Assignment #15- Final Reflection

For your final blog post, I want you to look back at your first and seventh blog posts. In your first blog post, you outlined your goals for the semester, and in your seventh blog post, you discussed the progress you feel you had made on those goals.

As the semester comes to an end, reflect back on those goals; do you feel you have achieved what you wanted to achieve? Would you in anyway change those goals now that you are more familiar with college level writing? 

In addition to reflecting back on those goals, you also need to outline how you would like to continue to grow as a writer. What strengths would you like to continue to develop? What are your weaknesses that you know you still need to work on?

The content of this blog post is likely to overlap significantly with your final reflection essay, but that's fine. Think of this as a shorter, more informal version of your final reflection that will help you develop and refine your ideas.

Assignment #14- Planning for Revisions

This week you should choose which essay you would like to revise for your final portfolio, and for this blog post, you are going to describe your revision strategy for that essay with the goal of making more effective revisions through the use of careful planning. To begin this process, you should list 2-3 strengths of your essay and 2-3 weaknesses. Then you should briefly describe how specifically you plan to revise your essay based on those strengths and weaknesses. For example:

For my portfolio I chose to revise my ad analysis essay. The strengths of my ad analysis were that I effectively described the ad and clearly stated my thesis. The weaknesses were that my paper lacked focus and I did not support my claims with evidence from the ad. My conclusion also strayed off topic.

To effectively revise my essay, I am going to work on better focusing my paper around my thesis. As I go over each paragraph, I will ask myself how this paragraph relates to my main idea. If the relationship is unclear or illogical, then I know I need to revise that paragraph. In addition, I am going summarize each paragraph in a sentence, and then check to see if my paragraphs are ordered logically.

I also am going to interrogate each claim I made in my essay. I will ask myself what about the text led me to make this claim. If I have difficulty finding evidence from the ad to support my claim, then I know it is likely that that claim needs to be revised/deleted. After I have better supported my claims and organized/focused my thoughts, I am hoping it will be much easier to write an effective conclusion.

How to Write Argumentative Essays Videos

http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLE42C98564BC448F1

Assignment #13- Analyzing and Writing Arguments

For your third revised essay you analyzed an argument, and now, for your fourth essay, you are writing an argument of your own. For this blog post, you need to think critically about what you learned by analyzing another writer's argument that can be applied to your own argument.  I want you to identify at least three specific things you learned from analyzing an argument that you will use when writing your own argument. Briefly describe what specifically from the text led to your observation and how specifically you will use that information when writing your own argument. For example:

• I analyzed "Essay X." In that essay, the writer used an informal tone in an attempt to build a connection to the reader. However, that tone ultimately weakened her argument by making her seem less authoritative. This taught me how my choice of tone can affect how trustworthy I appear to readers, and I will be conscious of choosing an appropriate tone for my subject matter.

The purpose of this blog post is to get you to continue to think critically about effective arguments and also to help you draw connections between your assignments. In addition, it may be helpful to you to also read your peers' blogs to gain additional insight into what makes an argument effective.

Assignment #12- Thinking Critically About Evidence

In class on Wednesday we will be working in small groups to critically examine the evidence you developed to support your arguable thesis. For this blog post, I want you create a revised version of your evidence chart, complete with your thesis. Then you need to identify both the evidence that you find strongest and most compelling, and the evidence that you think is the weakest part of your argument. In addition, you need to briefly explain what makes that particular evidence strong or weak, and how you plan to address these issues in your argument. 

For example, say I was going argue the thesis we went over in class: "Most students would benefit from enrolling in college immediately after high school because doing so will better prepare students for educational and professional success."

After creating my chart, I might identify my most compelling evidence as my claim that enrolling immediately after high school makes students more likely to finish school because they are already acclimated to an educational environment and have not had time to forget the knowledge they acquired in high school, and thus are more likely to succeed in their classes. I also might identify my rebuttal to the counter-argument that school is too expensive to be the weakest part of my argument. My blog post would then be something along the lines of the following:

• My most compelling evidence is my claim that students who enroll in college immediately after high school are more likely to finish because they are accustomed to being in an academic environment and the knowledge they acquired in high school is still relatively fresh. This is strong evidence because it is logically sound, and it is something that my audience will be familiar with. Everyone has come back to school after having the summer off and struggled to sit through a lecture and remember the concepts they learned the year before. It is only logical that this problem would be exacerbated both by taking a break for a longer period of time and the added rigor of college coursework. Since this is my strongest claim, I am going to mention it at the beginning of my essay and continue to reiterate throughout my argument.

• My weakest evidence is my rebuttal to the claim that students cannot afford college immediately after high school. I argue that there is financial aid available and that college leads to higher lifetime earnings. This is my weakest evidence because it can be difficult for anyone, but particularly the young people who are my target audience, to make short-term sacrifices in exchange for long-term rewards. In addition, as my audience is likely well aware, a college degree is no longer a guarantee of financial success. To strengthen this part of my argument, I will be honest with my audience about the high costs of college and the uncertainty after graduation, but I will also emphasize that while the job search is difficult with a college degree, it is significantly worse without one. I will also tie back to my idea the longer students wait to go to school, the more difficult  it can be to finish, and add that given the high costs of college, it is unlikely that a person could save up enough money to cover all their expenses.