Lesson Topic: Emphasis
The English lesson for College Writing I focuses on emphasis, a significant and pervasive feature of most discourse, but also a rhetorical tool that aids in communicating clearly and effectively. A lesson on emphasis is appropriate at any phase of the writing process, and like other topics in introductory composition courses, it comes across in active reading as well as in writing and revising. Emphasis occurs locally and globally in texts, at the level of the sentence, the subordinate clause, the paragraph, the section, and the whole text.
Writing involves making many interrelated moves over time, often in a recursive manner. Many aspects of writing (e.g. having a complex, arguable, and interesting thesis), even if isolated and clearly defined, are difficult to study given the diffuse nature of composing practice. A writer, for instance, may revise her thesis because she reconsiders her audience, finds a new sense of purpose, discovers something important about her subject, dislikes the sentence structure or wording, receives feedback from her peers, or simply changes her mind. A consideration of emphasis typically leads to considerations of other dimensions of writing such as audience, purpose, organization, development, and style. Although emphasis is complex and has a wide range of application, a single lesson usually focuses on one or two ways to understand and use the concept. We have decided to focus on emphasis with respect to critical reading, particularly the reading of a single text, making it, we hope, easier to determine whether or not our learning goals are being met in the lesson.
Students are often unaware of how to recognize and produce emphasis because they have been taught that writing is a merely matter of following rules and formulas rather than making informed decisions in given situations. The widely taught five-paragraph essay format, for instance, does little to promote an understanding of how or why certain ideas are emphasized. In this format, students typically do less to conceive a focus than to make a relatively bland statement and divide it into arbitrary parts in the body of the essay, putting their most important ideas in predetermined places.
Learning Goal
As a result of the lesson, students should be able to recognize and analyze emphasis as a particular strategy deployed by a writer for specific purposes and audiences.
Overarching Purposes
The lesson has an immediate goal, but it also meshes with the larger goals of the course. Critical reading is one of the four major outcome areas of ENG 110:
Students who complete English 110 with a B/C or better should
· Be able to use writing and reading for inquiry, learning, and thinking
· Understand how to find, evaluate, analyze, and synthesize appropriate sources
· Be able to integrate the idea of other with their own
· Be aware of the relationships among language, knowledge, and power
The lesson can help students improve the clarity of purpose and focus of ideas in their essays. With an understanding of emphasis, students can better integrate sources into their own writing (by helping them recognize the most important elements of a text to be integrated) and indicate to their own readers the most significant elements in the texts they are creating. This lesson encourages students to read critically for a writer’s emphasis, ultimately promoting a deeper understanding of how readers and writers play complementary and alternating roles in discourse communities.
Contact: Mary Helen McMurran
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