Phone Message Assignment for Saturday, September 13
Tracy Mendham
College Writing I
Succinct Instructions:
Call 1-800-749-0632
Enter Channel Number 12483
Enter Password 3848
Speak
Press # when done speaking
At the prompt, select 1 to listen, or 2 to publish
Select 2 to publish.
You're done!
Longer Instructions
The purpose of this assignment is to:
Give you practice identifying received ideas
Give you practice describing a received idea and your reaction to it
Give you access to your fellow students' parallel projects
Your formal essay assignment, which is due next week and for which you can read about below on this, asks you
to "respond to a received idea." This short homework assignment, which you will complete by phone, asks you
identify a common saying and your reaction to it.
I will collect phone messages and post them on our class blog at http://biggerclassroom.blogspot.com.
First, choose a received idea, something that people often say. Choose something that interests you,
either because you think it's right, or you think it's wrong, or because you like the saying, or hate it, or because
you have an understanding of it that might be different from other people's. Take a few minutes to jot down
some notes saying what the idea or saying is, and what your personal reaction or understanding of it
is. You might want to practice saying your response out loud once or twice before you call.
Then, from a touchtone phone, call our Gabcast message center at 1-800-749-0632 anytime before midnight
on Saturday, September 8th.
When you are asked for the channel number, press 12483, and when you are asked for the password, type
in 3848. (It requires that they be entered rather quickly; if you have trouble, just stay on the phone until you're
asked again for the channel number and password.) After the tone, leave your message.
Say your first name or initials at the beginning of the call so I can tell who has completed the assignment.
This recording will be publicly accessible once I've posted it to the blog, so please don't reveal anything that is
too private for people outside the class to hear.
Mendham 2
Essay 1: Examining Received Ideas
Topic: In this essay, you're asked to examine “the standard view” on a topic of your choice, question it, analyze
it, and persuasively express your own view on it.
Here are some prompts to get you started on identifying standard views:
“Americans today believe that...”
“I've always believed that...”
“Conventional wisdom has it that..”
“When I was a child, I used to think that...”
“Common sense seems to dictate that...”
“Although I should know better by now, I cannot help
“The standard way of thinking about ___ is...”
thinking that...”
“It is often said that...”
“At the same time that I believe _____, I cannot help
“My whole life I have heard it said that...”
thinking that...”
“You would think that...”
“Everybody knows that...”
“Many people assume that...”
“My mother always told me...”
You can choose almost any topic you like for this, as long as you can identify some conventional
wisdom (a commonly held belief) that's worth debating. See if these categories from Randall VanderMey's
College Writer give you a good idea for a subject:
Current affairs: Recent trends, new laws, emerging controversies in the media
Burning issues: What issues related to family, work, education, recreation, technology, the environment, or
popular culture do you care about? Which issue do you want to confront?
Dividing lines: What dividing lines characterize the communities you belong to—what issues set people
against one another? Religion, gender, money, class, sports?
Fresh fare: Can you think of an unexpected topic, like barbed versus smooth fishing hooks?
There are a few topics that I will ask you steer clear of, though, because so many of us have debated and
considered them so thoroughly already that we have pretty fixed ideas on them: you cannot write about abortion,
capital punishment, or the legalization of marijuana for this particular essay.
Your essay must say something. You are free to agree, disagree, or partially agree/disagree with the
conventional wisdom, as long as you have clear position. Don't only tell us what other people say; tell us what you
say and why you think as you do. What will really be interesting is what only you can tell your reader: how to see
your subject as you do, through your eyes. You will need a clear claim (thesis), and the whole essay should be
organized around clearly supporting that claim with logic, persuasion, and experience. Your claim must also be
debatable: that is, something that the reasonable person could possibly disagree with. Therefore, “child abuse is
wrong” would not be a good thesis: who would argue?
Keys for success: Respect the opposition, or the “standard view” that you're analyzing. Ground your argument in
a clear understanding of the opposition's stance. Develop a credible counterargument. What shortcomings, blind
spots, and fallacies do you find at work in the standard view? What new evidence can you bring to the discussion?
Format: Use one inch margins and 11 point font. You are not required to use any sources for the essay, but if you
do, they should be cited in MLA format; that means putting a Works Cited list at the end of the essay, and putting
the author's name and the page number (if there is one) in the text after you quote, paraphrase, or summarize
someone else's words or ideas. There are no minimum or maximum number of pages for the assignment; just
write as much as you need to in order to make it a good essay.
Audience : Your audience is your fellow students and your instructor.
Peer/Instructor: When the peer draft is due, that means that you have to bring a first (or rough) draft of the
essay to class to use in peer review; another student will read it but it will not be graded. When the instructor draft
is due, bring in the final draft of the essay to give to me; this is the draft I'll read, respond to, and grade. You
must attach your peer draft, any peer review you've received; anything that lead up to the final product.
Grade Weight: The instructor draft is worth 12% of your grade for the course.