CM 220
College Composition II
UNIT 5 Seminar
Professor _______________
General Education, Composition
Kaplan University
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UNIT 5 Learning Activities
• Reading: Introduction to unit; The Kaplan Guide to
Successful Writing, chapters 7, 13, 14 (pp. 167-168)
• Invention Lab 1: Map ideas for draft
• Invention Lab 2: Formal and informal
communications of big idea (letter to editor and post
on Facebook, for example)
• Seminar: Organization and development of ideas for
draft, audience, comparison of letters to the editor
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Getting Started with your Big Idea
In unit 6, you will submit a 3-5 page draft of your Big Idea.
Why is beginning early, in unit 5, helpful to you as a writer?
What can you do to GET STARTED?
If you have trouble with Writer’s Block, how can you solve this problem?
For ideas on how to get started writing and avoid Writer’s Block, consider
reviewing this Writing Center Workshop:
http://khe2.acrobat.com/p13592508/?launcher=false&fcsContent=true&pb
Mode=normal
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Audience and Purpose
How are audience and purpose KEY to successful writing?
Who is the audience you would like to communicate to?
What do you know about them and what do you need to know about them?
What do you want to communicate to that audience?
How can you best communicate your information to that audience?
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More about Audience and Purpose
For an excellent workshop on audience and
purpose, review this Writing Center video:
http://khe2.acrobat.com/p19397839/?launcher
=false&fcsContent=true&pbMode=normal
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What is an informative essay?
An Informative Essay
• An informative essay, also called
expository or explanatory essay, seeks to
educate the audience on a given topic.
• In general, it does not feature its writer's
experiences or feelings, as autobiography
does. Instead, successful explanatory
writing presents information with the
purpose of educating the reader
about a subject.
Informative Essays (continued)
• This type of writing, required almost every day in
nearly every profession, may be based on
firsthand observation, but it always moves
beyond describing specific objects and events to
explain general principles and patterns of
behavior.
• Since it deals almost exclusively with established
information, explanatory writing tends not to
present an argument but to present information
as if everyone assumes it were true. It is a way
for readers to find out about a particular subject.
• Much of what we find in newspapers,
encyclopedias, instruction manuals
reference books, and research
reports is explanatory writing.
Informative Essays do not express the writer's
opinion.
• However, views, pro and con, can be included.
The views must be provided in an unbiased
fashion, pointing out the comparisons and
contrasts of the viewpoints. To avoid being
persuasive, do not indicate which side you
support.
• For example, if you informative essay topic is gay
marriage, you can say that Group A is opposed to
it and Group B supports it. You, however, can
not say which side you think is right.
Instead, remain neutral, saying something like:
"This controversial issue is not likely to be
resolved any time soon. Perhaps the final
resolution will lie with the Supreme Court, or
maybe the American voters will resolve the issue
at the polls."
Informative Essays
• Educate the reader
• Support the writer’s thesis with information
from other sources
• Do not try to persuade or convince the reader
• Educate the reader
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Informative vs. persuasive thesis
• Informative: "No Child Left Behind aims to
improve student performance and to provide
disadvantaged children with better
educational opportunities."
• Persuasive thesis: "No Child Left Behind
should be repealed because the act has
diminished opportunities for improved
student performance.”
A persuasive thesis should. . .
• Take a position about which reasonable people could
disagree
• Deal with a subject that can be adequately treated
given the nature of the assignment
• Express one main idea
• Assert your conclusions about a subject
• Contain words like "because," "since," "so,"
"although," "unless," and "however."
 Take on a subject upon which reasonable people
could disagree
 Deal with a subject that can be adequately
treated given the nature of the assignment
 Express one main idea
 Assert your conclusion(s) about a subject—take a
position!
 Use words like “because,” “since,” “therefore,”
etc. to show relationships between ideas.
Persuasive thesis statements—what
should they do?
• Weak: Adoption is a very serious issue, so
people who decide to give up a child or adopt
a child need to think about it carefully.
• Better: The United States needs to create
national laws for adoptions because this will
ensure that biological and adoptive parents
are clear about their rights and those of the
adopted child.
Example
 Since states currently have different laws, parents
may be confused about what their rights are and
whether the law holds for the state where the
adoptive or biological parents live.
 National laws concerning the rights of adopted
children to find biological parents would also be
helpful.
 International adoptions would have to abide by
specific, national American laws as well.
Three possible points
 Shouldn’t states have the right to set up their
own adoption laws, as they currently do?
 Who would decide what the national laws should
be?
 Would the laws favor biological or adoptive
parents? For example, states like Florida have
very short periods for biological parents to
change their minds about the adoption (48
hours), while other states have a period of several
months.
Opposition points and issues to
consider. . .
Arkansas adopts ban on adoption, foster care by unmarried couples. (2008, November 12).
Education Week, 5. Retrieved August 17, 2009, from Academic Search Premier database.
This article demonstrates how different states have developed specific laws concerning who can
(and cannot) adopt. National guidelines outlining who could adopt would help to reduce
confusion. What if an unmarried couple from California wanted to adopt a child from
Arkansas? Would the Arkansas law apply, or the California law? National laws would make
cross-state adoptions less complicated, and it would also ensure that more conservative
states did not adopt such stringent guidelines that orphans could not get adopted.
Source
Some questions to consider. . .
• What are differences between informative and
persuasive writing?
• What kinds of persuasion do we see and use in our
daily lives?
• How might you use persuasive writing in your
professional life?
• What are some positive (or negative) experiences
you have had with writing?
• What apprehensions do you feel about this
class/final project?
Organizing and Developing your ideas
• Establish a thesis
• Consider writing an outline (it can be changed later)
• Take the ideas in the outline and brainstorm each
concept/argument
• Begin researching and incorporating evidence to support your
argument/claims
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More help with developing ideas
Review the following Writing Center Workshop for help with
fleshing out your ideas:
http://khe2.acrobat.com/p35695303/?launcher=false&fcsConte
nt=true&pbMode=normal
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Letters to the Editor
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Letters to the Editor Activity, 1
• Truth and fiction on the stimulus bill [Editorial]. (2010, February 20). The
New York Times. Retrieved from
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/20/opinion/20sat1.html
• Take charge: The stimulus bill requires President Obama’s intervention.
[Editorial]. (2009, February 1). Retrieved from
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wpdyn/content/article/2009/01/31/AR2009013101535.html
• The immigration law fallacy: Will Texas be next? [Editorial]. (2010, June
16). Retrieved from http://www.examiner.com/x-51717-Dallas-Tea-PartyExaminer~y2010m6d16-The-Immigration-Law-Fallacy-Will-Texas-Be-Next
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Letters to the Editor Activity, 2
• Are these letters effective?
• What is the argument each makes?
• Are the facts that the authors use credible? You can
go to FactCheck.org to read credible information on
this topic.
• Select at least one argument in each letter that you
can verify, or not, and discuss how this adds to or
detracts from the writer’s argument.
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What do you do if you get stuck
while writing your draft?
Used with permission from the artist.
Even professional writers suffer from
writer’s block sometimes.
• Some of the greatest writers in literature such as Leo
Tolstoy, Virginia Woolf, Katherine Mansfield, Joseph
Conrad, and Ernest Hemingway were tormented by
writer's block. However, if you have ever looked at
War and Peace, you would not believe that Tolstoy
had any problems writing!
• Don't let writer's block stop you. Writer Jack London
gave the following advice: "You can't wait for
inspiration. You have to go after it with a club."
(LOL)
Strategies to Use if
You Get Stuck
• 1. Go ahead and write drivel at first, as long as you write.
Out of your nonsense and ramblings, however, believe that
something good will come, some idea will catch fire right
there on the page, there will be sparks, and patterns will
emerge.
• Be willing to throw stuff out. It's all right. Do you think
Shakespeare didn't litter his kitchen floor with balled-up
pieces of paper?
• One nice thing about the word-processor is that you're not
wasting paper and trees; you're just exercising the delete key.
But this is no time to worry about the environment. Fill that
wastebasket with paper and trust that something will come
of all this scribbling. It will.
Strategy #2: Physical
Exercise
• People who tell you that physical exercise is
important for mental activity are telling the truth.
• If nothing's happening on the computer screen or
paper, take a walk around the block. Hit the treadmill
or tennis courts or drive to the gym. But take your
notebook with you. Fresh blood will be flowing
through your brain and jogging might just jog
something loose in your head. It happens.
• Now you know why it's called "jog"ging. LOL
Strategy #3: Start in the Middle
• Another trick is to start in the middle of your writing
project.
• Avoid the problem of getting started by starting on a
part of the project that interests you more and then
come back to the introductory matter later. This
sounds a bit like starting to earn your second million
dollars before you've earned your first, but it's really
not a bad idea in any case, because sometimes it's
easier to say where you're going after you know
where you've been. After all, your readers will never
know you wrote the introduction last.
Strategy #4: Tape Recorder
Strategy #5: Read & Take Notes
• 4) Another maneuver around the old writer's block
is to talk about your topic into a tape recorder. Play
the tape back and write down what you hear in
clusters of ideas.
• 5) Many people read and take more notes at times
like this. Since reading will make you think, you
should write out all of the ideas and insights that
come to you as you read. Soon you will have plenty
of new material to add to your paper.
Strategy #6: Free Writing
Strategy #7: Talk
• 6) Try free writing, which is writing fast, in phrases or
sentences, on your topic without imposing any structure or
order. Then do some more reading and follow that with
additional free writing. Getting words on the page in any
form is what it takes for some writers to break out of a
block.
• 7) It is also extremely useful to talk about your ideas
for your paper with someone else to get fresh
insights and solve some of your writing problems. Or ask
someone else to read a draft of your paper and to write
some comments on it. This will provide you with insights
and ideas to get you moving again. This is the idea behind
using peer groups! You have a ready made group of
readers!
Finally, give yourself permission to write a less
than perfect first draft.
• You can paralyze
yourself by trying to
produce a finished
draft on the first try.
• Lower your
expectations for the
first draft, and
remind yourself that
you can always go
back later and fix it.
Must you know your opponent's
positions? Why or why not?
Other Side of the Argument: Counterarguments
• You can not know if your position is
correct if
you do not know both sides of
the entire issue.
This goes for everything in life.
• Plus, you can not possibly write a good
argumentative essay if you do not know both sides
of the issue. You can not convince your reader that
your side is right if you do not cover the other side
of the issue.
• For example, an attorney never asks a question he or
she doesn't already know the answer to.
What are counter-arguments?
Counter-Arguments
• Counter-arguments are the other side of your
assertion. They are the "yeah, buts" of the people
who disagree with you.
• It is your job to convince the opposition by
acknowledging and then refuting their points,
encouraging them to accept your point of view or
consider your point of view as a possibility, and
giving them "food for thought."
• It is possible that they will listen or read and still
reject your position. But with established truths,
opinions of authorities, primary source information,
statistical findings, and personal experience, you will
be able to form a logical well-developed argument.
Refuting an Argument
• Refuting an opposing view means to attack it in order to
weaken, invalidate, or make it less credible to a reader.
• Since all arguments are dialogues or debates even when the
opponent is only imaginary, refutation of the other point of
view is always implicit in your arguments.
• As you write, you should be looking at your own argument as
an unsympathetic reader may look at it, asking yourself the
same kinds of critical questions and trying to find its
weaknesses in order to correct them.
• If your argument is long and complex, choose only the most
important points to refute. Also, you must have evidence to
support what you are countering.
You must refute counter-arguments
before your reader can make them.
• For example, if your assertion was: "President Bush was
right to have the U.S. invade Iraq," then you would be
working to prove that statement to your readers.
• However, someone who was reading your paper might say,
"BUT we did not find weapons of mass destruction."
That is an example of a counter-argument. The counterargument disagrees with the original claim. It finds the
holes or weaknesses in the argument.
• In your paper, you must refute counter-arguments
before your reader can make them. You will never convince
people that invading Iraq was right unless you provide an
answer to "we didn't find WMDs."
Even when refuting a counter-argument, you
must provide PROOF!
• Remember: Even with a counter-argument,
you MUST provide your readers with PROOF
that YOU are
right!
• You are trying to think what a reader who
disagrees with you would say and say it
first. You have all done that before
with your parents. LOL
How do you develop
counter arguments?
Developing Counter Arguments
• Read your paper critically. What would people with
opposing views say? Think about ways in which they
might poke holes in your supporting arguments.
Anticipate their questions, concerns, objections, and
counterarguments.
• By anticipating the objections and
counterarguments, you can overcome them. How
would you go about doing this?
Developing Counter-Arguments
(continued)
• After you have drafted your paper, reread it and make a list
of your reasons and evidence. Reread what you have
written from your opponent's perspective, looking for ways
to knock down your reasons and evidence. You can also use
your outline for this.
• Next to each of your points, list your opponent's possible
objections. Answer the objections using facts, examples, and
expert testimony.
How Do You Find Your Point?
You’ve been given topics,
so all you need is a point.
• You've been given topics, so that's
not a problem. All you need to do is
choose one. But a topic is not
enough. What point will you
make about your topic? This is an
informative essay, so you must
inform or teach the reader about
some aspect of your topic. How do
you figure that out? This is where
prewriting comes in.
Methods You Can Use to Find Your Point:
Freewriting
• Take a piece of paper or pull up a
blank computer screen and start
jotting down everything you know
about the topic. When you run out
of things you know, ask questions
that you'd like to have answered.
Sample Free Writing
about Illegal Immigration
• That means coming to the country illegally. What makes it
illegal? How do you come legally? What type of people are
coming and why? How are they coming? Where are they
coming from? Why? Are they families or just individuals?
How do they get here. I heard the government was going
to build a wall between Mexico and the U.S. I also heard
that illegals had built a tunnel. Some people say that it's a
war zone down there. Do we have the same problems with
Canada? What about our large coast line. I heard people
are sneaking in by ship. Some have even landed on
Sanibel. That's just down the road from me!
• Reading that, you can see that it lacks unity and
organization. That means that it jumps from idea to idea.
Freewriting (continued)
• When you use free writing, you write down whatever comes
to you. Don't evaluate your ideas; just write FAST! After
you are done, comb through the writing, much like an
archeologist carefully scrapes the earth looking for things of
value. Something you wrote may be the direction (point) in
which you want to go.
• Choose one sentence and research it. Examples:
– "The U.S. is proposing to build a wall between
Mexico and the U.S." –
– You could write an essay informing the reader
about that.
– OR: "How do you come illegally?" Answering that
question could be your essay.
Methods You Can Use to Find Your Point: Questioning
• If free writing isn't helping or it's just not for you,
try
questioning. Brainstorm answers to WHO, WHAT, WHERE,
WHEN, WHY.
• WHO: People from other countries who come to the U.S.
They're coming here illegally. Possibly terrorists, too.
• WHAT: They're coming here illegally. What does that
mean? How do you come here legally?
• WHERE: They're coming from Mexico, Central America, S.
America, China, Cuba, Haiti, Dominican Republic, Arab
nations. Maybe other places.
• HOW: How are they getting here?
Car? Boat? Plane? Walking?
Choose one question to answer
• WHEN: It's happening now. How long has it
been going on? Have there always been laws
restricting immigration? Is it different now than
before or are we just more worried about it now?
• WHY: Why are they coming here? Money?
Freedom? Fleeing from oppression? Running
drugs? Terrorists?
• Select one of the questions (who, what, when,
where, why).
– Example:
Why: "Why are they coming
here?“
– Answering that question could be your
essay.
Any questions?
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