10.23 What to include in your portfolio, and the overall organization for a comparative analysis assignment

What to include in your portfolio
line by line analysis (10.8)
writing about poem choice (10.20)
brainstorming for essay (10.23
rough draft (10.27)
final draft for peer review (10.30)
peer review feedback (10.30 in-lass writing)

Overall organization,
You did some writing to "outline" the points you would make, and after you had some of that in front of you, we talked through a general plan for writing a comparative essay.  I hope I made clear that the particular organization for your essay depends on your topic, and the approach you take to analysizing it.

Introduction: In general, you want to provide a set up for your essay which includes a statement of the general focus (something to answer the "why should I read this? question;  the names of the poems and authors you will be writing about, an overview of the points you will make through your comparison (what you will show through your analysis), and enough background on the poems so that the reader can understand why it makes sense to compare these two poems (the basis for comparison).

The particular order of these four moves will depend on your style, and the "flow" of your discussion.  If you are making a particularly detailed point, you will definitely want to set up your general focus FIRST, so that your reader has something to go on.  In general, you need to name the poems + poets before you begin writing about analyzing them.  Background comes next, and then you want to re-state your general focus in terms of the specific points (features of the poem you will analyze) as a transition to the body of your essay.

Body: For the body of a comparison essay, you can choose either a subject by subject comparison or a point by point discussion.

For a subject by subject comparison, you write everything about one poem, a transition, and the everything about the other, followed by a comparision of the points you discussed for each poem.

For point by point, you write a paragraph (or two) for each "point" you want to make about the two essays, and describe how they are similar and different, then transition to the next point.

We decided that Alycia's comparison of My Last Duchess and My Ex-lover might work better as a subject by subject comparison, because the second poem depends on the reader's familiarity with the first.  And we thought maybe Justin's comparison of The Moth and Billie Collins poem about literature students, might work better as a point by point, where he could discuss the following points:the similarity of focus, the similarity of the way the poem's achieved their effect (by having the addresseee go ahead in their old patterns - and leaving the reader to think about that); the differences presentation (one is dialog, one is monolog). poetic form (one is a sonnet the other is ??); and perhaps one other point?

When writing either a subject by subject or point by point comparison it is important to keep both references to poems and the order of points "in the same order".  If this is confusing - I will explain it more in class.

Good writing!

Plays. . .
Also, we talked about the plays in your textbook, and the majority of the class chose to read/write about Othello.  I will have the assignment sequence posted for you by Monday, and get started.  This should be fun!

For next class:
We will go back to the assignment sheet, make a list of what we would look for if we were evaluating this as a teacher = and then take a look at a couple of sample drafts.

Volunteers to have their drafts reviewed include: Jayshawn, Julia, Maddie, Melissa and Alycia.

Have a great weekend and see you on Monday.