Clarification of the Writing Assignments for this week.

One of your fellow authors wrote with the following question:

I'm so confused about what exactly the assignments are for this week. I have reread the blog at least 4 times and I'm still not clear about the assignments. After reading the postings done my different individuals it seems that everyone is doing different things. Please help me to understand what I should be working on.

Below find my response. I hope it helps clarify the writing assignments for this week.

To complete the assignments this week you need to understand the distinction between a claim and how it is developed.

A claim is simply a statement you make or an opinion you offer that you want your audience to believe.

Academic arguments almost always have two parts, a claim and good reasons for your audience to believe your claim. These good reasons usually consist of some combination of clarification of exactly what you mean by your claim, facts, evidence, an analogy, an example, a list of examples, or an illustration.

OK. If you are with me so far, let's talk about this week's assignment. In it you are to go into the group assessments and the two new rhetorical analysis produced by your group/group members this past week. Your job is to identify a few places where a claim could be improved and to suggest a tactic or two on how to better develop the claims which are there. The main way I've pointed to for improving claims is making them less vague. The main way I've pointed to help develop or back up a claim is by providing examples, facts, or supporting evidence.

What each author will end up with is a set of comments on their group assessments and on their new rhetorical analysis. Use this set of comments to produce a revised draft of your group assessment and rhetorical analysis. Do the revisions of first drafts in new files you create using google documents. Share these files with your group. Once shared, your group is to help you proofread your new drafts, and you are then to "turn these drafts in" by sharing them with me.

Does this help? If not, write with specific questions.

Steve