Today in class you began planning and drafting your analysis longhand. If you devoted more time to planning than drafting, you are not off track. Both steps are important Your aim was not to reach a conclusion today but rather to begin a process of discovery that will lead you to an analysis, one that you will continue to craft for two more weeks.
Next Wednesday, September 15, you will receive your handwritten plans and drafts with my notes, and you will have the class period to begin revising your analysis on your laptop or tablet.
In the meantime, continue to think about your analysis as a work in progress. Freewrite on your subject, “Blogs vs. Term Papers” or “Skim Reading is the New Normal,” in your journal, and practice “The Five Analytical Moves” outlined in our textbook:
- “Move 1: Suspend judgment.
- Move 2: Define significant parts and how they are related.
- Move 3: Make the implicit explicit. Push observations to implications by ASKING ‘SO WHAT?’
- Move 4: Look for patterns of repetition and contrast for anomalies (THE METHOD).
- Move 5: Keep reformulating questions and explanations” (Rosenwasser and Stephen 16).
Next Up
Friday marks our third Wordplay Day of the semester. To prepare for class and to up your game, browse the Scrabble site’s Tips and Tools.
Coming Soon
Next week you will complete lesson two in the Check, Please! Starter Course and submit your completed worksheet in class on Wednesday, September 15. That due date and the ones for your other Check, Please! lessons are included on the course calendar in the syllabus. If you were absent from class today, you can download and print the worksheet from the link below or from Blackboard.
Work Cited
Rosenwasser, David and Jill Stephen. Writing Analytically, 8th edition. Wadsworth/Cengage, 2019.
Jane Lucas 