Category: Writing

Posted in English 1103, Teaching, Writing

ENG 1103: Writing Your Midterm Reflection

Posted on by janemlucas

This morning in class, you will plan and draft a short midterm reflective essay that documents your work in the first half of the semester, focusing on your analysis and one or two other assignments or aspects of the course that have contributed to your development as a writer and a student. In addition to your analysis, assignments and aspects of the course to consider include the following:

  • Keeping a journal
  • Completing Check, Please! assignments
  • Studying one of the readings examined class, including “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” “Me Talk Pretty One Day,” “The Day that Language Came into My Life,” “Back Story” (from The Blind Side), “The Falling Man,” “The School,” the sample literacy narrative (“A Bridge to Words”), or the sample analysis (“The Strange Fruit of Sosnowiec”)
  • Reading and editing samples of student writing
  • Writing for an online audience beyond the classroom/creating and maintaining a WordPress blog
  • Collaborating with your classmates on in-class writing assignments
  • Playing Scrabble/Collaborating with your teammates on Wordplay Day
  • Writing longhand
  • Limiting screen time

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. Introduce your quotation with a signal phrase and follow it with a parenthetical citation.  In addition to quoting a relevant passage from Writing Analytically, you may quote one of the texts that we have studied in class.
  • A conclusion that revisits the thesis without restating it verbatim
  • An MLA-style works cited entry for your source or sources

Sample MLA Style Works Cited Entries

Bartheleme, Donald. “The School.” The Best American Short Stories 1975, edited by Martha Foley, Houghton Mifflin, 1975. pp.8-11.

Junod, Tom. “The Falling Man.” Esquire, vol. 140, no. 3, Sept. 2003, pp. 176+. Gale Academic OneFile Select, https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A106423422/EAIM?u=hpu_main&sid=bookmark-EAIM&xid=ce48797f.

Keller, Helen. “The Day Language Came into My Life.” Chapter Four. The Story of My Life. https://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/keller/life/life.html.

King, Martin Luther, Jr. “Letter from Birmingham Jail.” The Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute, Stanford University, https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/sites/mlk/files/letterfrombirmingham_wwcw_0.pdf.

Lewis, Michael. Chapter One: “Back Story.” The Blind Side. 2006. Norton, 2009. pp.15-16.

Lucas, Jane. “A Bridge to Words.” Jane Lucas, 11 Sept. 2023, https://janelucas.com/2023/09/11/eng-1103-a-bridge-to-words/.

—. “The Strange Fruit of Sosnowiec.” Jane Lucas, 2 Oct. 2023, https://janelucas.com/2023/10/02/eng-1103-the-strange-fruit-of-sosnowiec/.

Rosenwasser, David and Jill Stephen. “Analysis and Argument.” Writing Analytically, 9th edition. Wadsworth/Cengage, 2019. pp. 7-8.

—. “Analysis and Everyday Life: More Than Breaking a Subject into Its Parts.” Writing Analytically, 9th edition. Wadsworth/Cengage, 2024. pp. 6-7.

—. “Integrating Quotations into Your Paper.” Writing Analytically, 9th edition. Wadsworth/Cengage, 2019. pp. 343-46.

—. “The Idea of the Paragraph.” Writing Analytically, 9th edition. Wadsworth/Cengage, 2019. pp. 307-313.

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

Next Up

Wordplay Day! To prepare for class, revisit the Dictionary and World Builder pages on the Scrabble website. Also review the posts on my blog devoted to Scrabble tips. 

Posted in English 1103, Teaching, Writing

ENG 1103: Revising Your Analysis and Planning for Your Midterm Reflection

Posted on by janemlucas
Rosenwasser, David and Jill Stephen. Writing Analytically, 9th edition. Wadsworth/Cengage, 2019.

Revising Your Analysis

As you continue to revise your analysis, review “The Strange Fruit of Sosnowiec” and consider the elements of the essay that we examined in class on Monday: the thesis, the examples of connections and separations that I offer as support for my thesis, and conclusion strategies that I employ in the final paragraph.

Additional Citations

You are not required to cite any text other than the essay, essay excerpt, or chapter excerpt that serves as your subject, but if you include any ideas from my class notes, you should name me in sentence and include a parenthetical citation and a work cited entry for the blog post in which the idea appears. In class on Monday, I distributed a handout with samples of additional citations and am including them here as well:

Example

Dr. Jane Lucas observes that “choosing not to divide the first paragraph creates an unbroken movement that parallels the unbroken downward flight of his [Junod’s] subject, the Falling Man” (par. 3).

Work Cited

Lucas, Jane. “ENG 1103: Tom Junod’s ‘The Falling Man.’” Jane Lucas, 19 Feb. 2024, https://janelucas.com/2024/02/19/eng-1103-tom-junods-the-falling-man.

The example above includes the parenthetical citation (par.3) because the source, the February 19 blog post, is an unpaginated source.

Work cited entries for the blog posts that include notes on the texts we have studied are listed below.

Sample Works Cited Entries

Lucas, Jane. “ENG 1103: A Second Look at Sedaris and a First Glimpse of Heller.” Jane Lucas, 22 Jan. 2024, https://janelucas.com/2024/01/22/eng-1103-a-second-look-at-sedaris-and-a-first-glimpse-of-keller-2.

—. “ENG 1103: Donald Barthelme’s ‘The School.’” Jane Lucas, 20 Feb. 2024, https://janelucas.com/2024/02/20/eng-1103-donald-barthelemes-the-school.

—. “ENG 1103: Field Notes and Peer Responses.” Jane Lucas, 13 Feb. 2004, https://janelucas.com/2024/02/13/eng-1103-field-notes-and-peer-responses.

—. “ENG 1103: ‘Letter from Birmingham Jail.’” Jane Lucas, 15 Jan. 2024, https://janelucas.com/2024/01/15/eng-1103-letter-from-birmingham-jail-2.

—. “ENG 1103: ‘Me Talk Pretty One Day.’” Jane Lucas, 17 Jan. 2024, https://janelucas.com/2024/01/17/eng-1103-me-talk-pretty-one-day.

—. “ENG 1103: Tom Junod’s ‘The Falling Man.’” Jane Lucas, 19 Feb. 2024, https://janelucas.com/2024/02/19/eng-1103-tom-junods-the-falling-man.

Planning for the Midterm Reflection

In class on Wednesday, you will plan and compose a midterm reflection that documents your work in the first half of the semester, focusing on your analysis and one or two other assignments or aspects of the course that have contributed to your development as a writer and a student. In addition to reflecting on your analysis, you may reflect on one or two of the following:

  • Keeping a journal
  • Completing Check, Please! assignments
  • Studying one of the readings examined class, including “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” “Me Talk Pretty One Day,” “The Day that Language Came into My Life,” “Back Story” (from The Blind Side), “The Falling Man,” “The School,” the sample literacy narrative (“A Bridge to Words”), or the sample analysis “The Strange Fruit of Sosnowiec”
  • Writing for an online audience beyond the classroom/creating and maintaining a WordPress blog
  • Collaborating with your classmates on in-class writing assignments
  • Playing Scrabble/collaborating with your teammates on Wordplay Day
  • Writing longhand
  • Limiting screen time

You will be required to include a relevant quotation from Writing Analytically. To prepare for that element of the reflection, review the sections of the textbook listed below, and select a relevant sentence, clause, or phrase to quote.

Rosenwasser, David and Jill Stephen. “Analysis and Argument.” Writing Analytically, 9th edition. Wadsworth/Cengage, 2019. pp. 7-8.

—. “Analysis and Everyday Life: More Than Breaking a Subject into Its Parts.” Writing Analytically, 9th edition. Wadsworth/Cengage, 2024. pp. 6-7.

—. “Integrating Quotations into Your Paper.” Writing Analytically, 9th edition. Wadsworth/Cengage, 2019. pp. 343-46.

—. “The Idea of the Paragraph.” Writing Analytically, 9th edition. Wadsworth/Cengage, 2019. pp. 307-313.

Next Up

In class on Wednesday, you will compose your midterm reflection. (See the notes above.) Wednesday, March 6 (before class) is also the due date for your analysis; the hard deadline is Friday, March 8 (before class). Review the assignment submission requirements, and be sure to post your analysis both as a Word or PDF file to Blackboard and as a blog entry on your WordPress site.

Posted in English 1103, Teaching, Writing

ENG 1103: Model Analysis–“The Strange Fruit of Sosnowiec”

Posted on by janemlucas

The analysis that follows is one that I wrote as a model for my students in 2021. As you read it, note how I turn from summary to thesis (in bold) in the first paragraph. Also note how the paragraphs that follow offer support for the thesis with concrete details from the comic’s panels.

Since concluding paragraphs can be particularly difficult to write without repeating the introduction, today’s group work will include a close look at strategies for conclusions.

The Strange Fruit of Sosnowiec

In Chapter 4 of Art Spiegelman’s graphic memoir Maus, he depicts his father Vladek’s account of the hangings of four Jewish merchants in Sosnowiec, Poland. Vladek and his wife, Anja, learn from Anja’s father, Mr. Zylberberg, that the Nazis have arrested his friend Nahum Cohn and his son. With his head bowed in sorrow, Mr. Zylberberg says to Anja and Vladek, “The Germans intend to make an example of them!” (83). That image of Mr. Zylberberg speaking with Vladek and Anja overlays the larger panel that dominates the page, one that depicts the horror that Mr. Zylberberg anticipates: the murder of his friend Nahum Cohn, Cohn’s son, and two other Jewish merchants. That haunting panel and the smaller ones that frame it illustrate the complexity of Spiegelman’s seemingly simple composition. His rendering of the panels of the living in conjunction with the fragmented panels of the hanged merchants simultaneously conveys connection and separation: both the grieving survivors’ ties to the dead and the hanged men’s objectification at the hands of the Nazis.

The placement of the overlaying panel not only hides part of the horror behind it, but it also connects Vladek’s father-in-law to one of the victims. Mr. Zylberberg’s head and torso appear directly above the suspended legs and feet of one of the hanged men, creating an image that merges the two.

Spiegelman further emphasizes the mourners’ identification with the hanged men by extending two of the nooses’ ropes upward to the smaller panel above them, linking the living to the dead. Additionally, Spiegelman underscores the link with Vladek’s line of narration at the bottom of the smaller panel: “I did much business with Cohn!” (83). The word “with” appears directly above the rope, punctuating the connection between both Nahum Cohn and his friend Mr. Zylberberg and Zylberberg’s son-in-law, Vladek.

While the panels of the hangings yoke the living to the dead, Spiegelman’s presentation of the hanged men in fragments also objectifies them. The final panels on the page depict only their shoes and part of their pant legs suspended above the onlookers, images that may evoke in some readers thoughts of the last remnants of the Jews who stepped barefoot into the gas chambers of Auschwitz.

Whether the hanged men’s shoes call to mind those mountains of leather left behind by the Jews, the separation of their lower legs and feet from the rest of their bodies turns them into something less than human—not people, but mere parts. Thus, Spiegelman creates a picture of the hangings that illustrates both the mourners’ identification with the victims and the Nazis’ perception of the Jews as less than human: the malignant ideology that the artist has pinpointed “at the very heart of the killing project.”

Spiegelman, Art. Maus 1. Pantheon, 1986, p. 83.

Spiegelman’s transformation of the Nazi propaganda portrayals of Jews as rats remains an astounding achievement thirty-five years after the publication of the first volume of Maus. But seeing the hanged merchants in Modrzejowska Street in the midst of the George Floyd murder trial in Minneapolis and less than three months after the January 6 Capitol riot reminds readers that the panels of Spiegelman’s memoir have grown more prescient. The nooses evoke images of Officer Derek Chauvin’s knee on George Floyd’s neck, the January 6 chants to hang the Vice President, and a T-shirt glimpsed in the Capitol crowd, one with a Nazi eagle below the acronym “6MWE” (Six Million Wasn’t Enough), a reference to the numbers of Jews slaughtered in the Holocaust. Our heads are bowed in sorrow with Mr. Zylberberg’s. The strange fruit of our past, both distant and recent, should seem far stranger.

Works Cited

Spiegelman, Art. Maus I. Pantheon, 1986.

—. “Why Mice?” Interview by Hillary Chute. The New York Review of Books, 20 Oct. 2011, https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2011/10/20/why-mice/.

After we examine “The Strange Fruit of Sosnowiec,” you and two or three of your classmates will collaborate on an exercise that asks you to consider an example of the connections and separations that I address in my thesis. The exercise will also ask you to explore the conclusion strategies that I employ in the final paragraph.

Next Up

In class on Wednesday, you will compose a reflective essay that focuses on your work over the first half of the semester. In your reflection, you will be required address your analysis and one or two other assignments or aspects of the course that have contributed to your development as a writer and a student. You will also be required to include at least one relevant quotation from a section of Writing Analytically devoted to analysis.

Posted in English 1103, Teaching, Writing

ENG 1103: Revising Your Analysis

Posted on by janemlucas

This morning, after I collect your Check, Please! worksheets for lesson four, I will return your drafts, and you will have the remainder of the class period to begin revising your analyses on your laptops and tablets. Because next week is spring break, you will have two additional weeks to continue your revision work before you submit the assignment to Blackboard and publish it as a WordPress blog entry. The due date is Wednesday, March 6 (before class). The hard deadline is Friday, March 8 (before class). Directions for submitting your analysis are included on your assignment sheet and on the Blackboard submission site.

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

To schedule an appointment, visit https://highpoint.mywconline.com, email the Writing Center’s director, Professor Justin Cook, at jcook3@highpoint.edu, or scan the QR code below. To earn bonus points for your literacy narrative, consult with a Writing Center tutor no later than Thursday, February 8.

Parethetical Citations for Your Analysis

In your analysis, you will include parenthetical citations for quotations and paraphrases. Since you are writing a textual analysis, I recommend quoting rather than paraphrasing because the writer’s particular word choices are vital to the text’s overall effect. If your subject is one of the unpaginated texts (“Letter from Birmingham Jail,” “The Day Language Came into My Life,” or “The Falling Man”), your parenthetical citations will include the abbreviation par. for paragraph, followed by the paragraph number. If your subject is one of the paginated texts (“Me Talk Pretty One Day,” “Back Story,” or “The School”), your parenthetical citations will include the page number by itself.

Including the author’s last name as well would be redundant because you have established in your introduction that your essay focuses solely on a work by him or her. When you a writing a paper in which you cite multiple sources, you will need to include the author’s last name in the parenthetical citation to clarify which of your sources you are citing.

Here are some examples of how to use parenthetical citations in your analysis:

  • The nonsense words “meimslsxp” and “lgpdmurct” underscore his utter lack of comprehension in French class (167).
  • The line “‘like Aaron’s rod, with flowers’” alludes to Numbers 17.8 (par. 9).
  • He notes that in contrast to the Falling Man, the others who jumped appeared “confused, as though trying to swim down the side of a mountain” (par. 1).
  • He employs the “One Mississippi . . . Two Mississippi . . .” count to mark the seconds leading up to Joe Theismann’s career-ending injury (15).
  • With the words, “[I]s death that which gives meaning to life?,” the story shifts from realism to surrealism (10).

Works Cited Entries for Your Analysis

At the end of your analysis, you will include an MLA-style work cited entry. Refer to the models below.

Barthelme, Donald. “The School.” The Best American Short Stories 1975, edited by Martha Foley, Houghton Mifflin, 1975. pp. 8-11.

Junod, Tom. “The Falling Man.” Esquire, vol. 140, no. 3, Sept. 2003, pp. 176+. Gale Academic OneFile Select, https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A106423422/EAIM?u=hpu_main&sid=bookmark-EAIM&xid=ce48797f.

Keller, Helen. “The Day Language Came into My Life.” The Story of My Life. https://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/keller/life/life.html.

King, Martin Luther, Jr. “Letter from Birmingham Jail.” The Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute, Stanford University, https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/ sites/mlk/files/letterfrombirmingham_wwcw_0.pdf.

Lewis, Michael. Chapter One: “Back Story.” The Blind Side. 2006. Norton, 2009, pp. 15-23.

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

Note that the sample work cited entries above do not have a hanging indent (because of the limitations of the blog platform), but your MLA-style work cited entries in your Word and PDF files should have a hanging indent. See the entries in my sample papers and on the citations handout that I will distibute in class this morning.

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.

Posted in English 1103, Reading, Teaching, Writing

ENG 1103: Donald Bartheleme’s “The School”

Posted on by janemlucas

Yesterday in class we examined Donald Barthelme’s short story “The School,” and in groups of two, three, or four you addressed in writing some of the elements of the story that you might explore in an analysis. As I mentioned last week, if you find the prospect of analyzing “The School” more appealing than analyzing one of the texts we studied previously (“Me Talk Pretty One Day,” “The Day Language Came into My Life,” the opening of “The Falling Man,” “Back Story”), you are welcome to change the subject of your analysis to “The School.”

Among the elements of Barthelme’s story that you considered yesterday are these:

  • the narrator and the narrative voice
  • conflict
  • narrative shift (Where does “The School” make an unexpected turn?)

Whether the subject of your analysis is Bartheleme’s story or one of our earlier readings, you will begin your first paragraph with a summary of the text. Remember that a summary is an objective synopsis of a text’s key points. It should be written in third person and present tense. For example, if you choose to analyze “The School,” you might summarize it this way:

Donald Barthelme’s short story “The School” recounts a series of classroom lessons that end with the deaths of plants and animals–deaths that serve as a prelude to the unexplained death of a Korean orphan, followed by the senseless deaths of classmates and family members.

Notice that the summary above does not comment on the story in any way. What follows the summary will be the beginning of your commentary, or analysis, the thesis statement that offers your particular close reading, or interpretation, of the story. The passage below is the same as the one above, but at the end of it I have added a thesis statement in bold.

Donald Barthelme’s short story “The School” recounts a series of classroom lessons that end with the death of plants and animals–deaths that serve as a prelude to the death of a Korean orphan, followed by the deaths of classmates and family members. With conversational narration, accumulation of detail, and a shift in fictional mode, Barthelme deftly depicts the reality of the fleeting nature of life, even as the story itself veers from reality.

If I were to continue to write the analysis that I began in the previous paragraph, I would follow that opening paragraph with body paragraphs that address each of the three story elements that I include in my thesis: (1) “conversational narration,” (2) “accumulation of detail,” and (3) “shift in fictional mode.”

Next Up

In class on Wednesday, after I collect your fourth Check, Please! assignments, I will return your handwritten analysis plans and drafts (with my notes), and you will have the remainder of the class period to devote to revising on your laptops and tablets. Because next week is spring break, you will have two additional weeks to continue revising. Your revision is due on Blackboard and on your WordPress blog Wednesday, March 6 (before clas). The hard deadline in Friday, March 8 (before class).

Posted in English 1103, Teaching, Writing

ENG 1103: Beginning Your Analysis

Posted on by janemlucas

This morning in class, you will begin your analysis of one of the texts we have studied in class, which include these:

  • The first paragraphs of “The Falling Man” by Tom Junod
  • “The Day Language Came into My Life” by Helen Keller
  • “Letter from Birmingham Jail” by Martin Luther King, Jr.
  • The first paragraphs of “Back Story” by Michael Lewis
  • “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.

Directions

  • Review the essays, essay excerpt, and chapter excerpt you’ve read, and determine which one appeals to you most as a subject of analysis.
  • Reread it and identify three or more elements that contribute to its effectiveness.
  • Develop your analysis through a close examination of those elements.
  • Write in dark ink, preferably black. You are welcome to use both sides of the page.
  • Before you leave class today, staple your assignment handout on top of your draft and submit it to me. Next week I will return your draft with notes, and you will have the class period to begin revising and editing on your laptop or tablet.

Think of your preliminary draft as your down draft; your aim in the early stage of the process is to get your ideas down on the page. You may need the process of drafting to discover what you think the essay, essay excerpt, or chapter excerpt means and how it makes its meaning.

Sample Works Cited Entries

Junod, Tom. “The Falling Man.” Junod, Tom. “The Falling Man.” Esquire, vol. 140, no. 3, Sept. 2003, pp. 176+. Gale Academic OneFile Select, https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A106423422/EAIM?u=hpu_main&sid=bookmark-EAIM&xid=ce48797f.

Keller, Helen. “The Day that Language Came into My Life.” The Story of My Life. https://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/keller/life/life.html.

King, Martin Luther, Jr. “Letter from Birmingham Jail.” The Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute, Stanford University, https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/sites/mlk/files/letterfrombirmingham_wwcw_0.pdf.

Lewis, Michael. Chapter One: “Back Story.” The Blind Side. 2006. Norton, 2009, pp. 15-23.

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

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.

Posted in English 1103, Reading, Teaching, Writing

ENG 1103: Field Notes and Peer Responses

Posted on by janemlucas

Yesterday’s class was devoted primarily to reading and responding to the blog post of one of your classmates’ literacy narratives. Elements you considered in your response included these:

  • the title
  • vivid details
  • dialogue, the use of scene and/or summary

Before you began that assignment, we examined the opening pages of “Back Story,” the first chapter of Michael Lewis‘s The Blind Side, which dramatizes the moments in the November 1985 Redskins-Giants football game leading up to the injury that ended quarterback Joe Theismann’s career:

“From the snap of the ball to the snap of the first bone is closer to four seconds than to five. One Mississippi: The quarterback of the Washington Redskins, Joe Theismann, turns and hands the ball to running back John Riggins. He watches Riggins run two steps forward, turn, and flip the ball back to him. It’s what most people know as a ‘flea-flicker,’ but the Redskins call it a ‘throw-back special.’ Two Mississippi: Theismann searches for a receiver but instead sees Harry Carson coming straight at him. It’s a running down—the start of the second quarter, first and 10 at midfield, with the score tied 7–7—and the New York Giants’ linebacker has been so completely suckered by the fake that he’s deep in the Redskins’ backfield. Carson thinks he’s come to tackle Riggins but Riggins is long gone, so Carson just keeps running, toward Theismann. Three Mississippi: Carson now sees that Theismann has the ball. Theismann notices Carson coming straight at him, and so he has time to avoid him. He steps up and to the side and Carson flies right on by and out of the play. The play is now 3.5 seconds old. Until this moment it has been defined by what the quarterback can see. Now it–and he–is at the mercy of what he can’t see” (15).

What Theismann cannot see is Lawrence Taylor. A second later, as Taylor sacks Theismann, Taylor’s knee drives straight into Theismann’s lower right leg, leading to the “snap of the first bone” that Lewis mentions in the first line of the chapter. He hooks the reader by linking the beginning of the play, “the snap of the ball” to the gruesome “snap of the first bone” that will follow. Lewis develops the opening paragraph using the common one-Mississippi, two-Mississippi method of marking seconds to present the events leading up to the compound fracture that ends Theisman’s career.

Lewis doesn’t dramatize the injury itself because his interest lies instead in the blind side that led to it and subsequently elevated the status and salary of the left tackle, the player who protects the quarterback’s blind side.

When you’re struggling to develop a piece of writing, reread the opening paragraph of The Blind Side. Observe how Lewis dramatizes 3.5 seconds–yes, only 3.5 seconds–with about two-hundred words.

Yesterday, after we studied the opening of The Blind Side, we examined the first two paragraphs of Tom Junod‘s Esquire magazine feature “The Falling Man” and considered why Junod may have chosen to present the beginning of his essay as an unusually long single paragraph, one that could have been divided into three or more paragraphs.

Peer Responses

In the last few minutes of Monday’s class (or on your own if you were still completing your blog comment at the end of class), you began reading your other classmates’ literacy narratives and began taking notes on them in your journal.

Once you have read and taken notes on all of the essays, compose a brief comment that states which of the narratives is the strongest and why. Include in your response the title of the narrative, the writer’s first and last name, and the section number. Post your response as a comment on this blog post no later noon on Thursday, February 15.

After the posting deadline (but not immediately after), I will make the comments visible. In the coming days and weeks, we will look at some of the comments in class, as well as the literacy narratives that they address.

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 Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” David Sedaris‘s “Me Talk Pretty One,” Helen Keller‘s “The Day Language Came into My Life,” Michael Lewis‘s “Back Story,” and Tom Junod‘s “The Falling Man.” 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.

Posted in English 1103, Reading, Teaching, Writing

ENG 1103: Commenting on a Classmate’s Literacy Narrative

Posted on by janemlucas

This morning in class you will read one of your classmate’s literacy narratives, compose a response to it, and post your response as a comment on the student’s blog.

Directions

  1. Go to the class page, and click on the link for the blog of the of classmate whose name follows yours on the roster. If you are last on the list, go to the blog of the student whose name is first on the list.  
  2. If the student’s blog is not accessible, email the student and ask that he/she/they email you a copy of his/her/their literacy narrative.
  3. Read the classmate’s narrative and compose a response (seventy-five words, minimum) that addresses one or more of these elements: the title, vivid details, dialogue, the use of scene and/or summary.
  4. Does the blog post include an image that documents part of the blogger’s writing process away from the screen? ___ (yes or no)
  5. Does the post include a relevant embedded link? ___ (yes or no)
  6. Write on the lines provided on your worksheet and use the back of the sheet if you need additional space.
  7. After you have composed your response longhand on your worksheet, type your response as a comment for the blogger. You should see a leave comment/reply option at the top or bottom of the post. If you do not see that option, click on the title of the blog post, and scroll down. You should then see leave comment/reply.
  8. Submit your worksheet at the end of class today. You will submit your paper copy of your comment because the blogger may not choose to make your comment visible. You will receive credit for this assignment only if you submit your worksheet at the end of class today.
  9. In the last few minutes of class (or on your own if you’re still completing your blog comment at the end of class): Begin reading your other classmates’ literacy narratives, and take notes on them in your journal. After you have read and taken notes all of the essays, compose a brief comment that states which of the narratives is the strongest and why. Include in your response the title of the narrative, the writer’s first and last name, and the section number. Post your response as a comment on my February 13 blog post no later noon on Thursday, February 15.

Next Up

In class on Wednesday, you will begin planning and drafting your analysis longhand. The following Wednesday, February 21, I will return your handwritten drafts with my notes, and you will have the class period to begin revising on your laptops and tablets. After that, you will have an additional two weeks to continue working on your analysis before posting it to Blackboard and to your WordPress blog. (You have an additional week because of Spring Break, February 24-March 3.) The due date for your analysis is Wednesday, March 6 (before class); the hard deadline is Friday, March 8 (before class).

Posted in English 1103, Teaching, Writing

ENG 1103: Reflecting on Your Literacy Narrative

Posted on by janemlucas

This morning in class you will compose a short essay in which you reflect on the processes of planning, drafting, and revising your literacy narrative. Questions to consider include the ones below. You don’t need to address all of these questions, focus on the ones whose answers reveal the most about your work.  

  • What aspect of the writing seemed the most challenging? Determining the focus of your narrative? Developing the story? Crafting the conclusion? Why did that aspect of the writing seem the most challenging?
  • Did you change the subject of your narrative? If so, what was the original subject? What did you change it to? Why?
  • Did you change the organization of the narrative? For example: Did you initially present the story chronologically, then change it?
  • Did any of the sample essays we examined (“Me Talk Pretty One Day,” “The Day Language Came into My Life,” “A Bridge to Words”) prove helpful to you as a model? If so, how? (Offer one or more concrete details to support your claim.)
  • What do you consider the strongest element of your literacy narrative?
  • 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 did you include that documents part of your writing process away from the screen? Why did you choose that particular image?
  • What relevant website did you link to your blog post. Why is that particular site relevant to your narrative?
  • In addition to metacognition, did any of the other habits of mind of successful college students play a significant role in your writing process? If so, which one? The other seven are curiosity, openness, engagement, creativity, persistence, responsibility, and flexibility.

Students who have their physical copies of Writing analytically have the option to earn a bonus point by integrating a quotation from the textbook into their reflection. See the directions and the example below.

Directions

  1. Read the section of Writing Analytically titled “Writing on Computers vs. Writing on Paper.”
  2. Choose a short passage from the section that is relevant to your writing process and include it in your reflection.
  3. Introduce the quotation with a signal phrase and end the sentence with a parenthetical citation. At the end of your reflection, include an MLA-style work cited entry. See the example below.

Example

The authors of Writing Analytically note that beginning a piece of writing on a computer can “lock you into a draft or a particular idea too soon” (Rosenwasser and Stephen 124). Early in the process of writing my literacy narrative, I found myself locked into an idea that I was able to discard only after I resumed writing longhand.

Work Cited

Rosenwasser, David and Jill Stephen. “Writing on Computers vs. Writing on Paper.” Writing Analytically, 8th edition. 9th edition. Wadsworth/Cengage, 2019. 2024. pp. 124-25.     

Note that the title of the textbook section and the page numbers in the ninth edition may differ from the those in the eighth edition. Make changes as needed in your parenthetical citation and work cited entry.

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.

Posted in English 1103, Teaching, Writing

ENG 1103: “A Bridge to Words” Follow-Up

Posted on by janemlucas
Carl Thomas Anderson’s comic strip character Henry

Yesterday in class we examined the model literacy narrative “A Bridge to Words,” and you and two or three of your classmates collaboratively composed a piece of writing that addressed one of these elements in the essay:

  • concrete details
  • figurative language
  • scene (see paragraphs two through five)
  • the adult retrospective narrator
  • the writer as a child

As you continue to revise your own literacy narrative, review David Sedaris’s “Me Talk Pretty One Day,” Helen Keller’s “The Day Language Came into My Life,” and “A Bridge to Words.” Note the use of concrete details, figurative language, and scene in all three. As you review Keller’s essay and mine, examine the dual roles of the central figure: the adult retrospective narrator and the child that she recollects.

Consider how your study of the narrative elements listed above can enhance those story components in your own essay.

Hilaire Belloc’s “Rebecca,” illustrated by Alice and Martin Provensen

Narrative Don’ts

I also asked you to consider what the narrative doesn’t do (because it shouldn’t). Here are the two narrative don’ts that I covered in class:

  • Don’t write, “It made me the reader I am today,” “It made me the writer I am today,” “It made me the person I am today,” or any variation on those. Such statements are common in speeches, but they are trite and should be avoided in writing because they tell readers nothing about your particular experience. Rather than writing, “It made me the reader/writer/person . . . ,” show the readers that person.
  • Don’t write, “I became a better reader (or writer, or person) because I persevered, and that’s what you should do.” Don’t tell readers what they should do. Instead, let them see your experience and draw their own conclusions.

Next Up

In class on Wednesday you will compose a short reflective essay that chronicles the process of planning, drafting, and revising your literacy narrative.