Find an article or book chapter on a topic of your choice and compose an argument that refutes the main claim of the piece. For the purposes of this assignment, the article or chapter that you refuteNOTE: You will be required to submit a xeroxed copy of the article or chapter with your paper.
- must be published in a respectable book, magazine, journal, or newspaper (no tabloids, pamphlets, brochures, or television shows),
- must be more than a single page in length,
- must argue a claim (rather than merely inform, summarize, or report), and
- must have been published in the last three years.
Keep in mind that your essay will be graded based on my usual grading criteria for papers.
As your second essay for class, revise your Essay 1.We will discuss revision in class over the next few class meetings. By revision, I do not mean merely editing or proofreading (that is, cleaning up typos, misspellings, or punctuation problems). You should certainly correct such errors in your revision, but you should also make more substantial changes. If you turn in roughly the same paper for Essay 2 as for Essay 1, you will get at least one full letter grade lower on Essay 2 than you did on Essay 1. The purpose of Essay 2's assignment is to help you to develop your revision skills. As a result, Essay 2 will be graded as much on the effectiveness and significance of the revisions you make as on the paper's inherent merits by itself.
As a way to revise,
- you may choose to do more research in order to support your claim better;
- you may choose to reorganize your paper to improve its efficiency, coherence, and appeal;
- you may decide to experiment with more risky or more creative arguments than you used in Essay 1;
- you may re-think the logic of your paper to refine and sharpen your reasoning;
- you may decide to change or narrow your main claim in order to focus more specifically on the real heart of the issue in your paper;
- you may choose to work on and modify your writing style for clarity, elegance, and effectiveness; or
- you may do some combination of any or all of these possibilities
But whatever revisions you choose to make, they must represent a significant change from your original paper and a serious re-thinking/re-seeing (that is, re-vision) of Essay 1.
For your first speech in this course, you will present to the class the argument that you constructed to refute the article or book chapter that you chose for Essays 1 and 2.In essence, you will make exactly the same argument as you made in Essays 1 and 2, but you will have to adapt and revise the argument to fit a new medium -- that of oral presentation. Among other things, you should consider how to make your argument spontaneous, clear, and interesting in an oral format.
Your speech will be graded for its merits as a speech -- not in relation to the written essays that have preceded it.
You will not be permitted to read your written essays or to memorize and recite them, so you should give considerable thought to ways of remembering the material that you wish to cover in your speech (e.g., mnemonic devices, notecards, a memorized outline).
You might think about visuals that might help your audience to appreciate your evidence or to follow your argument more easily in the oral format.
You might also consider that your audience for Essays 1 and 2 was primarily your professor, but your audience for your speech will be both your professor and your fellow classmates. How might you change your essay's argument to appeal more effectively to this larger audience?
Finally, you will probably need to cut considerable material from your written arguments in order to keep your speech within the required 3-5 minutes. What should you cut and what should you keep? What are your best arguments and your best evidence?
Keep in mind that your speech will be graded based on my usual grading criteria for speeches.