HW for 11/30

1. Finish reading the Frost poem packet. Do your Co-leading poem, and be ready to present your ideas in front of the class.

2. Continue to work on Essay 3, which is due Wednesday, December 2, 2015.

HW for 11/25

1. Read and annotate the Robert Frost poems, especially the one you will co-lead (see #2) next Monday, 11/30.

2. Each student will be required to be a Co-leader in teaching to the class everything they can about a particular poem:

• "Out, Out--"
• Max
• Tityonna
• Anthony

• "Acquainted With The Night"
• Jay
• Genevieve
• Daijah
• Alejandra

• "Mending Wall"
• John
• Cristina
• Colby

• "Stopping By The Woods On a Snowy Evening"
• Ashley
• Lisa
• Vu

What Does Co-Leading Entail?

• Use the University of Illinois' Modern American Poetry database to help you with your reading of the poem.
• Also, read the Academy of American Poets links on Robert Frost for help.

1. Posing a question about what you think the poem's basic situation is and then being able to answer and support your answer.
2. Posting a question about the poem's largest thematic statement, and being able to answer and support your answer.
3. Discussing at least two poetic techniques that Frost uses in the poem, and providing examples.
4. Discussing the structure of the poem, including any formal qualities of the poem (in addition to #3), and providing examples of each quality.

HW for 11/23

1. Write your thesis, topic sentences, and conclusion in a Word document; then, post that to Canvas under "Peer Review 3."  We will workshop the conclusions on Monday.

2. Also, to help you out, read the blog posts:

• Paragraph Unity: Linking Strategies
• Editing Transitions
• Conclusions Like A Manifesto of Human Nature's Relationship With Mother Nature
• and the last one, which we reviewed in class: Another Way to Look At Writing Conclusions

Another Way to Look At Writing Conclusions

The last paragraph (or sometimes paragraphs, when writing much longer essays ) should reflect upon the thesis statement and its subtopics that you have addressed in your essay. 

There are other ways to view your conclusions, and viewing a conclusion in these different ways will help guide you in what else you can say beyond being repetitive. You may not address each question below each time, but here are some general ideas you may explore in your conclusion rather than simply "restating the thesis":

• What is important to the general audience/larger world about what you have argued/analyzed/defined. etc.? What knowledge do you provide us, and why is that important? 

• What is the impact of this knowledge I provide ? Who is affected, how? 

• Where does my idea fit in the larger discussion of the subject addressed in the essay? (compare or contrast with socially common views, stereotypes, and/or subjects)

• What recommendations can I make, and why, based on my thesis and other points made in the essay?

• If I were to continue discussing the topic, what are some points that I did not make that are worth exploring, and that are related to what I've already pointed out? 

• What would I like others to consider that I did not have 'time' to in this essay? (Pose questions that you haven't addressed that are relevant to what you have already written. Pose questions that are within the context of your essay--further questions that relate to your ideas.)

Another way of looking at just conclusions and the above general conclusion strategies when dealing with literary analysis:

• Here is how it is put by the University of Iowa's Writing center: "The conclusion is a good place to not only sum up the points made in the paper but to suggest the further implications of your argument.  You do not want to simply reiterate the points you have made in your introduction, thesis, or body paragraphs.  Instead, use the analyses that you have already presented to ask questions, or suggest the possible next logical step in the argument.  You can use the conclusion to draw connections between your chosen text and its genre and historical or cultural contexts.  You want to make sure that the claims you make in the conclusion are not too far-fetched or wildly out of step with the rest of your paper.  The conclusion should be the final step in the progression of your argument."

• Ask questions based on your essay points!

• Suggest next possible step in the argument!

• Draw connections between your essay subject text and other texts in the genre or same time period or cultural perspective 

• Do you know of any novel or other literature that does similar things to the novel you wrote about? Explain connections, if so.

• Do you know of texts outside literature that your novel may connect to? What are they and how do they relate? What does it say that similar things are done outside of literature?

• Culturally, does your text seem to say something about some the time period the author is writing about? Does the novel relate to some historical event outside of the book?  

• Does the text (or, do the texts) do something special within the genre that relates to your essay argument?  (For instance, our book has some differences between it an a normal novel, right? What could be said about those differences?)

Conclusions Like A Manifesto of Human Nature's Relationship With Mother Nature

First, let's take a quick look at one famous manifesto--the Unabomber's Manifesto!

What are five larger ideas about man's views towards nature that are expressed by each author? Write these out as five commandments.  (i.e.  London's Laws; O'Brien's Laws)

• To inspire you, here are some questions that may provide you with those five commandments:

• What problem with man or with nature does each speaker or narrator seem to have?

• What type of culture is each author fighting against or with?  

• How does each speaker or narrator personify nature?

• What does each story or poem seem to value most about the world, based on what--or shown through what or who?

Editing Transitions: What to think about; what to edit?

Sentences should logically follow one another, but often the writer will need to create the right relationship between words through transitional phrases.

Within a paragraph, sentence to sentence:

• Any place you shift time
• Any place you shift from point to reason
• Any place you shift from reason to example
• Any place you want to subordinate a sentence's point to another
• Any place you want to coordinate a sentence's point to another
• Any place you are leading in to an example
• Any place you are leading out of an example
• At the end of every paragraph and/or...
• At the start of every paragraph

Paragraph to Paragraph:

• Do you need a "hinge" or a "bridge"?

• Are you shifting to a new point on the same subject (same character, same author, same element, ...)

• Are you shifting to a new subject of sentences (new character, new author, new element)

• How did you set up your idea in the introduction?

How to edit:

• Read each sentence in pairs to test clarity or relationship, and write the relationship (time, example, contrast, etc.) in the gap above each pair.

• Read sentence one and sentence two...do they have a clear logical connection stated?

• Then, read sentence two and sentence three...do they have a clear logical connection?

• Paragraph to paragraph: read the end and start back to back paragraphs...

Paragraph Unity: Linking Strategies

Techniques to String Sentences Together...

• Have a topic sentence, of course! (In all college essays, this will be a duh! strategy)
• Here are 2 ways to create greater sentence-to-sentence clarity by repeating or restating key words & word groups:

• Subject: ______?
• Object: ______?

1.      Maintain the same subject in the next sentence.  

• Klein writes that, “The cost of youth unemployment is not only financial, but also emotional” (A25). Klein’s argument may not expand on the kind of emotional tolls not having a job can cause, but … 

2.      Turn the object of the previous sentence into the subject of the next sentence. 

• Example: Klein writes that, “The cost of youth unemployment is not only financial, but also emotional” (A25). The emotional cost of unemployment that Klein references could include the creation of a high number of severely depressed citizens who devalue of education.  The high number of depression is a likely outcome for those largely taught that things such as one’s job define individual worth. If one has no job for which to define their worth …

Other Linking Strategies

•  Avoid standalone pronouns (especially weak to start sentences): “This, That, These, Those, It”

• Only use if you attach these pronouns to modifiers, such as “these pronouns” or “These phrases…”, or “This belief…,” or “Those reasons for…”  The extra, more specific word or phrase can clarify what the “these” or “this” or “those” or “that” is referring to from the last sentence!

• Avoid “It” altogether. It=Ebay!!!  Besides harming coherence of a paragraph, careless writers often do the following without being critical of his or her language:

• the word "it" as subject often causes a writer to digress from original subject in the sentences that follow

• the word "it" is used in one sentence to mean two different things (very confusing--writer is lazy and implying meaning with such language)

• the word "it" is used in one paragraph to mean two more more things (subjects).

• "it" can refer to either the subject OR the object of the previous sentence, which is bad, bad, bad. All of us as writers need pronouns to have a clear reference (a clear antecedent).

• Use Transitional Devices (Seagull, 23-25):  words and phrases whose specific function in the sentence is to link one sentence (or independent clause/complete thought) to the last, or to the next one.  Such words give the reader “location” or “position” of how to read a sentence. Study the list on Purdue’s OWL site and use these transitional devices every time you write.