I want you to write to the class as your audience and I want you to do that with two related forms in mind:
- the genre of the blog post/online article
- the medium of online writing
This form of writing assumes a stance of entertaining while also informing readers. So how can you both entertain us by making it clear there is something interesting about your analysis but also inform us about something meaningful about it?
Consider the following characteristics:
- The way you open your piece (how do you grab interest?)
- your thesis statement (how do you make clear what argument is about?)
- the title of your piece (how do you grab attention while still being truthful?)
- how you hyperlink to other information (how do you provide access to sources that inform your writing?)
- how you incorporate visuals throughout the piece (what would be relevant to what you are writing about but also nicely positioned to break up the writing for keeping interest?)
- paragraphing function and length (are your paragraphs clear on what you are doing in them? do you signal to your reader what they’ll be about and how they connect to other paragraphs? are they too long for reading experience of reading on screen?)
Task
Here are some examples that you can use as models…take notes on them and see what you want to try to imitate in relation to above characteristics in your revision!:
Baseball General Manager Billy Bean article from FiveThirtyEight.
After reviewing these characteristics, reviewing the three example posts/articles above, and looking through your rhetorical analysis draft, do the following:
- Choose a paragraph you’d like to revise (or write) in your Rhetorical Analysis draft.
- Consider which characteristics of blogging and online writing from above that you’d like to apply to revising (or writing) that paragraph
- Revise (or write) the paragraph or write what your plan for revising/writing is
- Paste the paragraph into a comment below or paste your plan
- Write up a brief explanation of what you wrote/revised or planned and why (no more than 100 words)
Comment below with #4 and #5 from above list
After commenting, click on the button below to continue:
4) Take out the unnecessary content of my piece to give more space to elaborate on certain points and views I made in the Rhetorical Analysis. Add hyperlinks to certain artists, music videos, and albums mentioned in my Rhetorical Analysis.
5) I want to be able to elaborate on certain points so readers can understand how the songs I mentioned in my analysis pertained to a phase in my life while still allowing the reader to maintain the ability to see the overall message throughout my piece of writing. The addition of hyperlinks would allow readers interested in the music or videos mentioned in my Rhetorical Analysis to perhaps see and hear the sights and sounds I am analyzing, or to check out the artist and new music.
4. I’d like to make my thesis statement in a way that addresses the prompt, but at the same time is specific enough to write about standout parts from the texts I chose that support my claim.
5. My thesis statement is ” In terms of how I have grown as a person, Spongebob Squarepants is representative of my younger years where I was easily entertained and spent a lot of time just trying to have plain fun without a specific goal in sight, whereas The Matrix represents my shifting towards the desire to find meaning in a world of chaos where truths can be difficult to swallow. I’d consider this statement to be specific to make it easier to take specific examples from these texts because I think if I made it broader, it would be more difficult to write my body paragraphs.
4. My plan is to reread my introduction and take what I can use while getting rid of all the other writing. I will try to draw a connection between my two mediums and how they affected my life before and after seeing/listening to them. I will also try to incorporate hyperlinks in my revision, where I will introduce evidence for the claim I am stating.
5. My introduction is lacking a proper thesis statement, so I will invest some of my time on a better and more concise introduction. The use of hyperlinks will also allow me to introduce more information to support my claim.
4. My plan is I would like to take out extra information that maybe isn’t needed and makes the writing sound as if Im stretching it.
5. I noticed while reading through my paper that there were many “extra” sentences that aren’t really needed and just don’t make the paragraph sound as good. So that was the first thing I did, I took out unnecessary sentences out. Then after that I wrote down sentences that better elaborated on what I was talking about in that specific paragraph.
4. I should shorten the paragraphs that are too long and take out things that aren’t needed. Then elaborate more into my analysis that lacked detail and continue on things that would grab more attention.
5. I wanted to connect the movie Princess Mononoke to younger days, about how it affected my perspective towards nature and to life. I added some analysis and evidence as to how it affected me in terms of what I had thought about nature and living things before and after. Though some of the points may have been a bit rushed or not clear enough.
4. My plan is to make sure my intro paragraph isn’t too overloaded with extra unnecessary details that should normally be in the body paragraphs.
5. The reason I am doing this is because on my literacy narrative, that was one thing I needed to fix. In addition to this, when you write too much on your intro paragraph you have less to say on your body paragraphs.
4. My plan is to make a better argument in my body paragraphs, I need to have more supporting details in them to make a better argument.
5. While reading I came to the realization that there were some small details that needed to be revised to eliminated because it didn’t make as much sense as they should of.
4. my plan is to make sure my paragraphs arent filled with unecessary details and build more constructed body paragraphs
5. I decided to do this because in my other essays this was most important for me to do.
4. My plan is to go back and ensure that all my paragraphs (other than those providing context) actually working towards a point or thesis.
5. I’m doing this because as of now I think many of my paragraphs are ok but do not actually work towards a common goal. The picture they are painting is ok but I don’t know if the paper has a destination or purpose quite yet
1.Going to the gym improved my mentality for achieving goals, but another experience that has changed me as an individual is Impractical Jokers. Impractical Jokers is a comedy TV show about four friends competing in challenges to embarrass each other. The cast members are told what to do by the other jokers and if they cannot complete a challenge, lose the challenge. At the end of each episode, the joker with the most losses is “punished” by the other jokers and doesn’t have a way out of it. Some of these punishments include getting a tattoo of a random celebrity, shaving their entire head (and eyebrows) and taking a drivers license picture, being handcuffed to a mime for an entire day, and many MANY more.
2. I decided to write about Impractical Jokers instead of chess as my second example because i felt that it had a larger impact on my view of life.