11.21 – it’s too cold

It was freezing in our classroom today.

Anyway, so today you all wrote your in-class essays. The main reason I have you to do this is just to practice for your final and for your academic future, wherein you’ll have to do in-class essays more often.

I haven’t read through your essays yet, but I will do so this weekend. Tuesday we will be doing revisions, and talking about your sources. Attached is a helpful guide for you to use when evaluating sources.

annotated-bib

On Wednesday, you will need to bring in an annotated bibliography. We’ll discuss this on Tuesday, but the guide also explains what needs to be in the annotated bib. Ok see you. Hope you all have a nice weekend.

11/19 questions

Today we did one of my favorite activities for stimulating ideas about a topic… I love how you are all able to push each other forward just by asking simple questions.  I hope the exercise was helpful to each of you.

So, your next step, as I mentioned in class today, is to really dig in to the actual research.  Your next assignment will be to write an annotated bibliography.  Please have at least four sources on your topic by Tuesday, Nov 25.  I will work with you in class to evaluate your sources and work on doing annotations, which are basically summaries of the sources with a sentence or two on how it will be used in your essay.  I will show give you an example on Friday, and your bibliographies will be due on Wednesday November 26.

Finally, as you also know, we are having an inclass essay exam on Friday.  I have posted the article and the questions.  You need to print those out and bring them to class with you.

I’d also like for each of you to post (on this blog) some of your thoughts and comments about the article.

11/18 – Friday’s assignment, updated information

Please print this out and review it.  We will be writing an in-class essay on Friday, during class. You must be in class on Friday in order to write this essay.  If you cannot be in class, or are going to be late, you must inform me ahead of time.

Ok now that that’s out of the way… The attachment is a piece of writing by Peggy McIntosh.  We can discuss it briefly tomorrow, and you are free to discuss the essay and the essay prompts amongst each other.  Friday, you will be allowed to use your notes and a dictionary. No computers.
This is in order for you to practice the conditions of the final exam.

The final exam, by the way, is held on December 12th. I’m  not sure of the time, but I believe it is midday.  All other classes are cancelled on the 12th, in order that you can take the English final.
daily-effects-of-white-privilege

Ok, so read through the attachment, and see you tomorrow.

11/12 – introducing…

We discussed introductions today, and I hope the intro handout is helpful to you.

I think the important things to remember in an introduction are that

1) you need to be introducing a topic

2) you need to also introduce a stance on the topic, or if you aren’t writing an opinionated essay, then a set of specific questions you will address

3) you need to find a way to engage your audience, whether it is through a quotation, a story, an interesting statistic, or simply an interesting idea.

Many of you chose the intro from New York mag as your favorite.  Interestingly, the ones you all disliked where the ones that were most similar to the types of introductions that I see in all of your papers.  I’m not saying this in a mean or sarcastic way, but I just think it’s interesting.  It’s like you all have a sense of what good writing is, but you aren’t sure how to produce it.

So I want you to really really practice with the introductions.  If you like a certain style, for now just try imitating it.  You can develop your own quirks within that style once you are comfortable with it.

Each of you got a topic to write an introductory paragraph about.  If you don’t like your topic, choose another.

Just as another sample, the intro on the handout, the one on “emo” is one that I wrote.  It took me a while to get the wording write, and I still think it needs revising. If I really researched the topic, the focuses of my writing would evolve, and that would change my intro.

I tend to like to ask lots of questions in my introductions, but that’s just one way to go about it.
Hasta luego!

11/11 – boring but whatever

Sometimes I find that teaching the research paper can be boring.  Mainly because people are scared or uncertain about how to write a paper on a topic they are truly interested in.  I was talking to a friend last night, asking him “What would you love to write about right now?”  He replied that the things he is really interested in are things he doesn’t know a lot about, and that he wouldn’t feel comfortable writing about them.  I replied “that’s why it’s a research paper.  You’re writing and reading to learn about a new thing.”  But he professed that 1) he’d rather learn about a new topic by talking about it with knowledgeable people than reading about it (which is hard, since we aren’t all surrounded by people who know tons, and plus they aren’t “citeable” in a paper so much) and 2) he just feels lazy about it, and 3) he feels that writing and researching a topic makes it seem so academic and takes all the fun out of it.

SO!!!!!!!!!! We’re going to try not to do that.  How can we make it so that this is a positive experience for you all? I hope we started along that road today, just talking and sharing about topics you might want to pursue.  As I said, I’d like you to start some preliminary research on these topics and see what you come up with.  We will discuss this on Friday.

Please be sure to turn in your ad analysis papers by tomorrow.  Any other lingering assignments you still have left?  Turn those in too!

OK see you all tomorrow, and just want to let you all know that I think you’re doing a great job in class, and I’m glad to see you all participating, and I really care about each of you and hope you’re weathering the semester well.

and also, I think I might do a research paper too, and my topic is going to be P. Diddy: How he got started, how he played a huge part in encouraging rabid consumerism, and what he’s up to now.  I think he was one of the key figures influencing the hip hop scene.  Two pictures in particular struck my interest in him, though I am having trouble finding them.  One, in which he is wearing a t-shirt that reads “I am the American Dream.” And another, where he is wearing a giant fur coat and pouring two bottles of Cristal onto the floor.  I think they send strong messages and I am interested in that for sure.

Laurie