Chapter 4. Essentials_Video_Topic

4.1 Lesson 4 Essentials Video: Topic

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Lesson 4 Essentials Video: Topic

Watch the video below to see how students like you have written about a topic that matters to them.

Transcript

Students in order of appearance: Nicole, Vinh-Thuy, Daishawn, Chase, Gregg, Samantha, Nanaissa, Kendra, Therese

Exercise: Integrate the video

Question

Write a substantial paragraph or two, with a topic sentence or mini-thesis, through which you respond to this video as you form your own approaches to selecting and refining a topic for your writing assignment. You might begin by identifying the moments that stand out to you the most. Which student videos seem to make the most sense to you? With whom do you agree? Disagree? What patterns do you find among the student sound bites? Which ideas were the most instructive or helpful to you? What surprised you? How have your own ideas about “topic” come into focus through the videos?
Ashia has a well-designed, strongly connected, and ideally balanced rhetorical triangle when she says, “When I’m picking a topic, I’m looking for a personal connection. Because I feel like I [can] get more feeling into the paper and create more pathos and ethos in the paper. I [want to] get my audience to feel what I am saying and to feel what I feel.” Notice how Ashia is connected to her topic, and her topic is connected to her audience, and, thus, her audience is connected to her, as a writer. Your approach to selecting a topic may be different from Ashia’s, but so long as you have chosen a topic you can approach with interest, you will be on the right track.