3-22-2021 Lesson Plan

Rhetorical Analysis Review and Work (30-45 min)

I strongly recommend you to review the following:

Learning Module 4 Landing Page 2-24-2021 – ENG 2100: Writing I, Spring 2021 (cuny.edu)

3-1-2021 Lesson Plan – ENG 2100: Writing I, Spring 2021 (cuny.edu)

Learning Module 5 Landing Page 3-3-2021 – ENG 2100: Writing I, Spring 2021 (cuny.edu)

3-8-2021 Lesson Plan – ENG 2100: Writing I, Spring 2021 (cuny.edu)

Learning Module 6 Landing Page – ENG 2100: Writing I, Spring 2021 (cuny.edu)

 

The above lesson plans and learning modules have directly addressed work we did on rhetorical analysis. If you are having a tough time with getting this paper done, and you haven’t looked at this stuff yet, this could be part of the reason.

 

Let’s take the next half hour or so and get into your writing groups. Check in with one another as needed. If you want to exchange drafts, go for it. If not, you can use this time to work on your rhetorical analysis assignment.

Let’s get a first draft done this week. After spring break, on April 5, we will talk about how it went.

 

Research and Evidence (20-30 min)

As the rhetorical analysis unit comes to a close, let’s review the things relating to rhetoric that we focused on and the things related to research that we are going to focus on. You can open up the syllabus on Blackboard but I’ll open it up here, too.

As Graves, Corcoran, and Belmihoub point out, curiosity runs throughout our lives. The research project is a moment to capture and seize that curiosity, and to try to sit with it through a recursive process of researching and writing (i.e., toggling back and forth between the two).

Even something you really know well might look a little different when you have time to really sit with it and explore all the elements involved in a process or concept.

One of the first steps is to develop a research question.

Your task for this research project is to come up with something you want to know more about. It is to ask a genuine question. Here is some great information on research questions from George Mason University’s Writing Center.

The key is to:

  • be clear with specifics to understand the purpose of the research
  • that it is narrow enough that you can genuinely provide some sort of response to the question in the space of the writing task that you have
  • that it is concise enough so you are clear on how to answer it (sometimes if research question is too wordy or complex, it is hard to know how to get started)
  • the response to the question cannot be summed up with “yes” or “no”…Ask questions that start with “what, how, why” sort of language.
  • it is an arguable question, that it is open to debate and exploration and is not already largely “settled.”

To get into specifics about the kinds of questions you might ask to research further, let’s look more closely at the prompt for the research project.

Go to Blackboard>Submit Assignments>Major Writing Projects>Research Writing Project. Click on the attachment underneath to look at the prompt.

Finding Evidence

Things to keep in mind when looking for sources:

  • For your research question, what is the best approach to address it? What sort of field of study (e.g., history, psychology, economics, cultural or literary studies, rhetorical studies, writing studies, linguistics, marketing, sociology)?
  • What sort of evidence is preferred for that field of study?
  • What ways of finding information would give you the highest quality evidence to research your topic? (e.g. library databases like Academic Search Complete or JSTOR or EBSCOHost or the Newman Library’s main search engine, internet search engines like Google or Bing, specialized versions of internet search engines like Google Scholar, specific academic journals that you know will have information on your topic, sites with access to image/audio/video–see here for more on that).
  • The place to start for most of this is the Newman Library main page. You can use main search bar but also click “Databases” on right side of page to browse options to look for information.
  • Contacting a librarian about places to look for information can always be really helpful. You will learn a ton because they are smart people who specialize in doing exactly what you are just learning to do: find and evaluate information. You can schedule a research consultation here.
  • Thinking about how to search is important. More information on how to search on this page.
  • Wikipedia is fine–just see what they cite and grab those sources instead!
  • Popular vs. academic sources–academic sources nearly (but not always) always more reliable. Check web address like “.com” vs. “.edu” or “.org”. Something with “.com” or “.net” might not always be as reliable (just have to do more digging).
  • Do you need any primary sources or just secondary sources? Primary sources are the original data talked about–e.g., your Rhetorical Analysis was analyzing a specific text, that specific text was a primary source. Secondary sources talk about data, so you citing a study of college students about learning styles would be secondary since you are not analyzing their data but their analysis of their data.
  • Worth collecting your own primary evidence (experiments, making observations, interview people, surveys, personal experience)? If so, how will you go about doing that?

So let’s try this out. Here is a first try of a research question (because they can change as you go!) and we are going to do a brief search to try to find and evaluate some evidence for it:

How susceptible are older people (approx. age 60 and older) to fake news and why?

 

Wednesday Meetings (5 min)

We won’t be doing small group meetings on Wednesdays anymore. Instead, I will be in class from 12:25pm until about 2pm to go through the Learning Module with you and to be there for any questions or help.

For anyone who has struggled with getting the Learning Modules done, I highly recommend that you come to these meetings on Wednesdays.

Next Time

-Complete readings for March 24–will help you complete Learning Module 7.

-Complete Learning Module 7. Come to the Wednesday meeting at 12:25pm to help get it done.

-Work on Research Writing Project proposal due Monday, April 5. Do the reading on stasis theory for that day, as well.

-Get Rhetorical Analysis draft done if you have not already. I will have feedback to folks on their rhetorical analysis by today or tomorrow (if you turn it in today, it might not be until Wednesday).

-Start working on second draft of Rhetorical Analysis due April 7.