HW for Tuesday, 9/2

Here are questions that we will look to discuss as a class on Tuesday. Make sure to answer them in your notebooks (including having pages cited that reflect your answers)

1. What are all the things you learn about Laurids Madsen in the first 4 pages of the novel?

2. What type of tone/mood does the narrator take in describing to you the people and the events in the novel? What are some phrases or sentences that stick out to you in providing you with tone?

3. When the war starts in 1848, how are the townspeople of Marstal first portrayed in pages 4-9? In other words, how ready were they for war and what do their actions make you think?

4. To continue with #3, once war broke out "in earnest," what types of mindset do the men of Marstal have towards the war--towards its purpose? What do their reactions and words make you think about war?  (pages 9-14 and beyond)

Also, besides being prepared to answer these questions:

• Highlight and be ready to discuss five sentences that show you the author is trying to say something larger about humanity--about human experiences. 

Reading Builds Empathy (and Intellect) | Diagnostic

Literary fiction, by contrast, focuses more on the psychology of characters and their relationships. “Often those characters’ minds are depicted vaguely, without many details, and we’re forced to fill in the gaps to understand their intentions and motivations,” Kidd says. This genre prompts the reader to imagine the characters’ introspective dialogues. This psychological awareness carries over into the real world, which is full of complicated individuals whose inner lives are usually difficult to fathom. Although literary fiction tends to be more realistic than popular fiction, the characters disrupt reader expectations, undermining prejudices and stereotypes. They support and teach us values about social behavior, such as the importance of understanding those who are different from ourselves.

The results suggest that reading fiction is a valuable socializing influence.

Diagnostic Prompt: For the next 30 minutes, respond to this prompt:

What is a specific book, story, poem that has helped you develop some understanding of humanity? If not a book, story, or poem—what is an event in your life that helped you changed the way you look at people?  What was it you came to understand? (Try to make a topic sentence that combines both the subject and what you learned from it)  

Active Reading Skills

All smart, perceptive, thoughtful writers take their time to study and dissect what they're reading. In short, writers learn to write well by reading how other writers construct sentences, ideas, examples, and more:

·       One must play close attention to, pose questions, and break down any text that comes one’s way!

·       How to be an active reader:

o   Highlighters can be good friends. (Consider color-coding)

o   Dictionaries can be your BFF, and help you build your vocab…"COLLECT" those words you are not sure of as you read.

o   Wikipedia is a frenemy!  (You have to be careful around Wiki, as Wiki can be very wicked. Yes, this is really goofy, but it’s a mnemonic device.)

o   Mnemonic devices: memory techniques, including use of “acronyms” (FBI or CIA or D.A.R.E.) and personal “associate value” such as “____sounds like _____” or using rhyme or creating a little song or poem…

o   Take Notes in a notebook as you read… and/or…

o   Use the margins of a text | all available white space of a page

§  Create a running commentary of emotions

§  Pose questions

§  Pull out the main concept / restate main word from a paragraph

§  Note where ideas shift at beginnings of new paragraphs (chart the author’s "progression of thesis"!)

o   Re-title the piece or its sections for your own reflective understanding

o   At end of reading text (in white space at end, or on separate sheet of paper):

§  What is the major plot point? (good in literature to ask)

§  What was the major example used?

§  What are large points that you took from your first read?

§  . . . other ideas YOU find relevant to notate.

Writing a Unified Paragraph: PRE structure model

Quite relevant to our class lecture today, I saw this piece on the similarities in writing and running on-line for anyone wanting to make a further reconnection between the two....

http://home.europa.com/~bence/pre/

The above picture is Steve Prefontaine, a world-class runner who died too young. His nickname is Pre. Look at how focused his eyes are in this picture and remember those eyes when you remember our focusing technique, PRE.

http://www.justrunners.com/Steve%20Prefontaine%20Poster.htm

http://en.nkfu.com/steve-prefontaine-quotes/

PRE teaches us that to be the best one must put their best effort into all that they do. PRE can also teach us, again, how to write a unified body paragraph. 

Point: start each paragraph off with a sentence (we call it that Topic Sentence) that states who/what the paragraph is about--your subject--and what you have to say about that subject in that paragraph.

Reason: follow up your Topic Sentence with some logical reasons for why you believe your point is true.

Example: follow up your reasons with specific examples that support your point and reasons. You can also add a second E to Example, and that would be Explain! Make sure that when you illustrate your example that you also make sure to explain how it connects back to your Topic Sentence.

Example:  Here is the article we read for today: "In the Beginning," and below are model PRE body paragraphs that incorporate some example facts from the article and the quotes above. These body paragraphs make basic summary points about "how Prefontaine learned to be successful, according to the article." (We will discuss the different structure of Introductions and Conclusions over the coming semesters.)

       Steve Prefontaine, who held many American records in distance running, is a great example of how much effort plays a role in having success in life--even during high school years. Prefontaine started off as one of the weaker runners on his high school team before setting goals to become a national record holder by his senior year.  In the article "In the Beginning," Michael Musca discusses how Prefontaine could not break five minutes in the mile his freshman year of high school, and as a sophomore failed to qualify for state. However, by his junior year in 1968, he went undefeated and won the Oregon state cross country meet in. Musca writes that "From this point forward, the winter of 1968, young Pre embarked on McClure’s 30-week program, which he hoped would yield the time goals and a state championship in the two-mile" (Musca). Prefontaine would run four to eight miles a day while working multiple jobs. His setting goals and following them is what lead to his success during those years.

       Those high school years are a small example of showing how setting goals matters; Prefontaine also had the work ethic and mindset to accomplish his goals. Steve Prefontaine is widely known as the ultimate competitor. He fulfilled his goals by training extremely hard and by maintaining an aggressive mindset that he would maintain for the rest of his life. There is no better evidence than Pre's own words: "To give anything less than your best is to sacrifice the gift" (Just Runners). These are the words of a competitor, someone who does not settle for finishing a task. Another quote of Prefontaine is "I'm going to work so that it's a pure guts race at the end, and if it is, then I am the only one who can win it" (NKFU). He confidently believes that nobody can beat him if he works as hard as he can.

        Prefontaine's successes came from also following a clear plan of actions to take to accomplish his goals. Pre's high school coach, Walt McClure, helped lay out a training program so that Prefontaine could set the records and live up to his goals. McClure set Pre up on a 30-week training regiment in the winter of 1968 that helped Pre win state in the two-miler that Spring. Prefontaine continued to run at least four miles a day during that following summer, even as he worked multiple jobs to help his struggling family (Musca). Prefontaine won the two miler his senior year in a national record of 8:41.5 (Musca), which shows how much one can improve in something if they are really dedicated to their own success. 

       Prefontaine was never known as a fast runner, but his effort on those days off helped propel him towards national success at an early age.  ...

Reading HW for 8/28

Click on this link to read the article "In the Beginning" (you may have to skip the ad that shows up in the link) prior to class on Thursday. Give yourself at least 30-40 minutes to read and take notes on Prefontaine's character.

• This article is important to our very first writing assignment (graded), and also inspires our first writing strategy*. 

• *This first writing strategy is something we come back to our entire semester together (I use the language from this lesson consistently as we critique our essay writing)

Blog Intro

This blog, http://wethedrowned.blogspot.com (title of our novel), will be a valuable resource for our EN002 course. Here are a couple of the things I use blogs for:

• Lecture Notes: Most of my lecture notes are directly imbedded within the Writing Strategies and Writing Activities (see below) posted to the blog. This means that you can spend more time asking questions and creating your own set of personal notes from the posts that we review that day. Additionally, a lot (and I do mean a lot) of time expanding on what is posted; quite often our discussion of writing will lead to new examples discussed, new ideas, and sometimes clearer ways than the post may give without the context we provide together.

• Writing Strategies and Writing Activities: To reduce the use of paper, I often use the blog for in-class activities. Sometimes I will post the same activities has I provide as hard copies. On the day we are working on a particular reading or writing, I tend to post a Writing Strategy (or more) that we can use in attacking the kind of writing we are currently doing. I also tend to follow up outlining the Writing Strategy with Writing Activities, which are prompts that ask you to practice the Strategy just gone over. I may also use the terms Pre-writing Strategy and Pre-writing Activity, depending on the mood I am in!!! 

• Homework Reminders: I do NOT always post reminders, but I do like to use this blog for doing so about ten times during the semester. I will especially use the blog to remind you of additional homework from that in the syllabus' weekly schedule.

• Schedule Changes: If we have a drastic change in the reading / essay due date, I may post it here along with informing the class during our scheduled meeting times.

• Helpful Grammar and Class Reading: When a topic is relevant, I tend to post extra places for you to go and use outside of what we do in class. I will post links from places such as Purdue University's OWL website when we work on particular rhetorical issues -- such as Thesis Statements or Misplaced Modifiers. These extra places are great places to get more info on topics related to your improvement as a writer.  Also, if I find an article that supplements our in-class readings and discussions, I may post the link along with an explanation of what we can do with the reading!

• Links: On the right hand side of this blog will be useful links (updated as I find relevant) that you may go and read on your own in your personal pursuit of becoming a more well-rounded citizen. In the least, I like to create links to important, CREDIBLE periodicals that many academics either routinely read or go to when they are doing the first legs of research! I also like to include links to good grammar (like OWL) and research-citation (like Diana Hacker's) guides, and to places to find good literature and well-written pieces on topical issues (the Virginia Quarterly, aka: VQR).