Final Essay Scenario

If you are having topic/thesis trouble with your essay, feel free to use the scenario described below.

Several students, however, have spoken to me about approaches to the assignment that do not conform to the scenario; this is perfectly fine. If the scenario helps, use it. If not, see me with your ideas, and I will help you make sure you're pursuing a viable thesis.

The scenario:

A common cultural experience is being planned on a global scale. This project is similar to common reading experiences, in which all members of a given community read the same book with the idea that this will generate discussion and understanding.

The "text" in this project is not limited to books. Any act of human cultural expression created within your lifetime may be used. Once a work is selected, the goal will be for it to be experienced by as many people on the planet as possible.

Your task is to nominate a single work and make the strongest case possible that it should be adopted for the project.

Your argument must be made objectively and you must provide reasons beyond the fact that you like the work you are nominating.

Also, your argument should be based in part on information obtained from outside sources. Keep in mind that this encompasses much more that background information on whatever book, film, painting or other work your are discussing. For example, imagine that you are arguing that everyone should experience the song "Eye of the Tiger" because it will energize people and encourage them toward physical activity, contributing to increased global physical fitness. In this scenario, you may be better off researching fitness levels around the world than the discography of the band Survivor.

Here are some logistical requirements:

• Length: 1250-1750 words.
• Due at the time of the final exam.
• Sources do not need to come from academic publications, but must conform to reasonable standards of reliability. This means:
• a source must have an identifiable author.
• a source's author must be qualified in some way to discuss the topic.
• Essays citing sources like Wikipedia, Buzzfeed, About.com, etc. will not be accepted. See me if you have questions about the suitability of a particular source.
• Sources should be documented according to MLA guidelines. This includes in-text parenthetical citations that correspond to entries on a works cited page.

 

 

 

Final Exam Information

The following links lead to final exam review terms and sample questions from previous courses. Although this course's exam will not be identical, the content will be very similar.

http://jfcomposition.blogspot.com/2012/12/final-tips.html
http://jfcomposition.blogspot.com/2012/12/final-exam-review-terms.html

Remaining Schedule

Th 11/13: Giving Tree article discussion.


Tu 11/18: Academic writing. Working with sources: locating and evaluating.

Th 11/20: Working with sources: Integrating.


Tu 11/25: Reasoning, fallacies, and types of appeals.

Th 11/27: Thanksgiving--no class.


Tu 12/2: Book report presentations. Final exam preview. Documenting sources.

Th 12/4: Documenting sources. Courese wrap-up.


Tu 12/9: Final exam for 3:30 section.

Th 12/11: Final exam for 5:30 section.

Handbooks may be used for the final exam. Please bring a pencil. Final essays are due at the time of the exam.

Preparing for the Final Essay

In addition to the book review and final exam, the one major assignment remaining in the course is Essay III. This essay will continue to build on skills from earlier in the course.

While Essay II focused on formulating an arguable thesis, the thesis for this assignment is somewhat built-in and should be much more easy to discover; the focus here will be on providing effective support for that thesis.

The topics and skills we will cover include the following:

• Academic vs. other types of writing
• Types of appeals: ethical, emotional, logical
• Reasoning and fallacies
• Locating sources
• Evaluating sources
• Integrating sources
• Documenting sources

I will give you formal instructions for Essay III soon; for now, here is a general idea: You will be asked to choose a contemporary artwork (defined broadly to include literature, music, film, painting, sculpture, dance, theater, architecture--virtually any act of cultural expression) that you feel to be among the most important in existence. In other words, what work has the greatest value to humanity? You will make the case that your chosen work is indeed among the world's most important and support your claim with examples from outside sources.

Details will be provided soon. For now, choose a work you want to write about, and begin some informal research to educate yourself about your work and its context. Don't wait. Be prepared on Tuesday to talk and/or write about your choice.

Reading for Thursday 11/13

For Thursday, please read this article from the New Yorker on Shel Silverstein's book The Giving Tree. Pay attention to the author's claims and the evidence she uses to support them.

A quiz on the reading is very likely. Be sure to print a copy of the article to refer to during discussion.

An Essay Checklist

The checklist below might be useful in making sure your essay is accomplishing its goals:

Essay Focus:
Is the topic narrow enough to address in an essay of this length? Does the essay make an arguable claim about this topic? Do all parts of the essay work to support this claim?

Paragraph Focus:
Do the examples in each paragraph work together to support an overall point about the paragraph’s topic? 

Specific Examples:
Does the essay use suitably precise language, rather than generalizations, to support its claims?

Mechanics/Grammar/Punctuation/etc.:
Is the essay formatted according to the stated guidelines? Has it been carefully proofread. Are there any sentence-level errors of any type we’ve discussed in class?

Essay II Due Date

The essay is due in class on Thursday, November 6. It should be formatted according to MLA guidelines and submitted in hard copy form (printed on paper). Don't forget to staple. The length requirement is 1200-1500 words.

Please contact me if you are having problems.

More Clarification

Some of the questions following Tuesday's class suggest a need for still more clarification on the assignment instructions.

The original instructions read as follows:

This assignment asks you to...examine a contemporary text, draw a suitably precise (and arguable) conclusion about it, and convincingly support that conclusion with specific examples.

These instructions are deliberately open ended in order to encourage original thinking about your topic (see the previous post). We want to eliminate the model of students providing a "correct" answer to an instructor question. Instead, you, the student, are the one posing the question.

Everyone has chosen a text. Your task now is to discover what matters to you about your text. If you feel lost without more structure, you might try the following steps, adapted from Section A of the handbook):

• Examine your text (see the guidelines on page 68).
• Sketch a brief outline.
• Write a brief summary.
• Identify as many subtopics as possible (you've done assignments to get you started on this). If you're having a hard time, do some online searching to see what others have written about in relation to your topic.
• Decide what subtopic(s) you care most about. What do you have to say about your topic? What aspects of the topic do you feel most strongly about? Is there some aspect of the topic you don't understand? Can you identify some misconception about your topic that you would like to correct?
•  Begin to form a working thesis. See the guidelines on pages 373 and 17 for some useful tips.

I hope this helps. Don't forget to see me if you're still feeling confused.

More on Essay II

There was some confusion during Thursday's class about the goals of essay two. To clarify, let's compare this assignment to typical writing assignments from other college courses.

In general, college writing assignments ask the student to examine a text and respond to some instructor-supplied question or prompt. For example, in a political science course, students might respond to the question, "What are the most significant differences between U.S. student protests against the Vietnam War and 2014's Umbrella Revolution in Hong Kong?" Questions like this are intended to engage students in higher-order thinking (see the chart below), and rarely have a single correct answer.

© 2009, The Teaching Center, Washington University in St. Louis

Rather than answering "correctly," the most effective responses use the question as a point of departure and proceed to make some original claim about the topic. In the example above, a dozen or more significant differences might exist between the two protests. Answering the question depends not on which difference the writer chooses, but on how effectively she supports that choice.

Additionally, in writing Essay II, you are not responding to an instructor question. Instead you must formulate a question yourself--one whose answer reveals some significant insight into your chosen topic. This is more difficult, because the comfortable framework of the instructor-supplied question is removed. The hope here is that you will engage in more original thinking and focus less on simply providing the answer you think the instructor is looking for.

One word of caution: In rare cases, writing assignments will call for a simple recitation of facts without any interpretation. To determine the instructor's expectations, pay careful attention to the verbs used in the prompt. For example, consider the following verbs: "list," "explain," "discuss," "analyze," "argue," "predict," "compare," "contrast," "summarize," "challenge," and "refute"; all imply very different expectations of how much and what kind of original interpretation is appropriate. In general, however, err on the side of higher-order approaches, as opposed to mere summary or recitation.

Two Assignments

FOR THURSDAY 10/23:
Please submit to me the name of the text you have chosen for the subject of your essay. You don't need to know yet exactly what you're going to say about this text, but I want you to pick something and stick with it. Here are some examples of what you might give me (this doesn't need to be typed):

• The novel, A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan.
• John Oliver's September 7 segment on student debt.
• Apple's "Everything, Everywhere" iPhone 6 TV commercial.
• Roger Ebert's October 15, 1999 review of David Lynch's The Straight Story, "Cowboy Plays It Straight."
• Louis C.K.'s tweets about the Ebola epidemic.

Bring a copy of your text (if possible) to Thursday's class, along with whatever notes you have.

FOR TUESDAY 10/28:
Read the article "Big Box Stores Are Bad for Main Street" (p. 69) and the student textual analysis paper "Rethinking Big Box Stores" (pp. 75-76). Be sure to bring your handbook to class on this day for our discussion.

For Context:

In the instructions for Essay II, I use "The Films of David Lynch" as an example of a general topic. To give you a feel for Lynch's style, here is a preview for his film, Wild at Heart:

And here is the trailer for another Lynch film, The Straight Story:

For Tuesday

First, a reminder that we will not meet as a class on Thursday. Instead, be sure to spend a significant amount of time on background reading related to a potential essay topic. For Tuesday, please complete the following:

1. Choose a general topic you may want to write about.
2. Read broadly about this topic and skim as many texts related to your topic as possible. Your goal is to see what kinds of things others are writing about, and what kinds of claims they are making.
3. Select four of the texts that you find most interesting.
4. For each of these texts, list at least four possible subtopics (or, if you’re feeling ambitious, claims).

What you hand in might look something like this:

General topic: The films of David Lynch.

Possible texts:

1.   Wild at Heart
2.   Blue Velvet
3.   Mulholland Drive
4.   Lost Highway
5.   The Elephant Man
6.   Twin Peaks
7.   Walk Fire with Me
8.   New Yorker article about Lynch’s disagreements with ABC.
9.   Review of Blue Velvet
10.   Lynch’s performance in Louie

Most interesting texts and subtopics/claims:

1.      Wild at Heart

a.       The film’s violence

b.      The film’s Wizard of Oz imagery

c.       The film as a road movie

d.      The film’s role in Nicholas Cage’s career (claim: the film was the last artistic movie Nicholas Cage made).

2.      Blue Velvet

a.       Public outrage

b.      Dennis Hopper’s performance

c.       The film’s music

d.      References to American popular culture of the 1950’s (claim: the film helped spark the retro/nostalgia craze of the 1990s and 2000s).

3.      Twin Peaks

a.       Connections to the film Walk Fire with Me

b.      The film’s ending

c.       Lynch’s disputes with ABC

d.      The series’ influence on later television (Claim: The Sopranos and Breaking Bad would not have existed without Twin Peaks).

4.      The Elephant Man

a.       The film’s awards

b.      Costuming and makeup

c.       Lynch’s choice of black and white

d.      Parallels to the historical “Elephant Man” (Claim: Much of the film’s integrity and power comes from its historical accuracy).

What the kids are up to these days...

Essay Two: Textual Analysis

In Essay One we practiced the skills needed to describe a subject using specific details. This essay asks you use those kinds of details as examples in support of a focused claim about a topic.

For example, if you were describing Donald Trump, you might fill pages and pages with details about his business expertise, his reality TV career, his casinos, his personal life, his sense of style, his political opinions, or any number of related topics. But so what? Why are you providing this information? What claim (or conclusion) about Donald Trump are you trying to make?

You might argue that Trump is one of the truest examples of the American Dream. Or, instead, you might argue that the media mocks him unfairly. Or that the media gives him more attention than he deserves. Or that he is a financial genius, a bad role model, a good role model, a negative force in American politics, a good presidential candidate. You could argue almost anything, as long as you support your claims with convincing evidence.

This assignment asks you to do just that: examine a contemporary text, draw a suitably precise (and arguable) conclusion about it, and convincingly support that conclusion with specific examples.

For our purposes, a text is any act of public communication. This includes books, articles, stories, essays, magazines, speeches, films, newspapers, websites, songs, albums, television programs, online videos, podcasts, buildings, plays, paintings, poems, cartoons, illustrations, advertising messages, Twitter feeds, and many other types of messages.

Keep in mind that choosing a more general topic will require you to narrow your focus more. “The Film Career of David Lynch,” for example, is far broader than “The Impact of David Lynch’s Transcendental Meditation Experiences on the Opening Credits of Twin Peaks.” (Please note, also, that although the second example is quite specific, it is still only a topic. The job of the writer here will be to make a claim about this topic.)

We will discuss and practice these concepts in upcoming classes. Your job for the time being is to begin studying potential topics in order to identify precise subtopics about which you have something significant to say. I urge you to ask for feedback on potential topics.

Logistical information (i.e.: length, format, due date) will be announced.

Leonardo da Vinci Paragraph

We will examine the paragraph below in terms of its focus. Remember, a paragraph is a group of sentences that work together to make and support a single main idea.

Leonardo da Vinci was born on April 6, 1542, in the Republic of Florence. A good deal of controversy once existed about the identity of the subject of da Vinci's masterpiece, the Mona Lisa. For years, scholars wondered if da Vinci had based the image on his own facial features, on those of some secret lover, or on no one in particular. In recent years, however, the woman has been positively identified as Lisa Gherardini, a member of the Florentine middle class. In addition to his painting, da Vinci was also an engineer, sculptor, architect, anatomist, inventor, writer, and mathematician. Only about fifteen of da Vinci's paintings survive today, along with numerous notebooks, drawings, and diagrams. Although he made many important discoveries, he did not publish his findings, and his work had no direct impact on later science. Da Vinci was a vegetarian, and he had a habit of purchasing caged birds and releasing them. He worked in a variety of places, including Florence, Rome, Milan, Venice, and France. Along with fellow Ninja Turtles Michelangelo and Raphael, he is considered one of the most important figures of the Italian Renaissance.

Link to Reading Assignment

For Tuesday's class, please read this review of Guns N' Roses bassist Duff McKagan's memoir, It's So Easy (and Other Lies). We will discuss the review's paragraphing and its thesis; it will also serve as a useful model for the book review you are writing.

Be prepared to discuss the review in detail, and have a printed copy to refer to during that discussion. A quiz is likely.

Book Review Assignment Guidelines

The book review assignment will not be due until the final weeks of the course, but I would like to provide the guidelines now.

If you have not already chosen a book to read and review, you should do so soon. Don't feel pressured to pick something literary or highbrow, but do choose something age-appropriate. Harry Potter and Percy Jackson books are too juvenile. Books in the Hunger Games, Divergent, Fifty Shades of Grey, and Twilight series are borderline but acceptable. Most students choose novels, but this is not a requirement. See me if you aren't sure about a book's suitability.

On Tuesday we will discuss a sample book review that may be used as a model for the review you write. The most important guideline is that your review should do more than summarize. Instead, the review should articulate your honest reaction to the book. This might include answers to some (but not all) of the following questions:

• Was the book enjoyable? 
• Was the book believable?
• Was the book easy or difficult to read?
• Did the book challenge the way you think?
• Did it teach you anything new?
• What was the most/least interesting part of the book?

Be sure to provide specific examples from the text to support your claims about the book's enjoyability, believability, ease or difficulty, etc. Remember that your audience is a room full of people who might consider reading your book based on your review. What are the most important things those people need to know in order to decide whether reading the book was a worthwhile experience?  

Reviews should be 500-700 words and formatted according to MLA guidelines. On the day reviews are due, each student will give a short presentation introducing his or her book to the class. Presentations should cover the main points included in the written review. The due date will be announced.

Not what you'd expect in a torture scene

In Robert Stone's Dog Soldiers, villains torture a character by pressing his hand against a red-hot stove burner. As this happens, this film plays in the background.

Hands

For Tuesday's class, please read the poem below. A quiz is possible.

Hands 

by Jean Sprackland

She peels cod fillets off the slab,
dips them in batter, drops them
one by one into the storm of hot fat.
I watch her scrubbed hands,
elegant at the work,

and think of the hands of the midwife
stroking wet hair from my face as I sobbed and cursed,
calling me sweetheart and wheeling in more gas,
hauling out at last my slippery fish of a son.
He was all silence and milky blue. She took him away
and brought him back breathing,
wrapped in a white sheet. By then
I loved her like my own mother.

I stand here speechless in the steam and banter,
as she makes hospital corners of my hot paper parcel.

Wheelbarrows and Birds

We will use this poem and image in class today.

 

William Carlos Williams: "The Red Wheelbarrow"

---

so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens.

Bird in Space by Constantin Brancusi

Reading for Thursday

For Thursday's class, please read this brief student essay, "H's Hickory Chips." The expectation is that you will read the essay very carefully (perhaps twice) so that you are well-prepared for a detailed discussion. A quiz is likely.

As you read, consider the mental images that the essay creates for you. What specific words and phrases contribute most to those images?

Non-Required Reading

In your first assignment, many of you argued in favor of wearing casual clothing to class. The primary reason given was that being comfortable in the classroom will lead to more effective learning. I came across this article today, which makes the case for dressing nicely during public travel. It addresses the issue of comfort, but also explores a few aspects of the issue you may not have considered. If you are interested in this topic, take a look.

I may assign this article for a future class, but for the time being it is not required.

Essay I Instructions

This assignment is intended to use your skills in description and awareness of rhetorical situation.

Instructions: Choose an image that you find interesting. It could be most anything: an assortment of desserts, a group of college students walking across campus, a street-scene in the New York financial district. It may be a photo, a drawing, painting, cartoon, or something else. The only restrictions are these:

1. The image must not be famous or otherwise well-known. It should not come from a current magazine or any other source that might cause classmates to recognize it.
2. The image must be available electronically, so that we can project it in the classroom. Scanned images of personal photos are fine.

In a 1000-1200 word essay, describe the image as fully as possible. Your audience is the rest of the class. Your essay's goal is to help your readers visualize your image as completely as possible, without having seen it first. At some point after the essays are due, the class will have an opportunity to compare your image with your description.


Due date is Thursday, September 18. Submission guidelines will be announced.

Ekphrasis Example

Landscape With The Fall of Icarus

William Carlos Williams, 1883 - 1963

According to Brueghel
when Icarus fell
it was spring

a farmer was ploughing
his field
the whole pageantry

of the year was
awake tingling
near

the edge of the sea
concerned 
with itself

sweating in the sun
that melted
the wings’ wax

unsignificantly
off the coast
there was

a splash quite unnoticed
this was
Icarus drowning 

Rhetorical Situation In-Class Writing

You are an assistant coach at a nationally known college football program. After the final game of a winning season, you throw the players a small party at your house. Your university has a strict policy against staff members providing alcohol to students, so you don’t purchase any beer for the party. At the party, however, a group of players finds a partial case of beer in your garage refrigerator, and they help themselves. When you discover the students drinking, they plead to be allowed to drink one beer each. Since all of the students in the garage are over twenty-one, you decide to bend the rules slightly and allow them to finish the beers they started. You drink one beer as well.

After leaving the party, the team’s star quarterback, Bert Foster, is stopped by police. The officer smells alcohol on Bert’s breath and administers a sobriety test, which Bert passes. Bert insults the officer, however, and this leads to his car being searched. The police discover a suitcase full of cocaine. Bert is arrested.

Your job is to explain what happened as you would in your group’s assigned situation:

1. Bert called you from jail to tell you he has been arrested. You called the head coach immediately, but he did not answer. Write an email explaining the situation to him. Assume the head coach is a close personal friend. The national media have not picked up the story yet.
2. You went to the jail to see if you could bail Bert out and keep the story out of the papers. Text your spouse to explain where you are.
3. The police visit your house the day after Bert’s arrest. As part of their investigation, they ask you for a written statement of what happened. Write that statement.
4. The story is all over the national media. Your sister (with whom you have a close relationship) emails you to ask what happened and if you are okay. Answer her.
5. You have been fired (unfairly, you believe) from your assistant coaching job for providing alcohol to students. The local newspaper invites you to tell your side of the story.
6. You fail to get your job back and go on to a modest career as an advertising sales representative. Twenty years later, Sports Illustrated invites you to tell your story as part of a where-are-they-now article. Tell your story.

Before beginning your explanation, jot down the answers to the following questions:

1. Exactly who is your intended reader? Be as specific as possible. This will be more challenging with situations 3, 5, and 6.
2. What do you know about your reader? What is the nature of your relationship? Think about issues of power, authority, trust, familiarity, and knowledge of the situation.
3. Exactly what do you hope to accomplish by writing your explanation?

Assignment #1

For our second class, please read this article on classroom etiquette and write a short reaction paper.

Your paper should discuss your personal response to the article. Do you agree with the author's advice for respectful classroom behavior? Do you disagree? Do you think will attempt to follow the advice? Will this be a challenge for you? Why or why not? Be honest; you won't necessarily impress me my insisting that the article's advice is perfect and every student should follow it at all times. (Note: the author addresses his article to men, but the advice is universal. Self-respect and good citizenship are certainly not limited to a single gender.)

Reaction papers should be 300-500 words and formatted according to MLA guidelines, as listed on page 429 of the handbook. Page 436 shows a sample MLA paper.

Please email me if you have questions. 

Welcome to Fall 2014

This is the first post for Fall Semester, 2014. Feel free to browse previous posts to see the kinds of assignments and activities I have used in the past.