Assignment Author
CWRL Assignment DatabasePedagogical Goals of the Assignment
Description: This is a web research and short writing assignment (3-4 pages) designed for an E314J Lit and Film class or literary contests and contexts. While reading Pride and Prejudice, we examine fan web sites devoted to Jane Austen and her work. I then ask the students to peruse these sites and works of fan fiction that utilize characters from Pride and Prejudice, and to consider how those sites influence their perceptions and interpretations of Austen and Pride and Prejudice. Students research examples of fan sites and fan fiction, formulate a thesis, and then prove that thesis by using evidence from Pride and Prejudice and the selected web site.

Assignment Author
Stephanie Odom-RobertsonPedagogical Goals of the Assignment
For students to apply the rhetorical analysis skills they have been applying to verbal texts to visual ones.

Assignment Author
Phil BarrishPedagogical Goals of the Assignment
Useful tips for writing an analytic paper.

Attribution
Visual Rhetoric WorkgroupPedagogical Goals of the Assignment
The goals of this assignment are 1) to introduce them to the difficult issue of causality and images, 2) to get them to think in abstract terms first, i.e., to argue an issue in general terms, before they apply those terms to more specific situations and test their validity, and 3) to help them decide for themselves how much evidence is “enough” for a given type of paper and what level of abstraction they need to employ in a given argumentative situation.

Attribution
Visual Rhetoric WorkgroupPedagogical Goals of the Assignment
This assignment has several goals: a) to give the students the opportunity to realize that successful arguments about rhetorical effect can be quite complex and require much research, b) to give them a chance to revise and incorporate some of their own writing into longer pieces of text with different goals, c) to help them realize that no description or comparison is “neutral;” all descriptions/comparisons have a particular rhetorical goal and audience, and their language and selection of elements is important.

Pedagogical Goals of the Assignment
The goal is to highlight the unreliability of the MS Word thesaurus, hopefully encouraging the students to use it more cautiously.

Marking Up Papers

Remember: you’re not “correcting” papers– showing the writing every error that he or she made. Papers that bleed red ink only please cruel teachers and humiliate students. You’re trying to help students become better readers, writers, and thinkers. You need to be able to justify everything you do in those terms.

Don’t zoom in on the details right away. Step back and look at the writer’s whole argument in his or her own terms.

In descending order of importance, consider these questions:

1. Can you easily determine what is the argument here and why is it important?
2. Does the essay maintain a consistent focus on that argument or does it stray off its stated or implied purpose?
3. Is the development of the argument clear, purposeful, and substantial?

Clear: you can see a progression from one point to the next