Essay Outline for Peer Review

Writing Processes

Note: This is really just an advanced outline for my five page essay. Apologies for the ‘bare bones’ nature, I’m still not entirely certain if this is a good thesis. Your critiques are deeply appreciated fellow Chivalrous Flamingos of Epicocity. 🙂

Questions:
What do you think of how I organized the different processes? Does it make sense?
Which of the class resources do you think best apply?

Six Word Story:

“Find it, Fix it, Do it.”

Find it – Gather random ideas for the project throughout the day through a notepad and dictation on an iphone.
Fix it – Coalesce the ideas together into a good outline. Explore the ideas with database research.
Do it – Sit down and start hammering it out.

(This is based off something my Drill Sergeant once told me: the three F’s that constitute the universal plan of attack. “Find em, Fix em, and F*** em.” Principle still applies and it was six words, so I went with it.)

Activity 2 – Trying out template use

 In the introduction to “They Say I Say” The Moves That Matter in Academic Writing, Gerald Graff and Cathy Birkenstein provide templates designed to guide students through a basic essay format. Specifically, Graff and Birkenstein argue that the types of writing templates they offer encourage students to ape the effective introductory paragraph methods before making it their own. As the authors themselves put it, “You need to use what other’s say as a launching pad for your own arguments.” Although some people believe that templates can be constricting, Graff and Birkenstein insist that templates are a useful tool to initiate a writer’s creative flow. In sum, then, their view is that templates are an effective method to strengthen student’s writing. 
 I can agree that these sort of essay templates may have their uses, but only for the most basic of writing classes and the most ‘writer’s blocked’ authors. In my limited experience, the types of templates that the authors provide make the author’s contributions almost periphery. Some might object that students should be able to look at different templates and choose the design they like. However, that is precisely what’s accomplished when the same student reads any other academic essay; there’s dictating a paragraph and then there’s adopting a similar style. All writers examine each other’s styles and adopt similar ‘basic moves’ and general structure, which still allows for individual creativity.