You will gain a foundation for college-level writing valuable for nearly any field. Students will learn how to read carefully, write effective arguments, understand the writing process, engage with others' ideas, cite accurately, and craft powerful prose. Course Learning Objectives • Summarize, analyze, question, and evaluate written and visual texts • Argue and support a position • Recognize audience and disciplinary expectations • Identify and use the stages of the writing process • Identify characteristics of effective prose • Apply proper citation practices • Discuss applying your writing knowledge to other writing occasions
Moving from Discussion to Draft
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From the course by Duke University
English Composition I
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From the lesson
Critical Reading
This week will concentrate on the skill of reading critically. Additionally, we will learn about the conventions of academic writing, including integrating evidence and schools of citation. Finally, you are encouraged to write your own critical review of "The Sweet Spot." This is an optional writing assignment, but it is a requirement to receive a honor's certificate.
Meet the Instructors
Dr. Denise ComerAssistant Professor of the Practice; Director of First-Year Writing
Thompson Writing Program
Hi. You've had a very robust discussion of
Coyle on the discussion forum, and now it's time for us to think about how do you move
from this really exciting conversation to a draft of your project.
We'll be doing a series of quick writes today and I'll talk about what a quick
write is in a second, to help you move towards your first draft.
The first thing that I want all of us to think about is what Group A talked about,
the claim, subclaims and evidence that Coyle presented in his argument.
A claim, you might also have heard this phrased argument or thesis.
I like the word claim because it comes from the Latin root of, clamare, which in,
what I've read anyways, can mean to shout or to cry out.
And I like that because I think it suggests that you really have something
important that you're saying, right. That you want to yell out, that's
important enough that other people really need to stop and listen.
So I like the word claim because it has that kind of intensity to it.
Sub claims would be every, most arguments have kind of major significant point to
them, but also other significant points, right that authors want to
communicate to their readers. So we want to also think about what Coil's
sub claims are, smaller arguments. And then finally, what kinds of evidence
does he use, what are the main examples. So regardless what your critical review
has in it in terms of your own personal approach to Coyle, we're all going to be as
writers trying to communicate what Coyle's main claim was,
What if, any, are his sub-claims, and then what evidence he draws on.
So, our first exercise and a quickwrite is to re-read group A's discussion forum.
You might not have time to read all of it. That's fine.
So, just browse around in group A's discussion forum and try to get a sense of
what you think most people are saying are the main claims, sub-claims, and evidence.
Or what seems most resonant with you in terms of what you think are the main
claims, subclaims, and evidence. After you've spent maybe 10, 15, 20
minutes browsing around in Group A's forum, I want you to spend just five
minutes doing a quickwrite. A quickwrite is where you sit down, you
set a timer like we did with the phone, with the brain storming list earlier this
week. You set a timer and you just write for
five minutes. Try not to stop writing, even if you get
stuck and you're not sure what to say. You might actually write, I'm stuck, I
don't know what to say. And then, sooner or later, hopefully, your
brain will go back to focusing. Quickwrites can be very loose, where a
teacher or someone just, or someone just chose to do a quickwrite just on nothing,
right? Let me just do a quickwrite, kind of get
my head into writing and that's good.
Today I'm going to offer you a focused quickwrite because I'm going to ask you
specifically to write about something. What I'd like you to do is set a timer for five
minutes, and when you're ready, begin writing, what do you think is Coyle’s main
argument. What do you think his subclaims are, and
what are his main pieces of evidence? Don't find the page numbers and quotes
yet, and don't look on the discussion forum yet.
Just from your reading, just take a second with your own brain, your own head, and
just try to get at what you believe to be his main claim as.
And then after the quick write we'll come back and find the page numbers.
Okay, so hopefully you've done your quickwrite for five minutes.
Now, so we don't get too far away from the text itself of Coyle, I'd like you to take
a few minutes and whatever you had identified as his main claim, subclaims
and evidence, I'd like you to look through Coyle's text and add page numbers to your
quickwrite, so that you can have those in place for your draft.
After we all have a sense of what we think are his main claims, subclaims, and
evidence, then we're going to turn in our draft to figuring out what your approach
is. This is still kind of moving from the
discussion through to your draft. This is going to be your unique
perspective and maybe every single person in the class will have a slightly
different version of a critical review. I hope you do.
I wouldn't want them to all be the same because that would be not as exciting to
read as me hearing what you have to think and your colleagues hearing different
ideas. So this is not about whether Coyle's ideas
are good or bad. You're not evaluating the ideas for
how strong they are or how weak they are. What you're really thinking about is the
uses and limits of Coyle's approach. As well as perhaps, any underlying
assumptions, his motivations, his purpose. Any of those really nuance, sophisticated
aspects of his text, that groups B, C, D, and E were charged with talking about.
I'm going to ask you in second to do a quickwrite again, but first I want you to
be thinking about this question. What do you have to say about Coyle's
argument? What strikes you as interesting?
What do you think your readers should know about Coyle's argument?
So this is another iteration of what we did with group A's ideas, but instead this
time I'd like you to spend around 15 minutes browsing through groups B, C, D,
and E, those discussions forums, and then you're going to do two quickwrites.
There's a lot of really good material there, so it's going to be hard to just
spend 15 minutes, but I thought doing two quickwrites might get you further along
towards identifying what it is that you want to say in your draft.
So reread groups B, C, D and E, and then put those aside and find something to
write with. Set your timer for a quick write.
Again, just keep writing even if you get stuck or you run out of things to say,
just say, I'm running out of things to say.
Anyways, do a quickwrite on what strikes you as significant.
What are you interested in thinking more about, based on those discussion forums.
Okay, and again, now you should have done your quickwrites, so now go back to
Coyle's text and identify the page numbers and quotes and put those in your
quickwrite, so you can have them when you are moving on to writing your draft.
I would like you to do another iteration of that because you might not have
actually landed on what you find most significant yet, so give yourself a little
more time to do another quickwrite based on groups B, C, D, and E, and then after you
are done with that quickwrite, find the page numbers based on these three
quickwrites that we've done today. You should have a kind of working draft.
You should have identified the way you’re going to summarize Coyle and then the
critical review part of that, right? What do you want to say to
your readers about Coyle’s argument?
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