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The Case aka Rhetorical Situation Your essays step by step ENG 110 - College Writing II - Spring 2010 other pages welcome | course | essay | syllabus | reports this page choosing a research topic list of your research topics | searching developing your topic rhetorical modes reality check (jobs) evaluation criteria college-wide rubric

What are you going to write about?

You're going to write four essays for this course, but it doesn't matter what they're about. The research and writing/thinking techniques that you're learning are transferrable skills. You can use them all your life and take them from job to job.

Almost everywhere that you use these skills, there will be several important differences from what you do in school. The biggest difference, we can do at least a little something about. In every real life situation, you are using these skills in two types of activities: solving problems and making decisions. You take in information (research), think about it, and then write, speak, solve the problem or behave in some manner differently than you would had you made a different decision.

In this course, we can only pretend that there is a real problem to be solved or decision to be made. Which leads to the second difference. The essays you write in school don't have consequences, except perhaps your grades, but the writing/thinking that you do on the job can cost you your job. Or get you a raise.

Which leads to the third difference. This course isn't real life. To use a baseball analogy, if the season is real life, then college is spring training. At here at Camp Medaille, what is this course, ENG 110? Calesthenics. Breaking down your grame. Working on the parts. The essays that you write are well-formed, considered versions of the kind of thinking you will have to do on the fly in ten years to keep your job, let alone get raises.

So I'm not going to ask you to write inside a vacuum, without context or contact with the outside world. We have to describe a situation within which you are going to write and the problem to be solved or decision to be made.

I have also found that some students prefer to be assigned topics and others prefer to pick their own. Some prefer working in groups; others would rather work alone. I don't see why everyone has to be the same. The point is to write, to express a formal, stylized but essential thinking process. If you want to share research tasks with someone or proofread each other's essay, I'll let you find your own way. If you want to work completely alone, that's fine with me, too.

In what possible rhetorical situations, that is, "real world" situations where you would write essays, not reports? A report is factual and objective. An essay uses facts to contribute to solving a problem or making a decision. For instance, you would write a report about Mark McGwire's career stats. But you would write an essay if you used those stats to compare the ups and downs of his numbers to his steroid use and argue that he should be voted into the Hall of Fame.

Possible research areas and writing topics

a topic you already know a lot about

a topic you are researching for another course

current events -- sports topics are OK

one of last fall's learning community themes -- see yellow box below

As you can see from the list on the left of Fall 2009 learning community themes, the obvious ones are Buffalo institutions, communities, or features. For example, Buffalo architecture or Buffalo history or Buffalo poverty. The less-obvious ones are perhaps even more interesting. What about Buffalo as depicted to the rest of the world on YouTube videos?

These are just topics. You still need a rhetorical situation.

Rhetorical situations

introducing the pop culture in a foreign country for students going there on a semester abroad, ex: Germany, Costa Rica

introducing a new product or service, ex: video game, rock band, museum tour, airport security

advocating for/against a cause, ex: health care, preservation of Buffalo landmarks, globalization, Internet neutrality

trying a case, ex: the Nigerian Christmas terrorist, the Fort Hood shooter, Gilbert Arenas, Michael Vick

deciding whom to vote for, ex: election to political office or to hall of fame

deciding whom to choose, ex: GM evaluating players, business owner deciding on service provider, Bills' next coach

solving the world's problems, ex: global warming, infant mortality, education, the war between men and women, poverty

solving the Buffalo's problems, ex: downtown, harbor, Bills' losing record

solving Tiger Woods' problems, ex: you're Elin's lawyer

In general, the best topics are what are called wicked problems, messy complex situations with no clear way forward. That's what organizations pay college graduates to do -- solve the messy problems. If the company already know where they're going and how to get there, what does it need you for?

Brainstorming ideas

To make this page shorter, I deleted all your brainstorming ideas that I had listed here.

Workshops

Looking at the syllabus, you will see that most of the class time is spent in "workshops". On those class tdays, we will look at your writing in a constructive way. Your paragraphs and essays will be on the screen. We will read them aloud and discuss them, while you mostly listen.

The most important thing for you to learn in this course is how to better use critical thinking in your writing. It is still a writing course, but I expect that you will practice in ENG 110 what you are learning or have learned in GEN 110. This course differs from GEN 110 in concentrating more on the writing process, on research, on sentence and paragraph structures, and on grammatical conventions.

Within that broad constraint, you have a lot of latitude to come up with an interesting research area.

In this course, you will write four essays in addition to the in-class diagnostic essays. Your four essays are going to be organized according to what are called "rhetorical modes". The first word, rhetoric, means using the basic unit of discourse in order to demonstrate for your audience the strength of your claims. If they had disagreed with you before they read the essay, perhaps you changed their minds by telling them how to think about the evidence you brought to support your claim. The second word, modes, is like having different weapons in a war or offensive formations in a football game or strategies in a marketing campaign. You change modes when the "rhetorical situation", your audience and purpose, make one mode more efficient than another.

The rhetorical modes we'll use are definition, compare/contrast, process, and cause/effect, although I may adjust that after I learn more about your research topics.

Until you decide on your research topics, I will not be able to develop the rest of this web page, which is a carry-over from other semesters.

One thing that won't change is the manner in which we will evaluate your writing. See the college-wide rubric at the bottom of this page.

Choosing a research topic

After you have chosen a broad research area, you need to focus it. This means choosing an appropriate rhetorical situation. Who is the author? Who is the audience? What is the purpose of the writing?

Finding an audience

Who will read your writing? Why will they be reading it? To write for the teacher for a grade, while real and true, does very little to help you make decisions while you write. When the teacher is the audience, there is no plausible context for most essays.

You will make much more progress is you put all of your writing in a plausible context -- readers with a purpose. Whether you reveal that context to the reader is a separate decision. But without that context, you are making the writing way harder than it needs to be.

In an organization, on the job, you will almost always have a context for your writing -- a reader or more likely readers with a purpose. Their overriding goal is to, as quickly as possible, stop reading what you have written. That is, they want to get the information they need to get and then move on to something else.

You can see from the job descriptions below the context in which recent college graduates would need to do the kind of research and writing that we're practicing in ENG 110.

Thus, successful writing is that which gives the audience what they want -- or need, because sometimes they don't know enough about the topic to know what they want. It is the writer's job to anticipate the questions the readers have as well as the questions they don't have but should have.

This is a college course, so we're working backwards. First, we're finding a topic, then an audience. In the real world, your boss and the organization's goals would pre-suppose the audience before the topic. In either case, the best way to approach their needs and wants is through qestions.

What do they need to know?

Audience

Primary audience. You make your writing more effective by writing to a specific audience. The more specific the better. If you can, boil it down to one human with a face and emotional reactions. Pick one. Take his/her picture. Put the picture in front of you when you sit down to write. When you get stuck, look at the picture and think of what he/she would ask next or want to know next.

Secondary audience. Your writing will often have a secondary audience that can be more numerous and more important to you than the primary audience. Write to the primary audience, but keep the needs of that secondary audience in mind. An example would be something that you write for a client, the primary audience, but which will be reviewed first by your boss, the secondary audience.

Purpose

Generally speaking, we use information for two purposes, two solve problems and to make decisions. How will your primary audience use this information? What problem needs to be solved? What decision needs to be made? How will your secondary audience use it?

Analytical framework

From what perspective are you going to look at it? A good way to answer this might be to think what course it would be in. For example, if your topic is romance, you can use a psychological framework (individual relationships), sociological (men vs women), financial (marketing flowers to forgetful males), historical, etc.

In organizations, the process of defining the problem is often called an "environmental scan". When you take a snapshot of a situation, what perspective are you going to bring to it?

Another way of asking this: any situation is part of several systems. Which are you going to use to define your situation? The conventional categories are PEST: political, economic, social, and technological. For example, if you're looking at the welfare system or the Haitian adoption system, do you look at it as part of a political system, an economic system, a social system, or a technological system?

Why is this important?

1) The reader needs to know the context in order to understand your essays.

2) You need to know in order to focus your research. If you look at welfare as part of a political system, then you will use keywords like "US congress welfare policy" and "welfare reform". If you look at welfare as part of an economic system, then you will use keywords like "agricultural subsidies" and "supply demand food prices". If you look at welfare as part of a social system, then you will use keywords like "class resentment" and "socio-economic status poverty". If you look at it as a technological problem, then you will use keywords like "farm technology distribution infrastructure".

Research Plan

Major questions

Now that you have a topic, audience, and purpose, you are ready to plan your research.

Your writing will close a gap between what the foreground audience knows and thinks now and what they'll know after reading what you wrote. So put yourself in their shoes and think of the questions they might have to close that gap. Your research and writing will answer some of (not all of) those questions.

To help you organize those questions, we're going to look ahead a little to the essays you are going to write.

What's the situation? Definition

What's the difference? Compare / Contrast

How does it happen? Process

So what? Cause/Effect

Where are you going to find this information?

Things that you have already been written. Much of this is available online. Some is locked up in print resources that you'll find in a library or elsewhere during your research.

Things that you can find through observation and interviews. You can visit places and organizations to take pictures (with your eye and your camera). You can talk to people who know more than you do about your subject.

Searching

There are a variety of searching methods on the Internet. .

harvesting information

This comes under the larger topic of file management. You have all these files on your computer. You may use several computers. How do you organize everything so that you can find it again?

making Windows Work for you

In the next couple of weeks, you should be able to do all the online research that you need to for this course. Some of it will come from searching the web. Some of it will come from the resources you learn about in the library on Thursday.

saving into a folder on the desktop

exporting favorites / bookmarks in MS Internet Explorer and Firefox

editing in Word - comments in .doc files

Net Snippets - online source of Flash video on my desktop

how to get your research to me

zipping (compressing) files

attaching the .zip files to email

research plan

Your research plan is the hierarchical group of subtopics and sub-subtopics that you will use to organize your research. While I'm asking you to plan it ahead of time, you will probably be wiser after you have done some of the preliminary research.

Look at your plan as organic and dynamic. By that, I mean that you should recognize that it will change and grow, and you should leave room for it to do so.

Each of you will have a different plan, so I'm not going to be too prescriptive beforehand. We'll do better when we can see some examples and talk about them.

Developing your topic

As you start choose topics, I'll start using them as examples here.

gap analysis

the difference between the situation as it is now and as it should be or could be

Answering the questions about your research

Over the centuries, we have developed half a dozen or so patterns of organizing our ideas. In general, we call these patterns "rational". That is, a person who uses them -- who can read and write with the patterns, are called rational people. Their arguments are called rational arguments. They gain legitimacy just for following the basic patterns.

People who can't use these patterns are difficult to communicate with because they aren't playing by the same rules, so to speak.

In ENG 110, we are calling those patterns rhetorical modes. Mode is another word for pattern, and rhetorical means that we're going to use them in essays to support a thesis.

Rhetorical Modes

These are the time-tested, common patterns of organizing information. Because they are common, other people are more likely to be able to follow them. Because they are time-tested, we give them a lot of legitimacy as a way of organizing our thinking and writing. You've been doing this kind of thinking all your life. Now is the time to organize it in writing more self-consciously.

In ENG 110, you are going to ask questions of your research. You and I are then going to narrow that list of questions and decide which rhetorical mode would best answer each question. I strongly recommend that you not think too much about this list until you have the questions that the audience would naturally ask.

That is, let your audience's needs determine the questions and then let the questions determine how you organize your research. That may mean that you use some of these modes more than once and others not at all. You and I will decide that together.

The organizing principle is how you decide what to do and in what order.

The transitions are the phrases within the paragraph (and between paragraphs) that connect the parts and reveal the organizing principle.

The questions section has the kinds of questions and examples of questions that your audience might ask about your research topic. They will help you decide which rhetorical mode will be most appropriate for your paragraphs.

generic paragraph structure (see essay structures)

How do people treat pets in [  country ]? Exemp Topic sentence: People in [ country ] treat their pets _______. For example,

What do you need to know if you want to take your pet to [ these countries ] to visit or live? exemp, process, division/class

What animals are not allowed in other countries and why? cause-effect

How are animals we see as pets treated? description

How do people view animals in general in other countries? division/classification

What animal rights groups or activists are prominent in other countries? exemp, definition, div/class

Definition

In this kind of paragraph, you are defining a concept that you are using in a specific way for your purposes. This is your way of limiting what your words mean so that you and your reader will be on the same page. You are saying, "Regardless of the dictionary definition or what other people say, for the purposes of this essay I am defining ____ as ...."

organizing principle

group and separate

What group does it belong to? How is it different from every other member of that group?

You can probably do that in a couple of sentences. Then extend that basic definition with the support the the claim (topic sentence) needs.

transitions

first, second, third

questions

How is that different from __? What's in, what's out?

What do you mean by romance in Buffalo? Are you including Iraq and Egypt, or only Israel and its neighbors?

What do you mean by famous people? Are you including only events that happen inside the home?

What do you mean by firsts? Are you including only those from an embryo or also those from bone marrow?

Comparison-contrast

In this kind of paragraph, you are evaluating two alternatives or options according to a certain criterion. Which movie will you see this weekend? One's at the Regal and costs $8 each. The other's on my TV and costs $5 for the video rental. On what basis will you decide?

organizing principle

The table below is for minimum of 2 options and 3 criteria - expand to suit your situation

example from sports: Rating Percentage Index (RPI) for the NCAA men's basketball committee

weighted criteria grid

For the RPI, the evidence is game scores, game locations, and strengths of schedules, which is all public, objective information. For your essay, the evidence will be the usual statistics, expert opinions, narratives, etc.

Instead of the RPI, the grid above will work for two movies (options 1 and 2) and the criteria of cost, convenience, and content, with convenience being as important as the other two combined.

transitions

the next option, the next criterion

questions

Which path should we take, path A or path B, and on what basis will we decide?

How can I decide which Australian university to attend for my study abroad semester?

Process analysis

In this kind of paragraph, you are tracing a process over time. The requirements of cause and effect are not as important here. For example, you could trace the process by which stem cells are extracted from living tissue. Or you could walk us through an evening in a Bavarian beer garden.

A set of directions says what to do. A recipe says what to do. A process analysis says what to do, but it also says why it's being done that way.

The entry-level employee needs to know what to do. The boss needs to know why, in addition to what.

The low-wage employee is just laying asphalt. The boss is paving a bike path.

The carpenter needs to know what to nail together. The general contractor knows why. So the carpenter needs a set of directions, but the contractor needs a process analysis.

organizing principle

time

Present the events to the reader in chronological order (and in rare cases, reverse chronology).

Divide the process into phases and the phases into steps. Then in the body of the essay, go through the process step by step.

transitions

first, second, third

questions

How do I do __?

How did __ happen?

How does child trafficking work? Is it like being kidnapped or enslaved?

How do I apply for this study abroad program?

How to overcome stress.

The divorce process.

Cause-effect

In this kind of paragraph, either you are explaining why something is important, that is, what it's causing

or you are explaining what led up to it, that is, what caused it

or you are explaining a chain of cause and effect.

By chain, I mean that an individual event can be both cause and effect. For example, A can cause B and B can cause C. Thus, B is an effect of A and a cause of C, depending on how you look at it.

organizing principle

time and logic

Just because event A happens before event B does not mean that event A causes event B. To establish a cause-and-effect relationship, you must show the empirical basis for your claim of cause and effect. By empirical, I mean something that a physicist, psychologist, or other social scientist could measure.

transitions

As a result of that, because of that, the most important effect of that, the primary cause of that

questions

Why? How important is it? How did it get this way?

Why is the surfing on that beach in Ecuador so good?

Why is this year's NFL draft so important for the Bills?

Trace the chain of cause and effect that got Tiger Woods to where he is today.

How could the Khmer Rouge dominate Cambodian life for so long while causing so much harm?

What is the most effective way to market American rock music to European teenagers? That is, what causes them to buy CDs and concert tickets?

Other rhetorical forms you can use

Description

In this kind of paragraph, you are describing something. It could be as small as a stem cell or as large as a beach in Ecuador or even a whole region of the world such as the Middle East.

You can also characterize the description.

organizing principle

space

The four "objective" attributes that describe almost anything, especially objects: shape, size, colors, and position in relation to other things. With a little adaptation, these general terms can apply to dynamic (constantly changing) things like stem cells, beaches, the family violence situation in a country such as Pakistan.

We read from top left to bottom right, so that is a familiar organizing principle. Depending on what you are describing, you could go from a bird's eye view to a closer view. Or you could go from inside to outside or the reverse.

Adding "subjective" characteristics can be difficult to do well, so be careful.

transitions

below that, to the right of this

questions

What is __?

What is a stem cell? Describe it from outside to inside, starting with the cell walls and then the inside parts.

What is the Middle East? What is the status of women in traditional Pakistani families?

Exemplification

In this kind of paragraph, you are giving examples to support a claim or assertion. If that claim is the focus of a paragraph, we call it a topic sentence.

organizing principle

rank order

In what order should you present the examples? According to what criteria? How many examples should you present?

transitions

most importantly, last but not least, next in importance

questions

What do you mean by that? Give me some examples.

Division-classification

In this kind of paragraph, you are making sense of a lot of information by setting up a classification system and then applying it to the information. This Rhetorical Modes section of this course web is using division and classification (types of paragraphs) to help you develop your writing skills.

organizing principle

taxonomy - a hierarchical cascade of branches off a root

At any given level in the taxonomy, among equal parts, you will need another organizing principle such as size, importance, seniority

transitions

first type, second type, third type; largest, most important, oldest

questions

Where do all these __ fit?

How many types of internships are there in Germany for Medaille marketing majors?

How many types of family violence are there in Pakistan?

Are all stem cells the same? If not, how many types of stem cells are there and how can you tell them apart

turning questions into topic sentences

While topic sentences can be phrased as questions, it is usually more clear to phrase them as declarative statements. A useful topic sentence will make a claim that needs support and explanation.

For example, What is domestic violence? To turn that into a topic sentence, you need the answer, which will come from your research.

The topic sentence (or "controlling" sentence) for a definition paragraph might start: XXX

Looking above at the organizing principles, definitions group and separate. What group does it belong to? How is it different from every other member of that group? You can probably do that in a couple of sentences. Then extend that basic definition with the support the the claim (topic sentence) needs.

The group that you put it into makes all the difference. Domestic violence could be defined as a kind of violence. The definition would then separate it from other kinds of violence such as public violence or stranger violence.

In not all cases will the grouping/separating be so straightforward.
Another example:
Every year, xx thousand Pakistani women are physically beaten at least X times by a male relative.

Developing topic sentences into paragraphs

Put your topic sentence first. What comes next? The support for the claim or assertion in the topic sentence (the bullets) as well as the explanation of what it means, how the support relates to the claim (pulling the trigger).

Reality Check

Do real jobs available to recent college graduates involve writing of the kind that we are doing in this course? The links at the end of each description below take you to the Monster.com listing for that job.

Note how they want you to be able to learn about new situations and developments, analyze them, and communicate your analysis.

The Business Department faculty recently asked our advisory board -- composed of representatives of companies that hire Medaille graduates -- what they think is important in our Business curriculum (1 = Extremely important, 5 = Not that important). I have rounded off the results, reordered them by decreasing importance, and boldfaced the ones that ENG 110 develops.

Marketing Research Analyst

Description

Assist in the capturing and analysis of quantitative and qualitative consumer data

Analyze transactional behavior at the consumer and market level to identify consumer and marketplace trends, effective media vehicles and promotions, and competitive/environmental threats and opportunities

Design in-market test scenarios, sample schemes and methodologies, and hypotheses for testing

Recommend ad-hoc research studies based on trends, opportunities or threats identified within the clients' business or marketplace

Assist in the development of survey designs and questionnaires, as well as their implementation in the field

Prepare and distribute written research proposals

Work with outside research vendors to propose, design, coordinate and/or execute research studies

Experience yielding consumer insight from Claritas, MRI, Simmons, geo demographic mapping software and/or Microvision.

Requirements

Four-year degree with concentration in a research or analytical/financial field.

At least two years' experience in an analytical multi-tasking position. Ad agency experience, or other advertising function a plus.

Knowledge of PC applications in a client/server environment.

Proficiency in MS Office Suite including Access. SPSS, MRI, and Claritas proficiencies are a plus.

Above average vocabulary, spelling skills, and ability to follow written and verbal directions.

Ability to communicate effectively with both internal and external contacts through both verbal and written correspondence (E-mail, memos, voice mail, etc.).

Analytical skills.

Ability to quickly learn advertising terms and how to interpret reports and flowcharts in a short period of time.

Ability to multi-task.

A general curiosity and willingness to learn.

Experience working with digital media (media placement, research, tracking, etc.) a plus.

on Monster (as of 28 Jan 06)

Legislative Assistant

Company: Pennsylvania School Board Association
Location: Mechanicsburg, PA 17055
Status: Full Time
Employee Job Category: Government and Policy
Relevant Work Experience: 1+ to 2 Years
Career Level: Experienced (Non-Manager)
Education Level: Bachelor's Degree
Apply Online

Job Description

Busy governmental relations staff seeks detail-oriented, self-starter with stellar communication skills to monitor, identify and track legislation, prepare analyses of proposals and testimony, serve a supportive role to lobbyists, and communicate association positions to appropriate audiences.

Prior experience in timely executing work assignments and researching and analyzing laws, bills, and issues in required. Background in education issues preferred.

Good Benefits

Qualified applicants should have a bachelor's degree with strong interest in public policy.

Send cover letter detailing interest and salary requirements along with resume and writing sample.

on Monster (as of 28 Jan 06)

Policy Administrative Assistant

Company: Preston Gates Ellis and Rouvelas Meeds LLP
Location: Washington, DC 20006
Status: Full Time
Employee Job Category: Legal
Relevant Work Experience: 2+ to 5 Years
Career Level: Experienced (Non-Manager)
Education Level: Some College Coursework Completed
Apply Online

Job Description

Preston Gates Ellis & Rouvelas Meeds LLP, a premiere law and lobbying firm, is seeking a Policy Administrative Assistant to work in our growing Federal Policy practice, providing executive assistant/secretary services to assigned department attorneys or other professionals. Responsibilities include: production of documents; scheduling; review of incoming documents; gathering, organizing and preparing reports; setting up meetings and conferences; heavy client contact; filing; performing internet research; creating PowerPoint presentations; and other duties as assigned.

Job Qualifications: Undergraduate degree; two years of executive assistant and/or legal secretary experience; 60 wpm typing; advanced Microsoft Office; excellent spelling, proofreading and editing skills; flexibility for OT; legislative experience or ability to learn quickly; high attention to detail; outstanding communication skills; extreme confidentiality; ability to prioritize, multi-task and work under tight deadlines; and ability to work independently or in a team.

Benefits: We offer a competitive salary and benefits plan (including ability to immediately contribute to the Firm’s 401K plan) and a supportive and collegial work environment.

on Monster (as of 28 Jan 06)

Process of writing an essay response to a teacher's question.

This course is called College Writing because it prepares you to do the kind of writing you will be asked to do in other courses' term papers and essay exams. In some cases, especially term papers, you can write your own thesis statement. In many cases, however, you will be responding to a question or instructions posed by the teacher. In that case, here's the strategy that you're learning in this course.

1 - Determine the rhetorical mode(s) being asked for: description, definition, comparison, process? It may well ask for a mixture or combination or hybrid, but one will probably (hopefully) be dominant.

2 - Imagine in detail the audience / scenario. Even if you never mention it in the essay, having one is a major crucial assist in writing effectively.

3 - Write a helpful thesis statement. It should include all the important words from the teacher's question. In addition, it should lay out a clear, manageable focus and plan for your whole essay. The dominant rhetorical mode should be unambiguous. If the teacher's question does not give you enough, add to it by connecting it to other ideas. Cause and effect relationships are especially effective. "Because", "due to this", "as a result" and other such phrases will give you something to discuss in the body of the essay.

4 - With your audience / scenario firmly in mind, establish a direct, friendly tone or voice in the introduction and sustain it through the whole essay.

5 - Use transitions between body sections and between ideas to clearly direct the reader and keep the flow going.

6 - In the body, make claims (gun), use evidence (bullets), and explain how the evidence supports your claims, develop your ideas (pull the trigger). Don't just present your evidence and support as though it speaks for itself. Use your essay voice to tell the reader what to think about it. Develop the implications.

7 - Drop names. Reference all your sources, preferably in the flow of the text.

8 - In the conclusion, give a sense of closure and make sure you work in all the important words from the original question and the ideas (if not the exact words) in your thesis statement.

9 - Try to use vivid, concrete images. Write pictures. Humanize it.

10 - As a cherry atop a cake, try to come up with a snappy title. If you can't, just use the most important words from your thesis statement.

11 - While you are working on the essay, use the College-wide evaluation rubric as a guide.

Writing Assignments

Tip | This is not a course or a project with One Right Answer.

intro: the pain points experienced by the reader and the problems caused by those pains establish credibility with the reader

Why is it better for your writing to be displayed publicly in class rather than passed privately between you and me?

Communicating is the point of the writing you will do in the kind of job you want. On the job, your writing doesn't belong to you. It belongs to the organization that pays your salary. In this course, I'm not asking you to write about anything personal or private. I emphasize writing for an audience. Also, it's good for you as a writer to have not some vague theoretical audience, but a real audience. You'll write it differently (and, I believe, better) if you know your peers are going to see it than you would write it if only an authority figure (me) is going to see it. Finally, I think you as a student can profit by reading what your classmates wrote and how I responded. You can apply it to your own writing. It's not fair for that process to be one-way -- you get to see theirs but they don't get to see yours.

Evaluation Criteria

My evaluation system for your writing asks four questions.

content Is it logical, insightful, and visually interesting?
structure Is it easy to follow and learn from?
language Is it written, designed, and presented in an appropriate tone?
mechanics Is it free of error and attractive to look at?

It comes down to this: If I were your boss, I would want to see paper and screen documents that are attractive and accessible. Having your work available when I need it affects the quality component of my assessment. The quality of your writing can be important at raise and promotion time.

These criteria are loaded with ambiguous and subjective terms: easy, appropriate, attractive, good, hard, flair, enthusiasm. Such holistic characterizations come from observations colored by assumptions and prejudices.

For the purposes of giving you feedback in this course, I will use these ideas:

Content

insufficient, irrelevant, invalid, unreliable, incredible <----> sufficient, relevant, valid, reliable, credible

boring <----> interesting, surprising, delightful

misuse of concepts <----> fluent use of concepts 

Structure

puzzling, delaying <----> intuitive 

at the essay, paragraph, and sentence (syntax) levels 

Language

mixed, shaky voice <----> consistent, clear voice

flat, boring voice <----> bright, interesting voice

inaccurate use of vocabulary <----> fluent use of vocabulary 

Mechanics

intrusive (misspelling, inconsistent punctuation, diction etc.) <----> invisible

The College is developing a rubric (list of "what counts") for all research essays in all classes. We will use it in this class to evaluate your writing.

College-wide Writing Evaluation Rubric