Month: February 2025

Posted in English 1103, Scrabble, Teaching

ENG 1103: “Blowin’ in the Wind”

Posted on by janemlucas

To mark the eve of the first day of our windiest month, this Scrabble post features playable wind-related words. If your rack contains the right letters, spelling these words will be a breeze.

  • bayamo: a strong wind found in Cuba
  • bhut: a warm, dry wind in India (also bhoot)
  • bise: a cold, dry wind, found especially blowing from the northeast in Switzerland (also bize)
  • blaw: to blow
  • bleb: a blister (an extremely intense or severe wind)
  • bora: a cold wind in lowland regions
  • brr: used to indicate feeling cold (also brrr)
  • bura: a violent Eurasian windstorm (also buran)
  • chinook: a warm wind that flows off the east side of the Rockies; or a type of Pacific Northwest salmon named after the Chinook people)
  • fon: a warm dry wind that blows down off some mountains (also fohn and foehn)

Next Up

On Monday, we will examine the sample Keller and King analyses that you read and annotated for class, and I will distribute copies of a model analysis of my own for us to study.

Posted in Check, Please!, English 1103, Teaching, Writing

ENG 1103: Sample King Analysis Follow-Up

Posted on by janemlucas

In the picture above–and in the one in yesterday’s post–you can see some of my notes on the sample King analysis, “Wait Means Never.” Today’s blog post presents more detailed notes on the essay’s content and form.

Content

  • Rather than beginning with a summary of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” the writer comments on it by observing its relevance. Instead the writer should state what the letter is, an epistolary essay King wrote in 1962 while he was jailed in Alabama for leading nonviolent protests.
  • The writer ends the first paragraph with a thesis, but the statement is primarily description. Essentially, the writer states that King uses stylistic devices to deliver his message to a wider audience, but a thesis or main claim in a textual analysis should offer an assertion about how the writer’s use of those devices achieve a particular effect. In class next Monday, we will examine a sample revised thesis for “Wait Means Never.”
  • The writer observes that King repeats “the word ‘wait’ throughout the letter” (par. 2), but King does not introduce that word until his eleventh paragraph. The writer could revise his thesis to focus specifically on King’s eleventh paragraph because that portion of the letter is the source of his claims and textual support.
  • In the body paragraphs, the writer effectively details King’s diction and sentence structure, but a couple of inaccuaracies undercut the prose. Neither “from bad to worse” (par. 3) nor “at the end of the letter” (par. 5) is accurate.
  • After ending the final body paragraph with ”’wait'” (par. 5), the writer turns to a conclusion that reads more like the ending of a history report than a textual analysis. Simply revising the opening of the last paragraph to begin, “[t]he words of Dr. Martin Luther King . . .” would maintain the focus of the analysis, the words themselves. The writer could still address the letter’s role in history by noting how the words have endured as a rallying cry for peaceful nonviolent protest. Consider how else the writer might give the analysis closure.

Form

  • The document lacks a running header.
  • Because the writer is referring to “wait” and “never” as words in his title, both should be enclosed in quotation marks.
  • In the first line, the writer defines King’s letter as a “speech of literature” (par. 1). Although King was an orator, his “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” is not one of his speeches. As the title indicates, it’s a letter. Labeling the letter “literature” is unnecessary because the analysis that unfolds will reveal the literary quality of the prose. If the writer wants to address the letter’s status as a work of literature, in the conclusion, he might note that many students first encounter King’s letter in the pages of their high school and college anthologies.
  • In the first sentence of the introductory paragraph and the second sentence of the second paragraph, the writer uses coordinating conjunctions that indicate contrast, but the clauses those words connect are not in contrast. See “yet remains” (par. 1) and “but irked” (par. 2). In both cases, “and” would be the accurate conjunction. That said, “yet remains” introduces an assessment of the letter–in particular, its relevance–which shouldn’t be part of the summary at the beginning of the analysis.
  • The writer refers to King’s voice as “the narrator’s” (par. 2), but a narrator is a person who tells a story, usually a work of fiction or a narrative poem. King should be referred to as the writer or the author.
  • The clauses “it can easily be acknowledged” (par. 2) and “it can be identified” (par. 5) are passive constructions that de-emphasize the subject. The sentences that contain those clauses should be revised to show the action that King performs as a writer. The second-paragraph sentence might be rewritten as this: King’s repetition of “wait” emphasizes how frequently he has heard the word and how its “piercing familiarity” (par. 11) has increased his frustration. The two sentences convey the same idea, but the revision is eleven words shorter.
Posted in English 1103, Teaching, Writing

ENG 1103: Sample King Analysis, “Wait Means Never”

Posted on by janemlucas

With pen or pencil in hand, read your copy of the student analysis of “Letter from Birmingham Jail.” Write notes in the margin and on the text itself, and afterward compose a brief journal entry that addresses both the content and the form of the essay. Remember that you are not required to complete this exercise until you return to campus after spring break, but completing it earlier offers you the opportunity to reflect again on Martin Luther King, Jr.’s letter in the last days of Black History Month.

Tomorrow I will publish a follow-up post with notes on the analysis.

Posted in English 1103, Teaching, Writing

ENG 1103: Sample Keller Analysis Follow-Up

Posted on by janemlucas

In the picture above–and in the one in yesterday’s post–you can see some of my notes on the sample Keller analysis. Today’s blog post presents more detailed notes on the essay’s content and form.

Content

  • The title isn’t actually a title; it’s a label that identifies the assignment as an analysis. The title should offer a window into the analysis with a reference to an aspect of Helen Keller’s chapter or an idea or image in it.
  • Rather than beginning with a summary, the writer states that the chapter’s organization caught her eye. However, organization isn’t eye catching. What’s eye catching is perceived at a glance. What did catch the writer’s eye, and is that the real focus of the analysis?
  • The first paragraph does not present the writer’s thesis or main claim.
  • In the second and third paragraphs, the writer focuses on the idea of the chapter’s descriptiveness but doesn’t provide examples of its descriptiveness.
  • The fourth paragraph quotes words that Miss Sullivan spells for Heller, but those particular details don’t support the writer’s claim about “mood and tone.” The writer does mention that Keller intentionally breaks her doll, but that detail is an obvious example of Keller’s anger and frustration. Mentioning that is not an act of analysis but rather an act of description.
  • With the fifth paragraph, the writer turns to a key moment in the narrative, but the single word that the writer quotes does not directly support her point about the young Keller’s realization.
  • In the sixth paragraph, the writer returns to the idea of organization and quotes two lines, but the writer does not address how those lines demonstrate the strength of the conclusion’s organization. Examining the choice and placement of the word “awakened” (Keller, par. 7) is one way that the writer might have forged a connection between the organization of Keller’s essay and her word choices.
  • The final two paragraphs offer a general assessment of the chapter but the writer’s observations are primarily statements of the obvious. Applying Rosenwasser and Stephen’s “Seems to Be About X” strategy (104) is one strategy that may have moved the essay beyond description and into analysis.

Form

  • Neither the running header nor the first-page information (in the upper left) is Times New Roman.
  • The lines of the paragraphs are a space and half apart, rather than double spaced. Double spacing occurs only between the paragraphs.
  • The writer incorrectly cites the quotation in the first paragraph. She identifies it as a line from the second paragraph but it’s actually a line from the third. Later in the essay she twice confuses the sixth and seventh paragraphs.
  • The second paragraph includes an instance of passive voice. The line “hope is introduced when Heller meets her new teacher” should be rewritten in active voice as “Keller introduces hope when she meets her new teacher.”
  • Three times in the essay, the writer refers to Keller’s teacher as “Ms. Sullivan” rather than “Miss Sullivan.” That inaccuracy and the misidentification of paragraphs indicate that writer has not carefully examined her subject, which is the primary aim of analysis.
  • The writer repeatedly uses the word “this” in place of “that” or “the.” In formal prose, writers should use “this” only to refer to something at hand.
  • The writer begins the final paragraph with the phrase “in conclusion,” which can be a useful signal in an oral presentation. However, readers can see when they have reached the final paragraph of a text. Rather than writing the empty phrase “in conclusion,” or some variation on it, the writer offer an insight about the chapter or an additional quotation from it. Other strategies for developing your conclusion include revisiting the thesis without stating it verbatim and pointing to the broader implications of the analysis. Those are more subtle ways to provide closure.

Work Cited

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. 

Posted in English 1103, Reading, Teaching, Writing

ENG 1103: “Spring” Break, Sample Keller Analysis

Posted on by janemlucas

The words of the epitaph above conclude Percy Bysshe Shelley’s poem “Ode to the West Wind,” published in 1820. In that poem, the speaker meditates on the seemingly contradictory nature of the wind as both “[d]estroyer and preserver” (line 14). The poem ends on a positive note with the promise of spring, which will not arrive until March 20. That is why the word spring is enclosed in quotation marks in the title of this post. It isn’t spring yet, but it isn’t “far behind” (line 70), and its nearness brings us hope.

As you continue your un-springlike spring break, I invite you to examine this blog post and the others that I will publish in the coming days. These are by no means required reading during your brief respite from the semester, but they are here for you in case you find yourself returning to thoughts of your analysis in progress and wanting to study samples to aid your own writing process. If you don’t read these posts this week, read them before class on Monday, March 3.

Work Cited

Shelle, Percy Bysshe. “Ode to the West Wind.” Poetry Foundation, https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45134/ode-to-the-west-wind. Accessed 23 Feb. 2025.

An epigraph is a short quotation at the beginning of a piece of writing that suggests its theme.

The speaker of a poem is the voice that serves as the narrator. Just as the narrative voice of a work of fiction varies from the author’s, the speaker in a poem is not the poet but rather a persona created by the poet.

A note on mechanics: Ordinarily, seasons and elements are not capitalized, but Shelley capitalizes “Wind,” “Winter,” and “Spring” (lines 69-70) because he personifies them.

Sample Keller Analysis

With pen or pencil in hand, read your copy of the student analysis of “The Day Language Came into My Life.” Write notes in the margin and on the text itself, and afterward compose a brief journal entry that addresses both the content and the form of the essay. (Remember that you are not required to complete this exercise until you return to campus after spring break.)

Tomorrow I will publish a follow-up post with notes on the analysis.

Posted in English 1103, Scrabble, Teaching

ENG 1103: Irritable Vowel Syndrome, Part I

Posted on by janemlucas

Knowing words with multiple vowels proves useful when you’re faced with a rack of mostly, or all, vowels. Here’s a list of the first twenty-two playable four-letter words with three vowels:

  • aeon: a long period of time (also eon)
  • agee: to one side (also ajee)
  • agio: a surcharge applied when exchanging currency
  • ague: a sickness associated with malaria
  • ajee: to one side (also agee)
  • akee: a tropical tree
  • alae: wings (pl. of ala)
  • alee: on the side shielded from wind
  • amia: a freshwater fish
  • amoa: a kind of small buffalo
  • awee: a little while
  • eaux: waters (pl. of eau)
  • eide: distinctive appearances of things (pl. of eidos)
  • emeu: an emu
  • etui: an ornamental case
  • euro: an Australian marsupial, also known as wallaroo, for being like the kangaroo and the wallaby; also a unified currency of much of Europe
  • ilea: the terminal portions of small intestines (pl. of ileum)
  • ilia: pelvic bones (pl. of ilium)
  • jiao: a Chinese currency (also chiao)
  • luau: a large Hawaiian feast
  • meou: to meow
  • moue: a pouting expression

Next Up

Wordplay Day! To prepare for class, revisit the Dictionary and World Builder pages on the Scrabble website. Also review the Scrabble blog posts, including this one.

Posted in Check, Please!, English 1103, Teaching

ENG 1103: Check, Please! Lesson Four

Posted on by janemlucas
A viral photo featured in the fourth lesson of Check, Please! as an example of false framing.  https://webliteracy.pressbooks.com/front-matter/updated-resources-for-2021/.

This blog post features my version of the fourth Check, Please! assignment, which you submitted at the beginning of class on Wednesday. In preparation for submitting your worksheet for lesson five, review this post as well as the assignment notes that I posted on January 23.

Check, Please! Lesson Four

In the fourth lesson of the Check, Please!, Starter Course, Mike Caulfield, author of the course and a research scientist at the University of Washington’s Center for an Informed Public, focuses his instruction on the third step in the four-step SIFT approach to determining the reliability of a source. Lesson four, “Find Trusted Coverage,” addresses these topics: (1) scanning Google News for relevant stories, (2) using known fact-checking sites, and (3) conducting a reverse-image search to find a relevant source for an image.

One of the concepts Caulfield introduces in lesson four is click restraint, which was given its name by Sam Wineberg, Professor of History and Education at Stanford, and Sarah McGrew, Assistant Professor of Education at the University of Maryland. Click Restraint is an activity that fact checkers practice regularly, but average people do not. Fact checkers resist the impulse to click on the first result, opting instead to scan multiple results to find one that combines trustworthiness and relevance.

Caulfield also considers the issue of false frames and offers as an example the miscaptioned photo of a young woman that circulated widely after the 2017 London Bridge attack. In the photo, the woman, who is wearing a hijab, is looking down at her phone as she walks past one of the victims lying by the side of the road, surrounded by members of the rescue team. Because the woman’s face is blurred, viewers of the miscaptioned picture cannot see the look of shock that is visible in her face in another image taken by the same photographer. Subsequently, her apparent lack of concern for the victim seems to confirm the caption in the infamous tweet.

Choosing a general search term over a specific one is a useful and unexpected tip Caulfield includes in his discussion of image searches. He explains that the benefit of such a bland term as “letter” or “photo” will prevent the confirmation bias that can lead to the proliferation of disinformation through false frames.

Work Cited

Caulfield, Mike. Check, Please! Starter Course, 2021, https://checkpleasecc.notion.site/Check-Please-Starter-Course-ae34d043575e42828dc2964437ea4eed .

Next Up

Wordplay Day! To prepare for class, revisit the Dictionary and World Builder pages on the Scrabble website, and review the blog posts devoted to Scrabble tips.

Posted in English 1103, Teaching, Writing

ENG 1103: Revising Your Analysis

Posted on by janemlucas

This morning, after I return your Check, Please! worksheets for lesson four, I will return your drafts with my notes, and you will have the remainder of the class period to begin revising your analyses on your laptops. Because next week is spring break, you will have two additional weeks to continue your revision work before you submit the assignment to Blackboard and publish it as a WordPress blog entry. The due date is Wednesday, March 5 (before class). The hard deadline is Friday, March 7 (before class). Directions for submitting your analysis are included on your assignment sheet and on the Blackboard submission site.

As you continue to revise your analysis, consider visiting The Writing Center. If you do so, you will earn five bonus points for the assignment.

To schedule an appointment, visit https://highpoint.mywconline.com, email the Writing Center’s director, Professor Justin Cook, at jcook3@highpoint.edu, or scan the QR code below. To earn bonus points for your analysis, consult with a Writing Center tutor no later than Thursday, March 6.

Next Up

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

Posted in English 1103, Teaching, Writing

ENG 1103: Developing Your Draft

Posted on by janemlucas

As you continue to draft your analysis, you may be unsure of how to develop it into a full-length essay of at least six hundred words. Here are some recommendations:

  • If you know you want to include a particular point but do not know where to place it in the essay, go ahead and write it down in your journal or type it into your document file. Sometimes the act of putting words on the page will lead you to additional ideas and give you a sense of where you might include that point without a home. In other words, try following this advice from Writing Analytically: “Don’t wait to write until you have an idea around which you can organize a paper. Instead, use writing to get you to the idea” (Rosenwasser and Stephen 123).
  • The authors of Writing Analytically also note that writers of analyses “usually find that subtler, less obvious meanings are cloaked by more obvious ones, and so they are distracted from seeing them” (Rosenwasser and Stephen 104). Moving beyond the obvious to the subtle creates a path for development. Applying Rosenwasser and Stephen’s “Seems to Be About X” strategy (104) may provide you with additional claims and textual evidence. Consider these possibilities: “Me Talk Pretty One Day” seems to be about learning French, but could also be (or is really) about the healing power of humor; “The Day Language Came into My Life” seems to be about learning sign language, but could also be (or is really) about overcoming despair; “Letter from Birmingham Jail” seems to be about the need for nonviolent protest, but could also be (or is really) about the deaf ears of those who have not been the victims of segregration; “Back Story” seems to be about Joe Theismann’s career-ending injury and players’ fear of Lawrence Taylor but could also be (or is really) about the excessive violence of football; “The Falling Man” seems to be about the title figure but could also be (or is really) about symbolization: the process of becoming a symbol.
  • Imagine that the task at hand is not an analysis but a letter to a friend about the essay or chapter that serves as your subject. Draft that letter in your journal. Begin with a summary and follow with the reasons that your friend will find the essay or chapter as appealing as you do. Offer textual evidence to support your claims. Then step back and ask yourself whether that letter could become a more formal analysis–chances are, it could.

Works Cited

Rosenwasser, David and Jill Stephen. “Rule 6: Use Freewriting to Find and Interpret Topics.” Writing Analytically, 9th edition. Wadsworth/Cengage, 2024. pp. 123. 

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

Next Up

At the beginning of Wednesday’s class, I will collect your worksheets for the fourth lesson of Check, Please! Afterward, I will return your handwritten drafts with my notes, and you will have the remainder of the period to begin revising your analyses on your laptops and tablets.

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 short 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 that Language Came into My Life,” “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” “Back Story,” or “The Falling Man”
  • 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
  • Completing Check, Please! assignments
  • Writing longhand
  • Limiting screen time
  • Beginning your analysis

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 thesis
  • One relevant quotation from one of the essays or chapters that you have read or from Writing Analytically—see the accompanying handout for examples
  • A signal phrase and a parenthetical citation for the quotation
  • A conclusion that revisits the thesis without restating it verbatim

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. https://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/keller/life/life.html.

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.

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

Rosenwasser, David and Jill Stephen. “Becoming Conversant with a Reading.” Writing Analytically, 9th edition. Wadsworth/Cengage, 2024. p. 46. 

Rosenwasser, David and Jill Stephen. “Process and Product.” Writing Analytically, 9th edition. Wadsworth/Cengage, 2024. pp. 141-42. 

Rosenwasser, David and Jill Stephen. “The Writer as Both Observer and Observed.” Writing Analytically, 9th edition. Wadsworth/Cengage, 2024. pp. 163. 

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 Microsft Word files and PDFs that you post to Blackboard.

The complete midterm reflection assignment, along 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 collect your worksheets for the fourth Check, Please! lesson. Afterward, I will return your handwritten analyses drafts with my notes, and you will have the remainder of the class period to begin revising on your laptops and tablets.