Propaganda Analysis Handout 3

Zobel Handout #3

Propaganda Analysis

Fall 2008

Solid Thinking Skills Some of the thinking skills you can develop in this class will benefit you, your writing, your grades, and they may even earn you a Gold Medal. Well, perhaps not the Gold Medal, but they will help you out enormously if you take the time to develop them. Learning to write good papers is fraught with challenges. One of the biggest challenges is not limited to just choosing what to write about but how to write. As you are in college, you have demonstrated that you do know how to write, but that writing is not necessarily what we expect in college. To reach the levels of a successful college student, you need specific thinking and writing skills and abilities. With no further adieu, here are some of the most critical skills1: Selective attention: this means you keep and maintain your focus on your assignment, your goal, your paper, the text you are reading the paragraph you are working on, the evidence you are looking for/analyzing. If your analysis or attention starts to wander, selective attention brings it back to task. Sustained Analysis: Analysis often looks at a few ideas or pieces of evidence and then wanders off to explore new ideas, like that new icon on your cell phone. Selective attention helps analysis stay focused and remain sustained. This results in heavy evidence and meaning which is discussed and presented in depth. It is also called substance. Your position is solid, shored up, and is backed up. The analysis and meaning flow throughout your whole paper, and it is all interconnected. Suspension of Closure: If there is any confusion, stop and revisit the problem. Just because you think you have the right answer on the first attempt does not mean it is so. Go back. Review. Make sure that you have the right answer. Being ready to put things away does not make them complete, well done, or competently done. Analoging: Analoging means comparing things and indicating how they are alike. This builds connections and establishes links between items, evidence, and ideas. Autocensorship: do not quit just because you think you are done. Go back and check everything; make sure that you have answered all the questions thoroughly and that you are addressing the problem which you started out with. Have you compared your product with the grading criteria and assignment’s instructions? One way which you can develop these skills is in writing analytical papers. All of the papers in this class involve analysis. The long-term goal is for you to develop your abilities to generate sustained analysis with depth. This means that you can provide a discussion on your topic which lasts throughout the entire paper. In that paper, each of the different elements of support you have selected are supported by well-documented pieces of relevant evidence which is clearly linked to the point it is supporting. Each of these points which are shored up by evidence are themselves linked and connected to your overall claim, your thesis. Your paper is a power grid. If any element stands alone, is not connected, is not relevant, or is not balanced and grounded, it does not belong. If it does not contribute to the paper and making its point, then it is a distraction and it is irrelevant to your writing. Unfortunately, some of the most beautiful things you will write will be irrelevant to your paper’s goal. Cut it and save it to another file for another time. If you try to force pretty yet unrelated writing where it does not belong, that is like trying to go Frisbee golfing at a skeet shooting range: you do not belong there, and you may well get hurt—or earn a bad grade—if you insist on persisting. 1

These labels/names are taken from The Thoughtful Teacher’s Guide to Thinking Skills by Woditsch & Scmittroth

Zobel Propaganda Analysis Fall 2008 Handout #3 In order to develop the five solid thinking skills mentioned above and help your paper out, fill out the following. If this form is not completed or filled out, you will not get credit for the Propaganda Analysis. What is your claim or thesis? [This should be 1, ONE, sentence.] What are the two, three, or four major points supporting it (briefly). For point one, fill out the following: What is one piece of your specific supporting evidence that supports point one? How do you know that it is credible? How is it related to your point (point one)? Write it out overtly. Do not assume the reader will make the connections.

How does this piece of evidence connect your point 1 to your claim? Write it out clearly and overtly.

For point two, fill out the following: What is one piece of your specific supporting evidence that supports point two? How do you know that it is credible? How is it related to your point (point two)? Write it out overtly. Do not assume the reader will make the connections.

How does this piece of evidence connect your point 2 to your claim? Write it out clearly and overtly. Ideally, you will go in depth on ALL of your points with this approach. NEVER assume your points are obvious, blatant, clear, etc.—that depends upon your audience. I can say Berlin 1989, Grenada and Ronald Reagan, Stockholm 2000, or David Bell—each of these are obvious and meaningful points to me—and not add anything else. They likely mean zero to you. Do not assume what you know to be common knowledge or clear links just because it is common to you. Similarly, what you may regard as normal, clear, or valid logic must be spelled out and discussed. Make all your connections and reasoning overt and clear and present in text form.