Shitty First Drafts An Essay About An English Cl

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Shitty First Drafts An Essay About An English Cl

Previous assignments have asked students to analyze the elements of an argument, including claims, evidence, and rhetorical appeals. Now, you will need to synthesize the ideas of multiple writers, explain how literacy has impacted their lives, and analyze the effectiveness or persuasiveness of their texts based on your past and future experience with reading & writing.

Then, in an effort to make personal connections, you will need to position yourself in the conversation by forwarding or countering (They Say/I Say, Chapter Four, “Yes/ No/ Okay, But”) the ideas of the writers. Based on your own experience (evidence), how does your past or potential future career experiences align with theirs? How might your experiences differ?

You will read/listen/watch the following four texts before choosing at least one claim per text to analyze & reflect on in your essay:

Main texts:
  1. Anne Lamott’s “Shitty First Drafts”
  2. Sue Lorch’s “Confessions of a Former Sailor”
  3. “The Magic of Letters” by Chameli Waiba (short podcast)
  4. Video: “Why is Writing Important?”
Goals:
  • Read various academic texts, take extensive notes on overall argument, claims, and evidence
  • Draw connections between the texts, noting where they offer similar/different claims and pieces of evidence
  • Synthesize the four texts and begin to draw connections between the texts and your experiences with reading or writing in either the arts or sciences
  • Develop an essay between 4-5 pages

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Guidelines:

  1. Intro:
    1. strong hook, background context on your experience with writing, introduce authors & texts, road map of your essay, thesis
  2. Body (within each body paragraph):
    1. provide an account of an author’s central argument and their position in terms of how they view literacy and/or the writing process
    2. describe some of the claims the author uses, provide interpretation and analysis of how these claims work
    3. draw connections between the claims or evidence used to your own experience with writing by forwarding or countering (aka agreeing or disagreeing)
    4. evaluate how effectively or ineffectively the author’s claims/evidence work based on your past or future writing goals
  3. Conclusion:
    1. offer a conclusion that is not merely repetitive, but instead offers insight into the significance of your writing process; how you will use writing moving forward; what potential writing you may do in your career, etc.
  4. MLA 8 Works Cited
  5. https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=100677646
  6. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L7hbR-MivtQ&t=56s