Thread by @raulpacheco

I know most of you are watching the US vs Netherlands world women's soccer final match, but I've got some time right now to write about reading strategies for undergraduates, so I'm going to go ahead. I'm using @christyzen 's Just Water and @Farhana_H2O Water Justice pieces.

I'll use @maliniranga and Carolina Balasz's piece in @urbgeog on environmental justice is #Free2DownloadAndRead tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.10… to show you how using topic sentences can help students (and readers!) figure out the core of your argument.

I'll start with @maliniranga and Balasz's piece as it allows me to show something I've reiterated in previous threads: writing the core idea of your paragraph at the beginning (i.e., as a "topic sentence") allows the reader to detect it (and facilitates reading the piece).

Note how Malini & Carolina highlight their core idea: we're studying geographies of water marginalization (purple hue) by comparing two case studies (yellow hue), where we find similarities in degree of marginalization (orange hue). Then they define "urban fringe" (green hue)

Before you ask: I usually highlight in print, but I left my copy of Malini and Carolina's paper back in Aguascalientes, so I'm using the digital version and highlighting in Mendeley. raulpacheco.org/2018/03/an-upd… (this is my colour coding scheme).

In these two snips of my highlights, you can tell that Malini and Carolina foreground the two theoretical strands they're using (environmental justice and urban political ecology, in orange highlight). In doing so, they explain (pink and green highlights) how these converse.

You'll have to read it (it's an excellent piece), you'll discover that the entire article is written with topic sentences at the beginning of a paragraph. This strategy is incrediby useful to readers, because it allows them to skim the entire article by looking at Topic Sentences

On to @Farhana_H2O 's Water International water justice piece, which you can download here farhanasultana.com/publications/ Note how Farhana highlights two key factors in the global water crisis: climate change and increasing privatization. Also note how she ends the paragraph...

... by linking to the next idea (yellow highlights). Once she posits a key idea (yellow highlight), she provides evidence/argues why it is important (orange highlights). She highlights again the two key factors, but then provides key insights (intersectionality, power).

If I were taking notes in index cards raulpacheco.org/2018/11/note-t… I woudl want to quote this entire paragraph. That's also why I have a "Quotations" column and a "Page" column in my Excel Dump: so I can properly attribute quotations to authors. raulpacheco.org/2016/06/synthe… I take away...

... 3 key ideas: 1) water is about power (purple highlight) 2) we need to think about water through an intersectionality lens (blue highlight) and 3) we can't isolate issues that affect water (green highlight). And at the core, the main idea (water can be affected by CC and $$$)

My third example comes from my coauthor and dear friend, Dr. Christiana Zenner @christyzen 's book, Just Water, available from Orbis Books or Amazon. orbisbooks.com/just-water-en.… I blurbed the book, so I have an additional copy (on paper, not the bound copy) that I'll use for this.

At the end of Chapter 2, @christyzen reiterates her main points: 1) Water is a problem of “the common good” 2) Responses to water crises need to take social and physical realities into account 3) we need to think about adaptation and long-term water management. Note her outline:

As my handwritten notes show, Christiana offers 3 core ideas on water crises, all of them spelled out (yellow highlight). I could note these in an index card. I could write them out in my Everything Notebook raulpacheco.org/2018/12/note-t… or in my Excel Dump. I'll do this last option.

This particular paragraph doesn’t start with a topic sentence, but it does provide me with a chance to show how to find the core idea. Note how the chapter is about water as an economic commodity. I search the paragraph for “how do we value water” (yellow highlight)

If you follow my nested 6 colours highlighting process, you'll see I see @christyzen's argument as :
1) We can't define value of water as just $$$
2) Valuing frameworks will affect ecosystems and humans alike
3) Water value is often translated as "price"
4) We can't just use $$$

In this paragraph, @christyzen does lead with a topic sentence. Note how I follow her logic using yellow, orange, pink, green and purple. For those reading They Say/I Say, here’s a classic (note my “however” on the margins!). I also link to my own work and Malini’s too.