Persuasive Writing 103-01

Fall 06  Resident

Dr. Edward E. Eller

Office: Admin 3-28

Office Hours:  Click Here

Office Phone #: 342-1495

Webaddress: www.ulm.edu/~eller/103

Class texts and supplies

Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal by Eric Schlosser

Lundsford, Andrea.  The Everyday Writer.  Boston:  Bedford/St. Martin P, 2004.

Schlosser, Eric.  Fast Food Nation:  The Dark Side of the All-American Meal.  Harper Perennial P, 2005.

Regular access to a dependable computer with Internet connections.

A flash drive.

Course description

PERSUASIVE WRITING. 3 cr. Composition of persuasive essays, including documented papers. Includes study of various forms of argument. Prerequisite: 101.

During the semester students will have an opportunity to choose social and political issues of interest to them and join a group of fellow students in an investigation of those controversial topics.  The main focus of this class is on doing various kinds of real-world, independent research on controversial issues and practicing different ways to present those issues to an audience of peers.  The semester concludes with an informed argument paper.

Class philosophy

Writing is a skill just as surely as is playing the guitar or throwing the ball.  Like any skill, it can be developed and sharpened.  Talent and genetics and culture have something to do with the degree and ease of developing such skill, but just about anybody can become a competent persuasive writer if enough time and energy are devoted to the effort.  

    So the main activity of a writing class -- of this class -- should be practice under the guidance of good coaches.  Typically, most of the writings will be short items -- 100-500 words -- with quick feedback from each other and from expert coaches.  

      The object of these "coaching sessions" will be to:

• Identify an important strength in your writing;

• Identify one or two major areas of weakness on which to work;

• Model brief rewrites and edits and provide quick examples of improvements which you could make.

During the course of these exchanges, we will most importantly be behaving as professionals, engaged in the collection, organization, and presentation of information and ideas with which we have both an intellectual interest and an emotional concern.  Our activities will mirror the real-life behavior of professionals.

Main goals

Goal #1:  Practice applying key skills and ideas for persuasion and argument:  paraphrase, summary, and conventional patterns of discussion.

Goal #2:  Examine the validity of a set of ideas presented by Eric Schlosser's Fast Food Nation -- examining the claims he makes, analyzing his use of ethos, pathos, and logos, finding facts and ideas that both support and contradict the content of the Schlosser's book.

Note:  Even though grammar / mechanics can severely damage your grade and, in fact, be the sole cause of failure, this is not a grammar / mechanics class.  If you have trouble with grammar / mechanics which will prevent you from succeeding in this class, the teacher will let you know and direct you to the ULM Writing Center [Admin 2-52] which is ready to help you work out major problems.

Goal #3:  After having examined closely and at length the issues and arguments suggested by Schlosser's text, either develop a related argument supporting his argument or develop arguments which effectively counters some aspect of his argument.

    Our main shared text this semester is Fast Food Nation:  The Dark Side of the All-American Meal, written by Eric Schlosser.  During the semester there will be other short readings which we will share, and some memorization of information and ideas, but our main goal will be to put to practice and develop the habits it takes to produce a respectable argument.  With that goal in mind, here are most of the topics we'll discuss and practice together:

Practicing and applying key skills and ideas for persuasion and argument

• Paraphrasing quotes, and building a short essay on a paraphrase foundation

  • A series of paraphrasing exercises

  • Choose your best paraphrase and build a short essay around it

• The summary-paraphrase -- after having practiced summary / paraphrases of short passages, develop an independent report on the content of some subtopic in Schlosser's report.

• Collecting information and ideas

  • Take care to track sources of ideas and information 

  • Practice good summaries, paraphrases, and quoting

  • Do research using a variety of research methods

• Clarifying ideas 

  • Putting research into the context of your own concerns

  • Developing a complex, and logical main claims

  • Using syllogisms to clarify main ideas

  • Recognizing and avoiding logical fallacies

• Presenting ideas and information  

  • Ways to begin and end

  • Traditional and Rogerian structure -- outlining and listing

  • Developing paragraphs around expected structures, especially general-to-specific 

  • Practice and implement a selection of stylistic devices -- parallelism, repeated sentence structure, analogy, the verb

Class Policies

• Attendance: 

  • Resident Students:  Roll will be called every class period and participation in class discussions and activities is expected.  Weak participation in class discussion is the same as being absent.  Absence and lack of participation will be tracked in Blackboard Gradebook.  Excessive absence [4 or more unexcused] during the semester will result in a report to your Dean and a request that you be dropped from the rolls.

   

  • Internet Students:  Timely participation in discussion groups, chats, and email is the same thing as attendance. Since you would spend 3 hours in class every week if you were attending a resident class, you should spend at least 3 hours each week in our discussion boards. 

All attendance scores are worth a max of 50 points in a two week discussion round using Blackboard Discussion Board.  Each substantive act of participation is worth 10 points.  So to get a possible full credit on a two week round of discussion, you must participate substantively 5 times.  [Click here to find out what substantive means.]  In addition, in order to receive good credit, you will need to spread your participation out over the period of the discussion, going back to discussion board several times during the round.

• Technical Problems:

  • Eller is tolerant -- up to a point -- with the time it takes to work out technical problems when writing and submitting assignments.

  • If you get kicked out of an open-book, Blackboard-posted quiz, email the teacher or teacher's assistant and they will arrange for you to take a different version of the quiz on-site or at a specified time with an approved proctor.  Unlike the quizzes, though, the make up quiz will not be open-book.

• Communication with Teacher:

  • Students can expect about a 24-72 hour turn return on emails.  Not all emails will be answered especially if the question can easily be answered by reference to previous emails or by looking at the Internet-posted Syllabus and Schedule or Blackboard Announcements.

  • Teacher is not on email 24/7.  Email received after five o'clock in the evening during the work week and on the weekends will not be immediately answered.  However, on weekends, teacher may occassionally spend a period of time responding to emails.  If teacher takes a short email holiday for conference visits, etc. he will inform the class before hand.

  • Students needing immediate feedback on class-related problems can use Eller's cell phone number between 7 p.m. and 9 p.m. on weekdays and during the weekend.

  • Check Eller's on-line schedule at <http://www.ulm.edu/~eller/eschedule.htm> for hours in which he will be available in his office.

   

• Late Fees:  Papers are not considered late if the written assignment is turned in before Eller finishes evaluating all the previously submitted assignments in that assignment group.  If you have not turned an assignment in by the time Eller has finished evaluating the group already submitted, an

  arbitrary penalty will be assigned to your work.  Writings are always accepted no matter how late they may be, but the later they are the stronger the penalty applied to the final grade after evaluation.

   

• Submitting Final Assignments: 

  • Unless otherwise instructed all final writing assignments must be sent to Eller in a readable file format using Blackboard's digital dropbox [Click here for sending and file format requirements]. 

  • However, Eller may often choose to read your work in hardcopy at any time.  Even so, the assignments should be sent to Blackboard.ulm.edu digital dropbox.

  • Readable formats:  Rich Text Format, Word, WordPerfect.  [Teacher cannot read Works files].

  • Writing assignments will be screened by turnitin.com.  Check this website out to see how it works.

   

• First time plagiarism or cheating of any kind, whether intended or "accidental," will fail a writing assignment or test.  Second time plagiarism will fail you in the course.

Name of assignment

Approx. Points

Formal topics  covered

Unit One:  Practicing Paraphrasing, and Building your

first persuasive essay with sentence variety 

[Weeks 1 - 3]  

Practice Paraphrases

25

What is paraphrase and summary.  Teacher Models.

Short Persuasive essay built around paraphrases relevant to the content of Fast Food Nation

25

Rules for quoting sources.

Sentence Variety [Review of 101 and exercises; an applied lesson]

50

Simple, compound, complex

Unit Two:  Summary, Paraphrase,

and Rhetorical Appeal

[Weeks 4 - 7]

3 practice summary/paraphrases [25 each]

30

Practice writing summaries

Short Persuasive Essay Built around a summary of an essay relevant to the content of Fast Food Nation

50

Quote, Paraphrase, Elaborate, Compare, and give Examples

A One Paragraph rhetorical analysis of a fast food advertisement

25

Rhetorical approaches to a subject:  Ethos, Pathos, Logos

Unit Three:  Researching and Citations

[Weeks 8-12]

Primary Research -- Group Work with an oral report to the class

• Interview an expert and produce a short transcript:  deliver a brief oral report to the class

• Track the food habits of 10 students [including your own] and produce a brief summary report to the class

• Visit 5 different fast food chains, collect their menus and any nutrition data they offer [a camera would be useful here] and produce a brief oral report for the class

50

Research

List of facts which confirm and/or contradict some aspect of Eric Schlosser's argument in Fast Food Nation

25

Finding and Evaluating Source Material in the library databases.

Short Persuasive essay built around a summary of an essay found in j-stor which is relevant to the content of Fast Food Nation

75

Citation rules and forms

Unit 4:  Organizing your ideas and clarifying

the issues presented in Fast Food Nation

[Weeks 12-14

The "IT" chat

50

Syllogisms, Ethymemes and Logical Fallacies.

Editorial letter to newspaper or person of consequence concerning some aspect of issue which Eric Schlosser presents in Fast Food Nation

50 [with 10 point bonus if published or responded to in writing]

Making complex and focused claims.

Throughout the Semester

Miscellaneous on line activities -- peer reviews, on-line assignments, quizzes, and exercises [approximate]

150

Complex sentence structure.

Final informed argument

100

2 Tests [Midterm and Final] -- Skills check

100 (50 each)