Today’s Agenda
1) Today will be a workshop day. We are going to work on the drafts that you have produced that find way to improve what we have written.
a. Get out your draft for today. Get out your journal.
i. In your journal I want you to write two entries, each about ¾ of a page. In the first, I want you to describe what you like about this draft. In the second, I want you to describe what you do not like about this draft, and what it is that you need to do to improve it.
b. Once we have finished these entries, I want you to find a partner and swap your paper with him or her.
i. Once you have your partner’s paper, I want you to begin a general proofread for essay content. To do this, you will need to check the format of the essay against the outline we went over in class last time (I will provide you a handout for this.)
In each paragraph, you need to be checking to see if the author is following the outline, or if they are attempting something different and maybe getting lost. We are not looking at grammatical issues yet.
ii. As we find errors in content in our partner’s papers, we need to be noting it on their draft.
iii. When we come to the end of the draft, we need to write a detailed paragraph at the end of the document that explains what we see as the drafts strengths and weaknesses at this point. Once you finish one paper, you need to do another.
2) Once we have looked over two papers, we need to have group discussions about where we are with our paper. Each person needs to talk about their two journal entries, and then talk about the feedback he or she received on the draft. Each group needs to come up with a list of both communal and individual concerns. Each group will record these in a list, and will then share them with the class.
3) Now that we have looked at the content of our drafts, we will have an idea-generating session as a class. We will talk about how we can improve our ideas and come up with better arguments.
4) It is time to start thinking about a counterargument paragraph, and how we will include it in our essay.
a. Questions: What is a counterargument? Why do we need to include them in our essay?
b. In your counterargument paragraph or paragraphs, you need to explain a point of view or argument that is CONTRARY to your own, present some evidence to support that view, and then explain why that View is WRONG and your view is RIGHT. We will discuss how to do this in class.
c. We also need to be thinking about how we conclude this paper. What might some strategies for concluding a paper like this be?
Homework: Complete Draft of Essay, incluidng counterargument, summary, two secondary sources, and MLA citation.
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Journal Entry
November 20, 2008
1.
Something that I like about this particular draft is the fact that I am able to choose the direction in which I want my argument to go. I was able to choose my text and choose my argument. Even though I found trouble at first with choosing a contestable thesis, I finally got on the right track and was able to just go with what I was writing about. I liked how I was able to choose different quotes from the short stories to help with my argument and I also liked the direction in which I could take them. I was able to take this paper and make it something of value to me, and connect it with life experiences. Some other things that I really like about this particular piece is comparing two pieces of short stories for the same outcome. I am able to make a text to text connection between the two. In particular I like the quotes that I have chosen to support my contestable thesis. They are quotes that show great emotion and contribute a lot to their pieces of work, and without them, the stories would not be the same, or have the same meaning.
2.
Something that I think I need to change about my draft are my supporting paragraphs. I don’t think that they are supportive enough to support my points, although I think they contain valuable information and I would like to just rearrange or add to them. I found that I was doing the paper wrong and then had to turn around and find another way in which to create my argument. I found that after doing so, I was able to get my thoughts out, just in a different format than I had imagined. Something that I do not like about my paper is that I think it is very unorganized, yet I followed the steps outlined on the website. I will in some way get to the point where I need to be with some effort.
Comment by Jennifer Campbell — November 20, 2008 @ 5:46 pm |
11/20/08
The things that I like about the paper are what it is about. It is something that I’m interested in so it is holding my attention more than it would if it were like a love story. I think that the detail that I have put in to the story is coming along well. The other thing about the story that I like is the fact that I have all of the detail of the characters to work with. The information that the reader gets about each of the person is excellent. You can just imagine what all of the characters are looking like and how they act. When looking at this story you get more detail out of it than if you were just to sit down and read it. I tried to strongly emphasize the strong points of the character and at the same time high light the weaker points of the as well. The next thing that I like about my paper is the fact that I use outside sources that are form the military to see what the soldiers actually had on them at the time of the war. I wanted to see if the information that the author had given the reader stood up to the military testing that they had done in research and development. I wanted to see if the things they actually matched up with the author had given us.
The things that I dislike about this paper are finding ways to introduce the secondary sources into my paper. That is going to be the hardest thing for me to do. I have been having trouble finding peaces on-line that fit into the things that they actually had on them for personal items
Comment by Michael Austin — November 20, 2008 @ 6:40 pm |