English
1301
Monday
P.M.
Tuesday
and Thursday A.M.
Angryverbs.blogspot.com
Week
of 1- 5 October 2012
Week
6 – Conclude PERSUASIVE WRITING, continue “The Seafarer” as a prelude to
EXPOSITIVE WRITING, return DESCRIPTIVE ESSAYS
1. Class begins when you
enter the room; put away the plastic electrical toys that light up and make
noises. Open your journal and begin
writing, work on your current assignment, update your notebook, or read the
assigned pages in your textbook, but do not idle.
2. Each class begins
with journal writing. Follow the prompt
on the board. Talk with each other. Share knowledge.
3. A typed, complete
final draft of your two persuasive mini-essays in MLA format will be submitted
as your name is called for roll on your first meeting of the week. Two weeks are more than enough time for an
effort requiring perhaps two hours; no late papers will be accepted. An absence is no excuse; the assignment was
posted on angryverbs.blogspot.com and on BlackBoard. If you miss class, your essay is due at the
next class with no penalty, but will not be accepted after that.
- This week we will continue
reading “The Seafarer” in translation (it’s some 1,500 years old) as a
prelude to an expository essay with internal citations and a short
bibliography. Read Item 53, “MLA Documentation Style,” on pp. 517-519 in
your Bedford, 8th edition. Earlier editions may feature this on
different pages.
- We are reading “Seafarer” not
only as a source for practicing professional / academic writing but as a
literary work in itself. Some terms
you will need to learn: four-beat line, rhythm, caesura, alliteration,
elegy, exemplum, and kenning. If
you are not working at “Seafarer” and reading your long-term assignments outside
of class, you’re not working.
Remember the college 3:1 rule.
- General debriefing of
descriptive essays:
The
combined scores of both classes:
90
– 99 – 14 students
80
- 89 - 15 “
70
– 79 - 7 “
0 -
9 “
Roughly
a third of all students earned an ‘A.’ These essays were a joy to read, and the
writers should be proud of themselves for their hours and hours of meaningful
effort. Most of the other students wrote
acceptable essays; if you didn’t, why not?
The
zero papers are those which demonstrate a complete failure of the writer to
read the instructions, listen to the teacher, read any of the handouts, read
the material provided on angryverbs.blogspot.com or on BlackBoard, proofread,
seek out the instructor for help, or seek out anyone else for a bit of advice.
When
your papers are returned to you they are marked closely. Read those marks and comments, and then work
to understand – if you see “parallelism” next to a sequence, for instance, then
look up “parallelism” in your text or other source to perceive the problem and
then learn how to resolve it. If you
merely note your grade and do nothing to sort out the errors, you are not
learning. You will not pass this class
through passivity.
Please
read these general comments about the descriptive essays, and think:
Format
– generally, the use of format was fair, but a number of you have not made the
word-processing program of your choice obey you. Do not turn in papers unless the formatting
is perfect.
Tense
change – most of you avoided this common error.
“I
like to call…” – this pointless phrase was common. Stop it.
Don’t write that you like to call your car Floyd; simply say that your
car’s name is Floyd.
Memories
/ remember – you remember events in your life; you do not remember memories.
Beautiful
/ gorgeous / amazing sunrises – no. There
are no ugly sunrises, and very few amazing ones. If you employ hyperbole and unnecessary
adjectives in discussing ordinary occasions, what will you say when you really
do encounter something beautiful / gorgeous / amazing?
Monster
– “monster” is applies only to a being that is capable of eating you.
Topic
sentence – avoid the annoying coyness of delaying the topic until the end of
the first paragraph. Respect your
reader.
Noun-pronoun
agreements – one person cannot be “they.”
Hyperbole
– understatement is always to be preferred.
Exclamation
marks - return the exclamation marks to junior high, where they belong, along
with “extreme” and any not-cute variant spelling thereof, and the, like,
totally rad “awesome.”
Verb
phrases – seldom employ verb phrases as subjects, i.e., “Being that my brother
was a…”
Repetition
– once you have written your essay, stop.
If your essay is too brief, you do not solve the problem by repeating
what you have already written.
Overwriting
/ filler language / cliches’ / stilted language – “I walked along the gravel
path” is good; “The amazing path along which the person known as me walked,
skipped, jumped, and leaped happily to my special place along the path was
layered in truckloads of rocks so that it wouldn’t wash away when the next
hurricane came was a truly awesome and inspiring event that changed my life
forever” isn’t. Some of you compromised
good ideas by writing as if you had cut up a thesaurus and dumped the words on
the page. Write short, plain, economical
sentences that say what you want them to say; then add a very few adjectives
and adverbs if they help.
Parallelism – items in sequence share a
common grammatical structure and…oh, look it up.
Weak
verbs – “have,” “has,” “is,” “go,” “went,” “gone,” “are,” and so on are
sometimes exactly the right words to use, but not often. I gave you a lesson on using strong verbs – were
you texting under the table on the plastic electric box?
Hallmark
card language – Your family deserves better than sloppily sentimental language
that would disgrace a greeting card – please, no more Ye Olde Good Ol’ Days
When Life was Simple and Honest and Folks Never Met a Stranger and We Was Poor
But We Didn’t Know it. Please.
K.I.S.S.
– Keep It Short and Simple.
“Grandpa always wore those faded overalls that Grandma hated, and smelled
like the hand-rolled cigarettes he smoked” says something. “The wonderful, loving, marvelous gentle
giant I liked to call my grandpa always clothed himself in old, faded, patched,
grimy, blue overalls that Grandma hated, loathed, and despised, and was always
and forever drenched in the smelly, stinky smell of the cigarettes that were
rolled lovingly and skillfully by hand by him which I will remember forever and
ever in my heart” is babbling.
Catalogues
of adjectives – “I loved my rusty old Ford truck” is clear. “I loved my cranky, squeaking, clanking,
once-red, rusty, ancient, 1953 Ford truck” is babbling.
S.S.
– sentence structure. Write short,
clear, simple sentences. Make sure they
say exactly what you want them to say. Then
stop.
Excessive
detail – the reader doesn’t care that your desk has two drawers on the
right-hand side, two drawers on the left-hand side, and a small drawer in the
center. That you have a desk is almost
always enough information.
Queen-sized
beds – this year’s flatscreen, I suppose.
“Queen-sized” is nothing more than advertising puffery, and says
nothing. That you have a bed is almost
always enough information.
Paragraphing
– generally very good. Remember that a
paragraph is predicated on one main idea.
Just
– whenever you employ the word “just,” you’re probably getting it wrong. With “just” or with any other word, you must
ask yourself why you are using this word in this place.
Would
– as a helping verb: “We would go to town and then we would go for ice cream
and then we would go home.” Stop
it. Stop it now. Use simple past tense.
Technical
terms – every craft employs many specialized words for the sake of precise
meaning for the cognoscenti, but
which may not be clear to others. “.270”
means something to a hunter but nothing except evil mathematics to others. Skillfully embed an explanation: “My sister
enjoys hunting with her .270, which refers to her rifle and its calibre.”
Pronouns
– “It.” As with weak verbs, “it” is
sometimes exactly the right word to use, but not often.
Passive
voice – the passive voice is to be avoided; you were told that by me. Yes, there’s a bit of snarkiness (tho’ that’s
a cliché’) in the preceding.
