Course Calendar

• Key terms: claim, fact, assumption, premise, warrant, opinion, argument, advocacy
• Key rhetorical contexts: subject, purpose, audience, and occasion; reader-based writing that accomplishes something
• St. Martin’s Handbook
• Reading
• Context
• Digication: summary and photo essay

• 9:40 section, post a précis on Kristoff’s “We’re Rich! (In Nature.),” Sunday Review section, p. 11
• 11:20 section, post a précis on “On Campus, It’s One Big Commercial,” from the Sunday Business section, p.1. (also have a look at the slide show for that article)
• Both sections, post your revised initial, first summary in précis form, and keep both versions; we want to be able to see your original summary and the revised version, in précis form. Here’s one possible organizing principle for that.

Due: Rhetorical précis
Background: NYT, Chicago

• For the section that meets at 9:40 a.m., there was a request to choose from the Arts & Leisure section. See Arts & Leisure Part I, page 16: “A Writer of Bodies Delves into Survival.” It’s a dance review, but as you read slowly and carefully, you will see that there are also arguments. They might be subtle, implied, and unspoken. Can you find them? Or one?
• For the section that meets at 11:20 a.m., there was a request to choose from the Sunday Review section. On page 13 you will find “Glimpses of the Next Great Famine.”
• Course Contract discussion
• St. Martin’s 13b: “Working with quotations”; note how some are rhetorically active verbs (“claims”) and some are not (“says”). Can you tell the difference? Samples.

Due: Précis
Background:

• Technical notes: using DePaul’s student email and downloadable NYT
• The NYT’s bias
• Textual Analysis notes; St. Martin’s chapter 8 on reading & analyzing arguments, especially 8g: A student’s rhetorical analysis of an argument

7d: Analyzing a text
8e: Identifying elements of an argument
9b: Determining whether a statement can be argued
9i: Organizing an argument
9k: A student’s argument essay

The first sentence of your first paragraph will begin, “I have come to believe that _______________________ …”

The first sentence of every subsequent paragraph will begin with some variation on,

“I wonder sometimes, however …”
“And sometimes I wonder …”
“But sometimes I wonder …”

Types of First Year Writing Portfolios:

• Organized by learning outcomes
• Organized by curatorial method
• Organized by your visual and logistical plan

You can work on your portfolios during this time; we will problem-solve any technical or organizational issues; and we will have a peer-review session.

It’s a good opportunity to reflect on the conventions of academic and professional discourse and how you can use them to establish credibility for yourself and for the work you present in your portfolio.

Due: Peer Editor Worksheet