Write an Introduction and Make a Connection

1. If you haven't set up your google email account and been subscribed to the class email discussion list, you will need to complete these steps before you do this assignment. You know you have been added to the class email discussion list if you have received a welcome message or, for that matter, any other emails to your new gmail address from:

engbiolcfall2008reynolds@googlegroups.com

If you haven't received such messages in your gmail account, please get in touch with me ASAP. Remember: my email is prof.brandon@gmail.com and my phone is 804-885-3727.

2. Due by 9:00 AM, Wednesday, 3 September. Write a short introduction of yourself and send it to the class email list. In your introduction, give some details about yourself, your plans, your life, why you decided to take the Learning Community, etc. You will use these emails to begin to get to know your classmates.

You can send a post to the class discussion list by sending an email from your gmail account to:

engbiolcfall2008reynolds@googlegroups.com

3. Due by 9:00 AM, Thursday, 4 September. Read the introductions posted by your classmates. Find places where you "connect" to another student author, and send a follow up email in which you briefly explain your connection. What you are doing is attempting to build connection or to get the sender to identify with you. In terms of rhetoric, you are building ethos--one of the three appeals you read about in the article on the rhetorical triangle. Southerners play this game of connection (ethos building) whenever they get together. Little do they know, they are practicing a simple form of building ethos.

• While I would like you to read the introductions from all your classmates, please *don't* write a response to every classmate; instead, pick and choose a few of those to whom you have some connection on which to build.