Thursday, March 28th

I want you all to begin drafting your final papers. Next Thursday, April 4th, you will need to turn in your first draft of the final paper. I want you to have an introduction with a clear thesis, at least three body paragraphs, and a tentative conclusion. You are not required to include cited research (we haven't covered this formally yet) for this draft, but if you do, please be sure to cite it properly and include a Works Cited page (please see The Little Seagull Handbook for formatting guidelines).

We will continue to discuss the essay about Abigail Fisher on Monday; otherwise, the only work you have for the weekend is to compose your first draft of the research paper. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me.

In-Class 3/26 and Homework for 3/28

Please review the list of logical fallacies and the health care letters, found in the Content section of D2L. In a blog post, identify the errors in reasoning that occur in the first letter. Then discuss why you believe changes were made to the second letter.

For Thursday, please read and be prepared to discuss the article titled, "Race Didn't Cost Abigail Fisher Her Spot at the University of Texas." If the hyperlink does not work for you, please contact me as soon as possible.

Due Tuesday, March 26th

On your blogs, write a short (about 250 words) proposal for your argumentative research project. Please include the following information:

• Identify the broad topic(s) you'll be covering
• State your tentative thesis
• Discuss how you've narrowed down your topic
• Identify the sources you've used to assist you
• Discuss additional areas and information (possibly sources, too) that you still wish to explore

Make sure to write down all of the necessary information you need to retrieve your sources and document them properly. Works Cited (MLA style) information can be found on pages 103-130 of The Little Seagull Handbook.

In-Class 3/19/2013

Today, we looked at ways we can evaluate sources on the web. The areas we focused on included Credibility, Bias, Accuracy, Relevance, Significance, Intended Audience, and Currency (please see the notes on Evaluating Sources, found in the content section of D2L for additional details).

In class, begin searching for potential web sources that are related to your paper's topic. Find at least three sources and evaluate them on your blog. For each source evaluation, please include the following information:

• Identify the source (article/source/website title) and its author.
• Determine source's credibility, accuracy, relevance, bias, currency, significance, and intended audience.
• Explain how you figured out this information.
• Discuss whether or not you'll use the source in your research.

Please be sure to bring your Little Seagull handbook to class on Thursday.

In-Class 03/07/2013

The thesis statement is a paper's main idea, expressed as a provable claim. It needs to narrow a broad topic down to a specifc focus of investigation. In order to do this, you might need to brainstorm ideas by asking yourself questions about the broad topic. On your blog, address the following questions:

• What is the topic?
• What's invovled?
• Who's involved?
• What do I know about my topic?
• What problems/issues are found within my topic?
• What do I want to learn about the topic and its issues/problems?

After you've answered these questions, formulate a tentative thesis statement in the post that could be used as the main idea for your argumentative research paper. I will upload the sample breakdown (titled Narrowing the Topic) that we reviewed in class to the Content section of D2L. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me.

In-Class 03/05/2013

After watching the TED talk from Elaine Lui, identify the following pieces of information in a blog post:

• Broad topic of the talk
• Issues and/or problems related to the topic
• The speaker's main idea (Lui's thesis)
• The broad subtopics
• The specific examples
• Lui's reasoning and conclusion

Please construct a complete paragraph that addresses each of the items listed above. Also, please generate a list of broad topics that you are interested in/passionate about that could be synthesized into a focus point for discussion. We will be referencing pages 61-88 in the book Everyone's an Author over the course of the next few weeks.