Dialoguing

After a brief question & answer regarding your descriptive essays -- remember the deadline is Monday at 12: 45 p.m. -- we finished the last three vocabulary words of unit 2/3. The mini verbal quiz over those 10 words will be on Monday. Resuming activity, we looked at common verb issues with subject verb agreement and split infinitives. To add in something new, we discussed the five elements of narrative writing: theme, imagery, character, time, and dialogue. And with that, we started our dialogue activity, in which you are to create a dialogue with other "character" without directly revealing your age or gender. We shall continue on Monday...

Verbage

While it may seem like an insignificant part of the speech hierarchy, verbs create tone, specificity, and descriptive elements in writing. As noted in class, "to be" verbs engender passivity and reflect less mature writing. By using more engaging verbage, you writing takes on a distinct level. For instance, the difference between marched and trudged indicates the mood of the characters. When writing, always pay attention to your verbs.

For the descriptive writing assessment, you will complete a final draft of your family description. The deadline for this assignment = Monday @ 2:40 p.m. Hard copy only. If absent for the day's entirety, send/share your essay by the deadline and bring in a hard copy the next day.

Nounage

Our beginning was in the field of the vernacular and adding four vocabulary words to your mature diction. Our middle was reviewing noun rule issues including capitalization, plurals, and possessives. Remember, apostrophe usage or lack thereof may cause massive distractions in your writing. Apostrophes are for possessives and contractions; these are not used for plural nouns (desk's) or verbs (raise's). Our ending was focused on descriptive body paragraphs, the structure, and the accumulation of details that create a full picture of a person. Remember, similes, metaphors, personification, alliteration, and other forms of figurative language assist in creating a memorable description. That tea kettle analogy is still my favorite!

During tomorrow's class, we will work on concluding paragraphs and verb usage.

Time for Essays!

After working on e-mails, summaries, and descriptive work, we are graduating to full blown essay writing for the remainder of the course. First up is the mighty introduction, a paragraph with a great deal of responsibility on its shoulders. An introduction requires a hook to engage the audience, to set your essay apart from other writings, and to exhibit your writing prowess. Once the hook is in place, you need a transitional element -- phrase, sentence, multiple sentences -- to set up the ending better known as a thesis statement. A thesis may be a map (look - here are my three body paragraph topics in order) or an overall statement that will be clarified throughout the essay. At the end of class, you began the process of composing an introduction for a family-based essay.

Other items of note were copying down the next 10 vocabulary words, which we will start tomorrow, and completing our grammar prep. We will start rules and practices tomorrow -- with nouns.

Mystery Description

Today began with a review of vocabulary -- you will have a pen and paper quiz tomorrow.

After partner reading and discussion of your subjective/objective paragraphs, you wrote a description of a celebrity without revealing his/her name. For the most part, your classmates did very well with guessing the celebrity.

For homework, you have a few items to do:
1. Review for quiz
2. Prep grammar terms
3. Select 3 relatives and write a descriptive paragraph for each one. The purpose is to describe your relative -- physicality, behavior, and so on -- to an audience without any ethos on your family.

Libraries & Words

Continuing forward with our descriptive work...

We completed our vocab experts for this round, which means that we will review all 22 words during our next class session and have a quiz over such the following day.

We select 4 highlighters (each representing a sense - sight, hear, touch, smell) and highlighted the sensory imagery in our library paragraph(s). From class consensus, sight was the overwhelming sense utilized throughout the writing. As a result, you provided examples from touch (the chill of the room, the feel of the uneven stacks of books, the plants, the tables), smell (moldering paper, food from the kitchenette), and hear (keyboards, pencils, talking, the tree branches hitting the window). Make sure to keep all of your descriptive writings as I will collect these as a mini descriptive portfolio at the end of the unit.

We read "Words Left Unspoken" by Leah Hager Cohen. This essay is online. If absent, use the questions given to you for the "Ground Zero" essay and answer these on paper for participation points.

You were given the grammar boot camp preparations handout - information due Friday - to start our grammar rules review and utilization in the upcoming weeks.

For next class, you are to select an object that has meaning to you --- no cellphones or pets --- and write one paragraph objectively describing the object and write one paragraph subjectively describing the object.

Description Continues

As we continue with description, we are emphasizing imagery, mood, subjective and objective details, and purpose. To further this, we began class by describing Miranda, a painting by John William Waterhouse. From our samples, you noted that specific adjectives and emphasis of details created a written version of this painting.

Continuing class, we added four more vocabulary words to our vernacular and participated in a class discussion. Last, we visited the library to write down all the sensory details. For homework, you will write 1 -2 paragraph description utilizing sensory details to depict the library to a person who has never visited the establishment.

Summary extra credit will be due no later than Friday, January 22. Extra credit will not be available at the end of the course.

Summarizing

Tuesday's class revolved, or at least was supposed to revolve before internet service failed, around the summary assessment, i.e. the perfect summary that incorporates the seven qualities of summation and provides strong mechanics. 

Summary Assessment Steps:

1. Head to Inside Higher Ed, a compilation of articles, blogs, and information regarding collegiate issues : https://www.insidehighered.com/

2. Select an article from the website that you would like to read and use for your summary assessment. The article should be at least 5 paragraphs. Each student will need a different essay.If you were absent, you will need to select an essay that has not been utilized by another student.

 These are the essays already selected that absent students will not be able to select:

• Poverty & Merit
• Historians as Futurists
• A Sense of Duty: Campus Safety & Veteran Students
• Do Students with Guns Save Lives?
• Bias Against Female Instructors
• Debate Over Debt
• Graded on Looks
• The Adjunct: Solution
• Putting Foreign Student Firsts

3. Write the perfect summary -- either as a Google document to share or a typed/handwritten hard copy. This is due by 10:45 a.m. on Wednesday. Absent students have an additional 24 hours -- Thursday at 10:45 a.m. to sign up for the essay and turn in by this deadline.

To end class was the vocab quiz covering the first 10 words. If absent, you will need to make an appointment before or after school to make up the quiz. We also copied down the next 11 words, which we will start on Wednesday. 

More Summation

A little enumeration for today's agenda...

1. Finish our vocab experts for this first round. Review on Monday and Mini Quiz on Tuesday.

2. Learn the qualities of a strong summary and use these to revise Sperber summary.

3. Read, annotate, and discuss Adjunct article.

For homework, write a summary for the Adjunct article. 

Annotating

For today's class, we discussed the techniques and purpose of annotating and how "marking up" your readings help comprehension, perpetuate questions, prepare for discussions, and aid in future studies. Homework this evening is to write a summary on the article for class analysis and revision tomorrow.

E-mails

Thank you for putting up with the sick version of me today. During today's class, we looked over the five elements that are needed in professional e-mails. These elements include the greeting, the introduction, the body, the closing, and the subject line. Your assessment will include 3 e-mails to me on any of these subjects: absence, questions on assignment(s), turning in work, setting up a meeting, clarification on policy/information/etc. These 3 e-mails are due by 11:05 a.m. on Thursday. Feel free to finish this assignment during class.

Advanced Composition Semester 2

Welcome to Advanced Composition! This class will help you fine tune your organization, content, originality, and mechanics in order to make you collegiate writers. I look forward to helping you improve your writing over the course of semester.

During today's class, we had a little chat time to break the ice, then we looked at the class syllabus, which you should keep nearby for any necessary information over the course of the semester. In addition, you were assigned our first group of vocabulary words from Lesson 1: words 1-11. For your assigned word, you will become an expert by sharing the definition, at least 2 synonyms (preferable not the ones given in the vocab book), and a memory trick. Examples of memory tricks are as follows:

• brackish = big rack of fish
• gumption = Forrest Gump
• lachrymose = lac "cry" mose

We will start vocab experts tomorrow, so make sure you have your expert work ready to share.

During our last moments, we looked at faulty e-mails from students to professors. During tomorrow's class, we will continue looking at poor and more successful e-mails and you will be writing your own for your first assessment.

Remember, this blog is to help you with the class -- whether to refresh your memory, review class content, or catch up after an absence.