Organizing Research-Driven Writing (30-45 min)
Today we will do something similar to what we did for the rhetorical analysis essay, where we will “label” paragraphs to get a better sense of the structure of this kind of writing.
First, I want you to become acquainted with what the argument of the essay is and how the argument is supported. Take the next 10 minutes or so and read “Avoiding Misconceptions: Immigrants Are Beneficial to Society” by Suhaib Qasim on page 186 in our textbook on Perusall (go to “Library” and then the textbook).
Second, I’m going to split you up into groups like last time. You’ll be in six groups. Each group will be responsible for 2 paragraphs to come up with labels for what the paragraph is doing to support the argument and paper’s purpose.
Group 1: Paragraphs 1 and 2 on pages 186-187
Group 2: Paragraphs 3 and 4 on page 187 (from “Immigrants benefit the economy…” opening sentence through the paragraph beginning “Additionally, immigrants contribute…”)
Group 3: Paragraphs 5 and 6 on pages 187-188 (from “While it has been proven…” through the paragraph beginning with “The United States if not alone…”).
Group 4: Paragraphs 7 and 8 on pages 188-189 (from “Contrary to opponents’ claims…” through the paragraph beginning “During the last presidential election…”)
Group 5: Paragraphs 9 and 10 on pages 189-190 (from “While it is true that many immigrants originate…” through the paragraph beginning “Some may argue that…”).
Group 6: Paragraphs 11 and 12 on page 190 (from “Opponents of immigration may also spread the myth…” through the paragraph beginning “When it comes to the controversial issue of immigration…”).
Using the annotation function in Perusall, assign a label for your group’s two paragraphs.
Punctuation (30-45 min)
Read all of the below sentences. Pick 3 that you like. What does the punctuation do to help do something to you as a reader of the sentence?
Sentences with colons, em-dashes, and semicolons
“In our world, that’s the way you live your grown-up life: you must constantly rebuild your identity as an adult, the way it’s been put together is wobbly, ephemeral, and fragile, it cloaks despair and, when you’re alone in front of the mirror, it tells you the lies you need to believe.”
– Muriel Barbery
“The Captain’s wife played the harp; she had very long arms, silver as eels on those nights, and armpits as dark and mysterious as sea urchins; and the sound of the harp was sweet and piercing, so sweet and piercing it was almost unbearable, and we were forced to let out long cries, not so much to accompany the music as to protect our hearing from it.”
–Italo Calvino
“Everything was still bathed and saturated with her presence — higher, wider, deeper than life, a shift in optics that had produced a rainbow edge, and I remember thinking that this must be how people felt after visions of saints — not that my mother was a saint, only that her appearance had been as distinct and startling as a flame leaping up in a dark room.”
– Donna Tartt
“Each of her soothing utterances battered me more grievously than the last—as if I were traveling in a perverse ambulance whose function was to collect a healthy man and steadily damage him in readiness for the hospital at which a final and terrible injury would be inflicted.”
– Joseph O’Neill
“Maybe life doesn’t get any better than this, or any worse, and what we get is just what we’re willing to find: small wonders where they grow.”
– Barbara Kingsolver
“The torch spit sparks and sent chunks of flaming tar spinning into the air behind her as she bolted across the cosmos — the only body in the heavens who was not held to a strict elliptical path.”
– Elizabeth Gilbert
“Decisions are never really made – at best they manage to emerge, from a chaos of peeves, whims, hallucinations and all around assholery.”
– Thomas Pynchon
“You’re an insomniac, you tell yourself: there are profound truths revealed only to the insomniac by night like those phosphorescent minerals veined and glimmering in the dark but coarse and ordinary otherwise; you have to examine such minerals in the absence of light to discover their beauty, you tell yourself.”
– Joyce Carol Oates
“In fact, this particular memory is one she’ll return to again and again, for the rest of her life, long after Ralph has shot himself in the head in their father’s house at twenty eight: her brother as a boy, hair slicked flat, eyes sparking, shyly learning to dance.”
– Jennifer Egan
“So, as was often the case when he was alone and sober, whatever the surroundings, he saw a boy pushing his entrails back in, holding them in his palms like a fortune-teller’s globe shattering with bad news; or he heard a boy with only the bottom half of his face intact, the lips calling mama.”
– Toni Morrison
“And I asked myself about the present: how wide it was, how deep it was, how much was mine to keep.”
—Kurt Vonnegut
“Here’s a good rule to remember about rattlesnakes and scorpions: If you don’t bother them, they won’t bother you. Usually.”
–Louis Sachar
“I believe you’re hungry — or been hungry — to try to snatch my pocketbook.”
–Langston Hughes
“I took a deep breath and listened to the old brag of my heart; I am, I am, I am.”
—Sylvia Plath
Semicolon exceptions to divide independent clauses
Semicolon | The Punctuation Guide
Also, sometimes just fragments are after or before semicolons just because it can look cool and leave a reader with something more poetic (which fragments tend to do sometimes when used well)
Colons
Lists
explanation after colon that explains what preceded colon
for emphasis
Em-dash
Em dash | The Punctuation Guide
in place of commas for asides / extra information
in place of colon
in place of parentheses
(make sure you do two “dashes” on your keyboard)
–Remember: commas almost never have an independent clause on both sides of it so if you want something to have an independent clause on both sides, you will need a period, semicolon, em-dash, colon. Exceptions: when a conjunction (and, or, but, so, because) is involved, if list items are independent clauses where commas separate list items, if you want to violate a grammatical convention for rhetorical effect of some kind.
Try it out.
Rewrite some sentences using each of these punctuation marks. Post them at this Google Doc. Paste the original sentence (or sentences) first and then paste in a new sentence using a semicolon, colon, or em-dash.
Next Time (5 min)
-Synthesis paragraph is due tonight by 11:59pm. Let’s go over that one again.
-I will prioritize getting you feedback on your synthesis paragraphs, so I don’t anticipate getting you feedback on your rhetorical analysis final drafts until later this week or early next week. HOWEVER, if you plan to revise your rhetorical analysis draft for a grade boost, please email me and let me know. I have already returned feedback to two students who told me they wanted to revise.
-Because I want you to focus on your research projects, I am cancelling the homework on December 2 and will cancel the private journal response on December 4.
-Finally, let’s just get our heads around what happens between now and December 18. I think that is a good thing to do before we go into break.