MbShea@PWP@English@UMCP

Here we go with our first assignment:  DUE IN DRAFT ON WEDNESDAY, one week from today, February 11, for peer review and consultation. Final copy, due in hard copy on FRIDAY, February 13th.

At work, you need to write a brief memo (a type of document or genre, with a specific arrangement) about what a rain garden is. We will discuss the audience, context, and purpose for this writing assigment in class.

Here is a structure -- what Aristotle would call arrangement -- for your memo, where each indented item represents a paragraph:

Introduce rain gardens very briefly, based on conjecture, the first stasis

Define rain gardens (definition paragraph, the second stasis)

Categorize rain gardens as a kind of low impact development (categorizing paragraph, which is an act of expanded definition)

Document the effectiveness of rain gardens (logos-proof paragraph with ethos of citation authority; this action is a type of valuing act -- the fourth stasis)

Illustrate what a rain garden looks like and how this garden works. (More on this Friday, after you have read about them.  Here, the description is, again, part of an extended definition act, yet requires information from the third stasis -- cause and effect.

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Source documents for you, which is an act of invention, a kind of audience-context-purpose driven research.

EPA Case study

UMD Davis, et al study

You can also use a Google-as-expert approach, as well as look at the Wikipedia entry. Next, try the UMD website, as well as search (back to Google) on "Prince George's County" with the term "rain garden."  

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For Friday and next week, we need to think about sentences.  

Sentences: Let's look at these handouts.
Sentence patterns: basic
Lean Predicates (the Buffy handout)