Paper 1 Concepts 1-3 Problematizing a Topic

Think about the rules have you learned about how to write a good paper Think about the rules have you learned about how to write a good paper. Try to remember what every English teacher has emphasized over your years in school? In small groups list the 5 most important rules of good writing that you have gathered and learned over the years in your English class. Order them in priority of 5,4,3,2,1. All must come to agreement. Share your lists in groups, put on board, and compare, discuss, debate the number 1 rules from each group.   Start every paragraph with a topic sentence Never use “I” Thesis should be the last sentence of your intro paragraph Explain that the rules are more fluid now…you spent your high school years mastering the 5 paragraph essay so that you could now go ahead in your academic career with more freedom to bend those rules.

Structure and organization matters Consistency matters What do you think was the purpose of teaching all of the structure and rules of a 5 paragraph essay? What would we hope students would take away from that format? Structure and organization matters Consistency matters Thoughtfully controlling the development of your ideas matters.

By the way, MLA heading matters Your name—first and last Class period Class name (CE1010 English) Date TITLE (Size 12 font, double space, NO extra spaces between paragraphs, readable font.)

Concept 1—good writing can vary from closed to open forms. You get to make rhetorical choices, rather than follow hard and fast formulas. http://urbanconfessional.org/blog/howtodisagree Copy pages 9-11 and have students annotate (contrasting essay types)—did not copy this for them…I put it in my teacher notes instead… --students should discuss and then copy my continuum that explains the difference between open and closed into their notes.  

Continuum of Essay Types, Closed to Open Form

Concept 2: Good writers pose questions. The question is what the writer is grappling with. Behind every thesis is an explicit or implicit question, which is the problem or issue to which the thesis responds. The kinds of questions that stimulate the writing most valued in college are open-ended questions that focus on unknowns rather than factual questions that have single right answers, that invite multiple points of view and stimulate critical thinking and research.

A good question is problematic for your audience A good question is problematic for your audience. The reader should find it puzzling or intriguing, and either they don’t know the answer or they are considering an answer different from yours.   A good question is significant. Why does the problem matter? Why is the question worth pursuing? A good question is interesting to the writer. It has to be a real question for you, a problem in which you feel invested. Good questions will vary from discipline to discipline, but they all require the thinker to make sense of complex data, to wrestle with alternative views, and eventually to stake out a claim and support it Refer to your list of questions for our candidates; can you craft one that is problematic, significant and interesting? Read the sample essay on page 14 and annotate it. High school student and beginning level college students value questions that have the right answers. Students ask the professor questions and hope/expect the professor to have the right answer and to explain it clearly. The students’ purpose in asking questions is to eliminate misunderstanding, not to open controversy and debate. This is where thinking changes in college   The kinds of questions that stimulate the writing most valued in college are open-ended questions that focus on unknowns rather than factual questions that have single right answers They invite multiple points of view and stimulate critical thinking and research.

Analyze, synthesis, or interpret Reflect Concept 3: Good writers write for a purpose to an audience with a genre. Purpose: what am I trying to accomplish in this paper? What do I want my readers to know, believe, see or do? Audience: What are my readers’ values and assumptions? What do they already know or believe about my subject? How much do they care about it? Genre: what kind of document am I writing? What are its requirements for structure, style and document design? Your purpose: To express Explore or inquire Inform or explain Analyze, synthesis, or interpret Reflect   Purpose, Audience, Genre activity: pg. 29 Email to a friend explaining you are missing a social event because you are sick; ask to reschedule. Email to your professor explaining you cannot meet a deadline because you are sick. Ask for an extension.

STUDENTS’ STAGES OF DEVELOPMENT AS WRITERS: NOVICE TO EXPERT Stage 1: Nonacademic or pseudo-academic writing [what students bring from high school]
 Stage 2: Generalized academic writing concerned with stating claims, offering evidence, respecting others' opinions, and learning how to write with authority [goal of first-year composition]
 Stage 3: Novice approximations of particular disciplinary ways of making knowledge [early courses in the major]
 Stage 4: Expert, insider prose within a discipline [advanced courses in the major]

Do a thought experiment Pose a question that shows multiple sides of a dilemma: NOT a full on question paper but a question that is addressed from different angles. Write a one to two page double-spaced essay that poses a question about a problem that perplexes you on a subject matter of your choice. Besides explaining your question and providing needed background information, you should help readers to see why the question is problematic, that is, why it is a genuine problem with no easy right answers and why the question is significant or worth pursuing; that is what benefit will come from solving it. Your task is to pose the question not answer it. Show sample on page 14-15 The end of the first paragraph states her question explicitly; she then shows what makes this question problematic for her. Her fourth paragraph then shows why the question is significant.