Continue drafting your individual blog post

Over the weekend, I’d like you to continue drafting your individual blog posts in preparation for our peer review workshop on Monday. To help you with this process, I would like to remind you to review all the rhetorical strategies of invention that we’ve studied this quarter and encourage you to use them as a way to generate your draft.

To help generate a focus for your argument, you might consider returning to the stasis questions or the common topics. Clarifying the kind of question that you’re answering might be one powerful way to help you frame your argument about your topic. Or, you might start by appealing to kairos and situating your discussion in relation to whatever current debates are going on in relation to your topic. You might also find a way to address appropriately a very specific audience who’s invested in this issue (and again, think of one that might be somewhat skeptical to your approach). Similarly, you might think about how you could develop your logical appeals or the reasons behind your argument, cultivate your ethos within your piece, or appeal to pathos. As we’ve also been talking about, identifying and presenting extrinsic proofs are also a compelling way to persuade your reader.

However you proceed, please aim for a draft of 3-4 pages by Monday so we can make use of our peer review time most productively. If you have any questions or run into any difficulties, please post a comment here and explain what kind of help you need. Feel free to respond to your classmates if you’re able to help out, and I will do the same. Good luck drafting!