Taking this class has opened my eyes about the meticulous process that is writing. Especially, I have been introduced to the art of deconstructing someone else’s argument in order to incorporate it in my own writing. This reflects the underlying theme of the course, which is “They Say, I say”. This is the theme that I would feel the most comfortable to teach because throughout my writing, I have always been able to effectively use someone’s else argument or statement to support my own. In my Research Paper Draft, for example, I write: “In the New York times, John Mcworther argues that languages provide “variations on a worldwide, cross-cultural perception of this thing called life.”, allowing us to each have different opinions and different ways to express them. (Mcworther, 2014). It can be seen that here I incorporate his own words into my writing in order to validate my point that languages offer different perspectives.

If I were to teach this concept to others, I would first come up with a thesis statement of my own that backs up a particular argument. I would write it on the board giving an idea of what I am to write about. Then, I would ask everyone to find one other classmate to work with and distribute different articles/research papers to each pair of students. I would give them 15 minutes to read the article and find anything that the author says that could support or refute the original thesis statement written on the board. Finally, I would ask them to write a They Say, I Say statement in a paragraph that incorporates how the thoughts of the author they read about are able to either support or contradict the thesis. As a class, we would discuss how effective the article mention is and how it contributes to the development of a well structured argument.
This exercise would be able to make others understand how to incorporate someone else’s argument into one’s writing so to craft an argument or idea that is coherent and original.

If I were given the chance to teach Freshmen about writing in Sci-Fi field, I would like to teach them how to make a “They Say I Say” structure. I personally feel that being able to respond to  another idea is extremely important and essential for writing, especially in Sci-Fi field. Sci-Fi works are naturally bonded with real life sciences and imagination. However, neither of these two elements can work without the other. As authors, we have to learn to balance between realistic values and our own perspectives. By using a “They Say I Say” structure, authors can effectively show readers their thesises and the reason they write. In addition, referring to others’ works can also increase the credibility of our own papers much as Sci-Fi authors implement real-life technologies to make audiences feel that their stories are based on real life.

I have designed several activities so that students will get engaged in class. First of all, I will let students make a Pecha Kucha presentation since I really love the one we did this year. I did not do perfectly on my presentation since I failed to apply close reading skills. Based on my mistake, I will ask my students to focus on close reading. I would not necessarily ask them to pick a physical object, but I will ask them to pick a critic who they are interested in. I will ask them to pick 20 quotes from the critics’ works and comment on those quotes. They can either support or refute those quotes but within 20 seconds. In this way, students need to figure out what is the most important part of their quotes and thus respond to it. Furthermore, I will let them write a formal research paper based on this presentation. They can have different topics, but they have to include at least two quotes they used in their presentation. In this way, students need to think how they can build their essay around evidences and thus learn to use “They Say I Say” structure.

The skill that I really want to teach to incoming freshman is how to use the structure of “quotation sandwich” to integrate citation into a paper and let it better serve the thesis.

In order to let students fully understand the usefulness of this structure and remember to use it whenever they have a citation, I will design a small game. At first, I will show my students a piece of meat, such as toasted beef. I will ask them to think about what this meat is, where it might come from and why it shows up in the classroom. I hope that they might have many wrong answers because only after they make mistakes can this game and the structure that I want to tell them leave a great and indelible impression. When all the students have their guesses, I will tell them that actually this is just a piece of meat I take out from a sandwich. And then I will put the meat back into the two pieces of bread with lettuce. Within a second, the existence of this piece of meat makes more sense. In the end, I will tell my students that if one puts a citation in his paper without any introduction or summary, this citation will be just like this piece of meat; readers will be confused about why the writer puts such a citation here. However, if one introduces the author, and source of the citation and then give a short summary after the citation with a beginning like “in other words…”, “what this means is that…” or “this author is trying to convey that…”, the whole citation will make the paper more consistent and convincing.

During my study of Eng181, I am very impressed of the use of “quotation sandwich” which I believe lightens my logic in my paper. So I wish that other students can also understand the great advantages a successful “quotation sandwich” can give to the paper.

If I had to guest lecture in the next section of this course, the skill I would be most confident teaching would be using ethos, logos, and pathos as rhetorical appeals. These three methods of persuasion involve credibility, logic, and emotion, respectively. They are used in order to draw the audience’s different interests and gain their attention towards the importance of an argument. Throughout the course, we have spent a lot of time understanding how to utilize these appeals effectively and how to use key quotes and information to portray them.

In order to teach this method, I would begin by providing a simple triangle diagram that separates and explain the three distinct strategies. The explanation would involve a word or two that defines the word such as “emotion/values” for “Pathos” and then the main techniques used in order to address said characteristics. In this case, possibly the use of “stories, inspiration, vivid language, etc.”

In order to reaffirm their understanding, I would go through an activity where the class would be separated into thirds and each group would receive one of the rhetorical strategies. Then, the group would discuss a manner to demonstrate their specific appeal through a short work of writing. For example, with pathos, they can write a short story that reflects a traumatic, excessively happy, heartfelt theme; something that captures the hearts and passions of an audience. In terms of logos, they could write a statement and then provide clear evidence or statistics using a made up source as way to prove their argument. For ethos, they can discuss a main point using a historical figure as a source or a famous quote from a specific leader that demonstrates the importance of their argument. Then, they would all present their work to the class, really focusing in on how they crafted their work and the steps they took in their respective categories to create the appeal.

The artifacts I would want to showcase are, the letter, Pecha Kucha, a blog post from early in the year, one from later in the year, and my final paper rough draft and final. I feel like these artifacts would show my growth as a writer throughout the year and would also highlight the assignments I enjoyed doing the most.

Outcome 1:

My portfolio will cover a wide selection of genres displaying diverse forms of writing. This will show that I am an open author not limited to one form of writing. The letter will show the creative side to my writing and it will demonstrate how I can closely analyze a character and adopt their persona. My letter is interesting because it continues the story but also incorporates my own writing elements. My Pecha Kucha is a unique form of rhetorical analysis. This will exhibit that I can closely analyze an image or idea and break apart its arguments. This genre is extremely unique because presentations are not usually considered as writing, but the same analysis goes into both. The Pecha Kucha was my favorite assignment of the year and I feel like it most adequately depicts me. The blog post is a new and unique genre as well. Our blog posts reveal that we can follow a prompt and still incorporate our own ideas. Most of the blogs required us to use the “they say, I say” method, which is one of our major class themes. Finally the final paper is most important because, although it is not as creative, it takes all the skills we learned throughout the year to do. The paper showcases our ability to, research, analyze, respond, and to craft a paper. This assignment takes the most work and represents us the most because we are arguing our own individual opinions. I think that my portfolio will present me as a diverse writer capable of analyzing a topic and composing a presentable argument.

In my cover letter, I am considering showcasing my blog post 4, blog post 5, proposal and annotated bibliography, rough draft, and final paper to show my growth as a writer through writing as a process.  My blog post 4 was the comparison of an image in Patrick Ness’s The Knife of Never Letting Go to the never-ending stream of data and lack of privacy and how that affects identity in Gary Shteyngart’s Super Sad True Love Story. The use of a secondary source in comparison to Gary Shteyngart’s Super Sad True Love Story is found in blog post 5, where I brought in Melissa Nilles’ article, “Technology is Destroying the Quality of Human Interaction” to relate the technological detachment found in the novel to today’s society.  Both of these blog posts gave me ideas to build off of and inspired my topic for my final paper.  My proposal and annotated bibliography in comparison to my final paper will prove how much my ideas have transformed through the writing process.  From their simple origins, my thoughts for my final paper started out with a very large scope as seen in my proposal, and slowly narrowed back down to my original analysis of Super Sad True Love Story.  After getting the basis of the ideas for my paper, I like to write them down and add bullet points of subtopics that I can think of off the top of my head. At this point, I tend to just ramble on about my topic to a willing listener, so that they can give me feedback if any of it makes sense without context.  Then, I tend to go back to my sources and look for specific passages that pertain to those subtopics that I can use to quote and expand or refute my claim.  I then annotate the sources, so that I can come back to them at a later date, and still have specific notes and examples to easily pull from when I begin writing the actual paper.  I generally don’t like outlines, because I tend to restrict myself by only sticking to them instead of letting the creative thoughts flow naturally on paper.  Once I have my general topic, subtopics and specific details, I am able to start writing my rough draft where I throw all of my thoughts down on paper.  I tend to need revision of the organizational aspects for my papers and specific wordings, because occasionally I struggle to get my thoughts to make sense on paper rather than just in my head.

In my cover letter, I would like to explore in particular the artifacts that led me to developing the larger components of my final portfolio. My primary considerations are my blog posts regarding the Staten Island bar scene of Gary Shteyngart’s Super Sad True Love Story (blog post #2), the Grey’s Anatomy ad as my Pecha Kucha artifact (blog post #3), the literary analysis letter and reflection, and choosing Super Sad True Love Story to be my literary text for my final paper (blog post #7).

I have chosen to focus on Learning Outcome #3:Writing as Process in this blog post. My researched argument has already undergone an editing process, from proposal to rough draft to (soon to be) final. My proposal became an outline before it became a rough draft, and the rough draft underwent a reverse outlining process during peer editing in class. This process was extremely helpful, as when I tend to compose rough drafts, my paragraphs tend to run on until they run out of directions to go in, rather than ending and starting new paragraphs every time I switch directions. Yes, informal kinds of writing managed to sneak into the process. I’ve talked out my paper ideas with friends who were unfamiliar with the text in order to get the opinions of unbiased, uninformed audience members. They weren’t much help as to interpreting the text, but I was able to figure out how to tackle the part of the paper regarding technology’s influence on social interaction with the help of outside opinions. Ultimately, I intend my final paper to be the best product of my previous drafts possible, and I continue to use all the available tools to produce this work.

One project that underwent several changes was my proposal and annotated bibliography. It was born out of Blog Post #7, a post in which I researched an article relating to Frankenstein titled “The Monster in a Dark Room: Frankenstein, Feminism, and Philosophy” and the potential arguments I would make with it. However, I still had ideas that I jotted down on my computer, from class discussion points that stuck with me to ideas swirling in my head, that I wanted to explore. In order to contemplate these ideas, I met with my professor outside of class and bounced ideas off of her until we finally came to a solid idea with which I could manage. When I began my proposal, I still had to contemplate which ideas I had accumulated with my professor were cohesive and formed a proper argument. To aid with this, I began researching sources before completing my proposal. As I researched sources, I developed arguments and counterarguments that I could potentially use, then cited them and annotated them as I incorporated them into my proposal. The proposal itself slowly focused in on what I wanted to write about, but even when I finished some things still weren’t clear. I had been sure to focus on writing techniques that we had discussed in class, such as a “They say, I say” statement for my objective, but peer-reviews allowed me to see what I needed to clear up for my rough draft. My professor also gave me feedback independent of my peers, which highlighted other aspects of my proposal that were good and that were needing revision. This one project was a long process, but was necessary in the scheme of my final paper.

While I do not have a concrete idea of how I want to present my final portfolio, I feel its definitely important to display a visible progress and improvement. Thus, I most likely will be including my first blog post, “Eye in the sky” and whatever my last blog post may be. For the “Eye in the sky” blog post I only suggested my opinions on the subject matter without really taking into consideration what others may think of the topic. This is a technique we thoroughly learned in class and one that I believe I have effectively utilized in my later works. With these two blog posts as a starter, I will try and find blog posts that truly reflect the progress I have made during this course.

As for the one of the three outcomes that I want to focus on, I would like to put emphasis on outcome 2. Much of this class has been devoted into learning how to strengthen my own argument by acknowledging and at times rebutting what others may say about my argument. This has included finding works of other scholars to further support my thesis or present a counter argument and denounce it to further validate my points. So I will try and include blog posts where I effectively incorporate the use of the “I say They say” model that has been emphasized so often in class. I feel that the assignment that best reflects this is the researched argument on Frankenstein. Here, finding, analyzing and evaluating the works of other scholars to better support my own argument is a critical element and I strongly feel that this paper will be the best embodiment of my ability to incorporate the ideas of others into my own writing.

For my final portfolio, I would like to put my literary analysis letter in cover letter because of how much I enjoyed creating a letter in the mind of Eunice. There were a lot of critiques about Eunice’s personality, and I wanted to show in my letter that while she was conforming to the personality that her society wanted to see, she is more intelligent and mature than she wants everyone to see. As a result, out of impulse, she expresses signs of maturity rather than her normal juvenile behavior. I would also like to like to put my Pecha Kucha presentation in my cover letter because it was the one I worked on the hardest because I wanted my artifact to be as deeply analyzed as possible. It was really cool in my opinion of how I was able to make something scary and turn it into an inspirational artifact that shows tactics that the United States still use today. I would also like to include my proposal and annotated bibliography because of how well thought out the paper was before actually writing it. I would also like to include my final paper to show how much I have grown as a writer by the end of the class.

For Outcome 1: My portfolio contains a literary analysis letter in the point of view of Eunice in Super Sad True Love Story. This literary analysis letter allowed me to write as if Eunice is writing in a letter format and not through email. This allowed her to show some of her true inner feelings without technology interfering with it. I also selected some word choice that would show some of her juvenile and also some of her mature side so that the audience can also see a different side of her normal personality through Lenny and technology. The portfolio also contains blog posts where I am either analyzing or getting more information out of a certain topic. The portfolio also contains the Pecha Kucha presentation which is an oral format of participation. The Pecha Kucha presentation was important because it taught me how to plan to make sure that I fit in the time constraints. The genres of my literary writings were mostly analysis because of how this class is based on how you can make up something different from what everyone says. I will include everything but the lesser blog posts that are just summaries because it doesn’t say anything interesting about my writing. The other genres are included because it shows how my writing style changed through the course of the class.