Writing Assignment One: Week of Monday, 23 June-Sunday, 29 June

This week you are working on how to revise your work. To revise well, you have to notice specific aspects of your messages which could be better crafted so as to improve your ethos and help your audience understand what you are trying to say--your logos. In my two previous posts, I discussed how to judge the quality of the opinions an author offers and how to notice places where these opinions could be more fully developed. In this writing assignment, you will be looking for places in your group's work where they could improve how they present their claims or more fully develop or support their opinions. Here is what I want you to do:

1. Share your group assessment and two new rhetorical analysis with your group using google documents.
2. Read my posts on "Revising Claims" and on "Revising to Develop."
3. Visit each member of your group's work over the past week. In each document, try to identify two places where how a claim/opinion is made could be improved and where a claim/opinion could be more fully developed.
4. Offer advice on how to improve claims/opinions and development in your color of text, and make sure to sign your work with something akin to "--Steve." Of course, you may encounter a text where the claims are crystal clear and adequately specific and where every claim is fully and completely developed. If so, compliment the author on their work, but think long and hard before doing so. Remember, an editor's value is largely related to their ability to notice aspects of the authors work which can be improved, and one of the mottoes for the class is: "Texts can always be improved." You are practicing the skill of looking for these places, and you are helping the author by offering advice. Having said this, sometimes a text is just blessed good.