Today’s Plan:
I want to do a presentation today on logos, the rhetorical term for forms of proof.
I want you to argue in favor of a statistic this week. Frame the statistic’s source, qualify its limitations, and argue for its importance. Make a case for a number.
Note that the syllabus has us reading Duffett chapter 5 this week, but I am going to move that to next week.
Today’s Plan:
Let’s do this.
Today we will be working from Williams and Bizup’s Style, working on sentence syntax. Williams emphasizing moving from subjects and verbs to characters and actions. The clearer the character, and her relation to the action, the easier it is for readers to follow your writing, and the more likely your writing will engage your readers.
There’s a handout. There’s a quiz in Canvas.
Today in class I want you to revise some existing writing with Williams’ strategy in mind. Work on producing sentences with concrete characters and actions.
Workshop preparation. There will be three workshop pieces this week. In each, I want you to find one sentence that could be revised using Williams’ strategy. I will also ask you to identify at least one claim made and evaluate whether the author provides enough evidence, and suggest what other evidence she might provide.
I will email you a confirmation when all three pieces are up.
You should also be reading and writing for week 8.
Today’s Plan:
This semester I have asked you to summarize quite a bit of reading. I think the quality of your reading summaries are inconsistent, and a few people asked for more guidance paraphrasing and summarizing in our Q&A. So let’s take a day to work on that.
I’ve chosen an article over at fivethirtyeight.com by Nate Silver for this exercise. But before we read the article, let’s be very clear on what kind of reading we are doing. We are reading in order to identify, evaluate, and report on Silver’s argument. This means we need to identify the central claim in the argument and the evidence Silver uses to make that claim. We also want to identify any limitations or qualifications Silver makes about that one, central claim (in some cases there might be more than one claim in an argument–but it is almost always possible to identify the author’s single, main concern).
At the same time, we want to filter out any information that doesn’t relate to the central claim.
Finally, in some articles (not all), we want to separate the argument (what is proven) from the conclusion (what, based on the argument, we should do differently). Sometimes I refer to this as “the walk-away”: walking away from this argument, what does the author hope I will do differently? Note that not all articles will necessarily have a conclusion of this sort.
Ok, let’s read the article. As we read, try to identify and mark off the article’s central claim, identify specific evidence that supports the claim, and look for moments in which Silver anticipates counter-arguments or qualifies his argument (i.e., where he acknowledges limitations or weaknesses). Also, let’s see if we can identify a walk-away.
At this point I would like you to get into groups of three to compare what you have found. As a group, you should identify the part of the article in which Silver makes his central claim and work to paraphrase it. He’s a link to the Purdue OWL’s guide for paraphrasing.
Your group should write a 4-5 sentence summary of the article that paraphrases the main argument, highlights Silver’s evidence, and notes how he qualifies his argument. Be sure to introduce Silver’s argument to a reader, providing contextual information about the author and article as necessary.
Please post your sentences to Canvas, listing all group members.
Put this paraphrasing exercise into practice by reading and summarizing something for your weekly writing this week. Remember that we are meeting in the computer lab in Ross 1240 on Wednesday.
Also, remember that I have office hours today from 1-2 if you have questions or want me to read and comment on some writing.
Today’s Plan:
First, the quiz questions:
I find Duffett’s sense of ideology too narrowly defined by Marxism. He writes: “An ideology is a set of ideas circulating in society that can be challenged and that operates to uphold inequalities between different groups of people” (59). My problem here lies with his framing ideology as only serving a pejorative function: that of maintaining inequalities. Marx proposed that “Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.” From Marx’s perspective, religion taught us to accept our place in this world instead of working for more equality (to be rewarded in the next world, etc). Adorno continued this line of thinking, arguing that Hollywood, professional sports, and popular music was an extension of this mass drugging, keeping people from recognizing the financial inequalities ruining society (the Matrix is essentially a retelling of Adorno’s theoretical dismissal of mass culture and society).
Working from rhetoric, I want to see ideology differently. Do I think there are social forces that work to keep us from asking questions? Yes. But I also think that humans have an underlying need for a sense of their place in the world and of how the world should and does work. This is what an ideology is, before it is a nefarious strategy. It is our desire to know ourselves and our world. Religion plays a powerful role in establishing this sense (although, numbers show less so than in past generations). Before we dismiss religion as an opiate, we can recognize its ability to provide people with a powerful sense of “home.”
Thinking about your final projects, I want to add one more question–one that I think is productive for thinking about fan communities (and even about projects that range outside of what we might identify as “fandom”):
Thinking about fandom, or even about an academic discipline or a social problem, we can think of fandom of the collection of “texts” that one must be familiar with in order to be considered a true fan, discipline, practitioner (i.e., credible to participate in the community, activity, or problem-solving). For instance, I might ask: what 10 things must you have read/watched/experienced to be a true fan of Destiny? To be a “real” member of the Destiny community. Or I might produce a list of texts that you might need to know in order to be a “real” Rhetoric student. Or I might produce a list of ten people you need to read and follow in order to be a true Republican. Or a true member of the BLM movement. Or a sophisticated tea drinker. Whatever. In any socio-cultural group, there will be a collection of “sacred” texts that one must know in order to be legitimate. That’s a canon. You should be asking yourself now: what do you have to know to be a real ___________?
Thinking about how to apply Duffett to your projects, I also thought of another question, one that comes from Jenkins’ “optimistic and utopian” investigation into fandom. I hope you recognized that Jenkins isn’t talking about ALL fans when he (or Duffett, framing him) talks about fandom. Jenkins’ interest focused on the practices of particular fans, the one’s who create media, items, discourse, etc. in support or extension of their fandom. Fan fiction. Videos. Forum sites. Duffett shares Fiske’s label of these fans as “producerly” (6). Jenkins identifies them as members of “participatory cultures.”
What does this level of producerly or participatory fandom look like in your activity? What’s the difference between the mainstream and popular culture for your subculture/activity? The difference between consumption and production? What are some things that people in your community make and share (either regular texts or media or tee-shirts)? Where is the line between corporate manufacturing and audience creativity?
Questions for this week:
Due Sunday at 11:59pm, Week 7 Writing Report.
Today’s Plan:
To simplify, please email me a copy of your workshop piece, as an attachment (preferably a .docx) to insignificantwrangler@gmail.com.
Note on emails and spam filters: make sure your email has at least a subject line, a salutation, and a signature. Example:
Dr. Santos,
Here’s my piece for the workshop: http://something.com.
Thanks,
Kyle “The Yellow Dart” Smith
This increases the chances that a spam filter doesn’t think you are a machine programmed to send fake emails.
Today I want to introduce two rhetorical concepts from classical rhetoric: kairos (prominent in ancient Greek rhetoric) and its relative, stasis (which lies at the center of Roman rhetoric). Together, these two terms should help you develop more purposeful and effective introductions, since they situate a reader to your topic.
The textbook definition of kairos is “right place, right time.” But time here means something different than we tend to think of it (as chronos, the quantitative measurement of time’s passing). Rather, kairos means something closer to opportunity, an opening in time. Rhetoricians debated whether a speaker could *create* such an opportunity, or whether she merely *recognized* one. Regardless, the point is that a great speaker recognizes the specifics of a moment and place (a context), and shapes them so that a listener or reader knows why she is speaking at that moment, why she is called to speak, the exigency (situation) that demands her response. So, establishing kairos in part requires
These aims can generate a list of standard questions and guides, what we call topoi, for positioning yourself, your problem, and your audience. For instance, is this a problem that gets talked about a lot but rarely acted upon? Then here we go again. Is this a problem that you, a smart functioning human, didn’t know was a problem until recently? Then let me tell you something. Is this a problem that you thought was minor/easy to fix, but have learned it might not be? Then this might get complicated. Etc.
In Aristotle’s (in)famous treaty On Rhetoric, he declares that one of the primary obligations of a rhetor in the opening of her speech is to “prepare the judge” for what they are about to hear. While I have some pretty staunch disagreements with Aristotle, I want to highlight this advice. Millenia later, Martin Heidegger declares that this advice, on the part of Aristotle, is the birth of psychoanalysis and phenomenology: philosophical approaches that begin by recognizing that human consciousness, perception, and reason is always, already influenced by our “mood.” The task of an introduction is to set a mood: to anticipate an audience’s feelings toward a topic and shift them to a position whereby they might be more willing to entertain a new perspective.
Ok, let’s read and talk about a speech. You might have heard of this one.
The Romans followed the lead of the Greeks and considered kairos in their speeches. But the Romans also develop more intricate and complex political and legal systems, and part of that advancement involved developing clear ideas for the purpose of speeches and the nature of arguments. Stasis theory, invented by the Greeks and advanced by the Romans, was a four-part heuristic (method of invention) for establishing the purpose of an argument.
Richard Lanham, in his Handlist of Rhetorical Terms, explicates Cicero: “Cicero argued that the whole matter [stasis, issue, schematizing what an argument was about] was contained in three questions: does it exist? (Sitne?); what is it (Quid sit?); what kind of thing is it? (Quale sit?). For Lanham, this is the root of the modern “journalist’s litany, Who? What? When? Why? Where?” (93). Lanham credits Hermagoras with articulating four different types of theses related to stasis:
To Lanham’s list I might add one more:
Michael R. Moore’s WRD page has an extended list of questions that can help your invention process.
Each of these theses emphasizes a different mode of evidence–for instance, a conjectural thesis seeks to present physical evidence. A definitional or translative thesis, however, will need to provide discursive evidence (to demonstrate the legitimacy of a definition based on standards already established). A qualitative thesis is the most open to exploring circumstantial evidence, since it often makes contextual justifications for negative definitions. Think of defending a wife accused of murdering an abusive husband. Clearly, stabbing him in the chest is murder in the eyes of the law books–the discursive/textual frameworks–but can be qualified as self-defense and thus valued as a justified act. Similarly, qualitative arguments can change the ways in which we define things.
Think about the following controversies to try and identify the level of stasis:
Stasis theory helps you to identify what you *aren’t* arguing just as much as identifying what you are arguing. For instance, if you open an essay by writing “Abortion is murder. Let’s get that out of the way. But just because it is murder doesn’t mean it is wrong.” You’ve really clarified your level of stasis (and you might have completely alienated a large amount of your audience!).
I wanted to go back and revisit our reading in Duffett from the opening weeks of the semester, both because some of you are now participating in fandom groups and because we are beginning to approach the part of the semester when I ask you to generate a final paper topic.
Here’s the questions from our last reading:
Go back and rewrite the first paragraph to one of your posts this week, revising to improve kairos and/or clarify stasis (without sounding like a robot).
Read Duffett Chapter 3 and complete Quiz on Canvas before class. Read and begin drafting week 7 writing.
Remember that we will be meeting in the computer lab on Wednesday (for real this time). We will talk about Duffett, revise some writing, and then I will leave you alone so you can write.
Today’s Plan:
We are at the part of the semester where I will be a bit more diligent in checking that you are actually reading, and making sure that you are incorporating that reading into your writing in sophisticated and responsible ways. With that in mind, I want to do a quick demonstration to show the difference between a 3 (or a C) and a 4 (or an A) on the weekly writing reports.
Here’s a strong paragraph from last week’s writing:
First off, the movement is not anti-police. There are tons of great police officers out there that take their job seriously and treat everyone equally like they should. However, there are some officers who don’t treat everyone the same. Every officers job is to serve and protect. The three sisters (Patrisse Cullors, Opal Tometi, and Alicia Garza) who started the movement also stated, “Police officers are people. Their lives have inherent value. This movement is not an anti-people movement; therefore, it is not an anti-police-officer movement. Most police officers are just everyday people who want to do their jobs, make a living for their families, and come home safely at the end of their shift”.There is no reason that an innocent black man should fear being pulled over or confronted by an officer. There have been way too many cases that a black man was killed for allegedly “reaching for a weapon” while they were asked to show their license and registration.
As on Wednesday, I think we can read this paragraph and find a moment where there is a big logical jump, where one sentence doesn’t speak to what came immediately before it. Let’s talk about that.
But I also want to talk about arrangement and logical development. I haven’t said too much about thesis statements in the class because I think they carry a lot of baggage and generally confuse people. What I want to talk about instead is making claims. At the core, good writing is structured to make a claim and then provide evidence and reasons to support that claim (evidence and reasons are the two major categories of logos). My guess is that we all have a good sense of “evidence.” Evidence is tangible, measurable, quantitative, material. One can point to it. A videotape of a robbery, for instance. Evidence isn’t necessarily invented, it is found or measured. Reasons are different. Wikipedia offers a nice, concise definition for “reason”: “A reason is a consideration which justifies or explains.” Reasons are invented (or, using Aristotle’s language, “artistic”). A strong argumentative paragraph will blend a mix of evidence and reasons in support of a claim.
Looking at the paragraph above, we see a clear claim: BLM is not anti-police. And we see evidence of this, too: a quote from the founders of BLM that clearly indicates that BLM isn’t anti-police. Good.
First off, the movement is not anti-police. From the beginning the founders of the Black Lives Matter movement, Patrisse Cullors, Opal Tometi, and Alicia Garza, have maintained that “Police officers are people. Their lives have inherent value. This movement is not an anti-people movement; therefore, it is not an anti-police-officer movement. Most police officers are just everyday people who want to do their jobs, make a living for their families, and come home safely at the end of their shift.” Contrary to Bill O’Reilly, Breibart, and others in the media, BLM does not promote violence against police officers. There are tons of great police officers out there that take their job seriously and treat everyone equally like they should. However, there are some officers who don’t treat everyone the same.
There have been way too many cases like that of Philando Castile, a black man was killed for allegedly “reaching for his weapon” during a routine traffic stop. Just this week we are coping with the deaths of Keith Lamont Scott and Terence Crutcher. And while CNN reports that the police suggest that Scott was holding a gun and not a book when he was shot (in contrast to earlier media reports that he was holding a book), the larger concern is the role race plays in police shootings and in our justice system in general. Black Lives Matter isn’t responding to one or two isolated events, but to a larger systemic problem. A recent Vanity Fair article explores 18 academic studies on police shootings, one of which, by UC Davis professor Cody Ross found that an unarmed black person was 3.5 times more likely to be shot that an unarmed white person. Similarly, several other studies in the article report how much more likely black people are to be searched or stopped by police. Black Lives Matter isn’t advocating killing police or rejecting their need or authority. Rather, it wants America to recognize that there are a select few police officers are more likely to target black suspects and seem much more willing to escalate to lethal force when a suspect is black and not white.
Week 6 Writing Reports (the 3rd report so far) is due this weekend. As I said on Wednesday, I’m looking for a few specific things this week:
Today’s Plan:
As I understand it, Write for Market is focused on helping you launch your careers as creative writers, or to locate work in the publishing industry. Today, I hope to show you concretely how Twitter can help you grow a network that will help with those goals.
But I also want to stress that developing increased proficiency with social media can also help you land a job. Mediabistro lists 82 jobs (nationwide) for writers familiar with social media. While the requirements for those jobs vary, many of them are looking for people who can manage and grow Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Linkedin accounts.
Unlike other social media networks, the first impression of Twitter is often “chaos.” This is understandable. A Twitter feed is much more chaotic than the feed for a Facebook or Instagram account. You often encounter bits of conversations (since twitter doesn’t necessarily present entire threads), and this can be disorienting (you often can’t tell if there’s replies to a tweet until you click on it). But with a little diligence (in who you follow) and familiarity, Twitter becomes a very useful resource for networking.
The basics. Every tweet is a short statement of 140 characters or less. Let’s look at the parts of a tweet:
First, let’s look at a tweet:
New ep of Rhetoricity is up! This one, recorded @ #4c15, feat. @jennyrice & @sophist_monster: https://t.co/jodmP0uDmj pic.twitter.com/Que9vVURwq
— Eric Detweiler (@EricSDet) March 26, 2015
What do we see?
Ideally, every tweet should have a hashtag, since it is hashtags that file tweets into conversations.
When necessary, shorten links with tinyurl.com. Don’t shorten links if you don’t have to–many people are hesitant to click a link if they don’t know where they are going.
Beyond the how-to and jobs, I want to talk a bit about the etiquette ethics of social media communication.
Much of the work of rhetoric involves cultivating an ethos that appeals to your audience. Social media provides you a powerful opportunity to do this kind of work–to credentialize yourself. One of my good friends used to call this the art of faking it until you make it.
Follow the jobs you want to be when you grow up. Be strategic in who you follow. Be strategic about rewarding a follow with a follow (“standard” Twitter etiquette). Much of someone’s Twitter experience comes down to the quality of people they choose to follow (and unfollow). With a bit of early investment, Twitter provide both a feed of things you want to read and connections to a network of peers and professionals.
Before you create an account with twitter, you should make a few important decisions. Perhaps the most important is deciding whether to use your real name or to use a pseudonym. As a graduate student, I did all of my online writing under a pseudonym (insignificantwrangler), however, if you are using social media to enter into the creative writing community and develop a professional network, then you might want to use your real name. It is possible to create a handle that has no connection to your real name, and to set your user name as a first name. If you have a quality experience, then you can always change your username later.
Once you have developed your name and user name, you should set your profile picture (this is an ethos thing–no one follows an egg. Plenty of people are able to build credibility with a pseudonym, but an egg is a deal breaker. Change that photo before you start following people.
The next step would be to set up your description. Simply hit edit profile from your profile page. The twitter profile description has developed into a clear genre with traditional expectations. Here’s a local Colorado writer (I found in SageGreenJournal) using this bio in action.
Of course, many people play with these conventions. As a rhetorician, my advice is to pay attention to the authors you read and follow.
I really like Julie Pagano’s “On Twitter” and her follow-up “Twitter Guidelines.”
The quality of your experience on Twitter is directly tied to who you choose to follow. By selecting quality accounts to follow, we can turn twitter’s chaos into a productive network. To Google!
Your professional aspirations will probably inform who you want to follow. But were I you, I would start with a combination of publishing venues, active writers, and creative spaces. So:
How about a list of publishing houses here in Colorado, via the Colorado Poets Center:
These lists are starting points. How you develop from here depends on your interests. Are you thinking about applying to MFA programs? Then start looking for programs who have twitter accounts, like @PittWriters or Queens Univ MFA. Even better, look for individual faculty accounts, especially of (local) people with whom you might want to work, like @sukrungruang or Elizabeth McCracken (or any from this list of the top 50 Creative Writing Faculty on twitter).
There’s another trick. Let’s say you were thinking about going to Colorado State–then you might look at what accounts the Colorado Review follows.
Today’s Plan:
We are making progress, but we still have a few issues with setting up the weekly writing reports in Google Drive.
Link to the template.Reminder: my email address for sharing is insignificantwrangler@gmail.com
PLEASE DO THIS.
I need two people to volunteer to have an approximately 400 word write-up completed by Wednesday for workshopping.
After our discussion last class, I went ahead and reserved the computer lab for every Wednesday from this week through November 16th. That means we are meeting in the computer lab on:
The computer lab is room 1240 in Ross Hall.
One of the requests from our Q&A concerned using more interesting words, which I interpret as using more precise language. First, I want to do a quick exercise that introduces “poststructuralism,” a semiotic approach to philosophy rooted in the inherent (and necessary) ambiguity of language.
Next, I want to walk through Roane State OWL’s quick workshop on precise language.
This weekend I found myself writing the following sentences:
I have a number of publications that focus on how to best develop students’ composing skills, confidence, and creative capacity. The most recent of which appeared online in Composition Forum. Essentially, I try to design courses and assignments that call for students to articulate their own projects based on their own academic and/or professional trajectories, and to VERB their expectation for me to tell them what to do or what they should know. Rather than act as an authority, I position myself more as a guide or a resource. This student-oriented approach is called postpedagogy. It can be a bit disorienting at first, but, as we demonstrate in the article via student surveys, the vast majority of students report that our approach significantly helps them develop as writers and agents of change.
I spent a non-trivial amount of time thinking about what verb I wanted to use in that sentence. My first choice was “subvert.” Let’s Google “synonyms for subvert” and see what happens.
While precise language is a mark of sophisticated writing, we have to make sure we do not sacrifice clarity for precision. Let’s look at Butte College’s “Advice to Write Clearly.”
As you write this week, be on the look out for imprecise words such as interesting, good, important, beautiful, excellent, etc. When you catch these words, try to rewrite those sentences to tell us why something is interesting, good, etc.
We will spend the first half of Wednesday’s class revising some material from this past weekend’s writing. The second half of class, however, will be dedicated to drafting and revising your writing. PLEASE COME TO CLASS WITH WRITING TO WORK ON!
Today’s Plan:
Not surprising, there were a number of questions regarding the weekly writing reports:
When exactly is the writing due each week?
The writing is due every Sunday at 11:59am.
I would like to talk more about the timeline of the project. I’m still confused on how its getting done.
I am confused on the weekly writing prompts and how exactly they are done.
One question I have for you pertaining to the class is be more clear on what is due, more
in-depth instructions. Maybe an example of recent projects?
Can you be more indepth and clear on your instructions. Also be more clear on when the actual posts should be up.
Something I am confused on was the weekly writing and the syllabus.
I would like for you to explain more in detail the way we should be writing. I’m confused because there is really no structure for this project.
I’m confused about how you want to progress with our writing in class. How exactly does your method work? I also need more motivation during class to engage myself with my writing after class.
In terms of what you need to complete every week, you need to read somewhere in the neighborhood of 3 articles/longer posts and write 750 words summarizing, synthesizing, and responding to those articles. My only other rule is that the 750 words cannot be one long post. You must post/publish more than one thing a week.
You tell me what you have read and what/where you have written that week by completing the Weekly Writing Report. If you scroll down, you will see that the report has space for weeks 4 through 13. Last Sunday was the week 4 report. This Sunday will be the week 5 report. Once you have shared the document with me once, you simply have to go to this document and update it every week. If you do not have a grade in Canvas for the Week 4 post, then you have not successfully shared the document with me. We can set this up today after class if you are struggling to locate, copy/create, or share your weekly writing report document.
I would say there is some structure for this project: read stuff, compare it to other stuff, write up your comparisons. But I readily admit that I’m not going to give you more detail on the way you should be writing. You are college students now. I am insisting that you develop your own details for the way you should be writing. I am here to help you write better, but it is your responsibility to determine what you will write. This approach is called postpedagogy, and I have published on it in a few places. If you are interested, then I recommend you read this piece that I co-wrote with Megan McIntyre (perhaps skip down to the parts where we talk about student survey responses to our courses). I also wrote an article about the development of this class, though it is a bit more theoretical in nature.
Here is a summary paragraph from the article with Megan:
Student responses suggest three major findings: first, students found themselves breaking rules and exploring new physical and intellectual spaces during the completion of these projects and throughout the course. Second, students believed that the vague nature of these projects and the lack of explicit constraints encouraged them to express a kind of creativity not necessarily required by other projects in other courses. Finally, students reported that our vague assignments produced anxiety and fear, but most students ultimately found this anxiety productive.
Since this is a freshman class, I have tried to be clearer about my expectations. And I think I have been pretty diligent about writing up these daily notes and specifying due dates and expectations. Please be sure you are checking the homework section at the bottom of the daily notes.
A demo on what a full week’s writing report looks like.
As I showed in Wednesday’s class, a completed Writing Report looks exactly like this. Notice the links to the student’s writing, along with a sentence or two that describes that writing. Notice the word counts. Notice how the student lists and links to what she has read.
If you can just give more exact examples of what is expected. Also show us more paraphrasing and how we can avoid plagiarism. If we do it on accident understand it wasn’t on purpose. Also give us time to work with these assignments because this class is the first class where most of us do not have a set topic and requirements for this class. Since we make our own schedule, it can be problematic. Just give us time–and you have and I thank you for that.
Absolutely I can do more on paraphrasing and avoiding plagiarism. I don’t want to “bust” people, I want to help people learn. I will put more paraphrasing exercises on the syllabus.
Explain how we should interact with the community on a weekly basis.
I’m not sure I can? If you are completing the Weekly Writing report, then you should be leaving at least one substantive comment somewhere on the Internet. You are free to leave more than one substantive comment! Every time you comment, document it in the Weekly Writing report with a word count so I can see it!
When we are re-writing sentences in class and are supposed to share them, I usually do not finish my sentence by the time you ask us to share them. So maybe give us more time or show a way to write sentences faster.
My bad. I can give more time. And if I am being a jerk, you should tell me “hey, wait, I need more time.”
I’m still confused on MLA formatting, so maybe towards the end of the semester go over that?
Oh my goodness certainly. As we move into the research project, we will have several days/exercises focused on MLA / APA formatting.
Something I would like for you to do in class more is to have a day where we go to the lab and everyone has the chance to write and talk about their weekly writing.
Yes, I agree that we need more lab time. I am in the process of trying to reserve the lab every Wednesday. I will keep you all informed.
More class time to read or write our papers with you there to help.
As with the above answer on labs, I want to do this. However, I will also PUSH FOR YOU TO COME TO OFFICE HOURS. Bring a draft of what you are reading or writing. We can read it together and come up with questions for a response or revision strategies. I am in office hours M&W from 1:00-2:00 and F from 10-10:45. Also, I will meet just about any time M/W afternoon from 2:00-4:00 if you want to make an appointment. And if you are struggling and can’t meet during those times, then let me know and I will come to campus on a T/R to meet with you. Seriously, you are paying a lot of money to have access to faculty. Take advantage of my availability.
Something I would like to learn more on is, how to make writing more focused on one topic. My writing tends to be very scattered. Though this may be more of a me-problem.
Every draft is scattered! What I hope you develop over the next few months is an internal ear that hears when a sentence breaks from the one before it. That’s really the key to revising (developing ideas) vs editing (fixing grammar, style, readability). We will work on this–but the most important step here is to READ YOUR WRITING OUT LOUD BEFORE YOU PRESS PUBLISH.
Could you go over powerful words to use in place of weak ones in writing. For example: What’s a good alternative word to “really” that is a little more powerful.
Yeah, I think a few workshops on synonyms could be good.
Focus on improving our work / talk about what you would like to see specifically.
Umm…I would like to see you telling me what you would like to see
What font would you recommend for online posting?
Let me flip this rhetorically on you (rhetoric meaning something like thinking about how the audience who receives a work might influence the production of the work). Look at the places you read. What kinds of fonts do they use? Of course, fonts have personality and there are “rules” for what fonts should appear where, but these rules get broken all the time.
Easy ways to make my writing more interesting, to put my thoughts into one paragraph.
Writing? Easy? You’re funny. But seriously, concrete details. Narrative. Tell stories, no matter what you are writing about.
I have no questions.
Cool.
Complete the Week 5 section of the weekly writing report by Sunday at 11:59am.