Text-Based Discussion

Basic Structure

Topic idea – Make your point precisely and succinctly. Don’t summarize plot!!

Basic Structure

Topic idea – Make your point precisely and succinctly. Don’t summarize plot!!!!

Example 1 ] Example 2 ] Example 3 ]

Basic Structure

Topic idea – Make your point precisely and succinctly. Don’t summarize plot!!!!

Example 1 ] Organize and transition these purposefully.

Example 2 ] Example 3 ]

Basic Structure

Topic idea – Make your point precisely and succinctly. Don’t summarize plot!!!!

Example 1 ] Organize and transition these purposefully.

Example 2 ] Each example should be grounded in text. Example 3 ]

Basic Structure

Topic idea – Make your point precisely and succinctly. Don’t summarize plot!!!!

Example 1 ] Organize and transition these purposefully.

Example 2 ] Each example should be grounded in text

Example 3 ] Provide context, content, and connection

for each!

Basic Structure

Topic idea – Make your point precisely and succinctly. Don’t summarize plot!

Example 1 ] Organize and transition these purposefully.

Example 2 ] Each example should be grounded in text

Example 3 ] Provide context, content, and connection

for each!

Close – point back to or extend your topic idea. Don’t just restate your topic idea!

Sample Development

Topic idea

Shakespeare suggests that people are prone to vain self-delusion and that this is often aided by friends.

Example 1: Feste voices Shakespeare’s idea

Example 2: How not to behave

Example 3: How to behave

Sample Development

Example one: Feste making the point

In his conversation with Orisno at Olivia’s estate, the fool asserts this idea that friends can be harmful by enabling one to ignore one’s own faults: “they praise me and make an ass of me…/ …by my friends, I am abused” (V.i.15,18).

(Notice context, content, and connection to the topic idea)

Sample Development

Example two: How NOT to behaveThe relationship of Andrew and Toby exemplifies this negative type of friendship. Set on by his “friend” Sir Toby to court Olivia, Andrew, inept, foppish, simple, is in no way a decent match for the sophisticated and pragmatic Olivia. Andrew himself has a sense of this absurdity as he says to Toby early in the process of wooing her, “Your niece will not be seen; or if she be, it's four to one she'll none of me” (I.iii.104-105). Yet he sets aside his own accurate sense of the situation due Toby’s encouragement, which is much less probable: “She'll none o' the count: she'll not match above her degree, neither in estate, years, nor wit; I have heard her swear't. Tut, there's life in't, man”( I.iii.106-108). While Toby’s encouragement may be motivated by the best of intentions, it nonetheless succeeds making an ass of Andrew, who is tempted by Toby’s flattery and ignores his own common sense.

(Notice context, content, and connection to the topic idea)

Sample Development

Example three: How TO behaveShakespeare offers a more positive example of how a friend should behave in Olivia, who tries to do Malvolio a favor by pointing out his vanity after he gets upset at an insult from Feste:

Oh, you are sick of self-love, Malvolio, and taste with a distempered appetite. To be generous, guiltless and of free disposition, is to take those things for bird-bolts that you deem cannon-bullets (I.V. 89-92)

Unfortunately for Malvolio, he does not learn from her comments, and he eventually falls prey to his own vanity, reinforcing Shakespeare’s theme about this human weakness.

Closing off your point

Notice how the end of the last statement points back to the topic idea without restating it:

“…reinforcing Shakespeare’s theme of this human weakness [vanity].”

Topic idea from above: “Shakespeare suggests that people are prone to vain self-delusion and that this is often aided by friends.”

Remember!

Always lead with an evaluative point – compare, contrast, characterize, identify cause or effect, etc.

Organize detail purposefully – know why certain details go first, second, last.

Context, content (text!!), connection