Thesis + Body Paragraph Focus

1. Thesis + Body Paragraph Focus

2. Essay Topic Reminder • How does Gould attempt to shake our belief in the credibility of what we see or remember seeing? • To what extent does his essay convince you to doubt what people perceive or remember? • To develop your essay, discuss specific examples from your own experience, your observation of others, or your reading – including “Some Close Encounters of a Mental Kind” itself.

3. Analyzing the question Looking at how the question helps you to organize your essay

4. The first question:

5. The second question:

6. Samples • I was very convinced by Gould that people should doubt what they see and remember. • Although Gould’s essay shows that people should doubt the memories of what they’ve seen, I am not convinced that people should doubt what they actually see.

7. The third question:

8. The compoents of effective body paragraphs (the 4 c’s)

9. Body Paragraphs C#1 • Controlling Idea/Topic Sentence; it includes: • Transition • Connection to thesis • Clear indication of the upcoming paragraph’s focus • YOUR Example(s) • Your experience • Your observation of the world • OTHER readings • Popular culture • NOT Gould(or your original source) C#2

10. Body Paragraphs C#3 • Connection / Relevance • Explain why your example is important • Compare and contrast to Gould (what you are responding to) • Compare and contrast to a “larger” example • Relate to a theory/statistics about the controlling idea • Discuss how the controlling idea applies to society at large • Connect to the thesis • If you did your job with the other C’s, you already did this! C#4

11. Example One convincing aspect of Gould’s argument relates to problems with retrieving memories. I too have had difficulties with mixing up two memories. Just last month, I was having a talk with my girlfriend, and she asked me what my favorite memory was. Of course, I wanted to try to make her feel good, so I told her that it was of our first date when I drove her to the Santa Monica pier and we spent the day (and had our first kiss) on the beach. Immediately, she got

12. Example continued really mad at me, but I didn’t know why at first. It turned out that we hadn’t gone to the beach for our first date. We’d gone to the movies. The beach memory was actually with my girlfriend before her. Sadly, once my girlfriend realized that I had mixed her up with someone else and that my memory wasn’t with her, she got jealous. The whole thing embarrassed me a lot, and my girlfriend and I eventually broke up. This situation demonstrates the same point Gould was talking

13. Example, continued about when he told readers about his Devils Tower experience. In his mind, his memories of Devils Tower and Scotts Bluff must have mixed over time, and a new memory—a false one—was created when he tried to retrieve what Devils Tower looked like. He too got embarrassed when his memories got confused. At least, however, he didn’t lose a girlfriend over it! Both of our examples demonstrate that the memories of two separate events can become twisted together in the retrieval stage and can cause people to make mistakes.

14. Brainstorm • Now think of controlling ideas that you might use for body paragraphs (reasons you found Gould convincing or not) • Then think of examples that could support those • Share with a group