1-on-1 Conferences: Thursday, 12/11

Meetings Will Take Place in Resource Center 111  

1. 12:30-1:00: Open 
2. 1:10: Ibrahim B.
3. 1:20: Stephanie B.
4. 1:30: Lidia D.
5. 1:40: Meagan J.
6. 1:50: Hector L.
7. 2:00: Joshua L
8. 2:10: Storm R.
9. 2:20: Gadaa T.
10. 2:30: Travis W.
11. 2:40: Anne H.
12. 2:50: Lala K.
13. 3:00: Uchenna O.
14. 3:10: Wendy M.
15. 3:20: Mekdes Z. 
16. 3:30: Mayra M-P
17. 3:40: Jennifer S.
18. 3:50: Jovonte H.
19. 4:00: West T.
20. 4:10: Deborah O.
21. 4:20-4:45: open

For 3:30pm-5:35pm section: Essay 4

Worth: 100 points total

Completed Draft Due Dates:

·         Tuesday, December 2, 2014 (for my 3:30-5:35pm students)

Format Guidelines:

·         Header, @ top left-hand corner:               Name

EN002

Essay 4

·         MLA format, including: 12 pt. font, either Times New Roman, Calibri or Cambria; double-spaced

·         Use of rhetorical conventions, including 5-paragraph essay format. Must be at least four paragraphs (intro, two body paragraphs, conclusion)

·         450-500 words  (work towards two complete pages)

·         A Title that acts like a second thesis!

Prompt: Write a 450- to 500-word essay in which you pursue the following prompt:

            Be creative and imagine where you will be in ten to fifteen years in your life. What job will you hold, what degrees will you have, what challenges will you have to overcome? Paint a picture of future you.

           

Some considerations, though you don’t need to address all them: You may cite the Bureau of National Labor information you found if it supports your vision. You should be well-detailed and descriptive towards what interests you, how long those things have interested you, and such. Be specific, be precise and concise. Detail where you live, who you hang with, what will you be working on. What does America look like, and where do you fit in?

HW for Tuesday, 11/25

1.  Bring in your Portfolios.


2.  Look on the Bureau of National Labor's website for an occupation that you are interested in pursuing. Click here to access their Occupational Handbook.

• What are your Academic goals? 
• Certificate?
• Associates?
• Bachelors?
• Masters?
• Doctorate?

• Why do you want to achieve these goals?

• How will these goals help you pursue a career?

Tuesday, 11/18, and Thursday, 11/20

For my 1-3:05pm students, you take the in-class final on Rudyard Kipling's "If--" on Tuesday, so do the following preparation over the weekend.

For my 3:30pm-5:35pm students, you take the in-class final on Thursday.

How to prepare for final:

• Practice at a computer lab. Time yourself writing one paragraph.
• Practice writing sentences that include quoted lines from the poem.
• Divide up the 1 hour and 25 minutes into segments to pace yourself.

You are allowed to bring in a copy of the poem with notes written on the back side of the poem. Here is what I would include in my notes:

• Annotate poem on the front (as I have demonstrated in class), but do not write any complete paragraphs. Just write jotted thoughts, identify metaphors and other figures of speech (and write down a meaning over the word/phrase), define words. At end of poem, list a theme or two and pose a question or two. 

• On back, write example of how to mechanically cite poetry lines (see the post for the differences between poetry and fiction)

• Write a word bank of key words that you want to use. (Besides "moral," for example, what are other words that describe the poem, its separate actions, its poetic techniques, etc.)

• Write short, non-sentence reminders of real examples that the poem inspires in you.

• Write an example 3rd person claim, as you will want to write the final with your point of view not shifting to first or second person.

• Write a reminder of CONTEXT in the introduction with a source, including mechanics of title and brief summary of poem's action

Editing: SV AGR

One of the bigger grammatical issues to edit out draft to draft is subject-verb agreement (S/V AGR), which means that the subject and its verb have to match in number (singular or plural) and person (first, second, third).

Identify, then Fix

1. Underline the subject


• If the subject is a noun phrase, reduce the subject down to its proper pronoun so that you can better match it with the verb.


• The amazingly bright Johnny = He
• Johnny and Tom=They
• The sisters and I=We
• My favorite lamp=It


2. Circle the verb(s) that the subject 'acts on'


3. Ignore every other word in sentence to test for agreement! 

• Use chart on 198 for a visual aid/reminder (all regular, or typical, verbs will follow the top chart)

• Pay attention to sentences with multiple subjects 


• 'and'= plural
• 'nor' or "'or'=verb must agree with the subject closest it (200)
• Collective nouns (where a group of people is referred to as one unit) such as jury, committee, crowd, and class are to be singular forms unless the idea in the sentence shows the individuals acting separately (see 201-202)
• indefinite pronouns are treated as singular (200)
• Who, which and that=agree with the antecedent 
• antecedent sounds like 'ancestor,' and it means: the noun or pronoun that came before which the current one is supposed to refer to...
• A title of a work or company needs a singular verb, even if it sounds plural!  (The Chicago Bears is my favorite team.)
• Treat gerund phrases (when -ing verbs are used at start) as singular nouns (Beginning with today...)
• ...and other special cases

Editing  Strategies for Your Essays

• Read your paragraphs backwards or with a sheet that covers the other sentences to slow you down

• Do your editing on a printed copy first, so that you can better diagram

• Diagram each sentence for its subject (underline) and verb (circle). 

• Convert the subject to its pronoun form (
• Or, cross out (on the page or in your head) all the words but the basic subject 

• Read for agreement between pronoun and verb to test the verb's correctness

• Make sure to then write the corrections above where you find a lack of agreement. Consult your Rules for Writers for extra help where unsure. 

• If editing on the computer:

• Re-type your essay from a blank document
• REALLY DO THIS WITH at least one Major Error editing session, for the action is another way to slow down and reflect on what you wrote:

• Run-ons (both fused and comma splice) editing session
• Fragment editing session
• Comma editing session
• Verb Tense shift editing session

Using and Citing Poetry in an Essay

• The ideas about any quoting of outside sources are still relevant with poetry. You still need to lead-in to your quotes, attaching them to your own ideas with a sentence. Never drop a quote! 

• Use the line number in your in-text ( ) citation, rather than page. The line of a poem never changes! 

• Don't quote more than three lines of poetry at a time, within a sentence. Your points will be harder to understand because there will be way too much language to unpack in those lines. Plus, quoting too much takes up your thought space. 

• With "If--" you are lucky that Kipling provides clear ideas with couplets, so you will like cite couplets.

• You don't have to, nor should you want to, always quote entire lines. With poems, you can practice quoting just important images or a figures of speech within a line or lines.

• Example:  The speaker's first piece of advice includes the idiom to "keep your head" (line 1). The idiom refers to the listeners need to stay calm and focused.

• Example: A major theme of the poem includes self control, as seen in the speaker's advice to the son to "trust yourself" (3), "don't give way to hating" (7), and do not "make dreams your master" (9). Such advice continues for the rest of the poem, including in the final stanza, where the speaker reminds his son not to let neither "foes nor loving friends" (27) emotionally change the way he acts. 

• Mechanically, if you are integrating two lines of poetry into your own sentence, you need to indicate the line break with a forward slash:   .../ ...

• Example:  "The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock" beings with the command, "Let us go now, you and I, / When the clouds are spread out against the sky/ Like a patient etherized upon a table," with that image setting the poem's sombre tone (lines 1-3).

• If the first word of each line is capitalized, make sure you do so in your own quote. Here, all three lines begin with words capitalized: Let, When, Like.  Your Kipling poem will do the same! 

• If you are quoting the last line of one stanza and the first line of the next stanza in the same quote, you use a double forward slash: ...// ...

• Example: Look at the poem "Those Winter Sundays." 

• The son shows the tense childhood relationship with his father, "and slowly I would rise and dress,/ fearing the chronic angers of that house,// Speaking indifferently to him" (lines 8-10).

The Portfolio

For Thursday, 11/20, you want to have your Portfolio ready: 

• You need two Portfolio folders, which you can buy at the MC bookstore. 

• In each Portfolio folder: identical copies of your best two revised essays, as polished as you can get them.

• From: Essay 1, 2, 3 or Midterm (two copies of best two)
• CLEAN COPIES, meaning no writing on them

• Your in-class final will also be placed in each folder, so make sure you really study for that final essay.

• You want to make sure you finish the essay, or nearly finished when time is called.
• You want to make sure you edit the essay.
• You want to make sure you demonstrate a solid thesis statement, topic sentences, use of signal phrases, and a well-laid out introduction