Rhet 105
Paper 2
First Draft Due: March 8, Sat 7AM (email attachment idvan@uiuc.edu)
Peer Workshops: March 13 (bring copies for your group)
Final Due: March 14, Friday 5pm, mailbox

Now that we have read two more essays that deal with schooling and writing (or at least literacy), I’d like you to read back over your first paper and think about whether Gee and/or Freire offer ways of imagining learning to write that complicate or extend the arguments you made.  How can you account for these complications or extensions?  It may be helpful to think of this paper as an “evolution” from the first.  While it’s not necessary to continue or address ideas from your first paper, this can often help jump start analysis for this paper, especially for the first draft.    

In addition to reflecting on your previous ideas, I’d like you to consider the ways Gee and Freire both talk about schooling practices that seem remarkably different than language and writing practices outside of school.  What do you make of this?  Freire seems to advocate for radical new teaching practices to make school more of a revolutionary force, more connected to social situations outside of school.  Gee seems less explicit about schooling changes, but does seem to advocate for a more conscious understanding of the social uses/values of language (ideology of discourse).  Try to account for these complicated notions of schooling and language in an analysis of how their ideas relate to your own about writing courses and/or student writers.

For this paper, your analysis should follow the evolving thesis method described in Writing Analytically.  In addition to making good arguments and using evidence, find evidence that complicates these arguments and offer differing interpretations of the evidence you use. 

Successful papers will exhibit the following features:

• An evolving thesis that incorporates complicating evidence to arrive at more qualified and analytical conclusions
• Arguments and claims that account for the complexity of Freire’s and Gee’s ideas.  Whether you disagree or agree with them, offer the reader reasons why they may have those ideas. 
• Interpretations of evidence.  Whether you quote the texts or discuss your experiences, discuss briefly or at length how the evidence is connected to your ideas.  This may mean putting the quote in your own words, or defining complex terms for readers, or other strategies we’ve discussed in class.
• A “genuine issue” (as WA discusses) at the beginning of your paper that starts the evolving thesis process.  Avoid overly general initial thesis statements.
• In-depth analysis.  Rather than trying to examine all of the ideas in Freire and Gee, select one or two related ones and try to follow out all the implications and complications they might have.

This paper should be between 3-5 pages, normal 12 point font, double-spaced, with the pages numbered.