This morning in class, you will plan and draft a short midterm reflective essay that documents your work in the first half of the semester, focusing on your analysis and one or two other assignments or aspects of the course that have contributed to your development as a writer and a student. In addition to your analysis, assignments and aspects of the course to consider include the following:
- Keeping a journal
- Completing Check, Please! assignments
- Studying one of the readings examined class, including “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” “Me Talk Pretty One Day,” “The Day that Language Came into My Life,” “Back Story” (from The Blind Side), “The Falling Man,” “The School,” the sample literacy narrative (“A Bridge to Words”), or the sample analysis (“The Strange Fruit of Sosnowiec”)
- Reading and editing samples of student writing
- 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
Include in your reflective 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 thesis.
- A relevant quotation from Writing Analytically. Introduce your quotation with a signal phrase and follow it with a parenthetical citation. In addition to quoting a relevant passage from Writing Analytically, you may quote one of the texts that we have studied in class.
- A conclusion that revisits the thesis without restating it verbatim
- An MLA-style works cited entry for your source or sources
Sample MLA Style Works Cited Entries
Bartheleme, 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.” Chapter Four. The Story of My Life. https://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/keller/life/life.html.
King, Martin Luther, Jr. “Letter from Birmingham Jail.” The Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute, Stanford University, https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/sites/mlk/files/letterfrombirmingham_wwcw_0.pdf.
Lewis, Michael. Chapter One: “Back Story.” The Blind Side. 2006. Norton, 2009. pp.15-16.
Lucas, Jane. “A Bridge to Words.” Jane Lucas, 11 Sept. 2023, https://janelucas.com/2023/09/11/eng-1103-a-bridge-to-words/.
—. “The Strange Fruit of Sosnowiec.” Jane Lucas, 2 Oct. 2023, https://janelucas.com/2023/10/02/eng-1103-the-strange-fruit-of-sosnowiec/.
Rosenwasser, David and Jill Stephen. “Analysis and Argument.” Writing Analytically, 9th edition. Wadsworth/Cengage, 2019. pp. 7-8.
—. “Analysis and Everyday Life: More Than Breaking a Subject into Its Parts.” Writing Analytically, 9th edition. Wadsworth/Cengage, 2024. pp. 6-7.
—. “Integrating Quotations into Your Paper.” Writing Analytically, 9th edition. Wadsworth/Cengage, 2019. pp. 343-46.
—. “The Idea of the Paragraph.” Writing Analytically, 9th edition. Wadsworth/Cengage, 2019. pp. 307-313.
Sedaris, David. “Me Talk Pretty One Day.” Me Talk Pretty One Day. Little, Brown, 2000. 166-73.
Next Up
Wordplay Day! To prepare for class, revisit the Dictionary and World Builder pages on the Scrabble website. Also review the posts on my blog devoted to Scrabble tips.
Jane Lucas 