read page 129-138 of They Say/I Say, which will introduce you to metacommentary.
One common way of using metacommentary is to offer readers a “roadmap” of your argument. Here is an example, taken from Elizabeth Wardle’s “‘Mutt Genres’ and the Goals of FYC [First-Year Composition].” I have highlighted the metacommentary “moves” for you.
In this article I first briefly overview the difficulties of teaching genres out of context, as FYC is asked to do. I then describe the results of a study I conducted of a composition program at a large midwestern university; this study concretely illustrates real problems that teacherseven teachers of homogenous cohorts organized around majorsencounter when faced with the goal of teaching students to write the specialized genres of the academy. I conclude by arguing that this research should lead us to radically re-examine the goals of FYC; I suggest we should no longer ask FYC to teach students to write in the university and instead construct FYC to teach students about writing in the university. (767)
Your task in this journal is to create a “roadmap” of your own argument in the Conceptual Analysis assignment. When you revise your Conceptual Analysis, you should place this roadmap somewhere in your introduction, likely before you transition into your actual analysis. [Note: you may find it helpful to look for instances of metacommentary in Russell and Yaez’s article as well.]
