • in your post, include all of the parts of Project 2 (even if you worked on them in different documents, you can copy and paste from all of them into your post
  • choose the category Project 2 Work
  • consider adding a tag to reflect your research topic
  • Publish your draft for class on 11/4, revise it for 11/6, and revise it again to submit the final version by the start of class on 11/11.

In Class:

  • peer review
  • You can visit the Writing Center in G608. or on the Writing Center’s OpenLab site
  • Remember you can go to the Library website and use the Ask A Librarian for 24-7 support.
  • Also, you can go to the Reference Desk in the library to get help or make an appointment to get help. If you want to meet with Eirini specifically, she’s available M/W/F 9am-2pm on the reference desk.
  • These are some library databases to explore: Pubmed; SpringerLink ejournals; Business Source Complete; Academic Search Complete; Gale Academic OneFile Select; for media: ArtSTOR, AVON; for video: Kanopy (for documentaries), SWANK (movies); NexisUni for news sources and more; New York Times Digital, New York Times Historical.
  • Checklists:
  • What belongs in the introduction? Use the detailed instructions and also the grading criteria to make a list of what you need to do
    • Introduce your research topic and question.
    • Explain how or why you got interested in your question.
    • Explain what you already know as a foundation for your research.
    • Explain what you expect to find in your research (a hypothesis).
    • Write this in paragraph format (1-3 paragraphs, approximately 300 words)
    • Presentation: Can someone else understand what you’ve written? Did you use formatting to help a reader make sense of your writing?
    • Citation: If you quote something in your introduction that’s from any of your sources or one of our readings, did you cite it? Do your citations include enough information for someone else to find that resource? Do you link out to your source or use parenthetical citations?
  • Citations for 4 sources
    • are you using MLA or APA? a different citation style?
    • Did you find out which is used in your field?
    • did you follow the citation formatting for your chosen style?
  • Annotations:
    • a summary of the source’s content
    • a brief rhetorical analysis
    • your reflection on that source
    • 1-3 important quotations
    • 2-4 keywords or tagsf
  • What belongs in the conclusion? Use the detailed instructions and also the grading criteria to make a list of what you need to do
    • summarize what you learned about your topic
    • explain how your thinking on your question deepened or changed
    • explain (with specifics!) why you think what you learned is important
    • explain who you think needs to know about it and why. Be specific–“everyone” is too big of an audience.  Narrow it down to one or two groups that would benefit from gaining an understanding of what you have newly learned. This will help you get started for Project 3!
  • Grading Criteria:
    • Content: Is it readable and informative? Does it teach us about the topic?
    • Research: Did you look for sources that don’t just agree with what you thought you would find? Were you open to being surprised and contradicted? Did you look further than the first four results on Google?
    • Genre: Remember that your four sources must include at least 3 different genres.
    • Presentation: Can someone else understand what you’ve written? Did you use formatting to help a reader make sense of your writing?
    • Citation: If you quote something in your conclusion that’s from any of your sources or one of our readings, did you cite it? Do your citations include enough information for someone else to find that resource?
  • How to submit Project 2:
    • Write a post (like you did for Project 1)
    • in your post, include all of the parts of Project 2 (even if you worked on them in different documents, you can copy and paste from all of them into your post
    • choose the category Project 2 Work
    • consider adding a tag
    • Publish your draft for class on 11/4 and 11/6, then the final version by the start of class on 11/11

Photo credit: “sparkler writing” by Virginia (Ginny) Sanderson via Flickr under the license CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.