Week 1 Review: BA1  What do you think your strengths are as a writer?  What do you think your weaknesses are as a writer?  What are your goals for this course?  What is audience? How can you identify audience?  What is purpose? How can you identify purpose?  What are rhetorical choices? How can you identify rhetorical choices?

Purpose and Audience  Purpose is why you are writing.  Three broad purposes for writing:  To entertain  To inform  To persuade  Audience is the person for whom you are writing.  Two questions about audience:  What does my audience know about this topic?  What does my audience need to know for me to achieve my purpose?

Practice: Purpose and Audience  Identify purpose and audience within the following video clips:   

Group Practice: Purpose and Audience This picture shows concert-goers enjoying a live performance at a rock concert. Choose a specific person—an elderly relative, a roommate, a teacher—and write to persuade him or her that rock concerts are fun, boring, or whatever else you think about them. Is there any evidence in this photo to support your argument?

“Taking Stock:” How Do You Read? As you answer these questions about how you read, imagine yourself reading a facebook post, a text message, a Harry Potter book—anything that you might read for fun in your leisure time.  List your reasons or purposes for undertaking this reading.  Describe the setting as fully as possible—the place where you are reading, the surroundings, the level of noise or other distractions, the presence or absence of other materials besides the text (pens, laptop, coffee, etc.).

“Taking Stock:” How Do You Read?  Notice what you do to get started—what do you say to yourself, what do you actually do first, what “rituals,” if any, do you have for this kind of reading?  What are your initial expectations regarding each reading? Do you expect the reading to be easy or difficult, enjoyable or a chore? Do you expect to learn something new, to be entertained, to be surprised, or perhaps to be inspired?  List all of the strategies you use as you read—glancing ahead; pausing to reread; reading word-for- word, scanning, or skimming; taking notes. How do you “manage” this particular reading experience? That is, what do you do to keep yourself moving along?

“Taking Stock:” How Do You Read?  Note how often you stop, and think about why you stop. What do you do when you stop? How do you get restarted?  How long does it take you to complete this reading? Is that what you expected?  What are the results of this reading experience? Did the text meet your expectations? What criteria are you using to judge whether the reading experience was successful or satisfying in this case?

“Taking Stock:” How Do You Read? As you answer these questions about how you read, imagine yourself reading a journal article, a chapter from a textbook, reference book – anything that you might be assigned to read for one of your classes.  List your reasons or purposes for undertaking this reading.  Describe the setting as fully as possible—the place where you are reading, the surroundings, the level of noise or other distractions, the presence or absence of other materials besides the text (pens, laptop, coffee, etc.).

“Taking Stock:” How Do You Read?  Notice what you do to get started—what do you say to yourself, what do you actually do first, what “rituals,” if any, do you have for this kind of reading?  What are your initial expectations regarding each reading? Do you expect the reading to be easy or difficult, enjoyable or a chore? Do you expect to learn something new, to be entertained, to be surprised, or perhaps to be inspired?  List all of the strategies you use as you read—glancing ahead; pausing to reread; reading word-for- word, scanning, or skimming; taking notes. How do you “manage” this particular reading experience? That is, what do you do to keep yourself moving along?

“Taking Stock:” How Do You Read?  Note how often you stop, and think about why you stop. What do you do when you stop? How do you get restarted?  How long does it take you to complete this reading? Is that what you expected?  What are the results of this reading experience? Did the text meet your expectations? What criteria are you using to judge whether the reading experience was successful or satisfying in this case?

Comparing Reading Strategies  To what extent did your purposes for reading and the reading situations account for these differences or similarities?  What most surprised you about your reading processes?

Homework  Before our next class meeting, complete the following: READINGS  First-year Writing: Chapter 1, pp. 2-15; Chapter 2 pp ; Chapter 3 pp , 51-61; Chapter 6 pp  St. Martin's Handbook: Chapter 1, “Expectations for College Writing”; Chapter 12 f2, “Paraphrases”; Chapter 12 f3 “Summaries”; Chapter 60a, "Reading Texts in the Humanities" and DiYanni, "Developing a College Vocabulary" (available in the final part of the handbook, "WID/Critical Reading Skills”)

Homework  Before our next class meeting, complete the following: AUDIO LESSONS  Reading Critically  Introduction to Rhetorical Analysis ction.mp3 ction.mp3

Homework  Before our next class meeting, complete the following: OTHER ITEMS  Post to the class blog by no later than Sunday, September 7, 2014 at 11:59.59pm (CST). You must make one original post and respond to at least one of your classmates to get credit for this assignment. Consider a community that you belong to where you feel that you can quickly catch the drift of an in-progress conversation (e.g., other triathlon athletes, or regulars on Farmville). What are some “hot topics” of conversation in these communities? What might exclude someone from these conversations? If you wanted to address a general audience about this issue, how much background information would you need to supply?

Homework  Before our next class meeting, complete the following: OTHER ITEMS  Complete the “Taking Stock” worksheet and bring it to class next week. We will begin class with group work/discussion on this activity. You will find the worksheet linked to the schedule in the course website.

Future Homework: BA2  Description, Part One, Article Summary  The following four articles are located in Ch. 16 of your textbook. To complete your article summary, select one of the articles from the list below. Your summary of an article should follow the summary writing guidelines discussed in Section 12f 3.  “The New Sovereignty,” Shelby Steele 450  “My Pedagogic Creed,” John Dewey 46  “The American Scholar,” Ralph Waldo Emerson 468

Future Homework: BA2 contd.  Description, Part Two, Paraphrase Assignment  After you’ve completed your summary, you will paraphrase a brief but complex passage from the same text. Your goal in this assignment is to restate the ideas of the passage in your own words and do so in a way that is readable and understandable. To complete this assignment, choose a passage of the text you summarized and paraphrase that passage. Identify the page number and paragraph number of the original passage (i.e. p. 205, paragraph 1) above your paraphrase so that your instructor can easily see the changes you have made to express the ideas of the passage in your own words.

Future Homework: Rhetorical Analysis  Description: To complete this assignment, you will begin by selecting a text to analyze. You may choose from the following:  “The New Sovereignty,” Shelby Steele 450  “My Pedagogic Creed,” John Dewey 460  “The American Scholar,” Ralph Waldo Emerson 468  After selecting your text and critically reading it, you will determine the writer’s purpose and intended audience for the text.

Future Homework: Rhetorical Analysis contd.  Once you have determined these elements, you will begin to analyze the text so as to determine the specific strategies (rhetorical choices) the writer uses to achieve his or her purpose and to meet the needs of the audience. For example, you might choose to look at such elements as the types of evidence a writer puts forward and how he or she does so. Ask yourself if the writer uses evidence from sources, or if he or she tells stories from personal experience. Examine the sentence structures and word choice. How do these contribute to the author’s purpose? Evaluate the overall tone of the text, and determine how it does or does not contribute to the way in which it communicates to its audience. After you determine what these strategies or rhetorical choices are, consider how well these strategies (rhetorical choices) actually work.

Future Homework: Rhetorical Analysis contd.  Although this is an initial draft, it should be carefully edited and written in a professional tone. Please use MLA format for both your in-text citations and your works cited in this draft.  Your draft should be 1200 words in length.

Questions, Comments, Concerns  Your success is important to me! Make sure you are communicating with me if you have any questions/comments/concerns about anything in the course. Mrs. Edlin Office: ENGL 459 Office hours: M and W 9:30am to 11:00am (other hours available by appointment)