Assignments for 31 August 2009

Another Revision: KSU Football

Please revise your football essays once more and develop your best version to submit in class on Monday.

Here were the requirements for the first revision that you brought to class on Wednesday to use in the second peer review exercise. Please adhere to these expectations for your final revision too. Here they are again:

 

Revise your essay again in the following ways: 4 establish a clear, opinionated thesis 4 craft effective, opinionated topic sentences 4 use the active voice most of the time 4 fix any pronoun inconsistencies 4 adhere to MLA Style formatting guidelines (there are 8 of them) 4 select a specific approach for your intro and conclusion 4 refer to the KSU Athletic PowerPoint 4 reconsider any part of your argument, structure, and depth

In addition, I request that your final revision for Monday be at least two pages in length. You may write as many words and paragraphs as you like, but this topic cannot be discussed adequately using fewer than two full pages.

Extra Credit Opportunity

As a rule, I do not offer extra credit, but I will provide an incentive to earn one full letter grade higher (10 percentage points) for anyone who can write a final draft using no more than three total linking verbs on the first two pages.

The point of this incentive is simple: I want you to begin creating a higher ratio of active to passive sentences. Right now, the average freshman will use linking verbs up to 70-80% of the time. This is a problem.

Remember, linking verbs act as "equal signs," and they cannot convey complex relationships effectively or efficiently due to this limitation. By attending to a higher standard for verb choice, your writing will improve automatically across a variety of areas, including grammar and punctuation (especially comma problems).

This same extra credit opportunity has been completed successfully by past freshman writers, but it will definitely be a very difficult task to achieve. That's why I'm giving you 5 days to do this. Good luck! Show me your very best work.

By the way, you also need to know the difference between a "linking" verb and a "helping" verb.

Consult your handbooks.

Submitting the Essay

Please type and PRINT your final draft before class and prepare to submit it at the beginning of the period.

Also, please bring your two revisions with their peer review forms stapled to the front. I will bring paper clips to attach all the pieces.

NOTE: Any students who are missing any peer reviews can complete extra peer review forms in future classes. Although you cannot make up the ones you have missed, you will be allowed to submit as many as you like. I will select your highest scores from the semester and divide by the total possible point total (yet to be determined).

Reminder: Read Ramage, chapters 1 and 2

We will look at the contents of chapters 1 and 2 more carefully in class on Monday, so please bring the Ramage text on Monday as well.

Please be sure that your edition matches the one that I am using:
the 8th edition (BRIEF edition).

If you have purchased the expanded version (instead of the brief edition), then you may still use it, but I would exchange it in the bookstore for the cheaper and smaller text.

Today's Topics

Content or Mechanics?

We briefly revisited the 10 evaluation areas that I will use to evaluate your major papers. If you recall, the first 5 areas pertain to content and the last 5 to technical aspects of your writing. Here is that list once more: Formal Essay Evaluation Criteria.

I asked the question, "Which is more important to your professors -- content or technicals?"

I received a variety of answers, and the best responses were those that were based on your own experience or those that demanded to know more about the context (the professor, the class, etc.).

I wanted to remind you that the lessons located on the peer review forms (and my evaluation form that I will attach) refer to coursepacket documents, such as the one that you just looked at.

I will ask you to keep track of your strengths and weaknesses this term across each of these 10 areas. I will show you how to do this later when you get these essay responses returned to you.

More about the Word "Critique"

We also briefly looked at a document called The Hierarchy of Critical Thinking. The box that you encountered on this page contains four terms in ascending order: observation, interpretation, analysis, and critique. Notice that critique is the highest academic accomplishment amongst the four.

When we were younger, our teachers asked us to write "reports." They were called "reports" because that's what your primary task was on those elementary assignments: to recall the facts from something that you read. You merely reported the facts to your teacher.

As we advanced through middle and high school, we were asked more frequently to express our opinions (interpretations), then to explain how their parts worked (analysis), and ultimately to evaluate something (critique). A film critic, for example, must reveal more than just the simple plot of the movie. Hopefully, the film critic can evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of the film, thus assisting you in making your viewing choices.

Bottom line: except for scientific reports and a few busy work assignments, you will likely NEVER be asked to write a "report" ever again, so please do not refer to your academic work merely as a "report."

Give yourself more credit than that!

Setting Standards

Lastly, we looked at an important tool that you can use to evaluate your "pro" and "con" ideas about KSU football. Here is one final coursepacket document devoted to Setting Standards. This document outlines several sample standards that you may use in this assignment. Thousands of others exist, so don't limit yourself exclusively to this listing.

A standard is a guideline, a rule, or a value that assists you in making decisions. So, if you are looking to date someone new, you will likely have to set some parameters to select who you want to date. If you feel uncomfortable dating someone much older or younger than yourself, for instance, then you will filter out the prospects who fall outside of your standards.

More importantly, recognizing and articulating your priorities in an argument can help clarify the motivation for your decisions. For example, since your task in this football assignment was partially to convey an equal argument for both sides, how do you justify choosing one over the other? That justification is a standard.

This can be especially helpful when deciding between two unlike things. For example, recall the most popular "pro" and "con" from our group consensus from last Wednesday:

How can you effectively argue that school spirit is more important than the operating costs of a football program? On the other hand, however, how can you justify that the cost trumps the spirit?

Technically, you really can't because you are contrasting two ideas that are too dissimilar to discuss equally. For instance, how can you measure school spirit? By the roar of the crowd? Memorabilia and merchandise sales? Tickets and concessions?

More importantly, how can you assess the COST of school spirit?

If KSU needs $35 million to start a football program, then that calculates into about $1,556 per student (assuming that students would bear 100% of the costs, which would not happen). So, how much money is school spirit worth? What would you pay for more school spirit?

$50 a term?
$250 per term?
more?

You will need to establish a clear standard that justifies your choice. So, in the example above, someone may argue that school spirit is "priceless" and is therefore more important, despite the high start-up costs. On the other hand, another student may argue that KSU students are already broke and already attend college football games elsewhere, so keeping costs down in a recession may be argued as more important than selling a few thousand tickets and sweatshirts.

You don't have to spell out your standard in such an obvious way, but your justifications should be explained and validated in your discussion.

Introductions and Conclusions

We also reviewed the document that exemplifies effective and ineffective introductions and conclusions.

After reviewing these introduction and conclusion examples, you should modify your own intro and conclusion in the football paper in your final revision. Go into this modification with a plan -- set out on purpose to write the intro and the conclusion by using a specific method. This is one of the ways that can make your writing more creative and can allow you to stamp your unique thumbprint on the conversation.

Remember, the purpose of an intro is not to repeat or summarize the body paragraphs' content; rather, the purpose is to engage the reader in a compelling way that suggests that the reader will be rewarded by reading the rest of your paper. Let's see what you can invent that expresses yourself and hooks the reader into your world.

Peer Review #2

We exchanged our revised drafts with a different partner today. Since a few of the items on this second peer review sheet are identical to the first one, I wanted you to receive different feedback on these issues.

Here is the form that we used in class today: Peer Review #2

Remember, I will evaluate your participation in the peer review activities. Read more about this in the peer review document from the online coursepacket.

Again: any students who are missing any peer reviews can complete extra ones in future classes. Although you cannot make up the ones you have missed, you will be allowed to submit an unlimited number this semester. I will select your highest scores from the semester and divide by the total possible point total (yet to be determined).

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