Today’s Agenda:

Your homework for today was as follows:

Write a one to one-and-a-half page synthesis of Hertgaard’s article that uses quotes or evidence from D’Souza and one other source of your choosing. This source needs to be addressing the reasons for contemporary American foreign policy. I would suggest you begin your search for sources by considering mainstream publications like Time, Newsweek, or US News and World Report.

Okay, let’s begin today by getting that writing out and turning it over. On the back, I want you to address the following question (10 mins):

How did you go about synthesizing Hertsgaard’s claims and evidence with claims and evidence from D’Souza and one other source? What was your reasoning? How did you uses these various sources, and for what purpose?

Are we comparing logos to logos, ethos to ethos, pathos to pathos? You may find that this helps.

Group Discussion (5-7 mins)

Class Discussion(5 mins)

One of the first things you need to do is break the argument down: What are you seeing that might be useful to you, how can you use it, and on what basis can it be compared or contrasted with what you are finding in your other arguments. While it is not necessary that you write a precis for both of these new sources, it is important that you understand the specific role the information you are using plays in its own argument. Let’s consider some examples you pulled from D’Souza.

1) What part of his argument to they relate to (Situation, Issue, or Thesis)

2) Are they an example of Logos, Pathos, or Ethos?

3) Okay — now that we have identified that, would it be MORE or LESS logical to compare and contrast this example with an aspect of Hertsgaard’s argument that represented a SIMILAR part of his argument that stemmed from the SAME kind of argumentation (Logos, Pathos, or Ethos)?

One way to use multiple sources is simply to focus on quotes or evidence from a source in one paragraph, and then, in another paragraph, to focus on information from another source. This is a common way to use sources in high school, but we need to become more sophisticated in our writing.

Within one paragraph, we can compare or contrast the related ideas from two or more arguments. How might we do this? Who thinks they have a good example of this? Remember the three stage process for using quotes, Introduce, Present, and then explain.

Let’s look over our writing for a moment. If we don’t have any paragraphs in which we attempt to compare or contrast the writing of two or more authors, we need to create such a paragraph now. If we already have one,then we need to create another one.

Over the past week, we have created an analysis and evaluation of “The Oblivious Empire,” and we have also synthesized the document with other arguments. This week, we will be tying these various documents together into a single argument, which will be the 3-5 page argument that we are building towards in this unit.

So today we are going to discuss strategies for tying these three documents together. But before we do that, I want you to take some time to journal on this subject on your own. “How can you organize these three documents into one coherent document?” (5 mins)

Group work

Class Discussion

What are goals of each section?

What will we need to add so that this argument is complete

Opening paragraph.

Transitions

Summary

Journal

Class Discussion

Your Homework for Wednesday is to tie your analysis, evaluation, and synthesis into one 3-5 page argument. You are to come to class with three copies of the document, and you are to e-mail me a draft of the paper BEFORE class (later papers will be marked late).

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