LAB FIVE-A

Writing can expand and contract as you develop or condense-and-select your points.  The more you are able to control the flexibility of your words -- gaining emphasis, clarity, and specific support -- the more effective your writing will become.   Today's activity will concentrate on finding the core ideas in larger statements, combining and amplifying them, and then expressing the core of the newly-developed ideas.

1. Routine Startup

• the first browser shows these instructions. Press Control-N to open a second browser and use it to follow links and carry out the instructions.

2. Persuasion / Right On!

1. Introduction: Making Every Word Count

You will be going to the Persuasion discussion in the online forum and preparing a report that summarizes the positions expressed.

2. The Report

1. Read the following steps over before you go to the forum

   go to the forum

2. Open the forum entitled "Persuasion 4-A"
    
3. Share the screen between your browser and a new document in Word.
    
4. Choose at least two topics, and find a relationship between them.  Are they both a result of budget cuts?  Do they both depend on the same kind of decision makers?  Could the same kind of solution (e.g. advertising) apply to both?
    
   • if you can't find a second to fit with your best choice, go ahead with a single topic
      
   • as a challenge, don't include your own topic!
   (but if you can't resist, that's ok)
    
5. Combine the topics into one report, about 400 words long, that gives an accurate picture of the opinions expressed

• include everything that you feel is important
• vary your treatment with summary, indirect quotation, and direct quotation
• check the number of words using the word count displayed at the lower left
• if the two topics don't give you enough to work with, include a third topic, or expand with your own thoughts

4. Save this report in the shared folder with the name report_yourlastname

3. Second Introduction: Making Every Word Count

When you write a first draft, it will often be long and wordy. You need to look at your style and rewrite for economy, flow, and directness. This exercise will help alert you to the value of individual words and phrases. You will be reducing your piece of writing to an exact size. In doing so, you will need to consider the relative importance of words that are making the count too long or too short. Consider every part for what it does and doesn’t do. Leave nothing out that is essential. Summarize and reword if that can accomplish the same thing more successfully.

4. Right On!: the exercise

1. Open a new document in Word and share the screen with your own document,  report_yourlastname

• TIP: minimize all Word documents except the two you want to work with, then click on View / Arrange All

2. Condense your original report into 200 words -- exactly, not a word more or a word less.
    
3. Save your condensed version in the shared folder with the name right-on_yourlastname

3. Work on your Persuasion Paper

Prepare as much as you can of the current writing project, Paper Three: Persuasion, during the lab. Your paper is due for the start of next week's first class, saved in the shared folder. Use the filename persuasion_yourlastname