Final Meeting

Our final meeting is on Monday, April 27th. Please be sure to upload a rough draft of your argumentative synthesis paper to the discussion board (to be titled, Synthesis--Rough Draft) by the beginning of that class. We will be meeting in person to conduct this workshop, but we will not be meeting on Wednesday, April 29th. Please reference the assignment sheet, the example essay, and the synthesis questions for consideration--available in the content section--and let me know if you have any questions. I will email you with some notes on your posts, regarding the thesis statement and subtopics over the next two days.

Homework for Wednesday, April 22nd

Please read the short essay, "Evolution's Sweet Tooth," (585) in the Current Issues textbook. We will discuss the construction and organization of the piece in class, based on what we talked about tonight, and look at a student example for the same purposes. If you missed class tonight, please be sure to review the assignment sheet for the final paper and keep in mind the due dates. 

Reminder about Wednesday's Class and Homework for 4/15/2015

Please disregard the reading assignment listed on the schedule for Wednesday's class, as we will not be meeting in person.

Instead, please address the following questions in a blog post by 11:59pm CST on Wednesday:

• What is the revised version of your thesis statement?
• What subtopics will you use to support this claim (include at least three, for now)
• Why do you feel your claim is important (what's at stake?) and how do your supporting points help to showcase that importance?

The answers to these questions could work as the skeleton for your final paper. If you have any questions or need help with your thesis, please email me.

Again, we are not meeting in person on Wednesday. Over the weekend, I would like you to read the Martin Luther King Jr. essay, "Letter from a Birmingham Jail," (beginning on page 736 in the Current Issues textbook) and write a response that focuses on what rhetorical devices/elements he uses effectively that you might want to utilize in your writing.

Homework for Monday, April 13th

I made a slight change to the schedule last night. Your homework for Monday is to read the Elliott Currie essay, "Toward a Policy on Drugs," which begins at the bottom of page 570 in the Current Issues textbook. You do not have a reading response due, but I will be asking specific questions about the essay, how it's constructed, and the effectiveness of the message in class on Monday, so be sure to have the piece read before class. We will save the MLK essay for the following Monday. If you have any questions, please contact me via email.

Homework for Tuesday, April 7th and Wednesday, April 8th

Please email me a tentative thesis for the final argumentative essay by 11:59pm CST tomorrow (Tuesday, 4/7). I have uploaded a document to the Content section with tips for formulating a strong synthesized claim. We will workshop these thesis statements in class on Wednesday. 

The tentative thesis for the final paper should also appear in your Compare/Contrast essay (either at the beginning or end), which is due by 11:59pm CST on Wednesday, April 8th. If you have questions about the paper or my feedback, please contact me by tomorrow (4/7) at the latest.

Homework for Monday, March 30th

Please read the two essays listed on the course schedule for Monday (Ricks on page 645, Eggers on 648 of the Current Issues textbook) and write a comparative response. The reading response should provide a brief summary of each piece and then identify similarities and differences between them (in terms of how they are written, what topics are addressed, who the writer is, the intended audience--all of the areas we discussed in class). Also, be sure to include what effects those aspects have on the essays. The reading response is due by the beginning of class on Monday as a dropbox submission.

Also, please continue to search for sources related to your research topic, since the rough draft of the Compare/Contrast essay is due in one week. The assignment sheet has been available in the content section for viewing/downloading; if you have not reviewed it yet, please do so as soon as possible. You can email me any questions you might have about the assignments, too.

Homework for Wednesday, March 25th

Please read the two essays that are listed on the course schedule (Tierney on 622, Hanson on 624) and be prepared to discuss the rhetorical elements that effect the way the messages are communicated. We'll focus on comparing the two pieces to one another in preparation for the next reading response, as well as the Compare/Contrast essay.

The assignment sheet for the Compare/Contrast essay is available under the Content section of D2L. Please review the guidelines and note the due dates for the assignment, then let me know if you have any questions.