When I went in today for a meeting and to post your grades, I found myself one of the few professors on campus. Guess who ended up ad hoc advising and removing holds until 4:00? I did get your grades posted just before 5:00, but I haven't had a chance to email those of you who asked me to. For this I apologize. Please check your transcripts to see your grade. It usually takes 24 hours or less for grades to show up on your transcripts, but all depends on when the IT folks run the job.
If you have questions about your grade, please write. Do realize, I will be out of town much of next week. This last means I will not have access to my office, so I won't have access to any physical portfolios or my grading notes. I will have access to all online portfolios, so if you have questions about your grade, and you turned in an online portfolio, do feel free write and ask. As I don't know how often I will access to the net, I won't promise to respond prior to getting back in town on the 9th, but if I can, I will.
Thank you for the privilege of teaching you. Let me know if I can be of any help to you in future.
Steve
31 July 2008
28 July 2008
After the semester...
On Wednesday, I will turn in your grades, so you can begin checking online then.
This semester, I have decided to continue to do a series of posts to the class blog. Mostly, these are resources to help you in your 112 classes and in your continued development as a writer. Don't worry. There won't be any homework involved. These will be there for your use.
As always, write with questions, etc.
This semester, I have decided to continue to do a series of posts to the class blog. Mostly, these are resources to help you in your 112 classes and in your continued development as a writer. Don't worry. There won't be any homework involved. These will be there for your use.
As always, write with questions, etc.
On turning your portfolios in, grading, etc.
I will try to work in the office as much as possible over the next two days, that is, Monday and Tuesday. My office is in 322 Georgiadis on the Parham Road campus. If you should stop by to turn in your portfolio and not find me there, please turn in your portfolio at the Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences office in Burnett. They will time stamp your portfolio for you. Every year, I get portfolios which are slid under my door. Twice over the past fifteen years, portfolios have been lost; so, I can't be responsible if you decide to submit your portfolio by sliding it under the door. You have better options for publishing it to me.
All of the above has applicability if you are turning in a physical copy of your portfolio instead of one in pdf or as a google document. My current plans are to begin reading a grading the portfolios Tuesday morning and continue grading and turn in grades on Wednesday.
There are always students who wait until the last minute to try to do the work for the class and who find just how much work there is to do. If you are among this group, please note: If I don't have a portfolio from you, and I have had no communication, I will turn in a failing grade; so, turning in something or, at the very least, getting in touch with me is to your advantage. If you have a legitimate reason for not getting the work to me, get in touch. My home number is 804-262-8585 and my email is prof.brandon@gmail.com. I will listen, and if the reason is substantial, legitimated, and documented, and I do and have offered incompletes to students.
All of the above has applicability if you are turning in a physical copy of your portfolio instead of one in pdf or as a google document. My current plans are to begin reading a grading the portfolios Tuesday morning and continue grading and turn in grades on Wednesday.
There are always students who wait until the last minute to try to do the work for the class and who find just how much work there is to do. If you are among this group, please note: If I don't have a portfolio from you, and I have had no communication, I will turn in a failing grade; so, turning in something or, at the very least, getting in touch with me is to your advantage. If you have a legitimate reason for not getting the work to me, get in touch. My home number is 804-262-8585 and my email is prof.brandon@gmail.com. I will listen, and if the reason is substantial, legitimated, and documented, and I do and have offered incompletes to students.
21 July 2008
Last Week of Class: Portfolio Due, 28 July
This week you will enter the last week of the class. This week is devoted to putting together and polishing your portfolio. This means you should now have a draft version of your cover letter done, and you should have gone through and made tentative choices as to what will go in the evidence section of your portfolio. If you aren't at this stage, then get there ASAP.
Essentially, your rhetorical purpose with the portfolio is to convince me you have learned, inform me about what you have learned, and to demonstrate to me, using the cover letter itself, some of the skills and techniques you have learned. The portfolio is an opportunity to show off your best work and the foreground work which best demonstrates you have learned the content of the class. As I reader and as a teacher, I want you to succeed in this class; so, you don't have a hostile audience, but you do have one which needs convincing.
The cover letter allows you a place to make the argument for the grade you think you deserve and to discuss your performance in the class. Remember, this cover letter is a detailed overview of what you have done over the past nine weeks and it should show me, not just tell me what you have learned; so, it should be packed with a long series of claims and each claim should be backed up with close, specific, detailed discussion of what you have learned which draws on examples from the work you place in your evidence section.
Write the list with any questions about the assignment.
Just a few notes:
Essentially, your rhetorical purpose with the portfolio is to convince me you have learned, inform me about what you have learned, and to demonstrate to me, using the cover letter itself, some of the skills and techniques you have learned. The portfolio is an opportunity to show off your best work and the foreground work which best demonstrates you have learned the content of the class. As I reader and as a teacher, I want you to succeed in this class; so, you don't have a hostile audience, but you do have one which needs convincing.
The cover letter allows you a place to make the argument for the grade you think you deserve and to discuss your performance in the class. Remember, this cover letter is a detailed overview of what you have done over the past nine weeks and it should show me, not just tell me what you have learned; so, it should be packed with a long series of claims and each claim should be backed up with close, specific, detailed discussion of what you have learned which draws on examples from the work you place in your evidence section.
Write the list with any questions about the assignment.
Just a few notes:
- Length of cover letter: 7-10 pages.
- Length of portfolio, that is, cover letter plus evidence section, 20-35 pages or so.
- Due: 28 July.
- Turn in as a physical copy in a manila folder, a scanned pdf, or a google document.
- When will the portfolios be graded? 29-30 July.
- My advice? Work with your group to produce a detailed, flawless, persuasive cover letter and pick examples to include in your evidence section from your writing this semester. Pick and choose carefully from multiple stages in your learning and writing process. Also, read through the blog and your notes to remind yourself of the details of what you have learned. Detailed, direct claims backed up by multiple examples and good evidence are what will win this reader (and most readers) over. What will loose you ethos? Vague claims and a portfolio which is thrown together rather than drafted, revised multiple times, and carefully proofread. The major topics in the course include basic rhetorical analysis, Kaizen, process writing, collaborative authorship, how to research and fix grammar problems, and new technological resources for writing. Fit these into a picture of where you have come from, what you have done this semester, and where you are going as a writer; show me how what you have learned in the course fits into this picture, and you are on the money.
15 July 2008
Writing Assignment One: Revising for a Consistent Tone/Style and Revising to Document
Due: As always, this Sunday.
When your group came together to research the genre of the process description, I had your group produce a collaborative paper which brought together your research and advice. This week, I want you to get together with your group and get this document ready to publish and share with the class and other students. I will pick the best two papers, and I will publish them on a web site I am developing providing advice to students on how to write in particular genres. The website is due to come online this next academic year, and all the students at Reynolds will be able to use it.
As the semester winds down, there are still a couple of essential revision skills you need to learn to be ready for English 112, that is, revising to obtain improve organization and revising to create a consistent style.
At present, most of the advice you brought together looks as if it were put together by a team. This is just fine, as it was brought together by a group of writers, and if you had no readers beyond yourselves; but, readers are used to most of their reading looking as if it was produced by a single author. Increasingly, documents are produced collaboratively, but readers are old fashioned and lazy.
The way teams of authors produce the illusion of a document being produced by a single author is to figure out a way to integrate what they have to say under a shared organization and to use a consistent style and tone through out their shared writing.
How do you integrate what four or more people have to say? Well, the best method I know is a technique called a post draft outline. Post draft outlines are good for improving loose organization, after you've got an initial draft down. In fact, they are useful for improving organization in general and for figuring out places where you still need to develop claims of to clarify.
When you produce a post draft outline, you go through a draft writing down two things: the major claims or points you make and then how you develop these claims. You do this in outline form. What you end up with is an outline of the major points you make in a piece of writing and the evidence, examples, etc. you have used to develop them. The outlive gives you a kind of skematic picture of your paper, and this short hand overview is useful for seeing and playing with questions of organization and of development.
Get together with your group, and produce a post draft outline of your process description advice. You can do this by having each member produce a post draft outline for part of the paper your wrote.
When you are done, get together--maybe with a conference call--and look at the outline you have produced collaboratively. Are there places where you repeat the same point? Are there places where you made a claim but didn't develop it? Do you use sufficient evidence, examples, etc. to tie together the advice you are giving? Do you give your audience a "road map" to what you will be covering and how you will cover it? Do you follow this road map? Is there a clear sense of there being an introduction and an end to your paper?
As you answer these questions, work with your group to fill in any blanks you find. Get rid of places where you repeat the same information. Combine your best explanations and examples. Finally, play around with the organization of your paper. Just because your first draft had one organization pattern, this doesn't mean that it's the best one out there. Maybe it would be more logical to change the advice you give, so you--for instance--explain to those who would write a good process paper what to do in each stage of the writing process. Maybe you want a section on what information a writer needs to have in place to write a good process paper, or maybe you want to give advice on what pieces of information good process description always has in it and to provide plenty of examples. Play with different ideas and decide on a logical way to develop your paper, not just the organization which happens when you initially got your ideas together. This is what you are after, that is, giving the reader a sense that your writing is coherent, logical, and has some governing principle of organization.
A useful tactic to discover ways to organize papers is to look at good examples and to figure out how they are organized. Over the years, when I've been tasked with writing in a new genre, not only do I research the advice which is out there on best practices, I look for several examples, and I then borrow the best ideas for organization.
OK. You've come up with a great organization for your advice to new writers on writing process descriptions; you've filled in all the holes in your development; and, your paper is well developed; and, most important, it's organization and development are coherent and logical.
What now?
Now you do a revision for style and tone. When you draft your cover letter (You are drafting your cover letter now? Aren't you???), I have asked that you follow the KISS/SVO<24 class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_6">consistent sense of style to your well organized draft. Since the KISS style focuses on clarity, short sentences, and strong nouns and verbs, as you revise every one's writing into the KISS style, you are also creating a paper using a single style.
My advice? Break up your well organized draft and have everyone in your group take on one section to revise to the KISS style. Then change up. With two eyes having done the revision for each section, chances are you'll end up with a well organized paper written in a consistent, single style.
When you write future papers, make sure to include revision passes where you take the time to check your organization and revise to a consistent style. I hope, by now, you are gaining a sense of just how much time and effort a well written paper takes, and you have learned to start early and give yourself the time it takes to do your best work and to make multiple revisions. It has been my experience, that these steps come out to the difference in a letter grade or more, and they allow you to ask essential questions like: "Are there places where I could have developed my explanations and evidence more?" "Have a organized my paper in a logical, consistent manner?" "Does my paper have a central focus, and do I maintain this focus?" "Is the style I've chosen the best one for my audience and purpose?"
When your group came together to research the genre of the process description, I had your group produce a collaborative paper which brought together your research and advice. This week, I want you to get together with your group and get this document ready to publish and share with the class and other students. I will pick the best two papers, and I will publish them on a web site I am developing providing advice to students on how to write in particular genres. The website is due to come online this next academic year, and all the students at Reynolds will be able to use it.
As the semester winds down, there are still a couple of essential revision skills you need to learn to be ready for English 112, that is, revising to obtain improve organization and revising to create a consistent style.
At present, most of the advice you brought together looks as if it were put together by a team. This is just fine, as it was brought together by a group of writers, and if you had no readers beyond yourselves; but, readers are used to most of their reading looking as if it was produced by a single author. Increasingly, documents are produced collaboratively, but readers are old fashioned and lazy.
The way teams of authors produce the illusion of a document being produced by a single author is to figure out a way to integrate what they have to say under a shared organization and to use a consistent style and tone through out their shared writing.
How do you integrate what four or more people have to say? Well, the best method I know is a technique called a post draft outline. Post draft outlines are good for improving loose organization, after you've got an initial draft down. In fact, they are useful for improving organization in general and for figuring out places where you still need to develop claims of to clarify.
When you produce a post draft outline, you go through a draft writing down two things: the major claims or points you make and then how you develop these claims. You do this in outline form. What you end up with is an outline of the major points you make in a piece of writing and the evidence, examples, etc. you have used to develop them. The outlive gives you a kind of skematic picture of your paper, and this short hand overview is useful for seeing and playing with questions of organization and of development.
Get together with your group, and produce a post draft outline of your process description advice. You can do this by having each member produce a post draft outline for part of the paper your wrote.
When you are done, get together--maybe with a conference call--and look at the outline you have produced collaboratively. Are there places where you repeat the same point? Are there places where you made a claim but didn't develop it? Do you use sufficient evidence, examples, etc. to tie together the advice you are giving? Do you give your audience a "road map" to what you will be covering and how you will cover it? Do you follow this road map? Is there a clear sense of there being an introduction and an end to your paper?
As you answer these questions, work with your group to fill in any blanks you find. Get rid of places where you repeat the same information. Combine your best explanations and examples. Finally, play around with the organization of your paper. Just because your first draft had one organization pattern, this doesn't mean that it's the best one out there. Maybe it would be more logical to change the advice you give, so you--for instance--explain to those who would write a good process paper what to do in each stage of the writing process. Maybe you want a section on what information a writer needs to have in place to write a good process paper, or maybe you want to give advice on what pieces of information good process description always has in it and to provide plenty of examples. Play with different ideas and decide on a logical way to develop your paper, not just the organization which happens when you initially got your ideas together. This is what you are after, that is, giving the reader a sense that your writing is coherent, logical, and has some governing principle of organization.
A useful tactic to discover ways to organize papers is to look at good examples and to figure out how they are organized. Over the years, when I've been tasked with writing in a new genre, not only do I research the advice which is out there on best practices, I look for several examples, and I then borrow the best ideas for organization.
OK. You've come up with a great organization for your advice to new writers on writing process descriptions; you've filled in all the holes in your development; and, your paper is well developed; and, most important, it's organization and development are coherent and logical.
What now?
Now you do a revision for style and tone. When you draft your cover letter (You are drafting your cover letter now? Aren't you???), I have asked that you follow the KISS/SVO<24 class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_6">consistent sense of style to your well organized draft. Since the KISS style focuses on clarity, short sentences, and strong nouns and verbs, as you revise every one's writing into the KISS style, you are also creating a paper using a single style.
My advice? Break up your well organized draft and have everyone in your group take on one section to revise to the KISS style. Then change up. With two eyes having done the revision for each section, chances are you'll end up with a well organized paper written in a consistent, single style.
When you write future papers, make sure to include revision passes where you take the time to check your organization and revise to a consistent style. I hope, by now, you are gaining a sense of just how much time and effort a well written paper takes, and you have learned to start early and give yourself the time it takes to do your best work and to make multiple revisions. It has been my experience, that these steps come out to the difference in a letter grade or more, and they allow you to ask essential questions like: "Are there places where I could have developed my explanations and evidence more?" "Have a organized my paper in a logical, consistent manner?" "Does my paper have a central focus, and do I maintain this focus?" "Is the style I've chosen the best one for my audience and purpose?"
12 July 2008
Writing Assignment: Portfolio, Due 28 July.
Frequently asked questions about the final portfolio?
How much of my final grade for the course will it count? 60%. The other 40% is determined by your class participation.
When is the portfolio due? 28 July.
What goes into the portfolio? 1) a 7-10 page cover letter; and, 2) a 10-20 page collection of work.
Can I turn it in after 28 July? Only if there is substantial evidence of hardship. A crashed printer, failure to backup, or catching a cold doesn't count. I expect you to plan for such events and to have started early.
How to turn the portfolio in? You can turn your portfolio in either as a long google doc, which you share with me, or in a manilla folder, which you turn into me by 5:00 PM at my office, 322 Georgiadis Hall, Parham Road Campus. If you go the google documents route, name your document: "Your Last Name, ENG 111, Summer 2008, Section # X." You fill in your name and section number. At a later date, I'll let you know which hours I will be in the office on 28 July.
Can I turn my portfolio in early? Of course. Make arrangments with me. Having said this, remember, your class participation grade will continue to play a factor in your overall grade. Finish early and bail on your group, and you will take a hit on your final grade. Part of your job is to make sure everyone in your group succeeds.
How can I receive my portfolio back? If you turn in a physical copy, include a self-addressed large envelop, and I will mail your portfolio back to you.
How will I know my grade on the portfolio? Send me an email with the following subject: "YourName: My Grade for ENG 111 Summer 2008." In this email, give me permission to state your grade for the portfolio and/or course in my reply. If you turn in your portfolio as a google document, you can give me explicit instructions to post your grade within the document. Remember to set your share list accordingly. In either case, please remember how harried I will be. Because I want to give you as much time as I can to help you succeed, I'm giving you up until the last day of class to turn in your portfolio; this means, I am only giving myself a day or so to read them, review them in the context your work over the semester, and turn in your grade. I won't have much time to chat in any email I send.
How many pages long should a portfolio be? No longer than 30; no shorter than 20. Don't panic. You've written more than enough to meet these demands. In fact, you will be surprised how much you have to week out to meet them. Now, give yourself a pat on the back, and the next time you are asked to write a lot, remember how much you can write...if you use the right process and if you spread the work out.
How long is a page? A page is double spaced. It is written using twelve point typeface. The spacing between paragraphs is the same as that between lines within a paragraph, that is, double spaced. Each page has one inch margins side, top, and bottom.
How should I format my cover letter? Start with the date, drop down a couple of lines and open with, "Dear Steve,...: End with something like, "Sincerely, ..." You've written a letter. This one is just typed, double spaced, and written to convience me to give you a specific grade. It's also longer than most letters you have written.
Why is the cover letter SO long? The cover letter serves the same learning function as does a final. That is, to allow the student to review all the material covered in the course, to provide the chance for the student to integrate the material covered, and, last and least, to allow the teacher to judge the students learning and performance in the coruse.
Then why not a final? It's a couse in writing and communication. You need the practice, and this is a *difficult* rhetorical situation you'll encounter later in life. Such self assessment happend every year in annual reviews. In this case, in the process of putting together the portfolio, process, I get you to review what you should have learned, get you to guage and assess your learning (hence, making sure you really learn instead of just memorize), and I get to give the knowledge and skill set one last chance to set.
What tone should I use in the cover letter? Use first person, that is, "I." You should have figured out by now, I am fairly informal, but I am your professor, and as an audience, I'm charged with making sure you have learned to write well. This means I'm looking at everything involved with your writing, including your grammar, usage, and puncuation. After all, you are supposed to have learned some tricks to help you in proofreading and revision in this course. It's only fair you should practice them.
What style should I use in the letter? The KISS/SVO<24. Make sure to do at least one revision making sure you are following this style.
What should I say in the cover letter? Your letter will consist of a series of claims backed up with support. You main claim or focus for the letter will be what grade you deserve in the course, but you will need to make a series of lessor or sub-claims (and back these up) for you to convience me your major claim is true. Prove your major and sub-slaims using evidence from the writing you have done this semester. To figure out what sub-claims you need to make, think of the major ideas, terms, and skills you have had an opportunity to learn this semester, and make claims about these. For instance, one of the major ideas you had a chance to learn involved rhetoric. You might make a sub-claim like the following:
Your cover letter will be made up of different claims you make concerning what you have learned and how you have performed in the class. Make sure you develop each of these claims with more than adequate support. Remember, one of the main things I am judging you on is on the quality of your claims and how well you develop the support for each claim you make.
What advice can you give me about what to say in the cover letter and how to approach writing it?
What can go into the evidence section of the portfolio? Any of the work you have done this semester. I don't want you to include it all. Go through it looking for the work which will best help you make a case for the grade you think you desearve in the course. Think of the evidence section as eveidence you can point to in your cover letter to help prove your claims. It's one thing to say, "I've learne to work well with groups and to use others to improve my writing." This is a great claim, but think how this claim comes alive if you point me to a particular email exchange or place in a google document where you really and truely helped another person in your group or they helped you. A good evidence section is a collection of such places to point me. The writing and work you include should help you make the case for your claims *snd* show off your writing and communication and what you have learned.
Do surface level issues count in the evidence section? Yes, but not as much as they do in the cover letter or as much as the deep content. If you have to make a choice about what to proofread carefully, make the choice to proofread your cover letter. Know the best choice you can jmake is to pick good evidence and work which shows you off at your best or which helps you make the case for each claim.
Does this mean I should re-type and proofread everything I include in the evidence section? No. For instance, you might decide to back up a claim you make about having taken the time to read the material in the course carefully, actively, and thoroughly by including a photocopy of notes you took on a hard copy of the reading. Don't retype these notes just to show me you can type and proofread. It would be silly. The same applies in other instances. Use your best judgment. It you include an analysis you have written or other type written work, then, yes, revise and proofread. Your measure here is: "Will retyping or proofreading make my audience more likely to respond to my message in the way I hope?" AND "Is this better response worth the time and effort to retype or proofread?" Learning to balance such questions is what the course has been about.
What do I do if I don't see an answer to a question I have about the portfolio? As always, write with questions.
How much of my final grade for the course will it count? 60%. The other 40% is determined by your class participation.
When is the portfolio due? 28 July.
What goes into the portfolio? 1) a 7-10 page cover letter; and, 2) a 10-20 page collection of work.
Can I turn it in after 28 July? Only if there is substantial evidence of hardship. A crashed printer, failure to backup, or catching a cold doesn't count. I expect you to plan for such events and to have started early.
How to turn the portfolio in? You can turn your portfolio in either as a long google doc, which you share with me, or in a manilla folder, which you turn into me by 5:00 PM at my office, 322 Georgiadis Hall, Parham Road Campus. If you go the google documents route, name your document: "Your Last Name, ENG 111, Summer 2008, Section # X." You fill in your name and section number. At a later date, I'll let you know which hours I will be in the office on 28 July.
Can I turn my portfolio in early? Of course. Make arrangments with me. Having said this, remember, your class participation grade will continue to play a factor in your overall grade. Finish early and bail on your group, and you will take a hit on your final grade. Part of your job is to make sure everyone in your group succeeds.
How can I receive my portfolio back? If you turn in a physical copy, include a self-addressed large envelop, and I will mail your portfolio back to you.
How will I know my grade on the portfolio? Send me an email with the following subject: "YourName: My Grade for ENG 111 Summer 2008." In this email, give me permission to state your grade for the portfolio and/or course in my reply. If you turn in your portfolio as a google document, you can give me explicit instructions to post your grade within the document. Remember to set your share list accordingly. In either case, please remember how harried I will be. Because I want to give you as much time as I can to help you succeed, I'm giving you up until the last day of class to turn in your portfolio; this means, I am only giving myself a day or so to read them, review them in the context your work over the semester, and turn in your grade. I won't have much time to chat in any email I send.
How many pages long should a portfolio be? No longer than 30; no shorter than 20. Don't panic. You've written more than enough to meet these demands. In fact, you will be surprised how much you have to week out to meet them. Now, give yourself a pat on the back, and the next time you are asked to write a lot, remember how much you can write...if you use the right process and if you spread the work out.
How long is a page? A page is double spaced. It is written using twelve point typeface. The spacing between paragraphs is the same as that between lines within a paragraph, that is, double spaced. Each page has one inch margins side, top, and bottom.
How should I format my cover letter? Start with the date, drop down a couple of lines and open with, "Dear Steve,...: End with something like, "Sincerely, ..." You've written a letter. This one is just typed, double spaced, and written to convience me to give you a specific grade. It's also longer than most letters you have written.
Why is the cover letter SO long? The cover letter serves the same learning function as does a final. That is, to allow the student to review all the material covered in the course, to provide the chance for the student to integrate the material covered, and, last and least, to allow the teacher to judge the students learning and performance in the coruse.
Then why not a final? It's a couse in writing and communication. You need the practice, and this is a *difficult* rhetorical situation you'll encounter later in life. Such self assessment happend every year in annual reviews. In this case, in the process of putting together the portfolio, process, I get you to review what you should have learned, get you to guage and assess your learning (hence, making sure you really learn instead of just memorize), and I get to give the knowledge and skill set one last chance to set.
What tone should I use in the cover letter? Use first person, that is, "I." You should have figured out by now, I am fairly informal, but I am your professor, and as an audience, I'm charged with making sure you have learned to write well. This means I'm looking at everything involved with your writing, including your grammar, usage, and puncuation. After all, you are supposed to have learned some tricks to help you in proofreading and revision in this course. It's only fair you should practice them.
What style should I use in the letter? The KISS/SVO<24. Make sure to do at least one revision making sure you are following this style.
What should I say in the cover letter? Your letter will consist of a series of claims backed up with support. You main claim or focus for the letter will be what grade you deserve in the course, but you will need to make a series of lessor or sub-claims (and back these up) for you to convience me your major claim is true. Prove your major and sub-slaims using evidence from the writing you have done this semester. To figure out what sub-claims you need to make, think of the major ideas, terms, and skills you have had an opportunity to learn this semester, and make claims about these. For instance, one of the major ideas you had a chance to learn involved rhetoric. You might make a sub-claim like the following:
"I understand rhetoric better than I did at the beginning of the semester, and I have learned how to use rhetorical analysis to gain a richer critical understanding of the communication which happens around me and to build on this understanding to become a better writer and communicator."You the evidence you might use to prove this claim might be taken from the rhetorical analysis you have done. You might compare your early work this semester with your later work. You might discuss each of the primary ideas in a rhetorical analysis, to show me you understand them, and then quote from different rhetorical analysis you have done to show me how your understanding of the terms has grown. You might tell me a story about day to day communication this semester and how rhetorical analysis helped you understand and be a better communicator in a communication situation in which you found yourself.
Your cover letter will be made up of different claims you make concerning what you have learned and how you have performed in the class. Make sure you develop each of these claims with more than adequate support. Remember, one of the main things I am judging you on is on the quality of your claims and how well you develop the support for each claim you make.
What advice can you give me about what to say in the cover letter and how to approach writing it?
- Make good, solid believable claims. Don't try to snowball me. If you screwed up in working with your group or in terms of getting the work done, don't gloss over this screw up. Instead, make it a part of what you discuss in your letter. Remember, I am not interested in excuses or reasons. I am interested in how you used a place where you messed up to learn and to get back on track. I am interested in how you recovered and what you learned in the process. You can turn having done poorly into an asset by discussing it in terms of what you have learned about Kaizen and process, how you corrected your mistakes, or--at the very least--how you might correct them in future.
- Having taught freshman writing most of my adult life, I have very well defined BS meter. Don't make the BS meter go off.
- Don't inflate how much you have learned or the grade you feel you deserve. You might be tempted to say, "I deserve an 'A,' when you feel you deserive a 'C.'" You'll get more credit if you make the claim for a "C." Remember, one thing I am judging is your ability to make effective claims you can backup. If you claim an "A," but can't back up your case, it will count against you. To work, claims must be honest and realistic.
- In the same vein as 2, be creative in how you back up a claim. You've got all the work and thinking you have done this semester as potential evidence to back up your claims. While I expect the majority of your evidence and support to be grounded in the writing and work you have done for the course, don't forget that you've been learning to think about your writing as a process. This means notes you've taken, email clarifications, revisiions and proofreading you have done all are potential evidence to help you support your claims about process. You might also tell stories which illusatrate a point you want to make, or you might point to a piece another student has written. Your choices, while not endless, are very wideranging; so, my best advice is to spend at least as much time going through and figuring out how you will back up your claims as you do. To do this well, go back and review *all* the work you have done for the course and *all* the reading you have been asked to do. Take notes. Your grade depends on how well you do these pre-writing tasks.
- Work with your group. A good pre-writing exercise for this assignment is to go through and review the reading and writing for this class and to take notes on claims you can make about your learning and how you can use writing from and to the class as evidence to back up your claim. Another effective pre-writing exercise is to then get together and share this information as a group. They *will* have had ideas about claims and how to support them which you haven't, and their idea might be the difference between a high and low grade. You might also think about getting your group to critique your claims and the development of them, and when you are finished with an initial draft helping you proofread.
- If you try to draft this letter and turn in your initial draft in a single pass, you will--in all likelyhood--fail. You have two weeks to revise and perfect this cover letter. It counts a *lot* of your final grade. Take the time to do it right. Use process writing. Revise multiple times over the course of the next two weeks. Get an initial draft done early,in the next few days, so you can add ideas to it and let it develop into your best work. Rush this process, and chances are, you will be disappointed in the result.
What can go into the evidence section of the portfolio? Any of the work you have done this semester. I don't want you to include it all. Go through it looking for the work which will best help you make a case for the grade you think you desearve in the course. Think of the evidence section as eveidence you can point to in your cover letter to help prove your claims. It's one thing to say, "I've learne to work well with groups and to use others to improve my writing." This is a great claim, but think how this claim comes alive if you point me to a particular email exchange or place in a google document where you really and truely helped another person in your group or they helped you. A good evidence section is a collection of such places to point me. The writing and work you include should help you make the case for your claims *snd* show off your writing and communication and what you have learned.
Do surface level issues count in the evidence section? Yes, but not as much as they do in the cover letter or as much as the deep content. If you have to make a choice about what to proofread carefully, make the choice to proofread your cover letter. Know the best choice you can jmake is to pick good evidence and work which shows you off at your best or which helps you make the case for each claim.
Does this mean I should re-type and proofread everything I include in the evidence section? No. For instance, you might decide to back up a claim you make about having taken the time to read the material in the course carefully, actively, and thoroughly by including a photocopy of notes you took on a hard copy of the reading. Don't retype these notes just to show me you can type and proofread. It would be silly. The same applies in other instances. Use your best judgment. It you include an analysis you have written or other type written work, then, yes, revise and proofread. Your measure here is: "Will retyping or proofreading make my audience more likely to respond to my message in the way I hope?" AND "Is this better response worth the time and effort to retype or proofread?" Learning to balance such questions is what the course has been about.
What do I do if I don't see an answer to a question I have about the portfolio? As always, write with questions.
05 July 2008
I will be dark until Monday.
Now it looks as if Tonya has found a group to adopt her and help her get caught up, I can head out to go hiking with good conscious. I'm currently in Roanoke at the Roanoke Hotel, but I plan to go dark until Monday. If it's an emergency, then you may contact me through the hotel; otherwise, I will check respond the backlog of messages Monday and Tuesday.
Have a good Forth of July weekend.
Steve
Have a good Forth of July weekend.
Steve
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