Newspaperlessness

• TR Workshop
• By verbing, it needs a subject

Negative Sports Media

Professional sports are known as great entertainment, but some people only find and report the negative news that they hear or see. News reporters, for example the reporters of newspapers and news shows, don’t always write about what happens on the field, but rather find aspects of what professional players do wrong off of the field.

The first sentence sets up a false contradiction. There’s nothing contradictory about:
A: Sports are great entertainment
B: Reporters go negative
As a consequence, readers don’t know what to make of the very first sentence, and the author loses most of her credibility.

A truer contradiction would be:
A: Sports are thrilling for the physical feats on display in athletic competition.
B: However, many reporters ignore the spectacle on the field and concentrate only on reporting negative off-the-field activities.

This is exactly the content of the second sentence, a clear demonstration that the first sentence was wasteful and confusing.

Exercise: Rewrite the first paragraph in a Reply below, in one sentence or two. Identify your comment as “Negative Sports Media.”

Learning in Our Sleep

Sleep is the most effective tool a person can utilize when wanting to improve the performance and efficiency of their brain. The more sleep someone gets the better their performance on exams and anything they are trying to learn will be.

The sentences Fail For Grammar (FFG) twice for pronoun disagreement (a person/their brain) (someone/their performance/they). But besides that they’re also quite wordy and get the essay off to a very slow start.

It says: Sleep is the most effective tool a person can utilize when wanting to improve the performance and efficiency of their brain.
It means: Sleep improves the brain’s efficiency.

It says: The more sleep someone gets the better their performance on exams and anything they are trying to learn will be.
It means: Sleeping longer helps us learn and perform better on exams.

Exercise: Rewrite the first paragraph in a Reply below, in just a few sentences. Consider using a brief, simple illustration. The tone is informational but light.

Failing Schools

The replacement of large failing public schools with smaller “specialized” schools will successfully guide underprivileged students in the right direction to become successful. Many disadvantaged students in areas like New York City are forced to attend large high schools with extremely low graduation rates. These high schools are overcrowded with students and understaffed with teachers. Classrooms are filled above capacity and the “schools are simply under managed.” These inner city areas consist of countless students living in poverty and receiving an education without the proper motivation and techniques needed to succeed.

The sentences introduce plenty of material but are wordy and repetitious.

Fat: The replacement of large failing public schools with smaller “specialized” schools will successfully guide underprivileged students in the right direction to become successful
Lean: Underprivileged students are more likely to succeed when large failing public schools are replaced with smaller “specialized” schools.

Fat: Many disadvantaged students in areas like New York City are forced to attend large high schools with extremely low graduation rates.
Lean (combine with 1st sentence): Underprivileged students in New York City are more likely to graduate when large failing public schools are replaced with smaller “specialized” schools.

Fat:These high schools are overcrowded with students and understaffed with teachers.
Lean: (Combine 1st 3 sentences): Underprivileged students in New York City are more likely to graduate when the overcrowded, understaffed public schools they’re forced to attend are replaced with smaller “specialized” schools.

Fat: Classrooms are filled above capacity and the “schools are simply under managed.”
Lean (combine with 1, 2, 3): Underprivileged students in New York City are more likely to graduate when the overcrowded, understaffed, badly managed public schools they’re forced to attend are replaced with smaller “specialized” schools, says Bill Moyers.

Fat: These inner city areas consist of countless students living in poverty and receiving an education without the proper motivation and techniques needed to succeed.
Lean: Inner-city students already living in poverty deserve better than failing schools that don’t motivate them or teach them to succeed.

Final Product:Underprivileged students in New York City are more likely to graduate when the overcrowded, understaffed, badly managed public schools they’re forced to attend are replaced with smaller “specialized” schools, says Bill Moyers. Inner-city students already living in poverty deserve better than failing schools that don’t motivate them or teach them to succeed.

Exercise: Expand the final two-sentence version back out to three or four sentences, adding a hook, a brief illustration, or an expression of opinion.

Death with Dignity

Paul Lamb, 57 was left quadriplegic in a horrific car accident twenty- three years ago. He lives day by day in pain. His only release is the constant drip of morphine into his body. Mr. Lamb is not the man that he wanted to be, having to be dependent on the help from others. He describes his life as “unbearable” because of the intense pain. He has gone to court multiple times in hopes someone will be merciful and allow him to end his suffering, but he got rejected.

The paragraph suffers from a choppy, repetitive sentence structure. Every sentence begins with Paul Lamb or a pronoun referring to Paul Lamb. The result is a series of unrelated statements that make no argument.

One Solution: Paul Lamb, 57, deserves the right to be released from his pain and dependency. For 23 years, he has lived in unbearable pain, or debilitated by a morphine drip that eases the body’s agony without relieving his total dependence on others since quadriplegia deprived him of the use of his limbs. Since he cannot be the man he wants to be, Lamb has spent years unsuccessfully battling the courts for the right to end his suffering.

Exercise: Rewrite the same material to emphasize why Mr. Lamb, and nobody else, should have the right to decide his fate.

By verbing,

Be very worried if your sentence begins with “By any verb ending in -ing.” The odds are about 50/50 you’ll fall into a syntax trap.

The winner:

By justifying the actions of the FBI, Director Comey hopes to assure Americans that their constitutional rights are being respected.

1. The opening phrase names an action taken by someone.
2. The person who acted immediately follows.

By naming the actor immediately after the action, the author wrote a good sentence.

The loser:

By diminishing our personal privacy, it is only a matter of time until we fall victim to constitutional abuses on every scale.

This sentence fails to identify how our privacy is diminished, or by whom. The only apparent subject for the action is “it.” And we have no idea who or what “it” is.

Revise the sentence in a Reply below either by providing an actor for the action, or by eliminating the dangerous “By phrase” altogether.

• Clarify Throwdown Assignment
• Workshop MW

Negative Sports Media

Professional sports are known as great entertainment, but some people only find and report the negative news that they hear or see. News reporters, for example the reporters of newspapers and news shows, don’t always write about what happens on the field, but rather find aspects of what professional players do wrong off of the field.

The first sentence sets up a false contradiction. There’s nothing contradictory about:
A: Sports are great entertainment
B: Reporters go negative
As a consequence, readers don’t know what to make of the very first sentence, and the author loses most of her credibility.

A truer contradiction would be:
A: Sports are thrilling for the physical feats on display in athletic competition.
B: However, many reporters ignore the spectacle on the field and concentrate only on reporting negative off-the-field activities.

This is exactly the content of the second sentence, a clear demonstration that the first sentence was wasteful and confusing.

Exercise: Rewrite the first paragraph in a Reply below, in one sentence or two. Identify your comment as “Negative Sports Media.”

Learning in Our Sleep

Sleep is the most effective tool a person can utilize when wanting to improve the performance and efficiency of their brain. The more sleep someone gets the better their performance on exams and anything they are trying to learn will be.

The sentences Fail For Grammar (FFG) twice for pronoun disagreement (a person/their brain) (someone/their performance/they). But besides that they’re also quite wordy and get the essay off to a very slow start.

It says: Sleep is the most effective tool a person can utilize when wanting to improve the performance and efficiency of their brain.
It means: Sleep improves the brain’s efficiency.

It says: The more sleep someone gets the better their performance on exams and anything they are trying to learn will be.
It means: Sleeping longer helps us learn and perform better on exams.

Exercise: Rewrite the first paragraph in a Reply below, in just a few sentences. Consider using a brief, simple illustration. The tone is informational but light.

Failing Schools

The replacement of large failing public schools with smaller “specialized” schools will successfully guide underprivileged students in the right direction to become successful. Many disadvantaged students in areas like New York City are forced to attend large high schools with extremely low graduation rates. These high schools are overcrowded with students and understaffed with teachers. Classrooms are filled above capacity and the “schools are simply under managed.” These inner city areas consist of countless students living in poverty and receiving an education without the proper motivation and techniques needed to succeed.

The sentences introduce plenty of material but are wordy and repetitious.

Fat: The replacement of large failing public schools with smaller “specialized” schools will successfully guide underprivileged students in the right direction to become successful
Lean: Underprivileged students are more likely to succeed when large failing public schools are replaced with smaller “specialized” schools.

Fat: Many disadvantaged students in areas like New York City are forced to attend large high schools with extremely low graduation rates.
Lean (combine with 1st sentence): Underprivileged students in New York City are more likely to graduate when large failing public schools are replaced with smaller “specialized” schools.

Fat:These high schools are overcrowded with students and understaffed with teachers.
Lean: (Combine 1st 3 sentences): Underprivileged students in New York City are more likely to graduate when the overcrowded, understaffed public schools they’re forced to attend are replaced with smaller “specialized” schools.

Fat: Classrooms are filled above capacity and the “schools are simply under managed.”
Lean (combine with 1, 2, 3): Underprivileged students in New York City are more likely to graduate when the overcrowded, understaffed, badly managed public schools they’re forced to attend are replaced with smaller “specialized” schools, says Bill Moyers.

Fat: These inner city areas consist of countless students living in poverty and receiving an education without the proper motivation and techniques needed to succeed.
Lean: Inner-city students already living in poverty deserve better than failing schools that don’t motivate them or teach them to succeed.

Final Product:Underprivileged students in New York City are more likely to graduate when the overcrowded, understaffed, badly managed public schools they’re forced to attend are replaced with smaller “specialized” schools, says Bill Moyers. Inner-city students already living in poverty deserve better than failing schools that don’t motivate them or teach them to succeed.

Exercise: Expand the final two-sentence version back out to three or four sentences, adding a hook, a brief illustration, or an expression of opinion.

Death with Dignity

Paul Lamb, 57 was left quadriplegic in a horrific car accident twenty- three years ago. He lives day by day in pain. His only release is the constant drip of morphine into his body. Mr. Lamb is not the man that he wanted to be, having to be dependent on the help from others. He describes his life as “unbearable” because of the intense pain. He has gone to court multiple times in hopes someone will be merciful and allow him to end his suffering, but he got rejected.

The paragraph suffers from a choppy, repetitive sentence structure. Every sentence begins with Paul Lamb or a pronoun referring to Paul Lamb. The result is a series of unrelated statements that make no argument.

One Solution: Paul Lamb, 57, deserves the right to be released from his pain and dependency. For 23 years, he has lived in unbearable pain, or debilitated by a morphine drip that eases the body’s agony without relieving his total dependence on others since quadriplegia deprived him of the use of his limbs. Since he cannot be the man he wants to be, Lamb has spent years unsuccessfully battling the courts for the right to end his suffering.

Exercise: Rewrite the same material to emphasize why Mr. Lamb, and nobody else, should have the right to decide his fate.

• Course Outline Update
• Class Notes
  • Don’t forget to launch your Notes for today’s live critiques of the Throwdown posts-in-progress.
• The Throwdown Model
  •  The Silence of the Lambs and Pigs updated with a second reading.
• Live Critiques.
  • If you want your Throwdown post to be reviewed live in class today, drop the comment “Live critique please” on your post.

Your next three assignments (A07, A08, and A09) combine to make up the Critical Engagement Assignment (code-named The Throwdown).

• A07: The Annotated Bibliography
  The first assignment of the Throwdown is an abbreviated version of an annotated bibliography.
  • You’ll list the usual bibliographic information: title, author, publication, date, web address, etc.
  • Author. You’ll also provide notes about the author’s relevant background, training, affiliations, previous publications, honors, awards, anything you think might affect the quality, reliability, or bias of the author’s work.
  • Publication. Finally, your bibliography will assess the reliability, credibility, popularity, academic authority, or reputation in its industry, for the purpose of assessing its relative value as a source for your assignment.
• A08: Summaries and Purposes
  The second assignment of the Throwdown is a critical analysis of your sources. It contains three sections.
  • Purposes. For each of your three sources, you’ll analyze in your own voice what you believe to be the motivation for the author’s publication. Understandably, the author always intends to inform, but only rarely is an author simply reporting facts. You’ll analyze the choices the author makes about what to report, how she characterizes the people who play roles in the stories related, the language and tone she uses to communicate the narrative. Sometimes the author will overtly persuade readers; sometimes the message will be more covert; only rarely is there no discernible purpose behind a published work.
    • For example, an excerpt from a colleague’s work: The author’s clear purpose is to undermine the validity of the Republican successes in the recent election. While factually describing the recent Republican takeover of the Senate as a result of dissatisfaction with the economy and the president, the author negatively portrays the Republicans as aggressors. Throughout the article, Democrats are portrayed as “fighting off” Republican encroachment, and finally being “toppled.” The language consistently characterizes Republican challengers as aggressors or attackers rather than champions of their constituents. Democrats are portrayed as embattled defenders trying to hold back invading forces. Democrats not fully committed to their candidates are “disengaged from the process,” while Republicans are “conflicted about their choices.”
  • Audience. Put yourself in the author’s position. What readers does she hope to reach, and why? A good Audience section is an extension of the Purposes section. It explains how the author hopes to achieve the goal of persuading different groups. What does the Author want her readers to think, feel, or do?
    
    • For example, from a colleague’s work:1) Advocates for personal privacy rights and the free press looking for evidence that government agencies often violate both; 2) Readers on the fence trying to balance their support for strenuous law enforcement with their insistence that police need to be constrained from deceptive practices; 3) the FBI, the courts, and the law enforcement community, as an expression of outrage at their tactics.
  • Summary. You’ll summarize just those parts of the source that directly apply to your topic and theme. Use the author’s voice for this section. To the best of your ability, write your summary as if the author were writing it. Instead of reporting what the author said or meant, write as if you were yourself the author.
• A09: My Take
  The third assignment (and the final section) of the Throwdown is the section where you add your voice to the conversation. Offer your own ideas on the key points or respond to what your authors have said (or both). The My Take section is the ultimate synthesis exercise, in which you blend your personal experience and background knowledge with the material you’ve learned during the research process, plus your attitudes about the other “experts” who have expressed themselves on the topic you’ve been studying.

MW Deadlines:

• A07: Annotated Bibliography
  • 11:59PM SUN NOV 09
• A08: Summaries and Purposes
  • 11:59PM TUE NOV 11
• A09: My Take Section
  • 11:59PM SUN NOV 16

TR Deadlines:

• A07: Annotated Bibliography
  • 11:59PM MON NOV 10
• A08: Summaries and Purposes
  • 11:59PM WED NOV 12
• A09: My Take Section
  • 11:59PM MON NOV 17

The Nitty Gritty

• Post in the Critical Engagement category, and your username
• Follow the Throwdown Model provided by your very devoted professor.
• Give it the official title Throwdown—Username
• Also give your Assignment a descriptive title.
  • For Example: Death with Dignity
• Provide links to sources.
• Provide a Works Cited.
• Long Argument grade category (25%)

• Course Outline Update
• Class Notes
  • Don’t forget to launch your Notes for today’s live critiques of the Throwdown posts-in-progress.
• The Throwdown Model
  •  The Silence of the Lambs and Pigs updated with a second reading.
• Live Critiques.
  • If you want your Throwdown post to be reviewed live in class today, drop the comment “Live critique please” on your post.

Conjunctive adverbs such as however, therefore, in addition, nevertheless, and furthermore, are used to transition between independent clauses and are punctuated with a semicolon and a comma, as demonstrated in the title above and the meme below.