Main point in your argument

• There is nothing wrong with Ashley’s physical body, so she should be allowed to develop as normal.

Subpoint One

• There is no proof that static encephalopathy is not a disease that will be cured in Ashley’s lifetime.

Subpoint Two

• What happens to Ashley after her parents die and she must be put into a home?

Subpoint Three

• Ashley’s parents may have caused more harm to her than they realize by performing the hysterectomy.

Main Counterargument

• Ashley’s parents did the best thing for her. This treatment enables her to remain in their care.

Subpoint One

• The treatment means that Ashley is at a lesser risk for sexual assault when she is put into a home

Subpoint Two

• If Ashley’s mental state is going to remain at the 10  year range,  her body should as well.

Subpoint Three

• There is no cure for her illness.

• If IE will not succeed, try, try Firefox. I still have not figured out how to get the toolbar on the IE website in the classrooms (though it works fine in my office). Odd. So, download Firefox. You can do this from the Mozilla website
• I’ll introduce a few other features to you in class on Thursday.
• I apologize for the near debacle that occurred in class. Those of you who were there  know what I’m talking about and I would prefer it if you did not share with those who were not there.

Again, I want to thank each of you for agreeing to be guinea pigs with this experiment. It’s already helped me immensely to know where the beginning boundaries of this research are. In other words, I know where to begin revising next semester.

Remember, Thursday you need to be in class with your websites bookmarked to Diigo. This is our goal. We’ll take class from there.

• Start with the broadest search term possible. For example, if my research question is “should abortions be banned after the eighth week of pregnancy?”, then I would begin with a search for resources on abortion. Your search will likely result in more than 50 resources, which is what you want at this point. (“Abortion” gives me 630). If your search does not result in more than 50, then make a note of the number of sources available. (The best place to put this is in your research journal.)

• Now, we don’t want all research on abortion, so we need to narrow our search a bit. First, we need to make sure that we have the most current research. So, we need to narrow the search to exclude old texts. If you look at the right hand side of the page, just above your search results, you will see a box that says “Quick Limit.” Pull down the menu and select the option for “2000 -.” This will give you research from the last 7 years. (If you do this with the abortion search, you now have 118 results. This is a lot easier to get through.)

• Next, check the box on the top left (Sort By) and make sure that you are sorting by “relevance.” What you want to do once you have sorted by relevance is look to see how many texts are rated at the most relevant (usually demonstrated by 5 gray boxes in the “relevance” column). (For abortion, you have 63.) These are the sources that you want to consider.

• You will not list all 63 of these in your Working Bibliography. This is where your judgment and your research topic come into play. You need to read the titles of each of the most relevant sources and eliminate some based on your topic and the text title. For example, in the first few sources on abortion I eliminated these titles because they did not pertain to the research question I was working with:

• Women of Color and the Reproductive Rights Movement

• I eliminated this source because I am not writing specifically about women of color, but about all women, so this source is too narrow for my research.

• Textual Contraception: Birth Control and Modern American Fiction

• I eliminated this source because I am not writing on fiction.

As you read the titles, select the check box next to those you want to keep. Once you get to the end of the first page, make sure you select “Retain Selections” so that the search keeps the sources that you want.
When you finish this portion of your source you should have less than 20 books. These are the ones
that you put in your Working Bibliography. (For newer controversies, you may have fewer.) If you
have more than 20, review your results and see if there are any other sources that seem less useful to
you. If you have more than 20, select those that are the most ambiguously titled, click on the title and
then select “Detailed Record.” A brief look at the table of contents (provided in this record) should
help you decide to keep or eliminate the text.

So, that search is all nice and complete if you’re working on a controversy that is decades old. What if you want to work with a more modern topic, like the Iraq war? Well, you have to think about the topic and contemplate key words. For example, let’s say that I’m researching the Ashley X issue that we’ll be looking at over the next few weeks. Going into this I know a few things:

• Ashley has static encephalopathy
• her parents have chosen to have her body essentially “frozen in time” so that the body does not age.
  • this was done through a series of medical procedures
• I feel this was wrong. People should not be allowed to genetically alter their child’s development in this way.

So, when I type “Ashley X” into the library database, I get no results that pertain to Ashley herself. I try “Static Encephalopathy” where I find one result for my research and it’s not going to be a big help to the paper. Still, anything is good right now, so I’ll write it down. In  my research journal, I make a note that none of the terms are providing results and I move on. I have my heart set on writing on this topic for the semester, so I’m more determined to find good information on this topic that will allow me to write about it. Does this sound familiar? Pay close attention over the next few weeks and I’ll show you how you can prove to me that a topic like this is worth writing on.

I don’t have a grade in the gradebook! All I see is an abbreviation/revise note.

Alright, I’ve switched up the display format for WA 1 in the gradebook. You can still see the numerical grade you received for your essay, but you have to look at the points. Instead of recording this as a score, I show this grade as a comment. If you did well (C or above) on your essay, you should see a letter grade. However, grades lower than a C may have one of these comments in the grade section. Here they are with a description of what they mean:

IP–Your essay is “in progress.” In other words, I don’t think that your essay is complete to the best of your ability. You may choose to revise your essay and resubmit by the revision deadline. I will announce the deadline for revision submissions when I complete all the grading.

IP*–This mark also means that I see your essay as “in progress.” However, I recommend revisions more strongly than I would for a simple “IP” grade.

Revise–As this grade states, you need to revise. This is the highest category of recommended revisions that you will get. You are not required, at this point, to revise, but it will only help you in the long run.

Required Revisions–In this category, I am requiring you to revise your essay. You must resubmit the essay by the revision deadline because this assignment, for at least one reason, does not meet the assignment guidelines. You may have left out a key component of the essay, or your essay may have been written off topic. The comments in your essay will tell you more about that.

NTI–For most students who receive an “NTI,” I did not receive your essay on time or have not received it at all. This causes a serious problem for you. Since I do not accept late work and you cannot pass the class if you do not turn in all WAs, you need to contact me. If you have a documented medical absence, I will accept your essay. However, all other situations are left to my judgment. Contact me ASAP.

In some cases, a grade of NTI appears when you have turned in the essay. This occurs because your score on the essay is in the same area as those who did not turn in their essay. For this category, you need to look specifically at the professionalism and points lost section of the grade to determine how helpful revising the essay will be in the long run.

A Note on Revisions

Revisions are a continual process of essay writing. Each time I return an essay, your revision status will change. If you begin with a “required revision” status and make some good revisions, then your next draft will show a “revise” status. I provide you with two weeks to complete revisions (from the time I finish grading all essays). You may revise as many times as you wish until your status becomes a letter grade. Keep in mind that if you simply correct the MLA errors and/or the grammar errors, then I will not consider this a revision. These errors are technical errors, not content errors. They should be included in your revisions, but they should not be the entire revision. However, if you miss a revision deadline, your grade becomes permanent and you may no longer submit the essay for revisions. Make sure in your revisions that you complete the following steps:

• underline your thesis
• highlight all changes that you have made in your document.
  • you may do this either by physically highlighting the changed words, or by tracking your changes while drafting and turning in a draft that shows these changes.

I am asking you to revise so that you will learn about your writing process and your weaknesses. You will need to keep your changes in mind as you write WA 2. However, make sure that you are devoting the more time to WA 2 than you are to the revisions. You should be learning as you revise, and these lessons should be incorporated into WA 2 as you write it. This way, you are improving both grades consecutively. The result is that you improve the grade for WA 1 as you improve your writing skills which results in WA 2 receiving a higher grade with the first submission. 

  I have comments in my essay that I don’t understand. They aren’t sentences, but are comprised of a number and a letter. What do these mean?

As I read your essay, I pay close attention to grammatical mistakes that you have in your essay. These do not figure into a specific component of the grade, but may be deducted from your “professionalism” portion of the grade (depending on how I feel they detract from your essay). As I notice errors, I place a comment to the side that reads “18g” so that you are responsible for figuring out this error and how to correct the error. These comments refer to specific chapters and sections of the Little Brown Handbook. The number refers to a specific chapter; the letter refers to a specific error in your writing. You need to read these sections of the handbook and revise appropriately. You also need to pay close attention to these rules in your next draft.

What areas of my grade can be improved?

You may improve any section of the grade that does not come from the “Professionalism” or “Points Lost” categories. These categories are determined by other portions of your writing/participation.

Why did I lose points for my attendance? This doesn’t seem fair!

Points taken off for not participating in the class discussion or excessive absences during the unit may not seem fair. However, it is also not fair to classmates when you do nothing but attend class (if you do that) and then submit an assignment. Points are removed in these areas only when you have not attended class or participated in discussions for more than half of the WA unit. Alone, these points cannot fail you, but can reduce your grade significantly. If you have lost points in this area for WA 1, then you need to make sure you are attending classes and participating in the discussion throughout the weeks that we are working on the assignment.

I got a A-/B/C on my paper. Can I revise?

Here is the thing about revising–I want to see you improve your writing. However, I also do not want you dwelling on a paper in an attempt to get the coveted “100″ on a paper when you need to be working on your next assignment. I had a student several semesters ago who continued to turn in WA 1 for revisions desperately trying to get a perfect score. While that is noble, she paid so much attention to this revision that she didn’t give herself enough time to work on WA 2. So, she ended up with a 94 on WA 1 and a 73 on WA 2.

With that said, here is the policy on revising if you already have a letter grade. If you have an A- or higher, you cannot revise. If you have a B or C, you may complete one revision. If you do not have the paper to me at the first revision deadline, you don’t get another chance. You need to focus on WA 2. 

Let’s start by looking at a the components of a good research topic. What makes up a good research topic?

• a controversial issue
• a topic from which you can derive a good amount of research.

Okay, so these are the given. But, there is one more key component to creating a good research question.
• a good research question should be capable of becoming a strong, argumentative proposition.

Now, let’s look at a couple of research questions that meet all three of these requirements.

• Why are Childcare workers undervalued and underpaid?

• Since the rising cost of daycare often makes people ask why they must pay this much, this easily becomes a controversial issue.

• Research can be undertaken on this topic readily, looking at the wages, responsibilities, profits of the daycare, etc.

• An argumentative proposition can be made of this topic:

• “Childcare workers are/are not undervalued and underpaid.”

• Are extended rear facing/harnessing for children in car seats really safer?

• This issue has been a controversy for at least the past ten years

• research into fatalities of rear and forward facing harnesses, safety recalls, etc. will aid in the development of the argument.

• An argumentative proposition can be made of this topic:

• Extended rear facing/harnessing car seats are/are not safer for children.

So, now that we’ve looked at a few good topics, I recommend that you put your own three topics through this quick test. If you can’t determine appropriate controversy, research or an argumentative proposition from your topic, you should probably toss it and choose another.

Now, for those of you who are suddenly finding yourselves with only two topics, lets look at a few other research questions from a few of your classmates. I chose these questions because not only are they great research questions, but they are also excellent means of approaching argumentative research. If you need to brainstorm again, contemplate these questions and how the researcher is approaching the topic.

• What effect has the evangelical conservative population had on the U.S. policy towards Africa?

• Do parents have the right to chose whether their unborn child lives or dies in order to prevent suffering or the death of another? I came across a good comparison that brought up another question. Families have to choose to “pull the plug” on loved ones suffering from a terminal illness or disease. Isn’t selective abortion the same thing? Deciding to “pull the plug” to prevent death or severe suffering?

Before you begin the research for this week, you need to make sure that you have three research questions that provide you with good argumentative propositions. As always, if you aren’t sure about a research question, feel free to email me, IM me, or drop by the office.

The List

HPV vaccine

Organic food

Hazing

Universal Healthcare

electoral college

degrees for jobs

abortion

war in Iraq

legalizing alcohol at 18

standardized testing

sorority/fraternity involvement and its impact on your college life and career

crime in urban areas (what causes it?)

Healthcare for kids

legalizing gay marriage

stem cell research

immigration

local vs international adoption

legalizing marijuana

Why is segregation still prevalent in the south

Argument  is when two or more people share different views on the same topic. This generally happens with an issue that becomes controversial.

Persuasion is the attempt to change a person’s mind on an argumentative topic.

Moral Statements are statements made relying on moral beliefs rather than on factual research.

Distinguishing Between Argumentative Topic and Argumentative Proposition

Argumentative Topic is the broad topic you will use to begin your research.

• The soldiers need to out of Iraq
• The HPV vaccine should be required

Argumentative Proposition is the argument you are persuading your audience on, but placed within  specific parameters:

• We should begin pulling soldiers out of Iraq in the next six months
• The HPV vaccine should be required for all girls over the age of 12.

Bad Argumentative Proposition

“Abortion is wrong because the Bible says so.”

Why is this wrong? Two reasons. First, the Bible does not say “Thou shalt not commit abortion.” Second, since this idea is a loose interpretation of the “Thou shalt not kill” commandment, it must first be determined scientifically when life begins. Since scientists cannot agree on this fact, you cannot state when it is legal to kill a fetus.

• Another fact (that was not brought up in class)–to argue against this proposition, a person could easily use the fact that a fetus can be defined as a parasite since it attaches itself to a person and thrives from this person. Since there is not any doubt that the fetus fits this classification, this rebuttal would readily win the argument.

 Good Argumentative Proposition

“Abortion should be banned after the 8th week of pregnancy.”

This is a good argumentative proposition specifically for the fact that a heartbeat is defined as a determination of life (when your heart stops, you’re dead). A fetus has a heartbeat at 8 weeks, so it is then considered a life.

First, I want to give you a link that Kristha provided in her blog. This is one of the best explanations for the rhetorical appeals that I have seen online.

 Logos, Pathos, Ethos

You might want to bookmark this site for future reference in the course and throughout your academic career (yes, this will come up later in life).

Now, I want to look at each of the appeals in detail. 

Ethos

Ethos is the appeal to the author’s credibility. This may sound confusing at first, but hopefully with the help of a compilation from YouTube. Take a minute and watch this video of Ronald Reagan in Berlin. When you’re done, ask yourself if Reagan comes across as knowing what he is talking about. Notice how Reagan uses foreign languages without stumbling and how he demonstrates a knowledge of the subject he is talking about. You should also notice that he does not stammer, does not get confused over the dates and the names. This is Reagan demonstrating his ethos. He is a credible source who knows what he is talking about. This is the very definition of ethos. The speaker demonstrates a knowledge of the subject. The speaker is, therefore, demonstrating that he is a credible witness.

Logos

 Logos is the author’s appeal to logic. With this appeal, the author is doing two things–asking the audience to think logically about the topic and demonstrating her own ability to think logically about the topic. Logos is derived from the author’s use of facts and the author avoiding logical fallacies (we’ll talk more about these throughout the semester). For right now, just focus on the use of facts in the speeches and the arguments that you are reading for class. Looking back at the Reagan video, what logos do you see there. How does he use the facts (that help gain him credibility) to demonstrate the logos of his argument as well? You should notice how Reagan uses the facts about the Berlin wall and the history of the wall to call into question the logic of the wall itself. He questions the logic of separating the people, the logic of denying freedom to people who fought so hard to earn freedom. All of this forms the crux of his argument–that the Berlin wall needs to come down because the presence of the wall (and the denial of freedom itself) is not a logical idea if society wishes to better itself. This is clearer when he discusses the economic success of the other countries that came out of World War II in the same state of destruction as Germany. This is Reagan’s logos. Essentially, the author’s logos is his ability to demonstrate that her argument is the logical solution to the problem. The author must demonstrate that there are illogical facets to the argument in general, but that the argument they are putting forth is a logical argument that should stand out in comparison to the illogical arguments she is refuting.

Pathos

 Pathos is the author’s appeal to the audience’s emotion. In watching the Reagan video, did you notice how often Reagan refers to freedom? This is the basis for his pathos appeal. Nobody can deny that they want freedom. This is a basic human emotional want. Pathos is any appeal to an emotional response in the audience. This can be hope, fear, happiness, anger, or sadness (among many others, of course). Reagan uses freedom in an effort to call on the emotions that being free bring to the free people of the Western world who heard or saw his speech; but he also uses freedom to appeal to the wanted happiness of the people of the Eastern world. 

To better explain pathos, though, we need to look at a pathos based appeal. I’m sure each of you has seen at least one of the Feed the Children commercials on television. These commercials use images of undernourished children to evoke sadness in the viewer. By showing the helpless children, the creators of this ad hope to persuade the audience to donate money by making the audience feel sorry for the children and want to do something to help.  Thus, the basis of a pathos appeal is that evokes an emotional response in the reader or viewer.

Think of the appeals as the three apexes of a triangle. For the triangle to be complete, you must have each of these in your argument. However, you need to pay more attention to the ethos and logos in the argument than to the pathos. An argument with too much pathos loses its rhetorical appeal. How many starving children in Africa can you see in thirty second intervals before the effect is lost on you and you simply change the channel? You may want to save the image below to your computer or bookmark it. We’ll be discussing this in depth over the next weeks, so you’ll want to be able to refer back to it. We’ll be discussing the appeals in depth throughout the semester and from different angles with each assignment, so make sure you’re clear on these before we continue. (Entry continues below the image)

Posting Your Essay for Peer Review

To be prepared to post your essay for peer review, you need to make sure that you have completely drafted your essay. By completely drafted, you need to have all of the information I asked for on the assignment sheet for WA 1, as well as an introduction and a conclusion. You will also need to have your Works Cited page included in the draft. Essentially, you need to consider the draft as complete as you would have it when you turned it in for a grade. I will be giving you a peer draft grade that will be reduced if you do not have all parts of the draft complete.

When you post your draft for the Peer Review, you need to post it in the same forum that the summaries and declaration of articles went in. This means that if you were writing on Joe Six Pack, then you need to post your Peer Review Draft under that forum in the Discussion Board. (Notice that “Article Summaries” has been renamed “Article Summaries and Peer Drafts.” You will need to upload your draft as an attachment to a post. The draft should be in a format readable by any word processing software. So, you should convert your file to a .doc or to a .rtf format. Files in .wps are not permitted since this program only allows you to open the file in WordPerfect. Do not upload a file in .docx since not all of your classmates have updated their software or have a converter for the program. If you do not know how to do this, ask me.

Choosing an Essay For Peer Review

Now that you have uploaded your essay, you need to choose another peer’s essay to respond to. You need to make sure that you choose a peer who has already uploaded their essay. This way, you do not lose credit if the person you choose does not upload their essay in time. You will want to do this on Tuesday for several reasons.

1. The deadline to upload essays is Monday at midnight. So choosing on Tuesday means that you will know who has met the deadline for peer reviews.
2. Choosing on Tuesday gives you a better selection of the essays since peer reviewing is first come first serve.
3. Waiting until later in the week gives you less time to review the essay. It also narrows down the number of essays that you have to choose from.

To choose an essay, follow these steps.

1. See if another student has uploaded an essay on the article that you wrote. If so, make sure that essay does not already have a peer reviewer. If it does not, then choose this essay.
2. If there are no available essays in on the article you wrote on, check the forums on the other article you summarized. If you find an available essay there, choose it.
3. If none of these essays are available, then you will need to decide on another article that you can read quickly and choose a peer’s essay on that article to respond to. Do not respond to a peer’s essay without first reading the article if you have not already read it. Reading a summary of the article will not provide you with the familiarity that you need to complete the peer review.

• I am asking that you be familiar with the article you are reading about so that you better understand the analysis you are reading. When you review the essay, you will need to be looking for places the author has missed as well as weak points in the analysis.

• As soon as you choose an available peer essay, respond to the post containing the essay draft and state that you are peer reviewing this essay. Remember that these are first come first serve, so you want to make sure you don’t lose the essay. If there is a dispute on who should be reviewing the essay, I am deferring to the posts stating your intent to respond. If you respond to the wrong post and somebody else sees that essay as available, you will be responsible for finding another essay to peer review.

Format for Response to Peer Draft

I am asking that you respond to the draft in a very specific matter so that there are no conversion problems with your comments to the essay. So, you need to pay close attention to this section so you know exactly what I am asking that you complete.

There are two parts to the peer review response and you will need to complete both of these to receive credit for the peer review.

In-text comments.

• To create in-text comments, I want you to physically type your comments in the text of the essay. You will need to set these comments apart from the essay itself, so I want you to bold the comments and place them at the end of the sentence to which they refer. A comment about this last sentence would stand out like this when I am reviewing an essay. This way, your peers can easily see where you have left in-text comments.
  • Do not use the comment feature in Word since you do not know what program your peer is using.
  • You can use color if you wish, but make sure the comments are also bolded. This way, if the peer’s program does not recognize color, then she will still be able to see the comments without searching for them.

End of Review Comments

Once you have finished reading the essay, I want you to answer the following questions using complete sentences. Place the answer to these questions at the bottom of the Works Cited page. Remember, yes and no answers do not count as adequate answers.

• What would you consider the writer’s weakest point in the analysis? What suggestions would you make for improvement?
• Are there areas of the analysis that you strongly agree with? What makes you agree with these areas?
• Are there areas that you strongly disagree with? Why or why not?
• What suggestions do you have for improvement in the overall essay? (Think about the introduction, thesis statement, conclusion, major points argued, etc.)
• What small things does the writer need to be aware of when revising their essay? (For this comment, consider grammar, syntax, diction, and MLA formatting). You do not need to correct these for the writer, but just point them out. For example, if you notice that they use the wrong citation form in the text, make sure that you say something about reviewing the MLA format for in-text citations.

Resubmitting the Essay After You Have Completed Your Review

Once you have finished your comments to the essay, you need to post the copy with your comments in it to the same forum from which you downloaded the original essay. You will do this in the same manner in which you uploaded your own draft. Completed peer reviews should be uploaded no later than midnight on Friday.  Once you have complete, the only thing left is for you to download your own essay and read over the comments left by your peer reviewer.

If you have any questions about this, please post them as comments to this post. For the benefit of the class, any general questions about the peer reviews that are asked via email and not answered in this post will be copied into a comment here and answered in this forum. This way, I am not answering the same questions repetitively through email.

Good luck!

For those of you who still have problems identifying these crucial parts of your analysis, I have uploaded the PowerPoint that I use with my online students. There is audio to accompany this presentation, but the key is making sure you comprehend the material. This presentation is under the “Lectures” tab on Blackboard.