Read all of Volume 10 of the WR journal, the CAS Writing Program journal of excellent student writing, or browse the following notes to think about how you may want to teach selections from the journal in class.
WR 112 Essays
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- “Fighting Against Tribalism” by Yun Li: This paper from WR 112 (Academic Writing for ELL 2) can serve as a successful example for teaching any of the following elements:
- Introduction paragraphs that set up a debate, pose a question, and offer a well-reasoned response
- Templates and example language from They Say, I Say to help distinguish the student’s voice in response to claims made by others (especially the use of concession)
- Anticipating objections and responding to counterarguments
- Quotation integration (varied methods for integrating quotes and citing in MLA style)
- Using sources for different types of evidence (e.g. anecdotes, statistics, etc.)
- Conversing between/among sources (e.g. Sharma and Traves; Gleiser; and Lahiri)
- Conclusion paragraphs that push the conversation forward
- “Fighting Against Tribalism” by Yun Li: This paper from WR 112 (Academic Writing for ELL 2) can serve as a successful example for teaching any of the following elements:
WR 120 Essays
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- “The Importance of Place in Contemporary Irish Poetry: Krass Clement and ‘Drum’” by Claire Rich can serve as a concrete model for analyzing visual exhibits, especially photographs. Students can see the particular aspects in the photos on which she chooses to focus and evaluate how she links those elements to specific sub-claims that support her argument. Particularly since the writer includes the images that she analyzes in the text of her paper, students can also consider how the same details she explored could be interpreted differently in the context of other central claims and even how other aspects of the photographs that Claire does not address could be highly relevant to other potential arguments. This paper also strives to use analytical topic sentences that give a clear sense of each paragraph’s focus, with varying levels of success; it could be used to discuss this skill and evaluate its challenges in the distinct yet interconnected contexts explored in the body paragraphs. The writer here makes particular choices about her order of body paragraphs. Changing the sequence of paragraphs in various ways would have profoundly different effects on the argument. Inviting students to scramble the order of the paragraphs and reflect on how each revision to the order affects the argument could help students develop a deeper understanding of how to revise the sequence of points in their own drafts.
- “Full-Colorism Television” by Mariel De Los Santos: This essay was composed in a multilingual section of WR 120 as an Op-Ed (non-academic genre) essay. Whether or not you are teaching Op-Eds in your course, you might want to use this piece in the classroom to focus students on the issue of genre and genre constraints. What is different about this piece than an academic essay? What is similar? Can students “translate” a paragraph or section of the paper into the voice that would be used in an academic paper? What words, phrases, and other stylistic features jump out here and mark this paper as an Op-Ed?
- “Taking a Gamble: Considering Potential Problems and Effects on Indigenous Gaming Communities” by Danielle Slawny: Though this essay may perhaps be a little bit mechanical, for this reason it would be great for teaching structure. It has an introduction that hews closely to the method outlined by Turabian et al. in The Student’s Guide. Moreover, the essay’s body develops an effective thesis-antithesis-synthesis structure, which flows smoothly because of its elegant use of transitions. As an example for WR 120, this essay works precisely because its argumentative moves are simultaneously obvious (easy for students to spot) and deftly executed.
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WR 15x Essays
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- “‘Fall’n in the practice of a damned slave’: Racial Ideology and Villainy in Shakespeare’s Othello” by Mari Rooney models all kinds of skills to students, but it may be most valuable as a chance to talk about organization and engagement with sources in WR 15x. The paper responds to argument sources well, but also invokes historians and other contemporaneous cultural texts in ways that helpfully complicate and extend the BEAT/BEAM framework. Sophisticated source work emerges right away in the introduction (with a creative extension of a modern critic and a careful articulation of how she will use historical research to produce her own “lens”), but instructors may want to ask students to read at least the first four body paragraphs; there, they will see clear and confident acknowledgment-response, excellent transitions and topic sentences, and a thoughtful progression of the argument as analytical claims about the context keep enabling new claims about the play itself. As a bonus, highlight the strong verbs and excellent “claim-quote-analysis” structures that feature in these paragraphs. If you have time to discuss the whole essay, you can talk about the organizational logic whereby the carefully sequenced layering of claims unlocks a major argument that genuinely stands upon the foundations set by the preceding paragraphs. You can also call attention to the insightful line readings, effective deployment of signposting and “I say” maneuvers, a wonderfully nuanced approach to literary characterization, and a firm grasp of the intellectual stakes. If you assign any kind of cultural artifacts as “exhibits,” this essay can help explain how they interact with the world around them, and therefore why students’ interpretations of them matter.
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Creative or Other Genre Pieces
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- “The Life Cycle of a Tree: A Cultural Journey” by Hallie Lazaro: This project is a valuable model for future students who are remediating an academic argument into a non-academic, and perhaps multimodal, genre. It demonstrates how arguments can be emotional and associative, not only logical and narrative. Hallie’s critical introduction contextualizes the project for readers, articulates a carefully framed problem related to her poetry project, and reflects on her inspirations. As an assignment, this short essay asks the student writer to use metacognition by considering the intentions and potential impacts of particular choices (e.g. aesthetic, thematic, formal).
- “Capes, Color and Culture: Connecting Superhero Costumes and Shifting Politics” by Skylar Shumate is a great example of a script of a TED Talk. Students can read it, but it works so much better when they read it out loud to get a sense of how the writer really did create this to be presented and not merely read. This presentation also does an excellent job at presenting a problem statement and identifying what has been talked about in terms of this topic and where this work fits in. This can be used an example of how a writer has to note what he or she is not talking about in order to make a project smaller and more manageable.
- “Odette’s” by Alan Shain is an example of an alternative genre assignment that requires students to engage in rhetorical thinking more comprehensively than their academic counterparts might, especially since students have less experience composing essays in such genres. Students more quickly recognize the limitations of the five-paragraph essay structure, strained and artificial transitions, and hackneyed conclusions that merely restate the general idea without offering anything new. But some of the central rhetorical tasks of academic writing still apply: how does the writer establish context and orient his reader? How does the essay develop and sustain a larger idea, and how do the details of the essay support, extend, or complicate that idea? “Odette’s” would be an excellent candidate for reverse-outlining for these reasons: each paragraph serves a specific rhetorical purpose, and they work together to communicate a larger (implied) thesis or claim that the writer discovered through his experience. Importantly, though, the writer leaves that claim implicit rather than explicit. Students might also consider the benefits and drawbacks of that choice. It avoids making this essay sound like a clichéd Hallmark card, but it also requires him to trust the reader, to be confident that his paragraphs will illustrate this renewed appreciation for his relationship with his grandmother without having to say it outright. Alan’s essay is also an example of how a style can be articulate without seeming too robotic or rigid. Analyzing the way he varies syntax and structure to achieve this effect would work well to help students polish these finer elements of style and voice.
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