As you gather your notes and begin to assemble your "Profile" essays, I would like for you to be thinking about the writing process and how you go about generating ideas, and then putting those ideas into the essay format, and specifically this "Profile" format. Here are some possible post ideas (and feel free to expand on more than one):
1. Share an experience of note-taking and how it corresponded or conflicted with your expectations for your essay. Share an experience that spurred an idea or thought for you. How did you incorporate this knowledge into your ideas for your essay?
2. Tell us about your writing process: How do you generate essay ideas? How do you organize your ideas into a plan? How do you start writing? What difficulties do you have in the writing process? What do you do when you feel like you can't write?
3. Give a synopsis of your idea for the essay and explain what you felt worked in trying to convey your idea and what did not.
4. Go into depth about a difficulty you faced during this essay anywhere in the writing process from start to finish and how you went about trying to fix it.
Tuesday, February 22, 2011
Friday, February 18, 2011
Today's Notes
Beginning an essay
I. Beginning means announcing and limiting the subject, indicating a plan, catching the reader’s attention, and establishing an appropriate tone and point of view
II. Announcing and Limiting the Subject
A. For most essays it is better to start with an implied announcement of your subject: Belief in the doctrines of religion may be justified in several ways
vs. an explicit announcement: It is my purpose to consider the type of justification which is available for belief in the doctrines of religion.
B. Immediate vs. Delayed announcement
If you opt to name your subject immediately then your focus is on clarity and getting right to the point: for example, All men are snobs about something. – Aldous Huxley
The alternative is to try to arouse curiosity or interest your reader first. This can be done by beginning broadly and then narrowing your topic, or by beginning with a specific detail or example and then broadening to arrive at the topic.
III. Indicating the plan of the essay
Essential to a good essay is outlining and giving the reader an idea of how you are going to organize the essay. You should let your readers know what your essay will be about, what your setting out to prove or say and finally in what order.
I want to tell you about a woodsman, what he was like, what his work was, and what it meant. His name was Alfred D. Teare and he came originally from Nova Scotia, but all the time I knew him his home was in Berlin, New Hampshire. Probably the best surveyor of old lines in New England, he was—in his way—a genius.
Kenneth Andler
Is this an implied or explicit announcement?
Is this an immediate or delayed announcement?
How will this essay be organized? What subtopics will the writer address and in what order?
IV. Interesting the reader
A. Stressing the importance of the subject: There is no painter who has so spontaneously and so profoundly reflected his age as Pablo Picasso
B. Arousing Curiosity: It is a pity true history is not taught in schools. Or, I hate botany, which is why I went to New York.
C. Amusing the reader: this can be down through a witty remark, an anecdote, or comparison (analogy, simile or metaphor).
V. The function of an opening is to introduce an essay, not to be a miniature version of it. You must balance the extremes of saying to much and saying too little.
Friday, February 4, 2011
Rhetoric, Culture and the Self
Give some of your thoughts about how you describe your writing style and answer two of the following questions:
1. How is writing affected by culture?
2. What role does the self play in writing?
3. What role does race, gender, ethnicity, social status play in how we see the world?
4. Doe bias or discrimination still exist in American culture and society?
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