Drafting a Thesis

I revised my thesis for the Genre Analysis essay by incorporating feedback from my instructor and peers on the first GA working draft. I received feedback on MLA formatting and introducing sources in the introduction before the thesis.

GA working draft 2 thesis

GA working draft 1 thesis

Revised thesis:

Oates employs conventions of memoir such as first-person narration, dialogue, personal arc of events and dual voices to unfold the realities of autism to inform the readers of the Narrative Magazine and her memoir, the effects of autism on families. While Oates labels her essay as an elegy, the text reinvents the genre convention of mourning a dead person, despite having poetic moments expressing grief, because the author feels the loss of a connection due to lack of communication with her sister Lynn although she is alive.

Author's name: Oates

Genres: memoir and elegy

Genre conventions:

Memoir- first-person narration, dialogue, personal arc of events and dual voices

Elegy - mourning a dead person, poetic moments expressing grief

Rhetorical purpose- the effects of autism on families.

Intended audience: readers of Narrative Magazine and her memoir

The thesis is arguable because it claims that the text is an elegy while it can be argued that the text is not an elegy because it is about a person who is alive whereas an elegy is a poem lamenting a dead person.

I revised my thesis to be more specific and detailed than the original thesis by including specific genre conventions for each genre

Moreover, I structured the conventions in the order that I analyzed them in my essay. Lastly, the thesis is sophisticated because it connects the three elements of a rhetorical situation- message, rhetor and audience.

Rhetorical triangle

I learned how to make my thesis structured and specific by including the effects of key genre conventions from doing a side-by-side comparison of both my theses based on the GA essay rubric which requires that The thesis is arguable, rhetorical, specific and insightful about the topic and texts. The thesis and essay develop a credible interpretation about how key genre conventions in the chosen text address a particular discourse community and/or a relevant context. Claims are presented clearly, rely on sound reasoning and an accurate reading of the text, and engage consistently with other perspectives or counterarguments.

I learnt through the process of peer review that the thesis should only include the rhetor’s last name and that the name of a magazine should be italicized according to MLA formatting as stated in the course objectives: Give productive feedback on peers’ writing-in-progress; prioritize and implement feedback received from instructor and peers to revise effectively over multiple drafts. This helped me develop my skills in writing an effective thesis which is essential to writing a rhetorical analysis essay. It gave me insight on proper formatting in academic writing which is important to my academic ethos because formatting properly is of paramount importance in the academic discourse community.