PLAN

It is best to think of this course in two stages.

 Stage I:

For the first half of the course we will be working closely with advertisements: how they are composed, how they are meant to persuade the viewer, and the like. We will spend this time considering different scholars who discuss different advertisement techniques in contemporary culture. This will culminate in your first essay (see essay one) where you will analyze one advertisement campaign or technique. Ultimately you will be examining different compositional components of contemporary advertisements. Along with exploring visual composition, in this stage you will also learn more about the writing process itself: the different stages involved (prewriting, writing, revising, drafting, and editing), how to become a critic, presenting thoughtful and useful responses to your peer’s work, and how to synthesize the critiques others have made on your work.

 Stage II:

The second half of this course will primarily be focused on essay 2. In this assignment, you will be asked to explore a question that arose for you when we discussed advertisements in contemporary culture. While this process will begin with an exploratory question, you will eventually write a researched argument (see essay two) that engages in some way with your initial question. While you will continue to develop your writing process, we will shift our primary focus to researching. We will focus on finding appropriate sources, properly citing, and developing and maintaining your own voice while incorporating other sources. To further your research skills you will complete an annotated bibliography, which will help you evaluate your source choices. 

Your final task will be a remediation assignment. You will take your second essay and remediate it, arguing some part of your paper in a different medium. With this assignment you will make a pictorial essay, along with a reflection essay, that should reflect some aspect of your researched argument.

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By the end of this course, through a combination of weekly blog assignments, free writing, two academic essays, reflections, an annotated bibliography, and a remediation project, you will have written over 30 pages. While initially this may seem like a daunting number, this is not a solitary process. Through peer revisions, individual conferences, and classroom discussion, we will work on honing your composition skills together.