This morning, after I collect your fourth Check, Please! assignment, you will begin your analysis of one of the texts we have studied in class, which include these:
The first paragraphs of “Back Story” by Michael Lewis
“The Day Language Came into My Life” by Helen Keller
The first paragraphs of “The Falling Man” by Tom Junod
“Me Talk Pretty One Day” by David Sedaris
On Monday we will read a short story, “The School” by Donald Barthelme, which will serve as an additional option for your analysis. If you begin an analysis of one of the texts listed above and decide you would rather write about “The School,” you are welcome to change your focus.
As a starting point for your analysis planning, this morning you will read the pages in Writing Analytically devoted to analysis. Among the key points to keep in mind as you write are these:
“One common denominator in all effective analytical writing is that it pays close attention to detail” (5).
“In order to understand a subject, we need to discover what it is ‘made of,’ the particulars that contribute most strongly to the character of the whole” (5).
“[A]sk not just ‘What is it made of?’ but also ‘How do these parts help me to understand the meaning of the subject as a whole?”’ (5).
“Analytical writing is more concerned with arriving at an understanding of a subject than it is with either self-expression or changing readers’ views” (5).
Next Wednesday, September 27, I will return your handwritten drafts with notes, and you will have the class period to begin revising on your laptops and tablets. You will have an additional week to continue to revise. Your revisions are due on Blackboard and on your blogs on Wednesday, October 4. The hard deadline is Friday, October 6.
Next Up
Wordplay Day! To prepare for class, revisit the Dictionary and World Builder pages on the Scrabble website, and review the posts on my blog devoted to Scrabble tips.
Today’s class will be devoted primarily to reading and responding to the blog post of one of your classmates’ literacy narratives. Elements to consider in your response include these:
the title
vivid details
dialogue, the use of scene and/or summary
After you complete that assignment, you will begin reading 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 sentence. 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. Lewis develops the 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. Study how Lewis dramatizes 3.5 seconds–yes, only 3.5 seconds–with 224 words.
Next Up
In class on Wednesday you will begin planning and drafting your analysis, which will focus on one of the texts that we have studied in class, including David Sedaris‘s “Me Talk Pretty One,” Helen Keller‘s “The Day Language Came into My Life,” Tom Junod‘s “The Falling Man,” and Michael Lewis‘s “Back Story.” If you have misplaced your copy of any of those or were absent the day that I distributed copies, you can download a copy from Blackboard and print it. Next Monday we will examine an additional text that may serve as the subject of your analysis. If it appeals to your more than the text you write about on Wednesday, you are welcome to change your subject to that latest addition to the readings.
Yesterday in class, in addition to studying my sample literacy narrative “A Bridge to Words,” we examined the opening paragraphs of Tom Junod‘s essay “The Falling Man, published in Esquire magazine two years after 9-11. When you wrote in your journal about the first two paragraphs of Junod’s essay, I asked you to consider these questions:
The long first paragraph of Junod’s essay could be two or more paragraphs. If you were Junod, where might you have divided the paragraph? Why do think he chose not to divide it?
Where does Junod employ similes?
Though “The Falling Man” is not a literacy narrative, it is an excellent example of creative nonfiction. As you continue to revise your literacy narrative, what in Junod’s essay might prove useful to you as a model?
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, longer than some of your literacy narratives will be. I advise you to avoid writing paragraphs of that length. 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.
Junod’s use of figurative include these lines:
“he departs from this earth like an arrow”
“the towers . . .loom like colosssi”
“they look confused, as though trying to swim down the side of a mountain”
“as though he were a missile, a spear”
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:
Under the heading “Search HPU Libraries . . . ,” click on the “Articles” tab.
Under the “Articles” tab, type Tom Junod “Falling Man” Esquire in the search box and click “search.”
On the next screen, you will see a brief summary of the article. Click “Access Online” to view the full article.
Next Up
Wednesday in class you will compose a short essay that reflects on the process of planning, drafting, and revising your literacy narrative. In addition to revisiting your own final narrative and the writing that led up to it, you will address one or more of the essays that you examined as models.
Hilaire Belloc’s “Rebecca,” illustrated by Alice and Martin Provensen
As you continue to revise your literacy narrative, look to the one that follows as another model. This narrative, “A Bridge to Words,” is one that I wrote as a sample for my students in 2021.
A Bridge to Words
To a small child, the pages of a newspaper are enormous. Looking far back through the years, I see myself, not yet school age, trying to hold up those long, thin sheets of newsprint, only to find myself draped in them, as if covered by a shroud. But of course, back then, my inability to hold a newspaper properly was of little consequence. Even if I could have turned the pages as gracefully as my parents did, I couldn’t decipher the black marks on the page; thus, my family’s ritual reading of the newspaper separated them from me. As the youngest and the only one who couldn’t read, I was left alone on the perimeter to observe. My family’s world of written words was impenetrable; I could only look over their shoulders and try to imagine the places where all those black marks on the page had carried them—these people, my kin, who had clearly forgotten that I was in the room.
My sister, who was three years older, had her very own news source: The Mini Page, a four-page miniature paper that arrived at our house as an insert in the Sunday edition. While our parents sat in their easy chairs poring over the state and local news, my sister, Jo, perched at the drop-front desk and occupied herself with articles, puzzles, and connect-the-dots.
Finally, one Sunday, someone noticed me on the margin and led me into our family’s reading circle. Whether it was one of my parents or my sister, I don’t know. I remember only the gesture and the words: someone handing me the Sunday comics and saying, “You can read part of the funny pages, too. You can read Henry.”
I took the giant page and laid it flat in the middle of the oval, braided rug on the floor of the den. Once I situated the page, I lay on top of it with my eyes just inches above the panels of the comic strip. To my parents, my prone position was a source of amusement, but for me it was simply a practical solution. How else was someone so small supposed to manage such a large piece of paper?
As I lay on the floor and looked at the comic strip’s panels, I realized what the voice had meant. I could “read” Henry, the comic with the bald boy in a red shirt, because it consisted entirely of pictures. In between panels of Henry walking, there were panels of him standing still, scratching his hairless head. I didn’t find Henry funny at all. I wondered how that pale forerunner of Charlie Brown had earned a prime spot in the funnies. Still, I was glad he was there. He was the bridge that led me to the written word.
Reading the wordless comic strip Henry for the first time was the beginning of a years-long habit of stretching out on the floor with newspapers and large books—not thick ones but ones that were tall and wide, among them one of my childhood favorites: The Golden Book of Fun and Nonsense. My sister and I spent hours lying on our bedroom floor, the pink shag carpet tickling our legs as we delighted in the antics of Rebecca, the mischievous title character of one of the poems.
Carl Thomas Anderson’s comic strip character Henry
“Rebecca”—which my sister read to me before I could read it myself—introduced me to the word “abhors,” the very sound of which appealed to me. Sometimes before Jo had finished reading the opening lines, my uncontrollable giggles collided with her perfect mock-serious delivery. As the last word in the first line, “abhors” serves as a lead-in to an enjambment: the continuation of a sentence or clause in a line break. It would be years before I learned the term “enjambment,” but I was immediately swept away by its effect in the opening lines: “A trick that everyone abhors/ In Little Girls is Slamming Doors” (Belloc 61). The first line lured me into the second one, and so on and so on. I was drawn both to the individual word “abhors”—with its side-by-side “b” and “h,” rare in English—and the way the words joined, like links in a chain, to yank me giggling through Rebecca’s cautionary tale:
It happened that a marble bust Of Abraham was standing just Above the door this little lamb Had carefully prepared to slam, And down it came! It knocked her flat! It laid her out! She looked like that.
Her funeral sermon (which was long And followed by a sacred song) Mentioned her virtues, it is true, But dwelt upon her vices too, And showed the dreadful end of one Who goes and slams the door for fun. (61)
Why these particular early memories visit me now, I don’t know. Perhaps rereading Art Spiegelman’s graphic memoir Maus with my students has roused the wordless Henry and the word-filled Golden Book of Fun and Nonsense from the corner of my brain where they’ve slumbered. The former wakes and stretches out in my mind as a bridge to the latter: a spot in the world of words I’ve inhabited ever since.
Today in class we will return to David Sedaris‘s essay “Me Talk Pretty One,” and you and 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:
scene and summary–you will examine how and where Sedaris shifts from one to the other
metaphors and similes
hyperbole
conclusion–specifically how the conclusion conveys the story’s significance without stating explicitly, this experience was significant because. . . .
Each of these elements plays an important role in narrative, none more so than scene, which is vital to a story’s life. Without it, a narrative falls flat. With summary, a writer compresses time to offer an overview of events. Through scene, a writer lets time unfold in front of the readers’ eyes, which is what readers prefer. They are drawn into a narrative when they can see for themselves what is happening.
Along with continuing our study of Sedaris’s “Me Talk Pretty One Day,” we will begin to examine “The Day Language Came into My Life,” the first pages of Chapter Four of Helen Keller’s autobiography, The Story of My Life.
Together, these two essays by David Sedaris and Hellen Keller 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 through the sign language of her teacher, Annie Sullivan, learning that certain finger positions mean “water” for those who cannot hear it, and for others, like her, who can neither see nor hear it.
And by the Way
Last week in class, I mentioned that David Sedaris’s sister Amy is an actress who is perhaps best known for her role as Deb in the movie Elf (2003). Here is a picture of her and her brother:
On Wednesday you will continue to work on your own literacy narratives. At the beginning of class, after I collect your second Check, Please! worksheets, I will return your handwritten drafts. You will have the class period to revise on your laptops and an additional week to continue revising before you post your revision to Blackboard and to your WordPress blog. The due date is Wednesday, September 13; the hard deadline is the morning of Friday, September 15.
Mike Caulfield, author of Check, Please! and Director of Blended and Networked Learning at Washington State University. https://webliteracy.pressbooks.com/ front-matter/updated-resources-for-2021/.
At the beginning of class on Wednesday, August 30, I will collect your worksheets for Lesson One of the Check, Please! starter course. My sample version of the assignment appears below, as well as on your worksheet and on Blackboard.
Sample Check, Please! Assignment
Check, Please! Lesson One Assignment
In the first lesson of the Check, Please! Starter Course, Mike Caulfield, author of the course and Director of Blended and Networked Learning at Washington State University, introduces the four-step SIFT approach to determining the reliability of a source: (1) “Stop,” (2) “Investigate,” (3) “Find better coverage,” and (4) “Trace claims, quotes, and media to the original context.”
One of the most useful practices presented in lesson one is what the author terms the “Wikipedia Trick.” Deleting everything that follows a website’s URL (including the slash), adding a space, typing “Wikipedia,” and hitting “enter” will yield the site’s Wikipedia page. The Wikipedia entry that appears at the top of the screen may indicate the source’s reliability or lack thereof.
The most memorable segment of lesson one is the short, riveting video “The Miseducation of Dylann Roof,” which begins with the narrator asking the question, “How does a child become a killer?” Produced by the Southern Poverty Law Center, it documents how algorithms can lead unskilled web searchers down paths of disinformation. In the worst cases, such as Roof’s, algorithms can lead searchers to the extremist propaganda of radical conspiracy theorists.
As a model for your own literacy narrative, today in class will examine “Me Talk Pretty One Day,” originally published in Esquire magazine and later as the title essay in David Sedaris’s 2000 essay collection.
To read more of Sedaris’s essays, see the list of links under the heading Writing and Radio on his website.
Next Up
As you begin work on your own literacy narrative on Wednesday, study Sedaris’s essay as a model, and consider how he uses the following:
Shifts from summary to scene and vice versa
Figurative language
Hyperbole
Vivid detail
Look for opportunities to use those elements in your own essay.
Am I the person who will teach your English 1103 class? I posed that question this morning at the beginning of class as a starting point for analysis, one of the key features of the course.
To begin the collaboration and inquiry that will figure prominently this semester—along with analysis—you will work together in groups today to find the answers to some of the most frequently asked questions about the course. After class, continue to review the syllabus, which is posted in Blackboard. If you have any questions about the assignments, the course policies, or the calendar, please let me know.
Textbook
All of you in sections 19 and 20 of English 1103 are required to have the paperback edition of the textbook, Writing Analytically, 8th edition, by David Rosenwasser and Jill Stephen. Bring your copy to class on the days when the title, Writing Analytically, appears in bold on the course calendar. On those days, we will examine portions of the chapters in class and complete some of the exercises related to the reading.
Your first reading assignment in the textbook will be scheduled for mid-September, which will give you ample time to order and receive your copy before you are required to have it in class. (Unlike my copy, pictured at the top of this blog entry, your textbook will not be in a binder.) Your textbook’s cover looks like this:
Other Required Materials
Writer’s notebook/journal, bring to every class.
Loose leaf paper (for drafts and short in-class assignments), bring to every Monday and Wednesday class
Pen with dark ink, bring to every class
Pocket portfolio (for class handouts), bring to every class
WordPress Blog
As practice in developing your web literacy and writing for a broader online audience, you will maintain a free WordPress blog for the class. As soon as possible, create a free blog at wordpress.com. After you create your blog, email the address, or URL, to me, and I will link your blog to our class page, English at High Point. If you encounter technical difficulties creating your blog or publishing a post, email help@wordpress.com or contact the HPU Help Desk: helpdesk@highpoint.edu, 336-841-HELP (3457).
You will post the revisions of all of your major writing assignments both to your blog and to Blackboard. The posts that you publish for class will be public. You are welcome to create additional posts on your own. If you prefer for some of those posts to be private, keep them in draft form or choose the private visibility option.
You may also be asked to post comments to your classmates’ blogs and to mine.
Falconer, Ian. The Competition. 2000. The New Yorker, 9 Oct. 2000. Copyright 2000 Condé Nast Publications, Inc.
Yesterday in class, we examined Ian Falconer’s The Competition, and as a collaborative exercise, you and two or three of your classmates composed a one-paragraph summary of the magazine cover, followed by a second paragraph that presented your close reading or analysis of The Competition.
Below are three sample paragraphs that I wrote as models for you. The first is a summary of Falconer’s cover. The second and third offer close readings of the magazine cover. Each integrates one of the two possible interpretations that the authors of Writing Analytically offer on page 89.
Summary
Ian Falconer’s mostly black-and-white New Yorker cover The Competition depicts four beauty pageant contestants, three of whom stand in stark contrast to Miss New York. Her dark hair, angular body, narrowed eyes, tightly pursed lips, and two-piece bathing suit set her apart from the nearly-identical blondes–Miss Georgia, Miss California, and Miss Florida–whose wide-open eyes and mouths and one-piece bathing suits are typical of pageant contestants.
Analyses
The contrast between the raven hair and eyes of Miss New York and the platinum-blonde and pale-eyed contestants from Georgia, California, and Florida in The New Yorker cover The Competition by Ian Falconer suggests what the authors of Writing Analytically present as the first of two possible interpretations: The cover “speak[s] to American history, in which New York has been the point of entry for generations of immigrants, the ‘dark’ (literally and figuratively) in the face of America’s blonde European legacy” (Rosenwasser and Stephen 89).
The self-satisfied expression of Miss New York in The New Yorker cover The Competition by Ian Falconer suggests what the authors of Writing Analytically present as the second of two possible interpretations: “[T]he magazine is . . . admitting , yes America, we do think that we’re cooloer and more individual and less plastic than the rest of you, but we also know that we shouldn’t be so smug about it” (Rosenwasser and Stephen 89).
Work Cited
Rosenwasser, David and Jill Stephen. Chapter 3: “Interpretation: Moving from Observation to Implication.” Writing Analytically, 8th edition. Wadsworth/Cengage, 2019. pp. 70-97.
As you continue to work on your final essay and annotated bibliography, review these samples as models for your own summaries and close readings of your sources.
This morning in class, as part of your blog response assignment, you will look for instances of the nine basic writing errors as you read your classmate’s literacy narrative.
The authors of your textbook, Writing Analytically, identify these as the nine basic writing errors:
Sentence Fragments
Comma splices and fused (run-on) sentences
Errors in subject-verb agreement
Shifts in sentence structure (faulty predication)
Errors in pronoun reference
Misplaced modifiers and dangling participles
Errors in using possessive apostrophes
Comma errors
Spelling/diction errors that interfere with meaning (341-59).
Next Up
You will turn to Writing Analytically again in class on Wednesday when you compose a reflection on your analysis. In your refelection, you will quote one relevant passage from the textbook, which may be a passage devoted to analysis (4-7), one devoted to writing longhand versus writing on a computer (124-25), or it may focus on one of the nine basic writing errors (341-59).
Work Cited
Rosenwasser, David and Jill Stephen. Writing Analytically, 8th edition. Wadsworth/Cengage, 2019.
This morning you will begin your analysis of one of the texts we have studied in class, which include these:
The first paragraphs of “Back Story” by Michael Lewis
“The Day Language Came into My Life” by Helen Keller
The first paragraphs of “The Falling Man” by Tom Junod
“Letter from Birmingham Jail” by Martin Luther King, Jr.
“Me Talk Pretty One Day” by David Sedaris
On Monday we will read a short story, “The School” by Donald Barthelme, which will serve as an additional option for your analysis. If you begin an analysis of one of the texts listed above and decide you would rather write about “The School,” you are welcome to change your focus.
As a starting point for your analysis planning, this morning you will read the pages in Writing Analytically devoted to analysis. Among the key points to keep in mind as you write are these:
“One common denominator in all effective analytical writing is that it pays close attention to detail” (5).
“In order to understand a subject, we need to discover what it is ‘made of,’ the particulars that contribute most strongly to the character of the whole” (5).
“[A]sk not just ‘What is it made of?’ but also ‘How do these parts help me to understand the meaning of the subject as a whole?” (5).
“Analytical writing is more concerned with arriving at an understanding of a subject than it is with either self-expression or changing readers’ views” (5).
Next Wednesday, February 15, I will return your handwritten drafts with notes, and you will have the class period to begin revising on your laptops and tablets. You will have an additional week to continue to revise. Your revisions are due on Blackboard and on your blogs on Wednesday, Febraury 22. The hard deadline is Friday, February 24
Next Up
Friday marks your fifth Wordplay Day of the semester. To up your game and increase your word power, review the tips and tools on the Scrabble website as well as my blog posts devoted to the game.
