- Maintaining use of literary present tense;
- Properly employing subject/verb and pronoun agreement;
- Properly citing in MLA format;
- Effectively proofreading and revising (no, they are NOT the same!);
- Doing close reading;
- Constructing and sustaining an argument (and avoiding plot review);
- Effectively incorporating evidence in support of an argument;
- Transitioning within and between paragraphs;
- Correctly employing literary terms;
- Effectively and accurately using new vocabulary terms;
- Accurately diagramming sentences;
- Writing a twelve sentence paragraph;
- Using vivid and concise terms;
- Avoiding banal, trite phrasing ("very," "good," "nice," "interesting," etc.);
- Effectively extracting literal and figurative meanings from texts;
- Employing efficient methods of tracking a text's basic information (characters, plot, setting, theme, etc.).
- Using this information in fruitful analysis.
To help you toward these goals, I asked you to fill out a goals sheet for fourth quarter. I asked you to take it seriously because this sheet will form the basis of our mutual expectations of one another and for our communication. On the sheet, I also asked you to identify and forces, circumstances or personal traits that may have hindered your success in the past.
After you completed and turned in the sheet, I asked you to do some sentence diagramming review, and the skills have no doubt grown rusty through disuse. Well, we're gearing up again, and picking up with vocabulary, too. PLEASE BRING BOTH YOUR VOCABULARY AND SENTENCE DIAGRAMMING WORKBOOKS TO CLASS ON WEDNESDAY!
Your homework, in preparation for the six day WWI poetry unit, is to write a list of thirty words you associate with WWI. Fifteen of them must be verbs. The other fifteen must be nouns. NO ADJECTIVES. For those of you who checked that you do your homework just to get it done, here's how you aspire beyond that state of mediocrity for which such behavior dooms you: don't accept the first fifteen that come to mind. Visualize scenes from the war and pick the most precise terms you can think of to describe them. Aspire to replace the humdrum terms with words that smack of precision and deep accuracy.
So, what you are saying (and keep in mind i lack the ability to distinguish literal and figurative meanings) is that, according to your last bullet point, I could be very thoroughly analyzing a brilliant passage from a superb novel, and have a banana pop into my hand, and then be able to throw strawberries into my mouth and, on top of that, be forever plagued with the dilemma of choosing between gulping down a passion-fruit or a pineapple. Now I understand why they say the academic achievers will save the world someday. We've just solved the problem of world hunger. We just need an organization to distribute good books everywhere, teach the starving how to find themes, and they will starve no longer, as once they start they will be bombarded with apples and tangerines left and right. Assuming everyone can pitch in one good book, it shouldn't cost more than a couple thousand dollars for S&H. And they said billions...
ReplyDeleteBrilliant I say,
~Nothing to do
Shorty