Chapter 1 Katie
Chapter 1
Two interrelated functions
- To communicate
- To create knowledge
How might well-educated people think?
- Make decisions carefully and take their time
- they understand the importance of studying an issue from the many different viewpoints and to gather information about each before rushing into judgement.
- Carefully explain and support their conclusions for others to scrutinize
- they understand that their readers won't settle for half-baked judgements or decisions
- Know that everyone's perspective, including their own limited
- they practice critical thinking, looking carefully for errors in reasoning.
- Scholars allow drafting, revision, and peer feedback to reshape their ideas.
- Though out the writing process, they improve and focus their ideas by,
- imaging different audiences and purposes
- finding potential gaps in their arguments.
To develop your writing ability, you only need four things:
- knowledge
- practice
- feedback
- motivation
Writing process broken into four parts
- Discovery
- choosing a topic, identifying the right questions to ask, finding and processing outside sources, and organizing ideas
- Drafting
- the first version of a complete draft
- Revision
- adding, deleting, or rearranging chunks of text or content
- Editing
- polishes paragraphs, sentences, formatting, and grammar
- the more time you invest in drafting, the less time you have to invest in discovery or revision
- Experience writers don't focus so much on the linear process, but the set priorities when drafting
- "higher order concerns" like development, focus, and organization
- "later order concerns" like grammar and formatting
The elements of scholarly arguments
- They have real purposes based on problems that interest the participants
- "how should we interpret X?", "What caused Y?", "What should we do about Z?"
- Scholarly arguments address a specific audience
- defined as a specialized academic discipline
- Arguments belong to larger conversations, histories, and contexts that determine the rules for what counts as a good argument
- scholars must know what methods of reasoning are typical, what is acceptable evidence, and what other scholars have already said about the subject
The Rhetorical Situation
- Who, what, when, where, why, and how?
- Who (Author, Audience)?
- who is the author or publisher of this text?
- who is the intended audience?
- what is the intended audience's background and demographics
- ex: age, gender, income, education, political preferences
- What and How (Subject Matter, Argument, and Style)?
- does the argument contain and explicit or implied thesis?
- how much (and what kind of) background information does the author present?
- how are the arguments and evidence organized?
- what kinds of evidence or examples does the argument rely on?
- how does the text the author's credibility to make such and argument?
- what kind of tone?
- serious, funny, sarcastic, scholarly, arrogant, immature
- what words stick out?
- what design elements are used
- informal, playful, ordinary, formal, technical
- how does the argument use charts, images, or other visual elements?
- what kind of citation style does the author use?
- are there footnotes or endnotes?
- When and Where (Context)?
- where and when was the text published?
- If the text is on the Internet, what is its domain?
- ex: .com, .edu, .org, .net, .gov
- Why (the Writer's Motivation)
- what is the author's purpose and motivation?
- why is this an important topic?
Writing with Purpose
- Analyze
- take something apart to see how it works
- Evaluate or Critique
- to judge something according to established criteria
- Interpret
- to examine something's meaning, implications, or significance
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