When revising your literacy narrative, I hope you are reading my comments and comments from your classmates.

If you have any technical issues reading my comments or your classmates’ comments, please let me know!

Commenting in Margins

In Word, the comments should show up to the right side of the page like the following (this is something I wrote that someone commented on):

In a PDF, I will comment with “sticky notes” that look like the following:

I will usually also highlight text so you know what the sticky note is referring to. You can hover your mouse over the sticky note to read it, but you should also click on it so you can scroll inside it to read the whole thing (sometimes if you just hover, you can only read part of the comment).

Commenting at End

I will also write comments at the end after the rubric. So please look over the rubric but ALSO look at the stuff I write at the end. I usually sum up the things that I reacted most strongly to here in a way that will make more sense from a global perspective than the more local perspective of the comments in the margins.

What Works?

Most research suggest that the best kinds of comments on writing are ones that ask questions and/or provide reasoning that can help show what something is doing, why it is working for the reader, and/or why it isn’t working for the reader. I will never comment in a way that tells you what to do. I will never expect you to respond to each and every comment. It is your paper, so I want you to drive it and own it, not me. That said, I do want you to meet the objectives of the assignment–there’s just more ways to do it then in ways that my comments might push you toward. There is never a clear right answer with writing. There are just better and worse answers.

I also don’t comment on every single thing I see. Research shows that it is better to comment on a few things, otherwise it can be overwhelming.

So, what I try to do, is to comment on things that are part of a larger pattern. So, any comment from me you should take as something that might apply to other places in your paper other than the place where I comment.

I also try to focus my energy mostly on what we are learning at the time of your writing (e.g., using examples, style).

Communicating with Readers

It is always a good idea to communicate with your readers who will comment. Tell them what you want them to look for. What you are not sure of. How to move it forward. Questions you have. You should always feel free to write in questions or make notes that talk directly to me on any of your drafts, especially first drafts.

With your writing group, please communicate with them about what you need and what they can help you with in the same way.

Task

In a comment below, do one of the following:

• Let me know if you have any questions, especially about any difficult accessing comments (e.g., issues with reading sticky notes on pdf).
• Write one thing that you really like when you read comments on your writing. How someone writes a comment. Less about content of comments, but how they are written.

After commenting below, click the button to continue:

The Phrase: Missing a subject or a verb, but as a collection of words, has meaning potential.

Examples: The dog with the ball. From there, they went to the park.

The Clause: a subject and a verb (often also includes phrases and words that modify the subject and verb).

Examples: He [subj] ran [verb]. She [subj] jumped [verb] up and down [adverbial phrase]. They [subj] jumped [verb] high [adverb] before stopping for a break [prepositional phrase].

The Independent Clause: It forms a complete sentence and thought, but can have other words, phrases, or clauses that modify it.

Examples: He ran. They jumped high before stopping for a break.

The Dependent Clause: It has a subject and a verb, but it needs an independent clause to complete the thought.

Example: While they were tired, they were able to muster enough energy to complete the task.

Sentences: An independent clause or a combination of independent and dependent clauses.

Examples: [any of the examples for independent clause or the full sentence for dependent clause example]

Using phrases and clauses to change up your sentences gets us in the realm of sentence types.

Return to the Learning Module Page Here to Continue the Module

For some writing, sentence variety will not matter as much. In short emails, in short memos, in some policy writing or some technical documents (especially instructions). However, writing that is longer and writing that you might worry people will stop paying attention to? Sentence variety is one trick you have as a writer to keep readers engaged.

On the last page, you got to take a brief look at some of your writing. To keep your reader engaged, varying your sentence lengths can wake them up a bit. If every sentence is about the same length, your writing could read like a song that always has the same exact beat…and that can be kind of boring, you know?

Varying sentence length at a key moment can emphasize something, too, that you want to be emphasized. For instance, perhaps you have several long sentences, and then all of a sudden have a sentence of three words. That violation of a pattern can emphasize whatever you put in that three word sentence.

Varying Sentences: Length and Using Phrases and Clauses

One way to vary sentences is to make them different lengths. You can do this by cutting or adding to them. You may intuitively have a sense to do this. Whether you do or do not, though, knowing the units of words is one way to help: adding/removing phrases, expanding a dependent clause into an independent clause as a new sentence, combining sentences into one sentence with multiple independent clauses, etc.

Click here to learn more about phrases and clauses, and how to manipulate them in different ways to help the ways in which you can vary your sentences. Please read! It will help in understanding the below.

Sentence Types

The four types of sentences, based on structure, are (more at Purdue OWL with examples):

• Simple
• Compound
• Complex
• Compound-Complex
• [Also, the fragment–which is completely legitimate to use, especially to emphasize something since readers often don’t expect fragments]

Read through the Purdue OWL explanation of sentence types to learn the differences between them. (open this in a new tab so you don’t navigate away from where you are at!)

Varying your sentence types can create a different rhythm. Dependent clauses or phrases, for instance, can interrupt a sentence in ways that a simple sentence only made up of an independent clause cannot.

Compare:

-He went to school.

-He went, after he dropped off library books at the library, to school.

Sentence Types and Proximity

Varying sentence types can draw ideas both closer together and further apart, which can have rhetorical effects:

Very Far: It was a rough day for Melissa. She had to cover a second shift for her friend at work. And now she was stranded. Because her car broke down. Great.

Far: It was a rough day for Melissa. She had to cover a second shift for her friend at work. Plus, now she was stranded at work because her car broke down.

Close: It was a rough day for Melissa, especially since she had to cover a second shift for her friend at work. Plus, now she was stranded at work because her car broke down.

Very Close: It was a rough day for Melissa, especially since she had to cover a second shift for her friend at work; now she was stranded in her broken down car.

Using em-dashes, along with semicolons and colons, can utilize proximity for purposes of emphasis.

–Very close with greater pause for dependent clause: It was a rough day for Melissa–especially since she had to cover a second shift for her friend at work; now she was stranded in her broken down car.

–Very close with longer pause for rhetorical triplet: It was a rough day for Melissa: she had to cover a second shift for her friend, her car broke down, and now she is stranded.

This punctuation guide website is a wonderful resource.

Much of this, too, depends on position in the sentence. Generally, the ranking of position of emphasis in English is:

1. End of Sentence
2. Beginning of Sentence
3. Middle of Sentence

Generally speaking, whatever you want to emphasize should come at the end of the sentence. If you want to de-emphasize something, bury it in the middle in a dependent clause or some other way.

Keeping an idea by itself is more likely to be emphasized, especially if you are engaging in a good variety of sentences (otherwise, if just a bunch of simple sentences, the monotone rhythm will lose the emphasis).

Task

Choose 2 paragraphs from your literacy narrative draft (you can choose the same 2 paragraphs from the activity on the last page if you want) and mark each sentence as a sentence type.

You can use the comment function in Word or Adobe Reader. You could also use a separate piece of paper and use this template: Sentence 1 = [insert sentence type]. Count sentence types for each of 4 sentence types in those 2 paragraphs.

Think about the following:

1. Do you notice any patterns? Do you tend to use a certain combination of types or is there a repetitive pattern that tends to happen (e.g., you often follow a complex or complex-compound sentence with 1-2 simple sentences)? If so, why do you think you do that? What does that do rhetorically? How does that pattern influence your reader?
2. Do you notice any violations of patterns? (e.g., do you all of a sudden have a string of 6 simple sentences or two consecutive compound sentences somewhere but do there nowhere else?) Does that violation of a pattern do something rhetorically? How? Why?

Comment below with the following information:

1. The number of sentence types for each sentence in those 2 paragraphs you selected.
2. Note anything that stood out to you in terms of both the amount of each sentence type and the ordering of those sentence types (e.g., was there interesting placement of different sentence types next to each other?)

After commenting below, click on the “Click here to continue” button below.

In Learning Module 3 and in Learning Module 4, we started going over style. Style, for our purposes, is defined as “Using certain kinds of sentences and words that serve the your and your audience’s values, expectations, and goals.” We talked about voice, tone, translingualism, word choice, and more so far.

I’ll be looking at your growth as stylists in the Literacy Narrative Revision, but won’t be grading harshly for it. Please experiment and try new things out with your words and sentences! I will never penalize you for that, especially early on.

Now, we are going to spend a little time going over sentences this week, and the way I like to start with this is to just focus on how long and short your sentences tend to be.

How long sentences are can have a range of rhetorical effects. Let’s check out what your lengths tend to be and what those rhetorical effects might be.

Task

First, Open up your Literacy Narrative first draft (or, if you want, your revision in-progress).

Second, let’s see your sentence length average and variance.

You can use Microsoft Word to do this.

a. Go to File>Options (make sure you use scroll bar all the way to right to scroll to bottom)>Proofing.

b. Under “When correcting spelling…”, check the box labeled “Show readability statistics.”

c. After that, go to “Review” on top menu bar and click “Spelling & Grammar” on far right.

d. Some box (or a few) might come up about conciseness or something else, click “Ignore once.”

e. Then another box will appear called “Readability Statistics.” Look at “Averages” and you will find your sentence average, as well as average sentence per paragraph and average character length for words.

If you don’t have Microsoft Word you can use analyzemywriting.com and paste your writing there and click “Analyze Text!”. Toward bottom, the last chart “Sentence Length” gives you the mean and median for your sentences (as well as a distribution of all of your sentence according to number of words).

Third, choose two different paragraphs and note the length of each sentence (in Word, use cursor to highlight sentence and in bottom left corner it tells you how long sentence is; in Google Docs, highlight sentence and then click Tools>Word Count).

Write down each length somewhere so you don’t forget (e.g., use comment function). Think about these questions:

1. Do you note any patterns in length? (e.g., do you tend, in both paragraphs, to start with really long sentences followed by a short sentence? Or do you tend to have really short sentences of about equal length throughout?) Is there a rhetorical effect here? What? How does it make that effect?
2. Is there a time where these patterns are violated? Is there a rhetorical effect there? What?
3. To see the distribution of sentence lengths, you can use analyzemywriting.com (follow instructions from previous page). This can help you see bigger picture of whether you tend to always have roughly the same length of sentence or not.

In a comment below, name one thing that stood out to you about your writing based on this analysis.

After you comment below, click the button below to continue.

You are going to take genre into consideration in two ways for your rhetorical analysis assignment:

1. You will be writing in a genre, the blog post. It is good to think about what expectations readers might (or might not) have when writing in any genre.
2. You will be analyzing 2 texts that might be different genres. Since they will be in different genres, it will be important to consider what effect that has in making meaning out of those texts.

The word genre might be heard in a few ways. For instance, you might associate it with music: pop, hip hop, R&B, rock and roll, etc.

When listening to hip hop or rock and roll, what do you “expect” to hear?

Genre relates to any form of communication or art. I like this succinct definition, drawn from the work of rhetorical scholar Carolyn Miller, from this video: https://liberalarts.oregonstate.edu/wlf/what-genre

Genre is what some might call ‘typified rhetorical action’ and what that means is that there are features that repeat again and again, over time, with few differences, in part because audiences expect certain things to happen or because they want certain kinds of experiences. Genre is the name we use to describe the categories that have developed over time for what we read, what we watch, and what we listen to. And the kinds of genres that exist in one culture at one time may not exist in another culture at another time – they’re constantly changing.

An easy example is a grocery list, as shown from this webpage differentiating genre from medium:

a grocery list is a genre that developed out of a need to remember what you are shopping for at the grocery store. It is a set form of writing with general expectations – brief and to-the-point, in a list format, usually following the store’s layout. Genre is determined by need and audience expectation.

Genre is sort of the big picture, it is the “style” from a macro perspective.

Like the kind of document rather than the kind of sentence, or language within a passage, or tone throughout a piece.

Genre considers so many things: it in part means style, but also formatting, organization, design, etc. The main focus is on fulfilling some recognizable form for audiences to recognize for repeated rhetorical situations.

Genre and MAYA

I want to put the idea of genre in conversation with MAYA from the Thompson reading. Help me out here.

Thompson claimed that Lowey believed in two opposing forces that consumers weigh: neophilia (curiosity about new things) and neophobia (a fear of anything too new).

The MAYA acronym describes the framework to join these opposing forces in order to make commodities most desirable—but Thompson branches out from pure consumerism to art/entertainment, academic knowledge, identity, and songwriting. Pretty much any art, design, or communicative activity.

Questions

1. So what does this mean for genre? How does MAYA apply to genre in writing do you think? In genres in other modes of expression? (e.g., music, film)
2. How true is it that there are set expectations in writing? How do you know? What about other modes of expression? (e.g., music, film)
3. What can the potential be for violating expectations? How do writers do that and do they still need to meet some expectations when doing that? What about other rhetors (e.g., filmmakers, musicians, artists, speakers)?

Task

On Discord, in the text channel called “mar-3-maya-genre” under Reading/Writing Discussion, write a post doing one of the following:

• Choose one of the three above questions under “Questions” in the previous section. Respond to it in at least three thoughtful sentences.
• Reply to a classmate who has already responded to one of those questions. Respond in at least three thoughtful sentences. Let it push that classmate’s thinking forward; take their ideas and see if you can run a bit further.

After posting in Discord, click the button below to continue:

Let’s get some more practice with this and think about things to do to make your own rhetorical analysis.

Things To Do

Follow these steps as you look over your texts for your Rhetorical Analysis and think through how you can turn it into a compelling paper in response to the prompt.

1. Pick texts (which texts will help you address the prompt?). Think back to what we did on March 1!
2. Consider scale (do I want to look at an episode of a show or a whole season? why or why not?). Do you want to look at an episode vs. a season vs. the whole series? A chapter or passage of a book or the whole book? A 30 second ad or a years-long advertising campaign? Bigger the scale, than the more narrow the focus (e.g., a very specific theme across seasons, an analysis of one character across one season). Smaller the scale, than the focus does not need to be as narrow. However, a danger of rhetorical analysis is always: let me analyze everything! If *everything* is analyzed to great detail, then it might be hard to have a coherent take away other than “this piece has rhetorical qualities to it.” Of course it does! Every text has rhetorical qualities. Make an argument about the rhetorical qualities, tell me about patterns and themes to say something noteworthy or interesting about the text you are analyzing.
3. Take notes (think back to Reading Annotation assignments! Take notes where you pause, where you have questions, where things start to connect to the argument you might make). Think of this like doing your Reading Annotation assignments. Note things that are interesting, surprising, confusing, note patterns, note things that connect to research interests you have, etc. If you are watching or listening to something, you should mark where the event occurs. Note the timestamp on the video or audio file: something happens that you want to take a note, you hit pause, you look at the time so far (e.g., happened at the 26th minute, happened at approximately 26:31).
4. Find patterns/themes/etc. (look for connections, things that stand out in the notes you take). Look over your notes that you took as you read/viewed/listened. Start to note patterns, themes, connections. What sorts of arguments, images, words, phrases, etc. keep coming up? Start to do some freewriting about these patterns, themes, and connections.
5. Choose a lens (see if a lens helps you look at your notes…once you have a lens, take notes again with another reading/viewing/listening). Go back to the “Tools for Analysis” chapter from our textbook. Review the lenses offered there and start to think about which ones would be most useful for analyzing your text. Don’t just focus on “what” you see, but “how” it is put together. For example: don’t just note topics that come up in your text, but how those topics are constructed (e.g., word choice, sentence structure, the type of imagery, character traits).
6. Context (what important cultural or historical information will help you understand the text?). Make sure you are also listing out any relevant context to consider for your analysis. What media (e.g., a video, online writing, print writing, audio) is used and how does that affect how the text is made? What genre is it? What audience expectations might there be? What is the time period it was made? What cultural context was it produced in?
7. Look again.  (What do you notice? What do you think about it? How does it connect to your argument?–ask these questions as you review your notes) You can read closely here or skim a bit (or fastforward). But now that you have your lens or lenses handy, you will look at the text with a new perspective. Take some notes again with your lens or lenses in mind. Also review your old notes, too.
8. State claim/give evidence/comment on evidence (turn some of this into writing in your draft: make the claim, offer the evidence from the text, connect the text to your claim). Turn #7 into concrete writing. Use what you found when looking again to start to argue about what you see in the text.

Task

Let’s try out #3-8 in this above list. We will use the following image to do this practice, to the best you can (since you are not using this below image to respond to the prompt–so just think about an argument in general rather than specific to the prompt).

Image to analyze:

Might be hard to see text on this image, so here it is:

Text says at top: One child is holding something that’s been banned in America to protect them. Guess which one (in red)

At bottom it reads: “We ban the game dodgeball because it’s viewed as being too violent? Why not assault weapons?

Then there is the website listed, Momsdemandaction.org, and then the Moms Demand Action For Gun Sense in America logo to right bottom.

In a comment below, list out responses of #3-8 as best as you can. In your comment, number all of your responses to correlate to the above list. For instance, offer some initial notes you took for #3, and then think about patterns you found when looking at these notes in #4, and so on.

After commenting below, click on the button to continue:

In this week’s learning module, we explored:

• an introduction to rhetoric and rhetorical analysis, using the readings for this week to help guide us (e.g., the rhetorical situation, rhetorical thinking, summary vs. analysis, using lenses in analysis)
• we started to talk about the prompt for the Rhetorical Analysis assignment and what to do for the proposal going forward
• we continued our exploration of style about words, word origins, tone, register, etc.
• we checked in on how the Literacy Narrative Revision is going so far.

Next time:

• Read “Nu Pogodi: Propaganda for Children of the USSR” by Leon Yablonovskiy, p. 139-144 (textbook) for Monday’s class (no reading response to get done before class, but be prepared to discuss it–take notes! You will have needed to read it closely to be able to do well in the activity we do on Monday).
• At the end of the day on Monday, March 1, please turn in the proposal for your Rhetorical Analysis assignment. To see the prompt for the proposal, go to Blackboard>Submit Assignments>Process Writing and Reading Responses>Process Writing: Rhetorical Analysis Proposal (click attachment).
• Keep working on the Literacy Narrative revision and work with your writing groups to get and give comments!

On Monday, we talked about a revision plan. You completed a draft of that revision plan. But it is not a final draft! We can revise our revision plan.

Let’s check in on how things are going.

Here were the questions you responded to:

1. What do you love about this piece? What do you want to return to and work on more? Why? Choose “love” and not “well, this was bad” or “well, this was pretty good.” Instead, what did you enjoy working on most? What is the most exciting part of this text? Why? How do you build off of that? Or, what about this text, generally, interests you the most?
2. What feedback will you incorporate do you think? Why?
3. What aspects of Liao’s perspective will help guide your revision do you think? Why? How?
4. What about your word choice and sentence structure? How will you revise your style in a way that best fits what you want to do in your piece and in ways your audience would appreciate?
5. Write out ALL of the specific tasks you will take based on: what you love, the feedback you got, and the new constraints you have (Liao, organization, using examples, style)? Be SPECIFIC.
6. What is your schedule for getting this done? Consult your writing schedule that you did for today!

Task

In a comment below, write about one thing you have started to work on as described in your revision plan and also write about if you decided you needed to change you revision plan (explain!).

After commenting below, click the button to continue.

Okay, okay. Don’t stress out! You have your Literacy Narrative Revision due March 8. That is where the majority of your energy should be.

However, I am a big believer in thinking EARLY about things. Your first draft of your Rhetorical Analysis is due March 17. That’s a while from now, but I would still like you to start thinking about it now.

Task

Right now, take 5 minutes to read through the prompt for your Rhetorical Analysis assignment. Let me know if you have any questions.

Comment below with any questions you have for the Rhetorical Analysis prompt linked above. If you do not have any questions, write “I don’t have a question” so I can give you credit for the task on this page.

On Monday, March 1 by 11:59pm, you will submit your proposal for your Rhetorical Analysis (see Blackboard>Submit Assignments>Process Writing and Reading Responses>Rhetorical Analysis Proposal). This is very informal, I just want you to tell me any initial ideas you have for this assignment in terms of the text that you want to analyze.

After commenting below, click the button below to continue:

One of the big adjustments for doing a rhetorical analysis is learning the distinction between summary and analysis.

Many of us wrote book reports in school. If you did, you would mostly be doing summary. 

Summary takes the most important parts that you think an audience would want to know, and assemble them in a “big picture” way to give your audience a sense of the meaningful parts of a given object. If it is a book report, that means the highlights and general trajectory of the plot. If it is an “executive summary” for, say, an annual report for a given business or non-profit, that means including the main takeaways in terms of yearly earnings, future directions, etc.

Summary is useful in a rhetorical analysis! Especially when you are analyzing an object that your audience is unfamiliar with–say a brief summary in the beginning (like no more than a paragraph).

But, the bulk of what you are doing in a rhetorical analysis is not summary, but (surprise!) analysis. It is a specific kind of analysis focused on text, but knowing how to analyze vs. summarize, generally, is a very important thing to develop as a writer for the kind of writing you do in college.

Analysis in Rhetorical Analysis

In the “Tools for Analyzing Texts” chapter, these are the sorts of things you are trying to figure out when analyzing a text:

• the central meanings of the text
• how meanings are expressed in the text
• why the text is important
• why the text is unusual, unique, or odd
• why it is influential or what influences it
• how it describes social, cultural, or historical ideas
• how it conceals, exposes, reinforces, or challenges hidden violence or prejudiced attitudes
• what philosophical, psychological, or affective concepts it channels
• or where it stands (or should stand) in relation to other texts

On pages 109-110, there is a great example of summarizing, summarizing + analyzing, and analyzing only. This can be very helpful to you as you work on your Rhetorical Analysis assignment.

Task

To get some practice with this distinction, and to get you in that revision headspace you all should be in now anyway (!), do the following in the comments below:

1. Write a brief summary of a day from this past week or from a show or podcast you watched listened to. What happened?
2. Write a brief analysis (about 100 words), using a lens from “Tools for Analyzing Texts,” of your day or show/podcast episode. Be creative! Try it out, don’t worry too much about being “right,” just take some chances here.

You can do a hybrid summary and analysis or do a separate summary and analysis in the same comment below (see p. 109-110). Make sure you have something substantive: about 150-300 words for your summary/analysis or summary + analysis.

After commenting below, click on the button to continue: