Argument Second Draft Review
Lesson Materials: For the student-facing pedagogical materials needed to teach today’s class, please open the following page: Argument Second Draft Review Lesson Materials.
Lesson Objectives: 1. Students become aware of the grammar needed to concede and contrast; 2. Practice the grammar needed to concede a point and contrast two ideas; 3. Raise awareness for the need of changes at the language level; 4. implement changes as needed in a paper.
Sequence of activities: 1. Grammar Instruction: Concessive and Contrastive Clauses
- Grammar Practice
- Peer Review
- Revision
Activities
1. Grammar Instruction (20 minutes): The instructor starts by defining the words, “to concede” and “to contrast.” Examples that could be useful in making the definition of conceding clear are “conceding a goal in sports.” The objective of each team is to prevent their opponent from scoring. However, sometimes getting scored on is inevitable. To contrast is a simpler concept and usually requires less explanation and elaboration. The instructor then shows students a series of sentences and asks the students to do a paired turn and talk on the sentence asking questions such as:
- Which of the following sentences concedes?
- Which of the following sentence introduces contrast?
- Which of the following sentences has an error?
The purpose of this activity is to raise student awareness about the grammar point and get them to deduce some rules about this grammar so that they are familiar with the concepts before practicing this sentence writing in the next activity.
2. Concessive and contrastive clauses practice (30 minutes): The instructor provides a series of images that are similar in some ways and different in others. There is a picture of Time Square in modern times and a picture of the same location before the turn of the century. Students should write a contrastive and a concessive sentence for each set of images. Example: “Although both pictures show Time Square, the one on the left is recent; whereas the one on the right was taken many years ago.” Time is also given to discussion on how this grammar could be used to address counterarguments (e.g. “Although some may believe that X point in my paper means Y, in fact…), transition from one section of the paper to another (e.g. “While point 1 is something that some may disagree with, point 2 is irrefutable…”) and how doing so makes writing stronger.
3. Peer Review (50 minutes): Students follow the peer review protocol, commenting on one another’s first drafts, and giving most of their attention to language level concerns.
4. Revision Time (50 minutes): The remainder of class time is spent making revisions and addressing peers’ notes.