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Challenge Level: College Sophomore
Course Formats: Individually Paced
Recommended School Credit: One-half academic year
Course Length: Typically 6 months
Course Codes: EM4
This course builds on the techniques learned and practiced in prerequisite courses. Here, students learn the rhetorical modes of discourse. Examples of these modes include persuasion, definition, analysis, and narration. While inculcating the modes of classical discourse, this course typically focuses on cultural criticism.
The work of contemporary writer Susan Orlean provides subjects for critical analysis. Opportunities for revision allow students to hone skills and combine rhetorical modes for maximum effect. By the end, students are able to analyze and evaluate most prose forms. Students should be able to argue their interpretations convincingly.
The course culminates in a capstone essay incorporating the skills students have learned. This essay is based on a five-hour observation of social interaction in a cultural group. For more information, see "Cultural Studies and the Capstone Essay" on the Course Details tab. The majority of assignments apply the strategies of classical rhetoric (narration, definition, argument, persuasion, and so forth) to the interdisciplinary field of cultural studies, which is concerned with the production of meaning in society. Students read essays by authors including Susan Orlean and Joan Didion, along with more traditional writings about argument by Cleanth Brooks and Robert Penn Warren.
Integral is a substantial metacognitive dialogue with the instructor about writing.
This course does not have any synchronous class meetings, but students may schedule one-on-one virtual meetings directly with the instructor.
Student contributions (e.g., projects, forum posts, etc.) may remain in the course after the student completes the course. These artifacts may be preserved to showcase student work or to continue important conversations.
Skilled, careful writers follow the conventions of Standard Written English, but writing is much more than mere adherence to convention. Instructors discuss grammar only when it affects meaning. Writing courses are not remedial. Students must already be proficient in Standard Written English.
Materials
The Orchid Thief: A True Story of Beauty and Obsession by Susan Orlean (Ballantine Books, 2000) ISBN 978-0449003718
Prerequisites
Completion of grade 9 English or successful completion of one course below:
CTY Online Programs
CTY Summer Programs
Note: It is strongly recommended that all students in grades 7-12 successfully complete Crafting the Essay before enrolling in Writing Analysis and Persuasion.
Course Details
Note: This describes the individually paced version of Writing Analysis and Persuasion. For the session-based course, visit Crafting the Essay – Independent or Crafting the Essay – Peer Review.
You set the schedule!
The individually paced format uses a web-based course management system that delivers assignments, receives finished essays, and returns instructor critiques. Students and instructors use the course management system's messaging module and email to communicate. The individually paced format does not include peer review workshops. As with the web-based format, it is not necessary for students and instructors to be online at the same time.
Students may enroll at any time during the year and progress at their own pace within their enrollment period, guided by instructors who strive to meet individual needs. Assignments may not be submitted closer than seven days apart. Enrollment and tuition are time-based, and students may enroll in a course for three, six, or nine months.
Assignment | Skills Taught |
Redesign your own educational experience | Intro to persuasion and thesis |
Personal Narrative
| Narrative design and purpose |
Division and Classification Essay | Analysis |
Topical Persuasive Essay | More about persuasion |
Revision | Global revision Common grammar issues |
Literary Analysis: The Orchid Thief excerpt | Writing about literature |
Cause and Effect | Analyzing cause/effect |
Book, Movie, or Play Review | Analyzing meaning Writing for an audience |
Persuading about "Meritocracy" | Analyzing a culture Formulating a thesis Persuasion |
Revision | Revision review |
Hi Everybody,
Three of your assignments -- 6, 8 and 10 -- depend on information you gather from your observations of a subculture. What do I mean by "subculture"? According to The Columbia Dictionary of Modern Literary and Cultural Criticism, "Generally speaking, the term subculture refers to a distinctive clique within a larger social group . . . subcultural activity does not aim to overthrow the dominant culture in the name of some more humane vision, but seeks only a measure of autonomy expressed in symbolic gestures, such as the distinctive forms of clothing, speech, and music . . ." (290-291).
Make plans to observe a group with which you are not familiar. It could be your brother's Cub Scout pack, your mom's finance group, a friend's computer club: any group where there is significant social interaction. Ideally, you will not be a member of this group. For example, say you have always been fascinated by the clique of "regulars" who go to your local coffee house daily, as if it were an important ritual that gives their lives meaning. What is it that compels them to go there each day? Why do they get along so well in this isolated half hour to an hour of time and never have anything to do with each other outside of the coffee house? Why do they have their own little rules and codes? How were these codes introduced and how did a silent consensus form?
If you MUST observe a group of which you are a member, please email me with some details so I can evaluate whether the group is appropriate. (Before emailing me, please read this whole assignment.)
Plan to observe this group for at least 5 hours. Fewer hours are not permitted. More hours are good. You only need to observe the group for 1 hour to write the #6 Narrative. The rest of the observation time should be spread out over the rest of our term, finishing your minimum 5 hours before you start writing Assignment #8. Don't get too caught up in the details of writing Assignments #5 or #8 right now. What you need to focus on now is choosing the group to observe.
Part of this course is learning to schedule your time wisely and independently. It is crucial that you make a schedule NOW for the rest of the term. Don't just assume you can drop in any time for do the observations later. Set a schedule. Put it on your calendar.
Once you have decided on the social group that you will observe, write a paragraph or two (but no more -- this is not a formal essay) letting me know about the group you intend to observe for our upcoming Subculture Observation Project.
Include
Indicate
As you are thinking this through,
Along with those essential details,
This is not a report of your observations of the group. It is a proposal about which group you want to observe. Do not start observing until you have received my approval of your group. Once your group is approved, start observing and take good notes. Your first report on your observation is in Lesson 6.
Now that you know what you'll be doing over the whole course, it's time to go on to your first full-fledged assignment.
Welcome to CTY Online Programs! We hope you have a wonderful experience writing analytical and persuasive essays.
TOPIC: Redesign your educational experience. Figure out what would make school really great, or at least worthwhile, and persuade me of your ideas' benefits.
As you know, there is no maximum length to your essays. Write as much as you want, but instructors usually expect essays to have a minimum length of about 500 words, or about 2 typed pages.
This essay will introduce your instructor to your writing style. It also allows us to jump right into persuasion (a standard essay form in which you should become most fluent) about a topic you know well and are likely to care about.
If you are a homeschooler, feel free to write your essay on the benefits and deficits in your educational experience, however contained or wide it is. In other words, don't get stopped by the word "school." Write about your own educational experience.
The first step is to begin thinking about what ideas you'd like to cover in this assignment. This essay question is broad and can lead you in many directions, so it is important to focus your topic. For instance, you could choose to write about curriculum, arguing that English classes would be more useful if students studied more contemporary writers, or perhaps you could argue for a shorter - or longer - school day. Other questions to consider might include the following:
School is something that you know a lot about, and you probably know how to make it better. The trick is to narrow your topic. Don't try to discuss everything. Find the most promising ideas for which you can argue convincingly.
So what makes a good argument? Ideas and real evidence to back up those ideas (see Guidelines for Persuasive Writing, below). In an assignment like this, you are probably going to be using mostly anecdotal evidence (for example, "Four out of five of my classmates sleep through trigonometry."). That's fine, but you should also try to draw in the rest of the world as you know it. So, if you just read that math scores are down, you might try and explain that from your perspective. A mix of the individual and the (believably) global is ideal. You also might want to consult some outside sources. In that case, make sure you document any ideas that aren't yours. (See "Documenting Your Sources" below.) Of course, it doesn't hurt to believe in your cause.
Don't forget a key to effective persuasion -- an awareness of your reading audience. For instance, you are writing to an instructor who probably believes in education at least a little. So perhaps you would think twice about trying to persuade your instructor that no one should go to school at all. But, see www.johntaylorgatto.com for an example of a veteran public school teacher and New York State Teacher of the Year who doesn't believe in school.
It is very likely that you might consult an outside source to provide evidence for your essay. The authors of Writing Worth Reading: The Critical Process clearly explain the importance of documentation of sources:
Documenting is an essential part of presenting evidence. You must identify the source of every quotation, fact, statistic, graph, or opinion about your subject that you include in your paper. You must tell your reader where you got every bit of information that you use. Further, you must list for your reader every source you have cited in your paper. In short, you must thoroughly document your research (375).
Since we're working with the humanities (literature, history, philosophy, etc.) here, and MLA style is used in the humanities, that's what we'll use. The basic form is to use the page number in parentheses at the end of a sentence containing a quotation.
As a rule, your instructor will expect you to write at least one draft and make significant changes to it BEFORE mailing the essay. Some instructors ask to see your earlier drafts, and others do not. You may write and revise as often as is reasonable.
When writing a first draft, don't worry much about such niceties as spelling and punctuation and subject-verb agreement. You'll clean those up later. The first draft is for discovering what you have to say: it doesn't matter how you say it, whether you say it perfectly, or if you say too much. The idea is to get lots of thoughts on paper. Author Annie Dillard claims, "It doesn't hurt much to babble in a first draft, so long as you have the sense to cut out irrelevancies later."
Revision happens after the first draft. Revision is the act of re-seeing, of perfecting your language and ideas. Painters will go through a series of sketches to get to the final vision they want on the canvas. The same is true for writers. With each draft or revision, the writing moves closer to a final vision. Many writers save grammatical and spelling corrections for the last draft.
In College Writing: A Personal Approach to Academic Writing (1991, Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook), Toby Fulwiler provides two easily applied revision techniques.
"The success of a company can be attributed to the market analysis of the executives of the company."To rewrite this sentence I would go after the three "of" constructions:
"The company's success can be attributed to its executives' market analysis" (128).
How much revision is "reasonable"? Those who seldom revise should do one more than they want to. Those who always revise may do one less. You know which you are.
In a perfect world, we would revise until the essay was perfect. Walt Whitman revised his book of poems, Leaves of Grass, ten times. But in the real world, we must stop revising when the assignment is due. To do well then, you should start writing when you get the assignment, not the night before it is due in the mail. (Instructors usually recognize rush jobs, though they don't always say so.)
Think and design first, and then try for clean, clear prose. To your computers (pens). Design and persuade on! Do your best and enjoy this challenge. Your instructor is looking forward to the results.
The following are guidelines for writing persuasive essays. During the course we will focus on each one particularly, but it is never too early to take all these points into account as you write your papers. Keep this list beside your due dates calendar.
[Yes, all this takes thinking! You can do it.]
This course requires a properly maintained computer with high-speed internet access and an up-to-date web browser (such as Chrome or Firefox). The student must be able to communicate with the instructor via email. Visit the Technical Requirements and Support page for more details.