English 1301
M. Hall

Notice for Thursday, 12 October, and Monday, 16 October

Dear Students:

I regret that I (too much use of the first-person in one sentence) will not be able to meet with you1 on Thursday, 12 October.

However, please allow me to make amends. Because I am missing a day, I (again, too much use of “I”) grant everyone in both classes an extra absence.

Further, on Thursday I will leave on the front desk of Angelina College’s Jasper Teaching Center a sign-in sheet for the Monday-Wednesday class and a sign-in sheet for the Tuesday-Thursday class. If you sign in and then promise to yourself to take an hour to work on your persuasive writing lessons, either on-site or at home, I grant each signer another absence. You will have to be honest with yourself on this.

And still further: Monday, 16 October, is a Jasper High School student off-day, and since most of our class are dual-credit students, all are exempted from class that day. However, I will be present beginning around 0930. If you can spend an hour on campus to work on your persuasive writing assignments in the classroom or the library, or to talk with me one-on-one about your progress, I will grant you yet another absence.

As you know, the State of Texas is strict on the matter of absences, and some among you are at the tipping point in this matter. I will not break the law regarding absences, but here is an opportunity to bend it. Come to campus and get rid of previous absences or build a metaphorical bank for future ones.

This is a bit dodgy, but I can ethically (adverb modifying a verb) defend (verb) it.

Initiative is your ally. Passivity is your enemy.

Cordially, Mr. Hall

1The second-person pronoun is correct here because the writer is addressing a very real you – which would be you – and not a conversational you referring only to an abstract.

Lessons, Week of 9 -13 October

English 1301

Angelina College
YOU and some old guy
Week of 9 – 13 October 2017

 

1. Monday and Tuesday:

 

General review of descriptive essays
Persuasive writing, continued
Return last week’s essays

 

2. Wednesday and Thursday:

 

Persuasive writing, continued
Notes re descriptive essays:

What Were the Grades?

 

A (90 – 100) - 18

B (80 - 79)   -  9

C (70 – 79)  -  3

D (60-69)    -  /

F (0 – 50)     -  2

 

18 students earned an A.  Everyone could have.

 

 

Lessons, 2-6 October 2017

English 1301

Angelina College

YOU and some old guy

Week of 2 – 6 October 2017

 

1. Monday and Tuesday:

 

A. Test

 

B. I will be pleased to take a last look at your rough drafts.

 

C. Please don’t bring me your draft if you have changed nothing about it

 since I read it last week.

 

2. Wednesday and Thursday:

 

A. The final draft of your descriptive essay is due at roll call.  No excuses

 – “It’s in my car.” / “My mother’s bringing it.” / “I was printing it in the

 library.”  / “It’s in my girlfriend’s truck which broke down and is in a

repair shop in Breaux Bridge, Louisiana.  Really!  You can ask my

mother!” Any of these can be true, but they are not excuses - you were

given this assignment two weeks ago.

 

B. Introduce persuasive writing

 

Some miscellaneous notes:

 

A. That head may not be down and those eyes may not be hidden in your

 hands.  If you are that tired you should be home; if you are that sick you

 should be in the nurse’s office.

 

B. If you cannot write a simple declarative sentence you cannot succeed in this class.  I hope and believe some of the curious assemblies of words I read last week were due to carelessness.

 

Until you can demonstrate control, avoid beginning sentences with verb phrases, i.e. “Walking into the room, the wall on the right is painted green.” Walls do not walk into rooms; indeed, they do not walk at all.

 

C. Demonstrate initiative – while the old instructor is working with another student that is your time to review your own work and that of others, not idle.  A successful college student, like a successful worker, does not need constant supervision.  Passivity is your enemy.

Lessons, Week of 25-29 September 2017

English 1301
Angelina College
YOU and some old guy
Week of 25-29 September 2017

1. Monday and Tuesday – let’s finish the previous project and turn it in, and work with rough drafts of your descriptive essays. I will be pleased to read your drafts and make suggestions, but I am not going to proof your paper.

Demonstrate initiative – while the old instructor is working with another student that is your time to review your own work and that of others, not idle. A successful college student, like a successful worker, does not need constant supervision. Passivity is your enemy.

2. Wednesday and Thursday – let’s work with rough drafts. If you bring to class a finished rough draft (it must be typed, but it shouldn’t be pretty, and it should suffer the scars of your handwritten corrections), that’s a 100 in the grade book for you.

3. A quiz might suddenly appear, like a summer thunderstorm.

4. The final draft of your descriptive essay is due NLT roll call on Wednesday / Thursday of next week. I will be pleased to accept it earlier.

Week of 18-22 September 2017

1. This week there will be a quiz.  The answers won't be difficult for you, but remembering to write in complete sentences will.  Sentence fragments, sentences beginning with unreferenced pronouns, and sentences with end stops (meaning a period) will be marked as wrong.  This is a writing class, remember, not a multiple-guess class.

We tend to speak and write in fragments, but for professional writing tightly-structured and complete sentences are essential.  Pp. 191- 248 and 277 - 358 will help you review this fifth-grade concept.

2. Trees gave their lives for the handouts.  Read them. Keep them.

3.  Pp. 5 - 92 review writing concepts you learned in K-12.

4.  Pp. 93 - 190 continue these concepts and carry them forward in professional writing.

5. Develop a professional approach to study.  If you have your own room and a study table you are blessed; if you have to share space, well, study will be a challenge. 

Schedule study time for each day of the week, perhaps in fifteen-minute blocks.  If you establish a program for yourself and stick to it, most of your family and friends will respect that.

The MePhone is useful for accessing information, but a curse when you must process that information and make some sense of it.  The gadget is often a temptation to distraction, and you must resist it with strength and determination.

6. 21 September is the autumn equinox, about which many scientific observations and much poetry have been written.

Exit the Hurricane - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Exit the Hurricane (not the catchiest title, eh?)

What is that silence? It is the not-rain
The first not-rain since Friday this past week
Every loud frog gloats in unseemly song
The old, sour water recedes from the door

The whole house stinks; it stinks of damp and rot
Of clothes unwashed because the drains are dammed
Of smelly shoes and even smellier socks
Of refugee gear flung casually about

The whole house stinks; it stinks of damp and rot
Of too many people – and isn’t it wonderful!

28-30 August 2017 - Practice Your Writing

30 August 2017

The InterGossip was out from yesterday until this morning, so another apology for another delay.

Although the storm will be headed away later this morning, waters will still rise because of drainage from upstream and from high elevations.

Think safety in all ways.

-      Mr. H

English 1301

Old Mr. Hall

Jasper Teaching Center

Angelina College

29 August 2017

I apologize for the delay in sending this; I’ve been off on a rescue mission (my part in it is boring).

Until we meet, practice keeping a journal of your adventures here where The Hundred-Acre Wood has grown floodier and floodier.  Use any sort of blank book or random sheets of paper stapled together.  This needn’t be all writing; you can attach receipts, notes, pictures you’ve printed out, a leaf blown from your favorite tree, and so on.  English 1301 is mostly dull, boring, what-am-doing-here mechanical, methodical, format writing for professional purposes, so have a little fun with this project.

Make entries whenever the thought occurs to you, and note the date, day, time, and temperature.  You can’t avoid the occasional first-person voice, but try to avoid the I, I, I, me, me, me self-obsession one sees on anti-social media, and write objectively about the weather and about others.  Avoid hyperbole (a flood is not biblical unless Noah and his Ark drop anchor outside your door). No awesome, epic, jaw-dropping, or other inflated adjectives.

Keep your narrative clear and use few adjectives and almost no adverbs (One cannot unactually do anything; thus, “actually” is mere filler).

Avoid these hurricane cliches’:

Rain event

We’re not out of the woods

Dodged the bullet

Storms that brew – what do they brew? Tea?  Coffee?

Storms that gain or lose steam, as if they were teakettles or steam locomotives

Hurricanes that pound

Hurricanes that lash

Reduced to rubble

Wreak havoc

Swirling in the Gulf / spinning in the Gulf – well, okay, but perhaps used too

 often?

Left a swath of destruction in its wake - what’s a swath, eh? 

Hurricanes that make landfall – well, what else would they make?  A gun rack

in shop class?

Hurricanes that slam ashore

Hurricanes that storm ashore – well of course they storm; they’re storms

Changed my life forever (Did it really? But your life is always changing.  Are you going to let a hurricane push you around?  You are made of sterner stuff.)

Mother Nature's wrath

Mother Nature’s fury

Mother Nature's anything

There is no Mother Nature

Decimated (unless precisely one out of every ten people was killed)
Trees snapping like matchsticks (do matchsticks ever snap like trees?)

Bodies stacked like cordwood (I’ve seen stacked wood; I’ve seen stacked bodies;

          ain’t the same)

Claimed the life (“Sorry, pal, no claim check, no life.”)

Mother of all hurricanes (Saddamn lives on)

Batten down the hatches (Darn, I forgot to buy a hatch; I wonder if the stores

 are still open)

Hunker down

Cars tossed about like Matchbox toys / Cars smashed like matchboxes

Boats bobbing like corks / boats smashed like matchboxes

Roofs peeled off

Rain coming down in sheets (never blankets?)

Calm before the storm

Calm after the storm, almost always “eerie”

Visual cliché’ – a camera shot of a palm tree and some idiot in a slicker telling

 us the obvious

ANY allusion to Katrina

Perfect storm

Storm of the century

A hurricane that defined a generation

Looked like a war zone – no, it didn’t.

Fish storm

Unleashed

Your children and grandchildren may read your flood journal someday – let us pray they will be bored by it.

See you next week.

Cheers,

Mr. H