Same-Sex Parenting and the Way People Look at It

Full Draft Assignment
This component of the TiC asks you to put your sources in conversation with one another to start to probe the complexity of the issue that you are researching.The full draft assignment that you post to the class discussion is considered a draft and will count as 20 points in addition to the final grade for the paper.
Directions:
1. Read through the texts that you listed in your preliminary bibliography, using the skills of rhetorical analysis that your developed for your RA assignment, to best understand the author's argument and stance related to your topic. Outline the article's main argument and 3-5 supporting points. You will directly address these supporting points in your essay.
2. Revise the text of your original blog post to reflect the deeper understanding of your topic that you have gained through your preliminary research. In your revision, write several paragraphs (from your own persona) in order to
explain a larger significance of the topic you are going to research
talk about the existing contradictions and questions within your topic
present the article's main argument and its supporting points (summary) - Summary Instructions
explain your current stance on the topic
In addition, you should revise in a way so that it is structured to engage your reader: think about rhetorical appeals and strategies, not just about delivering information. This will include expanding your initial blog post from 300+ words to at least 400+ words.
Click here to read the example of a revised preliminary blog post
3. Choose 3 sources from the preliminary bibliography that seem to represent intersecting but individual viewpoints in terms of the conversation about your topic. Do not choose the sources that simply represent the same argumentative position; you are looking to represent multiple perspectives on the issue, not just voices that speak in unison. If possible, choose those sources that represent some of the most important voices on the topic; use sources with a strong ethos for your argument.
4. Reread these three sources critically and keeping in mind that you will have to reproduce the author's stance/point of view in your TiC. Some hints:
If you are writing about a source with multiple authors, choose ONE as the primary author for your comment.
It's strongly recommended that you limit yourself to secondary sources for your TiC.
5. Now, maintaining the format of a blog post, write a comment to the original blog post in the persona of the author of each of the 3 sources that you selected. Each comment should be a MINIMUM of 250 words in length and is composed in multiple paragraphs. The goal of this assignment is to show how authors agree and disagree with each other on their main points surrounding your research topic.
In it, the “Author” should engage with ONE SUPPORTING POINT of the original blog post in context of his/her own ideas and specifically to the text/source that you are looking at. The idea behind this is that you are writing as if that author happened upon the blog post and was responding based on his or her own work/thoughts on the topic.
A new "Author" can agree/disagree with one of the supporting points OR add a completely new point that will ADD to your main argument.
Notes: In preparation for writing the TiC comments, be sure to use your rhetorical analysis skills to help you identify the persona, voice, rhetorical situation, and appeals that this author might be likely to use based on your knowledge of him/her from the source so that you can take those into account in terms of the style you use in the blog post. As needed, use Google or other search methods to find out background on the author to include (for instance, if the author is a Professor at Harvard, you might have her mention that in her comment as a way of establishing ethos).
Click here to read the example of blog comments
A note about quoting:
You should use some direct quotes in your TiC comments, enclosed in quotation marks... however, the author should mention that s/he is deliberately quoting him or herself; do not simply quote the way you would in a research paper. For instance:
RECOMMENDED QUOTING METHOD FOR TIC: As I said in my article, “Gaming is the devil’s work.” (Note the commenter draws attention to the fact she is quoting herself from her article)
DISCOURAGED QUOTING METHOD FOR TIC: I would like to emphasize that “gaming is the devil’s work.” (Note that while this more integrated method might be appropriate for a traditional research essay, it does not work when trying to maintain the pretense of the blog genre as we are for this assignment)
If you copy something verbatim from a source, you MUST enclose it in quotation marks! Never ever (not even in your notes) leave off the quotation marks because that's the way you start down that slippery slope toward plagiarism (intentional or otherwise –and the Honor Code doesn't really discriminate between the two)
Please cite the source of any direct quote(using a footnote, for this assignment)
Please cite the source of any material that you closely paraphrase (statistics, for instance, or enumerated lists of facts or definitions).
PLEASE NOTE –these are very different rules for using source material than you would use in writing a traditional academic essay! We will be exploring the differences as we move into the RBA assignment.
7. Having written these THREE comments based on THREE different sources, now write one final comment of at least 300 words. For this final comment, you are writing as yourself but still in the persona of a blogger who has received these comments on your post. You should assess the 3 different perspectives that have weighed in on your topic and original source and how they relate to the project that you have in mind. Your goal in responding to each source is to do the following:
SUMMARIZE (give a pithy reminder of what the source/comment was about)
EVALUATE (assess the source, considering bias, kairos, or just evaluating the article for relevance or persuasiveness), and
CONNECT (consider how the article applies to your topic and line of inquiry).
Be sure at the end of this comment to include at least 2-3 sentences in which you offer a tentative thesis or research question that is governing your research at this point, including how it might have changed since you wrote your original blog post.
Check the previous link to see the example
Evaluation:
At a minimum, it needs to contain a revised original blog post, three comments, and a final blog post and show some attention to showcasing source material and engaging the sources in conversation.