Intro to composition, slide set #1. What is a thesis

1. BIU English 106
Introduction to Literary Forms and
Critical Writing I
Dr. Daniel Feldman
danielb.feldman@gmail.com

2. Writing Blurbs 1
Recent research demonstrates how effectively and
efficiently writing can improve comprehension of content
in any discipline. Writing also enables students to
practice analysis, synthesis, and other skills that
constitute critical, creative, and even civic thinking. If
writing provides one of our best means to enhance
learning outcomes across the curriculum, then more
writing equals more learning. Why would we design
writing assignments with obstacles that discourage
students from learning? --Curt Schick

5. Before we begin…It’s not all bad!
Programming is a whole new kind of problem. Even if we
spend half our time looking at those busy screens, most of
us would be none the wiser. Watching The Social
Network, even though you know the filmmakers want your
disapproval, you can’t help feel a little swell of pride in this
2.0 generation. They’ve spent a decade being berated for
not making the right sorts of paintings or novels or music
or politics. Turns out the brightest 2.0 kids have been
doing something else extraordinary. They’ve been making
a world. --Zadie Smith, “Generation Why?”

6. The Facebook Phenomenon,
or Friendship in Crisis
1. Friendship all and nothing: friendship
characteristic relationship of our day.
2. Friendship means nothing in an age of
Facebook and hundreds of friends.
3. Fr-ship was once subversive and rare.
4. Friendship suppressed by Christianity
and Medievalism.
5. Friendship redux with classical revival.

7. The Facebook Phenomenon,
or Friendship in Crisis
6. Friendship becomes quintessential modern
relationship, for good and ill.
7. And with it an enervation of friendship --no longer
about frank criticism, but shallow affirmation.
8. Aspect of modernity: circle of friends
9. But all false: Facebook friendships a mirage
10. Ubiquity of friendship hides a hunger for
relationship in an age of solitude.

8. The Facebook Phenomenon,
or Friendship in Crisis
11. In truth, crippling isolation prevails.
“The more people we know, the lonelier
we get.”
12. Exhibitionism: no privacy means no friends.
13. Shallowness: “People doing their best to
impersonate themselves.”
14. Other FB vices: warps memory and
cheapens identity by reducing it to tags and
posts.

9. The Facebook Phenomenon,
or Friendship in Crisis
Conclusion:
“Posting information is like pornography,
a slick, impersonal exhibition.
Exchanging stories is like making love:
probing, questing, questioning,
caressing. It is mutual. It is intimate. It
takes patience, devotion, sensitivity,
subtlety, skill—and it teaches them all,
too.”

10. Before we write…maybe all wrong!
World makers, social network makers, ask one
question first: How can I do it? Zuckerberg
solved that one in about three weeks. The
other question, the ethical question, he came
to later: Why? Why Facebook? Why this
format? Why do it like that? Why not do it
another way? The striking thing about the real
Zuckerberg, in video and in print, is the
relative banality of his ideas concerning the
“Why” of Facebook.

11. Before we write…maybe all wrong!
He uses the word “connect” as believers use the word “Jesus,” as if
it were sacred in and of itself: “So the idea is really that, um, the
site helps everyone connect with people and share information
with the people they want to stay connected with….” Connection
is the goal. The quality of that connection, the quality of the
information that passes through it, the quality of the relationship
that connection permits—none of this is important. That a lot of
social networking software explicitly encourages people to make
weak, superficial connections with each other (as Malcolm
Gladwell has recently argued), and that this might not be an
entirely positive thing, seem to never have occurred to him.

12. In-class sample essay assignment
Facebook and social networking media
are corrupting the institution and
experience of friendship.
• Do you agree or disagree? State and
support your opinion in a brief, well-
reasoned essay.
• Use Deresiewicz’s essay or your own
knowledge to support your argument.

13. For Next Week 29.10 & 31.10
Monday: Sample essay group editing and intros
• No writing assignment for this week!!!!
• Revision and editing drill
Wednesday: Begin James Joyce’s Dubliners “An
Encounter,” “Araby,” “Eveline,” “The Boarding
House,” and “The Dead”
• For next week: “Araby” and “An Encounter”
http://www.literaturecollection.com/a/james-joyce/

14. Writing Blurbs 2
There are a thousand thoughts lying
within a man that he does not know till
he takes up a pen to write.
-William Makepeace Thackeray, novelist
(1811-1863)
• Did you like this?
Subscribe to A.Word.A.Day at Wordsmith.org

15. Vocab from last week
• Quintessence / quintessential
• Ubiquity / omnipresent
• Apotheosis
• Redux
• Enervate / enervation
• Relegate
• Attenuate / attenuation

16. Today’s agenda 29.10
• Editing exercise
» Correct sentence fragments, comma splices,
subject-verb agreement, logical snarls, etc.
» Ask me for help or use these resources:
MLA Handbook, Hacker’s Writers’s Reference,
Strunk’s Elements of Style, Purdue online
writing lab (owl.english.purdue.edu)
• Introduction to thesis sentences
» Compare examples
» Group editing exercise

17. A Smattering of Subject Sentences
1. Friendship has developed during the centuries.
2. Social networking has become an important part in our lives.
3. No doubt that the Internet, in general, and Facebook and social
media, in particular, have become a big part of a lot of people’s lives.
4. Like a flame, social media is a tool that can prove useful and one
which is easily corrupted. It is also a tool that can easily corrupt.
5. Facebook and social media have become a big part of our lives.
6. Many times have we heard the phrase “be careful who you trust;
friend today, foe tomorrow.” But how many of us have actually taken
the time to think through our friendships?
7. A world filled with social media is a new concept; even the Internet
as it exists today has reached a state that not many believed
possible.

18. A Smattering of Subject Sentences
9. In my opinion, reality is more complex and has its gray areas. It‫׳‬s not
all good or bad in the rising of social networks.
10. Everything in the world can be used for the good or for the bad.
Everything in the world has the potential to contribute to society in a
positive or negative way.
11. Facebook and social media is like any other technology we have. We
can us it in a good way or in a bad way.
12. Having Facebook, Twitter, and other social networks available
almost all the time nowadays, in my opinion, reduces the amount of
effort we actually put into getting to know other people.
13. We live today in a fast paced society in which the means in which we
reach our goal must be as efficient and error-free as possible.

19. 14. I do believe that Facebook and social media are not only
corrupting the experience of real friendships, but also
degrading something meant to be personal and intimate to
something impersonal.
• In our modern society, where technology rules almost every
aspect of our life and people are connecting to one another
mainly through technological media, some of us are
questioning whether this form of communication is sincere
and creates real connections, or whether we humans are
becoming more superficial because of our modern society.
• We don’t churn butter anymore. We can buy it, prepackaged
in a shiny foil cube, at the nearest grocery store. And yet
there’s no one ranting that, because of the loss of effort
applied to the manufacturing of butter, we can no longer
appreciate the real joy of eating.

20. 17. I disagree with Deresiewicz that facebook corrupts
friendship.
18. Bill d. argues, in a well written and persuasive
essay, that the world as we know it has changed,
and with it, so have our friendships.
19. In the 21st century, the world we live in seems to
have become a scary, unfriendly place.
20. I applaud Bill Deresiewicz for having the courage to
vocalize that which most people choose to ignore,
in his essay “Faux friendship.”
21. Facebook didn’t ruin friendship. It was ruined
already.

21. Constructing a Thesis
Thesis = Main idea
Evidence = Support for that central idea
Thesis + Evidence = Argument

22. A Thesis is an Answer to a
Question or Problem
As you get closer to writing, you can begin to shape the
information you have at hand into a unified, coherent
whole by framing a thesis statement for your paper: a
single sentence that formulates both your topic and
your point of view. In a sense, the thesis statement is your
answer to the central question or problem you have raised.
Writing this statement will enable you to see where you
are heading. (MLA Handbook)

23. A Thesis is an Answer to a
Question or Problem
A thesis is often one or more of the following:
• The answer to a question you have posed
• The solution for a problem you have identified
• A statement that takes a position on a debatable
topic
Be sure to take a position with your thesis! You are entering a
debate, not describing it!

24. Thesis Pitfalls
• Is your thesis too obvious or factual?
• Is your thesis too vague or unfocused?
• Is your thesis too narrow?
• Is your thesis too broad?
• Is your thesis supportable with evidence?
• Is your thesis interesting enough that a reader would
want to read an essay about it? How would you
answer, “So what?”

25. Thesis Secrets
• An effective thesis states a central idea that
-requires supporting evidence
-is appropriate in scope for an essay
-is sharply focused
-can be developed in interesting directions
-answers a question you or your
assignment has posed
-takes a stance in a debate

26. For Monday 5.11
Write thesis statements for five of the following:
1. Tel Aviv is a more dynamic city than Jerusalem
2. Laptop use should be prohibited in class
3. Israel would benefit by switching to a Sat/Sun weekend
4. Women benefit by postponing marriage
5. A course in English composition should be compulsory
for all university students in Israel
6. Tuition should be higher for the sciences than for the
Humanities
7. Students who study in single-sex schools do better
8. Electric cars should be fully subsidized

27. For Next Week 5.11 & 7.11
Monday: Thesis statements assignment due in class
• Read “Araby” and “An Encounter” in Dubliners
• Finding evidence
Wednesday: Read “Eveline” and “The Boarding House” in
Dubliners
• Outlining and annotating exercise
Dubliners available the Akademon bookstore,
English library or online at:
http://www.literaturecollection.com/a/james-joyce/