Category: Writing

Tomorrow in class, you will begin planning and drafting an analysis, your second major writing assignment for the course. Your subject may be any one of the following texts that we have studied.

• “Me Talk Pretty One Day” by David Sedaris
• “The Day Language Came into My Life” by Helen Keller
• “Letter from Birmingham Jail” by Martin Luther King, Jr.
• “Back Story” by Michael Lewis

As I noted in yesterday’s post, you should review your assigned readings, and determine which one appeals to you most as a subject for analysis. I asked you to consider this question: Which text are you most interested in examining in closer detail to determine what makes it an effective piece of writing? Your answer to that question is likely the best subject for you. That said, in the process of planning and drafting, your answer may change. Sometimes the writing process involves discovering that a subject you weren’t interested in–or were less interested in than others–deserves a closer look.

Rather than trying to begin the writing process with a thesis (or main claim, or controlling idea), jot down the words, phrases, and sentences from the text that have lingered in your mind the most. Ask yourself these questions:

• What do some of these words, phrases, and sentences have in common?
• How are they different?
• What patterns can you identify among them?
• After repeated readings, do any of them seem to take on additional meanings?

Answering those questions will lead you to identify patterns that will give you the framework for your analysis.

Elements to address in your analysis include these:

• Scene
• Summary
• Figurative language
• Sensory details
• Structure
• Theme

To determine one of the themes of your subject, think about the ideas that the writer conveys throughout the text. Humor in the face of adversity and antagonism (“Me Talk Pretty One Day”), language as illumination and liberation (“The Day Language Came into My Life”), social injustice and the urgency of nonviolent protest (“Letter from Birmingham Jail”), fear and the unseen (“Back Story”) are among the themes to consider.

Keep in mind that themes are abstractions that writers convey through concrete details. If you address a theme in your subject, be sure to refer to concrete details that convey that theme.

As you continue to work on your analysis, read these sections of Writing Analytically:

• “Focus on Individual Words and Sentences” (49-50)
• “Find the Analytical Potential: Locate an Area of Uncertainty” (120-21)
• “Six Rules of Thumb for Responding to Assignments more Analytically” (121-23)

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Next Up

At the beginning of class on Wednesday, you will submit your third Check, Please! worksheet, and you will have the rest of the class period to begin planning and drafting your analyses.

Yesterday before you and your group members assessed the literacy narratives that you read for class, we examined a page (pictured above) from Harper Lee’s novel To Kill a Mockingbird. That page from Chapter One serves as a useful 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 sets the scene with summary, designating the “summertime boundaries” within which the narrator, Jean Louise, “Scout,” Finch, and her older brother, Jem, may play outdoors (12). 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.

In my notes above, I have been careful to distinguish between the author, Harper Lee, and the narrator, the fictional character Scout. When you write about an autobiographical work, such as a literacy narrative, you may use the terms writer and narrator interchangeably. When you write about a work of fiction, it’s important to separate the narrative voice from the author. Reserve the term author for published writers. When you write about a piece of student writing, refer to the student as a writer, not an author.

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Sample Student Literacy Narratives

The paragraphs that follow include detailed but not comprehensive notes on the two sample narratives that you assessed in class yesterday. Look to these notes as a guide for editing your own literacy narrative.

“Creativity is Key”

• The writer changes the font of the body of the paper to Times New Roman but does not change the font of the running header, which should also be Times New Roman.
• The writer incorrectly adds an extra space between the first-page course information (in the upper left) and between the title and the first line of the essay. MLA-style manuscripts are double-spaced. Note that later, the writer also incorrectly adds space between the paragraphs.
• The title should be typed in twelve-point font, which is the font size that should be used throughout the document.
• The title should not appear in boldface.
• In MLA style, all major words in a title, including the final one, are capitalized (“key” should be “Key).
• Form, which is the focus of the previous notes, is less important than content, but easily avoidable errors of form may prevent a reader from appreciating the content of your narrative. Creating a compelling story is hard work, proofreading isn’t. If you don’t get the easy part right, readers may stop reading.
• The second “sentence” of the second paragraph is a fragment because the meaning of “one being my senior year . . .” is dependent upon the clause that ends the previous sentence. See Writing Analytically, page 426-29.
• The comma between “all” and “matter” is a comma splice. See Writing Analytically, 429.
• “[R]eal life” should be hyphenated (as real-life) when it functions as a compound modifier. Ditto for “open minded” and “four to five.”
• Errors of letter case–upper rather than lower, or vice versa–are mistakes of mechanics, which are prevalent in the second paragraph “Track, “Field,” “Defensive,” “Back,” and “Athlete” should all began with a lower-case letter.
• “[F]elt like” should be “felt as if.” In comparisons, use “like” before a noun and “as if” before a clause.
• “I’m a writer that” should be “I’m a writer who.” The correct relative pronoun for a person is “who,” not “that.”
• The essay is not a narrative. The writer mentions his experience writing a Southern gothic story, and he briefly recounts writing about his training for track and field and international football (soccer), but the writer offers very few details. Focusing on one of those experiences and recreating one or more moments from it would transform the essay into a narrative and develop it into one that meets the six hundred-word minimum requirement.

“Giving a Speech: Worst Nightmare to Best Feeling”

• In the second line of the second paragraph, “Megan” is a parenthetical element that should be set off by commas. See Writing Analytically, 441.
• The parenthetical element is the next line, “Mrs. Hron’s,” is correctly set off with commas, but the word that precedes “Mrs. Hron’s” should be possessive (“teacher’s,” not “teachers”).
• Several other minor punctuation errors occur in the essay, but overall it’s a strong literacy narrative that’s notable for its vivid scenes and the writer’s self-deprecating humor.

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Notes on Monday’s Quiz

Rather than posting the answers to the quiz, I am asking you to review the sample student literacy narratives, my annotations on your assignments, and the class notes for January 28 and February 3 and  to find the answers on your own. Doing so will enable you to retain more of the course content from the past two weeks of class.

Keep in mind that one of the reasons we write is to remember. Taking notes on all of the blog entries that I publish and on all of your other reading assignments will both engage you in learning process and enable you to demonstrate your learning in the course.

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Integrating Quotations

Writing your reflective essay on your literacy narrative tomorrow will include an exercise in integrating a quotation into your writing, a practice you will engage in more frequently as the semester progresses.

In your reflection, you are required include a minimum of one relevant quotation from the textbook, Writing Analytically, which you will introduce with a signal phrase and follow with a parenthetical citation.

Examples

The authors of Writing Analytically observe that “[o]ne goal of a writer’s notebook is to teach yourself through repeated practice that you are capable of finding things to write about” (Rosenwasser and Stephen 157).

In Writing Analytically, Rosenwasser and Stephen note, “to a significant extent, writing of all kinds tells a story—the story of how we have come to understand something” (162).

In the first example above, the authors’ last names appear in the parenthetical citation because they are not named in the signal phrase. In the second example, only the page number appears in the parenthetical citation because the authors are named in the signal phrase.

At the end of your essay, you will include a work cited entry for the section of the textbook that you quote.

Sample Work Cited Entries

Rosenwasser, David and Jill Stephen. “On Keeping a Writer’s Notebook.” Writing Analytically, 9th edition. Wadsworth/Cengage, 2024. pp. 157-58. 

Rosenwasser, David and Jill Stephen. “Writing from Life: The Personal Essay.” Writing Analytically, 9th edition. Wadsworth/Cengage, 2024. pp. 161-63. 

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Next Up

In class tomorrow, you will compose a short essay that reflects on the processes of planning, drafting and composing your literacy narrative. If you do not post your essay to Blackboard and WordPress before class (you have until Friday morning to do so), you should refer to your work as ongoing. Be sure to bring your copy of Writing Analytically to class.

The excerpt featured in the image above (on the far right) isn’t part of a literacy narrative; it’s a page from Harper Lee’s novel To Kill a Mockingbird. That page from Chapter One serves as a useful model for three narrative elements, at least two of which will figure in your literacy narrative. We will examine the page today in class, and I will address the page in more detail in Wednesday’s class.

After we examine the page from To Kill a Mockingbird, you and two or three of your classmates will collaboratively assess the two student literacy narratives that you read for today’s class.

First, you will discuss your annotations on “Creativity is Key,” and you will collaboratively compose a brief assessment, a minimum of one complete sentence. After that, you will use the grade criteria on your literacy narrative assignment sheet to assign a grade for the essay.

Next, you will complete the steps above with the second literacy narrative, “Giving a Speech: Worst Nightmare to Best Feeling.”

Next Up

In class on Wednesday, you will compose a short essay that reflects on the processes of planning, drafting and composing your literacy narrative. If you do not post your essay to Blackboard and WordPress before class (you have until Friday morning to do so), you should refer to your work as ongoing.

Remember that Wednesday is the first day that you are required to bring your copy of Writing Analytically to class. In the reflection that you write in class, you will quote one relevant line from the textbook. Reviewing tomorrow’s blog post, which will include notes on quoting Writing Analytically, will ensure that you are able to effectively integrate a quotation into your essay in the allottted time.

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 . . . .

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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.

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Next Up

In class on Wednesday, we will turn to briefly to “Letter from Birmingham Jail” before you begin planning and drafting your literacy narrative.