Please post your revised final draft of Essay 1 to this Dropbox folder: https://www.dropbox.com/request/xKntURQSQZ2Zj30TY3xH.
Make sure you follow all submission, formatting and assignment guidelines.
College Writing 1: Monsters and/in Culture | Spring 2018
A COURSE SITE FOR ENGLISH 110, SECTIONS 3 & 26 | Professor Christopher Williams
Please post your revised final draft of Essay 1 to this Dropbox folder: https://www.dropbox.com/request/xKntURQSQZ2Zj30TY3xH.
Make sure you follow all submission, formatting and assignment guidelines.
The goal of this exercise is to produce a revised and polished final draft of your rhetorical analysis essay. To produce your final draft, you will extensively revise and develop your formal draft using lessons and strategies learned in class and suggestions provided in my feedback and from your peers.
Estimated time: 2-3 hours
Due by 11:59 p.m. Sunday, March 4th
Make sure that you:
The aim of this exercise is to better understand the function and structure of an effective thesis.
Estimated time: 10 minutes
Due by 9:30 a.m. Tuesday, February 27th
For class on Tuesday, please read the Effective Theses handout.
(No writing is due.)
Post a revised version of one of the paragraphs from your formal draft below. Make sure you identify the claim (i.e. the topic sentence), the reason, and the evidence. See the example below:
[CLAIM] In The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald uses both repetition and symbolism to draw readers’ attention to the theme of time—and in particular, the past, for which his main characters yearn. [EVIDENCE] The novel begins “In my younger and more vulnerable years…” and ends “borne back ceaselessly into the past.” Fitzgerald goes on to use some 450 time-words, including 87 appearances of the actual word ‘time.’ The Buchanan lawn is described as “jumping over sundials”; Gatsby knocks over a clock during his reunion with Daisy; and Klipspringer plays “In the meantime, In between time—.” [REASONS/ANALYSIS] The clock, sundial and frequent use of ‘time’ all reinforce for the reader the importance of the theme of time and the inevitability of time passing. Fitzgerald seems to want to remind the reader that time will always get in the way of Gatsby and his dreams, and his desire to return to the past—there’s no turning back the clock.
The aim of this exercise is to evaluate the argumentation in your formal draft by identifying the claims you make and reviewing how well you support them.
Estimated time: 1.5 hours
Due by 9:30 a.m. Thursday, February 22nd
The goal of this exercise is to produce a revised formal draft of your first essay. To produce your formal draft, you will extensively revise and develop your zero draft using ideas from class and suggestions provided in my feedback.
Estimated time: 2-3 hours
Due by 11:59 p.m. Tuesday, February 20th
Assignment
Here are steps you can follow to analyze a rhetorical pattern in Cohen’s essay:
Each group must post their analysis below. Your analysis should take up two to three paragraphs. (Don’t worry about grammar and spelling; this is just a rough draft. Just try to explain yourself as clearly as possible to make a persuasive argument.)
Each group must post below a response to the two following questions:
The goal of this exercise is to produce a very rough draft (a “zero draft”) of your first essay. This will help you find raw material (i.e. potential evidence and rough ideas) that can be refined and further developed in your formal draft.
Estimated time: 2-3 hours
Due by 9:30 a.m. Tuesday, February 13th
Assignment
The aim of this exercise is to summarize “Monster Culture (Seven Theses)” for a reader who has not read the essay.
Estimated time: 1 hour
Due by 9:30 a.m. Thursday, February 7th
An effective summary helps an unfamiliar reader to accurately understand the main ideas of a piece of writing. Typically, an effective summary includes:
1) the author’s full name
2) the name of the text
3) a description of the author’s analytical project (USEFUL VERBS: explores, examines, analyzes, investigates; NOT: says, writes, is about, looks into)
4) one or two quotes of the author’s main point (USEFUL VERBS: argues, asserts, states, proposes, hypothesizes, claims)
5) a paraphrase/explanation/example of the author’s main point (USEFUL PHRASES: for example, for instance, in other words)
6) a brief description of how author supports his/her main idea in the text
Here’s an example of a summary of a 25-page essay called “The Trouble with Wilderness”:
In his essay “The Trouble with Wilderness,” William Cronon, Professor of History, Geography, and Environmental Studies at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, asks his readers to “rethink wilderness” (83). He criticizes mainstream environmentalism’s portrayal of wilderness as “sublime,” claiming that these “specific habits of thinking” have actually hindered the modern environmental movement by “underpinning other environmental concerns” (97-99). Cronon claims that this insistence on portraying the wilderness as separate from society inadvertently draws attention away from “most of our serious environmental problems” in “the landscape … that we call home” (103). Thus, he concludes that humankind should refrain from a “dualistic vision in which the human is entirely outside the natural” (97). Instead, he advocates that society be self-conscious of its actions in relation to nature everywhere, not just the locations perceived as the wilderness but also the environment that surrounds and permeates human civilization.
Write a one-paragraph summary of “Monster Culture (Seven Thesis)” following the above guidelines. Imagine that you want another freshman who has not read the essay to understand it. (Even though we are only reading up to Thesis IV for the first assignment, you know enough about the essay to be able to summarize it.)