First Draft

As our research comes to an end, you will have the first draft completed by 3 p.m. on Monday. During class on Monday, you will have time to work on the essay. However, I will have 2 elements for you to do with the essay -- these elements involve your diction and verbs, little elements that may slide by in your haste to write the perfect first draft.

A Boring Blog

At current status, we are in research mode, which means not much is going on other than reading, note taking, and claiming. Today the first four sources and claim were due.

Organizing Arguments

During today's class, we created an outline for an argumentation essay on women in the military. The process, which you may use when constructing your actual essay, commences with brainstorming possible claims, selecting the claim that would have the most evidence or be easiest to argue, listing evidence, grouping similar evidence, and composing warrants for each evidence grouping. Phew! However, we were not finished with argumentation. Next up, you selected a counterclaim (which could be one of your brainstormed claims), incorporated evidence to support the counterclaim, composed a rebuttal statement with evidence, and finished off the writing with a concluding sentence.

For the remainder of class, we discussed your argumentation essay and the requirements for its completion. While we did not finish all the due dates and steps, you are more than welcome to start your source pages for the textbook essays.

Argumentation

During today's class, we worked on the second half of argumentation with counterclaims and rebuttals.

Counterclaims are a second position that you take on a topic. It is not the opposite of the original claim. To create a strong counterclaim, you also include evidence to show its validity.

Rebuttals return the focus to the original claim's position. While a rebuttal does show how the original claim is better, the rebuttal does not "trash" the counterclaim as wrong.

For homework, you will be reading and annotating 3 essays on women in the military. We will use this information and your thoughts on the topic during class on Monday.

Digital versions of the essays:
http://beta.townhall.com/columnists/lindachavez/2003/04/30/women_in_combat_will_take_toll_on_our_culture
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A29269-2003Mar25.html
http://www.newsweek.com/uncle-sam-and-aunt-samantha-149413

Presentation Prep

Today's was a work day for our rhetorical analysis presentations tomorrow. After that, we will commence our last unit: argumentation.

Meryl

To prep for our rhetorical group presentation, we watched and annotated Meryl Streep's commencement speech at Barnard College.

You can watch the speech at this link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5-a8QXUAe2g
Here is another transcript copy in case you were absent or would like a digital one to peruse: http://www.graduationwisdom.com/speeches/0069-streep.htm

Following our viewing and annotation, I split the class into 2 groups to prep for the presentations, which will occur on Wednesday. Tuesday will be a prep day.

Persuasive Appeals

After finishing up and sharing our tone maps, we used a text to identify logos, ethos, and pathos and how the other manipulated these appeals to reflect his purpose. At this point, you have worked with syntax, diction, tone, logos, ethos, and pathos, all strategies that you will work with next week in a group assessment.