Blog Prompt for Friday, Sept. 25

Dear All,

This week for your blog you will be preparing to write your first formal paper. Here is what you need to do.

The title of your blog should be your topic. That is, in the "Title" block should be something like: "Learning Langauge: Biological or Cultural?," "Defining Animal and Human Communication," or "Language Authority in the United States."

Write your thesis statement/s. Remember that it should be CLEAR, PRECISE, and DEBATABLE. As discussed, sometimes, a thesis "statement" can be more than one sentence.

Record and cite (author, page number!) three quotes from the reading that you think you could use as material to establish credibility, as evidence for your argument, or as a counterargument that you will address.

After each quote, explain in a few sentences what the quote means and how you plan on using it in the essay (credibility, evidence, counterargument).

I will not be checking the length of your blog, but this is not an invitation to slack off. Your explanations of the quotes will take some effort! I will be grading you on how well you followed directions, and how well you pulled the material together as the basis of your paper. Your writing should be in formal Standard English -- I will mark down for poor or sloppy grammar.

We will be going over these blogs in class on Friday!