Essay #1 sign-up sheet for conferences with David

Below is the sign-up sheet you filled out on Thursday for meeting with our Writing Fellow, David, next week.

If you’re currently scheduled to meet with him late on Thursday, David is willing to schedule an earlier time for you, which is really awesome of him. (If you need David’s email address in order to contact him, email me and I’ll pass it right along.)

Conferences for ILS 121 Essay #1

Writing Fellow: David Ziehr

Sections: 313 (8:30 a.m. TR), 314 (9:30 a.m. TR)

All conferences will be held in the Open Book Café of College Library (fist floor, Helen C. White Hall). Conferences will last approximately 25 minutes. I will place a sign with my name, David Ziehr, on my table.

IMPORTANT: Please read Mike’s comments and begin making revisions to your essay before our conference. To make the best use of our time together, please come with a few questions or concerns that you would like to discuss. What is the strongest part of your essay? The weakest? What is your thesis?

Wednesday, July 1

7:00 p.m. Athavi

7:25 p.m. Erica

7:50 p.m. Lauren

8:15 p.m. Jessica

8:40 p.m. Kham Thee

9:05 p.m. Roberto

9:30 p.m. Jaeyong

Thursday, July 2

7:00 p.m. Samuel

7:25 p.m. Dan

7:50 p.m. Eric

8:15 p.m. Kia

8:40 p.m. Rene

9:05 p.m. Alec

9:30 p.m. Kristen

Citing the sonnets in Essay 1

One of the nit-pickier problems in writing about Shakespeare’s sonnets lies in how you quote and cite them. Click here for a quick post explaining the rules.

Formatting the top of your essay

This has no effect on your grade, but should give you a sense of the formatting that I, at least, am looking for. I can’t speak for other instructors and graders.

I prefer the top left corner of your essay to look like this:

Susie Q. Student
Mike Shapiro
ILS 121.311
1 July 2008

(It would be ILS 121.312 for students in the 10 o’ clock section.)

Then, centered, your title:

"Renaming and reframing": The rhetoric of appropriation in Bush's economic policy

(By the way, that title format—“Quotation”: Description of argument—is a fairly common one in collegiate essays.)

Finally, in the top right corner of every page should be your last name and the page number:

Doe 1

You can do this simply by editing the header in Word; here’s how.

Two short remarks on Essay 1, Draft 2

Here are two of the argumentative and analytical weaknesses that appeared in a number of the first essays I graded today:

Arguing causation and not correlation

A number of essays argued that the rhetorical tools Brooks observes in Bush’s speeches shaped public opinion:

• “By using this technique, Bush persuades people to stop thinking and just act on the negative emotion.”
• “Bush’s followers believe the same thing, and soon many people believe that immigrants are the only cause of America’s problems.”
• “George W. Bush would reword his speech in such a way as to trick us into giving up our power.”

This is Brooks’s argument, but we have no way of proving that Bush’s rhetoric has led to Bush’s (partial) success in swaying the opinions of his constituents. Keep a watchful eye on your prose: never claim more than you can prove in the essay. It is no shame to write “Brooks argues that technique X appears in both Bush’s rhetoric and in the speech patterns of abusive communicators; we can only correlate X with public response Y, though Brooks’s theory would seem to predict a cause-and-effect relationship.”

Not answering the “So what?” question

I wrote TWE? (To What End?) after about 70% of the first paragraphs I have read. In essence this means “So what? Why is it important to study how Bush uses these techniques?”

The So what? question is critical: your thesis should argue what new information your reader will gain for having read your essay. It’s not quite enough to argue that learning X is useful, or that theory Y seems to be accurate; you need to point to some new work that you are doing.

Here are the sorts of questions you might answer in your introduction (and at greater length in your conclusion) to satisfy the So what? question:

• What new theory do you offer your reader? ←This one will be particularly useful in your second essays, in which you do most of the hard lifting yourselves
• How does your analysis help change an old theory? (And why does that old theory need to be changed?)
• How do you apply an old theory to a new data set, and what does this give us?

What a strong essay looks like (part 2)

(Updated 7/30: See Kelly’s second draft of this essay.)

Pasted below is, in its entirety, the first essay written by SCE’s own beloved Kelly Kuschel.

The essay prompt Kelly answers is this:

In a scene from Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking-Glass, Humpty Dumpty comments upon a mathematical problem that Alice has just solved for him:

“As I was saying, that seems to be done right—though I haven’t time to look it over thoroughly just now—and that shows that there are three hundred and sixty-four days when you might get un-birthday presents—”

“Certainly,” said Alice.

“And only one for birthday presents, you know. There’s glory for you!”

“I don’t know what you mean by ‘glory,’” Alice said.

Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously. “Of course you don’t—till I tell you. I meant ‘there’s a nice knock-down argument for you!’”

“But ‘glory’ doesn’t mean ‘a nice knock-down argument,’” Alice objected.

“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.”

“The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.”

“The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master—that’s all.”

In a two-page, typed, double-spaced essay, discuss Humpty Dumpty’s and Alice’s positions about language:

1. What do they believe? Comment on the validity or logic of each.
2. What consequences for communication logically lead from Humpty’s position?
3. Alice’s?
4. Are their positions irreconcilable? Why? Or do you see a compromise? Why?
5. Remember: this debate is not about using slang.
6. Avoid a long introduction: get right to the point in your first sentence.
7. Avoid a meaningless conclusion: don’t repeat what you’ve already said.

(It’s interesting, looking back, to see that Larry’s points 6 and 7 apply as much to the first essay this year as they did in 2006.)

Here is Kelly’s answer:

Kaiser of Language

In the excerpt from Through the Looking-Glass, Alice and Humpty Dumpty debate over the method for which words meanings are assigned. Alice states that one can not merely give new meanings, while Humpty Dumpty argues that we are the masters of language, and thus can do whatever we please. Though Mr. Dumpty has a point, the consequences of his position far outweigh the benefits. On the other hand Alice’s view is not without faults. Like many great decisions made throughout history, a compromise must be made.

Humpty himself states the problem to his own rationale of assigning meanings to words when Alice says “I don’t know what you mean by ‘glory,’” and he responds “of course you don’t – till I tell you.” If people continuously add new and diverse meanings to words, with time, everyone would become incomprehensible. Though it might be true that “a rose by any other name would smell as sweet” (Shakespeare in Romeo and Juliet), naming it something else would only lead to unnecessary confusion. Humpty is using the same form of reasoning as Shakespeare (though in a less romantic way).

As for the flaw in Alice’s argument, it is not nearly as grave. She says people can not make new meanings for words. Language however, is like a living creature and with time evolution is necessary for the language to survive. If there were no changes the language would become irrelevant and die. There are a plethora of words in our common diction that have only developed within the last 100 years, and the language has had to change in order to accommodate them. Language is the means of expressing our thoughts, if the language fails to evolve and encapsulate the realities of the times, then we can not express our thoughts to reflect our realities. The importance of language to express oneself is made quite evident in 1984 by Orwell. As words were slowly saturated into others the people in 1984 could no longer think as clearly. With less ways to express themselves their mental capacities likewise diminished. It is important to be able to modify words as long as there is a consensus on the final meaning.

There is thus a necessary point of compromise and one that is actually in application (as seen with the Académie Français for the French language). One single person can not change the meaning of word without creating confusion, but language must change in order to accommodate the needs of modern day life and further our ways of communicating our thoughts in a precise way. If enough people use a word for enough time and in a diverse set of locations (meaning the word is not merely a local phenomenon but widespread) the word should then be considered a “true” word and put into the dictionary. Allowing this to occur would create a balance between who is master: the authority or the person. People would be able to freely express themselves, while still not confusing others through the use of unaccepted meanings and definitions of a word.

Humpty and Alice both have valid points, and certain logic behind what they are debating. Luckily enough for us we don’t live in a world of black and white, and a compromise can be made that takes into account the faults and advantages of both positions. We neither have to live under the totalitarian view of Alice, nor the anarchy prone view of the honorable Mr. Dumpty.

Here are some smart analytical and argumentative choices to notice when you read this paper:

• Kelly uses the first paragraph to focus the problem: the first sentence lays out the context, the second sentence frames the essay’s approach to the Alice/Humpty debate. The rest of the paragraph lays out the strokes of the argument and foreshadow the conclusion.
• The third paragraph offers a great example of analytical subtlety. Kelly observes the weakness in Alice’s perspective about language and applies two tests to it. He asks, first, whether Alice’s argument is historically accurate. (Answer: no.) He asks, second, what the logical result of her attitude might be. (Answer: a kind of psychological totalitarianism.) He does these three things in one comparatively short, targeted paragraph. Print this paragraph out and post it next to your bed: this is one to learn from.
• The fourth paragraph functions as the conclusion, offering an example of a focused, real-world solution to what had been up to this point a literary/philosophical problem. Indeed, throughout the essay Kelly leverages evidence from the Alice in Wonderland against examples from elsewhere in his experience.
• Notice that the essay isn’t flawless: its conclusion doesn’t add much; it violates three of the 44 Reminders in the first paragraph alone; it misspells cannot and l’Académie française. Being a perfectionist will get you far in life, but it won’t help you survive this summer: spend your time crafting an interesting argument and thoughtful analysis and you can feel pretty confident that things will go your way.

If you get a chance, please thank Kelly for sharing this essay from two summers ago.

How to make the most of your Writing Fellow

Writing Fellows are upper-level students from all majors who have written oodles of essays and have been extensively trained in academic writing and revision. I’ve met and worked with Fellows a bunch of times, and have been consistently awestruck by their insight and thoughtfulness. Read more about them and their awesomeness here.

Remember, always, that the onus for writerly excellence lies on you: no matter how awe-inspiring, your Fellow isn’t the one pushing you forward—s/he is only helping you learn how to push yourself.

Be prepared when you meet your Fellow. Super prepared.

1. Think about your writing beforehand. Reread your first draft and my comments. Reread the Brooks article. Reread the speech you are analyzing. Outline a possible second draft.
2. Take your writing and the material you are writing on. Draft 1 with my notes, your outline of your second draft, the Brooks piece, the Bush speech, your notes from yesterday’s discussion, maybe a printout of blog posts on the topic.
3. Concentrate on analysis and argument. Grammar is only 10% of your essay grade, after all, and Larry’s two books spell out the rules and expectations for grammar.
4. Ask to focus on two or three issues. Look at my notes at the end of your draft. What do I say are the big things you should look at? Focus on those. Suggestion: thesis. Ask your Fellow, “How can I make an argument that says something new—that isn’t just a cookie cutter repetition of what Brooks writes?” Another suggestion: analysis. Ask your Fellow, “How can I make my analysis in this paper deeper, more precise, more nuanced?”
5. Listen. These Fellows have been around the block: when they suggest there is a better way to approach a problem or phrase an idea, listen to them. Take notes.

What a strong essay looks like (part 1)

Jack and Adam suggested, quite wonderfully, that having an example of a strong essay to look at might help focus the revision process. I’m hoping to secure permission to share an essay written by one of my former ILS 121 students, but for now I can link to an extraordinary essay written by a student I taught in 2005.

This essay, “Creating Identity: Rosamond and the Looking Glass,” develops a focused bit of literary analysis. You don’t need to know anything about the novel Middlemarch, but follow the way the essayist first identifies a symbol—a symbol that reappears in an equally significant way early in Jane Eyre, as it happens— and then develops a discussion of this symbol into a sequence of increasingly nuanced insights into the text. (We did something similar, yesterday, in our analysis of the esplanade, the lorgnette, and the pet dog in the Chekhov story.)

The essayist’s focused analysis of textual evidence—symbol and language—is exactly like the work I would like you to do as you draft your second essay this weekend, but the essay has just as much to offer you as you revise your first essays: look, for example, at how the essay moves between quotation from the text and analysis of that text.

Minor comments for Essay 1: issues of phrasing

See posts below for comments about clichés and dead words.

In discussion tomorrow I will mention three significant problems that I saw repeated in most or all of the first drafts of Essay 1—these are the sorts of problems that can make the difference between a C and a B.

Below is a longer list of less important problems; these are issues of phrasing rather than of content, and although changing them will have a cumulative effect on your grade, the difference won’t be significant:

• Indent quotations four lines or longer. Do not use quotation marks in this case.
• Avoid generic pronouns. Make sure that every “it” and “they” has a direct antecedent—that is, the pronoun refers back to the first appropriate noun it can find.
• The first time you introduce a name in your essay, spell it out in its entirety; every time thereafter, even in later paragraphs, use only the surname of the person you’re writing about. Hence, your first sentence might be “Renana Brooks critiques George W. Bush’s use of dominating language.” Your second sentence, however, would say simply this: “Brooks divides Bush’s rhetorical moves into three categories.”
• When you write about a specific use of a specific word, put that word in quotation marks. Example: “The ‘horror’ Bush describes is indefinite.”
• Capitalize only proper nouns. Concepts like “empty language” or “negative framing” should not be capitalized.
• Use colons. A colon is like a semicolon that says “there is a direct relationship between the first idea and the second.” Example: “Brooks argues that empty language undermines opponents: it ‘attribute[s] negative motivations to others,’ for example.”

Writing resources, at your fingertips!

To the right, under “Essay stuff” and “Resources,” are, respectively, links to the prompts (assignments) for the first two essays in ILS 121 this summer and to a set of guides written by the Writing Center that can help you develop answers to those prompts.

As the summer progresses, I will add more handouts and more resources to those lists, so keep your eyes on ‘em.

Some speeches by Pres. Bush for Essay 1

Essay 1 asks you to parse the language of a Bush speech in the style of Renana Brooks’s 2003 “A Nation of Victims.” Here are transcripts for some of Bush’s speeches this month:

• 6/18: …Discusses Energy
• 6/17: …Honors Black Music Month
• 6/7: …Discusses Defense Funding (audio only)
• 6/5: …Attends Ceremonial Groundbreaking of U. S. Institute of Peace
• 6/2: …Discusses Economy and Tax Cuts

The full archive of transcripts, with speeches going back to 2001, is here.