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Blog #2: Entering the Conversation: Wait. I get to give my opinion?

I teach more first-year students than anything else here at SDSU. It's kind of nice, really. They're excited to be here, optimistic, idealistic.

And then the semester starts and they get to see what college writing is about.

In high school, they wrote a lot of argument papers, papers that allowed them to give their opinion, to support it with evidence and, well, other opinions. (Really, that's the kind of evidence they give me at the beginning. You might remember what it was like to be a first-year student.)

And then I let them know: This is an analytical paper. You can have an opinion, I want you to have an opinion, but it doesn't belong in this paper.

And that's hard.
Even when they finally get to create an argument paper, it's not really about their opinions; it's about the conclusions they can draw from the evidence, which may or may not align with their opinion.

Amy Devitt says that when we take up a genre, we subconsciously take up the values reinforced with that type of writing, and I suspect there is some merit in her argument. Anecdotally, at least, it seems that by the time I see students in RWS 305, they have taken on that value of objectivity and the idea of creating a subjective argument makes them feel a little (or a lot) uncomfortable.

I've been giving a version of this assignment for about a decade, and some of my students find this type of writing refreshing and empowering. On the other hand, other students just hate it, and they tell me it's their least favorite assignment of the semester.

I've thought about taking this assignment out, and I keep leaving it in. Why? Because learning how to adapt writing for new situations and with new genres gives you skills that you can take in other new situations, and that's kind of my rationale for this entire class.

Sometimes it's good to be uncomfortable. It's good to feel something different than what you normally feel when you are writing for a class. I want you to think about that,be aware of what it's like to use words in new ways.

At any rate, in this blog, you can focus on a few things: 1) The transition from objectivity to subjectivity and what that means for you or how it feels; 2) an exploration of how blogs respond to a rhetorical situation and how that allows writers to make their position seem relevant; or 3) a discussion of how op/eds seem to appeal to specific audiences but not to others.

Requirements of this blog:
1) Your blog should be at least 500 words;
2) you need to incorporate at least two hyperlinks to the information on what op/eds are all about and any other hyperlinks that you think are relevant. If you don't know how to make a hyperlink, there is information about that in FAQ link on Bb.
3) BTW, there is a folder in Module 2 that has information on op/eds and their requirements if you want to know more about what you are writing.

As always, write using your unique identity. Appeal to your audience of students in this class, however you are imagining them based on what they have written.

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