Commentary Essay
Commentary Essay
Purpose: The purpose of commentary is not simply to report things but to give readers a way to make sense of them. A commentary will help you write critically about a topic and will help you analyze this topic within a larger societal context.
Audience: Your audience for this paper should be one who has a stake in the topic. For example, if you are discussing your understanding of a topic like ISTEP testing, your audience could be administrators.
Genre: For this paper, your genre is in the form of a commentary.
Stance: Your stance should be formal in that you are writing to an academic audience who will be making meaning of your topic. However, you may use the pronoun “I” to discuss your position.
Media/Design: This paper should be typed and take the form of an essay: 4-6 pages, double spaced, Times New Roman, with title page.
• Give readers something to react to, think about or use to make sense of topic. • You will not use an objective tone or take a neutral stance; you have a perspective. • You are attempting to analyze and explain what is going on around you. • You are asking your readers to consider one possible way of making sense of what has happened in the past and what is going on in the present. • Your readers want a satisfying account of our shared experience and to find patterns of meaning that can make the world make more sense. • Approach your readers as co-thinkers, you are asking them to look at the world from your perspective (whether they ultimately agree with you or not). Even through your perspective, you must negotiate differences fairly. • While doing these things, refer to chapters 30-33 in Norton. You will be analyzing, classifying, and perhaps defining. Chapter 12, entitled evaluations, also speaks to aspects of commentary papers and Chapter 9 refers to arguing a position.
For this paper, you need to have three sources. Because you will be trying to show your
Purpose: The purpose of commentary is not simply to report things but to give readers a way to make sense of them. A commentary will help you write critically about a topic and will help you analyze this topic within a larger societal context.
Audience: Your audience for this paper should be one who has a stake in the topic. For example, if you are discussing your understanding of a topic like ISTEP testing, your audience could be administrators.
Genre: For this paper, your genre is in the form of a commentary.
Stance: Your stance should be formal in that you are writing to an academic audience who will be making meaning of your topic. However, you may use the pronoun “I” to discuss your position.
Media/Design: This paper should be typed and take the form of an essay: 4-6 pages, double spaced, Times New Roman, with title page.
• Give readers something to react to, think about or use to make sense of topic. • You will not use an objective tone or take a neutral stance; you have a perspective. • You are attempting to analyze and explain what is going on around you. • You are asking your readers to consider one possible way of making sense of what has happened in the past and what is going on in the present. • Your readers want a satisfying account of our shared experience and to find patterns of meaning that can make the world make more sense. • Approach your readers as co-thinkers, you are asking them to look at the world from your perspective (whether they ultimately agree with you or not). Even through your perspective, you must negotiate differences fairly. • While doing these things, refer to chapters 30-33 in Norton. You will be analyzing, classifying, and perhaps defining. Chapter 12, entitled evaluations, also speaks to aspects of commentary papers and Chapter 9 refers to arguing a position.
For this paper, you need to have three sources. Because you will be trying to show your