English 1103, Reading, Teaching, Writing

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

Posted on January 14, 2026January 14, 2026 by janemlucas

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

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

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

Directions

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

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

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

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

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

Next Up

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

English 1103, Reading, Teaching, Writing

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

Posted on January 13, 2026January 14, 2026 by janemlucas

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

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

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

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

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

Dead Metaphors

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

Memorable Words

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

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

Work Cited

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

“What’s in a Name” Follow-Up

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

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

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

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

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

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

Next Up

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

English 1103, Scrabble, Teaching, Writing

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

Posted on January 12, 2026January 14, 2026 by janemlucas

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

Metaphors and similes
Hyperbole

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

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

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

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

Work Cited

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

Scrabble Debriefings

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

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

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

Next Up

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

English 1103, Teaching, Writing

ENG 1103: Collaborative Writing and Syllabus Exercise

Posted on January 7, 2026 by janemlucas

This morning in class, I will return your reflections-in-progress, and you and three of your classmates will compose two paragraphs that incorporate some of the details from your individual reflections. Afterward, we will review the syllabus exercise that you completed on Monday.

Directions

Discuss your writing with your group members, and collaboratively plan and compose two paragraphs that address your various experiences with your most recent literature and composition courses.
In the first paragraph, provide a summary of your experiences. Your first sentence might begin something like this: Our recent English courses include Advanced Placement Language and Composition, AP Literature and Composition, and courses focusing on American literature and journalism. The sentences that follow should include more specific details, such as some of the works that you studied, identified by title and/or author, and one or more of the major assignments. Keep in mind that your first paragraph is a summary, which by definition is objective. Do not comment on the courses; simply provide an overview of them.
In the second paragraph, offer commentary on the courses. (Here is where your personal observations enter the writing.) Since you will not be able to address everyone’s take on all of the courses, you’ll need to be selective. One way to organize the paragraph is to focus on some of the differences among your group members’ experiences; focusing on similarities is another option. Yet another option is this: focusing on how the courses contributed to your group members’ development as writers, as analytical readers, as both, or as neither.
After the note taker has recorded your paragraphs, allow time for each group member to review them and offer recommendations for revisions. Discuss any suggestions for changes and edit as needed.

Next Up

Wordplay Day! To prepare for class, visit the Dictionary and World Builder pages on the Scrabble website, and review tomorrow’s post on my blog devoted to Scrabble tips. If you have never played Scrabble before, be sure to watch this short video on how to play Scrabble.

English 1103, Teaching, Writing

ENG 1103: Looking Ahead to Our Second Class

Posted on January 6, 2026January 6, 2026 by janemlucas

Before tomorrow’s class, be sure to complete the following tasks.

Review yesterday’s blog post as well as the syllabus. If you added the class after our first meeting on Monday, you can download the syllabus from Blackboard. In your journal, jot down any questions you have about the course.

Also, if you added the class after our first meeting on Monday, begin composing a reflective essay focusing on your most recent experiences in literature and/or composition courses. Begin your essay with a one-paragraph summary. Keep in mind that summaries are by nature objective. Do not comment on the courses, simply offer an overview of them.

Follow those paragraphs with your observations on the courses. (Here is where your personal observations enter the writing.) Points to address include the following:

Were the courses similar to or different from your previous English classes? How?
Did the courses contribute to your development as a writer, an analytical reader, both, or neither?
How did those courses shape your attitude towards writing and/or reading?
How do you anticipate that English 1103 may be similar to or different from those courses?

If you haven’t purchased or rented it already, order the textbook, the paperback edition of Writing Analytically, 9^th edition, by David Rosenwasser and Jill Stephen. Bring your journal to class along with your other required materials, which are listed in the syllabus and pictured in yesterday’s post.

Also, as soon as possible, create a free WordPress blog at wordpress.com, and email the URL to me so that I can link your blog to the class page.

Because writing longhand and limiting screen time are essential components of the class, I am including below some notes that illustrate why those practices, which may seem quaint, are vital to our work.

Writing Longhand

One practical reason for writing longhand: What we mark through remains on the page. Sometimes what we cross out can be useful later on, elsewhere in our writing. More importantly, research in cognitive neuroscience indicates that writing longhand has these benefits:

We remember more when we write notes by hand.
Writing cursive activates areas of the brain that remain dormant when we type.

Simply put, writing longhand sharpens our minds in ways that typing doesn’t.

Limiting Screen Time

When we use our phones and laptops, it’s difficult for us to give our undivided attention to one endeavor, but often that singular focus is critical.

When we type on our phones, we often aim to convey as much as we can with as few characters as possible. Texting and emailing–both of which now feature predictive text–do not foster the vital skills of developing our writing and producing original thought.

Limiting our screen time not only helps us improve our writing skills, it can also benefit our overall well-being.

The blue light of screens disrupts our circadian rhythms more than other light does, making it harder for us to sleep.
Psychological studies demonstrate a correlation between screen time and both anxiety and depression.

The research cited in the links that I’ve included above isn’t definitive, but it makes a strong case for the value of limiting our screen time and putting pen to paper. I encourage you to continue these practices after the semester ends.

Next Up

On Wednesday, I will return the reflective writing that you began on Monday, and you and three of your classmates will draw on your individual pieces of writing to create a collaborative text.

English 1103, Teaching, Writing

ENG 1103: Writing Beyond the Classroom, Superlatives . . .

Posted on December 6, 2025December 6, 2025 by janemlucas

(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.

Highest Preliminary Averages

Section 8: Kylie Bussell, Avery Falor, Chloe Freeman, Raven Houston, Campbell Nelson, Lexi Owensby, Luke Simpson
Section 18: Cameron Anderson, Mariana Pavajeau, Heloise Richer, Haven Tucker, Bailey Upchurch

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.

English 1103, Teaching, Writing

ENG 1103: Individual Presentations and Peer Responses

Posted on December 1, 2025 by janemlucas

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.

Next Up

Wordplay Day! To prepare for class, revisit the Dictionary and World Builder pages on the Scrabble website, the Merriam-Webster Scrabble Word Finder page, and review the blog posts devoted to Scrabble tips.

English 1103, Reading, Teaching, Writing

ENG 1103: Composing Your Final Reflection

Posted on November 24, 2025December 1, 2025 by janemlucas

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.

Enjoy your Thanksgiving break!

English 1103, Reading, Teaching, Writing

ENG 1103: A Second Look at “Seedlings”

Posted on November 20, 2025 by janemlucas

Ishida, Tetsuya. “Seedlings.” Artjouer, https://artjouer.wordpress.com/2015/10/29/tetsuya-ishida-paintings/recalled-detail-painting-by-tetsuya-ishida.

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.

Next Up

English 1103, Teaching, Writing

ENG 1103: Reflecting on Your Final Essay and Annotated Bibliography

Posted on November 19, 2025 by janemlucas

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.