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 our critical thinking, one of the key features of the class and of your other college courses.
To begin the collaboration and inquiry that will figure prominently this semester, you worked 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. (An additional copy 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 section 8 of English 1103 are required to purchase or rent the paperback edition of the textbook, Writing Analytically, 9th 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 you will address passages in the textbook in your own writing.
Your first reading assignment in the textbook–one you will complete in class–is scheduled for January 28, which will give you ample time to order and receive your copy before you are required to have it in class.
Other Required Materials
Writer’s notebook/journal, bring to every Monday and Wednesday 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 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.
Next Up
On Wednesday, you will continue to compose the introductory reflective essay that you began in class today.
(L-R) Madison Kline, ENG 1103.19 Fall 2024, Kaitlyn Ngo, and Olivia Quinones with their poster display for their research project “Environmental Effects on Wing Shape in the Painted Lady Butterfly, Vanessa Cardui.”
As you leave our English 1103 class for the last time, aim to continue the practices you have cultivated this semester, including blogging. Although you may prefer to delete your major writing assignments from your blog, I encourage you to maintain your WordPress site. Tailoring it to showcase your writing and other projects in your major—and posting your resume on it too—will serve you well when you apply for internships and jobs. In your application cover letters, you can direct employers to your blog by writing, To learn more about my work, please visit my website: [yourblogname.wordpress.com].
Molly McCarver, ENG 1103.19 Fall 2023, with her poster display for her research project “The Prevalence of Physical Problems and Overuse Injury Symptoms in Adolescent Athletes.”
For many of you, composing longhand isn’t preferable to typing—and often it isn’t for me either—but I recommend putting pen to paper at least occasionally, especially when you find yourself struggling to move forward with a piece of writing. The words you are now reading—and those in the other posts I composed this semester—all began as scribbles on paper. Also, remember that putting pen to paper offers us an opportunity to turn away from our screens, a practice that not only benefits our writing but also our overall well-being.
Madison Kline, ENG 1103.19 Fall 2024, (center) and her collaborators (right) discuss their project with a poster session attendee (left).
Envision how the papers you wrote for English 1103 and your other classes may evolve into larger projects for upper-level courses or conference presentations. Look back at those assignments and ask yourself the same questions that you addressed in your final essay for English 1103: What larger project might develop from it? What would serve as its theoretical framework?
Molly McCarver, ENG 1103.19 Fall 2023, discusses her project with a poster session attendee (left).
The photographs included in this post feature former students of mine who produced projects chosen for High-PURCS (High Point University Research and Creativity Symposium) 2025. Please attend the 2026 conference in April at the Qubein Center. Attending will show your support for your fellow students’ hard work—and it may also inspire ideas for projects of your own.
Superlatives
Congratulations to the students who have earned the highest preliminary averages and to those who achieved perfect attendance.
Section 8: Chloe Freeman, Raven Houston, Ethan Howard
Section 18: Jorja Mangeot
Parting Thoughts
The essayist Susan Sontag advised writers to “[l]ove words, agonize over sentences. And pay attention to the world.” As you commence life after English 1103, keep those words in mind.
Section 8 (10:40): Remember that your exam period begins at 8 a.m. on Saturday, December 6.
Section 18 (9:15): Remember that your exam period begins at 8 a.m. on Wednesday, December 10.
Keep all of your required blog posts for the semester (your final essay and annotated bibliography, analysis, and literacy narrative) published (visible on your blog) until final grades have been posted. Also, make sure that you have line-edited them and deleted any placeholder posts. Since blog activity is a component of your coursework, I will review your blogs before I finalize your course assignment grades.
If you haven’t done so already, submit course evaluations for ENG 1103 and your other classes.
Tomorrow morning, your course assignments grade will be updated to its preliminary final average. Blog activity may raise or lower it. If you wish to check your preliminary grade, please do so before 5 p.m. tomorrow, Thursday, December 4. After that, the Blackboard course site for English 1103, sections eight and eighteen, will no longer be available to students. Final grades for the course will be posted in eServices by 5 p.m. on Wednesday, December 10.
Next Up
During the exam period, you will deliver your individual presentations and serve as the audience/intern selection committee for your classmates. See your assignment handout and the December 1 blog post for details.
This final Scrabble post of the semester features the names of authors and characters that are playable words. Learning these will not only increase your word power and up your game, it will also broaden your knowledge of literature. If you haven’t read some of classics listed here, I encourage you to check them out.
eyre: a long journey (the last name of of the title character in Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre, 1847)
dickens: a devil (Charles Dickens, 1812-1870)
fagin: a person, usually an adult, who instructs others, usually children, in crime (from a character of that type in Dickens’ Oliver Twist, 1838)
holden: the past participle of hold (Holden Caulfield, the protagonist in J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye, 1951)
huckleberry: a berry like a blueberry (the first name of the title character in Mark Twain’s Adventures of Hucklebery Finn, 1884)
oedipal: describing libidinal feelings of a child toward the parent of the opposite sex (from the title character in Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex, c. 429 B.C.)
quixote: a quixotic, or extremely idealistic person; also quixotry, a quixotic action or thought (the title character in Michael de Cervantes’ Don Quixote, Part I: 1605, Part II: 1615)
Note that “huckleberry” and “quixote” could not be the first two words played in a Scrabble game because “huckleberry” is more than seven letters long. However, “huckleberry” and “quixote” could constitute the first three plays. The first two plays could be “berry” and “quixote,” and the third play could add “huckle” to “berry.”
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, including this one.
This morning in class, you will receive the assignment for the individual presentation that you will deliver during the exam period. An additional copy is posted on Blackboard, and the directions are also included below.
Overview
As a finalist for a much-sought-after internship in your field, you are required to deliver a concise and engaging presentation that highlights your achievements in English 1103 and demonstrates your ability to effectively assume the responsibilities that the internship requires of you. Among the aspects of the course that you should address are one or more of your major writing assignments and the development of your critical thinking and collaboration skills. You are encouraged but not required to address additional aspects of the course.
Directions for Planning
Plan a brief presentation of approximately three minutes that highlights your achievements in English 1103 and demonstrates your ability to effectively assume the responsibilities that the internship in your field requires of you.
Address one or more of your major writing assignments and the development of your critical thinking and collaboration skills. You are encouraged but not required to address additional aspects of the course.
Include the following in your presentation:
An opening in which you state your first and last names and your major,
Details from your experiences in the course that illustrate the development of your writing, your critical thinking, and your collaboration skills
A close examination of one pertinent passage in your blog, and
A conclusion that provides closure and invites questions from the interview committee.
Directions for Rehearsing
In preparation for rehearsing, write your notes on index cards. If your notes are in complete sentences, rewrite them to include only words and short phrases for your key points. If your notes are too detailed, you will risk relying heavily on them and making minimal eye contact with the interview committee. Make as much eye contact as possible and be sure to make eye contact with committee members throughout the room rather than fixing your eyes on one or two people.
Because you are required to project your blog on the classroom screen, you should familiarize yourself with the presentation station. Demonstrating that you are not adept at using the technology required for your presentation may jeopardize your chances for obtaining the internship. If you have not used the presentation station, I encourage you to devote part of today’s class period to familiarizing yourself with its setup.
Practice good posture. As you deliver your presentation, your ears should be directly above your shoulders. If you tend to shift your weight from one foot to the other—a distracting habit that’s sometimes called rocking the boat—stand with your feet perpendicular to each other. If you do, you will not be able to shift your weight from one foot to the other.
Avoid filler words, such as um, like, and you know. If you tend to use filler words, practice pausing at the points where you are likely to use fillers.
Optional: Rehearse with a classmate. Take turns delivering your presentations and offering feedback. Offer both suggestions for improvement and words of encouragement.
Peer Responses
After we discuss your presentation assignment, you will read a final essay and annotated bibliography written by one of your classmates and compose a response to it.
Directions
Go to the class blog page, and choose one student’s essay and bibliography for your response. You are welcome to respond to any student in section eight or eighteen whose subject for the project is different from your own.
Read the student’s essay and bibliography and compose a response (75 words, minimum) that addresses two or more of these elements: the title, the introductory paragraph, the mention of a larger project that could develop from the research and the theoretical framework that would guide it, the bibliography’s commentaries.
Does the blog post include an image that documents part of the blogger’s writing process away from the screen? (yes or no)
Does the post include a relevant embedded link? (yes or no)
Compose your response on the lines below and on the ones on the back of this sheet. Use additional paper if you need more space.
Blog Checklist
If you complete your peer response before the end of the period, use your remaining time to consult the checklist and make any necessary changes. An additional copy of the list, which you will receive in class today, appears below.
Content
All three major writing assignments—the literacy narrative, the analysis, and the final essay and annotated bibliography—remain published on the blog as three separate blog posts and are accessible to site visitors.
The posts’ titles are the ones you created for the assignments, not the assignment labels.
All three posts include an image that documents part of your writing process away from the screen.
All three posts include an embedded link to a relevant website (a site related to the subject of the assignment).
The embedded links are not tertiary (background) sources.
Form
“Hello World” and any other placeholder posts have been deleted.
The posts’ titles are not enclosed in quotation marks.
If a title asks a question, it includes a question mark.
No single line or paragraph has an accidental division, and no other irregular spacing appears in the text.
Recommended, not required: Headings, including Work Cited, Works Cited, and Annotated Bibliography, are presented as headings (H1 or H2 in the editor), not as paragraphs.
Recommended, not required: Because of inconsistencies with indentations in the blogging platform, paragraphs are presented in block style
If you encounter any technical difficulties, email help@wordpress.com and explain the issue. A technician will contact you within twenty-four hours and help you resolve it.
This morning in class, you will compose a final reflective essay that documents your work in the second half of the semester, focusing on what you consider some of your most significant work and the feature or features of the course that have benefited your development as a writer and a student. Since you have already written a reflective essay on your final essay and annotated bibliography, your final reflection should focus on other assignments and features, including one, two, or three of the following:
Studying one of the texts we have examined in the second half of the semester, including “Blogs vs. Term Papers,” “A Break from Your Smartphone can Boost Your Mood . . . ,” The Competition, “How a Small North Carolina College . . . ,” “Scrabble is a Lousy Game,” Seedlings, “Speed Reading is the New Normal,” “Strawberry Spring,” “To Remember a Lecture Better, Take Notes by Hand,” or one of the sample final essays and annotated bibliographies (“The King of Storytelling,” “Scrabble as a Game Changer in the College Classroom”)
Writing for an online audience beyond the classroom/creating and maintaining a WordPress blog
Delivering your group presentation.
Collaborating with your classmates on in-class writing assignments
Playing Scrabble/collaborating with your teammates on Wordplay Day
Writing longhand
Limiting screen time
Keeping a journal
Focus on one, two, or three assignments or features of the course, and include in your reflective essay the following elements:
A title that offers a window into your reflection
An opening paragraph that introduces your focus and presents your thesis
Body paragraphs that offer concrete details from your work to support your thesis.
A relevant quotation from Writing Analytically or a relevant quotation from one of the texts that we have studied in the second half of the semester. Introduce your quotation with a signal phrase and follow it with a parenthetical citation.
A conclusion that revisits the thesis without restating it verbatim
An MLA-style works cited entry for your source
Coming Soon
In class next Monday, December 1, you will compose a peer blog response to a classmate’s final essay and annotated bibliography. You are welcome to choose any classmate whose subject is different from your own. To ensure that you have sufficient time both to compose your response longhand and type it, choose a classmate and begin reading his or her blog post before next Monday’s class.
Monday in class, you will compose a final reflective essay that documents your work in the second half of the semester, focusing on what you consider some of your most significant work and the feature or features of the course that have benefited your development as a writer and a student. Since you have already written a reflective essay on your final essay and annotated bibliography, your final reflection should focus on other assignments and features. The texts you have read in the second half of he semester include these:
“Blogs vs. Term Papers”
“A Break from Your Smartphone can Boost Your Mood . . . ”
The Competition
“How a Small North Carolina College . . . ”
“Scrabble is a Lousy Game”
Seedlings
“Speed Reading is the New Normal”
“Strawberry Spring”
“To Remember a Lecture Better, Take Notes by Hand”
Sample final essays and annotated bibliographies (“The King of Storytelling,” “Scrabble as a Game Changer in the College Classroom”)
In your reflection, you will include a minimum of one relevant quotation from Writing Analytically or from one of the texts we studied in the second half of the semester. Before class, identify the passage you plan to quote, and draft a sentence with it in your journal. Also, be sure to write in your journal a complete MLA-style work cited entry for the source you plan to quote. That preparation will ensure that you have ample time to integrate the quotation into your reflection and compose your work cited entry before the end of the class period. You will not have the option to consult texts online, so a handwritten version of the information you need is essential.
Monday in class, after you examined Ian Falconer’s New Yorker cover The Competition, you studied Tetsuya Ishida’s painting Seedlings (1998) and chose one of those two visual texts as the subject of a writing exercise: a paragraph of summary followed by a paragraph of analysis. That exercise served both as a departure from your study of written texts and as additional writing practice. The summary and analysis of Seedlings that I wrote as samples for you appear below.
Summary
Tetsuya Ishida’s painting Seedlings depicts a classroom of uniformed teenagers, all males, whose teacher, seen only from the shoulders down, holds a textbook in one hand. The teacher drapes his other hand on the head of one of the pupils, one of two students presented as microscopes with human faces.
Analysis
Although the subject at hand is biology, the study of living organisms, the student seedlings barely seem alive themselves as they stare blankly into the distance. The uniformity Ishida depicts, with their haircuts, crested blazers, striped neckties, and rows of desks, takes a surrealistic twist with the images of the two pupils who have transformed into microscopes. By placing the teacher’s hand on one of the students-turned-microscope, Ishida indicates that the instructor—himself objectified by the absence of his head—approves of the metamorphosis. For him, the goal of education seems to be that transformation: for the individual to be consumed by the device of study itself, to become a cold, metallic instrument.
As I noted in class yesterday, you will have the opportunity to revisit The Competition or Seedlings, or both, in the final reflection that you will compose next Monday.
This morning in class, you will plan and compose a reflective essay that documents your writing process and includes at least one relevant quotation from Writing Analytically or one of the articles included in your bibliography. You will introduce your quotation with a signal phrase and follow your essay with a works cited entry.
Questions to Consider in Your Reflection
What aspect of the writing seemed the most challenging? Locating relevant sources? Composing your annotations? Developing the final essay? Why did that aspect seem the most challenging?
Did your subject change? If so, what was your original subject, and why did you change it?
What do you consider the strongest element of your final essay and annotated bibliography?
At what point in the process did you decide on a title? Did you change the title during the writing process? If so, what was the original title?
What image that documents part of your writing process away from the screen did you include in your blog post? Why did you choose that particular image?
To which relevant website did you include an embedded link in your blog post?
Sample Quotations with Signal Phrases
The authors of Writing Analytically advise writers to “frame material with a phrase such as ‘according to Sprayberry’ or ‘as Gruen argues'” (Rosenwasser and Stephen 344).
Rosenwasser and Stephen advise writers to “frame material with a phrase such as ‘according to Sprayberry’ or ‘as Gruen argues'” (344).
The parenthetical citation in the first sample above includes the authors’ last names because they are not named in the sentence. The parethetical citation in the second sample above does not include the authors’ last names because they are named in the sentence.
Sample Works Cited Entries
Rosenwasser, David and Jill Stephen. “Integrating Quotations into Your Paper.” Writing Analytically, 9th edition. Wadsworth/Cengage, 2024. pp. 343-46.
—. “Two Methods for Conversing with Sources.” Writing Analytically, 9th edition. Wadsworth/Cengage, 2024. p. 325.
—. “Ways to use a Source as a Point of Departure.” Writing Analytically, 9th edition. Wadsworth/Cengage, 2024. p. 326.
Note that your work cited entry in your reflection–and all of the work cited entries and bibliographic entries except for the ones on your blog–should have a hanging indent.
Journal Exercise
Time permitting, you will have the opportunity to begin an exercise that you should complete in your journal no later than Monday, November 24, before class.
Falconer, Ian. “The Competition.” Writing Analytically by David Rosenwaser and Jill Stephen, 9th edition, Wadsworth/Cengage, 2024. p. 108.
Yesterday in class, you and two or three of your classmates collaboratively examined Ian Falconer’s The Competition and Kazuo Ishiguro’s Seedlings. Afterward, you chose one of the two as the subject for an individual two-paragraph exercise in composing summary and analysis.
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 interpretations that the authors of Writing Analytically offer. You were not required to address the textbook authors’ interpretations in your own analysis. I included them in the samples below because they serve as models for integrating a source’s commentary into your analysis, models you may want to follow if you choose to write about The Competition in your final reflection for the course.
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 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 a major point of entry for generations of immigrants, embracing diversity and conformity, while viewing the rest of the nation as more homogenous” (Rosenwasser and Stephen 112).
The self-satisfied expression of Miss New York suggests what the authors of Writing Analytically present as the second of two possible interpretations: “[T]he magazine is . . . admitting, yes America, we New Yorkers do think that we’re cooler 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 112).
Work Cited
Rosenwasser, David and Jill Stephen. “Making an Interpretation: The Example of a New Yorker Cover.” Writing Analytically, 9th edition. Wadsworth/Cengage, 2024. pp. 107-112.
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.
If the style of Ian Falconer’s New Yorker cover seems familiar to you, it may be because you encountered his work when you were a child. His book Olivia, published in 2000, received the 2001 Caldecott Medal, an award the Association for Library Service bestows upon the book they deem the best children’s picture book of the year. Falconer followed Olivia with several sequels, including Olivia Saves the Circus and Olivia Helps with Christmas.
Thursday’s blog post will offer a second look at the other visual text we examined yesterday: Tetsua Ishida’s painting Seedlings.
. . . Continuing Your Revisions
As you continue to revise, refer to the checklist I distributed in class, and have included below, to ensure that your essay and bibliography comply with all assignment requirements.
Final Essay
Presents the subject of the bibliography and the purpose for compiling it; in other words, what drives the research, and what question do you seek to answer?
Addresses all your sources at least briefly and quotes a minimum of two of them.
Introduces quotations with signal phrases and follows them with parenthetical citations. The only exception to the parenthetical citation rule is any quotation from the peer interview.
Concludes with a paragraph that mentions a larger project that might develop from it, in what discipline that project might be produced, and what would serve as its theoretical framework.
Annotated Bibliography
Each entry begins with a complete MLA-style bibliographic citation.
Each bibliographic citation is followed by three paragraphs: one of summary, a second of commentary, and a third that includes the author’s credentials.
The commentary paragraphs do not simply restate the information in the summaries but instead demonstrate the usefulness of the sources to researchers and make some connections among them. You are not required to mention another source in each commentary, but you should aim to do so at least once.
The sources in the bibliography are alphabetized by the authors’ last names.
MLA Style
The file’s font is twelve-point Times New Roman, including the running header.
The running header, which includes your last name and the page number, appears one-half inch from the top of the page, on the right side.
All required first-page information is included in the upper left.
The file is double-spaced, with no extra space between any sections.
All paragraphs are indented five spaces, or one-half inch.
All bibliographic citations have hanging idents; in other words, their formatting is the opposite of a conventional paragraph. (The first line is flush left, and any subsequent lines are indented.)
Next Up
Tomorrow in class, you will compose a reflective essay that focuses on the processes of planning, drafting, and revising your final essay and annotated bibliography. The due date for your revision is tomorrow, before class, but you have until the hard deadline, Friday, November 21, before class, to post your revision to Blackboard and publish it on your WordPress blog.
If you are still revising your essay and bibliography tomorrow, in your reflection, you will refer to your writing as ongoing.
In your reflection, you will include a minimum of one relevant quotation from Writing Analytically or from one of the sources included in your bibliography. Before class, identify the passage you plan to quote, and draft a sentence with it in your journal. Also, be sure to write in your journal a complete MLA-style work cited entry for the source you plan to quote. That preparation will ensure that you have ample time to integrate the quotation into your reflection and compose your work cited entry before the end of Wednesday’s class period. You will not have the option to refer to your essay online, so a handwritten version of the information you’ll need is essential.
Jane Lucas 