An

The change(s) I
observation or made to what I
question I
initially wrote:
received from
De Piero or a
classmate:

How this
change impacts
my paper:

Political articles are

often written in order
to persuade the
audience to agree
with them, making it
extremely important
for the reader to
challenge the
credibility and
motives of the author
as well as understand
the genres
conventions.

Agreed, but I need

more of a specific,
driving thesis
statement,
Kennedy. What,
exactly, are you
going to be arguing
here? And what
specific points are
you going to use to
make that case?
What about the
conventions within
this genre will you
be emphasizing?
Also: do you think
itd help your
reader (technically,
me) to lay out
which specific
sources youll be
using to make your
case?

Political articles are

often written with the
impact they will have
on the intended
audience in mind; and
the conventions of
political articles often
function to persuade the
audience.

I didnt touch on
every suggestion that
Zack made but I think
changing my thesis
made it work much
better with my paper.
I also think it passes
the arguability test
now, whereas
before not so
much.

Information is being
thrown at us more
rapidly now than it
has ever been thrown
at us in the past.
There is information
coming from online
articles, T.V. shows,
and social media.
Gun control is a very
important issue for a
lot of Americans
today

See if you can

work in a tighter
connection between
sentence 1 and the
*start* of sentence
2. If you can do
that, you'll get more
flow. (I hesitated
while I was reading
it, thinking: how
did I go from
"there's tons of info
out there" to "gun
control is an

Information is being
thrown at us more
rapidly now than it has
ever been thrown at us
in the past. This
information is being
thrown at us through
online articles, T.V.
shows, and social media

By changing the
wording of this to use
the word thrown in
both the sentences I
feel like it greatly
improved the flow of
the paper that Zack
had a problem with.
Using the same word
makes it easier for the
reader to see how the
first sentence relates
to the second

Text from my
initial WP
submission:

important issue.")

sentence.

reading politically Great opportunity

charged articles
to hyphenate this.
(You need to know
why, though...

reading politicallycharged articles

This is a small thing

but it helps the
mechanics of my
paper. I learned after
this that you
hyphenate when one
or both words doesnt
make sense without
the other.

This genre is
distinct due to its
often subtle bias
towards one stance
on an issue. Often
times, careful reading
of political articles
reveals the bias that
the news source has.
Another skill that is
very helpful for
decoding one of the
rather surface level
conventions of
political articles is
visual literacy.

Hmm... I'm
wondering what the
central focus of the
paragraph is -- first
I was reading about
subtle biases, and
now I'm reading
about visual
literacy. How do
these ideas fit
together? What the
answer is, consider
making that crystalclear in your topic
sentence so your
reader can
anticipate what's
coming up.

Political articles
belong to a genre that is
ever-present in many of
our lives and sometimes
they can be difficult to
fully grasp. A skill that
is quite helpful for
decoding one of the
rather surface level
conventions of political
articles is visual
literacy.

I decided to
completely scrap the
part about bias
because after reading
it over I realized Zack
was right, it didnt fit
within the paragraph.
To me, this paragraph
made more sense as a
paragraph focusing
on the conventions
that relate to visual
literacy.

Spaces for Writing

describes visual
literacy as important
in understanding the
messages that are
conveyed by
photography and
illustration

One question to
consider: is the
book, itself,
describing what
visual literacy
means or are the
authors?

In their book Spaces

for Writing, the authors
describe visual literacy
as important in
understanding the
messages that are
conveyed by
photography and

It was a quick and

pretty simple fix. This
just strengthens my
paper because it was
a pretty dumb
mistake to make. By
fixing it, I keep my
reader from

(Alexander et al.
16).

Paragraph 2 of WP1

This comment is
in reference to the
whole paragraph:
When I see this
even before I start
readingI think,
Ahhhhhhh!
Attack of the pagelong paragraph!
See if you like this
metaphor: Pretend
your whole paper is
a big, juicy steak.
Do you want your
reader to enjoy that
steak in easy-tochew, digestable
bites? Or do you
want them to start
gnawing away at
the whole thing in
one piece (think:
zombie).
Paragraphs are like
those bites.
Give your reader
your argument in
little, digestable,
one-idea-at-a-time
bits.
Readers need to be
able to see the
different
parts/pieces/bites of
the argument that
theyre chewing

illustration (Alexander
et al. 16).

questioning me for
making a silly
mistake.

After reading the

paragraph I realized I
could easily break it up.
The paragraph
contained a part about
how visual literacy
pertains to the
convention of which
pictures they use in
political articles and a
part about the
convention of quoting
politicians. So it was as
simple as that, instead
of making a giant
paragraph about two
conventions I made
each convention into its
own paragraph.

When I read this I

couldnt see why I
didnt make each of
these into their own
paragraphs in the first
place. Besides both
being conventions,
they didnt really
relate to each other
much at all. This
really helped the flow
of my paper. I guess
the fact that I disliked
the way it sounded
shows that this class
has changed my
writing quite a lot.

on.

Analyzing the
rhetorical strategies
that the authors of
political articles
employ is crucial in
order to really
understand what is
going on in the
author's mind. The
first thing a reader of
a political article
should think about is
who the intended
audience for the
article is.

I'm wondering if
you can be even
more precise in this
topic sentence and
use "audience" in
there. (After all, it
seems like that's the
focus of the whole
paragraph.)

Analyzing the
rhetorical strategies that
the authors of political
articles employ is
crucial in order to
understand how the
authors are attempting
to persuade their
audience.

By changing the first

sentence of the
paragraph to include
a focus on audience I
feel like it makes the
paragraph flow a lot
better. I realized that
a lot of my writing
was disjointed and it
made the paper a bit
confusing but this
lessens that.

Although this article Such as?

makes a bold move
with their
assumptions, many
other political articles
try stick with
statements that can
be more easily
proven.

Although this article

makes a bold move with
their assumptions, many
other political articles
try stick with statements
that can be more easily
proven such as a
statement that a political
candidate made during a
debate.

This adds
clarification to my
point. It makes it so
the reader has less
room for confusion.

Politics are
important because
they play a huge role
in how we live our
lives. When we read
about something as
influential as politics
we should always
keep an eye out for
the conventions of
the genre.

Deleted it.

Taking these two

sentences out makes
my paper less
repetitive and gets rid
of unnecessary
fluff. If I keep it the
readers could
potentially get
annoyed with reading
the same thing over
and over.

Didn't you already

establish this too??

For instance, if you

have a sense of visual
literacy you would be
able to understand
that an unappealing
picture of Hillary
Clinton in a Fox
News article does not
necessarily mean she
is a bad choice for
president.

OK, this has a lot

of potential.
How/why is it
unappealing? What
*about it* makes it
unappealing?
This kind of
descriptive
evidence is what
could help me
believe that "visual
literacy" plays such
an important role
here. I think you
need a lot more of
this.

For instance, if you

have a sense of visual
literacy you would be
able to understand that
an unappealing picture
of Hillary Clinton in a
Fox News article does
not necessarily mean
she is a bad choice for
president. Such
unappealing images are
usually recognizable
upon first glance. The
images are typically of
the politician looking
caught off guard, with
their mouth gaping open
or an angry scowl on
their face.

Once again, this

change just adds a
little extra clarity for
my reader. I think I
had an overall
problem with making
claims but glazing
over them without
providing evidence,
or with only a little
evidence, to back up
said claims. I may not
have needed to
elaborate on what I
meant by unappealing
but it certainly helps.