Reflection

Reflect on the writing process for your first essay. Answer these questions:

  1. What did you do well in your essay?
  2. What are the strengths and weaknesses of your essay?
  3. Where did you struggle, if at all?

Intro to Report

Reports are as diverse as all the classes you will take. You can write a report on a lab experiment, conduct interviews and assemble into a report, and even research a topic and publish it for the benefit of everyone.

Reports are a genre that you may be familiar with but not know it. Reports are what we have done since elementary school. Reports are produced by government organizations, websites, companies, universities, and even individual students like yourselves. A report can answer a question, explore a topic, review what is already known about a subject, or report new knowledge, to name a few.

There are a few qualities that a report usually has:

  • Presents information
  • Uses reliable sources
  • Aims for objectivity
  • Information is clear and well structured

For this assignment, I want you to choose a topic that interests you and you want to learn more about. It can be related to your major, future or current career, something you are familiar with, or something you want to know more about.

You can research a problem that you want to know more about.

We will learn to research the library databases in order to find reliable sources of information.

Subgenres of Report

The report can be in any style or format that you think best suits it. If you choose to do a PowerPoint, that is your report. You do not need to write a separate report, the PowerPoint should have all the information on it. Here is a list of possible choices:

The Conversation Review

We spent the first couple of weeks talking about the conversation. What was the ongoing conversation? How is it connected to a report?

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Brainstorming

Let us brainstorm some ideas. We first need to choose a topic to write about.

  • Build from lists
  • Mapping ideas
  • Freewriting
  • Memory Prompts
  • Search online for ideas

Come up with at least two ideas that you want to write about. They can be general now, they will become more focused as you begin the research.

Quick Write

What two topics are you considering for your report? List the topics you came up with in class.

Responding

Chapter four details the three major forms of response: agree, disagree, and agree but with a difference. You can argue anything.

Remember, not everything has to be an argument. For this class, we will focus on responding to arguments/conversations.

Responding Templates

The book includes many templates. Including to Disagree p. 60, Agreeing p. 62, and Agreeing and Disagreeing Simultaneously p. 64.

Write a response using the templates to one of the articles we have read. Bonus if you pick the article you are going to do for the first paper. You have to write three responses, One agreeing, one disagreeing, and one both agreeing and disagreeing simultaneously.

Why did we do this exercise?

Pop-Up Debate

Take a few minutes and write down some notes about the articles we read for today. We will be having a class debate and you can agree, disagree, or other to a point. You can also summarize first, if the debate has moved on from the point you want to make.