HW for 10/30 (a week to look over):

Articles on the vetting process:

• State Department (Federal Government)
• "How the Refugee Vetting Process Works" (Heritage Foundation: conservative think tank)
• "Refugees Entering the U.S. Already Face a Rigorous Vetting Process" (NY Times: left-leaning)
• "Refugees are already vigorously vetted. I know because I vetted them." (Washington Post (left-center) opinion piece: former immigration officer)

Articles on terrorist acts in US:

• "America has suffered a terror attack every year under Obama" (opinion piece)

• Who is the author?
• What is his position on refugees, and how can we know besides this article?
• Notice that his timeline is filled with personal summaries of the events--what can and should you do as a reader and citizen to inform yourself on these events?

• "Where America's Terrorists Actually Come From"
• Who is the author?
• What is the author's position on refugees, on terrorist acts?
• How does the author seem to justify position while acknowledging terrorist acts in America? How do they view these acts?

Creating Your Base: Early Steps/Stages in Thinking and Writing About Ethics

1. I would like you to do a 10-minute free-write on the following question:

What are my own ground rules for how much my own individual beliefs and rights matter in comparison to other citizens? 

2. After choosing your position on the subject for the Ethical Evaluation Argument essay, you will need to brainstorm  at least two area of thinking:

• What are the principles on which  X operates?  

• Write a list of 10 (or less) Commandments on Morals and Ethics.

• What are the consequences of the act(s)?

• If yes...
• If no...
• If yes and no...

3. Use the two example sentence frames (287) to make a preliminary list of principle-based claims and consequence-based claims.

• Principle-based Frame*: An act is right (wrong) because it follows (violates) principles A and B (A, A and D, etc.)

• Consequence-based Frame*:  An act is right (wrong) because it will lead to consequences A, B, and C (or A and B, or A, or B and C, etc.), which are good (bad).

*These become your preliminary topic sentence claims, ONCE you revise them into your own original syntax and choose stronger unique synonyms.

4. Who is your audience? (291)  Before you start writing the actual body paragraphs, you have to identify and define who you want to be your target audience. In your introduction and in your language throughout essay, I want you to "give a nod" to the people you believe will most be impacted or need to listen to your ethnical argument.

• For instance:  Do you want to write to Millennials and beyond?  Do you want to write to a certain type of American you want there to be?

HW for 10/23

1. You must bring in your typed, revised***  Causal Argument Essay, due for a grade. Review source citation chapters and the Integration and Citation handout in Unit 3 on myLearning.

2. Read Chapter 13 in Writing Arguments, which introduces concepts needed for our next essay, an Ethical Evaluation essay. 

Today's Major Focus/Lesson

• Below is the third page from the "Causal Arguments Writing Strategies Models" handout you can download from Unit 3 on myLearning.

• This lesson, and the larger handout, expands upon the "Integration and Citation Notes" handout that can be found within the same unit. Review both of them and work to integrate the ideas into your own revisions. (Again, we will cover the concepts within the models, in class, as we move on, but I did want to give you some general tips on how to improve your essays from first draft, focusing on source integration).

Integration of Source Material

• Evidence should be dictated by the topic sentence claim.
• Evidence should be explained in regards to the topic sentence claim.
• Evidence should be organized by order of reasons claimed.
• Evidence should be put into context of the topic sentence claim. Use the R sentences to help set up your quotes, summaries, or paraphrases.

•  Quoted evidence should be explained in synonymous language leading in or out of quote.

o   Do not simply restate the quote’s own phrases to make a point: 

Example: When Eliot writes that the clouds are “Like a patient etherized upon a table” (line 4), he means the clouds a medical patient etherized on a table-->

 No, clarify what that image suggests to you using synonyms--> When Eliot writes that the clouds are “Like a patient etherized upon a table” (line 4), he means the thick block of clouds creates a feeling of numbness in Prufrock as he walks through the city.

Model for How to Lead Into Evidence (transitional phrases)…

The Orlando shooting massacre symbolizes the worst nightmare for any American parent, the loss of a child at the hands of a hateful person, but Smith’s “Good Bones” addresses the horrible reality with a bit of optimism that was sorely needed. As the largest mass shooting in American history, social media exploded with outrage and fear; the forty-nine adults were also somebodies’ children, as evidenced by individual stories about the victims. Among the handfuls of stories published and tweeted, … (cite).  At the same time that stories of the victims were being shared on social media, Maggie Smith’s “Good Bones” was republished, and just happened to be a poem about a parent’s desire to protect her children from the world. The poem thematically address the outrage that “Life is short,” but also ….

·       What do I need to most take away from this A-level model?

o   Look at the bolded phrases. The student writer is attempting to use transitional phrases to move between the multiple texts that he/she believes are connected. In essence, they are building each claimed causal relationships between the shooting and the poem using transitional phrases that relate to the claim.

o   Any evidence presented is made as a dependent clause with a sentence presenting the student’s own argument. Evidence is never allowed to be in its own sentence, separate from the claim.  

Samples of Starting Point Guiding Research Questions (GRQ) & Considerations for Crafting Them

Example Starting GRQs  from our Argument Research Prompt (handout in Unit 6):

1.  Do Pride and Prejudice's Eliza Bennet's challenges of being seen as family property represent the typical path for young women in Victorian England?

2. Do the modern Native American characters in Natalie Diaz's poems in When My Brother Was An Aztec accurately portray typical effects of mental health and substance abuse issues due to lose of heritage?

3. Are the religious identity conflicts between progressive Western ideals and conservative Islam evident in Marjane Satrapi's graphic autobiography Persepolis an accurate representation of life for the modern Iranian--both female and male?

***These questions focus on what is learned about the culture and its people--the empathy is in what is learned by asking.

****Furthermore, you will be guided to revise your questions to argue how your pursued focuses teach readers to see these characters as struggling with human issues--not just Victorian, Native American, Iranian issues.



Craft Considerations for a GRQ

1. Name the text and author in your question. This is the most basic detail to include because your research revolves around the text.

• Also, identify a main character, too, in any memoir, play, or piece of fiction. In poetry, if you are dealing with different speakers--then it is "speakers"

2. What things strike you as most different from how your life is structured and/or lived? What things strike you as most similar to how your life is structured and/or lived?

• Comparing and contrasting your life with characters (do a two-column chart, even) is one way to figure out where you find yourself relating to them. This may seem obvious--make the obvious visible.

                 Comparisons   |     Contrasts

Food: 

Religion: 

3. Pull from the plot/action, setting (time, geography)

4. Pay attention to themes that deal with government, religion/spirituality, diction/vernacular/dialect, marginalization,


5. Read the book jacket, the library card catalog summary, and/or any reviews you can find online (from SparkNotes to actual magazine reviews).

• http://www.npr.org/sections/book-reviews 
• http://www.sparknotes.com

6. Use basic contextual descriptive words like typical, similar, universal, stereotype, representative, illustrative, and more 

7. VERBS, VERBS, VERBS.   

• You need to make sure you are asking questions about portrayal, illustration, symbolization, representation, illumination.   

• You also need to be able to classify, distinguish, analyze, compare, contrast.

• Fresno State University has a great chart on Bloom's Taxonomy of verbs, which overlaps those from our very first lessons (which are included on the Crafting Thesis Statements handout).

Let us review a lecture we did not get to two weeks ago:

https://argument1010.blogspot.com/2017/09/causal-argument-main-ideas-body.html?m=1

HW for 10/9: Conclusion drafts and causal links and citation

1. Read the following lecture on "Writing Scholarly Conclusions" to help you with your draft, but also to help prepare you for Monday's discussions.

• I will ask you, "How may your source be used in your conclusion, looking at the list of possible questions and ideas in the list.  And, outside of your secondary source, what other events in the world relate to our subject matter--what events allude to the poems?"

2. Read chapters 16 and 17, which deal with MLA citation (both in-text and Work Cited end citation).

2. Review Chapter 12 and the blog post on making causal links, even if you've read the chapter. There's much more good advice and rhetorical advice in here than we can cover in our classes. ---------------------------------------------------------------------

Writing Scholarly Conclusions
The last paragraph (or sometimes paragraphs, when writing much longer essays) should reflect upon the thesis statement and its subtopics that you have addressed in your essay. 

However, there are other ways to view your conclusions, and viewing a conclusion in these different ways will help guide you in what else you can say beyond being repetitive. 

Another way of looking at just conclusions and the above general conclusion definition, according to the University of Iowa's Writing Center:

 "The conclusion is a good place to not only sum up the points made in the paper but to suggest the further implications of your argument.  You do not want to simply reiterate the points you have made in your introduction, thesis, or body paragraphs.  

Instead, use the analyses that you have already presented to ask questions, or suggest the possible next logical step in the argument.  You can use the conclusion to draw connections between your chosen text and its genre and historical or cultural contexts.  

You want to make sure that the claims you make in the conclusion are not too far-fetched or wildly out of step with the rest of your paper.  The conclusion should be the final step in the progression of your argument."

You likely will not address each question below each time, but here are some general ideas you may explore in your conclusion rather than simply "restating the thesis." (As a writer, you may find some of these thoughtful actions are useful for other parts of your essay...):

• What is important to the general audience/larger world about what you have argued/analyzed/defined. etc.? What knowledge do you provide us, and why is that important? 

• What is the impact of this knowledge I provide ? Who is affected, how? 

• Where does my idea fit in the larger discussion of the subject addressed in the essay? 

• Quickly state comparison or contrast with socially common views, stereotypes, and/or subjects.

• What recommendations can I make, and why, based on my thesis and other points made in the essay? Or, what recommendations do I have based on the source author's ideas?

• What is another major point or two about the subject that I did not have 'time' to include in this essay? 

• Pose questions that you haven't addressed that are relevant to what you have already written. 

• Pose questions that further help reader understand the subject's context.

• Suggest next possible step in the author's argument.

• Suggest different types of evidence that were not used in author's argument.

• In third person, briefly provide your own thoughts on any examples used from your source author that matter to you. 

• Example: Tamir Rice...

• Have you read other articles, books, etc., on the subject? Draw connections between your essay subject text and well-known texts in the genre or same time period or cultural perspective.

Finding and Evaluating Sources Further (STAR)

Choosing Sources Based on Your Poem, Your Argumentative Claims, and the Prompt:

• Decide on what kind of evidence you need to find besides the poem itself to support why the poem has gone viral. 

• What is your argument?
• What kinds of "field of study" do your arguments rely? What kind of expert/professional help might give authority to your arguments?

• Find two sources that you believe could be used to support why the poem has gone viral. 

• For each of your two sources:  

• Answer each question in the STAR criteria (92). 

• Also, review "Rhetorical Strategies for Framing Evidence" and "Special Strategies for Framing Statistical Evidence" (99-101) and: 

• List three different strategies that you feel you should apply to your sources.

• Explain why you think it is important to do so, and
• Provide an example of how a writer may do so, using evidence from the source.