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

Poetic Sound

• Rhythm and/or meter are huge factors. If writing in a form, syllables and stress of syllables becomes important. If writing free verse, sounds become even more important. “Sounds play in the same ballpark, on the same team.”

• Meter –pattern of stress(short)/unstress (long) syllables. Stressed syllables=accentuation 
• Syllabic verse – each line having a certain # of syllables
• Alliteration – repetition of sound in first syllable of words (Sufferin’ succotash!)
• Assonance – internal vowel sound repeated
• Consonance – internal consonant sound repeated… (The batters teeth chatter… / the pitcher switches)
• Anaphora – repetition of word/phrase at beginning of lines (Today, … / Today, … / Today, …)
• Epiphora – repetition of the last word/phrase of lines 

• The Rudy Giuliani Game
• Clowns cry on 9/11
• Firefighters burn on 9/11
• Flags fly after 9/11

Editing Mechanics: Go through the list with Rules for Writers

Use the list below to edit different issues that arise in your drafts. You want to format and present your Portfolio essays nicely, with none of these easily fixable (VERY EASY) edits. Go through them individually in each of your essays.


1. Don't use "etc." and other Latin abbreviations (343) because they are tonally too casual.

2. Acronyms: only used widely-known acronyms. As RR notes, if you are using a less unfamiliar acronym you need to introduce the whole title first, with the acronym in parentheses.

• Bourdain studied at the Culinary Institute of America (CIA), the premier cooking school in the USA.  [See what I did there?!?}

3. Salutations can be used with proper names, when logical. 

• Unless the character goes by "Miss Sophie," you would call her Sophie--never Ms. Sophie.  However, Mrs. Rasmussen is also Anna Rasmussen--never Missus Rasmussen.

4. With numbers, the general rule is to spell out all numbers one-hundred and below. Along with rule four, you also have rule five dealing with numbers:

5. If a number starts off a sentence, write out that number. Fourteen-hundred and seventy-five is a large number, isn't it?

6. Stay numerically consistent. If you make the minor error of stating 3 out of four dentists agree, you should really be arguing that 3 out of 4 dentists agree. 

7.  As the book notes, numbers used as part of modifying phrases can be in number form, not spelled out.

• He hired an editor to get the 500-pound monkey off his back. The editor, though, was not five-hundred pounds, nor a monkey.

8. To italicize, or not to italicize, that is A question. However, you should never have to make it THE question.

•  Longer, "complete" texts such as books, albums, TV shows, movies, plays, magazines, newspapers, and even websites should be italicized. 

• However, the Bible and the Constitution are not italicized (348). Legal document titles are never italicized. 

9. Also, do not italicize (or bold, or underline) the title of your own essay. Use capitalization rules, instead.

10. Go beyond spellcheck. Use spellcheck, but don't rely on it. Spellcheck doesn't catch homonyms (there, their, there're | it it's | to two too | here hear!)

11.  Plurals versus (not verses) Possessives.  The apostrophe (') is used for ownership. You cannot tack on an -s or -es to a word to make that word own the next word. 

• What do I do with Jerry's throw [rug]? Do all Jerrys throw left-handed?

12. Capitalize proper nouns, like character names. Real people names. Business names. Titles of sources.

• There is a difference between giving Johnny cash and giving Johnny Cash away.

13. Commonly misspelled words: look for them versus assuming you have tight verses. Check 356-57 in RR, but also go to a dictionary for words you are unsure of.

14. Hyphens are not dashes. Hyphens are used with compound words, between prefixes and suffixes (360). 

15. Hyphens are also important to use when you are formatting your essay. If there is too much white space at the end of a line and you have long word, try to split that word up at a natural syllabic break to avoid the empty, or too short, line.

HW for Tuesday

1. Bring in CLEAN, REVISED AND EDITED Essays 1, 2 and Midterm. If you come to class having done nothing but what we have worked on in class, with essays that have your professor's critique all over it, then you are setting yourself up for failing the class.

Your job over this weekend is to re-write and edit those essays that you feel will help you get out of Developmental English and into credit level courses. Coming to class with essays that you have not touched, looked at, or thought much about just indicates something about where you are at in "getting it."

I have given you multiple activities and ideas for how to work on your language. The hard part is yours to work out: putting in the difficult thinking and working on your essay's language, because you must realize that what you have done so far is simply not good enough to pass a credit-level class.


Work on a few of these things, separately, daily, between now and Tuesday:

1. Adding context to your introductions. Giving proper background information and details. Who is your audience, what do they need to know about your subject? What is the purpose of the essay, and what points am I making to support and prove that purpose?

2. Edit run ons

3. Edit comma errors

4. Edit your sentences for concision

5. Edit fragments

6. Edit mechanics

7. Edit agreement issues: subject verb, tense, point of view

8. Content revision/addition: Work on adding details and descriptions to examples

9. Work on Emphasizing Key Ideas with coordination and subordination

10. Edit concision of sentences.

11. Get a dictionary out, a thesaurus, and build up your individual essay word banks. Work on going through essays, identifying repeated words and phrases, and work on new forms of expressions--synonyms!

Revising Essays To Emphasize Key Ideas

Open up the hood to your essays and look at the language engine. How strong are your main ideas, how much coordination and subordination and paralleling and ordering have you taken to your main points? No matter. Even if you have spent a lot of time on those ideas, you can spend a bit more time going through your essays and looking for places to reorder and rewrite sentences to make sure your ideas are EMPHASIZED.

1. Do one of two strategies for your already revised essays:

• Bold all of your most important sentences, the thesis claim and topic sentences. 

• OR, sketch outline those same sentences on a clean sheet of paper, with space in between each sentence so that you can work on writing the sentence over using different techniques.

2. Look at concision once again, after revising the sentences. Again, the biggest thing that different strategies do is making us continuously inspect our language and try to better what we've already written--in content and in grammar.

Editing: Parallels and How They Work For Us When We Get Them To Work

Parallel Structure (Rules for Writers, 116-119)

As the OWL website clarifies, a parallelism is when you have a list or multiple ideas that are presented in the same pattern, same basic syntactical structure.

Here are a few things to consider about your sentences that have lists (or could use a list) or that present multiple ideas:

• verb forms should match (especially in a list)
• clauses should have matching word patterns
• correlative expressions also need to be edited (check the link)

Furthermore, Towson University up in Baltimore has a great breakdown for how to identify and work on parallel structure. 

How can knowing and working on parallel structure help me out?!?

• A strong parallel made within a thesis statement can outline your entire essay body.

• Besides using the structure for thesis statements, the technique is good to use for:

•  outlining multiple reasons or examples within a body paragraph
• reiterating in a conclusion the points made in an essay (especially if you didn't use the same structure in the introduction/thesis)

• Example 1: Being an effective boss includes keeping cool and  solving in-house problems when there are issues between employees.

• Example 2: One's spirituality can be defined through religious beliefs, expressed through artistic views, and nurtured through daily interactions.

• Notice how the verbs match in form, and the objects have the same pattern

• Example 3: Grams' favorite arugula farro rissto can be made in three easy stages: dicing up the tomato and herbs, cooking the farro down in broth, and adding arugula and lemon mixture before serving.  (Each of these stages has steps within to cover, and each stage represents a body paragraph.)

Grammar Aside, How Does Effective Parallelism Impact My Writing?

• You can organize your main idea(s) in a sentence list that gives you directions for each paragraph to follow. Organization!!!

• You can order ideas in a list that emphasizes a certain priority to the list. Which idea is most important or strongest?

• As RR shows in Chapter 14, when you order sentences and you order parallel actions/images, that order impacts understanding. 

"If" and When We Take the Final

For your final, you are going to write an essay centered around the Rudyard Kipling Poem "If--." Over the next few classes, we will break the poem down from different angles, looking at different poetry elements, as well as discussing the applicable actions and themes presented in the poem.


 Before I go through elements with you, let's read "Reading Poems: 20 Strategies" as class.

Layers of Poetry | Word Choice

1. Denotation: the dictionary meaning a word holds; its surface meaning

2. Connotation: extra meaning a word carries, or “suggests”; the meaning may be cultural, thematically related to rest of poem’s content. Also, a word or phrase may depend on reader understanding alternate meanings in dictionary, sound-relations to other words (insure/ensure), context of usage, & other credible connections of the words to the rest of the text. 

• Writers use many figures of speech: they rely on a reader getting (or working to understand) the connotative values of their word choice.   (Look these terms up for further comprehension!)

• Imagery: visual thing, concrete, like a picture or sculpture--you can see thing being described (whether in action or stationary). Images can be literally within the poem or the speaker's own figure of speech (see this definition)
• 
  
• Symbol: an image that is both the literal and figurative thing.
• An eagle in a poem is an eagle, but its usage may also represent other things, like 
• 
  
• Idiom: an expression whose meaning doesn't logically apply to its parts of speech, but has come to have a particular usage.

• "not predictable from the usual meanings of its constituent elements, as kick the bucket or hangone's head, or from the general grammatical rules of a language, asthe table round for the round table, and that is not a constituent of a larger expression of like characteristics." (Dictionary.com)

• Personification: giving human qualities to non-human things, such as animals or inanimate objects.
• 
  
• Allusions: words in a piece that refer to people, places, historical events, literary works, works of art, etc.  For instance, what may a "bald eagle" refer to?
• 
  
• Metaphor: comparing a thing to another thing that it is normally unassociated with. Key to seeing: "____ is ______."
• 
  
• Similes: comparing specific qualities of a thing to an unlike thing, using "like" or "as."

• Hyperbole: a gross exaggeration to make a point (see "To His Coy Mistress").
• 
  
• & many more
• 
  

3. Precision versus Accuracy: Why a Write Chooses Words From Synonyms

• Accurate word=meets denotative meaning
• Precise word= connotations, and also situational à slice: knife, not slice: ax    (If word doesn’t fit the situation in a published piece – we should look into why they’ve used an imprecise word.)

• Writers, especially many poets, seek out the best word possible, based on a word’s accuracy and precision. 
• *Precision may also be based off of rhyme scheme, too. 
• Or off of other sound qualities, which we will cover next week. 

HW for Thursday, 11/6

Read Chapter 14 of Rules for Writers. Read and answer, too, the Breaking Down Metaphor handout available in the files section of our MyMC course page. 

Continue working on your concision issues in your Essays 1, 2 and Midterm. 

Editing: Working on Concision & Emphasizing Idea

Go through your Midterm Essay--and if you don't have it, then choose one of your other Essays 1, 2 or, as a last resort, 3--and work on improving each sentence with:

1. Concise in phrases and words (cutting out wordiness)

2. Most effective ordering of ideas (coordination and subordination)


This means you better:

1. Start with one paragraph. Separate each sentence from its paragraph form. List them like lines in a poem:

Sentence one on its own line

Sentence two on its own line

Sentence three on its own line

2. Use the concision handout to look for different wordiness issues.

3. Additionally, after fixing each sentence separately, work on combining sentences IF two sentences are in need of a clearer relationship.

• Use the coordination and subordination techniques/fixing run-on techniques. Chapter 14 in Rules for Writers demonstrates ways for reorganizing sentences to emphasize key eyes, which further helps with concision. 

HW for Tuesday, Nov. 4:

1. Complete Essay 3 and hand in your typed draft. Seriously, do it. Stop being late!

• Attach all pre-writing strategies to the back of the draft (essay on top).

2. For your Midterm revision: continue reading We, the Drowned while using the Organizing Character chart for your own idea organization. 

3. Read Rules for Writers chapter 16 on Wordy Sentence (156-161). We will review a handout on Tuesday.

Essay 3: Outline One Body Paragraph, Then...

Again, before trying to answer everything in essay or in paragraphs, focus on each smaller part that an outline has. In other words, FOLLOW DIRECTIONS and don't jump ahead.


Open up a new Word Document. Put your name at the top left hand side. Label this Essay 3 Body Paragraph Outline. Then go step by step in answering each of the questions. (Don't waste time rewriting these questions, just place the answers in your outline.)


II.  Body Paragraphs

A. Topic Sentence Claim (answer the question to get the claim):  What is one illogical belief/stereotype against your subject group, and what is the biggest reason the belief is illogical?  [use sentence combining techniques to answer both what and why]

Answer:



1. What is further reason that develops from, or relates to, that main reason? (answer in one sentence)

Answer:

• Who/what is an example that fits your reason? Explain how the example fits.
• Answer:

2. What is another reason that your topic sentence claim is valid? (answer in one sentence)

Answer:

• Who/what is an example that fits your reason? Explain how the example fits.
• Answer:

Reverse Outline

Pull out the thesis statement and subtopics from your from your Midterm or Midterm revised introduction.

I.  Introduction:

A. Thesis Statement:

1. Subtopic claim 1:

2. Subtopic claim 2:

3. Subtopic claim 3:


After you outline these points, you are going to work on making them more coherent, more specific, more concise, and more insightful. We are going to critique these as a class, on the overhead, so that we can go through different, directly relevant rhetorical strategies in order to improve these sentences (ideas) based on their individual issues.

Driving Example

Who is a person or a group who represents your issue as a positive role model? What traits and actions make them a great, contradicting example to a negative stereotype (and which negative stereotype)?

Spend 30 minutes brainstorming (word bank?), then draft a descriptive example that can be included in your Essay 3 next draft.

Descriptive Value:

For both Essay 3 and for any revision done on the Midterm, as well as any essay writing you ever do(!!!), you may want to help out the vocabulary of your piece by creating TOPICAL WORD BANKS.

Topical Word Banks, as I call them, are lists of relevant terms you brainstorm, Google (by googling the topic), pull from notes/professors and textbooks that directly relate to the topic and your possible examples to be used.

adjectives
adverbs
nouns
verbs


For instance, in Essay 3, in dealing with SOLVING a PREJUDICE, those two words inspire the start a vocabulary:


oppression, oppressive, misogynist, patriarchal, systemic, social mobility, peaceful protest, Twitter, organize, stage, sit in, privilege, access, historical, agenda, racism, ideology, ideal, cynicism, implicit, explicit, denigrate, exult, equity, equality, justice, humane, decency, moral, immoral, enduring, patient, judgment, better, ...

Aristotle's Appeals

Ethos (ethics/people)

• Making an appeal using one's own credibility/character
• Using things about yourself (personal history, age, race, religion) to make an argument

How to attempt:

• Describe what you think are moral or positive characteristics and actions of a specific person/group of people if you want to show their goodness or authority.

• Describe immoral actions and negative characteristics and actions of a person/group of people if you want to put them in a 'bad light' or have them lose authority.

Logos (logic/facts)

• Making an appeal using your logic, your reasoning skills.

How to attempt:

• Cite facts. Basic facts of life that can found anywhere, or specific facts that give a view of the situation. 
• Explain what your facts mean. Interpret them for your audience. Never let a fact speak for itself! Facts can be distorted into different truths.

Pathos (apathy/empathy/sympathy/feelings)

• Making an appeal to the readers' emotions. 

How to attempt:

• Describe an event that represents an idea to you, and try to describe the actions and details that help build a particular emotion. 
• Using figures of speech like hyperbole (gross exaggeration), anaphora (repeat an important phrase for emphasis), and metaphor may be helpful.
• Try to use words to draw an image. 
• Use dialogue or quotes that represent things said that illicit emotion. 
• Pose questions that illicit an emotion.
• Huge generalizations and huge consequences. Formulate these in a way that comes off syntactically as possibilities. 
• Make sure something or someone is impacted by somebody else's actions, but make sure that you specify who each someone is!

Kairos

• Using time and setting to give context to your argument! What's going on in the world, recently, currently, historically, that supports your points?

How to attempt:

• Write about an event and its known impacts...
• Write a point about the historical aspects of the event--is what is going on today a reoccurrence?
• or, talk about an event and what the results could be if the world doesn't act (and act the way you urge them to!).

***Many times, we mix and match our appeals, and that is fine and dandy. It's most important that you are very conscious about trying to appeal to your audience, thinking of your audience and using language to affect them. 

Writing Gestures in Argument/Persuasive Essays

ATactful, Courteous Language:

• Avoid large, sweeping statements (Everyone, Nobody, All, . . .)
• Avoid boxing in you, your readership, or those with differing viewpoints into overly general teams/categories.
• Avoid personal attacks (ad hominem) or bold judgments of anyone you are speaking about!

• However, one might consider a persuasive way of describing the action of a person/group in regards to TONE
• How do academics like bell hooks  get away with using profanity and obscenity, then? Because they are analyzing that language! One cannot write about an ugly phrase if one doesn't identify the phrase, right? 

Point Out Common Ground: if there is something within the larger argument that you agree with, it is effective to make reader see your open-mindedness.  

• Discussing in your argument where you agree with others will logically be followed by your contrasting interpretation of what sides agree upon.

• Quick Brainstorming:  Write down a couple of ideas that you may share with "the opposition." Specify who this person/group is...

Acknowledge Differing Viewpoints: start with the different viewpoint and use a change in direction transitional word/phrase (however, while, although, in contrast, …) and then go into your viewpoint.

• You may also start with the proper transitional phrase and differing viewpoint, insert the comma at the end of that point, and then go into your viewpoint

Make Reader Aware of the Merits of Differing Viewpoint: beyond just stating different views, adding some of the positives of that other view will enable you to compare and contrast the positives of the other side with the positives of your side! 

Quick Brainstorming:  Write down what you feel is "good" or "right" about "the opposition's" point of views.

Rebut Differing Viewpoints (even published critics/authorities): Many large issues have common arguments made for either side. After acknowledging a differing view, make arguments for why the view is less valid than your own.

• Quick Brainstorming:  Write down what you think "the opposition" is missing or ignoring in their own point(s). 

Confronting Society: Making Provocative Arguments

First, let's read "bell hooks Was Bored by 'Anaconda'" from New York Magazine and discuss just how audacious and yet academically permissible the language can be!  (Warning: profanity and highly sexual language is used--adults only, please)

Finish reading this article and breaking down bell hooks' argument.

• Summarize her main point about sexuality and feminism. 

HW for Tuesday, 10/14:

As far as in-class work, we will be focusing on preparation for and taking of the Midterm over the next week. Make sure to clarify with Professor A. when your class is taking the Midterm if you are absent! 

1. Read up to page 375 in We, the Drowned. As you read, use the following strategies below to help guide your thinking and preparation for the Midterm.

 What are two cultural topics that you find discussed within the setting of Marstal? Which characters are involved, and what are the strongest passages that support your understanding of Marstal?

• Define the general Marstal worldview on each topic. 

• Also, define individual mindsets of Marstallers who discuss these topics. 

Cultural Analysis: Gender Roles as Example

There is a very interesting map on the Washington Post website that gives a brief historical, worldly perspective of Gender. 

How can such a map help your critical thinking about gender, and thus, about understanding more about various world views? 

• What are gender roles? 

• A gender role is a theoretical construct in the social sciences and humanities that refers to a set of social and behavioral norms that, within a specific culture, are widely considered to be socially appropriate for individuals of a specific sex. Socially accepted gender roles differ widely between different cultures. Proponents of gender role theory assert that observed gender differences in behavior and personality characteristics are, at least in part, socially constructed, and therefore, the product of socialization experiences; this contrasts with other models of gender that assert that gender differences are "essential" to biological sex. Gender differences exist in almost all societies. With differences in the norms adopted, this suggests that gender differences are, at least partly, influenced by culture.^[1]

Cultural Analysis of Marstal: gender roles as a subtopic of "way of life"

• What are different general roles in Marstal, and where are those roles constructed--based on the textual evidence? (Such a question is multilayered, of course)

Cultural Analysis of Marstal: other subtopics of "way of life"

• What are other cultural topics that are discussed within the novel? (We have started to discuss culture, already, in a more probative light.)