Writers' Tool Shed

[stvdybuddies]

1. Know your stance: Make sure you know exactly where you stand on the issue! Which side will you take? What are your biases? The importance of a persuasive essay is to be able to assert your point while simultaneously acknowledging the opposition. State your claims and back them up.

2. Understand your topic: One of the most important aspects of a persuasive essay is the evidence that you use to back your assertions, and disprove your opposition’s argument. This can only be done if you have a very clear and thorough understanding of the topic at hand. This means doing research, research, and more research!

3. Audience: It’s important, especially in a persuasive essay, that you know your audience. While you may stand strongly on one side of the argument, keep in mind that there will always be others who don’t see the situation through the same lens as you do. It’s important in a persuasive essay to not only assert your opinions, but to also consider and address the opposing side. Whether it’s to disprove an argument, or to concede to some valid points, it’s essential to acknowledge the other side.

4. Structure is key: The foundation of a good essay (of any kind) is in its organization. The introduction to your essay should grab the audience’s attention, state your thesis, as well as provide some background information on the subject at hand. The body is where the bulk of the argument comes in. Remember that each paragraph should assert a certain point (a clear topic sentence is key), and that each of your points should be backed with strong evidence. Evidence can include research, quotes, data, or real life examples etc. And finally, include a strong and succinct conclusion to round off your essay!

Tips: Remember that the flow of your essay needs to be logical, so that your reader can clearly see the point of the argument instead of getting lost in the midst of a scramble of ideas.

Additionally:

Outline and Draft! Forming an outline really helps when writing any essay. If you have written a structured and detailed outline, then writing the draft will be much easier. Flesh out the outline that you have prepared and just let your ideas flow. Don’t worry too much about wording or grammar the first time around, just try to get your ideas out onto the paper.

Revise! Congrats! You’re almost done! Now, go over and edit your draft. Really pay attention to the flow, coherence, and organization of your ideas. This is also the time to look for any grammatical errors. 

Take a step back! If you have the extra time, it helps to leave your essay for a while (a day or two), before coming back to it. Sometimes taking a step back can really go a long way!

[writerstoolshed]

Here's a great guide to writing argumentative essays from @stvdybuddies. Project two planning begins tomorrow!

[english102survivalguide-blog]

No matter how hard you’ve worked on a project, turning in a final draft can always be somewhat intimidating. Remember that writing is a process– not the creation of a product, and every draft could be further revised or edited in conversation with the author and audience. 

Photo credit: https://theundefeated.com/features/stephen-currys-quest-to-silence-the-haters/

[writerstoolshed]

In honor of deadline day! 

[writerstoolshed]

People Suffer at Work When They Can’t Discuss the Racial Bias They Face Outside of It

They become more disengaged and more likely to leave.

As you're conferencing about your rough drafts, offering peer review feedback, and revising your own P1, I think you might find this multimodal causal argument interesting. Hewlett et. al. recently published this article for the Harvard Business Review. They are writing with their own rhetorical situation in mind, of course, but they do have a goal similar to yours in P1: They make a clear causal argument, as summarized in the title. They also back their claim up with evidence: "But 38% of black professionals also feel that it is never acceptable at their companies to speak out about their experiences of bias — a silence that makes them more than twice as vulnerable to feelings of isolation and alienation in the workplace. Black employees who feel muzzled are nearly three times as likely as those who don’t to have one foot out the door, and they’re 13 times as likely to be disengaged."

In the end, Hewlett et. al. do speculate about future positive effects of creating more open discussions about race in the workplace. This underscores the importance of the conversation without taking away the focus on the present environment they’ve analyzed.

What do you notice about how these writers put forth a persuasive, arguable causal claim? About how they use multimodal components to underscore that claim?

[writerstoolshed]

Happy Saturday, everyone. Your classmate Jen shared this really helpful video from Schmoop on your Blackboard peer discussion thread. In it, the creators discuss the art of persuasion. If rhetorical concepts still seem pretty abstract to you, I think this will help explain how we use rhetorical strategies in the real world (the world with Coke vs. Pepsi arguments!). Reflecting on these tactics (or *rhetorical appeals*) will you develop audience-specific arguments to support your causal claim. Thanks for sharing, Jen!

[writerstoolshed]

Don’t let this be you at the end of our six week course! Remember to schedule time to come back to your e-portfolio in order to reflect on your work throughout the semester. 

[writerstoolshed]

You just finished creating your e-portfolio. Make sure you revisit the portfolio-- weekly, if possible-- throughout the course of the semester.

[writerstoolshed]

In case you missed this under Blackboard’s “Tips for Success,” watch this quick video offering solid advice as you begin English 102 online assignments. 

[writerstoolshed]

I find this overview of brainstorming activities, from the UNC Chapel Hill Writing Center, to be very helpful in the beginning stages of developing research questions and potential topics for a new writing project: "If you consciously take advantage of your natural thinking processes by gathering your brain’s energies into a “storm,” you can transform these energies into written words or diagrams that will lead to lively, vibrant writing. Below you will find a brief discussion of what brainstorming is, why you might brainstorm, and suggestions for how you might brainstorm."

[writerstoolshed]

Three suggestions for success on multimodal assignments

1) If you don’t know exactly how a specific medium works, learn. Most social media and online platforms have extensive troubleshooting guides and many accompanying YouTube tutorials. Let’s say, for example, I can’t remember how sharing settings work for Prezi. When I google “share a Prezi,” voilà:

Similarly, I faced an issue trying to view a Windows Media Player video on my Mac. I quickly learned that I needed a new video player, VHL, which was free and easy to find online. You have knowledgeable communities— and the power of Google— to help you with any issues you face with the new technologies you are using. Be proactive and a problem-solver.

Keep reading

[writerstoolshed]

Hello, English 102 Summer B students! As you navigate the many contents of our blackboard shell, you might also want to consider reviewing these strategies I have for you as you compose multimodal texts– perhaps for the first time. What challenges do you foresee facing? What questions do you have? Feel free to ask any of those questions here.

[writerstoolshed]

Gaiman argues that the true muse of writing lies not in divine inspiration but in unrelenting persistence of effort and force of will…

–Neil Gaiman

I am always uplifted by the ding that means my inbox has just received a new blog entry from Maria Popova’s *Brain Pickings.* Here, Papova highlights novelist Neil Gaiman’s encouraging advice to writers.May this be a reminder that persistence–not divine inspiration–  will be crucial to the success of your own writing endeavors (academic and otherwise). 

(via writerstoolshed)

[writerstoolshed]

Because I'm an avid Warrior fan, I'd ask that you please watch this short ad, created by the WNBA campaign #WatchMeWork, as you work on revising your Proposal Arguments.

 While Curry doesn’t directly say “Hey, fans, watch WNBA now!” the creators of this ad use various rhetorical appeals to convince his fanbase to do just that. The writers make sure that Curry shows an understanding of his audience’s values: He knows that his fans admire his creativity and skill, so he shows how WNBA players demonstrate similar attributes. The ad also leans heavily on Curry’s own credibility as a world-renowned basketball player, sometimes featuring only his face floating prominently in a simple black background. Such simplicity also helps establish connection with his fans-- he could be in your very living room, just talking about basketball. In doing so, he urges his own fans to think: Well, if Curry watches WNBA, then maybe I should, too!

Curry has also seemed to have considered possible objections. Consider the abhor-able but inevitable opinion that WNBA players aren’t as talented or fun to watch, for example: Curry undercuts such a point of view by stating twice that WNBA players are talented; he also mentions that he himself learns by watching them.

The ad’s claim is clear and calls on a specific audience to take a specific action: NBA fans, you should tune in for WNBA games.

As you revise, ask yourself: What is your claim’s specific call to action? Who are you asking to do what, precisely? Because you are calling on an action to address a specific problem, its easy for the more direct call to get lost in your research and reflection. Keep this question in mind at every step of the revision process this week, and make sure every piece of information you deliver to your audience is clearly connected to the call:

Dear X:

Please do Y in order to address the issue of Z.

[writerstoolshed]

It doesn’t matter how eloquent or well-researched your writing is: If you stray off-topic, or write without consideration of assignment goals and genre expectations, your good work will miss the mark. Get ahead on Project 2 by listening to this podcast and printing P2 assignment sheet.

[writerstoolshed]

-- From https://www.facebook.com/EMMnotemma/

[writerstoolshed]

Consider buying this additional book if you are having trouble getting your thoughts down on the page.

While you have many good resources and an excellent e-book to help guide you through 102, I find this (Cheap!) textbook especially helpful for students who are having a hard time getting their thoughts down on the page. It offers sentence structures you might find helpful and outlines “moves for academic writing” that I think might help you better interact with course material-- all of our interactions are writing interactions, after all.

[writerstoolshed]

Here is an extremely helpful video from Ted Ed, Camille A. Langston, and the TOGETHER animation team. It describes the three major rhetorical appeals a persuasive writer/speaker might use, as outlined by Aristotle. 

[writerstoolshed]

The Miracle of Prose: Introduction to English 1-0-Tuesdays

English 10-Tuesdays is a weekly podcast designed to help Writers' Studio English 102 students navigate the obstacles of researching and writing for course assignments. Instructor Sara Sams leads Summe

Hi, all: Here’s an additional way to hear from me throughout the week as you work on your assignments-- an experiment of a podcast. You can listen via this link on Soundcloud (take it with you on the go, if you like!) or read the transcript here: https://docs.google.com/a/asu.edu/document/d/17rIt-Hnu_luVoQYzR6B-GfHJQ4kZAsxsmPrhxKS43wc/edit?usp=sharing. Hopefully these Tuesday releases will also help you prepare for Thursday deadlines. Happy writing!

[writerstoolshed]

More inspiration via Brainpickings this Monday morning: A call to compose as a way to seek truth, “to look for that pinprick of light,” from Illustrator Wendy MacNaughton and writer Courtney E. Martin. How can you take advantage of Project 1 as a way to think on the page and to learn more fully and thoughtfully about an issue you care about? To “reveal the fierce urgency of now”?

[writerstoolshed]

Don’t let this be you at the end of our six week course! Remember to schedule time to come back to your e-portfolio in order to reflect on your work throughout the semester.