Moving into the unit 2 essay
Your homework for this weekend is to draft an initial introduction to an essay about social network sites. I understand that this writing task may offend some of your writing sensibilities; often writers save the introduction for last, since sometimes we don’t know what our essay is going to say until we write it (and how does one introduce something that doesn’t exist yet?). Clearly, I understand, but at this point I simply need you to humor me and start writing.
I suggest that you start with some kind of question or interest that has emerged from your preliminary work for unit one and the annotated bibliography. While the unit 2 essay does NOT need to draw specifically from your annotated bibliography, you might find one or two of the pieces particularly controversial or confrontational and that you’d like to “settle their differences.” Or, you might find that one of the texts you annotated either resonates or significantly conflicts with your own personal experience using SNS. However you decide on a focus (“social networking AND _____”), make sure you begin to look for additional sources to supplement what you already have.
For Monday, simply begin writing. I’d like everyone to come with a decent paragraph. It doesn’t have to be long (half page double spaced will suffice), but I do want to see evidence of careful (thoughtful!) wording and editing.
In addition, you’re reading Bazerman’s “Intertextuality,” which will provide for us a second method for conducting the content analysis. Make sure you read closely; the quiz for this reading is slightly more rigorous than earlier quizzes have been thus far.
Class on Monday will include working carefully through Bazerman’s method, as well as close workshopping of those introductory paragraphs.
