Friday, September 23, 2011

Draft Workshop Feeder 1.2


Begin by composing a retrospective outline of your partner's paper, using the outline we composed of the Huckleberry Finn paper as a model. Once you have completed the outline, examine it for coherence, repetition, orderly logic and transitions, and whether it fulfills the demands of the prompt. Suggest any changes that you believe would improve the paper's sense of organization.
After you're finished, answer the following questions at the bottom of the draft:
1. Briefly describe the current draft's organizing principle. Could the information be organized in another way? Suggest a different organizing principle that would change the draft radically while still making sense, and revise the thesis statement to reflect this new organizing principle.
2. The prompt asks you to make the argument that the information summarized is relevant or interesting to your blog's audience. How does the author do this? Is the strategy effective? Suggest another way in which the author might have related the information summarized to his or her audience.
3. Describe the draft's introduction, concentrating on the first sentence. How does the author attempt to "hook" the reader? Does s/he begin by telling the reader something she doesn't know? If not, scan the body of the draft and/or the original article for an interesting fact that the author could place at the beginning of the essay.

Wednesday, September 21, 2011

Your Blog's Citation Conventions


Using the formal APA, MLA, and Chicago styles (refer to the relevant sections on the Library's Citation Tutorial (http://www.lib.unc.edu/instruct/citations/) for details), work with your group members to draft a rationale for how and why you will cite your sources on your blog. Compose a short, 2-3 paragraph essay that explains:
1. Why your group thinks that citing sources is important.
2. How citations will be implemented on your blog. This should take the form of a rough style guide like this one for MLA format: http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/747/06/. You need only explain the format for the types of references you anticipate using most on your blog.
3. A short rationale for how and why you chose the citation style you agreed upon.
Post this essay to your blog by class time on Friday, September 23.

Why We Cite Tutorial


Go to the library's tutorial on citations and complete the section "Why We Cite:"
Stop reading when you reach the section on APA documentation.

PowerPoint on Introductions

https://docs.google.com/present/edit?id=0AV1JiXOw1yx0ZGN6OHp0dHpfNDlnNDVwendmdg&hl=en_US

Draft Workshop Feeder 1.2


1. We just finished talking about several different types of effective and ineffective introductions. What type of introduction does the current draft have? Is it one of the effective or ineffective introductions? Explain how you determined which category the introduction fits into.
2. How does the author answer the "so what?" question? In other words, why does the author's argument matter to his or her readers? At what point in the draft does the author establish this answer to the "so what?" question? Could it come earlier? Explain your answer.

Monday, September 19, 2011

Pre-Writing Assignment for Feeder 1.2


Arrange yourself into groups of 2 or 3 within your group. Show your partner the article you plan to write about for Feeder 1.2. Let your partner look it over and confirm that it is a scholarly source. If there is any question about the matter please call me over to help.
Next, get started on the introduction for your Feeder 1.2 assignment. As I noted in class, the introduction is where you explain to your audience why your article matters specifically to them. Draft at least two different introductions that avoid clichés and meet the other criteria for a good introduction that we talked about today in class. Add both introductions to a new Google Doc, where you will keep all of your work for Feeder 1.2.