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NameDateEnglish Language Arts, Arguing Your Case Unit 1, Lesson 2 Worksheet: Postulating a Thesis. Now that we’ve spent some time considering the purpose of an argument, we’ll spend a class period considering the word thesis and the concept it represents. We’ll start with a do-now exercise, then we’ll define thesis for our purposes. After that, you’ll do some hands-on work identifying theses in scholarly work. Finally, you’ll review some short passages of text and use them to postulate theses of your own.Do-Now, Focus on One Word: Postulate (verb): this is a short exercise to help you use context (which means “the parts of a discourse that surround a word or passage and can throw light on its meaning”) to learn a new word. This is a whole class activity, so you will be asked to read these sentences aloud. We will work together as a class to determine its meaning.In *** research paper on Spanish colonialism in the Americas, *** postulates that Spain and Portugal essentially robbed the New World of its wealth.Many music critics, *** among them, postulate that Kendrick Lamar is the greatest rapper of all time.*** postulated, wrongly, that Quito is the capital of Brazil.*** is working on a magazine article in which *** will postulate that democracy in the United States is in jeopardy.The United States Declaration of Independence postulates that all men are created equal.The verb postulate meansDefining Thesis: Three meanings may be distinguished. A long essay or treatise presented for a degree.A proposition to be provedThe unstressed syllable of a metrical foot (e.g. thesis itself is a trochaic word on which the second syllable is unstressed).Which of these three definitions, given the scope of our unit on argumentation, is the one you need to understand and use in the context of composing a research paper?What is the plural of thesis? (Two hints: first, this is a Greek noun, so its plural will be irregular; second, the plural of thesis is used elsewhere on this page.Identifying Theses in Texts: in the following excerpts from scholarly publications, there is a thesis stated. Please identify it by writing it out in the blank space provided.“In July of this year, Saleh published the first of a series of moving letters to his missing wife on the website of the al-Jumhuriya Collective, a group of Syrian writers and researchers. If these letters had been integrated into a broader analysis of Saleh’s book, it might have had a wider appeal. It might even have been able to convince leftist thinkers in Britain and the U.S. that the uprising was not simply a Western plot to overthrow an anti-imperialist government as many believe. The writer’s personal tragedy reveals him as an authentic voice trying to understand how the genuine, progressive revolt he supported went so horribly wrong.”Hilsum, Lindsay. “War of All Against All.” The New York Review of Books LXIV.18 (2017): 4. Print.“It is twenty-seven years since John Bayley, writing in these pages about John Banville’s seventh novel, The Book of Evidence,” noted that the author ‘does not quite coordinate pace with expectation in the reader’s mind; his felicities are apt to hold him up, so that the reader wants to read faster than the author is doing the writing.’ In the novels that have followed, Banville has done little to assist the reader who feels held up in the tight curves of his prose. There is a willfulness about this method, with its seeming disregard for the niceties of story line. As Bayley intimates, the reader is often anxious to push on, to cease drifting aimlessly in a rapture of thickly laid on articulation; in other words, to get to the point. But Banville is a fiercely defiant author whose substantial body of work suggests that he expects his readers to submit to the more subtle drama of lush language being pressed and squeezed, as opposed to stopping to feed at the banal table of plot.”Philips, Caryl. “The Case of Isabel Archer.” The New York Review of Books LXIV.18 (2017): 14. Print.Section III, continued….“The Russian Revolution reshaped global time and space. The replacement of the House of Romanov by the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics inaugurated what came to be known as the “short twentieth century”; the USSR’s disintegration in 1991 signaled its finale, in all likelihood the last time events in Europe will serve as a century’s bookends. The Soviet project precipitated the partition of the planet into first (capitalist), second (socialist), and third (developing) worlds. For much of its existence, the USSR haunted the West and beckoned developing societies to replicate Russia’s leap into industrial and fully sovereign socialism.”Nathans, Benjamin. “Bolshevism’s New Believers.” The New York Review of Books LXIV.18 (2017): 18. Print.Postulating Theses: using the following excerpts from a variety of texts, there is sufficient context for you to postulate a thesis. Please write out your thesis in the blank space provided.“When Haley Barbour, the Governor of Mississippi, honored him in 2005, the great bluesman B.B. King had just turned 80 years old. Mr. King had been playing the blues for over 50 years, and his influence was great and wide. Reading the joint resolution of the Mississippi House and Senate, the Secretary of the Senate reminded his listeners that John Lennon of the Beatles once said ‘I wish I could play guitar like B.B. King.’”King, B.B. and Dick Waterman. The B.B. King Treasures. New York: Bulfinch Press, 2005.Section IV, continued….“Born in Kingston, Jamaica, in 1955 as Clive Campbell, DJ Kool Herc immigrated to the United States at age twelve. He settled in the Bronx and began deejaying at block parties in poor neighborhoods while still a teenager. At the time, the Bronx suffered from massive unemployment, violence, and social malaise, conditions which were reflected in many of the first rap lyrics. Herc’s greatest invitation as a DJ was to pick out the most danceable section of a song—the ‘break’—and repeat it continuously on his turntables, providing a pulsating backdrop for rappers whose lyrics accompanied his beats. As he put it in an interview in 2005, ‘I played records to get you up; I get a record to sit you down; I played records you could talk over; and, I get you back on the dance floor. That’s my format.’ Herc scavenged old funk records for good breaks, which he then incorporated into his shows; continuously looped breaks of funk songs later became a staple of hip-hop.”Kidder, David S, and Noah Oppenheim. “DJ Kool Herc.” The Intellectual Devotional Modern Culture: Converse Confidently about Society and the Arts. Emmaus PA: Modern Times, 2008.“On February 1, 1965, James Brown, already a veteran performer, entered Arthur Smith Studios in Charlotte, North Carolina. He brought along a band of eight musicians, including the famous saxophonist Maceo Parker (1943-). Brown had lyrics as well, but there wasn’t much to them. He wanted a song to encompass every style of dance popular at the time, so he shouted out their names one by one: ‘the jerk,’ ‘the fly,’.’ the monkey,’ ‘the mashed potato,’ ‘the twist,’ ‘the boomerang.’ While Brown sang, his musicians shot out notes all around him, each one a quick, staccato burst. Every note sounded percussive. As Brown wrote in his autobiography, “I was hearing everything, even the guitars, like they were drums.” The song Brown and his band recorded in a single take that day—‘Papa’s Got a Brand New Bag’—was the perfect prototype for funk, a style that values rhythm above all else. Funk was born on that day.”Kidder, David S, and Noah Oppenheim. “James Brown.” The Intellectual Devotional Modern Culture: Converse Confidently about Society and the Arts. Emmaus PA: Modern Times, 2008. ................
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