Presenting Evidence in a Deepening Sequence
This assignment asks you to draft two paragraphs that might appear early in the body of the upcoming essay.
The first ¶ should be a 3-4 source mashup, like we did in HW 6.1: F5 | F6 | F7.
- Start with the collection of sources that make up your body of evidence. What pattern do you see? Write a topic sentence that names that pattern, using language like “most” or “many” or “8 of 10 ads” to convey a sense of its prevalence.
- Follow up with sentences presenting 3-4 samples in quick succession, one sentence each. Aim to name each piece of evidence (“In a New York Times article dated 10/16/63″ or “In a 1967 ad”) to give some sense of the granularity of your evidence—but leave most bibliographic details to the footnote. Use the rest of each sentence to provide a quick description that shows how this piece of evidence fits the pattern. For example, if I was interested in how ads present women in supporting roles: “A 1965 Norelco ad shows not just a clean-shaven husband, but his admiring wife.”
- End the ¶ with a conclusion that leaves a blank, “_______,” to be filled in once you’ve written your second ¶.
The second ¶ should do one of two things:
- Zoom in to examine one particular source from your body of evidence, in an effort to explain the pattern identified in ¶1;
- Identify a contrary trend in the same set of sources, complicating our understanding of the pattern identified in ¶1.
In either case, you’ll note how deepening understanding comes from giving a second look to the same piece or pieces of evidence.
Once you know where you plan to take analysis in ¶2, you can go back and fill in the blank you left in the conclusion of ¶1. Sum up what ¶1 argued while at the same time setting up the new insight offered in ¶2. Avoid naming the new insight—naming the new insight is the job of ¶2’s topic sentence. It’s like a comedy routine: the concluding sentence plays the role of straight man, while the topic sentence of the following ¶ gets to voice the punchline.
Paste your 2-¶ sequence into the comment below. Be sure to give two ¶ breaks between paragraphs, so as to help the website format your HW properly.