This morning in class you will plan and draft a short midterm reflection essay that documents your work in the first weeks of the semester, focusing on what you consider your most significant work and the feature or features of the course that have benefited your development as a writer and a student. Features to consider include the following:
- Planning, drafting, and revising your literacy narrative and your analysis
- Keeping a journal
- Completing Check, Please! assignments
- Studying one of the readings examined class, including “Blogs vs. Term Papers,” “Skim Reading is the New Normal,” “Me Talk Pretty One Day,” “The Day that Language Came into My Life,” ‘Back Story” (from The Blind Side), “The Falling Man,” the sample literacy narrative and analysis, “Another Way with Words” and “On Its Face, Who Could Disagree with the Transformation?,” and The Competition, The New Yorker cover by Ian Falconer.
- Writing for an online audience beyond the classroom/creating and maintaining a WordPress blog
- Collaborating with your classmates on in-class writing assignments
- Playing Scrabble/Collaborating with your teammates on Wordplay Day
- Writing longhand
- Limiting screen time
You will include in your reflective essay the following elements:
- An opening paragraph that introduces your focus and presents your thesis
- Body paragraphs that offer concrete details from your work to support your thesis.
- A quotation or paraphrase from Writing Analytically and a quotation or paraphrase from one additional relevant source. Introduce your quotations/paraphrases with signal phrases and follow them with parenthetical citations where needed.
- A conclusion that reiterates the thesis without restating it verbatim
- MLA-style works cited entries for your sources
SAMPLE MLA WORKS CITED ENTRIES
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.” Chapter Four. The Story of My Life. ttps://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/keller/life/life.html.
Lewis, Michael. Chapter One: “Back Story.” The Blind Side. 2006. Norton, 2009. pp.15-16.
Lucas, Jane. “Another Way with Words.” Jane Lucas, 13 Sept. 2022, https://janelucas.com/2022/09/13/eng-1103-another-way-with-words-2/
—. “On its Face, “‘Who Could Disagree with the Transformation?’: Revisiting Richtel’s Report on the Blog-Term Paper Question.” Jane Lucas, 28 Sept.. 2022, https://janelucas.com/2022/09/28/eng-1103-revising-your-analysis/.
Richtel, Matt. “Blogs vs. Term Papers,” The New York Times, 20 Jan. 2012, https://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/22/education/edlife/muscling-in-on-the-term-paper-tradition.html.
Rosenwasser, David and Jill Stephen. “Analysis Does More than Break a Subject into Its Parts.” Writing Analytically, 8th edition. Wadsworth/Cengage, 2019. pp. 4-5.
—“Making an Interpretation: The Example of a New Yorker Cover. Writing Analytically, 8th edition. Wadsworth/Cengage, 2019. pp. 84-89.
—. “Integrating Quotations.” Writing Analytically, 8th edition. Wadsworth/Cengage, 2019. pp. 231-33.
—. “Writing on Computers vs. Writing on Paper.” Writing Analytically, 8th edition. Wadsworth/Cengage, 2019. pp. 124-25.
Sedaris, David. “Me Talk Pretty One Day.” Me Talk Pretty One Day. Little, Brown, 2000. 166-73.
Wolf, Maryanne. “Skim Reading is the New Normal. The Effect on Society is Profound.” The Guardian, 25 Aug. 2018, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/aug/25/skim-reading-new-normal-maryanne-wolf.
Jane Lucas 