CHFM class: The Research Paper (Spring Semester, 2017)

Instructor: Michael Witherspoon ()

Dear Enrolled Students and their Parents,

This information letter outlines the process and pedagogy for our class:

1.  Come to class on Monday, January 23, with a three-ring binder (with paper for note-taking) and a couple of writing pens.

2.  You will not need to purchase any books for this class.

3.  I will provide all of the handouts and rubrics to guide the students’ research and proper development of their research paper.

4.  We hope to have consistent internet access in the classroom, so a personal laptop is recommended, though not an absolute requirement.

5.  Students will be expected to spend at least 6 hours per week working at home on their paper. (Some will spend more.)

The following sequences how the pedagogy will unfold, i.e., we will understand the following skills and concepts in this order:

a)  Choosing a topic

b)  Evaluating online sources

c)  Avoiding plagiarism

d)  Citing sources; the Works Cited Page

e)  The five canons of rhetoric: invention, arrangement, memory, style, delivery

f)  Inventing an argument through “the common topics”

g)  The six parts of a discourse, i.e., the arrangement of the paper

h)  The three modes of persuasion

·  Logos: avoiding informal fallacies (e.g., the genetic fallacy, straw men, ad populum, hasty generalization, etc.); valid deductive arguments (e.g., modus ponens, modus tollens, hypothetical syllogism, disjunctive syllogism); claims need reasons and warrants

·  Ethos: ethical proofs; arguing from values

·  Pathos: emotion and argument

i)  Using a master outline

j)  Clarity and brevity in academic language: subjects and verbs; metadiscourse; avoiding nominalizations; the beginning and end of sentences; cohesion; coherence; hedges and intensifiers; redundancy; resumptive and summative modifiers

k)  Schemes and tropes that “entertain” the reader, that make academic language more engaging: analogies; allusion; simile; hypophora; parallelism; litotes; antimetabole; polyptoton; anaphora, etc.

Deadlines: (Don’t panic. I will explain these thoroughly on Monday, January 23.)

·  On January 30, a student must have a topic selected.

·  On February 27, the “invention” process is completed and a thesis statement written.

·  On April 3, the first draft is digitally delivered to the instructor.

·  On April 17, the revised draft is digitally delivered to the instructor.

·  On April 24, the class meets to discuss the process of the last 3 months; final draft submitted.

*If an evening of student readings is desired, the instructor would welcome such and look to the CHFM leadership for logistical details.