Author: janemlucas

Posted in English 1103, Reading, Teaching, Writing

ENG 1103: Lessons in Summary, Scene, and Dialogue from Harper Lee

Posted on by janemlucas

Yesterday before you you began your revision work, we examined a page (pictured above) from Harper Lee’s novel To Kill a Mockingbird. That page from the first chapter serves as a valuable model for three narrative elements: summary, scene, and dialogue–at least two of which will figure in your literacy narrative.

The first paragraph of the passage summarizes the characters’ circumstances, designating the “summertime boundaries” (12) within which the narrator, Jean Louise, “Scout,” Finch, and her older brother, Jem, may play outdoors. The short one-sentence paragraph that follows continues the summary, informing readers that the summer Scout has just summarized is the one in which Dill (Charles Baker Harris) first visits Maycomb, Alabama.

With the first words of the next paragraph, “[e]arly one morning,” Scout shifts from summary to scene (12). All of the remaining paragraphs except the final one continue the scene with dialogue. Scout returns to summary with the words “Dill was from Meridian” (12).

Note that Harper Lee begins a new paragraph whenever the speaker changes. Also note that every line of dialogue does not include a dialogue tag, such as “he said” or “she said.” If a passage of dialogue includes only two speakers, none of the paragraphs require dialogue tags after the speakers’ first lines because the start of a new paragraph signals to the reader that the other person is speaking. If a dialogue includes three or more speakers–such as Scout’s conversation with Jem and Dill–occasional tags are essential.

Lessons in Punctuation

The excerpt from To Kill a Mockingbird also demonstrates how to use a variety of punctuation marks, including em dashes, hyphens, and commas.

  • Harper Lee uses em dashes to set off “Miss Rachel’s rat terrier was expecting” (12) from the rest of the sentence because it is nonessential. It adds details, but the sentence can function without them. An em dash is used before and after phrases that are nonessential. Note that there is no space before or after the dash, which is made with two strikes of the hyphen key.
  • Jem asks if Dill is “four-and-a-half”? Hyphens appear between those words because multiple-word numbers are hyphenated.
  • Near the end of the excerpt, “Mississippi” and “Miss Rachel” (12) are both set off by commas because those details are nonessential. Commas are used to set off single words and short phrases of nonessentials the way that em dashes are used to set off longer units of words.

Work Cited

Lee, Harper. To Kill a Mockingbird. Lippincott, 1960. p. 12.

Congratulations to Davis Smith for winning a copy of Helen Keller’s autobiography, The Story of My Life, in yesterday’s raffle.

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, Teaching, Writing

ENG 1103: Revising Your Literacy Narrative

Posted on by janemlucas

Today’s class will be devoted primarily to revision work. After your Scrabble debriefing and our examination of “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” I will return the drafts of your literacy narratives, and you will have the remainder of the class period to begin revising on your laptops. You will have an additional week to continue revising before posting to Blackboard and WordPress. The due date for your literacy narrative is Wednesday, January 28, before class; the hard deadline is Friday, January 30, before class. Next Monday, January 26, I will guide you through the submission processes step by step.

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

To schedule an appointment, visit the Writing Center’s sign-up page, email the Writing Center’s director, Professor Justin Cook, at jcook3@highpoint.edu, or scan the QR code above. To earn bonus points for your literacy narrative, consult with a Writing Center tutor no later than Thursday, January 29.

I have attached a writing notes handout to your drafts. Keep it in your portfolio and refer to it when composing assignments. I have included an additional copy of that list below.

Writing Notes

  • &: Do not use an ampersand (&) in place of the word and in formal writing.
  • Abbreviations should often be avoided in formal writing. Do not write vocab for vocabulary. On first reference, spell out Advanced Placement in the name of a course. In subsequent references, AP is acceptable.
  • A lot: Don’t use a lot a lot. There are a lot of better ways to express that idea, such as many, often, considerable, etc. If you use a lot in your writing, I will mark it with a d, which denotes diction or word choice.
  • Compound modifiers are linked with a hyphen. Write twelve-page paper, not twelve page paper.
  • Do: What specifically did you do? (There is almost always a stronger verb than do.) Drafted, revised, edited, reviewed, studied, and memorized are all verbs that denote a particular action. Use action verbs whenever possible.
  • English and the names of other languages are always capitalized. If you write English with a lower-case e, I will underscore the letter with three vertical lines. Those three lines are the proofreader’s mark that denotes the need for a capital letter.
  • Modifiers: Place modifiers and modifying phrases as close as possible to the words they are meant to describe. Consider this sentence: As a four-year-old, my grandmother taught me to print the letters of the alphabet. In it, the person who is four is the grandmother, which makes no sense. (She cannot be a grandmother at four.) The sentence should be revised to read something like this: As a four-year-old, I learned from my grandmother how to print the letters of the alphabet.
  • Numbers that can be expressed as one or two words are written as words, not figures, in MLA style, which is the style used in English courses as well as some other courses in the humanities. Write twenty-five, not 25.
  • Paragraphs: Business writing calls for block paragraphs, but English 1103 and many of your other classes will require you to indent the first lines of each paragraph five spaces or one-half inch.
  • Passive voice should often be avoided in formal writing. The subject should perform the action. Write, we read several nineteenth-century novels, not several nineteenth-century novels were read.
  • Separate: an easy way to remember the spelling of this often-misspelled word is to tell yourself, there’s a rat in separate.
  • That/Who: The relative pronoun who, not that, refers to people. (That refers to things.) Do not write He is the teacher that taught me how to develop my writing. Instead, write He is the teacher who taught me how to develop my writing.
  • That/This: The relative pronoun this refers to something at hand or occurring now. That class is the one you’re writing about in your literacy narrative. This class is English 1103.
  • Then/Than: Than is used in comparisons; then refers to a point in time.
  • Titles: In MLA style, the titles of book-length works are italicized. If you are writing longhand, the titles of book-length works are underlined. The titles of shorter works—such as essays, short stories, and poems—are enclosed in quotation marks.
  • Whether/If: Whether introduces alternatives or a choice. If introduces a condition. Write, I don’t know whether my mother or my father read to me first, and If my pen runs out of ink, I will write in pencil instead.

Occasionally, I will post additional writing notes on my blog and will include notes on diction, mechanics, and style—as well as other writing elements—in my feedback on your major writing assignments.

Journal Exercise: Alternate Portraits

The first paragraph of Petrusich’s two-paragraph short-take. The New Yorker, 12 Jan. 2026, pp. 44.
The second paragraph of Petrusich’s two-paragrpah short-take. The New Yorker, 12 Jan. 2026, pp. 44.

If you reach a stopping point in your revision before the end of the class period, begin this journal exercise. If you continue to work on your revision until the end of class, complete this exercise on your own.

Aim to explore how a writer creates an unconventional portrait of a subject by forgoing physical description and focusing on other elements, such as mood and contrast.

Directions for Option One

  1. Read “Amanda Petrusich on Katy Grannan’s Photograph of Taylor Swift.”
  2. Compose a one- or two-paragraph journal entry that addresses a detail that demonstrates how the writing develops an alternate portrait of Swift, not of her physical features but of the mood the image evokes or the now-then contrast that the writer explores.
  3. In your journal entry, quote a word, phrase, or sentence of Petrusich’s. Introduce the quotation with a signal phrase and follow it with a parenthetical citation. See the example below.
  4. At the end of your journal entry, include the header “Work Cited,” followed by an entry for “Amanda Petrusich on Katy Grannan’s Photograph of Taylor Swift.” See the example below. follows.
  5. Complete your journal entry on or before Monday, February 2.

Example:

The simile that ends with the words “seismic happened” (44) could be a sentence ender. But instead, the writer, Amanda Petrusich, follows it with an appositive: a noun or noun phrase that identifies, renames, or explains it. That appositive builds on the simile and develops the sentence, offering readers a series of possible seismic events. Petrusich writes, “maybe you met a great love, or learned you were having a baby, or lost someone” (44).

Work Cited

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

Directions for Option Two

If you do not want to write about Taylor Swift, complete the exercise using one of your class readings. The work cited entry for each of those texts is included on the handout.

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. Also, review the Scrabble notes in your journal and the blog posts devoted to Scrabble.

Posted in English 1103, Reading, Teaching, Writing

ENG 1103: Takeaways from Keller . . .

Posted on by janemlucas

As you prepare to revise your literacy narrative, look back at Helen Keller’s “The Day Language Came into My Life,” the fourth chapter of her autobiography, The Story of My Life, and consider how you can employ some of the same elements in your revision.

  • Keller draws on her sense of touch to render her world to us because she cannot see or hear. She writes of the warmth of the sun “on her upturned face” (par. 2) as she depicts herself waiting for the arrival of her teacher, Anne Mansfield Sullivan. Aim to use relevant sensory details in your own literacy narrative.
  • In the conclusion, Keller writes, “I learned a great many words that day. I do not remember what they all were; but I do know that mother, father, sister, teacher were among them” (par. 9). In writing those words, Keller makes both what she doesn’t remember and what she does remember part of her story. You may not remember all the details of a memory from your childhood, but the details you do remember will render your narrative more vividly. And if there’s something you don’t remember, that uncertainty–as Keller demonstrates–can be on the page, too.
  • She spells out the words that her teacher spells for her by forming each letter one at a time in Keller’s hand. If you are writing about learning to spell words, let the reader see that on the page as Keller lets her reader see: “‘w-a-t-e-r’ is water” (par. 6).

In “Me Talk Pretty One Day,” David Sedaris does not spell out the French words he is learning to speak, but he does include nonsense words, such as “meimslsxp” (167), to convey his lack of understanding. If you are writing about learning a second language, consider following Sedaris’ lead and using nonsense words–not his but ones of your own making–to convey your initial confusion. Also, try including one or more words of the language itself. Remember that words you write that are not English words–nonsense words included–are italicized. For more details on Sedaris’s essay, see the January 13 class notes.

Work Cited

Keller, Helen. “The Day Language Came Into My Life.” https://janelucasdotcom. files.wordpress.com/2025/08/a0461-3.thedaylanguagecameintomylife_keller.pdf.

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

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. In “The Day Language Came into My Life,” Helen Keller recounts what happened on that day, three months before she turned seven. Name one detail from that day that is notable for Keller’s rendering of it. See your copy of “The Day Language Came into My Life.”
  2. How is a dead metaphor different from a cliché? (Briefly explain the two.) See the class notes for January 13.
  3. What is the style used for formatting files and documenting sources in papers for courses in English and many other courses in the humanities (philosophy, classics, religious studies, art history, and foreign languages)? See the January 15 class notes.
  4. Name one of the formatting requirements for the style you will use for your papers in English 1103. See the class notes for January 15.
  5. What have you learned about writing from the annotations on your introductory reflection or on one of your Monday or Wednesday group exercises? Briefly note the rule or guideline. See your introductory reflection and your Monday and Wednesday group exercises.

Your quiz also included a bonus opportunity. Possible answers for that bonus are found in the class notes for January 8, January 9, and January 16.

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. That will increase your knowledge of what you read and ensure that you will earn high grades on your pop quizzes.

Next Up

Tomorrow, you will continue working on your own literacy narratives. After the Scrabble debriefing and our discussion of “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” I will return your rough drafts with my notes, and you will have the remainder of the class period to revise on your laptops. You will have an additional week to continue revising before posting your literacy narrative to Blackboard and to your WordPress blog. The due date is Wednesday, January 28, before class; the hard deadline is Friday, January 30, before class.

Posted in English 1103, Reading, Teaching, Writing

ENG 1103: Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail”

Posted on by janemlucas

To honor Martin Luther King, Jr., today, I am asking you to you engage in a close study of his epistolary essay “Letter from Birmingham Jail.” Although I could ask you to listen to a recording of it, I ask that you to read it instead. King’s gift for oratory is well known, but for students of writing, closely examining his words on the page is a more pertinent exercise than listening to his voice.

What makes King’s letter an effective piece of writing? With that question in mind, consider these words: “Perhaps it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging darts of segregation to say, ‘Wait” (par. 11). Here King is addressing his initial audience, the eight white Birmingham-area clergymen who criticized his protest as “unwise and untimely” (par. 1). He suggests to those men that waiting to act isn’t difficult when you yourself aren’t the victim of injustice, when you haven’t, in King’s words, “felt the stinging darts of segregation” (par. 11). The sentence is notable not only for the contrast it illustrates between King’s reality and the lives of his readers but also for the words that King uses to show that contrast.

Consider King’s sentence and the paraphrase that follows:

  • Perhaps it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging darts of segregation to say, “Wait.”
  • Maybe it is simple for people who have not experienced segregation to say, “Wait.”

King’s sentence is stronger than the paraphrase that follows it because of the “stinging darts.” Writing that someone has not “experienced segregation” is abstract. Readers do not feel the general experience in the second sentence, but they feel King’s “stinging darts.” Sensory details strengthen sentences by appealing to readers’ senses, and figurative language invigorates writing by making the unfamiliar familiar. King’s white readers have not been the victims of segregation, but his choice of words makes them feel the sting.

While King’s “stinging darts” sentence—a relatively short one—is laudable, the long, winding sentence that follows is nothing short of staggering.

It starts with these words: “But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim.” King presents those atrocities in an introductory dependent clause, one whose full meaning depends on an independent clause that follows. But rather than immediately turning to an independent clause to complete the thought, King expands the sentence with this series of dependent clauses:

  • when you have seen hate filled policemen curse, kick and even kill your black brothers and sisters;
  • when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society;
  • when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six-year-old daughter why she can’t go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see ominous clouds of inferiority beginning to form in her little mental sky, and see her beginning to distort her personality by developing an unconscious bitterness toward white people;
  • when you take a cross-county drive and find it necessary to sleep night after night in the uncomfortable corners of your automobile because no motel will accept you;
  • when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs reading “white” and “colored”;
  • when your first name becomes “n—,” your middle name becomes “boy” (however old you are) and your last name becomes “John,” and your wife and mother are never given the respected title “Mrs.”;
  • when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never quite knowing what to expect next, and are plagued with inner fears and outer resentments;
  • when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of “nobodiness”–(par. 11).

The independent clause that readers have been waiting for, the statement that completes the thought is this: “then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait” (par. 11). Those words could have immediately followed the first dependent clause, but instead King offers nine more dependent clauses, ten darts that sting his readers.

Ten dependent clauses connected by semicolons followed by a dash and an independent clause, a total of 316 words: That is not a structure I recommend for the sentences you write in English 1103, but it’s a valuable model, nevertheless.

I hope that you, as citizens, will continue to study the words of his letter. As your writing teacher, I hope that you will return to the sentence that I have examined in detail here. Along with showing his readers why his nonviolent protests could not wait, that sentence of King’s demonstrates how to develop a piece of writing through the accumulation of detail—not just the when, but the when and when and when . . . .

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.

Next Up

In class on Wednesday, we will examine a passage from “Letter from Birmingham Jail” and another prose excerpt before you begin planning and drafting your literacy narrative.

Postscript

This morning, I wrote letters of thanks to the twenty-six local men and women who participated in the 1960 High Point Sit-ins. What a pleasure it was to discover that one of the other volunteer letter writers was former student Annika Brown, now a junior accounting major!

Posted in Reading

Redford the Reader

Posted on by janemlucas

Biographers don’t usually offer readers more than a glimpse of their subjects’ bookshelves, but Robert Redford’s biographer, Michael Feeney Callan, who is also a novelist and poet, lingers over the books he read—some of which helped shape his vision as an actor and director.

Nothing could calm the restless Redford as a student at Brentwood Elementary until “one teacher’s passionate reading from Farmer Boy and Little House on the Prairie finally got him interested in books” (26). Soon after, his father, Charlie, began the midweek routine of driving Redford and his mother, Martha, to the Santa Monica Public Library. In Redford’s words, “‘I couldn’t wait for Wednesdays, to go through the doors of that library . . . . I’d make straight for Perseus, Zeus, and The Odyssey. Even when I couldn’t read, I’d pick out a word, “Perseus,” and conjure the story from the illustrations”’(qtd. in Callan 26).

When Redford was attending Colorado University, his mother died from complications of septicemia. Less than two years later, his paternal grandmother, Lena, died. For comfort, Redford pored over the novels of Thomas Wolfe, Sinclair Lewis, and Thomas Mann, all of which “struck chords that would surface later in his work” (52), but it was in the pages of Henry Miller’s Nights of Love and Laughter—loaned to him by a classmate who recommended it—where Redford first encountered the frank examination of the world that he had sought in the pages of books. In his words, “‘Yes, he [Miller] talked about hunger and anger and sexual voracity. But it was all in the spirit of saying, “Let’s be honest about human beings.” It was frank, direct human communication, and that was a rare commodity in my life’” (qtd. in Callan 54).

At twenty-two—after dropping out of Colorado University and studying art sporadically in Europe—Redford enrolled at the American Academy of Dramatic Art. There, as an exercise in vocal assessment, an instructor asked the new students to prepare a favorite song to showcase their voices. One of Redford’s classmates, Ginny Burns, recalled that rather than performing the required song, “in a smoldering voice [he] dove into Edgar Allan Poe’s ‘The Raven,’ which he claimed appropriate because it was lyrical. He didn’t merely recite it. He hollered it like an opera, jumping from one window ledge to the next, caroming around the room” (qtd. in Callan 70).

Redford’s passion for Poe’s words didn’t extend to F. Scott Fitzgerald’s—not yet. When he first read The Great Gatsby at Colorado University, he thought it was overrated: “It seemed florid. But when I went back to it, I saw it was something extraordinary, the depiction of human obsessions, and I felt some great screen work could come from it. I found it tantalizing” (qtd. in Callan 250).

The admiration he developed for Fitzgerald’s prose and his close study of it are apparent in his reaction to producer Robert Evans’s initial refusal to consider him for the role of Jay Gatsby because he was a blond. Redford said, “‘I began to think that Evans never read the book. Sure, he liked the idea of doing a Fitzgerald, but he didn’t know the text. Nowhere in it does Fitzgerald say Gatsby’s hair is dark. He says, “His hair was freshly barbered and smoothed back, and his skin was pulled tight over his face.” That’s it. That’s the description”’ (qtd. in Callan 249).

Similarly, Redford’s careful examination of the novel is evident in his observation of a detail that gave him “a hook on which to hang his personal Gatsby” (253). He noticed that “‘Fitzgerald wrote that Jay Gatsby was awkward when he said “old sport”—it didn’t come out of his mouth easily . . . . There’s a whole encyclopedia right there, and it’s from there I started to build up my own version’” (qtd. in Callan 253).

His biographer’s chronicle of Redford’s love of the written word may lead some readers to ask why he didn’t become a writer—but he was one, in fact. Though he never published, he maintained diaries and notebooks throughout his life. And Michael Ritchie, who directed him in Downhill Racer, observed, ‘He was really an author. His writing credit wasn’t on Downhill or Jeremiah Johnson but he was really an author as much as David Rayfiel, or even [James] Salter’” (qtd. in Callan 220). Rayfiel himself agreed, noting, “‘He had a writer’s eye and ear more than any actor I ever worked with’” (qtd. in Callan 271).

When Hume Cronyn asked Redford how he wanted Sundance to be remembered in one hundred years, Redford replied, “‘Like Walden Pond’” (qtd. in Callan 374). It’s a testament to Redford’s life as a reader that his answer didn’t refer to the film character for whom his writers’ colony and non-profit are named, but instead to the wooded haven he discovered in the pages of Henry David Thoreau.

Work Cited

Callan, Michael. Feeney. Robert Redford: The Biography. 2011. Vintage, 2012.

Posted in English 1103, Scrabble, Teaching

ENG 1103: Two-Letter Words, B-E . . .

Posted on by janemlucas

The first Scrabble blog post of the semester featured playable two-letter words beginning with “a.” Learning those two-letter words, as well as the others that follow in the alphabet, will enable you to see more options for play and can increase the number of points you earn in a single turn.

Here’s a list of the playable words beginning with “b,” “d,” and “e”:

  • ba: the soul in ancient Egyptian spirituality
  • bi: a bisexual
  • bo: a pal
  • by: a side issue
  • de: of, from
  • do: a tone on a scale
  • ed: education
  • ef: the letter f (also eff)
  • eh: used to express doubt
  • el: an elevated train
  • em: the letter m
  • en: the letter n
  • er: used to express hesitation
  • es: the letter s
  • et: a past tense of eat
  • ex: the letter x

When in Doubt . . .

Consult the guidelines (in the game box) if you are unsure whether an action is permissible in gameplay. An additional copy of the guidelines follows.

Scrabble Guidelines

  • Do not let your opponents know which letters are on your rack. Whenever possible, communicate with your teammate nonverbally by pointing to the letters and rearranging them on the rack. If you need to refer out loud to letters on your rack, refer to them as “this one, that one . . . .”
  • Do not say the definition of a word aloud. If you play a word and your opponents question its validity, do not provide the definition. Definitions can be provided only in the event of a challenge. See the note below regarding challenges. Also, note that you will have the opportunity on your own after class to look up the meanings of any unfamiliar words played by your opponents or recommended by your teammate and subsequently played by the two of you. You will also have the chance to look up definitions during your Monday debriefings.
  • If you think your opponents have played a word that isn’t permissible, such as a misspelled word or a proper noun, tell me that you have a challenge. I will consult the Official Scrabble Players Dictionary to determine whether the word in question is playable and will provide the definition. If the challenged word isn’t playable, the team that set it down loses a turn. Conversely, if the challenged word is playable, the team that called the challenge loses a turn.
  • If any group member’s smartphone or laptop is in evidence during the game, immediately tell that person to put it away. The presence of any player’s digital device is a foul—as is providing a definition or otherwise offering unauthorized assistance—and fouls come with penalties, five points each.

Next Up

On Monday, in honor of Martin Luther King, Jr., you will read his ”Letter from Birmingham Jail.” You do not need to print a copy; I will distribute copies of an excerpt from the letter when class resumes on Wednesday, January 21, and we will examine it before you begin revising your literacy narratives in class.

Coming Soon

Next Wednesday will be devoted primarily to revision work. After your Scrabble debriefing and our examination of an excerpt from “Letter from Birmingham Jail” and another short excerpt, I will return the drafts of your literacy narratives. You will then have the remainder of the class period to begin revising on your laptops. You will have an additional week to continue revising before posting to Blackboard and WordPress. The due date for your literacy narrative is Wednesday, January 28, before class; the hard deadline is Friday, January 30, before class.

Posted in English 1103, Teaching, Writing

ENG 1103: Matters of Style

Posted on by janemlucas
https://style.mla.org/

MLA (Modern Language Association) style, the standard format used for writing and documentation in the humanities, is the style that you will use for paper assignments in English 1103.

Formatting a paper in MLA style requires changing the font because Times New Roman, used in MLA papers, is not the default font in Microsoft Word. You will also need to create a running header that includes both your last name and the page number. If you do not know how to change a font or create a running header, this YouTube video on MLA page set-up will show you how.

For additional models of MLA style, see the sample essays posted on Blackboard and the MLA Style center’s sample essays, including this one by Holly Nelson, an undergraduate at Johns Hopkins University.

Bonus Assignment

As practice in both revision and MLA formatting, complete the assignment below. Students who do so will earn a bonus assignment credit in the short assignments and participation category.

Directions

  1. Revise the introductory reflective writing that you began in class on January 5. If you were absent on the fifth or had not yet added the class, follow the assignment directions in the January 6 class notes. If your literacy narrative focuses on one of the classes that you wrote about in your reflection, do not include that class; the content of your bonus assignment should be markedly different from the content of your literacy narrative. You do not need to begin with a paragraph of summary followed by a paragraph of commentary. Those specifics were included in your reflective assignment so I could assess your understanding of the differences between the two and your ability to follow directions.
  2. Compose a revision of at least two-hundred and fifty words, and type it into a Microsoft Word document that you have formatted to comply with MLA style. If you are unsure of how to change the formatting in a file, revisit the second paragraph of this blog post.
  3. Print a copy of your file, and submit your paper copy at the beginning of class on Friday, January 23. You will not submit a copy online. Posting to Blackbaord and WordPress is a requirement for your three major writing assignments only. However, if you want to publish your bonus assignment on your blog as practice in using WordPress, you are welcome to do so.

Next Up

For Monday, in honor of Martin Luther King, Jr., you will read his ”Letter from Birmingham Jail.” You do not need to print a copy; I will distribute copies of an excerpt from the letter when class resumes on Wednesday, January 21, and we will examine it before you begin revising your literacy narratives in class.

Posted in English 1103, Reading, Teaching, Writing

ENG 1103: A First Glimpse of Keller, Beginning Your Literacy Narrative . . .

Posted on by janemlucas

This morning at the beginning of class, we will examine the literacy narrative that you read for today, “The Day Language Came into My Life,” which is the fourth chapter of Helen Keller’s autobiography, The Story of My Life.

Together, Sedaris‘s essay and Keller’s chapter demonstrate two vastly different ways to present a literacy narrative. “Me Talk Pretty One Day” offers a quirky look at the challenges of learning French from a sarcastic, soul-crushing instructor. Keller’s story poignantly recounts learning to make meaning of the world through sign language.

After we discuss Keller’s chapter, you will begin planning and drafting your first essay assignment, a literacy narrative: an account of a learning experience involving reading, writing, or learning to speak a language.

Directions

Begin by asking yourself this question: What were some of my most formative experiences as a reader, a writer, or a language learner? Freewrite on those, then choose one to bring to life. Your aim is to recreate your experience on the page and reflect on its significance. Your focus may be any one of the following:

  • A memory of a reading or writing assignment that you recall vividly  
  • Someone who helped you learn to read or write
  • A writing-related school event that you found humorous or embarrassing
  • A particular type of writing that you found (or still find) challenging
  • A memento that represents an important moment in your development as a reader or writer
  • Learning a second language

Your literacy narrative should be a well-told story that includes these elements:

  • Vivid detail
  • Some indication of the narrative’s significance
  • A minimum of 600 words
  • A title that offers a window into your essay (It should not be titled “Literacy Narrative.”)

Detailed instructions are included in the assignment handout that you will receive in class today. An additional copy is posted on Blackboard in the Major Paper Assignments folder.

Next Up

Wordplay Day! To prepare for class, review the Dictionary and World Builder pages on the Scrabble website or Merriam-Webster’s Scrabble Word Finder page. Also, review your journal notes on the game and the blog posts devoted to Scrabble.

Posted in English 1103, Reading, Teaching, Writing

ENG 1103: A Second Look at Sedaris, “What’s in a Name” Follow-Up . . .

Posted on by janemlucas
Author David Sedaris in New York on August 3, 2018 / Robert Deutsch USA Today, https://www.usatoday.com/story/life/books/2018/08/03/david-sedaris-hates-word-awesome-but-loves-sequined-culottes-calypso-bookmark/900667002/

Yesterday in class, you wrote about David Sedaris‘s use of similes, metaphors, and hyperboles. The list that follows illustrates the wide variety of figurative language that you identified in “Me Talk Pretty One Day.”

  • David Sedaris employs a simile when he describes himself as “not unlike Pa Kettle trapped backstage at a fashion show” (167).
  • Sedaris fashions a metaphor with the words “everybody into the language pool, sink or swim” (167).
  • The essay “Me Talk Pretty One Day” features the metaphorical hyperbole “front teeth the size of tombstones” (Sedaris 168).
  • David Sedaris uses a simile when he writes that one classmate’s introduction sounds “like a translation of one of those Playmate of the Month data sheets” (168).
  • The author of “Me Talk Pretty One Day” turns to hyperbole when he writes, “The teacher killed some time accusing the Yugoslavian girl of masterminding a program of genocide” (Sedaris 169), and again when he notes that he and his classmates “learned to dodge chalk” (170).
  • Similarly, Sedaris uses hyperbole to emphasize his teacher’s reaction, which “led [him] to believe that these mistakes were capital crimes in the country of France” (170).
  • David Sedaris fashions a metaphor when he describes his dread, writing, “My fear and discomfort crept beyond the borders of the classroom and accompanied me out onto the wide Boulevard” (171).
  • Sedaris’ teacher insults him with a simile when she remarks, “‘Everyday spent with you is like having a cesarean section'” (172).

The bulleted sentences above follow the format that you should follow in your group exercises and other writing assignments that require quotations. These are the specific guidelines to remember:

  • The answer should be a minimum of one sentence. It need not be a long sentence, but it should include concrete detail.
  • The sentence should not begin with a quotation. Though journalists, fiction writers, and memoirists sometimes begin sentences with quotations, in academic writing, quotations are introduced with signal phrases.
  • Do not foreground the paragraph or page number in a sentence. The most important feature of the sentence is the writer’s particular use of words. The page or paragraph number follows in the parenthetical citation.

Dead Metaphors

Some of you identified “killed some time” (169) as a metaphor, but it’s actually a dead metaphor, one so familiar that it’s lost its meaning. Killing time and running for office have become synonymous with the actions they once compared. A dead metaphor is not the same as one that has become a cliché: a predictable or overly familiar expression. Avoid clichés like the plague, which I just failed to do for the sake of illustration. (Avoid . . . like the plague is textbook cliché.)

Memorable Words

One group cited the use of nonsense words, such as “meimslsxp” (167), as an effective way to convey Sedaris’s utter lack of understanding of his French teacher’s speech.

Another noted the fitting choice of “intoxicating” (173) to describe the feeling Sedaris experienced when he finally began to understand French.

Work Cited

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

“What’s in a Name” Follow-Up

Friday’s blog entry offered a bonus assignment credit to any student who posted a response identifying the classmates whose names are also common nouns, which makes them playable Scrabble words.

The playable names of your classmates appear below in bold, followed by the definitions in parentheses.

  • Nick (to make a shallow cut) Beeker
  • Aidan Berlin (a type of carriage)
  • Jermaine Cain (a tax paid in produce or livestock, also kain)
  • Zach Dick (a detective)
  • Tommy (a loaf of bread) McHugh
  • Davis Smith (a worker in metals)
  • Dylan Virga (wisps of precipitation evaporating before reaching ground)
  • Sierra (a mountain range) Welch (to fail to pay a debt, also welsh)

Kudos to Nick Beeker, Aidan Berlin, Jermain Cain, Nicole Marin, Sophia Marin, and Sierra Welch for identifying your classmates’ names that are playable words. For their efforts, they will receive a bonus assignment credit in the short assignments and participation category

I will offer additional bonus assignments, so be on the lookout for those. Reading all the notes that I post for you here, on my blog, will ensure that you don’t miss those opportunities.

Congratulations to Aidan Berlin for winning a copy of The Santaland Diaries in yesterday’s raffle.

Next Up

In class tomorrow, you will begin drafting your first major writing assignment longhand. The assignment, a literacy narrative, is an account of a learning experience involving reading, writing, or learning to speak a language. As part of your prewriting process, look back at “Me Talk Pretty One Day” and consider how you might incorporate into your own essay some of the same elements that David Sedaris includes in his. Repeat the process with Helen Keller’s “The Day Language Came into My Life.”

Posted in English 1103, Scrabble, Teaching, Writing

ENG 1103: David Sedaris’s “Me Talk Pretty One Day” . . .

Posted on by janemlucas

This morning in class, after your Scrabble debriefing, we will examine David Sedaris‘s essay “Me Talk Pretty One Day,” and you and two or three of your classmates will collaborate on an exercise that asks you to examine–and subsequently address in writing–these elements of his literacy narrative:

  • Metaphors and similes
  • Hyperbole

Your group will also identify a word or phrase that appeals to you, or that seems particularly effective—one that is not an example of a metaphor, a simile, or a hyperbolic statement—and compose a sentence that includes the word or phrase and your observations about it.

Metaphors and similes make writing more vivid and can deepen a reader’s understanding of and connection to a piece of writing. In Imaginative Writing, novelist Janet Burroway observes, “Both metaphor and simile compare things that are both alike and different, and it is the tension between this likeness and difference that their literary power lies” (25).

Hyperbolic statements, along with metaphors and similes, are common in Sedaris’s humor, which has garnered him considerable commercial and critical success. Me Talk Pretty One Day (2000) was awarded the Thurber Prize for American Humor. In 2019, he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and in 2021, the New York Public Library voted Me Talk Pretty One Day one of the 125 most important books of the last 125 years.

Sedaris rose to prominence in 1992 after National Public Radio broadcast his essay “Santaland Diaries,” which chronicles his stint as an elf at Macy’s flagship store in New York. That essay is included in his collection Holidays on Ice (1997). You will have the opportunity to win a copy of that book in today’s class raffle.

Work Cited

Burroway, Janet. Imaginative Writing: The Elements of Craft. Pearson, 2014.

Scrabble Debriefings

Starting today, at the beginning of class on Mondays, I will return your Scrabble score sheets from Friday, and you and your group members will participate in a Scrabble debriefing in which you will (1) review and discuss your game, and (2) individually compose journal entries on the game. Questions to address include, but are not limited to, the ones on the handout that I will distribute this morning in class. Those questions for consideration are also listed below.

  • Did you learn any new words from your teammate or from your opponents? If so, what were they? If you did not look up their meanings after class and record them in your journal, look them up and record their meanings now.
  • What plays involved analyzing multiple options? Did your team opt not to make the highest-scoring play possible in order to either (1) block your opponent, or (2) keep letters that might enable you to score more points later?
  • Where did creative problem-solving figure in the game? If your team had a rack of all consonants or vowels–or mostly consonants or vowels–how were you able to advance the game by playing only one or two letters?
  • What was the largest number of words formed in a single play and what were they?
  • Scrabble, like writing, is a process of composing, only the board game involves composing smaller units, words rather than sentences and paragraphs. What parallels, if any, can you draw between your Scrabble play and your writing process?

You will have the opportunity to draw on the journal entries that you write during debriefings when you compose your midterm and final reflections for the course. If you choose Scrabble as the focus of your final essay and annotated bibliography, you may incorporate portions of your Scrabble debriefings into that assignment as well.

Next Up

In class on Wednesday, you will begin drafting your first major writing assignment longhand. The assignment, a literacy narrative, is an account of a learning experience involving reading, writing, or learning to speak a language. As part of your prewriting process, look back at “Me Talk Pretty One Day” and consider how you might incorporate into your own essay some of the same elements that David Sedaris includes in his. Repeat the process with Helen Keller’s “The Day Language Came into My Life.”