Week 9

To all, welcome back. We will have time in class tonight to address any remaining work/assignments and to review for next week's final (unless you all want to push it to week 11). Tonight we may choose some image-based focus for our last weekly practice assignment, the holiday season OR the following piece, which if you need to make up an assignment will serve:

Essay (extra-credit or makeup): In 350-500 words address address an idea that you hold as an article of faith or philosophical belief, using narrative or descriptive examples to support and flesh out the basis of that belief. I have several examples to give you from a book collection called This I Believe II: The Personal Philosophies of Remarkable Men and Women, but more can be found at thisibelieve.org. The site supports a public forum on personal belief, and opportunity to upload your essay for publication. It also allows you to explore topics and examples going all the way back to the 1950's, when the project itself first began.

The guidelines for writing the essay are much like those we have been following in class, keeping to 350-500 words in a voice that is personal and original. The following URL within the site describes in detail what the editors want in terms of style and development: http://thisibelieve.org/guidelines/. You may summarize and quote from any one of the published essays as a lead-in to your piece, though neither summary nor response is a required element of the essay. The topic you address should reflect your particular experience and corresponding beliefs or concerns–whether of religion, money, virtue, vice, growing up, growing old, love, death, sickness, health, the meaning of life, the nature of existence, the human condition, the fate of life on this planet, etcetera. Your statement of belief should be articulated in a sentence or two.

Students who have elected to take the final next week, will have week 11 reserved for rewrites, as needed.

I will post grades at ecompanion this week. Please check the grades posted at ecompanion to see what you may be missing and that my record is consistent with yours.

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I have posted below material from an earlier post to allow for review of English syntax and basic punctuation principles. I also include the following link to an article featuring discussion and review of the use of commas: http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/05/21/the-most-comma-mistakes/

Sentence Type 1: The simple sentence has one subject and one predicate, the base of which is always a verb or verb phrase. And in English, the subject usually comes up front, followed by the verb and other predicate elements such as direct and indirect objects. This subject-verb combo is called a clause, an independent clause, because it expresses a grammatically complete, stand-alone thought. Examples follow here:

Jesus wept.

Style has meaning.

Choices resonate.

What is the subject in each of the three preceding sentences? Jesus. Style. Choices. And the verbs? Wept and has and resonate, and some form of the "be" verb": is, was, are, were . . .

And in the following?

The house is surrounded by razor wire.

He and I fight too often. We cannot be good for one another.

After spring sunset, mist rises from the river, spreading like a flood.

From a bough, floating down river, insect song. (Sentence fragment here . . . no verb).

They slept on the floor.

The girl raised the flag.

Note: inverted syntax order: Subject follows the verb instead of preceding it. Lovable he isn't. Tall grow the pines on the hills.

Normal order: A fly is in my soup. With an expletive (which delays the subject) it looks like this: There is a fly in my soup.

Sentence type 2: The compound sentence has at least two independent subject and verb combinations or clauses, and no dependent clauses. Each independent clause is joined by means of some conjunction or coordinating punctuation:

Autumn is a sad season, but I love it anyway. (coordinating conjunction but preceded by a comma)
Name the baby Huey, or I'll cut you out of my will.
The class was young, eager, and intelligent, and the teacher delighted in their presence.
The sky grew black, and the wind died; an ominous quiet hung over the whole city. (semi-colon used, no coordinating conjunction required)
My mind is made up; however, I do want to discuss the decision with you. (semi-colon required with adverbial conjunction however)

Any of the seven short coordinating conjunctions can be used before the comma to join independent clauses: for, and, nor, but, or, yet, so: they can be remembered as FANBOYS.

*A semi-colon (;) must be used before adverbial conjunctions joining independent clauses: however, indeed, therefore, thus, in fact, moreover, in addition, consequently, still, etcetera.

Sentence Type 3: The complex sentence is composed of one independent clause and at least one dependent clause.

My man left me, though it was I who begged him to go.

Those who live in glass houses should not cast stones.

Many people believe that God does not exist.

Sentence Type 4: The compound-complex sentence has at least two independent clauses and one dependent clause.

As I waited for the bus, the sun beat down all around me, and I shivered in my thoughts.

Because she said nothing, we assumed that she wanted nothing, but her mother knew better.

She and her sister Amina are dancers, and they work at parties around town when they can.

While John shopped for groceries, two armed men forced their way into his home; fortunately, his wife and children were away.

Examples of subordinating conjunctions––those used in from of dependent clauses–– include the following: because, that, which, who, when, while, where, wherever, though, as though, although, since, as, if, as if, unless, et al .

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Exercises: Place commas where needed in the following sentences.

1. Today is June 4 2012 and a Monday.

2. Students and teachers will be busy this week for many are taking or administering final exams and projects.

3. The lab teachers including Mr. Fish and Mrs. Bird have seen an influx of students in recent weeks.

4. Many of the students concerned about performance on upcoming finals have been eager to review fundamentals of course material.

5. Mr. Fish a math teacher is working as hard as he can to keep up with student requests for tutoring which tend to rise during the weeks leading up to finals.

6. Introduction to Math and Introduction to Composition are two courses many students must take each course is designed to build basic skills needed in general college courses.

7. Schools across the nation have seen an increasing demand for courses that prepare students for upper level work, school administrators have responded by increasing the number and range of preparatory courses.

8. To facilitate student success they have also increased the number of hours tutors are available to help students with work.

9. Students today are often time-pressed indeed they often hold full-time jobs in addition to their course loads.

10. Increasingly, the Internet is being used as a new platform for teaching sharing and showcasing the work and ideas of people around the world and it offers students an unprecedented means of connecting with and learning from their peers wherever they may be living.

Week 8

Good day!  Hope you are well.  Today we will pick up where we left off last week.  I will be returning the summary/response work, and rewrites.  We will review/share some of the hypothetical pieces assigned last week and then move on to the character study or profile (#7), a piece which I hope you'll enjoy researching and putting together.  It will be due in class next week, week 9.

The Character Profile or study requires you present a "portrait" of an individual.  It includes the individual's background, and a look into their current endeavors, activities, interests, ideas and attitudes.  To put it together involves an interview of sorts, really a two-way exchange in which the pair members dialogue to come up with enough information and first-hand impressions to write the piece. The purpose is to bring to readers a sense of the background, motivation, and personality of the students pursuing specific degrees or career goals, specific skills and interests here at AiFL. It will be a chance to exchange personal interests and ideas with others as you gather the information to present the individual(s) with whom you share class and common pursuits and perhaps personal concerns and lifestyles. I imagine the audience as perhaps students and others in the local community or at other colleges locally or nationally who would be interested to know the experiences, concerns, and interests of college students today and something of college life. So key will be eliciting from your subject individual(s) a sense of the background and personal aims they bring to their school pursuits, and to bring that information to life in the profile. 

Some questions to ask to get your subject's story include the following:

*What's this experience or period of your life really about?

*What is the emotional truth of your life today? What feelings are you working through? What do you feel good about, uncertain about?

*How did you get to this point or place in life?

*Describe a past or current struggle in some detail to show the kind of challenge you know best.

*Who were the important people in your life? How did they influence or shape you?

*What are your near and long term goals?

We will cover in class how to structure this essay. In brief, it will involve framing your subject to support a certain thesis idea, which the life of your subject will illustrate. 

There are two ways of structuring the piece.  One is to introduce the subject in an opening paragraph, providing context and a lead-in that generates reader interest.  (See the introductory paragraph description below for more details.)  Imagine a target audience of your peers or some other reader group.  Follow the introductory paragraph with a transcript of the questions posed to your subject and the responses elicited.  Shape the dialogue so that the  questions and responses, from beginning to end, are expressive of the subject's history, interests, and future prospects or concluding thoughts on this stage of life.

The second way of structuring the piece is to summarize much of what you learn from your subject, shape the main story line around a theme, and illustrate the whole with a few well-chosen quotations from your subject.  The second way is the article or essay form, as described more fully directly below:

In the introductory paragraph, the writer must say something of the personal impressions your subject makes in a face-to-face meeting. We want readers to feel they are meeting this individual in person; of course the impressions are those you have drawn in meeting and talking with your subject.   The body paragraph(s) will recount history and current endeavors, any conflicts or issues the subject is adressing, and how they are being addressed.  

The body material is meant to illustrate  the nature of the personality and character of the individual subject.  Again, the pairs or groups will be talking and exchanging information in an informal flow of give and take as you establish rapport and commonalities and differences. You will take notes on each other, specific background information, career goals, interests, concerns, etcetera, which later you will incorporate into the essay. You will unfold something of the life of your subject to illustrate a point about students or student life today. 

Your conclusion will bring the presentation back to the central idea, underscoring it, and providing final comments. You may want to incorporate direct quotation of one or another remark your subject has made, as well, to give some sense of the individual's actual speech or voice. Dialogue or direct quotation is a dramatic device and draws readers into the presence of your subject. You may use present or past tense overall. Bringing a sense of the subject individual's physical presence is a means of creating interest and imaginative appeal. Description of hair, eyes, gestures, clothing, in some brief but telling way will allow readers to actually "see" the subject person as they learn something of the story he or she embodies in the role of student.

An alternative to assignment (7)  involves getting together with one or more classmates to discuss an issue important to you all, airing your thoughts, concerns, and collective knowledge.  As a pair or group, you will google some very narrowly focused area of the subject matter to see what can be learned from recent reports or the opinions expressed by others.   Each of you will write about the issue, incorporating into the paper some of what your classmates have had to say, your own beliefs, and any important items of fact or opinion expressed in news reports.  

Whew!  Sounds difficult, doesn't it?  But it is not, really.   You will hash out the matter between yourselves to determine how you each see a particular issue, its importance today and in the years ahead.   You will have to write down some of the interesting questions and comments generated in your group discussion. Some of these you will use to illustrate the issue and the range of responses it generated in your discussions.  Each of you will write your own paper and in the course of it show what one or more of your classmates had to contribute to the discussion.  You will quote, paraphrase, or summarize briefly their views.  You could even use the question/answer format for part of the piece.  Above all, have some fun and try to learn more about the subject and your classmates' experience.

Listed below are some of the topics I have received in the past:

1.  Threats to the environment, including climate change and pollution.

2.  The weak economy and high rate of unemployment.

3.  The struggle to legitimize gay marriage.

4.  Misuse of welfare funds.

5.  The high cost of education today.

6.  The technology race.  Should we spend for 4g phones?

7.  Fast food.  The real costs.

8.  The costs of war and militarization.

9.  Culture rot or the dumbing down of society by media.

10. The threat posed by overpopulation. 

Week 6

On the Road to Yosemite, CA Welcome back to class. Hope you had a good weekend. Today I'll return last week's work and look to you for the summary/responses to "Think the Best," by P.M. Forni, or to the Hurricane Sandy anniversary piece from the New York Times called "A Storm Still Felt."  Remember to use your own words, include title, author, and one or two quotations from the text to show some of the original text you are summarizing and responding to.    We will discuss the graded work in class, and I'll review with each of you, as needed. Summary/Response Checklist: Make sure that you identify the author’s name, the title of the article, essay, chapter and/or book from which the summary is drawn.  Reference these in your opening lines. Include one or two direct quotations to show the original textual matter and lend support to your claims. The formatting of these items is demonstrated on the handout accompanying the photocopied chapter "Think the Best." You were also to include a few direct quotations from the text, as illustrated in the passage below:        The author  P.M. Forni used both process description and cause/effect mode to argue that in the interests of civility we ought to think well of others, as a matter of practice, because in doing so we encourage people to be and do their best, including ourselves. “Believing that they are good, I want to be good for them,” he wrote. Your personal thoughts and feelings as regards the ideas expressed or the author's sentiments should be  included along with accurate summary of the work's ideas and sentiments.  You might include a story of your own on the subject addressed to develop the response material.  These directions apply to any of the materials you might have been  asked to address for homework. Two Sample Beginnings:     -----------------------------------------------------Summary Response Introductions In A Streetcar Named Desire, Blanche famously says, “I have always depended on the kindness of strangers.”  And we all do in so many ways, which is the central idea that P.M. Forni develops in the chapter “Think the Best,” which is one of  twenty-five chapters in the book Choosing Civility.  Indeed, we find salvation in others.  He quotes in epigraph the  Apostle Paul:  “Be not forgetful to entertain [. . . ].”     In P.M. Forni’s Choosing Civility, specifically the chapter “Think the Best,” he reminds readers that we all have a spark of  the divine in us, or at least that it helps to think that way, elevates us and all whom we come in contact with. In epigraph,  he quotes Paul of Tarsus:  “Be not forgetful to entertain strangers for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.”   I am reminded of a something Abraham Lincoln wrote, and here I paraphrase, if you look for the worst in man you will surely find it.  -------------- Next Assignment (6):If we were given the chance to rewrite some chapter in life, or to relive some moment now resigned to the past, what revisions would we make, or what insight would we bring to the moment now? What lessons are there in wondering, what if . . . ? What if we could time travel? We can in some senses. We can pretend that we had been born in a  different era and imaginatively enter into the lives of those who have lived before us. Thanks to the research of scientists and historians of every stripe, the past unveils its secrets, and is now recorded  in new layers of story and imagery, all adding to our knowledge of life on this planet and in this  universe. We may learn how other human societies lived and what they believed, how they and  other species have met the challenges of life, how they at whatever time did navigate, nourish and  reproduce themselves, defend themselves and their young. If you were given a day, week, month, or year to live wherever and whenever and however you choose, what choice would you make? We can say, had I known such and such a thing, I might never have done what I did. Sometimes we  rewrite the past with our inner voice, as a means of understanding what has worked and not worked for us, thus reshaping our thought and behavior as we move forward in life. What if we were still  stuck in outmoded ways of thinking and behaving? What if the possibility for personal change were  to be taken from us? Transformation begins with our thoughts, and with the language we use to  express ourselves. Thank goodness we can imagine possibilities beyond the given or present! Essay 6: In 350-500 words you are to explore a hypothetical scenario; that is, one that you  imaginatively enter into, with whatever sure knowledge makes it all plausible and meaningful as an  essay. You are writing non-fiction, remember, seeking to show a truth. You might think in terms of  the difference made if one or another event had occurred (or not) in your personal life or in history.  What effects on the past, present, and/or future do you imagine in this hypothetical scenario?  How might the past look, how might today be different, and how might the future look? This essay assignment provides good practice with verbs–past, present, future–and in using  comparison and contrast mode. You will likely use the subjunctive mood and conditional (modal)  tense forms as well as simple and perfect tenses. Again, imagine that you had been born under or into circumstances other than those you were born  into; for example, a different place and/or historical era, a different family, a different body (or  species), and so on. Describe what your childhood was actually like, and what it might have been like  (under the changed circumstances); what your present life might be like (as opposed to what is  actually happening); imagine your future, actually or hypothetically. Or look at any important  decision you made or did not make and trace the consequences of having taken an opposite track.  If we had the chance to do things differently, if we had superpowers, the omniscience of a goddess,  what would we do with these?  Of course, we don't have superhuman powers, and we must make do  with what we have–but there are insights that reflection brings on what might have been, or what  might be . . . that are within our grasp. Checklist: *Title the essay. *Proofread to make sure you have a clear central idea and adequate support. *Remember your audience and write on a matter of intrinsic or practical importance. *Edit your sentences for clarity of expression and grammatical correctness. Note: –The use of narration and description, with scene setting, vivid detail and action, will make readers see  and feel the particular experience(s) and ideas you have in mind. – Comparison/contrast mode will show the actual versus the imaginary, and make it clear that your  focus is hypothetical.      You might start in this way:  Had I been born an only child, instead of being born the fifth child of six, I might have got more attention than I did.  I might have been spoiled!  My parents had little time for me, as it was, with so many to care for. Or: If I were sixty-five (you can fill in any future age) and to at my life, what would I want to see I had  accomplished Or:   If I could do one thing differently, rewrite the past, I would go back to the time . . . Or:   If we were to walk, fly, or swim the proverbial mile in the life of (fill in whatever human, animal or insect subject interests you) we would discover . . . Or: If we were to travel to the ends of the earth and back, we would discover a great deal about life on this planet, including the fascinating  . . . Essay 6 will require homework. It involves hypothetical formulations of thought and verb  tense usage that may be fun and challenging for many of you. A description appears below.  We will practice the tense usages in class and then have a go at writing the piece. I have  photocopied a text by Alain De Botton to illustrate the manner in which you are to frame this piece. Below is a description of just what I mean when I say subjunctive mood, or hypothetical/speculative stance.