Weekly Notes and Advice

This week we complete students' arguments for an academic audience and introduce the argument for a public audience.  Be sure to provide students with options for the publication they will target and spend enough time discussing the use of visual rhetoric as this can be one of the biggest challenges for this argument.  You will also want to emphasize making choices based on a new writing situation (particularly audience). 

Please remember to provide lesson and course connections each class day and to introduce and conclude your lessons along with providing transitions between activities.

Connection to Course Goals

This argument draws on all the skills we have worked on this semester and reinforces the course goal that writing is a series of choices.  Like Portfolio 1's letter to the editor, students will take their academic arguments and revise them to meet the expectations/limitations of a different context/writing situation:  an audience of a publication of their choice.

Goals for this Week

• Finish discussing argument strategies for the academic audience (appeals, avoiding fallacies, development/organization, etc.).

• Read and discuss student samples of arguing for an academic audience.

• Conduct a workshop for the academic audience argument.

• Introduce the second context of Portfolio 3:  arguing for a public audience.

• Being to provide students with a base for incorporating visual rhetoric into their arguments for a public audience.

• Engage students in reading and collecting editorials and op-ed pieces from the NYT as well as graphics, photos, and other visual forms of story and argumentation.

Required Readings and Assignments

Assign the following to students this week:

• Read student samples of arguing for an academic audience posted in the Writing Studio
• Complete your argument for an academic audience
• Choose a publication to target for your argument for a public audience
• Decide what aspects of visual rhetoric you will incorporate into your argument for a public audience

Additional Teaching Resources

You can utilize the Writing Studio's Analyzing a Target Publication (located under the toolbar's "Activities and Guides" and then "Writing Activities") to help students analyze their publications this week.