Thursday, June 7, 2007

The Major Writing Assignment: Introduction to the Persuasion Piece

Major writing assignments are what English 98 is all about. All the readings, discussions, sentence skills work, etc., are all supposed to be synthesized to create a strong, well-crafted, well-argued final essay that demonstrates the students understanding of a particular rhetorical form. This quarter we've done three: the comparison/contrast essay, the definition essay, and the one that I will be showcasing, the persuasion essay.

We started preparing for this essay by talking about Aristotle's rhetorical triangle: ethos/pathos/logs and how those elements work to create a strong argument. We read essays regarding whether or not piercings and other outward markers should make a difference in the work place, whether college athletics ought to be abolished, and whether animal experimentation should be continued. This was followed by a trip to the library to learn about reliability in sources as well as an introduction to some paid databases the library has. One that I hadn't seen before that seemed very impressive for any argument source is CQ Researcher. Finally, we followed all this up with a rousing lecture on plagiarism by Dr. Dhil and the Plagiarism Court. All in all, this unit covered a lot of ground and I was pleased with the way it incorporated so many skills.

1 comment:

shellee said...

The trip to the library was a hit! I think Dan made it worthwhile with his free pens! I loved the info we were able to get and the fact I was able to follow up with him the next day for more clarification . Thanks for setting this up Phebe!
Shellee V,