ENG 123 A @ UNE

Reply to this post to ask any question you might have. I’ll monitor this post and try to get you a timely answer.

Use the comments you generated on your draft to make substantive revisions to your paper. Make sure to assess all of the changes you make from the readers’ point of view. Changes should make your ideas clearer and more easily understood.

I expect to see:

• An introduction that better comes-to-terms with the pop music debate you’re writing about and articulates a clear thesis with a complaint and a pitch.
• At least one new paragraph integrated into your argument – consider introducing a naysayer.
• At least one new example introduced, explained, and connected to something another writer says.
• Improvements in forwarding and countering sources.
• Improvements in the conclusion.
• Improvements in consistency of signal phrasing, quality of signal verbs, voice marking, use of pivotal words (transitions), and the 4 strategies to bring coherence within and between paragraphs.

Submit your final paper by re-sharing it with me no later than Sunday, March 29 at midnight (your local time) and posting it on your UNEportfolio.

Back to Remote Learning Calendar

Critiquing your own work and the work of others is one of the most important learning outcomes for the ENG 122-123 sequence. So far this year, we’ve developed draft reviewing and commenting skills by commenting on other students’ papers, but every professional needs to be able to assess the quality of their own written products and be able to improve them. You’ll develop your ability to do this work by using the same skills and procedures to analyze on your own writing and determine what improvements to make.

PRO TIP: Be sure to follow the links in the instructions below to refresh your memory of the advanced source-use strategies we were working on before break.

Focus your attention on these areas of your paper:

1. How well does your introduction “come-to-terms” with the full-range of the debate you’re writing about?
   • By this I mean, a) How well does it introduce the topic of debate and the most important questions that people are arguing about? b) How well does it narrow the debate to a smaller subtopic that your paper will address? c) How well does it bring forward the key terms and ideas of the most important 2 or 3 writers of the debate? d) How well does it establish your own thesis with both a complaint and a pitch (follow the link for a refresher on complaint and pitch).
2. How well do you “come-to-terms” with the sources/writers who influenced your thinking on the question?
   • define the writer’s project
   • notice and define key words and passages
   • assess the uses and limits of the writer’s approach to the topoc
3. How well do you make the 4 forwarding and 3 countering moves when you paraphrase or quote another writer?
4. How well does your conclusion highlight your contributions to the debate as a response to another writer’s view and say why your contribution matters?

Follow This Link for Important Information
on How to Be a Successful Online Student

I hope each of you – and every member of your family – is safe, well-supplied, and taking social distancing precautions to prevent the spread of the Novel Coronavirus.

Events have evolved rapidly since we last met. Some universities have already been practicing remote learning for a week or more now, and faculty and students have been sharing their experiences. We have learned quite a bit about the challenges of continuing learning during a pandemic.

One of the most important takeaways from these early weeks of remote learning is that both students and faculty need flexibility to determine their work flow in order to cope with their new realities. I understand that you or I may need to care for sick family members, have obligations to children or siblings, have inconsistent access to the internet, be living in different time zones, be coping with difficult interpersonal situations, be stressed out by the news and local happenings (or just have “helpers” like Sylvie who like to sit on your laptop while you work).

The Plan to Hold Class Live via Zoom is Cancelled

Because of this shared need for flexibility, I no longer think that holding online meetings during our regularly scheduled class time via Zoom is the best strategy for continuing our College Reading & Writing II course.

To be clear, you are NOT required to attend class by joining a Zoom meeting every M, W, and F at 10 am Eastern time.

So What’s Going to Happen?

Online Office Hours

Follow This Link for Important Information
on How to Be a Successful Online Student

I will hold online office hours every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday at 10 am. Join my office hours via a Zoom meeting link that I’ll post on the course website. I’ll hold my first office hour this coming Monday, March 23. I hope to see you then.

These office hours are optional, but please use these hours to learn more about assignments, get help, troubleshoot problems with access to materials, or just to check in.

You can also send me an email. Expect a reply within 24 hours.

Between the hours of 9 am and 5 pm (Eastern time), you can call me on my Google Voice number (sent to you in an email on March 19, 2020).

Assignments

Follow This Link for Important Information
on How to Be a Successful Online Student

Each Monday morning about 7 am, I will post the complete set of reading, writing, and discussion assignments due for the week on the Remote Learning Calendar page of our course website. Look for the first set of assignments to be posted Monday, March 23.

Some assignments will be due by Thursday at midnight (your local time); others will be due by Sunday at midnight (your local time).

You’ll submit some assignments by posting them on your ePortfolio (be sure to categorize them with ENG 123!). Other assignments will be submitted by replying to posts on our class website. Still other assignments will ask you interact with your peers in an online discussion forum hosted on our class website.

The Very Real Challenge of Managing the Homework

Follow This Link for Important Information
on How to Be a Successful Online Student

I think it’s important to recognize the realities that this shift to online learning is happening very quickly on a crisis basis. None of us expected to be finishing our course in this modality and many of you are new to learning online.

One of the biggest challenges for students new to online learning is managing and scheduling the workload. It will come as no surprise to anyone that many of us have faced the challenge of completing homework on time for most of the academic year.

I think some of the low homework completion rate comes from a belief that the real work on the paper starts the night before the draft is due.

To help you commit to the weekly assignments, we will not be writing a larger formal paper for Paper 3. We can develop fluency in all of the course learning outcomes by writing frequent short informal pieces of writing.

So, once we’re done revising Paper 2, the informal writing you do each week will be how you demonstrate fluency in the course learning outcomes and earn your grade.

It will be important for you to keep up and submit your work each week.

If events in your life change, making it impossible for you submit work one week, please be in touch to make arrangements.

Follow This Link for Important Information
on How to Be a Successful Online Student

Please Be in Touch with
Any Questions or Concerns!

Final Assignment (due May 1)| Week of April 20-27 | Week of April 13-19 | Week of April 6-April 12 | Week of March 30-April 5 | Week of March 23-March 29

I’ll hold live online office hours via Zoom during our regularly scheduled class times: M, W, F at 10 am (Eastern).

Check your UNE email for the link to join the Zoom session. Be sure to save that link. We’ll use the same one for all live sessions. If you have Writing Lab, there’s a second link sent to you in a separate email.

Week of M. April 27 – F. May 1

Final Assignment (due May 1)

Please answer the following questions and post them on your ePortfolio:

1. What have you learned about how to read a complex piece of writing this year?  Which of the active and critical reading techniques have become part of your standard approach to coming to terms with texts? 
2. What challenges did you face in the course?  What did you learn from facing them?
3. Describe one or two of your most rewarding moments of success in the course?  What did you learn from them?
4. What will you take away from the course to use in the writing situations you will face in the remaining years of your college education?

Week of M. April 20 – Su. April 26

Assignment List

Activity Set One – Learn how to spot Fake News by creating some – Reflection due Thursday, April 23 at 2 pm (your local time).

**Be sure to complete the writing prompt below my score**

Try your hand at creating fake news. Play the Bad News game to the end (about 20 minutes) and try to maximize your influence and credibility by publishing the fakest news possible. When asked during the game, please participate in the survey to help researchers study how to fight fake news. Once you’re done, there’s a short reading assignment and a writing prompt to complete.

See if you can beat my score!

Reflection Writing Prompt for Activity One: After you have played the game and read the Bad News Game Information Sheet for Educators, write and post an essay of 500 words or more explaining what you learned about how Fake News works by playing the game and reading the information sheet. Also, use the resources in this activity to explain why fake news is a problem and what can be done about it. Include a screenshot of your final score in your post!

Activity Set Two – Active, Careful Reading – Notice – Summarize, quote paraphrase, synthesize – Due Sunday, April 27 at 11:59 pm (your local time). Please don’t post your answers before 11:59 pm on April 27. Use this process to schedule your post to be published at that time (how-to video).

1. Print and number the paragraphs of “Is A Conspiracy Theory Protected Speech” by Jared Keller.
2. Review the writing prompt in item 4. Then read and annotate the article looking for the key words, passages, concepts, and examples that you’ll need to compose your mini-essay. Post photos of at least three pages of your annotations on your ePortfolio.
3. OPTIONAL: Join our ENG Zoom session Friday morning at 10 am to discuss the article and the questions.
4. Using materials from the Keller article, compose answers to the questions below. Your answers should stand alone and be understandable by a reader who has not read the article. You will need to define key terms, give examples, and explain Keller’s thinking to make it understandable to your reader.
   1. What is the “Brandenburg test” for protected speech? How is it different from the “clear and present danger” test?
   2. What is “stochastic terrorism”?
   3. How does “stochastic terrorism” make it difficult to apply the Brandenburg test to conspiracy theories?
   4. Using at least two quotes from the reading, write a paragraph or two explaining your view on whether conspiracy theory should be protected free speech.

Week of M. April 13 – Su. April 19

Assignment List

Activity Set One – Active, Careful Reading – Notice – Summarize, quote paraphrase, synthesize – Due Thursday, April 16 at 2 pm (your local time).

Please don’t post your mini-essay before 2 pm on April 16. Instead, use this process to schedule your post to be published at that time (how-to video).

1. Print and number the paragraphs of “Trapped in a Hoax: Survivors of Conspiracy Theories Speak Out” by Ed Pilkington
2. Review the writing prompt in item 4. Then read and annotate the article looking for the key words, passages, concepts, and examples that you’ll need to compose your mini-essay. Post photos of at least three pages of your annotations on your ePortfolio.
3. OPTIONAL: Join our ENG Zoom session Wednesday morning at 10 am to discuss the article and the questions.
4. Using materials from the Pilkington article, compose answers to the questions below. Your answers should stand alone and be understandable by a reader who has not read the article. You will need to define key terms, give examples, and explain Pilkington’s thinking to make it understandable to your reader.
   1. What role did the Internet (from 4chan to Infowars to Facebook and Twitter) play in the victimizing of Marcel Fontaine?
   2. What were the immediate and lasting effects of being mistakenly cast as the Parkland shooter for Fontaine?
   3. Why has Sandy Hook father Lenny Pozner had to move so often? What has he done to combat online conspiracy theorizing? For Pozner, where does the right to free speech stop?
   4. What drives Dr. Paul Offit to continue his work (despite death threats) debunking the “vaccines cause autism” conspiracy theories?
   5. How does sexism play into the harassment of video game development Brianna Wu?

Activity Set Two – Active, Careful Reading – Notice – Summarize, quote paraphrase, synthesize – Due Sunday, April 19 at 11:59 pm (your local time).

Please don’t post your answers before 11:59 pm on April 19. Use this process to schedule your post to be published at that time (how-to video).

1. Print The Conspiracy Theory Handbook (12 pages) by Stephan Lewandowsky and John Cook and “Coronavirus Is Spreading — And So Are the Hoaxes and Conspiracy Theories Around It” by EJ Dickson.
2. Review the writing prompt in item 4. Then read and annotate these articles looking for the key words, passages, concepts, and examples that you’ll need to compose your mini-essay. Post photos of at least three pages of your annotations on your ePortfolio.
3. OPTIONAL: Join our ENG Zoom session Friday morning at 10 am to discuss these articles and the writing prompt.
4. Using materials from this week’s readings, compose answers to the questions below. Your answers should stand alone and be understandable by a reader who has not read the article. You will need to define key terms, give examples, and explain your thinking to make it understandable to your reader.
   1. List and explain the 7 traits of conspiratorial thinking.
   2. According to Lewandowsky and Cook, why do people believe in and share conspiracy theories?
   3. Use what you learned answering questions 1 and 2 to speculate about 2 of the Coronavirus conspiracies described in “Coronavirus Is Spreading — And So Are the Hoaxes and Conspiracy Theories Around It.” For each of the 2 conspiracy theories identify some of the traits of conspiratorial thinking you see in it and explain why people believe it. For each theory, discuss whether believing or sharing it might cause harm in the real world.

Week of M. April 6 – Su. April 12

Assignment List

Activity Set One – Active, Careful Reading – Notice – Summarize, quote paraphrase, synthesize – Due Thursday, April 9 at 2 pm (your local time).

Please don’t post your mini-essay before 2 pm on April 9. Instead, use this process to schedule your post to be published at that time (how-to video).

1. Print and number the paragraphs of “What is Pizzagate”by Andy Cush and “Pizzagate: Anatomy of a Fake News Scandal” by Amanda Robb.
2. Review the writing prompt in item 4. Then read and annotate these articles looking for the key words, passages, concepts, and examples that you’ll need to compose your mini-essay. Post photos of at least three pages of your annotations on your ePortfolio.
3. OPTIONAL: Join our ENG Zoom session Wednesday morning at 10 am to discuss these articles and the writing prompt.
4. Using materials from the articles, compose a 600-750 word mini-essay in response to the prompt below. Your mini-essay should stand alone and be understandable by a reader who has not read the articles. You will need to define key terms, give examples, and explain the writers’ thinking to make it understandable to your reader.
   • PROMPT: Drawing on the work of Frank Donner, Anna Merlan claims that “Conspiracy theories tend to flourish especially at times of rapid social change, when we are reevaluating ourselves and, perhaps, facing uncomfortable questions in the process. In 1980, the civil liberties lawyer and author Frank Donner wrote that conspiracism reveals a fundamental insecurity about who Americans want to be versus who they are.” Adding to this, Jan-Willem van Prooijen asserts that “the root of conspiracy thinking lies in our ancient instinct to divide the social world into ‘Us’ and ‘[th]em’ categories.” Therefore, he continues, “citizens are most likely to believe…conspiracy theories when they perceive the government as ‘[th]em’, not representing ‘Us’.”
     
     Write a 600-750 word mini-essay drawing on these ideas of Merlan and van Prooijen to explain how the Pizzagate conspiracy theory could inspire conspiracist Edgar M. Welch to plan and launch an armed invasion of the Comet Ping Pong club to free supposed victims. First, orient readers to the Pizzagate conspiracy theory and the real world events that happened in response to it. Next, introduce readers to Merlan’s and van Prooijen’s ideas as a way to make sense of both the Pizzagate conspiracy theory and Welch’s response to it. At some point, explain what it was about the Pizzagate story that resonated with a person with the beliefs and life experiences of Welch. Also, explain what Welch wanted to believe about the federal government and himself. Then consider the reporting of Anna Robb on how the Pizzagate theory originated and evolved to explain who else (besides Edgar Welch) you think is to blame for the potentially lethal violence Welch decided was necessary to address the wrongs falsely asserted in the Pizzagate conspiracy theory?

Activity Set Two – Active, Careful Reading – Notice – Summarize, quote paraphrase, synthesize – Due Sunday, April 12 at 11:59 pm (your local time).

Please don’t post your answers before 11:59 pm on April 12. Use this process to schedule your post to be published at that time (how-to video).

1. Print and number the paragraphs of “‘Pizzagate’ and the Nocturnal Ritual Fantasy: Imaginary Cults, Fake News, and Real Violence” by Michael Barbezat.
2. Review the questions in item 4. Then read and annotate Barbezat’s article looking for the key words, passages, concepts, and examples that you’ll need to answer the questions. Post photos of at least three pages of your annotations on your ePortfolio.
3. OPTIONAL: Join our ENG Zoom session Friday morning at 10 am to discuss this article and the discussion questions.
4. Using materials from the Barbezat essay, compose essay-answers to the questions below. Your answers should stand alone and be understandable by a reader who has not read the essay. You will need to define key terms, give examples, and explain Barbezat’s thinking to make it understandable to your reader.
   1. What is the “the nocturnal ritual fantasy” and what did believing in it do for the people who disseminated it? [Right There + Right There]
   2. Given your correct answer to question 1, what made the Comet Ping Pong restaurant a likely target of a conspiracy theory based on the “nocturnal ritual fantasy”? [Right There]
   3. What is “persecuting society?” How did the “nocturnal ritual fantasy” contribute to the establishment of a “persecuting society” in medieval times? [Right There] To what degree are the people that dissemeinated and acted on the Pizzagate conspiracy theory members of a “persecuting society”? [Text + You]
   4. Barzebat says that the nocturnal ritual fantasy “is a tried-and-true strategy of the literal demonization that gets used when the basic pillars of a society are being remade. Modern America is undergoing just such a remaking.” According to Barbezat, what pillars are being remade in American society today? What other pillars would you say are also being remade? Are they reflected in the Pizzagate conspiracy theory? Or in another conspiracy that you’re aware of? [Right There + Text + You + All You]

Week of M. March 30 – Su. April 5

Having finished Paper 2, we’re moving on to the last unit of the course, where we will read about America’s obsession with conspiracy theories. We’ll discover who conspiracy theorists and conspiracy believers are and what motivates them. We’ll learn what makes some conspiracy theories dangerous. We’ll see what we can learn about reality by studying conspiracy theories. And we’ll think about what we can do not to fall prey to conspiracy thinking ourselves.

Throughout this project, in a series of short informal pieces of writing, you’ll practice your critical and active reading strategies, you’ll continue developing your coming-to-terms, forwarding and countering skills, and engage your classmates in (written) dialogue.

I’ll hold live online office hours via Zoom during our regularly scheduled class times: M, W, F at 10 am (Eastern).

Check your UNE email for the link to join the Zoom session. Be sure to save that link. We’ll use the same one for all live sessions.

Assignment List

Activity Set One – Active, Careful Reading – Notice – Summarize, quote paraphrase, synthesize – Due Thursday, April 2 at 2 pm (your local time).

Please don’t post your answers before 2 pm on April 2. Instead, use this process to schedule your post to be published at that time (how-to video).

1. Print and number the paragraphs of  “Why Are We Addicted to Conspiracy Theories?” by Anna Merlan.
2. Review the questions in item 4. Then read and annotate Merlan’s article looking for the key words, passages, concepts, and examples that you’ll need to answer the questions. Post photos of at least three pages of your annotations on your ePortfolio.
3. OPTIONAL: Join our ENG Zoom session Wednesday morning at 10 am to discuss the Merlan article and the discussion questions.
4. Using materials from the Merlan essay, compose essay-answers to the questions below. Your answers should stand alone and be understandable by a reader who has not read the essay. You will need to define key terms, give examples, and explain Merlan’s thinking to make it understandable to your reader.
   1. What is Merlan’s operating definition of a conspiracy theory? [Right There]
   2. Merlan says that conspiracy thinking has been part of American culture and governance since it’s very beginning. Summarize her reasons for thinking so and explain what she thinks is new about conspiracy theory in the last decade or so. [Pull It Together]
   3. What are the characteristics of the times in which conspiracy theory tends to survive? [Right There + Pull It Together]
   4. How does Merlan categorize the different types of people who tend to believe medical conspiracy theories? [Right There]
   5. What are the [multiple] reasons that Anna Merlan uses to answer the question: “Why are we addicted to conspiracy theories”? [Pull It Together]

Activity Set Two – Active, Careful Reading – Notice – Summarize, quote paraphrase, synthesize – Due Sunday, April 5 at 11:59 pm (your local time).

Please don’t post your answers before 11:59 pm on April 5. Use this process to schedule your post to be published at that time (how-to video).

1. Print and number the paragraphs of “Suspicion Makes Us Human” by Jan-Willem van Prooijen
2. Review the questions in item 4. Then read and annotate van Prooijen’s article looking for the key words, passages, concepts, and examples that you’ll need to answer the questions. Post photos of at least three pages of your annotations on your ePortfolio.
3. OPTIONAL: Join our ENG Zoom session Friday morning at 10 am to discuss this article and the discussion questions.
4. Using materials from the van Prooijen essay, compose essay-answers to the questions below. Your answers should stand alone and be understandable by a reader who has not read the essay. You will need to define key terms, give examples, and explain van Prooijen’s thinking to make it understandable to your reader.
   1. What is van Prooijen’s definition of “conspiracy theory”? [Right There] To what degree does van Prooijen’s definition match Merlan’s? [Text + You]
   2. What is van Prooijen’s (with Mark van Vugt) argument in support of the claim that conspiracy theories have evolutionary origins over 12,000 years old? You’ll need to Pull Together and summarize the information in paragraphs 9-14 to answer this question.
   3. What does van Prooijen mean by “evolutionary mismatch” (paragraph 20), how does it apply to conspiracy theory (paragraphs 20-22) and what kinds of problems can conspiracy theory as an evolutionary mismatch cause in the world? [Right There + Pull It Together]
   4. How could understanding conspiracy theories in the way that van Prooijen does contribute to our understanding of the rise of populist political movements and extremist organizations that endorse violent conflict with others? [Right There]

Week of M. March 23 – Su. March 29

Please be sure to follow the instructions in the links below. Don’t attempt to complete these assignments without reading the instructions and using the materials contained in the links.

Assignment List

1. Send an email to Eric confirming that you have found this assignment list.
2. Use the instructions on the linked page to review and comment on your own draft of your ethical questions about music paper submitted F. March 13. Comments due on your Google Drive version of your paper by Wednesday, March 25 at midnight (your local time).
3. Read these revising instructions to understand my expectations, then make significant improvements your paper. Revisions are due by Sunday, March 29 at midnight (your local time).
4. Ensure that your final paper meets MLA manuscript formatting and citation-system standards. Formatting due by Monday, March 30 at 9 am (your local time).
   • Use the Sample Citation below as a model to use to write a Works Cited entry for your Aesthetics for Birds debate.

I’ll hold live online office hours via Zoom during our regularly scheduled class times: M, W, F at 10 am (Eastern).

Check your UNE email for the link to join the Zoom session. Be sure to save that link. We’ll use the same one for all live sessions.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MwvC52oRwnI

Introduction

Chris Richards recently posed “The Five Hardest Questions in Pop Music,” reinvigorating debates that have raged among music fans for more than a decade. Critics at Aesthetics for Birds (a website devoted to aesthetics and philosophy of art for everyone) took up these questions, providing brief but thoughtful extensions, critiques, and dissents of Richard’s views. Now it’s your turn to join the conversation.

The Task

Write a paper in which you play the role of a professional music critic coming-to-terms with what has been written in response to one of the “five hardest questions in pop music.”

First, in at least 2 opening paragraphs, fairly and accurately represent the full map of the debate by summarizing the starter points or questions in Chris Richards’s piece and the gists of of the Aesthetics for Birds critics’ responses. Then, following the examples of the Aesthetics for Birds critics, narrow your readers’ focus to one or two of the most important issues or questions in the debate and explain why you chose to address the issues you did. Next, come-to-terms with each of the critics whose views shaped your thinking. Conclude this section of your essay, by presenting your answer to the question as responses to the critics. Your thesis should extend and/or counter views already existing in the debate. Use the complaint + pitch structure to make help you connect your thesis to the views of other writers.

Body paragraphs should focus both on 1) coming-to-terms with the AFB critics’ approaches to answering the question and 2) forwarding and countering their views to advance your own (likely related) answers to the question.

Your conclusion should highlight your contribution to the debate and say why what you wrote matters to people interested in addressing these questions.

Expectations

To write this paper, you will need to:

• Gather information and perspectives by reading and writing about the views of other writers on this topic (some of whom you may disagree with).
• Fairly and accurately represent the current state of the conversation by mapping (understanding and synthesizing) the key points of debate in the conversation.
• Move the conversation forward by formulating and developing your own point of view as a response to what other writers have written.
• Use direct quotation and paraphrase to bring the ideas of at least 3 other writers into your paper.
• Make 3 forwarding moves (illustrating, authorizing, borrowing, extending) and 2 countering moves (taking another, uncovering values, or dissenting).
• Use repeating keywords to build conceptual coherence in and among your paragraphs.
• Use pivotal words and pointing words to connect sentences to one another.
• Use signal phrases with good signal verbs to mark the shift into another writer’s voice and voice markers to indicate your view of the ideas you’re forwarding or countering.

Successful students will:

• Complete all homework assignments on time.
• Use homework assignments to deepen your understanding of the debate and practice designated reading and writing skills.
• Submit a complete draft that meets word count expectations by class time on Friday, March 13.
• Participate effectively in peer review and class discussion.
• Thoroughly revise and develop their work after initial drafts.
• Meet or exceed final word count expectations.
• Support classmates’ efforts.
• Write between 1250-1750 words.
• Use MLA manuscript formatting and citation style.

From Joseph Harris’s Rewriting

Coming to Terms with Another Writer’s Text

When you come to terms with another writer’s text, you write an account of another writer’s text and signal your own use and view of it. Coming to terms is an introductory move that happens whenever you first bring into your text ideas from another source that has been important to your understanding, whether you agree or disagree with it. To come to terms, you make these three moves:

1. Define the project and approach of the other writer
   • A writer’s project is the set of questions a writer sets out to answer. Every writer takes an approach to his project. An approach is the plan of work a writer uses to answer his or her questions. An approach includes the ideas, information, methods, and perspectives a writer chooses to use to think about and answer his or her questions.
   • Define the writer’s project means describe, explain, give examples of, and translate the other writer’s project into your own words.
2. Notice and assess the other writer’s key words (concepts) or key passages
   • Notice the keywords and key passages means introducing, contextualizing (who says what to whom…), defining, explaining, giving examples of, translating, and assessing the uses and limits of.
3. Assess the uses and limits of the other writer’s way of thinking
   • A writers ideas or approaches are useful when they help you understand something you didn’t understand before, make connections you otherwise couldn’t, reveal some aspect of the thing you’re working on that couldn’t otherwise be seen, get work done that you need to complete.
   • A writers ideas or approaches are limited when they can only be applied in certain situations, mislead readers, fail to explain important parts of the thing you’re trying to understand, emerge from a biased or interested perspective, obscures or distorts aspects of the thing you’re trying to understand.

Forwarding – “Yes, and …”

When you find another writer’s ideas or perspective useful to your thinking, you want to bring it forward into your own text and make clear how it’s useful, and in the best case to make it even more useful.

• Bringing forward an illustration from another writer (illustrating) gives you material to think about. Anecdotes, images, scenarios, data, information, facts, and cases are all good illustrations.
  • Use pivot words like these in your sentence to indicate that you’re making the illustration move: for example, specifically, for instance, such as.
• When you bring forward concepts, keywords, approaches, and theories from another writer, you are finding things in other texts to think with. There are three reasons to bring materials to think with from another writer into your text:
  • When you invoke the expertise or status of another writer to support the thinking in your text, you’re authorizing.
    • Use signal phrases in your sentence to indicate that you’re making the authorizing move: According to [author], [Author argues], [Author] insists, [Author] claims, [Author’s] research supports the idea that
  • When you draw on terms or ideas from other writers to think through your subject, you’re borrowing.
    • Use phrases like these in your sentence to indicate that you’re making the borrowing move: what [Author] calls [term], Following [Author] I claim, as [Author] uses the term, as [Author] suggests
  • When you put your own spin on the terms or concepts you’re taking from other texts, you’re extending.
    • Echo and replace the original writers words with closely related but different words of your own that take the original terms beyond the original author’s intention: “The virtue of [professional] wrestling,” Roland Barthes wrote, “is that it is the spectacle of excess.” The sitcom, in contrast, is a spectacle of subtleties.

Countering – “Yes, but …”

When you make the countering moves, you bring another writer’s text into your own text because, even though the work has strengths, you recognize it’s limits and want to use it to open up new lines of inquiry by working to overcome those limits. There are three types of countering:

• Arguing the other side: showing the usefulness of a term or idea that the other writer has criticized or noting problems with one that she or he has argued for.
• Uncovering values: Bringing to light a word or concept or assumption that the other writer has left undefined, unexamined or unwritten.
• Dissenting: Identifying a line of thought shared by multiple writers to reveal its limits. Usually in preparation to offer another view.

These songs represent some of the variety of my tastes. I think one thing that unites many of them is a strong sense of melody and rhythm combined with virtuosity. I love improvised music and re-workings of pop tunes in other genres. As a sax player, I’m drawn to great horn sections. Down near the bottom of the list, you’ll find a few drum and bugle corps videos from a classic era of my favorite corps, the Blue Devils.

https://youtu.be/kxW6e1jgt5Q

https://youtu.be/LTL-iwBsZGk