Today we will go over the course objectives and talk through what they mean.

Final draft of the inquiry/research paper are due on Monday (on Blackboard, look under the “Assignment Submission Links” tab)

This is our last day of class before finals. The final exam period is December 21 at 1:00pm. Please add your name to this document. We will go in this order for Final Show and Tell.

During Show and Tell, everyone will stand up in front of the class and share a little about what you learned while doing your project. That’s all. 🙂 It’s just graded on participation, not how well you speak or anything.

This is the last full week of class!

Monday (12/5)

texts

• Chapter 14 of The Craft of Research: “Revising Your Organization and Argument”
• Chapter 17 of The Craft of Research: “Revising Style: Telling Your Story Clearly”

writing

Second drafts of the final paper are due today!

If you prefer anonymous peer review: Upload them on Blackboard to the area that says “Final Project (Research Paper) SECOND Draft” under the Peer Review tab.

If you prefer in-person peer review: Email me your paper OR post it here on the Commons under Unit 3 Work

Everyone should ALSO email me “feedback please” if you’d like my written feedback on your essay, OR we can meet during lunch on Monday/Wednesday, OR after class Wednesday, OR we can schedule a time to Zoom.

Wednesday (12/7)

No readings or assignments due today, just keep working on your essays. We will discuss citing sources appropriately.

Monday

texts

• Scarcity Appeal
• Cognitive Biases
• Re-read the beginning and the end of “Should Writer’s Use They Own English?”
• The Craft of Research Chapter 16: “Introductions and Conclusions”

WRITING

No writing due today! Just keep working on your essays

Wednesday (11/30)

Link to google doc

texts

No reading due today – the stuff listed for today on the Google Doc version of the schedule, I’m going to postpone until next week.

writing

Turn in your second draft on Blackboard UNLESS you want to do in-class peer review. In which case, please email me your draft.

Rhetorical Devices examples + analysis

This week, we’ll just be having Zoom conferences. You can sign up for one here, and the Zoom link will be emailed to you along with the appointment confirmation.

Remember that everyone is expected to have a total of two conferences with me this semester, and these are the final two opportunities. Please sign up for one (or two) if you haven’t had two yet.

If you have met with me twice already this semester, you’re still welcome to sign up for a conference, but please wait a few days to give other folks first pick of the time slots.

Monday

texts

• Read “Parenthesis” and “Enumeratio” in the book
• Chapter 8 from The Craft of Research: “Making Claims”

No assignments due this day.

Wednesday

No readings due — it’s peer review day! Make sure you upload your draft on Blackboard (look under the “Peer Review” tab to find the place).

Please also complete the exercises for Parenthesis and Enumeratio in the book and post your answers here.

Monday (November 7)

texts

• Glittering Generalities
• “Climax” and “Parallelism/Chiasmus” in the book (pages 101-114)
• Euphemism
• Transfer

No writing/activities due

Wednesday (November 9)

texts

Below I am including several example outlines, plus one chapter from The Craft of Research.

Example Outlines

Example Outlines from Person 1

Okay, I’m Person 1, and these are some of my outlines from my sophomore year of college.

Outline 1: Witchcraft Outline
I like this one because of the color-coding. I wrote the main ideas/section headers in black, all of the things I wanted to talk about in that section in blue, and the names of the authors I wanted to cite in red. I also wrote out my thesis in full at the top to always remind me of what I was trying to argue. It helped keep me focused.

Outline 2: Amanda Palmer Project Outline
In this one, I didn’t use color coding, just loose nests of bullets and main ideas. However, you can tell when I copy/pasted a quote from a source, because the font and coloring is different. I did this to remind myself of what quotes/examples I wanted to use as evidence in each section.

Example Outlines from Person 2

These are from a colleague of mine, also from her early years of college. Notice that she uses a much more formalized structure of headings and subheadings (numbers, capital letters, roman numerals, lowercase letters, etc.) than I do. In one case, she wrote her entire introduction as part of the outline.

Islam outline

ps35, paper1 outline

Example Outline from Person 3

This person uses the standard structure of a scientific paper (Intro/Methods/Results/Discussion) but then added sublevels of bullets to her outline based on her specific topic. (This was for an advanced research course where psychology majors had to design and conduct their own studies.)

APA Study Outline

Once she had her outline, she wrote her paragraphs in the same document underneath each subheading. By the end, she had almost an entire paper and just had to paste the paragraphs into another document and add transitions/formatting.

Same outline with paragraphs: Copy of Outline

Next: Here is Chapter 13 of The Craft of Research, focused on “Drafting Your Report”

writing/activities

Please click here to see the activities due for Wednesday.

Monday (10/31)

texts

1. “Analogy” and “Allusion” in the book
2. Chapter 3 from The Craft of Research

writing

Unit 2 Reflections (due Monday 10/31)

In your reflection, please answer the following questions. Your reflection should be written in paragraph form. Please feel free to include any writing you have done during our Writing Into The Day exercises. You can be as formal or as informal as you want, but please use specific examples. 

1. What do you feel like you learned this unit that you didn’t know before?
2. What did you already know , but now understand better or learned more about?
3. What (if anything) do you feel like I wanted you to learn, but you still aren’t sure about? What are your lingering questions?
4. What are the strengths of the writing you did for this unit? What are you most proud of?
5. If you were to revise the writing you did for this unit, what would you want to do differently?
6. How would you describe or rate your participation/engagement in this unit?
7. What did you do this unit that helped make you successful?
8. How does this unit compare to the previous one for you?
9. What (if anything) do you want to do differently in the next unit?
10. What additional things (resources, support, information, etc.) do you wish you had had for this unit?
11. Is there anything you would like me to change (in the structure of our course, in how I’m presenting information, etc.) going forward? What were your favorite readings/activities, and which readings/activities didn’t feel effective for you? 
12. What (if anything) from this unit would you like to discuss/think about/explore further? (either this semester or just in your life)

Turn in your reflection as a post here on the Commons, using the Unit 2 Work category. As always, the default setting is Public, but you can also post as Private, which means only you and I can see your post. Refer to the Commons Help page if you don’t remember how to do a part of this.

Length Requirement: There is no set length (in pages or word count) for this reflection. Your reflection should be as long as it needs to be for you to feel like you have answered all of the questions in a thorough manner.

Wednesday (11/2)

texts

Chapter 4 from The Craft of Research: “From Questions to a Problem”

Chapter 5 of The Craft of Research

writing

Complete the activities in the book for “Analogy” and “Allusion” and post them as a comment here.

Monday (October 24)

Writing Into The Day Images

texts

• Romance Appeal
• Sex Appeal
• Gender Appeal
• Read OR listen to “Beyond Vietnam” by Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

writing/activities

None!

Wednesday (October 26)

texts

writing/activities

• Mini-Paper (Rhetorical Analysis of Social Movements) due — turn in on Blackboard OR by posting under “Unit 2 work”
• Examples + Analysis of Romance, Gender, and Sex appeals (post a comment on the post I linked to)

Monday (October 17)

**Meet on the 5th floor of the library on this day- we will be going to the CCNY archives**

texts

• Read about “Procatalepsis” and “Distinctio” in the book (p.32-37)
• Read the 5 Demands
• Watch this video of CCNY alumni reflecting on the occupation of campus
• Click around this digital exhibit to learn about student activism at CCNY (particularly around freedom of speech issues) in the 1930s and 1940s

Writing/activities

No writing or activities due today!

Wednesday (October 19)

Texts

No readings due today!

Writing/activities

• Complete the activities from the book for Procatalepsis and Distinctio and post your answers here
• Leave a comment on this post responding to the prompts

Since we have two more days off for holidays coming up, I thought I’d combine the next two weeks into one agenda post.

Monday (10/3)

Google Doc for today

Texts (read these by monday)

• “Hypophora” and “Rhetorical Question” in the book (pages 26-31)
• “May 1970: The Kent State Killings Built a Generation of Radicals– Myself Included,” by Scott Cooper
• Wikipedia Article on Columbia University Protests of 1968 (we will be reading about City College protests from the 1960s in a following week!)

Writing/activities

Final drafts of “This I No Longer Believe” are due — submit them on Blackboard

Wednesday (10/5)

NO SCHOOL

Happy Yom Kippur to all who celebrate

Monday (10/10)

NO SCHOOL

Happy Indigenous People’s Day. If you are interested, here is a chapter of A People’s History of the United States where you can learn about the history of the contemporary American Indian Movement (the movement when indigenous people from lots of different tribes all over the U.S. started working together to fight for their rights). This is not required reading for the class, just wanted to share.

Wednesday (10/12)

Texts

Please read the article below. (There’s a link below the PDF where you can download it if you prefer that)

As you read, make a note of anything you:

• Have a question about
• Don’t understand
• Think you understand but aren’t sure
• Have made a connection to something else (“Oh, that’s kind of like ____!”)
• Have another thought about while reading

Writing/Activities

• Complete the activities for “Rhetorical Question” and “Hypophora” from the book and upload your answers as a comment on this post
• Complete a Unit 1 Reflection (see below for instructions)

Unit 1 Reflection Instructions (due Wednesday 10/12)

In your reflection, please answer the following questions. Your reflection should be written in paragraph form. Please feel free to include any writing you have done during our Writing Into The Day exercises. You can be as formal or as informal as you want, but please use specific examples. 

1. What do you feel like you learned this unit that you didn’t know before?
2. What did you already know , but now understand better or learned more about?
3. What (if anything) do you feel like I wanted you to learn, but you still aren’t sure about? What are your lingering questions?
4. What are the strengths of the writing you did for this unit? What are you most proud of?
5. If you were to revise the writing you did for this unit, what would you want to do differently?
6. How would you describe or rate your participation/engagement in this unit?
7. What did you do this unit that helped make you successful?
8. What (if anything) do you want to do differently in the next unit?
9. What additional things (resources, support, information, etc.) do you wish you had had for this unit?
10. Is there anything you would like me to change (in the structure of our course, in how I’m presenting information, etc.) going forward? What were your favorite readings/activities, and which readings/activities didn’t feel effective for you? 
11. What (if anything) from this unit would you like to discuss/think about/explore further? (either this semester or just in your life)

Turn in your reflection as a post here on the Commons, using the Unit 1 Work category. As always, the default setting is Public, but you can also post as Private, which means only you and I can see your post. Refer to the Commons Help page if you don’t remember how to do a part of this.

Length Requirement: There is no set length (in pages or word count) for this reflection. Your reflection should be as long as it needs to be for you to feel like you have answered all of the questions in a thorough manner.