Week Twelve: Introduction Revision

1. Week Twelve: Introduction Revision Examine the Purpose of Introductions and Learning the Strategies for Effective Revisions

2. Class Overview • Housekeeping: Meeting Times, Due Dates • Short Quiz • Brief Assignment 8: Revision of Introductions • Review of Introductions: Purpose, Content, Format • Varying Strategies for Introductions and Theses • Re-“envisioning” your Introduction: In-class Practice • Participation Assignment

3. Housekeeping • Draft 1.2 due December 2ndbefore midnight: no exceptions. If you are having computer difficulty, send evidence (screenshot, error screen) immediately. Only then will the late penalty be waived. • Grading on 1.2s will be less lenient: make sure you are applying effective revisions and are making significant, reasoned improvements over your original draft. • University Writing Center is open 9:00AM-5:00PM, five days a week. Please call ahead or book an appointment in person. Located on the Philosophy side of the English building, ground floor (nearest outside door to the fountain). • Three weeks of class left: devote your time toward revisions and developing assignments fully.

4. Short Quiz Please write out an appropriately framed version of the following stand-alone quote, making use of the sentence that precedes the quotation. (*Remember: stand-alone quotes are unacceptable in your drafts.) • The poet W. S. Merwin posits the idea of open form in poetry. “Only the poem itself can be seen as its form” (271).

5. Brief Assignment 8 • Objective: To develop new strategies for writing effective introductions for academic papers and to expand your understanding of what makes an effective introduction. • Purpose: The introductory paragraph of a document plays a key role in how readers respond to the entire text. In this assignment, you will attempt a revision of your introduction to Draft 1.1. Keep in mind that your original introduction may remain the better of your two efforts. • Description: Your completed assignment should contain the following: • • A copy of your original introduction • • Your revised introduction • • A short summary and evaluation of your revisions, in which you identify and explain what you changed and why • The total length of the analysis should be 300-400 words, NOT including the original and revised conclusions. • Before you start to revise, take a few minutes to review key elements of your Draft 1.1, such as your audience, purpose, and thesis statement. Your new conclusion should reflect your consideration for each of these as well as indicate your understanding of what a rhetorical analysis accomplishes. • Next, study your original introduction and any comments that your instructors or peer critiquers made about that introduction. Using this feedback along with your broader understanding of a rhetorical analysis, revise your original introduction so that it more effectively reaches your readers. • Please note that if you need to revise for coherence, emphasis, or conciseness, refer to Chs. 40 and 43 of your e-handbook. If you need to work on sentence structure, see Chs. 34-39. If you need to work on other grammatical and/or mechanical elements, consult the appropriate chapters.

6. Additional Instructions: BA8 • Make sure to clearly label your original and your revised introduction. • Be clear about which elements you changed, how you changed them, and why. • We are grading for the quality of your evaluations and revision. Make sure you have put appropriate effort into both: do not be vague in your evaluation of your work. Always be specific in your references, and be as clear as possible about your revision strategies and your reasoning. • Make sure that you are providing evaluation and reasoning as to why or why not your most recent revisions were effective.

7. Introductions • What should an introduction do? • Provide background on a subject or concept • Gain the reader’s attention and guide them toward a purpose • Acquaint readers with main ideas of a text • Provide relevant information on author • Introduce the scope of your argument/analysis (thesis) and what tools you will use or evidence you will examine to make your case (methodology). • What else can an introduction do? How might it achieve this through a written strategy?

8. Introduction Checklist • __ Technique that gains the reader’s attention in a way clearly relevant to the article? • __ Transition that leads from opening technique and connects to introduction of the article, its main idea, purpose, and author? • __ Clear emphasis on the article and its persuasive purpose accomplished through rhetoric? • __ Clear understanding of the original context of the article? (Time of publication, background?) • __ Clear definition of the target audience? • __ Legible, easily located thesis containing: author effectively using rhetorical purposes to persuade or influence the audience?

9. (Just for fun [and knowledge]): Famous First Lines from Novels • “It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.”-from 1984 by George Orwell • “All this happened, more or less.”- from Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut • “In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I’ve been turning over in my mind ever since.” from The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald • “A screaming comes across the sky.” from Gravity’s Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon

10. Introduction Format • Which should come first: article or author’s background? To which should you devote more time and why? • Which details from an author’s background are necessary? How do we determine this? • How long should an introductory “hook” be? Could you start with the author or text and still have an introductory hook? • What sort of tone should you establish? How will this affect the rest of the draft? • Where should the thesis be? About how long should it go on? How long is too long?

11. Revision Strategies • Opening Hooks: • Try varying tone or perspective (in an appropriate manner) • Consider using an analogy or illustrative example that connects to the article’s main idea • Try stating in an assertive manner a one-sentence claim that tells the reader what the author wants their audience to do or wants to see “happen” in their world/society/profession • Introducing the article: • Try introducing both the author and article in the same sentence using a complex structure. • Try connecting your opening hook directly to the article through a careful transition (think of overlapping terms, ideas, or phrases). • Introducing the author: • Do you need to minimize the amount of background? Expand? Consider which details are necessary for the article and the body paragraphs of your analysis to make sense. • Main ideas and purpose: • Refine your reading of the main idea and purpose to one or two sentences. See how effective you can be with your short summary. • Try anticipating the connection to audience by pointing to “what’s at stake” in the article: what does the author want, what do they want the audience to do, and why? • Audience: • Make sure the audience is clearly stated. Consider giving audience at least its own sentence (and connections throughout introduction). • Consider the “background”: who are they, what do they do or care about, and why? How does the author target these details with their rhetoric? • Thesis and rhetorical choices: • Try varying your sentence structure for clarity • Consider how you “label” your rhetorical choices: are they clear and concise? Do they make sense in context with your body paragraphs?

12. Participation READ: Reading Twelve WRITE: (in 12pt Times New Roman) First, state your audience for your article (a phrase is fine), and below that, list qualities, background, assumptions, values, and needs that audience might have. Ex. “Poetry teachers working in higher-education” 1. Value art and carefulness with language 2. Well-read and educated (at least a graduate degree) 3. Value peer-review and critical insight 4. Strong sense of humanism (relation of language to quality of life, thought, independence 5. Very critical readers who pay attention to “meaning” and ambiguity Next, rewrite one of your body paragraphs (over a rhetorical choice), and in this new version, spend nearly all of your space discussing how the rhetorical choice is persuasive for your article’s specific target audience using the values and features you listed before. (Ex. “A poet would be persuaded by rhythmic phrasing because…”) Please integrate sources from your text as you would normally and include topic and concluding sentences. Whenever possible, please discuss how the choice would persuade the audience to accomplish or enact the author’s purpose (i. e. “to do” what the author wants them to do).