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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
Monday 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. One of the requirements of the assignment is incorporating a relevant quotation from one of the essays or chapters you have read 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 exchange 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. Note that 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
When I write a journal entry about an essay or chapter I have read for class, I sense that I have begun what Rosenwasser and Stephen term “a mental dialogue with it” (46).
When I write a journal entry about an essay or chapter I have read for class, I sense that I have begun “a mental dialogue with it” (Rosenwasser and Stephen 46).
A variation on the previous option is integrating a quotation that serves as an epigraph in Writing Analytically. If you quote an epigraph, which is a quote at the beginning of a book or book section, intended to suggest its theme, you are presenting an indirect quotation.
Examples
I realized that I needed to change the subject of my analysis when I began to feel like one of those writers who, in Vivian Gornick’s words, “are pulled around by motives they can neither identify accurately nor struggle to resolve” (qtd. in Rosenwasser and Stephen 163).
I realized that I needed to change the subject of my analysis when I began to feel like one of those writers who “are pulled around by motives they can neither identify accurately nor struggle to resolve” (Gornick qtd. in Rosenwasser and Stephen 163).
The first example names the writer, Vivian Gornick, so the parenthetical citation does not include her name as the author who is quoted. The second example omits her name, so her last name precedes “qtd. in” (quoted in) and the textbook’s authors’ last names.
Works Cited
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.
—. “The Writer as Both Observer and Observed.” Writing Analytically, 9th edition. Wadsworth/Cengage, 2024. pp. 163.
Constant Consonants
Learning nth (an unspecified number) and other all-consonant words enables you to continue a Scrabble game when you’re 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. Also review the blog posts devoted to Scrabble tips, including this one.
Coming Soon
In class on Monday, you will write your midterm reflection.
Yesterday in class, before you began planning and drafting your analyses, we examined the beginning of Tom Junod‘s essay “The Falling Man,” published in Esquire magazine two years after 9-11. If you choose that excerpt for the subject of your analysis, one element you might address is the unusually long first paragraph. Consider where Junod might have divided the paragraph and why he may have chosen not to divide it.
Junod might have started a second paragraph with the words “[i]n all the other pictures,” because there he shifts the focus from the Falling Man to the photographs of other people who jumped from the Twin Towers. An opportunity for a third paragraph comes with the words “[t]he man in the picture, by contrast,” where Junod turns his attention back to the Falling Man. And he might have begun a fourth paragraph with “[s]ome people who look at the picture,” because there he shifts to viewers’ perceptions of the Falling Man.
The first paragraph is over four-hundred words long, a length I advise you to avoid in your own paragraphs. Generally, one-hundred to one-hundred-and-fifty words is a suitable length. As a rule, you should begin a new paragraph whenyou present a new idea or point. If you have an extended idea that spans multiple paragraphs, each new point within that idea should have its own paragraph. But the first paragraph of “The Falling Man” is an exception. For Junod, choosing not to divide the first paragraph creates an unbroken movement that parallels the unbroken downward flight of his subject, the Falling Man. Outside of the photograph, “he drops and keeps dropping until he disappears.” With “disappears,” the last word of the paragraph,” the Falling Man disappears from the page, and Tom Junod turns to the photographer, whom we learn later in the essay is Richard Drew.
Unless you subscribe to Esquire, the magazine’s paywall will deny you access to the full text of “The Falling Man”; but if you’re interested in reading it in full, you can access it through the HPU Library site by following these steps:
The second half of this blog post features my version of the third Check, Please! assignment, which you submitted at the beginning of class on Wednesday. In preparation for submitting your worksheet for lesson four, review this post as well as the assignment notes that I posted on January 23.
Sample Assignment
In the third 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, continues his instruction on the second step in four-step SIFT approach to determining the reliability of a source. Lesson three, “Further Investigation” covers these topics: (1) Just add Wikipedia for names and organizations, (2) Google Scholar searches for verifying expertise, (3) Google News searches for information about organizations and individuals, (4) the nature of state media and how to identify it, and (5) the difference between bias and agenda.
One of the most instructive parts of lesson three focuses on two news stories about MH17, Malyasia Airlines Flight 17, a passenger flight scheduled to land in Kuala Lumpur that was shot down over eastern Ukraine on July 17, 2014. While the second story, a television news segment, appears to present detailed investigative reporting challenging the conclusion of the Dutch Safety Board and Dutch-led joint investigation team–the conclusion that Russia was to blame–a quick just-add-Wikipedia check reveals that RT (formerly Russia Today) is a Russian state-controlled international TV network, a government propaganda tool rather than a source of fair and balanced news. The first video, the one produced by Business Insider, a financial and business news site, delivers accurate coverage of MH17.
Another notable segment of “Further Investigation” addresses the important distinction between “bias” and “agenda.” There, Caulfield observes that “[p]ersonal bias has real impacts. But bias isn’t agenda, and it’s agenda that should be your primary concern for quick checks,” adding that “[b]ias is about how people see things; agenda is about what a news or research organization is set up to do.”
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.
This morning in class, after I collect your third Check, Please! worksheets, you will begin planning and drafting your analysis. You will receive a hard copy of the assignment in class, and I am including an additional copy below.
Directions for Planning and Drafting
Review the texts that you have read for class, and determine which one appeals to you most as a subject of analysis.
Identify one or more elements that contribute to its effectiveness.
Develop your analysis through a close examination of those elements.
Write in dark ink, preferably black. 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 week I will return your draft with notes, and you will have the class period to begin revising and editing on your laptop or tablet.
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 essay, essay excerpt, or chapter
A thesis statement, or main claim, that presents your take on the essay, essay excerpt, or chapter based on your close study of it
Textual evidence that supports your claims
A minimum of one relevant quotation from the text, introduced with a signal phrase and followed by a parenthetical citation
A conclusion that revisits the thesis without restating it verbatim
Lewis, Michael. Chapter One: “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 early stage of the process is to get your ideas down on the page. You may need the process of drafting to discover what you think the essay, essay excerpt, or chapter means and how it makes its meaning.
Directions for Formatting and Posting Your Revision—See the Course Calendar for the Due Date and Hard Deadline
Save your revised essay as a Microsoft Word file or PDF and submit it to Blackboard in compliance with MLA manuscript guidelines.
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 and 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.
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.
Tomorrow in class, you will begin planning and drafting an analysis, your second major writing assignment for the course. Your subject may be any one of the following texts that we have studied.
“Me Talk Pretty One Day” by David Sedaris
“The Day Language Came into My Life” by Helen Keller
“Letter from Birmingham Jail” by Martin Luther King, Jr.
“Back Story” by Michael Lewis
As I noted in yesterday’s post, you should review your assigned readings, and determine which one appeals to you most as a subject for analysis. I asked you to consider this question: Which text are you most interested in examining in closer detail to determine what makes it an effective piece of writing? Your answer to that question is likely the best subject for you. That said, in the process of planning and drafting, your answer may change. Sometimes the writing process involves discovering that a subject you weren’t interested in–or were less interested in than others–deserves a closer look.
Rather than trying to begin the writing process with a thesis (or main claim, or controlling idea), jot down the words, phrases, and sentences from the text that have lingered in your mind the most. Ask yourself these questions:
What do some of these words, phrases, and sentences have in common?
How are they different?
What patterns can you identify among them?
After repeated readings, do any of them seem to take on additional meanings?
Answering those questions will lead you to identify patterns that will give you the framework for your analysis.
Elements to address in your analysis include these:
Scene
Summary
Figurative language
Sensory details
Structure
Theme
To determine one of the themes of your subject, think about the ideas that the writer conveys throughout the text. Humor in the face of adversity and antagonism (“Me Talk Pretty One Day”), language as illumination and liberation (“The Day Language Came into My Life”), social injustice and the urgency of nonviolent protest (“Letter from Birmingham Jail”), fear and the unseen (“Back Story”) are among the themes to consider.
Keep in mind that themes are abstractions that writers convey through concrete details. If you address a theme in your subject, be sure to refer to concrete details that convey that theme.
As you continue to work on your analysis, read these sections of Writing Analytically:
“Focus on Individual Words and Sentences” (49-50)
“Find the Analytical Potential: Locate an Area of Uncertainty” (120-21)
“Six Rules of Thumb for Responding to Assignments more Analytically” (121-23)
Next Up
At the beginning of class on Wednesday, you will submit your third Check, Please! worksheet, and you will have the rest of the class period to begin planning and drafting your analyses.
Today’s class will be devoted primarily to reading and responding to the blog post of one of your classmates’ literacy narratives. Elements you will consider in your response included these:
the title
vivid details
scene and summary (and dialogue, if present)
the conclusion
the image documenting part of the writing process away from the screen
the link to a relevant website
Before you begin that assignment, we will examine the opening pages of “Back Story,” the first chapter of Michael Lewis‘s The Blind Side, which dramatizes 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 line of the chapter. 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 (15). Lewis develops the opening 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.
When you’re struggling to develop a piece of writing, reread the opening paragraph of The Blind Side. Observe how Lewis dramatizes 3.5 seconds–yes, only 3.5 seconds–with about two-hundred words.
Next Up
In class on Wednesday, after you submit your worksheets for the third lesson of Check, Please!, you will begin planning and drafting your analysis, your second major writing assignment for the course. To prepare for Wednesday’s class, review your assigned readings, and determine which one appeals to you most as a subject for analysis. Which text are you most interested in examining in closer detail to determine what makes it an effective piece of writing? Your answer to that question is likely the best subject for you.
Jane Lucas 