Chapter 4 the fourth week

1. Chapter 4the fourth week

2. Getting to the draft • Don’t wait until the last minute • Papers done under pressure often aren’t successful • Procrastination can be deadly. HOWEVER.. • Don’t rush into the draft if you don’t have enough information

3. Exploration or argument? • Working from a question, your draft can head in two directions • 1) Argument: Your discoveries from your research may lead you to think a certain answer to your question is particularly persuasive. Now you want to prove it. • Example: What should be done about the problem of smoking on campus? • 2) Exploratory Essay: Maybe you’re still not ready to make a judgment about the best answer. Focus less on trying to get the reader to believe something and more on helping them to appreciate what you find interesting. • Example: How do smoking bans on college campuses influence social relationship between smokers?

4. Exercise 4.1 • Think about your potential reader and why they should care about the subject you’re writing about. • Consider questions the reader might want to know the answer to: • Why? Where? Who? When? What? • What do you mean by _______? • Can you give me an example etc. • Now, make two columns; one with the reader’s possible questions and one with your answers to these questions. • Then think of an answer to the reader’s final question: This is all very interesting but what’s your point?

5. s.o.f.t • Say One Fricking Thing • Every piece of writing should say ONE thing but can deal with many different ideas • Academic writing should have: • Thesis • Point • Theme • main idea

6. Organizing the draft • Structure is very important especially if you have a lot of information. • BUT, avoid thinking about the structure of the essay as something set in concrete before you begin your draft. • There are two different kinds of structures: • 1) Delayed Thesis Structure: characteristic of the exploratory essay • 2)Question-Claim Structure: characteristic of the argumentative essay

7. Delayed thesis structure

8. Question-claim structure

9. A structure for exploring • Introduce the research problem or question and then your motive for exploring it. • Establish the significance of the problem or question and why readers should care about it. • Describe and analyze what has already been written or said by others about the problem or question and how this advances your understandings. • Explain what you find to be the most persuasive or significant answer to the research question. This is your thesis. • Describe what you’ve come to understand about the topic that you didn’t fully appreciate when you began the project. What is left to explore?

10. A structure for argument • Introduce the research question or problem that is the focus of the paper. • What will be your argument or claim in the paper? This will be your thesis • Review the literature. What have others already said about the question or problem? • What are your reasons for believing what you believe and for each one, what specific evidence did you find that you thought was convincing? • What is the significance of your claim? What’s at stake for your audience? What might be other avenues for research?

11. Preparing to Write the Draft • 1st – Make sure you have an overload of information on your topic • Lack of information causes unfocused and uninformative essay • When you have LITTLE information you try and use ALL of it to write your paper • When you have A LOT of information you can go through and choose what information conveys the best message • Hearty soup vs. Thin soup

12. PREPARING TO WRITE THE DRAFT • 2nd – Based on the information you collected, refine your question and make sure it is exactly what you want. • Normally questions start broad and become more specific • For example…

13. Helpful hint: Write your question on a sticky note and put it on your computer monitor so you can constantly revisit it while writing your paper.

14. Preparing to Write the Draft • 3rd– Refine your thesis to develop a secure sense of direction and organization • It should not be overly broad or obvious • However, it can still change • 4th – Decide on what perspective to use for your writing • Should you use first person? • Everyone is led to believe first person should be avoided but it actually offers advantages • Allows for personal presence in your writing • Can create better connection to reader

15. Starting to Write the Draft: Beginning at the Beginning • “Leads, like titles, are flashlights that shine down into the story.” • Have an interesting introduction that pulls readers in and points out the direction the paper is heading as well as the tone of the paper • Don’t try to cover the entire subject of the paper in your one paragraph introduction • Use “flashlights” instead of “floodlights”

16. Anecdote (short story that frames paper topic) Scene (descriptive look at revealing aspect of paper) Profile(introduces important person from topic) Background (important or surprising information on topic) Quotation(quote that nicely captures your question and the direction it will take) There are many ways to start off your paper… Dialogue(people involved with topic) Question(ask readers what you asked yourself before researching) Contrast(highlight problem or dilemma your paper will explore) Announcement (direct lead that tells what paper is about) • Experiment with writing different leads and pick the one that works best.

17. Writing for Reader Interest • You’ve tentatively chosen you’re lead based on how well you think it frames your tentative purpose, establishes an appropriate tone or voice, and captures your readers’ attention • Once you’ve gotten your readers’ attention, you want to keep it • Before you continue writing your draft, take some time to explore these four considerations:

18. Writing for Reader Interest • How does your topic intersect with your readers’ experiences? • Is there a way to put faces on your topic, to dramatize how it affects or is affected by particular people? • Can you find an ending that further clarifies, dramatizes, or emphasizes what you’ve come to understand about the answers to your research question? • Are there opportunities to surprise your readers, with interesting facts or arresting arguments, or highlighting a way of seeing something that is unexpected • Along with your strong lead, drafting with these considerations in mind will help you craft a lively, interesting paper

19. 1. Working the Common Ground • A passage from David Quammen’s “The Miracle of Geese” (The Flight of the Iguana): • Listen: uh-whongk, uh-whongk, uh-whongk, uh-whongk, and then you are wide awake, and you just smile up at the ceiling as the calls fade off to the north and already they are gone. Silence again, 3 A.M., the hiss of March winds. A thought crosses your mind before your roll over and, contentedly, resume sleeping. The thought is: “Thank God I live here, right here exactly, in their path. Thank God for those birds.” The honk of wild Canada geese passing overhead in the night is a sound to freshen the human soul. The question is why

20. 1. Working the Common Ground • The writer’s question- Why is this a sound “to freshen the human soul”?- becomes our question too. We want to know what he knows because he starts with what we both know already: the haunting sound of geese in flight • Quammenunderstands the importance of working the common ground his readers have with him on his topic. • His lead draws on an experience that many of us know, and once he establishes that common ground, he takes us into less familiar territory he encountered while researching Canada geese

21. 1. Working the Common Ground • As you write your draft this week, seize common ground with your readers whenever you can and ask yourself this: • What are my reader’s own experiences with my topic? • Is there some way in my paper that I can help them see that it’s relevant to them? • How can I help them see what they may already know

22. 1. Working the Common Ground • Ex: Steve, writing a paper about the town fire department that services the university, began by describing a frequent event in his dorm: a false alarm. He then went on to explore why many alarms are not really false after all. He hooked his readers by drawing on their common experience with the topic • Some topics, like geese and alcoholism, may have very real connections to lives of your readers • As your revise your paper, look for opportunities to encourage your readers to take a closer look at something that they may have seen before

23. 1. Working the Common Ground Topics for Which Common Ground Is Hard to Find • Some topics don’t yield common ground so directly. They may be outside the experiences of your readers • Ex: Margaret, a history major, is writing a paper on the Bubonic plague • This is an age and a disaster that is beyond the imagining of modern readers • She could connect the Bubonic Plague to the modern AIDS epidemic in Africa. Margaret might begin her essay with a brief glimpse at the devastation of families in South Africa today as a way of establishing the relevance of her 500-year-old topic. • In writing your paper, imagine the ways in which your topic intersects with the life of a typical reader, and then use your insights to bring the information to life

24. 2. Putting People on the Page • Ideas come alive when we see how they operate in the world we live in • Beware of long paragraphs with sentences that begin with phrases like “in today’s society”, where you wax on with generalization after generalization • Unless your ideas are anchored to specific cases, observations, experience, statistics, and, especially, people, they will be reduced to abstractions and lose their power for your reader

25. 2. Putting People on the Page Using Case Studies • Research papers are often peopleless landscapes which makes them so lifeless to read • Ultimately, what makes almost any topic matter to the writer or the reader is what difference it makes to people • Ex: Candy’s paper on child abuse and its effect on language development opened with the tragic story of Genie, who, for nearly 13 years, was bound in her room by her father and beaten whenever she made a sound • Sometimes, the best personal experience to share is your own

26. 2.Putting People on the Page Using Interviews • Interviews are another way to bring people on the page • Ex: Heidi’s paper on Sesame Street featured the voice of a school principal, a woman who echoed the point the paper made about the value of the program

27. 3. Writing a Strong Ending Endings to Avoid • Avoid conclusions that restate what you’ve already said. A common error is to repeat your point because you assume that the readers aren’t smart enough to understand what you’re saying or that you haven’t stated it clearly • Avoid endings that being with “in conclusion” or “thus”. These words signal that you’re ending and often lead into a very general summary

28. 3. Writing a Strong Ending • Avoid endings that don’t feel like endings- that trail off onto other topics, are abrupt, or don’t seem connected to what came before them. Prompting your readers to think is one thing; leaving them hanging is quite another • The most important quality of a good ending is that it add something to the paper. If it doesn’t, cut it and write a new one • What can the ending add?

29. 3. Writing a Strong Ending • A further elaboration of your thesis that grows from the evidence you’ve presented • A discussion of solutions to a problem that has arisen from the information you’ve uncovered • Perhaps a final illustration or piece of evidence that drives home your point • An ending, in many ways, can be approached similarly to a lead. You can conclude with an anecdote, a quotation, a description, or a profile • Find some way in the end of your essay to return to where the piece began • Although this approach is formulaic, it often works well because it gives a piece of writing a sense of unity

30. 4. Using Surprise • The research process- like the writing process - can be filled with discovery for the writer if he/she approaches the topic with curiosity and openness • As you write your draft, reflect on the surprising things you discovered about your topic during the research and looks for ways to weave that information into the rewrite • However, don’t include information, no matter how surprising or interesting, that doesn’t serve your purpose

31. Writing with Sources • Research papers require documentation • Try to not be stuck into the technical demands, once you know the material better it should be easier to handle the sources

32. Blending Different Sources • For a research paper you can draw from four different types of sources • Reading, interviews, observation, and experience • Obviously these are all cited separately, but it is possible to blend them all together to keep the paper more interesting

33. Handling Quotations • Try to talk about the quote, don’t just leave it as its own part of a paragraph, explain it somewhat • Look for a way to incorporate small portions of quotes into your writing to smooth out the flow of the paragraph

34. Good Tips for Quotes • The best way to use quoted material is often grafting a small amount of information into your own style of writing • Obviously not always true, sometimes a longer quotation helps to emphasize a point • Sandwiching quotes – make sure to surround the quote with information about it, like who said it and the quote is relevant

35. More Tips • Bill boarding – italicizing the most important parts of a quote to emphasize their relevancy • Splicing quotes – using “…” in the middle of a quote to make sure to only include the real meat of a quote, removing excess information

36. Even More Tips • Handling interview material – you can include yourself in an interview asking the questions or not, if the question is necessary then add it, but if it does not need to be included you might leave it out • Trust your memory • To try to be clean about referencing your work, avoid looking at your sources frequently, because you will remember what’s important if you’ve studied your notes enough

37. Writing the First Draft • It may be very difficult to stray away from your thesis, but as you write your paper you may find yourself “circling back” to redo a large amount. • This is good, it shows you’re really working on it • Don’t worry about the paper being perfect, it is going to have problems you can fix later