show & tell. telling academic essays “tell” you quite a bit:

Show & Tell

Telling• Academic essays “tell” you quite a bit:

Telling• Academic essays “tell” you quite a bit:

“Literacy is a complex concept.”

Telling• Academic essays “tell” you quite a bit:

“Literacy is a complex concept.” “Smoking can cause cancer.”

Telling• Academic essays “tell” you quite a bit:

“Literacy is a complex concept.” “Smoking can cause cancer.”

“Stephen King creates vivid images in his writing.”

Telling• Academic essays “tell” you quite a bit:

“Literacy is a complex concept.” “Smoking can cause cancer.”

“Stephen King creates vivid images in his writing.”

• But they don’t stop there—they have to “show” you in order to craft an argument.

Showing• How do they “show” you?

“Literacy is a complex concept.”

Showing• How do they “show” you?

“Literacy is a complex concept.”

• Support it through logic & quotation. “Literacy is often defined simply as ‘reading and writing,’ but according to composition scholars David Barton and Linda Hamilton, that includes

‘reading’ a map and ‘writing’ music…”

Showing• How do they “show” you?

“Smoking can cause cancer.”

Showing• How do they “show” you?

“Smoking can cause cancer.”

• Support it with statistics:“According to Cancer.org, women who smoke are 25.7 times more likely to get cancer than

non-smoking women…”

Showing• How do they “show” you?

“Stephen King creates vivid images in his writing.”

Showing• How do they “show” you?

“Stephen King creates vivid images in his writing.”

• Support it with examples:“When King argues that writing is telepathy, he does

not just explain why he thinks this; he does so by asking his reader to imagine a particular image: a white rabbit sitting on a red scarf with a blue “8”

painted on its back.”

Show & Tell

GeneralVs.

Specific

Show & Tell

Telling—General:“My English teacher taught me how to write

better.”

Show & Tell

Telling—General:“My English teacher taught me how to write

better.”

Telling—Specific:Add details! “Unpack” those broad, general

terms (Dr. Dunbar-Odom). Which English teacher? What did she/he teach you?

Show & Tell

Telling—General:“My English teacher taught me how to write

better.”

Telling—Specific:“My fifth grade English teacher helped me to improve my spelling and sentence structure.”

Show & Tell

Showing—General:“After school, we would meet in her classroom.

She would sit in the desk next to me, then together we would read my papers out loud.

When we found mistakes, she would suggest a few possible improvements. Once I chose the

improvement I preferred, then we would re-read the sentence to see how it flowed.”

Show & TellShowing—Specific:

With a “Once”

“One time…”

Show & TellShowing—Specific:

“I can remember one time when I met with Mrs. Calhoun after school in her classroom, and she scrunched her

body into the student’s desk next to me, like she always did. We began reading through my paper together like some kind of religious chant, when she noticed that I

spelled “chest of drawers” “chester drawers.” She didn’t laugh, but instead pronounced the word correctly several times in her theater voice, “Chest-of-drawers. Chest-of-

drawers. Now how do you think that would be spelled?” I have never made that spelling error since, but she didn’t

try to embarrass me to teach me the correct spelling.”

Show & Tell

Your challenge:when possible,

Show & Tell specifically!

Works Cited• http://comefillyourcup.com/wp-content/

uploads/2012/02/show_tell.jpg• Cancer.org