Read the following two essays and print them out. Our quiz will be on these two essays and the compare/contrast chapter in your book.
- Gary Ancheta
____________
Excerpt from Canadian Broadcast Corporation Interview with Neil Postman
Excerpt from Playboy Interview with Marshall McLuhan
Click Here to Read More..
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
Definition and Plagiarism
Make sure you read through these essays and vote on the sidebar for the best essay. In the comments section, tell me who you voted for and why you thought their "definition essay" was the best essay.
Your votes will determine extra credit points for another class, so make sure you vote and give comments. Click Here to Read More.. Click Here to Read More..
Your votes will determine extra credit points for another class, so make sure you vote and give comments. Click Here to Read More.. Click Here to Read More..
Thursday, February 5, 2009
Communication Memoir Paper Due on Tuesday
1. The Grading Rubric for Paper #1 is here
2. General Comments about the Papers I've Read:
- Start with the story first. Remember, your story illustrates your point, so give us as much detail and dialogue and explaination as possible when you tell us your story. Your story is the evidence that proves your point.
- Focus on one specific piece of technology. Try not to talk about everything. Focus on one piece and a story to illustrate that piece.
3. MLA Formatting:
- Your paper should be in Times, New Roman, Double Spaced. Last Name Page number on the upper right hand corner, and your work should be stapled.
- Your name, project number and section number should be in the upper right hand corner.
- You should title your paper.
- Put all of your paper drafts in one folder. In the other folder, put all your quizzes.
- Gary Ancheta Click Here to Read More..
2. General Comments about the Papers I've Read:
- Start with the story first. Remember, your story illustrates your point, so give us as much detail and dialogue and explaination as possible when you tell us your story. Your story is the evidence that proves your point.
- Focus on one specific piece of technology. Try not to talk about everything. Focus on one piece and a story to illustrate that piece.
3. MLA Formatting:
- Your paper should be in Times, New Roman, Double Spaced. Last Name Page number on the upper right hand corner, and your work should be stapled.
- Your name, project number and section number should be in the upper right hand corner.
- You should title your paper.
- Put all of your paper drafts in one folder. In the other folder, put all your quizzes.
- Gary Ancheta Click Here to Read More..
Tuesday, February 3, 2009
Excerpt: 'How to Write a Memoir' by William Zinsser
Most people embarking on a memoir are paralyzed by the size of the task. What to put in? What to leave out? Where to start? Where to stop? How to shape the story? The past looms over them in a thousand fragments, defying them to impose on it some kind of order. Because of that anxiety, many memoirs linger for years half written, or never get written at all.
What can be done?
You must make a series of reducing decisions. For example: in a family history, one big decision would be to write about only one branch of the family. Families are complex organisms, especially if you trace them back several generations. Decide to write about your mother's side of the family or your father's side, but not both. Return to the other one later and make it a separate project.
Remember that you are the protagonist in your own memoir, the tour guide. You must find a narrative trajectory for the story you want to tell and never relinquish control. This means leaving out of your memoir many people who don't need to be there. Like siblings.
My final reducing advice can be summed up in two words: think small. Don't rummage around in your past -- or your family's past -- to find episodes that you think are "important" enough to be worthy of including in your memoir. Look for small self-contained incidents that are still vivid in your memory. If you still remember them it's because they contain a universal truth that your readers will recognize from their own life.
That turned out to be the main lesson I learned by writing a book in 2004 called Writing About Your Life. It's a memoir of my own life, but it's also a teaching book -- along the way I explain the reducing and organizing decisions I made. I never felt that my memoir had to include all the important things that ever happened to me -- a common temptation when old people sit down to summarize their life journey. On the contrary, many of the chapters in my book are about small episodes that were not objectively "important" but that were important to me. Because they were important to me they also struck an emotional chord with readers, touching a universal truth that was important to them.
One chapter is about serving in the army in World War II. Like most men of my generation, I recall that war as the pivotal experience of my life. But in my memoir I don't write anything about the war itself. I just tell one story about one trip I took across North Africa after our troopship landed at Casablanca. My fellow GIs and I were put on a train consisting of decrepit wooden boxcars called "forty-and-eights," so named because they were first used by the French in World War I to transport forty men or eight horses. The words QUARANTE HOMMES OU HUIT CHEVAUX were still stenciled on them. For six days I sat in the open door of that boxcar with my feet hanging out over Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia. It was the most uncomfortable ride I ever took -- and the best. I couldn't believe I was in North Africa. I was the sheltered son of Northeastern wasps; nobody in my upbringing or my education had ever mentioned the Arabs. Now, suddenly, I was in a landscape where everything was new -- every sight and sound and smell.
The eight months I spent in that exotic land were the start of a romance that has never cooled. They would make me a lifelong traveler to Africa and Asia and other remote cultures and would forever change how I thought about the world. Remember: Your biggest stories will often have less to do with their subject than with their significance -- not what you did in a certain situation, but how that situation affected you and shaped the person you became.
As for how to actually organize your memoir, my final advice is, again, think small. Tackle your life in easily manageable chunks. Don't visualize the finished product, the grand edifice you have vowed to construct. That will only make you anxious.
Here's what I suggest.
Go to your desk on Monday morning and write about some event that's still vivid in your memory. What you write doesn't have to be long -- three pages, five pages -- but it should have a beginning and an end. Put that episode in a folder and get on with your life. On Tuesday morning, do the same thing. Tuesday's episode doesn't have to be related to Monday's episode. Take whatever memory comes calling; your subconscious mind, having been put to work, will start delivering your past.
Keep this up for two months, or three months, or six months. Don't be impatient to start writing your "memoir," the one you had in mind before you began. Then, one day, take all your entries out of their folder and spread them on the floor. (The floor is often a writer's best friend.) Read them through and see what they tell you and what patterns emerge. They will tell you what your memoir is about and what it's not about. They will tell you what's primary and what's secondary, what's interesting and what's not, what's emotional, what's important, what's funny, what's unusual, what's worth pursing and expanding. You'll begin to glimpse your story's narrative shape and the road you want to take.
Then all you have to do is put the pieces together.
From The American Scholar, Volume 75, No. 2, Spring 2006. Copyright 2006 by William Zinsser. This essay is adapted from a new chapter for the forthcoming 30th-anniversary edition of On Writing Well.
Click Here to Read More..
What can be done?
You must make a series of reducing decisions. For example: in a family history, one big decision would be to write about only one branch of the family. Families are complex organisms, especially if you trace them back several generations. Decide to write about your mother's side of the family or your father's side, but not both. Return to the other one later and make it a separate project.
Remember that you are the protagonist in your own memoir, the tour guide. You must find a narrative trajectory for the story you want to tell and never relinquish control. This means leaving out of your memoir many people who don't need to be there. Like siblings.
My final reducing advice can be summed up in two words: think small. Don't rummage around in your past -- or your family's past -- to find episodes that you think are "important" enough to be worthy of including in your memoir. Look for small self-contained incidents that are still vivid in your memory. If you still remember them it's because they contain a universal truth that your readers will recognize from their own life.
That turned out to be the main lesson I learned by writing a book in 2004 called Writing About Your Life. It's a memoir of my own life, but it's also a teaching book -- along the way I explain the reducing and organizing decisions I made. I never felt that my memoir had to include all the important things that ever happened to me -- a common temptation when old people sit down to summarize their life journey. On the contrary, many of the chapters in my book are about small episodes that were not objectively "important" but that were important to me. Because they were important to me they also struck an emotional chord with readers, touching a universal truth that was important to them.
One chapter is about serving in the army in World War II. Like most men of my generation, I recall that war as the pivotal experience of my life. But in my memoir I don't write anything about the war itself. I just tell one story about one trip I took across North Africa after our troopship landed at Casablanca. My fellow GIs and I were put on a train consisting of decrepit wooden boxcars called "forty-and-eights," so named because they were first used by the French in World War I to transport forty men or eight horses. The words QUARANTE HOMMES OU HUIT CHEVAUX were still stenciled on them. For six days I sat in the open door of that boxcar with my feet hanging out over Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia. It was the most uncomfortable ride I ever took -- and the best. I couldn't believe I was in North Africa. I was the sheltered son of Northeastern wasps; nobody in my upbringing or my education had ever mentioned the Arabs. Now, suddenly, I was in a landscape where everything was new -- every sight and sound and smell.
The eight months I spent in that exotic land were the start of a romance that has never cooled. They would make me a lifelong traveler to Africa and Asia and other remote cultures and would forever change how I thought about the world. Remember: Your biggest stories will often have less to do with their subject than with their significance -- not what you did in a certain situation, but how that situation affected you and shaped the person you became.
As for how to actually organize your memoir, my final advice is, again, think small. Tackle your life in easily manageable chunks. Don't visualize the finished product, the grand edifice you have vowed to construct. That will only make you anxious.
Here's what I suggest.
Go to your desk on Monday morning and write about some event that's still vivid in your memory. What you write doesn't have to be long -- three pages, five pages -- but it should have a beginning and an end. Put that episode in a folder and get on with your life. On Tuesday morning, do the same thing. Tuesday's episode doesn't have to be related to Monday's episode. Take whatever memory comes calling; your subconscious mind, having been put to work, will start delivering your past.
Keep this up for two months, or three months, or six months. Don't be impatient to start writing your "memoir," the one you had in mind before you began. Then, one day, take all your entries out of their folder and spread them on the floor. (The floor is often a writer's best friend.) Read them through and see what they tell you and what patterns emerge. They will tell you what your memoir is about and what it's not about. They will tell you what's primary and what's secondary, what's interesting and what's not, what's emotional, what's important, what's funny, what's unusual, what's worth pursing and expanding. You'll begin to glimpse your story's narrative shape and the road you want to take.
Then all you have to do is put the pieces together.
From The American Scholar, Volume 75, No. 2, Spring 2006. Copyright 2006 by William Zinsser. This essay is adapted from a new chapter for the forthcoming 30th-anniversary edition of On Writing Well.
Click Here to Read More..
Examples of Memoirs
Here are examples of memoirs that I've culled from the internet. Not all of these are about technology, not all of these are the best memoirs, but if you get stuck, take a look and see how these authors dealt with similar problems.
Type rest of the post here
Memoirs of a Summer Student
Hurricane Katrina Memoir
Hot Night Summer in the city
College, Sex and Love
Click Here to Read More..
Type rest of the post here
Memoirs of a Summer Student
Hurricane Katrina Memoir
Hot Night Summer in the city
College, Sex and Love
Click Here to Read More..
Thursday, January 29, 2009
Rhetorical Arguments
The worksheet for different types of arguments is here:
Your homework for this weekend is to give me a COMPLETE rough draft of your first paper. Remember, I don't care about length. All I care about is that it is completed (Introduction/Body/Conclusion) and we can work with it for our peer review. Click Here to Read More..
Your homework for this weekend is to give me a COMPLETE rough draft of your first paper. Remember, I don't care about length. All I care about is that it is completed (Introduction/Body/Conclusion) and we can work with it for our peer review. Click Here to Read More..
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
Introduction Narrative
Today we'll ease into Memoir and Narrative:
Quiz Questions
1. What is a Memoir?
Listen to the Moth here: http://www.themoth.org/
2. What is the Thesis Statement in this memoir? How does the writer back up that thesis statement in their narrative? Click Here to Read More..
Quiz Questions
1. What is a Memoir?
Listen to the Moth here: http://www.themoth.org/
2. What is the Thesis Statement in this memoir? How does the writer back up that thesis statement in their narrative? Click Here to Read More..
Thursday, January 15, 2009
Introduction of Project 1: What is in your wallet?
Write a socially, culturally, historically, and/or economically informed memoir that involves your how you use or how you see communication technologys in your life. You may base your text on your own personal experiences involving any type of communication technology (cell phones, internet, speaking, writing, books, newspapers, etc). (click here for more information)
Click Here to Read More..
Wednesday, January 7, 2009
First Post! Welcome to ENC 1101!
Thank you for signing up for this class. We will use this blog for current updates, out of class writings, and various projects. Please make sure you come to visit this page as much as possible throughout the semester...
In addition, I know that English I (because it’s required) is a course that some students are taking to “test the waters” of the higher educational environment to decide if college is “for them.” Others may be returning to school after years in the work force, and because they may have chosen a specific career goal, English I is the first step to that end. And finally, some students who are undecided on their career choice but want a college degree on their resumes are taking English I because it’s required and useful preparation for doing well in higher-level courses that require writing. Whichever of these three categories comes closest to your situation, I say to you that English I offers hands-on experience in reading and writing that will be extremely useful to your future.
While this will be a very interactive course (using lecture, group discussion, and individualized instruction), this will also be a very time-consuming course. I will expect your full attention during class (please no cell phones, texting, or useless websurfing) and I expect you to devote at least two hours out of class for every hour in class.
ASSIGNMENT FOR NEXT WEEK:
1. Purchase your books
2. Complete you first essay prompt (Give me one page on- "How do you use the computer and why?")
3. Sign up for a Google Account (optional)
4. Download, read, and sign the syllabus (click here).
Click Here to Read More..
In addition, I know that English I (because it’s required) is a course that some students are taking to “test the waters” of the higher educational environment to decide if college is “for them.” Others may be returning to school after years in the work force, and because they may have chosen a specific career goal, English I is the first step to that end. And finally, some students who are undecided on their career choice but want a college degree on their resumes are taking English I because it’s required and useful preparation for doing well in higher-level courses that require writing. Whichever of these three categories comes closest to your situation, I say to you that English I offers hands-on experience in reading and writing that will be extremely useful to your future.
While this will be a very interactive course (using lecture, group discussion, and individualized instruction), this will also be a very time-consuming course. I will expect your full attention during class (please no cell phones, texting, or useless websurfing) and I expect you to devote at least two hours out of class for every hour in class.
ASSIGNMENT FOR NEXT WEEK:
1. Purchase your books
2. Complete you first essay prompt (Give me one page on- "How do you use the computer and why?")
3. Sign up for a Google Account (optional)
4. Download, read, and sign the syllabus (click here).
Click Here to Read More..
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