Brandon worked on adding three sources to his annotated bibliography. To do this, Brandon simply looked at the research that he conducted on last week's second draft of his final paper, listing three additional sources and explaining why he used them in his paper. Brandon was finished in about an hour, and we used the rest of the time to continue researching for his final paper.
Today, Brandon worked on proving his first claim: there is a problem with how pregnant women and mothers are viewed in the American workforce. Using logos, Brandon cited a profound study which indicated that in a general audience asked to rate the starting salary and productiveness of two women, one of which was pregnant, they gave the women who appeared to be pregnant a significantly lower starting salary and productive rating. After citing this study, Brandon reported that the EEOC (Equal Employment Opportunity Commission) reported over 6,000 cases of pregnancy discrimination in 2012 alone. Moving on to pathos, which is an appeal to emotion, Brandon cited a real-life situation where a mother found herself unable to support her family because she was terminated for refusing to work overtime. With these powerful research findings, I am sure that we will get through his next few claims with little problems.
Per the Classical Model of Argumentation, Brandon worked on the "Argument" section of his final research paper, which entails Brandon's reiteration of his thesis using the specific claims from his outline and the use of the appeals logos, ethos, and pathos. Brandon began by articulating his stance on the issue of discrimination on the basis of pregnancy in the workplace, bringing up points that he did not discuss in his introduction to be sure that he did not become too repetitive. We will work on his claims more in the weeks to come.
Brandon began work on the second draft of his final research paper, which needed 8 pages to be complete. From the first draft, Brandon had a total of 6 pages completed, but there are still several areas of the classical model that Brandon has yet to touch in spite of the page requirements. It is this that we are working on this week.
Because Brandon's discussion posts were brief this week, we started first with this assignment. Brandon finished this in no time. We looked over his peer reviewers' feedback and noted the items of importance, and we began addressing those points on his paper.
Brandon spent some time finishing up the second draft of his final essay. This involved updating his bibliography and adding a conclusion to the document. Brandon also finished responding to two of his peers' discussion posts. Good day.
After obtaining approval from his professor, Brandon took some time to condense the information from his previous papers (i.e. history of women at work, discrimination, etc.). This helped Brandon research page 3, so we are in good shape for completing the 6 page paper on time. Brandon had to rework some of his previous statements so that they fit in with his overall claims.
Brandon and I worked on the first 6-8 page draft of his final paper this week. To support some of his claims, Brandon read through several articles and found several studies that corroborated his research findings. Afterwards, Brandon had to synthesize this information and explain 1) why it is applicable to his thesis, and 2) how it proves his claims. This took some time, and we are working through this first draft steadily.
Brandon wrote several discussions posts for English and completed some of the lecture materials. This week, the focus was on Argumentation, and Brandon had to become well versed in the classical model of essay writing to complete a first draft for the upcoming assignment.
