Tuesday, November 30, 2010

Does it Matter where you go to college?

NYTimes debates this question.

Small Change

Malcom Gladwell on Why the Revolution will not be Tweeted.

Day 45

Fall 2010 English 101 Day 45

1. Learn from Lindsay and Leon and the Tour De Dumb

2. Homework: Cover Letter and Revised Final, Final Draft due Friday.

3. Hand in Portfolio Revision Worksheet.

4. MLADM2KX: Round 1.
a. Put that coffee down! Coffee is for closers!

5. Tomorrow, round two: MLADM2KX: Black Ops.

6. Tomorrow, also, all bp from comments on the blog. Cut and paste into a document and number the comments.

Monday, November 29, 2010

Day 44

Fall 2010 English 101 Day 44

1. Narrative Rubric Point Spread

2. Hand in Essay 3

3. O/R: Y/N?

a. A Plate of Peas

4. Hand in Plot Log

5. Homework: Portfolio Review Worksheet. Answer on your own sheet of paper.

a. Also, MLADM2KX: Round 1 (in text citations, works cited page).

Wednesday, November 24, 2010

Day 43

Fall 2010 English 101 Day 43

1. Permission slips

2. Plot Logs

3. Calendar

4. A note about final essays
a. THE GIFT IS THE REASON YOU GO ON THE JOURNEY.

5. Another note about the final essays
a. If you are sure you don’t want to revise one of your first two essays, or if this third essay is looking bad so far, you can take a “0” on it for Monday and turn IT in as your revised essay on Friday for a score to replace the “0”.

6. Revision Notes.

Portfolio Review

Portfolio Revision Worksheet, Due Tuesday

Answer on your own paper

1. Which essay do you think is strongest? Explain your answer in detail, including a quote or paraphrase from the essay.

2. Did your peer readers agree with your assessment?

Paraphrase or quote from a peer

3. What did I have to say about the essay?

Paraphrase something I wrote to support your answer.

4. What essay do you think is your second best? Explain in detail.

5. For the second best essay, explain what your peers had to say. Paraphrase or quote

6. Explain what I had to say. Paraphrase or quote

7. What is your weakest essay? Explain why you think it’s weak, using quotes or paraphrase.

8. What do your readers have to say about this essay? Does their assessment or their comments reflect your opinion?

9. What did I have to say about this essay? Paraphrase or quote.

10. What revision would you need to do to submit the first assignment? List all the tasks you would need to complete below.

11. What revision would you need to do to submit the second assignment? List all the tasks you would need to complete.

12. What revision would you need to do to submit the third assignment? List all the tasks you would need to complete.

Cover Letter Assignment

Cover Letter Assignment—Due Friday December 3rd.

20 prewriting points, based on quality and quantity.

Your cover letter should present an evaluation of how you have performed as a student/writer this quarter.

1-2 single spaced pages.

Your cover letter should take the standard business letter format, (See Hacker for this). Use this for my address:

Mr. Dan Peters
YVCC
Yakima, Washington
98907-2520
dpeters@yvcc.edu

and formal salutation, Dear Mr. Peters is fine, and a signature line at the end.

Ideas/Questions that might help you get started--don't answer them as a list:

• How would you describe yourself as a writer before the class? How has this changed?

• How did you write papers before this class? How has this class changed your process?

• Evaluate the strengths and weaknesses as you see them in your thinking, reading, and writing for this course. Use the rubrics to help frame this response.

• What work do you do before you begin to write a draft of an essay? How do you develop a strong main point for your essays?

• How would you describe the peer group work as it affected your writing? Did it help you to have other readers for your papers? What sorts of comments were the most helpful to you? Did reading a peer’s paper give you any new perspectives on your own writing?

• What have you improved on this quarter?

• What skills do you still need to work on?

• How about as a student overall? (Ways of Seeing the World, attendance, participation, homework etc)

Tuesday, November 23, 2010

Friday, November 19, 2010

Clickers

Here's an article about our clickers.

Day 41

Day 41

1. Checklist for Dialogue (930 class)
2. Checklist for Setting

Point of View

First Person (not to be used in our essays)

1. Single character's point of view.

b. Advantages of First Person
i. maintain naivete or innocence

ii. Narrated out loud.

iii. Irony of narrator/Humor

1. Also, unreliable/biased narrators

iv. Immediacy?

v. Disadvantages

1. Less flexible

2. Can be contrived

c. Second Person

i. Seldom used

ii. Use of “You” as in You wake up, get out of bed, drag a comb across your head. You know there’s something you need to do. What is it?

d. Third person

i. Better for "hot" material.

ii. Flexible.

iii. Omniscient (all characters)/Limited (single character)

iv. Objective(no thoughts or feelings)/Subjective: (thoughts and feelings)

v. Disadvantages

a. "Head hopping"=confusion unless handled right

3. List of POV by novel.

5. Quiz

6. Graphic Organizers

Is this Racist?


Here's the background statement by Limbaugh:

This guy is an utter wrecking ball all by himself on the world stage to the point now of getting embarrassing. This presidency of Obama's, it doesn't take much to irritate the left. Try this: "Barack Obama's presidency is graffiti on the walls of American history." That's what his administration is. No more than graffiti on the walls of American history. We have a juvenile delinquent for a president who has ruined so much public and private property, not even his gang is making much of an effort here to protect him. It's an utter disaster.

Desegregation of Schools

Wednesday, November 17, 2010

Tuesday, November 16, 2010

List of Novels by Point of View

Right Here.

Bush and Kanye

Make up on SNL

Alabama trooper pleads guilty

To 1965 slaying.

Day 39

English 101 Day 39
1. Essays back today, and Thursday for 930 class

Dialogue

i. Short
ii. Vivid
iii. Believable

Tips on Dialogue

In two's: I'm sorry but…

1. The first writer pulls out a piece of paper and begins their dialogue with the words "I'm sorry, but…". They complete the sentence and pass the journal to their partner.

2. The partner, after reading the sentence,writes a line (or paragraph) of dialogue which heightens the tension.

3. Keep passing the journal back and forth, trying to throw curve balls at one another without delving into the absurd.

Movies with great dialogue: Tarantino, Juno, Linklater, Kevin Smith, Coen Brothers, David Mamet, Casablanca, China Town, Aaron Sorkin

Listen to how people talk to each other

• Most of it is the weather.
• He's like a bull in a china shop…
• Eating out.
• Bars.
• Waiting rooms.
• Cell phone jerks.
• At the checkout.

More notes on dialogue:

Dialogue is not real speech, but it should sound like it.
• Cut words and phrases that don't move things along

Don't use dialogue to provide exposition—keep it to three sentences or less

Break it up with action—remind us they are physical

Vary signal phrases, but keep it simple. Don't use elaborate signal phrases (she expostulated, he interjected)

Avoid stereotypes in dialect, but…
• Huck Finn
• To Kill a Mockingbird

Don't over use slang/profanity. "Slang goes sour in a short time." --EH

Read a lot. Note good/bad

Punctuate correctly
• Use quotation marks?

Start a new paragraph when changing speakers.

Setting

"If you say in the first chapter that there is a rifle hanging on the wall, in the second or third chapter it absolutely must go off. If it's not going to be fired, it shouldn't be hanging there."
–Anton Chekhov

1. Time
1. Year
2. Season
3. Month
4. Day of Week
5. Time of Day
6. General Era

1. Place (physical environment)
1. Country
2. State
3. City
4. Landscape
5. Climate
6. House
7. Yard/Surroundings

For example: Greasy Lake, Death of a Salesman, To Build a Fire, The Storm, Grapes of Wrath

Exercise: For your first chapter--The departure, or Ordinary World

5 w’s

Senses/Imagery

Point of view

a. First Person

1. Single character's point of view.

b. Advantages of First Person

i. maintain naivete or innocence
ii. Narrated out loud.
iii. Irony of narrator/Humor
1. Also, unreliable/biased narrators
iv. Immediacy?

v. Disadvantages

1. Less flexible
2. Can be contrived

c. Third person

i. Better for "hot" material.
ii. Flexible.
iii. Omniscient/Limited (All characters v Single character)
iv. Objective/Subjective: (No thoughts or feelings v. Thoughts and Feelings)

v. Disadvantages
a. "Head hopping"=confusion unless handled right

Monday, November 15, 2010

Day 38

English 101 Day 38
1. Essays back 1030 overview

2. Essays back today, tomorrow and Thursday for 930 class

3. Creating characters

a. Gradually revealing characters—peal the onion slowly.
b. Names—meaning and avoiding confusion.
c. Adding depth and personality

d. Characterization:
i. Telling
ii. Actions
iii. Conversations
iv. Feelings

v. Names exercise?

e. Checklist

4. Tips on Dialogue

In two's: I'm sorry but…

Movies with great dialogue: Tarantino, Juno, Linklater, Kevin Smith, Coen Brothers, David Mamet, Casablanca, China Town, Aaron Sorkin

Listen to how people talk to each other

• Most of it is the weather.
• He's like a bull in a china shop…
• Eating out.
• Waiting rooms.
• Cell phone jerks.
• At the checkout.

Read page 118, 119, 120, 121
More notes on dialogue:

Dialogue is not real speech, but it should sound like it.
• Cut words and phrases that don't move things along

Don't use dialogue provide exposition—keep it to three sentences or less

Break it up with action—remind us they are physical

Vary signal phrases, but keep it simple. Don't use elaborate signal phrases (she expostulated, he interjected)

Avoid stereotypes in dialect, but…
• Huck Finn

Don't over use slang/profanity. "Slang goes sour in a short time." --EH

Read a lot. Note good/bad

Punctuate correctly
• Use quotation marks?
• Start a new paragraph when changing speakers.

5. Homework: Read 127-133

Friday, November 12, 2010

How to Write a Good Short Story

Day 37

English 101 Day 37

1. Structure and Design
a. The story: the what
b. The plot: they why

2. Events over time—Chronology
a. Keep flashbacks and flashforwards to a minimum.
b. What is the “logline” of your story? One sentence of 25 words or less that summarizes the story.

3. Where to begin:
a. In media res “in the middle of things”
b. usually best to start as close to the end as possible.
c. Exposition: history, characters, time and place (5 w’s).
d. Draw your readers in.

4. Plot structure:
a. Exposition
b. Rising Action
c. Climax
d. falling action
e. resolution

5. Conflict: A Character faces challenges
a. Conflicts are often bigger than life. Stories magnify real experience.
b. Some specific event within the story causes the conflict to arise. A character’s life is thrown out of balance and he or she is called to the Journey. Often this external event mirrors an existing internal struggle.
c. In the beginning, the main character’s dominant personality traits dictate the character’s actions and reactions to the conflict.
d. Complications intensify the conflict, forcing the main character to adjust and change.
e. The main character makes several attempts to solve the conflict.
f. By the end of the story, the main character has grown so much that he or she resolves the conflict with knowledge and skill, not trickery or artifice.

6. Assignment: Briefly describe the conflict your character will solve in your story, and then describe the event that will call your initiate to the journey. Ask yourself, What event or situation will upset your character’s life? Is something missing, has something been taken, or ahs the initiate’s life been thrown out of harmony?

7. Checklist

8. Creating characters

a. Good and bad sides, three-dimensional and round- complex.
b. Flat, two dimensional, static characters- often single characteristic.
c. What does your character desire?
d. What are their quirks?
e. Composite characters—combinations of ourselves and others.
f. Gradually revealing characters—peal the onion slowly.
g. Names—meaning and avoiding confusion.
h. Character profile questions:
i. What is a typical day for this characters before the journey?
j. Adding depth and personality
i. list names of characters in your story.
ii. What are their dominant personality traits?
iii. They were the kind of person who…x5

k. Characterization:
i. Telling
ii. Actions
iii. Conversations
iv. Feelings
v. Names exercise?

l. Checklist

Homework: Read 118-127

Wednesday, November 10, 2010

Day 36

English 101 Day 35:

Exploring Ideas, continued

Personal Experience

a. Rites of passage? When did you know you were an adult? (or not a child…)
b. Road trips.
c. Vacations.
d. Moves.
e. Hikes.
f. Camps.
g. How did you arrive in Yakima.
h. Illness/injury.
i. Accidents.
j. Addiction.
k. Depression/psychological.
l. Divorce/relationship.
m. Friendships.
n. Moments of sudden growth

4. Observation (Second hand experiences)
a. How did your family arrive in Yakima?
b. Grandparents/parents/siblings/relatives/friends.

5. Imagination
a. Invent your own hero.
b. Take Scout, Jem, Boo or Dill on a second journey.

Next Steps:
A. Pick one and answer the five questions:
Who, What, Where, When and Why?
B. Freewrite 10 minutes

Creative Non-fiction: Ethics and Edicts

H/O Rubric
Homework: Read handout: 102-117 for Friday.

Tuesday, November 9, 2010

Day 35

English 101 Day 35 Fall 2010

The writing process.

a. Planning

i. Assess the situation.

1. Subject
2. Sources
3. Purpose and audience
4. Length
5. Reviewers and deadlines

ii. Exploring ideas

1. Talking and listening.
2. Annotating texts
3. Listing
4. Clustering
5. Freewriting
6. Asking journalist’s questions

iii. Formulating a tentative thesis

iv. Sketching a plan

b. Drafting

i. Introductions and thesis

ii. Body

iii. Conclusion

c. Revising

i. Global

ii. Revising and editing sentences

2. Essay 3 Prompt and due dates (Rough 11/22; Final 11/29)

3. Personal Experience

a. Rites of passage? When did you know you were an adult? (or not a child…)
b. Road trips.
c. Vacations.
d. Moves.
e. Hikes.
f. Camps.
g. How did you arrive in Yakima.
h. Illness/injury.
i. Accidents.
j. Addiction.
k. Depression/psychological.
l. Divorce/relationship.
m. Friendships.
n. Moments of sudden growth

4. Observation (Second hand experiences)

a. How did your family arrive in Yakima?
b. Grandparents/parents/siblings/relatives/friends.

5. Imagination

a. Invent your own hero.
b. Take Scout, Jem, Boo or Dill on a second journey.

Friday, November 5, 2010

Harris and Thompson's book

b. Book (383 in Hacker)
i. The Hero’s Journey: A Guide to Literature and Life
ii. Reg Harris and Susan Thompson
iii. Harris Communication
iv. Napa, California
v. Copyright 2005

Thursday, November 4, 2010

Day 32

Meet in lab.
Work on thesis and essays.
Essays due MONDAY, not Friday.

Tomorrow, we'll grade a sample essay and one of our own.

Wednesday, November 3, 2010

Day 31

English 101 Fall 2010 Day 31
1. Peer Review Review
2. Sample Thesis statements/Introductions
Think of it as similar to your Smoke Signals thesis, but instead of three steps (Separation, Initiation and Return) there are the 8 steps of the Hero's Journey to walk the reader through.

3. Your thesis statements
4. Body paragraphs—Topic sentences.
5. Tomorrow, lab time.

Tuesday, November 2, 2010

Day 30

Complete Peer Review
Bonus Points?
Peer Review, Review
Final Essays Due Monday.

Monday, November 1, 2010

Day 29

Rough Drafts Due Today.
Groups of 4.
# paragraphs
Write 1-3 questions
Exchange with partner
Read and mark as you go.
Complete the peer review worksheet
Discuss
hand peer review worksheet and essay back to author
Repeat 3 x

Hand in Rough Drafts
Hand in Finding Themes worksheet.
Bonus Points are closed for September/October.
Copy/Paste into a single document and number you posts.
Hand in posts tomorrow for Bonus Points.

November BP begins today.