Exercises

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In-Class Writing: Revising Your Thesis 2

Post your revision of your thesis as a comment below. Follow the revision procedure we used in class today.

  1. check to make sure that your thesis is made up of claims and not facts
  2. break your thesis into sub-claims
  3. make these sub-claims specific by reviewing and analyzing evidence from the poster

A strong thesis should:

  • explain the main message of the poster
  • explain how the poster conveys this message (via fear/desire, ethos/logos/pathos)
  • state the intended audience

Use simple sentence structure to make sure that your ideas are clear for your reader.

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Exercise 2.6

Review my comments on the thesis revisions you submitted for in-class writing on Tuesday. Continue to revise your thesis and body paragraphs. Bring your revised formal draft of Essay 2 (as a printed or digital copy) with you to class on Thursday. You will continue to work on your formal draft during class.

Also make sure you can access your final draft of Essay 1.

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In-Class Writing: Revising Your Thesis

Post your revised thesis for Essay 2 as a comment to this post. Then identify all the sub-points in your thesis. These sub-points should be developed and supported in the analysis paragraphs of your essay. See the example below:

This advertisement is telling its viewers that they can increase their social status (1) and add exceptional adventure to their lives (2) by purchasing Land Rover vehicles (3). To convey this message, the advertisement symbolizes a culture foreign (4) to its Western viewers (5), appealing to their fears that they are living unexciting lives (6). The Land Rover logo provides a solution to this fear (7); by buying a Land Rover, the viewer can escape a regular lifestyle and experience exotic cultures that only few can afford to enjoy.

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Exercise 2.5

The purpose of this exercise is to improve the organization of your argument by making your PAS outline more specific.

Estimated time: 45 mins
Due by 9:30 a.m. Tuesday, March 27th

Carefully re-read the Effective Paragraphing handout. For the formal draft of your lens analysis essay, you were asked to write out the PAS outline of your essay. For this exercise, you will revise it to make it more specific. To clearly explain what a paragraph is doing (in terms of PAS), you must specify what is being presented, analyzed or synthesized. For example:

Presentation. This paragraph presents a summary of “Masters of Desire,” an essay exploring how American advertising reveals core features of American culture.

Analysis. This paragraph analyzes the wildebeest eyeballs in the center of the advertisement to argue that it is “monstrous” according to Cohen’s definition of the term.

Synthesis. This paragraph complicates the viewer’s understanding of the advertisement and draws a preliminary conclusion about the message of the advertisement.

Submit your revised PAS outline as a comment below. Start off by copy-and-pasting your thesis, then write out the specific function of each paragraph in your draft as demonstrated above.

 

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Essay 2: Formal Draft

The goal of this exercise is to produce a revised formal draft of your second 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. Sunday, March 25th

Assignment

  1. Review the guidelines for the Lens Analysis Essay, then re-read the model lens analysis essay, and the guidelines for naming and formatting essay drafts detailed in the course syllabus.
  2. Write an introduction (either P-S or S-P) in which you carefully describe the exhibit, introduce the problem in the exhibit that you intend to address, state the costs or consequences of not solving the problem, and offer your thesis as a response to the problem. Your thesis should specify the implicit message of the advertisement as well as the intended audience of the advertisement. (2 paragraphs)
  3. Over the course of your formal draft, carefully analyze specific aspects of your advertisement using lens analysis whenever possible in order to develop and support your opinion about the messages of the advertisement and its intended audience.
  4. Include a Works Cited list on a separate page using MLA style. Refer to the course textbook for help with this.
  5. Instead of a self-evaluation, write the PAS outline for your essay on a separate page. (Review the Effective Paragraphing handout.)
  6. Name your Word document as explained in the course syllabus and then submit it to https://www.dropbox.com/request/4J7uCighc9hFBnqUjkC1
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Reading for Thursday’s Class

Estimated time: 30 mins
Due by 9:30 a.m. Thursday, March 22nd

As discussed in class, the formal draft of Essay 2 will not be due on Thursday. Instead, please read the Effective Paragraphing handout and the Model Lens Analysis essay in preparation for Thursday’s class.

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Exercise 2.4

Estimated time: 1 hour
Due by 9:30 a.m. Tuesday, March 20th

There is no writing due for this homework assignment. Instead please re-read the essays “Monster Culture” and “Masters of Desire” and the reading titled “Linking Evidence and Claims.”

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Essay 2: Zero Draft

The goal of this exercise is to produce a very rough draft (a “zero draft”) of your second 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. Reminder: this draft should be very messy. I want you to explore *ideas* and not worry about making (or fixing) grammatical mistakes. You can use a combination of English and other languages if you’d like. If this draft is polished and free of grammatical errors, it means you did not follow my instructions.

Estimated time: 2-3 hours
Due by 11:59 p.m. Friday, March 16th

Assignment

  1. Read the guidelines for the Lens Analysis Essay and the formatting guidelines described in the syllabus.
  2. Read the Visual Analysis handout, then describe your advertisement for a reader who has never seen it before. Based on your research, briefly explain when, where and why the advertisement was published, and who published it. (1 paragraph)
  3. Which three elements of the advertisement do you think are crucial to understanding its message and intended audience? Explain why you chose these three. (1 paragraph)
  4. Read the Citing Sources handout, then summarize “Masters of Desire: The Culture of American Advertising” by Jack Solomon for a reader who has never read it before. Make sure to include and explain in your own words a quotation that best expresses the thesis of the essay. Provide at least one example from the essay to help your reader understand Solomon’s argument. (1 paragraph)
  5. List three quotations (i.e. lens ideas) from Solomon that you believe can help you analyze elements of the advertisement in order to decipher its (implicit and explicit) messages. (1 paragraph)
  6. Read the Lens Analysis handout, then use one of your quotes from Solomon to analyze one element of the advertisement. (1 paragraph)
  7. Summarize “Monster Culture (Seven Theses)” for a reader who has never read it before. Define what Cohen means by the term “monster.” Make sure to include and explain in your own words a quotation that best expresses the thesis of the essay. Provide at least one example from the essay to help your reader understand Cohen’s argument. (1 paragraph)
  8. List two quotations from Cohen that you believe can help you analyze elements of the advertisement in order to decipher its (implicit and explicit) messages. (1 paragraph)
  9. Read the Lens Analysis handout, then use one of your quotes from Cohen to analyze one specific visual aspect of the advertisement and explain why this aspect is “monstrous” or a “monster.” (1 paragraph)
  10. Use another quotation from Cohen to help you explain the purpose of the monster or monstrous aspect of the advertisement. (1 paragraph)
  11. Conclude with one paragraph in which you attempt to state your hypothesis or tentative thesis: What is the central message of the advertisement? Who is the intended or target audience for this advertisement?
  12. Include a copy of your advertisement or a link to it on a separate page.
  13. Include a one-paragraph self-evaluation on a separate page in which you briefly explain what you think is promising in your draft and what sort of feedback you would like in order to continue to develop this draft.
  14. Name your draft correctly and submit it to: https://www.dropbox.com/request/qg1pKYaIQJ3RLlmp8dPH.

ALTERNATIVELY, you can freewrite to answer all the questions in the Visual Analysis handout and submit this as your zero draft.

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In-Class Writing: Paraphrasing vs Patch-writing

Patch-writing is a form of plagiarism in which a writer reproduces an idea by keeping crucial words, phrases, or sentence structure while swapping out few parts or making minor changes to the structure. A paraphrase however demonstrates that a writer understands an idea and can explain it in a way that is genuinely his or hers. To paraphrase, read the sentence a few times, think about its meaning, then close the text and write in your own words what you understood from the sentence.

Read the Wikipedia entry on morte d’Arthurs and write a paraphrase of the meaning of the term. Post below.