Generating your director’s statement

Take the last 15 minutes or so of class and start drafting your director’s statement for this final project. To do so, I’d like you to step back from the details of today’s editing work and remind us (and perhaps yourself) and clarify what your main purpose in making this film is. What do you hope to achieve by creating it in the way that you are? What effect(s) do you want it to have on your viewers? What would you say is the main argument or claim that you see yourself making?

Then, shift gears and start reflecting on the strategies and/or techniques that you’re using as both a rhetor and documentary film maker to develop and sustain your visual argument about your topic. What appeals are you making and how are you making them? How do you hope they will relate to your main purpose and support your claim? To what extent are these strategies similar to the ones you made as a writer? How are they different (either in terms of design or effect)?

Revising your claims

To help you continue your revisions on your first two assignments, please revisit your revision work from last week. Post a few sentences from your first or second assignment that represents the main claim of your initial final draft. Then, include your revisions from last week and post your revised (or refined) main claim.

Reflecting on your persuasive essay

Let’s start today’s class by taking a few minutes to reflect on completing your third essay for this course. As with previous reflections, feel free to comment on any significant lesson you took away from completing this assignment, but I would be most interested in reading about what it was like for you to move from analyzing other writers’ rhetoric to creating your own rhetorically effective and appropriate appeals in a piece of writing. What kinds of strategies did you use and find effective? Why did you use them? What kind of reader were you trying to reach? How did writing for this non-academic/non-specialist audience differ from writing for a more scholarly audience in your first two essays?

Drafting an introduction for your essay

Now, I’d like you to apply some of these arrangement strategies to your current essay by composing an introduction for it. (If you’ve already drafted one, take this opportunity to try out a different introduction.) Imagine your case as a difficult one, in which your audience is hostile (or at least weary) to your topic or argument. Use insinuation as a tactic to open your piece, as well as any other topics of introduction that might be helpful. How could you admit the difference of opinion on the issue, but still find some common ground on which to develop your argument?

Identifying promising sources for your current essay

Before class on Tuesday (Feb. 14), I would like you to take time to find as many credible sources as you can for your current essay, and for this exercise, you must locate them through the resources available via Penrose Library. (You’re welcome to continue using the resources we used in class like Summon@DU, Penrose Books, Access World News, Academic Search Complete, and Credo.) Once you have found at least five sources that you think will work effectively, read through them and then reflect on them in your comment to this post.

Start by explaining how you found these sources. What worked (or didn’t) as you used these library resources? Next, give an overview to the kinds of information, insights, testimony, or evidence they provide you. How will these sources help you make the argument you’d like to make? How did they enhance (or even alter) your emerging argument? Then, explain why you think they’re credible sources and how you think your intended audience would view them. Conclude your comment by giving us a sense of what your next steps are as you begin to draft this essay for our upcoming peer review workshop (which is on Thursday, February 16).

Also, please note: If you run into any problems, please email me ASAP and I will help you over the weekend. Good luck!

Generating a focus for your current essay

To conclude class today, I’d like to take the last 10-15 minutes and continue to generate some ideas for your current essay. First, share with the rest of us the topic or issue you’re most interested in writing about. How would you define this issue or explain it? How does it relate to larger questions of justice? Then, explore your current attitudes about this topic. How would you characterize your stance towards this issue? What do you already think about it? Then, consider your possible readers? Who would you like to address in this essay? How might their stance be different than yours? What story might you tell about this issue to reach them more effectively?

Reflecting on your second assignment

I’d like you to start class today by taking a few minutes and reflecting on your second assignment. What did you learn from completing this essay? What lessons did you apply from your first paper? What do you think you improved on as a writer? What remains challenging for you? As you look ahead to the rest of the quarter, what goals would you like to set for yourself as a writer?