Week fourteen: Writing Review

1. Week fourteen: Writing Review The Final class

2. Class overview • Housekeeping: How Did the 1.2s Go? Where Did You Perform the Most Revision and Why? • Semester Reflection Activity • Top Twenty Common Errors Review • Writing Review Directions • What to Anticipate for English 1302 at TTU

3. In-Class Reflection • At the top, define rhetoric and critical thinking: how do the two connect? Why is critical thinking important in today’s society? • For the first part of this reflection, think about what you thought were your greatest challenges as a writer when you first began this course. What are your greatest perceived challenges in college writing now? How has your view of college writing changed since the first few weeks? What do you feel you need to work on beyond this course, and how will you accomplish those goals? • For the second part of this reflection, consider how your understanding of rhetoric and college writing in this course has influenced or overlapped with your other university coursework. How has it affected, say, the way in which you complete written assignments? Do you feel better prepared for college coursework than before?

4. Writing Review • Writing Review • Objective: To review the work you have completed in the course and to reflect on what you have learned from it. • Description: To complete this assignment, begin by taking the post-semester diagnostic. You will need to include a discussion of the pre- and post-semester diagnostic in your review. Then look back at your pre- and post-semester grammar diagnostic scores and results, all of your assignments and commentary, and class notes and in-class activities. Based on what you find when you examine these materials, write a 400 - 550 word reflection on what you have learned about academic writing and what you understand about it that wasn’t clear to you before. Develop a thesis that helps your readers understand what you will focus on in the review. • Then, give specific examples that help you illustrate your thesis. For example, you can discuss specifically what you have learned about summarizing and paraphrasing texts, about analyzing texts, as well as what kinds of challenges those tasks posed for you. You should also discuss what you have learned about grammar and mechanics that has helped you become a stronger writer in that respect. In addition, you should also talk about other learning experiences you’ve encountered during the course. Finally, you should discuss how the work you’ve done in 1301 has or has not transferred to the writing you have been asked to do in other courses this semester. • You may use first-person pronouns in this review, but keep in mind that the language and tone of the review should be professional.

5. Writing Review: further Instructions • Diagnostics should be available on Raider Writer homepage. Same rules apply as last time: do not exit the diagnostic, and try to plan enough time so that you can take it in one sitting. • Please put pressure on your essay-style organization: make sure that paragraphs have clear topic sentences and are organized in a meaningful, logical manner. • The thesis is important: follow the assignment directions, and make sure that your thesis accounts for what you will discuss. (Hint: think of the structure we used for theses when listing rhetorical choices and the way those “choices” represented your body paragraphs) • Make sure to discuss your learning of mechanics, grammar, and structure in writing at some point. However, you will not want to make this your only point of discussion: focus on higher-order concerns in college writing. • Be specific not only about “what” you learned but “how” you learned; use specific examples and references to assignments (and how those assignments specifically worked for you or challenged you) • Finally, make sure that you have a paragraph that contextualizes the writing and lessons about critical thinking you’ve learned in 1301 with writing you’re doing for other courses. Be clear about any parallels you see, particularly in those classes that are part of your major discipline as an undergraduate. • Due Monday, 12/9 at 11:59:59 P. M.

6. English 1302: the Run-Down • Whereas English 1301 primarily focused on rhetoric and critical reading, 1302 expands on critical reading and writing by focusing on works of scholarly research and the methods of university-level researched writing. • 1302 is centered around the production of two longer drafts and revisions of those drafts (four altogether): 1) a literature review and 2) a researched argument (of your own devising) • Pacing of course is much faster, and more assignments are due overall. • A literature review, in most disciplines, is a paper that attempts to connect the arguments and methodologies concerning a particular problem or topic in a given field. A literature review is focused on accurately synthesizing the arguments of others in context with one another. Meaning, a literature review examines multiple articles and researchers’ views on a subject and demonstrates explicitly “how” those arguments overlap. A literature review refers to the available conversation on a scholarly topic and seeks to find the pattern in past and current research. • A researched argument is similar to an opinion editorial, a personal argument, but is performed in a scholarly manner, meaning its claims are organized according to a persuasive thesis and utilizes scholarly research (peer-reviewed sources from reputable journals, not newspapers or common magazines) to support those claims.

7. Example Theses for Literature reviews versus Researched Arguments • A literature review thesis might look like this (focuses on researchers’ views and the “common” thread running through those views as an organization structure): • “Although some researchers disagree, most research of American critics regarding the effectiveness of intelligence and espionage programs can be characterized by its concern with the ethics of globalization.” • A researched argument thesis on the same topic might look like this (Note the firm “stance” of the speaker using the phrase “should,” as in “you should do the following because of reasons a), b) , and c)): • “Because it protects domestic corporate interests, provides valuable support to troops overseas, and effectively prevents domestic and foreign attacks on American interests, the NSA program is necessary to national security and should be maintained in our government.”