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?
Dr. Denise ComerAssistant Professor of the Practice; Director of First-Year Writing
