Where we were back in October

You probably won't remember where we left off at the end of October. We were considering five provocative articles I'd found, on  Affirmative Action, Charity and Taxes, Creationism and Teaching, Islam and Koran burning, and Climate Change We were trying to see if we could recognize whether a writer is seriously advancing a position, or offering an argument that she knows (or hopes) the reader will disagree with so deeply that she'll recognize she wasn't supposed to agree. The underlying question was about how we recognize that (or are supposed to). I'd said that we would come back to these articles at the beginning of this term's English disciplinary seminars, but it strikes me that we actually now have a better source of examples of how writing works -- the work you've been doing in putting together your Frankenstein monster of a draft. So here's what we'll do instead, thinking about the transaction between writer and reader, this time, from the writer's point of view.

Where we are now

Go through your copy of your group's Frankdraft. Select a passage, in length somewhere between a paragraph and a page (let's say between 50 and 200 words), that you have questions about that you think a reader might help with. The questions should be specific -- not, in other words, is this clear? is this smooth? is this concise and to the point? what grade would you give this? They should be questions about phrasing, sentences, organization, and (especially) about the point your writing is trying to make and what the readers think the point is, what it assumes they believe and what they actually believe. It may help you in thinking about the kinds of questions you might ask to go back and look at the discussions of the five articles we ended last term's English seminars with: in some cases the issues around what the text expected of its readers might help you think about what your text is expecting of its readers.

Copy the passage into a new file, which has your name and "English Prompt 13" at the top. below the passage, write at least five questions that you think a reader might help you with. Save the whole works as a file called english13.doc in your section of the dropbox for your inquiry group. Print it out and bring it to class Thursday afternoon at 2:30.