Week 5 Homework (and a reminder)

You guys know how this works by now, right? You've got homework to do.

First, you've got some reading assignments in They Say / I Say, starting with two chapters about one of the most basic moves in academic writing, the "Who cares? So what?" move, and another move, the move that Gerald Graff and Cathy Birkenstein and many others like them believe is the strongest move in any kind of persuasive writing, the naysayer move.

But you've also got other readings to do. One of these readings is another one of the essays that appear in the back of They Say / I Say, and that's the essay titled, "Hidden Intellectualism," written by Gerald Graff (one of the authors of the book). I want you to read this essay closely and think about not only the specific statements, but also the moves Graff is making.

Now, I also want you to skim one more piece of writing...

Here's a link to an excerpt from Aristotle's writing about argument and rhetoric that I want you to skim as part of your reading assignment for next week:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B59oU02C12STSzJZNU9nQWZKbXM/view?usp=sharing.

Remember: I'm just asking you to skim Aristotle's writing -- unless you totally love it, in which case, go for it and read as much of it as you want.

That's it for reading assignments due next week.

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For your written homework, I want you to do the following:

-- Write a short paragraph discussing who you think is likely to disagree with your ideas in your Essay 2. If it's not obvious who would disagree with you, try to think in terms of qualities or background or beliefs: What would your most disagreeable readers probably be like? And on what basis would they disagree with you, or at least not believe you and refuse to accept your points?

-- Do the following exercises in They Say / I Say: Exercise 1 at the end of Chapter 4, and exercise 1 at the end of Chapter 5. All I want you to do is to list the templates that you come up with, one by one. A bullet-point list would be just fine for either of these exercises.

And since we're not meeting next Monday, 2/16, don't write these out on notebook paper or print them out. Instead, please type them up in a Word document, and email that document to me by the time we'd normally start class on Monday, 2/16. (Be aware: I will not accept assignments submitted later than 11:05am.)

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So don't forget (this is your reminder): We're not meeting on Monday, 2/16. Your other classes are not cancelled, just my class. All you have to do is submit your homework to me via email, then you're done.

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And that's it for minor homework assignments. Just don't forget that you've got a critique due on Wednesday, 2/18. We'll definitely meet on that day. As usual, though, if you're behind for whatever reason, let me know, and we can negotiate an alternative.

See you all next Wednesday!