• EA Chap 9 Definition-based Arguments: Project & Group Write

The Group Write: In a 3 pp (minimum) well proofread piece of writing, collaborate with your groupmates in creating a meta-analysis of your project work, making sure to include discussion that considers the design, research, editing and final development phases of the project. In addition, please make sure your descriptive analysis work covers all of the Group Write assignment criteria listed on this Definition Project Guidelines sheet. You may use (altered versions of) any of the individual project narrative writing work each of you submitted to the course the previous week as you feel is appropriate in this group write effort. 

The Project: Submit the project work you've created as a group to demonstrate your grasp of the principals of definition-based argumentation strategies utilizing a Rogerian framework to structure your rhetorical approach. Your project materials may include text or image files, video or audio content, or multimedia presentations containing some or all of those. I will be looking for a project that clearly demonstrates your knowledge of how to apply effective defintion-based analysis and persuasive speech and argumentation as it's appropriate in your chosen fictive setting. There are no specific length or content requirements for this project work beyond what is listed here.

These assignments are due as their own document attachments on Wednesday by 6 pm via the iLearn portal for our class.

Please review the Error Patterns Primer and the Proofreading Notes sheets (available on our course page) before you submit your final versions so as to make sure you're eliminating all of the most common student writing error patterns from your writing work before it gets to me.



• Week 11: Project Work Narrative (Definition Arguments)

In a brief, 1/2-1 page of well-proofread material, describe and justify how the research or project work you've done so far as an individual group member contributes to and fits in with your project and the larger project goals articulated by your group thus far in the project design process. As part of your descriptive narrative, describe the given research or profect work itself, and include any web links or imagery/tables/slides, etc. you think are relevant or helpful to your description work. Also, be sure to spend some time explaining how your particular research and project work will help to support a definition-based argument (and presentation) as it's defined in Chapter 9 of Everything's an Argument. The purpose of this assignment is for you to be able to clearly articulate (to yourself, to me, and for your group) what your given project work is and exactly how you think it's going to fit the needs of the project while making sure to further the goals and patterns of a standard definition-based claim.

This assignment is due on Wednesday by 11:55 pm via the iLearn portal for our class.

Please review the Error Patterns Primer and the Proofreading Notes sheets (available on our course page) before you submit your final version so as to make sure you're eliminating all of the most common student writing error patterns from your writing work before it gets to me.



• Week 5: Project Work Narrative

In a brief, 1/2-1 page of well-proofread material, describe and justify how the research or project work you've done so far as an individual group member contributes to and fits in with your project and the larger project goals articulated by your group thus far in the project design process. As part of your descriptive narrative, describe the given research or profect work itself, and include any web links or imagery/tables/slides, etc. you think are relevant or helpful to your description work. Also, be sure to spend some time explaining how your particular research and project work will help to support a fact-based argument (and presentation) as it's defined in Chapter 8 of Everything's an Argument. The purpose of this assignment is for you to be able to clearly articulate (to yourself, to me, and for your group) what your given project work is and exactly how you think it's going to fit the needs of the project while making sure to further the goals and patterns of a standard fact-based claim.

These assignments are due as their own document attachments before class this week via the iLearn portal for our class.

Please review the Error Patterns Primer and the Proofreading Notes sheets (available on our course page) before you submit your final version so as to make sure you're eliminating all of the most common student writing error patterns from your writing work before it gets to me.

• Week 6: EA Chap 8 Fact-based Arguments: Project & Group Write

The Group Write: In a 4 pp (minimum) well proofread piece of writing, collaborate with your groupmates in creating a description and meta-analysis of your project work, making sure to include discussion that considers the design, research, editing and final development phases of the project. In addition, please make sure your descriptive analysis work covers all of the Group Write assignment criteria listed on the Project Guidelines sheet for this unit. You may use (altered versions of) any of the individual project narrative writing work each of you submitted to the course the previous week as you feel is appropriate in this group write effort. 

The Project: Submit the project work you've created as a group to demonstrate your grasp of the principals of fact-based argumentation strategies in a business or professional setting. Your project materials may include text or image files, video or audio content, or multimedia presentations containing some or all of those. I will be looking for a project that clearly demonstrates your knowledge of how to apply effective fact-based analysis and persuasive speech and argumentation as it's appropriate in your chosen fictive business-professional setting. There are no specific length or content requirements for this project work beyond what is listed here.

These assignments are due as their own document attachments before class this week via the iLearn portal for our class.

Please review the Error Patterns Primer and the Proofreading Notes sheets (available on our course page) before you submit your final versions so as to make sure you're eliminating all of the most common student writing error patterns from your writing work before it gets to me.

• Week 2: Argument Analysis:

Write a short, well-supported analysis of the types of argument used in a reading selection of your choice. The single source you use should be online if possible (so I can review it), and it must be addressing some aspect of your own metier in either academic analysis or editorial fashion. Examples of legitimate source sites might be The Wall Street Journal, Marketplace, site pages associated with your textbooks in your other SFSU courses, etc. The analysis must be a minimum of 2 full pages of 12 point double-spaced text. Use academic language that has been carefully and repeatedly edited and proofread to eliminate all sentence errors.

Your goal is to produce two pages of clear, concise explanation and analysis of your chosen source on the basis of what types of argument strategy it contains and utilizes in its speech. You should provide detailed description and analysis of your selection along with convincing textual support that illustrates your arguments and observations.

The sections from Chapter 1 of Everything's an Argument that will be particulary useful to you here are those that describe the 3 main areas of argumentation (forensic, deliberative, ceremonial) - use them to help you analyze the arguments you're reading in your chosen selection. You'll need to be asking appropriately critical questions of the text as you seek to analyze its rhetorical structure for this assignment. Again, remember that your primary task is to determine what kind(s) of argument you see being used in your chosen selection, why you think so and what textual evidence you can show us to prove it, how well or not well you think those arguments are being deployed, and why.

Here a few critical questions you should be asking of your chosen reading selection as you begin to try and understand its argumentative structure:

Who is arguing?

What purpose(s) is the writer(s) trying to achieve?

To whom are (they) directing their arguments?

Does the writer's intended audience determine which arguments he/she leans on the most heavily?

Does the logic match the evidence?

Is the writing clear, are the ideas well developed and well supported?

Per the modes of argumentation you see being used in the piece, are they being used effectively? Why (or why not)?

* Please be sure to include in your write-up the full URL address link for your source so that I can find it online to review when I evaluate your work. 

Please review this Sample Argument Analysis to see what I'm looking for in this assignment.

These assignments are due as their own document attachments before class this week via the iLearn portal for our class.

Please review this File Formatting Guidelines sheet before you submit your work to me in order to be sure that you are saving the file in the correct format and naming it appropriately - I will not be able to accept files that are incorrectly formatted or titled.

• Week 7: Cover Letter (Sample)

Post a sample cover letter of your own as a document attachment using the assignment tool in our class iLearn portal. There is no minimum or maximum length requirement for this assignment, though as we will be working on these together in class, you'll want to make sure there is an adequate amount of material to work with. I suggest, though it is not required, that you submit one of your own past cover letters for an application or interview so that the feedback, critique and review work in class will be the most beneficial to you. Please make sure that if you do so you have first deleted any private information from the cover letter that you do not wish to share with other students in class. Please also review the reading assignment and supporting materials in this week's lesson agenda to make sure you're formatting your letter correctly and following the right template guidelines.

These assignments are due as their own document attachments before class this week via the iLearn portal for our class.

Please review the Error Patterns Primer and the Proofreading Notes sheets (available on our course page) before you submit your final versions so as to make sure you're eliminating all of the most common student writing error patterns from your writing work before it gets to me.



• Week 10 Vocabulary Log:
  

Create a grid containing 5 new vocabulary words of your choice, drawn from this week's course reading from this or any other of your SFSU classes. The grid must be comprised of 3 columns to be used, respectively, for the following: the word, a short "working definition" of it, and a single paragraph in which all 5 vocabulary words are used to the extent that I will know you understand what the words mean and how to use them in context. You may use the terms in any form. No sentence may use more than two of your vocabulary words at once. Please be sure to highlight the vocabulary words in red so that I may find them easily in your work.

This assignment is due as its own document attachment on Monday, Oct 29 by 2 pm via email only: (christenseng@smccd.edu)



• Week 8 Appeals Practice (from Week 7) - Ethos & The Business Letter: 

Using last week's EA & BC reading assignments to help you, compose a one-page business letter. Your letter must address the focus of this week's EA lesson by making a clear appeal to character - ethos - without relying on pathos or logos to communicate the letter content. You will choose the subject of your letter (e.g. what aspect of business priorities or office managagment). You will choose the imaginary professional position from which you will be speaking (i.e. a specific position within or without a corporation or business entity). You will choose the imaginary audience or recipients of your memo (not me) (e.g. a work group, a colleague, a superior, an employee, a company, etc.).

Although you should be using the template and sample links I've provided in agenda to help you with the form and format of your letter, the subject matter of your letter must be your own and it must be directly related to our study of ethos. Regarding your writing work, remember that effective letters are not only well proofread for clarity and correctness, they are also direct and specific and concise: there should be no "throw away" language in them. Also, as letters typically follow a very specific form on the screen and/or paper, you must make the formatting of your work a primary focus: how well you format your letter will have everything to do with how effective it is as a piece of inter-office communication and as such, the "formatting elements" - the visual organization and presentation of information on the page - are at least as important as the content of the letter itself.

In order to be considered for credit for this assignment, the body of your letter must be a minimum of 10 sentences and a maximum of 30 (not including the salutation at the top). It may contain as few or as many paragraphs you feel are necessary to effectively communicate the content of your letter. It must be very well proofread and well-formatted, and it must deal directly with ethos in a specific office or business related context.  Again, use the assigned pages from Chapter 3 in Everything's an Argument and Chapter 5 in Business Communication to help you understand how to approach this assignment. 

Note: Remember that you are required to integrate all 5 of your quiz vocabulary terms from last week into your writing for this assignment.

This assignment is due as its own document attachment on Monday, Oct 15 by 2 pm via email only: (christenseng@smccd.edu)

• Week 8 Vocabulary Log:
  

Create a grid containing 5 new vocabulary words of your choice, drawn from this week's course reading from this or any other of your SFSU classes. The grid must be 3 columns wide and 5 columns long. The 3 vertical columns are to be used, respectively, for the following: the word, its short definition, and a sentence you will write that contains that word used correctly in context (with the word highlighted in red).

Please review this Sample Vocabulary Log to see what I'm looking for in this assignment.  

This assignment is due as its own document attachment on Monday, Oct 15 by 2 pm via email only: (christenseng@smccd.edu)

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***Please review this File Formatting Guidelines sheet before you submit your work to me this week to be sure you are saving files in the correct format and naming them appropriately - I will not be able to accept files that are incorrectly formatted or titled.



• Week 7 Memo (group assignment from Week 6):

Submit your group memo. See the Week 6 description of this assignment for details.

This assignment is due EITHER as its own document attachment OR by pasting your work directly into the email window (but not both) by Monday, Oct 8 by 2 pm via email only: (christenseng@smccd.edu). Please make sure all three names of the group participants are clearly listed at the top of your memo so that I can give you each credit for your work when I evaluate the submission.

• Week 7 Vocabulary Log:
  

Create a grid containing 5 new vocabulary words of your choice, drawn from this week's course reading from this or any other of your SFSU classes. The grid must be 3 columns wide and 5 columns long. The 3 vertical columns are to be used, respectively, for the following: the word, its short definition, and a sentence you will write that contains that word used correctly in context (with the word highlighted in red).

Please review this Sample Vocabulary Log to see what I'm looking for in this assignment.  

This assignment is due as its own document attachment by Monday, Oct 8 by 2 pm via email only: (christenseng@smccd.edu)

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***Please review this File Formatting Guidelines sheet before you submit your work to me this week to be sure you are saving files in the correct format and naming them appropriately - I will not be able to accept files that are incorrectly formatted or titled.

 

• Week 6 Appeals Practice - Logos & The Business Memo: (This will be an in-class group assignment only)

Using this week's EA & BC reading assignments to help you, compose a one page business memo. The focus of your memo must address some aspect of fact and reason - logos - in a fundamental way. You will choose the subject of your memo (e.g. what aspect of business priorities or office managagment). You will choose the imaginary professional position from which you will be speaking (i.e. a specific position within a corporation or business). You will choose the imaginary audience or recipients of your memo (not me) (e.g. a work group, a colleague, a superior, an employee, the company, etc.).

Although you should be using the template and sample links I've provided in this week's agenda to help you with the form and format of your memo, the subject matter of your memo must be your own and it must be directly related to our study of logos this week. Regarding your writing work, remember that effective memos are not only well proofread for clarity and correctness, they are also direct and specific and concise: there should be no "throw away" language in them. Also, as memos follow a very specific form on the screen and/or paper, you must make the formatting of your work a primary focus: how well you format your memo will have everything to do with how effective it is as a piece of intra-office communication and as such, the "formatting elements" - the visual organization and presentation of information on the page - are  at least as important as the content of the memo.

In order to be considered for credit for this assignment, the body of your memo message must be a minimum of 10 sentences and a maximum of 30 (not including the address and subject information at the top of your memo). It may contain as few or as many paragraphs you feel are necessary to effectively communicate the content of the memo. It must  be very well proofread and well-formatted, and it must deal directly with logos in a specific office or business related context.  Again, use the assigned pages from Chapter 4 in Everything's an Argument and Chapter 5 in Business Communication to help you understand how to approach this assignment. 

*** This assignment will be an in-class group exercise only, to be turned in at the end of the class period.

• Week 6 Start-up Strategy - Asking Questions: (This will be an in-class group assignment only)
  

Create a list of questions in connection with your memo draft work this week that follows the Questioning Method start-up strategy approach outlined in Chapter 2 of Business Communication. Asking smart audience-driven questions of your material is an effective "prewriting strategy" - it's something you do before you begin the formal process of drafting the first version of a piece of writing.

Asking pointed questions of your audience and material is one of several prewriting techniques designed to help you generate ideas by forcing you to get your raw ideas down on paper so that you may begin assessing their usefulness for your writing task. Asking questions will help you isolate exactly what you wish to communicate to your audience - and what specifically you want from them. Asking the right kinds of questions in the prewriting phases of your work is a particularly useful strategy for generating ideas because, if the questions are the right ones, the answers that you formulate for them can easily become organizing points in a business memo or letter - which will in turn help you structure and focus the entire piece of writing.

In order to receive credit, your list must contain a minimum of 8 full sentence questions, the answers to some of which will be directly addressed in your actual memo for this week's homework (see above memo homework description).

Please use the description of this strategy on pp 18-20 of Chapter 2 "Start-Up Strategies" in your Business Communication text to help you with this assignment. You may also recall the questions on p 98 of Everything's an Argument for additional examples of useful questions to begin asking of your material and of your audience.

*** This assignment will be an in-class group exercise only, to be turned in at the end of the class period. 

(There is no Vocabulary Log due this week) 

• Week 5 Argument Analysis - Pathos:

Write a short, well-supported, well-explained, and well proofread rhetorical analysis of how a given print ad relies on pathos - an emotional appeal to an audience - to communicate its messages. You must choose your own advertisement from a print source or from an online source - either is fine. The ad can be for anything at all (e.g. a product, a service, a political group, etc.) but it must be using both text AND image, not just one or the other. This assignment is quite similar to the Week 3 Argument Analysis you did of the New York Times opinion column - only this time you are focusing more narrowly on how your chosen print or web ad relies on an emotional appeal to its audience in order to be persuasive. Use the assigned pages from Chapter 2 in Everything's an Argument to help you understand what an argument built around making an emotional appeal to its audience looks like.

Again, you must choose your own single ad to do this assignment. Choose one that seems to you to rely heavily on emotion (rather than reason or logic or shared cultural values) to do its primary persuasive work. This rhetorical analysis must be a minimum of 1 full page but not more than 2 pages of 12-point double-spaced text. You must use standard academic language that has been fully edited and proofread to eliminate all sentence errors. The beginning of your analysis must briefly but thoroughly (2-4 sentences) summarize and describe what your ad looks like, what words are in it, what it's advertising or selling, who is sponsoring the ad, etc. - introduce and summarize your ad for an "ignorant audience" who does not know what your ad is until you describe it. You may include a copy of your ad with your digital submission to me, but it  is not required - your summary description of the ad should be enough for me to understand your subsequent analysis of the ad. Your goal is to produce clear, concise summary description and rhetorical analysis that offers convincing support for the conclusions you reach about both the construction and the effectiveness of the argument(s) used in the ad you are examining.

Please use Question Prompts 2, 3 & 4 on p 51 in Chapter 2 of EA to help you choose appropriate questions to ask and answer about the text as you seek to analyze its rhetorical structure for this assignment. Again, remember that your primary task is to determine how and why the ad you've chosen to look at uses pathos as its primary appeal to its audience. Remember that you should also be using the rhetorical analysis questions from p 98 of EA to help you examine your ad and reach useful conclusions about it.

Note: Remember that you are required to integrate all 5 of your quiz vocabulary terms this week into your writing for this assignment.

(Please refer back to this previously posted Sample Argument Analysis if you still need a good general idea of the kind of close examination of strategy and argument I'm looking for in these rhetorical analysis pieces that you write.)

This assignment is due as its own document attachment by Monday, Sept 24 by 2 pm via email only: (christenseng@smccd.edu)

• Week 5 Start-up Strategy - Brainstorm:
  

Create a "brainstorm" as you prepare for your rhetorical analysis homework assignment this week. A "brainstorm" is a "prewriting strategy" - it's something you do before you begin the formal process of drafting the first version of a piece of writing. A brainstorm is one of several prewriting techniques designed to help you generate writing material by forcing you to get your raw ideas down on paper so that you may begin assessing their usefulness for your writing task. Brainstorms help you sort and organize, connect and separate, retain and delete material (ideas, concepts, terms, etc.) that you may end up using later on in the drafting process of your writing work.

In order to receive credit, your brainstorm needs to be a full page of "mapped" ideas, some of which you will end up using in your rhetorical analysis homework this week. You may handwrite this assignment and turn it in to me the day of class, or you may type it up ahead of time and email it to me before class begins - I'll accept it in either format.

Please use the description of this strategy on pp 22-25 of Chapter 2 ("Start-Up Strategies") in your Business Communication course text to help you with this assignment. This Purdue OWL Online page on brainstorming techniques may also help you develop your own brainstorm this week.

This assignment is due in class OR as its own document attachment by Monday, Sept 24 by 2 pm via email: (christenseng@smccd.edu) 

• Week 5 Vocabulary Log:
  

Create a grid containing 5 new vocabulary words of your choice, drawn from this week's course reading from this or any other of your SFSU classes. The grid must be 3 columns wide and 5 columns long. The 3 vertical columns are to be used, respectively, for the following: the word, its short definition, and a sentence you will write that contains that word used correctly in context (with the word highlighted in red).

Please review this Sample Vocabulary Log to see what I'm looking for in this assignment.  

This assignment is due as its own document attachment by Monday, Sept 24 by 2 pm via email only: (christenseng@smccd.edu)

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***Please review this File Formatting Guidelines sheet before you submit your work to me this week to be sure you are saving files in the correct format and naming them appropriately - I will not be able to accept files that are incorrectly formatted or titled



• Week 4 Writing Assignment (in class):

(In class argument analysis)

This assignment is an in-class writing assignment on Monday, Sept 17 - it cannot be submitted digitally and/or after class for credit

• Week 4 Vocabulary Log:
  

Create a grid containing 5 new vocabulary words of your choice, drawn from this week's course reading from this or any other of your SFSU classes. The grid must be 3 columns wide and 5 columns long. The 3 vertical columns are to be used, respectively, for the following: the word, its short definition, and a sentence you will write that contains that word used correctly in context (with the word highlighted in red).

This assignment is due by Monday, Sept 17 by 2 pm via email only: (christenseng@smccd.edu)



• Week 3 Argument Analysis:

Write a short, well-supported analysis of the type(s) of argument used in this recent New York Times Op Ed article (the password to open the file is "readings"). The analysis must be a minimum of 1 full page of 12 point double-spaced text. Use standard academic language that has been fully edited and proofread to eliminate all sentence errors. Your goal is to produce a minimum of one full page of clear, concise explanation that offers convincing support for your observations of the argument(s) used in the piece you are analyzing.

Please use Question Prompt #3 on page 36 in Chapter 1 of EA (Everything's an Argument) to help you choose appropriate questions to ask and answer about the text as you seek to analyze its rhetorical structure for this assignment. Again, remember that your primary task is to determine what kind(s) of argument you see being used in the New York Times article, specifically a deliberative, forensic, and/or ceremonial argument from your EA reading, and why you think so.

Please review this Sample Argument Analysis to see what I'm looking for in this assignment.

This assignment is due as its own document attachment by Monday, Sept 10 by 2 pm via email only: (christenseng@smccd.edu)

Please review this File Formatting Guidelines sheet before you submit your work to me in order to be sure that you are saving the file in the correct format and naming it appropriately - I will not be able to accept files that are incorrectly formatted or titled

• Week 3 Vocabulary Log:
  

Create a grid containing 5 new vocabulary words of your choice, drawn from this week's course reading from this or any other of your SFSU classes. The grid must be 3 columns wide and 5 columns long. The 3 vertical columns are to be used, respectively, for the following: the word, its short definition, and a sentence you will write that contains that word used correctly in context (with the word highlighted in red).

Please review this Sample Vocabulary Log to see what I'm looking for in this assignment.  

This assignment is due as its own document attachment by Monday, Sept 10 by 2 pm via email only: (christenseng@smccd.edu)

Please review this File Formatting Guidelines sheet before you submit your work to me in order to be sure that you are saving the file in the correct format and naming it appropriately - I will not be able to accept files that are incorrectly formatted or titled







Week 2 Announcement:

Hello everyone. This is just a quick reminder to please pay careful attention to how you name the files you'll upload to me in iLearn this week for your first writing assignment. I'm not anal about too many things, but file naming is one of the things I am very particular about because getting the right name on your doc / docx file is key to making sure it doesn't get lost on my machine once it's downloaded for grading.

Please remember to name the essay file following this precise pattern:

Your last name only + a short one- or two-word descriptor of the assignment. Don't insert spaces between words. Use capital letters for each new word.

So, if I was a student in this class and my last name was Smith, I would name my file exactly like this:

SmithArgAn.docx

(Don't type in "doc" or "docx" manually by the way - your word processing application will automatically append that descriptor to the file when you save it.)

Week 11 Notice:

Please remember to bring in a print example or digital link to something in which you can trace evidence of either a definition-based argument focus and/or an argument in which you're able to identify the stages of the Toulmin model.