Posted in English 1103, Teaching, Writing

ENG 1103: Writing Your Midterm Reflection

Posted on by janemlucas

Today in class you will plan and compose a midterm reflective essay that documents your work in the first half of the semester, focusing on two or three assignments or aspects of the course that have contributed to your development as a writer and a student. Since you have already written a reflection devoted solely to your literacy narrative, your midterm reflection should focus primarily on other assignments or aspects of the course, including the following:

  • Keeping a journal
  • Studying one of the readings examined class, including “Me Talk Pretty One Day,” “The Day Language Came into My Life,” “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” the excerpt from Chapter One of To Kill a Mockingbird, “The School,” “Back Story,” and the excerpt from “The Falling Man.”
  • Reading and editing samples of student writing
  • Creating and maintaining a WordPress blog and writing for an online audience beyond the classroom.
  • Collaborating with your classmates on in-class writing assignments
  • Playing Scrabble and collaborating with your teammates on Wordplay Day
  • Writing longhand
  • Limiting screen time

Include in your refelective essay the following elements:

  • A title that offers a window into your reflection
  • An opening paragraph that introduces your focus and presents your thesis
  • Body paragraphs that offer concrete details from your work to support your claims
  • One relevant quotation from one of the readings listed above or from Writing Analytically
  • A signal phrase and a parenthetical citation for the quotation. Consult your class handouts for models. If you include the author’s name in the sentence, include only the page number or the abbreviation par. and the paragraph number in the parenthetical citation. If you do not name the author in the sentence, include his or her name and the page number or the abbreviation par. and the paragraph number.
  • A conclusion that revisits the thesis without restating it verbatim
  • A work cited entry for the text that you quote

Sample MLA Works Cited Entries

Barthelme, Donald. “The School.” The Best American Short Stories 1975, edited by Martha Foley, Houghton Mifflin, 1975. pp. 8-11.

Junod, Tom. “The Falling Man.” Esquire, vol. 140, no. 3, Sept. 2003, pp. 176+. Gale Academic OneFile Select, https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A106423422/EAIM?u=hpu_main&sid=bookmark-EAIM&xid=ce48797f.

Keller, Helen. “The Day Language Came into My Life.” https://janelucas.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/a0461-3.thedaylanguagecameintomylife_keller.pdf

King, Martin Luther, Jr. “Letter from Birmingham Jail.” California State University, Chico. https://www.csuchico.edu/iege/_assets/documents/ susi-letter-from-birmingham-jail.pdf.

Lee, Harper. Chapter One. To Kill a Mockingbird. Lippincott, 1960. pp. 9-19.

Lewis, Michael. “Back Story.” The Blind Side. 2006. Norton, 2009. pp.15-23.

Rosenwasser, David and Jill Stephen. “‘Interesting,’ ‘Revealing,’ ‘Strange.’” Writing Analytically, 9th edition. Wadsworth/Cengage, 2024. p. 24. 

Rosenwasser, David and Jill Stephen. “On Keeping a Writer’s Notebook.” Writing Analytically, 9th edition. Wadsworth/Cengage, 2024. pp. 157-58. 

Rosenwasser, David and Jill Stephen. “Seems to Be About X, But Could Also Be (Or is ‘Really’) About Y.’” Writing Analytically, 9th edition. Wadsworth/Cengage, 2024. pp. 104-7. 

Sedaris, David. “Me Talk Pretty One Day.” Me Talk Pretty One Day. Little, Brown, 2000. 166-73.

Note that unlike the works cited entries above, the one on your midterm reflection will have a hanging indent, as will all of the works cited entries in the Microsoft Word files and PDFs that you post to Blackboard.

The complete midterm reflection assignment, along with the grade criteria, is included on the assignment handout that you will receive in class.

Next Up

At the beginning of class on Wednesday, I will return your handwritten analyses drafts with my notes, and I will conduct a check of your journal exercise on the first paragraph of Tom Junod’s “The Falling Man.” Afterward, you will have the remainder of the class period to begin revising on your laptops and tablets. The due date for posting your revised analysis to Blackboard and to your WordPress blog is Wednesday, March 4 (before class). The hard deadline is Friday, March 6 (before class).

Posted in English 1103, Reading, Teaching, Writing

ENG 1103: Preparing for Your Midterm Reflection

Posted on by janemlucas

Monday in class, you will plan and compose a midterm reflective essay that documents your work in the first half of the semester, focusing on two or three assignments or aspects of the course that have contributed to your development as a writer and a student. Since you have already written a reflection devoted solely to your literacy narrative, your midterm reflection should focus primarily on other assignments or aspects of the course. One of the requirements of the assignment is incorporating a relevant quotation from one of the texts we have studied or from Writing Analytically. Before Monday’s class, determine what phrase, clause, or sentence you will quote, and draft a sentence in your journal that introduces the quotation with a signal phrase and follows it with a parenthetical citation.

One option for integrating a quotation into your essay is to include a line from one of your readings and explain what that passage has taught you about writing.

Examples

  • In the opening line of “Back Story,” Michael Lewis demonstrates that repetition can be an asset. With the words “[f]rom the snap of the ball to the snap of the first bone” (15), he repeats “snap” as a frame for the seconds leading up to Jo Theismannn’s career-ending injury. The first “snap,” the hike of the football, begins the sequence. The second “snap,” the fracture of Theismann’s tibia and fibula, ends it.
  • The opening line of “Back Story,” demonstrates that repetition can be an asset. The two prepositional phrases “[f]rom the snap of the ball to the snap of the first bone” (Lewis 15), repeat “snap” as a frame for the seconds leading up to Jo Theismannn’s career-ending injury. The first “snap,” the hike of the football, begins the sequence. The second “snap,” the fracture of Theismann’s tibia and fibula, ends it.

The two examples above are very similar. The first one names the author, so only the page number appears in the parenthetical citation. The second does not name the author, so his last name precedes the page number in the parenthetical citation. Notice how omitting the author’s name from the passage shifts the emphasis from the writer’s actions (“he repeats ‘snap’”) to the words themselves (“prepositional phrases . . . repeat ‘snap’”).

Another option for integrating a quotation into your essay is to include a line from Writing Analytically that presents a concept that figures in your own reading or writing process.

Examples

  • The observation that “understandings are rarely simple and overt” (Rosenwasser and Stephen 104) led me to reexamine “The School” and reenvision it. No longer was it primarily a chronicle of deaths, but instead it was a narrative about the nature of storytelling itself.
  • David Rosenwasser and Jill Stephens’ observation that “understandings are rarely simple and overt” (104) led me to reexamine “The School” and reenvision it. No longer was it primarily a chronicle of deaths, but instead it was a narrative about the nature of storytelling itself.

Works Cited

Lewis, Michael. “Back Story.” The Blind Side. 2006. Norton, 2009. pp. 15-23.

Rosenwasser, David, and Jill Stephen. “Seems to Be About X, But Could Also Be (Or is ‘Really’) About Y.’” Writing Analytically, 9th edition. Wadsworth/Cengage, 2024. pp. 104-7. 

Happy Valentine’s Day Eve!

Today in class, you will receive a red paper heart on a lace doily for an informal writing exercise: composing a valentine for someone.

Next Up

In class on Monday, you will compose your midterm reflection. To prepare, choose a phrase, clause, or sentence from one of the course readings–one that is relevant to your work in the course–and draft in your journal a short passage that connects those words to your writing. That passage will serve as part of your reflection. 

Postscript

Bonus Assignment: Publish your completed Valentine as a post on your blog before 9 a.m. on Monday, February 16, and you will earn a bonus assignment credit in the short assignments/participation category. You are welcome to include a photo caption or a brief explanation of the Valentine, but that is not required. The photograph alone will suffice. Once you have published your post, email me so I can visit your site and credit you with the assignment.

Posted in English 1103, Reading, Teaching

ENG 1103: “The Falling Man” . . .

Posted on by janemlucas
Photo Credit: Richard Drew https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a48031/the-falling-man-tom-junod/

Tom Junod’s “The Falling Man”

Yesterday in class, before you began composing your analysis draft, we examined the beginning of Tom Junod‘s article “The Falling Man,” published in Esquire magazine two years after 9-11. One of the elements that we considered–and one that I asked you to address later in your journal–is the unusually long first paragraph.

The authors of Writing Analytically recommend that “[i]f you find a paragraph growing longer than half a page–particularly if it is your opening or second paragraph–find a place to make a paragraph break” (Rosenwasser and Stephen 308). Junod does not follow that advice. He opts instead to open his article with a paragraph of more than four hundred words.

If Junod had chosen to divide the first paragraph, where might he have divided it?

Work Cited

Rosenwasser, David, and Jill Stephen. “The Idea of the Paragraph.”Writing Analytically, 9th edition. Wadsworth/Cengage, 2024. pp. 307-313. 

“The Falling Man” presents you with a seventh option for your analysis. (The others six are “MeTalk Pretty One Day,” “The Day Language Came into Life,” “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” the excerpt from the first chapter of To Kill a Mockingbird,” “The School,” and “Back Story.”)

If you would like to analyze more of Junod’s article than the first paragraph and the beginning of the second, you are welcome to study a larger section, just as you are welcome to examine a larger section of the first chapter of To Kill a Mockingbird. The complete first chapter of Harper Lee’s novel is posted in Blackboard. To access all of Junod’s article, see the directions below.

Unless you subscribe to Esquire, the magazine’s paywall will deny you access to the full text of “The Falling Man,” but you can access it through the HPU Library site by following these steps:

Directions for Accessing “The Falling Man” (Full Text)

  1. Go to the HPU Library site.
  2. Under the heading Search HPU Libraries . . . , click on the Articles tab.
  3. Under the Articles tab, type Tom Junod “Falling Man” Esquire in the search box and click search.
  4. On the next screen, you will see a brief summary of the article. Click View full text to see the complete article.
  5. On the next screen, click View full text beside one of the database options.

. . . Constant Consonants? Hmm

Learning phpht and hmm, pictured above, and other all-consonant words can enable you to continue a Scrabble game when you are faced with a rack without vowels.

  • brr: used to indicate that one is cold
  • crwth: an ancient stringed instrument (pl. -s)
  • cwm: a cirque (a deep, steepwalled basin on a mountain, pl. -s, prounounced to rhyme with “boom”)
  • hm: used to express thoughtful consideration (also “hmm“)
  • mm: used to express assent or satisfaction
  • nth: describing an unspecified number in a series
  • phpht: used as an expression of mild anger or annoyance (also “pht“)
  • psst: used to attract someone’s attention
  • sh: used to urge silence (also “shh” and “sha“)
  • tsk: to utter an exclamation of annoyance (-ed, -ing, -s)
  • tsktsk: to “tsk” (-ed, -ing, -s)

Next Up

Wordplay Day! To prepare for class, revisit the Dictionary and World Builder pages on the Scrabble website, or the Merriam-Webster Scrabble Word Finder page, and review the blog posts with Scrabble tips, including this one

Coming Soon

In class on Monday, you will compose a midterm reflection focusing on the assignments and aspects of the course that have contributed the most to your development as a writer and a student. Tomorrow’s post will serve as a guide for your preparations.

Posted in English 1103, Teaching, Writing

ENG 1103: Beginning Your Analysis

Posted on by janemlucas

This morning, you will begin planning and drafting your analysis, your second major assignment for the semester. In class, you will receive a hard copy of the instructions, which are also included below.

Overview

A textual analysis aims to demonstrate how a text works, how it achieves its effects. The process of writing your analysis will include these steps:

  • Summarizing the text precisely so the reader can envision it. Note that your analysis is not a summary but will begin with one that will serve as a lead-in to your thesis or main claim: what you think the text achieves or what it means and how it conveys its meaning.
  • Paying close attention to details, what they imply, and how they relate to each other and the whole
  • Explaining what the text means or what it achieves

Directions for Planning and Drafting

  • Review the texts that you have read for class, and determine which one interests you most as a subject of analysis. You are not permitted to read any of the texts on screen during your drafting period today. (Yesterday’s class notes specify that if you were missing one of the reading handouts or decided to analyze a larger section of Chapter One of To Kill a Mockingbird, you should have printed a copy.)
  • Identify elements in the text that contribute to its effectiveness. (See the list of elements below.)
  • Develop your analysis through a close examination of those elements.
  • Write in dark ink, preferably black.
  • Double-space to allow for my annotations in between. You are welcome to use both sides of the page.
  • Before you leave class today, staple this handout on top of your draft and submit it to me. Next Wednesday, I will return your draft with notes, and you will have the class period to begin revising and editing on your laptop or tablet.

Elements for Textual Analysis

  • Language and Stylistic Devices: Literary devices (metaphors, irony, symbolism), diction (word choice), and syntax (sentence structure).
  • Content and Themes: Recurring ideas, patterns, or points of contrast.
  • Structure: Organization, including scene structure, and how it adheres to or breaks from convention.
  • Characterization (for fiction only, which includes To Kill a Mockingbird and “The School”): Character development, motivation, and their role in the story.

Directions for Revising

The revision of your analysis should include the following:

  • A title that offers a window into your analysis
  • An introduction that presents a summary of the text
  • A thesis statement, or main claim, that presents your take on the text based on your close study of it
  • Textual evidence that supports your claims
  • A minimum of two relevant quotations from the text, introduced with signal phrases and followed by parenthetical citations
  • A conclusion that revisits the thesis without restating it verbatim
  • A work cited entry 
  • A minimum of 600 words

Sample Works Cited Entries

Barthelme, Donald. “The School.” The Best American Short Stories 1975, edited by Martha Foley. Houghton Mifflin, 1975. pp. 8-11.

Junod, Tom. “The Falling Man.” Esquire, vol. 140, no. 3, Sept. 2003, pp. 176+. Gale Academic OneFile Select, https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A106423422/EAIM?u=hpu_main&sid=bookmark-EAIM&xid=ce48797f.

Keller, Helen. “The Day Language Came into My Life.” https://janelucas.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/a0461-3.thedaylanguagecameintomylife_keller.pdf.

King, Martin Luther, Jr. “Letter from Birmingham Jail.” California State University, Chico. https://www.csuchico.edu/iege/_assets/documents/susi-letter-from-birmingham-jail.pdf.

Lee, Harper. Chapter One. To Kill a Mockingbird. Lippincott, pp. 9-19.

Lewis, Michael. “Back Story.” The Blind Side. 2006. Norton, 2009, pp. 15-23.

Sedaris, David. “Me Talk Pretty One Day.” Me Talk Pretty One Day. Little Brown, 2000. pp. 166-73.

Think of your preliminary draft as your down draft; your aim in the first stage of the process is to get your ideas down on the page. You may need to go through the process of drafting to discover what you think the text achieves or what it means and how it conveys that meaning.

Directions for Formatting and Posting Your Revision—See the Course Calendar for the Due Date and Hard Deadline

  1. Save your revised essay as a Microsoft Word file or PDF and submit it to Blackboard in compliance with MLA manuscript guidelines.
  2. Publish your revision as a blog post. In your post, omit the first-page information included in your file submitted to Blackboard (your name, course, section, instructor’s name, and date). Add to your blog post an image that documents some part of your writing process away from the screen, such as a photo of your reading notes or a page of your draft. Also add to your blog post an embedded link to a relevant website.

Grade Criteria

  • An A analysis complies with all assignment guidelines, demonstrates a depth of understanding by using relevant and accurate detail, and is also well organized and relatively free of surface errors.
  • A B analysis complies with all assignment guidelines and presents an adequate analysis but examines little more than what was addressed in class. A B analysis is also well organized and relatively free of surface errors.
  • A C analysis complies with most but not all assignment guidelines and may also be flawed by issues of organization and/or surface errors, or more consequential factual errors.
  • A D analysis complies with only a few of the assignment guidelines and may also be flawed by issues of organization and/or surface errors, or more consequential factual errors.
  • An F analysis fails to comply with most or all assignment guidelines. It may also be flawed by substantial issues of organization and/or surface errors, or more consequential factual errors.

MLA Style

Look to my sample assignments on Blackboard as models of MLA style. For more information on MLA style, see the MLA Style Center and OWL sites linked to my blog and the January 15 class notes devoted to MLA style.

Next Up

Wordplay Day! To prepare for class, revisit the Scrabble Dictionary and World Builder pages or the Merriam-Webster Scrabble Word Finder page, and review the blog posts devoted to Scrabble tips.

Posted in English 1103, Reading, Teaching, Writing

ENG 1103: Field Notes . . .

Posted on by janemlucas

Yesterday in class, we examined “Back Story,” the first chapter of Michael Lewis’s The Blind Side, which begins with Lewis’s depiction of the moments in the November 1985 Redskins-Giants football game leading up to the injury that ended quarterback Joe Theismann’s career:

“From the snap of the ball to the snap of the first bone is closer to four seconds than to five. One Mississippi: The quarterback of the Washington Redskins, Joe Theismann, turns and hands the ball to running back John Riggins. He watches Riggins run two steps forward, turn, and flip the ball back to him. It’s what most people know as a “flea-flicker,” but the Redskins call it a “throw-back special.” Two Mississippi: Theismann searches for a receiver but instead sees Harry Carson coming straight at him. It’s a running down—the start of the second quarter, first and 10 at midfield, with the score tied 7–7—and the New York Giants’ linebacker has been so completely suckered by the fake that he’s deep in the Redskins’ backfield. Carson thinks he’s come to tackle Riggins but Riggins is long gone, so Carson just keeps running, toward Theismann. Three Mississippi: Carson now sees that Theismann has the ball. Theismann notices Carson coming straight at him, and so he has time to avoid him. He steps up and to the side and Carson flies right on by and out of the play. The play is now 3.5 seconds old. Until this moment it has been defined by what the quarterback can see. Now it–and he–is at the mercy of what he can’t see” (15).

What Theismann cannot see is Lawrence Taylor. A second later, as Taylor sacks Theismann, Taylor’s knee drives straight into Theismann’s lower right leg, leading to the “snap of the first bone” that Lewis mentions in the first sentence. He hooks the reader by linking the beginning of the play, “the snap of the ball” to the gruesome “snap of the first bone” that will follow. Lewis develops the paragraph using the common one-Mississippi, two-Mississippi method of marking seconds to present the events leading up to the compound fracture that ends Theisman’s career.

Lewis doesn’t dramatize the injury itself because his interest lies instead in the blind side that led to it and subsequently elevated the status and salary of the left tackle, the player who protects the quarterback’s blind side. Rather than immediately continuing the action of the play he presents in the opening of the chapter, Lewis turns away from the 3.5-second moment to show how, in his words, “Lawrence Taylor altered the environment and forced opposing players and coaches to adapt” (17).

When you’re struggling to develop a piece of writing, reread the opening paragraph of The Blind Side. Study how Lewis dramatizes 3.5 seconds–yes, only 3.5 seconds–with 224 words.

In your groups yesterday, you wrote of how Lewis returns to the chapter’s opening scene with the words “[f]our Mississippi” (21). Delaying the resumption of that scene for several pages gives Lewis the opportunity to develop the backstory of the title: how Lawrence Taylor redefined the role of running back and fundamentally changed the game.

In response to the “Seems to Be about X, But Could also Be (Or is ‘Really’) about Y” question, some of you wrote that “Back Story” could also be (or is really) about (1) the factor of fear in football. Others observed that the chapter may also be about (2) Lawrence’ Taylors role in the evolution of the sport, (3) the origin of the term blind side, (4) Taylor’s ultimate demise, (5) the media’s exploitation of injuries, and (6) the dangerous nature of the sport–a sport with injuries that can not only end players’ careers but can also have long-term consequences, including Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE).

Work Cited

Lewis, Michael. “Back Story.” The Blind Side. 2006. W.W. Norton, 2009. pp. 15-23.

Planning for Your Analysis

To explore possible topics for your analysis, repeat the a seems-to-be-about . . . but-could-also-be-(or-is-really)-about . . . exercise that you and your group members completed collaboratively in class.

Directions

  1. Review the essays, short fiction, chapters, and chapter excerpt that you have read for class, and determine which one you are most likely to choose as the subject of your analysis.
  2. In your journal, compose a seems-to-be-about . . . but-could-also-be-(or-is-really)-about . . . statement for that essay, story, chapters, or chapter excerpt. Begin your sentence with the author’s name and the title.
  3. After you have composed your x–y statement, write a list of words and phrases in the text that demonstrate how the essay, short story, chapter, or chapter excerpt could also (or really) be about what you have stated.

The essays, short story, chapters, and chapter excerpt to consider include these:

  • Davis Sedaris’s “Me Talk Pretty One Day”
  • Helen Keller’s “The Day Language Came into My Life”
  • Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail”
  • Chapter One of Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird
  • Donald Barthelme’s “The School”
  • Michael Lewis’s “Back Story,” the first chapter of The Blind Side

This exercise requires you to write only one x-y statement about one of the texts listed above. However, if you don’t yet have an inkling of what you want to write about, repeating the process with each text may lead you to a topic.

I will not collect your x-y journal exercise, but you should complete it in preparation for Wednesday’s class.

Note that you will have the option to write about a larger portion of Lee’s chapter, which is posted in the readings folder on Blackboard. You will also have the option to write about a seventh text, which we will examine in class on Wednesday.

Next Up

Tomorrow in class, you will begin planning and drafting your analysis, which will focus on one of the texts that we have studied, including David Sedaris’ “Me Talk Pretty One Day,” Helen Keller’s “The Day Language Came into My Life,” Martin Luther King, Jr.s “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” the excerpt from Harper Lee’s Novel To Kill a Mockingbird, and Michael Lewis’s “Back Story,” the first chapter of The Blind Side.

  • If you have misplaced your copy of any of the readings or were absent the day that I distributed copies, download a copy from Blackboard and print it.
  • If you would like to analyze a larger section of the first chapter of To Kill a Mockingbird, download a copy of Chapter One from Blackboard and print it.

Posted in English 1103, Reading, Teaching, Writing

ENG 1103: Introducing Michael Lewis

Posted on by janemlucas
Michael Lewis https://nymag.com/news/intelligencer/encounter/57066/

As an introduction to Michael Lewis, whose writing we will examine in class today, you read this overview of his publications. After you read it, you composed a one- or two-paragraph journal entry that addressed these questions: (1) Two of Lewis’ books on one subject have both been adapted for film. What is the subject, and what are the titles of the two books (and films)? (2) A third book of his, one devoted to a different subject, has also been adapted for film. What is the subject, and what is the title of the book (and film)?

As we read the first chapter of one of his books, consider what elements of his writing would attract filmmakers to his work. We will closely examine the opening of the chapter, paying special attention to its repetition of words and phrases. Later in class, we will read the remainder of the chapter and you will address in writing why Lewis may have chosen to delay the continuation of the action that he depicts in the opening paragraph.

As a segue from your Scrabble debriefing to your study of Michael Lewis’s “Back Story,” the cartoon below is included on your group assignment sheet.

Walsh, Liam. Cartoon. The New Yorker, 27 Jan. 2020. p. 64.

Food Cheeseheads for thought: This cartoon ran in The New Yorker shortly after the Packers lost the NFC title game to the 49ers and shortly before San Francisco lost Super Bowl LIV to the Chiefs. Would the Cheeseheads depicted here have opted to play Scrabble rather than watch the game that their team lost its chance to play, or would they have savored schadenfreude, watching the 49ers lose to Kansas City?

Next Up

In class on Wednesday, you will begin planning and drafting your second major writing assignment, your analysis. The chapter of Michael Lewis’s writing that we examine in class today and the other texts we have studied thus far in English 1103–“MeTalk Pretty One Day,” “The Day Language Came into Life,” “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” the excerpt from the first chapter of To Kill a Mockingbird,” and “The School“–are among the pieces of writing that may serve as the subject of your upcoming analysis.

Posted in English 1103, Scrabble, Teaching, Writing

ENG 1103: Two-Letter Words, Q-Z . . .

Posted on by janemlucas

Today’s blog post is the final installment in the series of posts devoted to playable two-letter words. Learning these two-letter words, as well as the other two-letter words in the alphabet, will enable you to see more options for play and increase the number of points you earn in a single turn.

  • qi: the central life force in Chinese culture (also ki)
  • re: a tone of the diatonic scale
  • sh: used to encourage silence
  • si: a tone of the diatonic scale (also ti)
  • so: a tone of the diatonic scale (also sol)
  • ta: an expression of thanks
  • ti: a tone of the diatonic scale
  • to: in the direction of
  • uh: used to express hesitation
  • um: used to express hesitation
  • un: one
  • up: to raise (-s, -ped, -ping)
  • us: a plural pronoun
  • ut: the musical tone C in the French solmization system, now replaced by do
  • we: a first-person plural pronoun
  • wo: woe
  • xi: a Greek letter
  • xu: a former monetary unit of Vietnam equal to one-hundreth of a dong (also sau, pl. xu)
  • ya: you
  • ye: you
  • yo: an expression used to attract attention
  • za: pizza

Next Up

Wordplay Day! To prepare for class, revisit the Dictionary and World Builder pages on the Scrabble website, or the Merriam-Webster Scrabble Word Finder page, and review the blog posts devoted to Scrabble tips, including this one.

As an introduction to Michael Lewis, whose writing we will examine in class on Monday, read this overview of his publications. After you read it, compose a one- or two-paragraph journal entry that addresses these questions: (1) Lewis’s two books on one subject have both been adapted for film. What is the subject, and what are the titles of the two books (and films)? (2) A third book of his, one devoted to a different subject, has also been adapted for film. What is the subject, and what is the title of the book (and film)?

Coming Soon

In class on Wednesday, you will begin planning and drafting your second major writing assignment, your analysis. The chapter of Michael Lewis’ writing that we examine in class on Monday and the other texts we have studied thus far in English 1103–“MeTalk Pretty One Day,” “The Day Language Came into Life,” “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” the excerpt from the first chapter of To Kill a Mockingbird,” and “The School“–are among the pieces of writing that may serve as the subject of your upcoming analysis.

Postscript

Barthelme, Donald. Sixty Stories. 1981. Penguin, 1993.

Congratulations to Avery Clark for winning a copy of Donald Barthelme’s 60 Stories in today’s prize drawing.

Posted in English 1103, Reading, Teaching, Writing

ENG 1103: “The School” Follow-Up . . .

Posted on by janemlucas

Yesterday in class, we examined Donald Barthelme’s “The School” as another potential subject for your analysis. In groups, you and your classmates considered these elements.

  • The narrator and the narrative voice
  • Conflict
  • A short passage that strikes you as interesting, revealing, or strange

The Narrator and the Narrative Voice

The words and phrases you and your classmates used to describe the narrator, Edgar, and his voice include these:

  • “casual”
  • “emotionless”
  • “funny and go with the flow”
  • “indifferent”
  • “a little questionable”
  • “monotonus”

Do any of those descriptions seem at odds with the narrator’s words or actions? If so, what might account for that discrepancy?

When the narrator, Edgar, says, “Of course we expected the fish to die” (9), he emphasizes the word expected, something you cannot do in monotone because emphasis in speech requires modulation.

In his account of the death of the students’ puppy, Edgar says, “I got it [the puppy’s body] out of there before the kids got to school. I checked the supply closet each morning, routinely, because I knew what was going to happen. I gave it to the custodian” (9). Later, when Edgar notes why his class didn’t adopt another orphan after the death of Kim, he says, “[W]e didn’t have the heart” (9).

Are those the words and deeds of an “emotionless” or “indifferent” character?

Conflict

All of your groups addressed the existential conflict of life versus death. The children want the plants and animals in their classroom to live. They want the Korean orphan, Kim, to live; they want their classmates and relatives to live, but the children are repeatedly faced with death.

Consider the lines below, and ask yourself what conflicts they reveal.

  • “[T]he boiler was shut off for days because of the strike” (8).
  • “But the lesson plan called for a tropical-fish input at that point, there was nothing we could do” (9).
  • “I don’t know what’s true and what’s not” (10).

Interesting, Revealing, or Strange

The lines that follow are the ones that you identified as interesting, revealing, or strange.

  • Bartheleme’s narrator observes that the school “had an extraordinary number of parents passing away, for instance” (10).
  • Edgar notes, “I forgot to mention Billy Brandt’s father, who was knifed fatally” (10).
  • The children ask, “[I]s death that which gives meaning to life . . . ? (10), and their teacher replies, “[N]o, life is that which gives meaning to life” (10).
  • The students ask Edgar, “[W]ill you make love now with Helen . . .?” (10). Instead, he embraces her, and “[T]hen the new gerbil walked in” (11).

In the examples above, I have included only signal phrases and quotations. However, in your analyses—as in your group responses yesterday—you will need to follow your quotations with commentary that demonstrates what makes the lines interesting, revealing, or strange.

Once you have decided on a subject for your analysis, repeat the interesting-revealing-strange exercise with the text you have chosen. As the textbook’s authors observe, those three words are “triggers for analysis” (Rosenwasser and Stephen 24).

Works Cited

Barthelme, Donald. “The School.” The Best American Short Stories 1975, edited by Martha Foley. Houghton Mifflin, 1975. pp. 8-11.

Rosenwasser, David, and Jill Stephen. “‘Interesting,’ ‘Revealing,’ ‘Strange,'” Writing Analytically, 9th edition. Wadsworth/Cengage, 2024. p. 24.

Pop Quiz

Rather than listing the answers to the questions on last Friday’s quiz, I have followed each question below with a note regarding where to find the answer. By finding the answers yourself, you will learn more than you would from simply reading them in a list.

  1. From your reading for today, what did you learn about Donald Barthelme’s writing style or readers’ and critics’ responses to his fiction? See the February 3 class notes.
  2. The class notes for last week included detailed commentary on the two student literacy narrative samples you read for class. What is one of the details you learned from those notes? See the January 27 class notes.
  3. Last week’s class notes included step-by-step directions for posting your literacy narrative to Blackboard and WordPress. What is one of the steps you learned from those notes? See the January 27 class notes.
  4. Your most recent Scrabble post covers two topics? What is one of them? See the January 29 class notes.
  5. What is the subject of the two short sections of Writing Analytically assigned for reading before class on Monday, February 2? See Writing Analytically (48-50).
  6. What is the bonus assignment in yesterday’s notes? Briefly note what was asked of you. See the February 3 class notes.

Your quiz also included two bonus opportunities. Answers for those bonuses appear in the January 29 class notes. If you aren’t familiar with Aesop’s fable of The Hare and the Tortoise,” you can read it on the Library of Congress site or on Project Gutenberg.

Be sure to write notes in your journal on all of your readings, including the notes posted on my blog. Before each class begins, take out your journal and review your notes. Those practices will increase your knowledge of what you read and ensure that you will earn high grades on your pop quizzes.

Kudos to Dylan Virga for completing yesterday’s bonus assignment, and congratulations to Sierra Welch, whose literacy narrative title, “Why I Hate the Letter R,” was selected by Dylan.

Next Up

Wordplay Day! To prepare for class, revisit the Dictionary and World Builder pages on the Scrabble website, or the Merriam-Webster Scrabble Word Finder page, and review the blog posts devoted to Scrabble.

Posted in English 1103, Reading, Teaching, Writing

ENG 1103: Donald Barthelme’s “The School”

Posted on by janemlucas
“The School,” originally published in The New Yorker magazine, was one of twenty-one stories chosen for the annual Best American Short Stories anthology in 1975.

This morning in class, we will examine Donald Barthelme’s short story “The School,” and in groups of three or four, you will write about elements of the story you might explore in an analysis:

  • The narrator and the narrative voice
  • Conflict
  • A short passage that strikes you as interesting, revealing, or strange

Whether you choose Bartheleme’s story or one of our other readings for your analysis, you will begin your first paragraph with a summary of the text. Remember that a summary is an objective synopsis of a text’s key points. It should be written in third person and present tense. For example, if you choose to analyze “The School,” you might summarize it this way:

Donald Barthelme’s short story “The School” recounts a series of classroom lessons that end with the deaths of plants and animals–deaths that serve as a prelude to the unexplained death of a Korean orphan, followed by the unexpected deaths of classmates and family members.

Notice that the summary above does not comment on the story in any way. What follows the summary will be the beginning of your commentary, or analysis, the thesis statement that offers your particular close reading, or interpretation, of the story. The passage below is the same as the one above, but at the end of it I have added a thesis statement in bold.

Donald Barthelme’s short story “The School” recounts a series of classroom lessons that end with the death of plants and animals–deaths that serve as a prelude to the unexplained death of a Korean orphan, followed by the unexpected deaths of classmates and family members. With conversational narration, accumulation of detail, and a shift in fictional mode, Barthelme deftly depicts the reality of the fleeting nature of life, even as the story itself veers from reality.

If I were to continue to write the analysis that I began in the previous paragraph, I would follow that opening paragraph with body paragraphs that address each of the three elements that I include in my thesis: (1) conversational narration, (2) accumulation of detail, and (3) shift in fictional mode.

Next Up

Wordplay Day! To prepare for class, revisit the Dictionary and World Builder pages on the Scrabble website, the Merriam-Webster Scrabble Word Finder page, and review the blog posts devoted to Scrabble.

Posted in English 1103, Reading, Teaching, Writing

ENG 1103: Introducing Donald Barthelme

Posted on by janemlucas
Donald Barthelme in 1964. Photograph: Ben Martin/Time Life/Getty

As an introduction to Donald Barthelme, whose fiction we will examine in class tomorrow, read this biographical sketch. After you read the sketch, compose a one- or two-paragraph journal entry that includes what you have learned about his writing style, and what you have learned about readers’ and critics’ mixed responses to his fiction.

Donald Barthelme’s “The School,” the story that we’ll read tomorrow in class, was originally published in The New Yorker, the magazine that recently featured “Katy Grannan’s Photograph of Taylor Swift.” That picture of Swift appears below. I did not include it on your assignment handout because the photograph itself wasn’t important to the exercise. The assignment asked you to explore how a writer creates an unconventional portrait of a subject by forgoing physical description and focusing instead on other elements, such as mood and contrast. That journal exercise on the Swift portrait–or a reading assignment of your choice–serves as a warm-up for your analysis.

Petrusich, Amanda. “Amanda Petrusich on Katy Grannan’s Photograph of Taylor Swift.” The New Yorker, 12 Jan. 2026, pp. 44. Photo credit: Katy Grannan.

What makes a title effective? That’s an important question to consider since the title contains the first words of yours that a reader will encounter. First, it should be descriptive; it should evoke an image in the reader’s mind. It should also be relevant to your subject; it should convey something about the writing that will follow. Lastly, it should be intriguing; it should create in the reader a desire to keep reading. With those traits in mind, review the titles of your classmates’ literacy listed below. Which of them is most effective and why?

  • “Breaking through the Pages”
  • “The Beauty of Discomfort”
  • “A Challenge Wrapped in a Smile”
  • “Editing the Story of Myself”
  • “Finding My Way through Words”
  • “Giving Voice to the Unheard”
  • “How to Write about Myself”
  • “My Eighth Grade Spanish Class”
  • “The Paper that Changed my Life”
  • “The Passage”
  • “Prompted to Say More”
  • “Reading Changed My Mind”
  • “Surviving Ingrid”
  • “Why I Hate the Letter R“
  • “Writing is Hard”

Bonus Assignment Opportunity

Directions

  1. Determine which of the literacy narrative titles you deem most effective.
  2. Compose a comment of one complete sentence or more that includes (1) the title enclosed in quotation marks, and (2) a brief explanation of its effectiveness.
  3. Post your comment as a reply to this blog entry no later than 5 p.m. today, Tuesday, February 3. (To post your comment, click on the post’s title, and scroll down to the bottom of the page. You will then see the image of an airmail envelope with a leave comment option.) 

I will approve your comments (make them visible) before Wednesday’s class.

Next Up

In class on Wednesday, we will read and discuss Donald Barthelme’s short story “The School.” That story and the texts we have studied thus far in English 1103–“MeTalk Pretty One Day,” “The Day Language Came into Life,” “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” and the excerpt from the first chapter of To Kill a Mockingbird–are among the pieces of writing that may serve as the subject of your upcoming analysis. Before you begin drafting that assignment on Wednesday, February 11, we will examine two more texts that may serve as your subject.