ENG 101-95 Spring 2012

Week 5 Assignments Spring 12

2012-02-09T16:54:00.003-05:00

Week 5
You know what to look for by now! Lecture material and specific material for assignments too!
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Week 5

Feb. 13

* Second intro graf to cause essay due
Same topic as the first intro--one topic, two different intros. Don't do two intros on two different topics!

Feb. 15
* Cause essay outro due

The cause essay is NOT due! Just the outro, last graf, wrap, conclusion, and yes, it is due before grafs 2/3/4. Don't even dream of giving me a finished essay today. Just the one graf!

Feb. 17

* what you already know about your isearch questions due --this is the third section of your isearch

WHAT I KNOW, BASELINE DATA, WHAT I ALREADY KNOW

In this third section of the isearch, you tell the reader what you already know about your questions, what you suspect about the answers, what you know you don’t know. This is not the same material as the Background, which typically is much broader. This is more focused on the particular questions you’ve got, a snapshot of where you are in the present before you’ve done any research.

You tell the reader what you already know about your questions, what you suspect about the answers, what you know you don’t know. This is not the same material as the Background, which typically is much broader. This is more focused on the particular questions you’ve got, a snapshot of where you are in the present before you’ve done any research.
Feel free to simply copy your questions and underneath give us a snapshot of your current state of knowledge about them or your guesses at possible answers. Speculate if you like.

* isearch research plan due, graf 14

This is not part of your isearch directly, but it is part of planning for it. Where are you going to look for answers? What sorts of problems do you foresee? Who will you talk to? Will there be activities or experiments as part of your research? Is there anything beyond wikipedia and the three most obvious next websites? Are you prepared to rejigger your plan if you find the dread "website that answers all my questions"? (If a single website can do that, the questions were pretty obvious to start with and have to be developed and extended somehow.)

Heads-up

2012-02-07T07:17:00.000-05:00

I've re-jiggered the order of assignments for weeks 4 & 5 slightly and changed the semester list of all assignments to match up.

I haven't added (or subtracted) anything, just made a few shifts of dates for the sake of breathing room.

Bottom line: everything for weeks 1-5 ought to be in my knapsack or in my gradebook by 2/17 when the February vacation starts.

Latest and greatest survey

2012-02-04T18:24:00.001-05:00

New survey

Week 4, Spring 12

2012-02-02T17:11:00.003-05:00

At this point, thanks to the snow day on Jan. 27, there is going to be confusion, no matter what I do. I apologize, but stuff happens.

My online students should be working along--no snow date for them, but my live students are a day behind. So, here's the deal.

Online students, continue with the week 4 assignments as shown here. You should have no special problems.

Live students, you should be caught up to Feb. 1 by Feb. 3. But you still have those Feb. 3 assignments to do! When should you do them? Sometime before Friday, Feb. 10.

Week 4

Below you will find two things. First is lecture material on week 4.

Below that are the assignments in large red letters with instructions on how to do the assignments. If you are an online student and don't understand instructions, assignments, or lectures, either email me at johngoldfine@gmail.com or post a question on the forum at the bottom of the page.

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Lecturette 1

Five paragraph essays--aka sandwich essays--these are the largest single part of your gradeAn essay takes an idea for a short walk around the block to show it off to other people. Doesn't have to be the-meaning-of-life kind of idea, just something you think about something you've noticed or experienced. More slice-of-life.
You explain, describe, argue, crack a joke, get serious for a minute, compare this with that, wrap it up, and that's that.

Well, those are a lot of things to do in one essay and you may not do them all all the time. But there is a basic minimum essay you will learn and use in this course called the five-paragraph or sandwich essay. This essay has a beginning, an end, and three slices of stuff between them in the middle, hopefully not baloney. Two slices of bread, three slices of your favorite filling, see?

Everyone agrees that a beginning and an end are a good idea, but people argue over the three-some in the middle. Why not one, two, or four?
Four is okay as long as you have a notion why you're up from three. One or two is too skimpy, not enough nourishment.

Each slice does the same thing. If your essay is all about why you got divorced, paragraphs 2, 3, 4 each give a different reason for dumping the jerk: for example, his drinking, his refusal to work, his lousy breath at night. Or you might be writing about the different types of tools you have in your toolbox: graf 2 talks about the cheapies, graf 3 about the inbetweens, and graf four about the tools you went into serious debt to buy from Mr. Snap-on.

Three is the magic number: the minimal mumber a stool needs; the heart and soul of a truss and of most buildings (because double triangles make squares and rectangles); three is the number of the Holy Trinity and of the minimal extended family (in case you haven't noticed, two often doesn't work until there's a third); three is the number of strikes you get, the number of outs the team gets, and the number of hotdogs it takes to get sick. Three is the middle number for your five-para essays!

You can do different kinds of things from essay to essay:
· give 3 reasons for something
· give 3 results of something
· describe the three steps you use to do something
· lay out different 3 categories of this or that
· talk about the three elements or parts that go to make up something
· talk about three ways two things are alike (or different)
One thing to keep in mind is the ricochet principle in essay writing. You take direct aim at a target in a paragraph assignment, you try to nail it with one shot. In an essay, sometimes it makes more sense to aim at it indirectly and take a couple of different shots.

Imagine you’re on a first date, a blind date, and the first thing your date says is, “I find you attractive so let’s get married tomorrow.” That’s pretty direct; the speaker is getting his or her meaning across, which is good. Unfortunately, your audience is likely to check out real fast. On the other hand, if you have a pleasant dinner, discover in conversation areas of common interest, enjoy a movie or a club, and decide to have a second date, who knows? All that indirect stuff may someday lead to someone saying “Let’s get married.” In other words you don’t always hit the target by aiming at it directly; sometimes the indirect ricochet works better.

Structure of an essay--what goes into each paragraph
Paragraph One. Intro or lead paragraph
* Hook your reader
* Develop the hook
* State your basic idea for the essay (what you'll be 'proving')
* Preview the following three paragraphs with a three part 'plan of development.'

I chew, swallow, and immediately realize I've made a terrible mistake. In
the next tree seconds, saliva floods my mouth as though I were about to
vomit. The glands under my jaw suddenly swell until I look like a squirrel
with two huge nuts in its mouth. Under my ears I feel a terrible itch and
then the corners of my mouth and tongue begin to burn. I'm in for it now--
I've ingested a substance I should have just said no to. The substance is a
Sun Gold cherry tomato I grew from seed. I have food allergies. You would
think that fifteen minutes of serious discomfort would teach me a lesson,
but experience is a teacher I often ignore for three reasons: hopefulness,
love, and nastiness.Paragraph Two. First support paragraph.
* In the first sentence, take the first part of the plan of development and restate it, using key words or signpost words like 'reason,' 'step,' 'category,' etc, depending on type of essay.
* Run with it ('development,' details, specifics, examples, personal
observation, personal experience)
* End paragraph with a mini-summary of paragraph

What I hope is that I have finally outgrown my idiotic food allergies.
Every time I reach for a peanut at the bar or scoff down a fluffernutter or
order a BLT, I tell myself this: "You had asthma for twenty years and then
it disappeared for twenty years. You can eat this." Of course, I forget to
tell myself that the asthma came back at age 40, worse than ever. I also
forget to remember that the very last time I ate one of the forbidden foods,
I got all screwed up. My greedy eye and hungry guts are what generates that
hope--my brain has no part in the process.
Paragraph Three. Second support paragraph.
* Summarize paragraph two's point and restate the second part of the
plan of development, using key words
* Run with it ('development,' details, specifics, examples, personal
observation, personal experience)
* End paragraph with a mini-summary of paragraph

Not only does hope spring eternal, so does love, reason number two. I love
my garden and all the fruities and veggies in it. I love starting the
cherry tomato seeds in April and nursing them through the damp, the cold,
the slugs, the birds, the cats (who like to use my garden plot as a shit-
and-scratch outpost), the drought, and the floods. By the time the first
week in August arrives and the first cherry tomato comes due, I am ready to
fulfill my love in the only possible way--I give that sucker a gentle
squeeze and sniff, hold it up to the light, and then pop that little old
red-yellow tomato right into my waiting mouth. Love? Yes, love! I love
the taste of a fruit that's been more than four months coming.Paragraph Four. Third support paragraph.
* Summarize paragraph two and three's points and restate the third part
of the plan of development, uisng key words
* Run with it ('development,' details, specifics, examples, personal
observation, personal experience)
* End paragraph with a mini-summary of the paragraph.

Hope and love alone are not enough to drive me to do something as foolish as
eating a cherry tomato. Sheer nastiness is the third and final reason. I
see that food I want and instantly split into two parts--Me and the Body--
and get a real ugly attitude toward the Body. I absolutely refuse to pamper
it. Dammit, I want the tomato, and the Body can like it or find someone
else. Doesn't make much sense written down like that--but the Body has to
learn! It's not enough that it's gotten fat, and lost its hair, and has to
wear glasses, and a whole lot of other stuff. No-oooo, now it's fussy about
its food. Well, I can't do anything about the baldness, but I can eat a
cherry tomato, and I will just to teach it a lesson. Funny thing about
nastiness though, it often bounces back, and I always wind up getting the
nasty lesson instead of giving it.
Paragraph five. Outro. Wrap. Conclusion.
* Very brief summary of the essay's main idea.
* Add value with new material related to topic, perhaps loop back to
intro and give it a twist, look ahead, look back, a joke, something
more than what has been already done.

Amazing that I would eat something, knowing that it's going to cause me pain
and misery. Probably you're laughing at me right now, forgetting maybe your
own little experiments with greasy burgers, chewing tobacco, sausage pizza,
birthday cake, cigarettes, Snickers bars, triple ice-cream cones, Slim Jims,
Budweiser, shrimp cocktail, and all the other things that look and smell so
good but pretty quick you can wish you had never laid eyes or nose on.
Anyway I come by my stupidity honestly: my dad's favorite story about his
childhood was the time he had to be rushed to the hospital to have the
raisins removed from his sinuses. When asked why he stuck them up his nose,
he said, "They tasted so good I couldn't stop putting them into me." I know
just what he meant.

Lecturette 2: Cause essays in a nutshell:Writing a cause essay.

By the end of the opening graf, you should have made it clear to the reader that your essay will describe three reasons why something happened. You should clue the reader in with keywords like because, why, reasons, causes, on account of, due to--those all indicate what the essay will do.

Then each of your support grafs explores a different one of those reasons.

But you have to be strict with yourself in the start. This essay is not about how something happened. It's about why, three reasons why:

* you had an accident
* your relationship is great
* you couldn't live without that cell
* you hate your brother
* your car sucks
* you don't want a roommate again
* you adopted a shelter dog

and so on. There is no lack of topics, ever.

Lecturette 3 : Essay intros
An essay takes an idea for a short walk around the block to show it off to other people. Doesn't have to be the-meaning-of-life kind of idea, just something you think about something you've noticed or experienced. You explain, describe, argue, crack a joke, get serious for a minute, compare this with that, wrap it up, and that's that.

Well, those are a lot of things to do in one essay and you may not do them all all the time.

Your particular job this week and next will be a cause essay: an essay where you give three reasons something happened, one reason per support graf. If you're writing about the three reasons you wrecked your car, graf 2 would be about being your many many shots of coffee brandy, graf 3 would be about your need for speed, and graf 4 would be about the black ice. Use words like reason, cause, because, and why freely to cue the reader in to what you're doing.

Here's an intro to a cause essay:

When my wife gets up at 5:30 nowadays in January, her morning start-up routine is nothing like her morning routine in August. In August, she's up with the birdsong, out with the dogs as they pee and poop, over to the newspaper holder to get the day's Bangor Daily, back to the porch for her tea and granola. Not so in January. In January, as soon as she's dressed, it's down to the cellar to split kindling, down again to drag up three loads of firewood, , down on her knees to clean out yesterday's pile of ashes and cinders from the woodstove, out to the garden through the snowdrifts to dump the ashes, and finally back to the woodstove to lay and start the day's fire. Meanwhile, I'm sitting at the computer eating my toast, drinking my coffee, and saying, 'F'gawdsake, why not hit the thermostat? Start that after breakfast.' Even though it's only 53 degrees inside, she looks up from where she's kneeling by the stove and scowls at me.

'Don't you dare, don't you dare touch that frippin thermostat.'

She's pretty emotional about not touching that frippin thermostat, but she has her reasons, or at least she claims she does. One reason is she couldn't enjoy her breakfast knowing that the chore was ahead of her. Another is that she's a pretty competitive lady and feels like she's in a race with the Arab sheikhs who deliver our number two bunker fuel oil--she doesn't want to lose. And finally it would be a huge waste not to burn the 48,203 cords of prime hardwood I stashed in the cellar last fall.Ways to Open an essay--

Some ways to get started. Some people fall in love with these little formulas and never go any further. Some people hate them from the git-go. An intro HAS to let the reader know what the essay is about, what your idea is, and has to interest the reader--in no special order. The fancy terms for these are topic, thesis, and hook. After that, it's your ballgame. If any of these type openings appeal, fine. If none of these type openings appeal, great--come up with something better!

Here they are. You can start--

WITH A STORY:

* Eight years ago I was riding my horse in a field near the house when he suddenly stopped dead. His ears pricked forward, his nostrils flared, and he stared at a boulder ten feet off. I tried to urge him on, but he refused to budge. On the boulder, curling lazily in the sun, was a striped garter snake, maybe a foot long. Because my horse had never seen a snake there before, he obviously never expected to see one there, ever. The universe had thrown him a curve ball, and now he was spooked. His instincts told him that anything unusual might mean danger. Although he wanted to go back to the barn, right then, I knew that if I calmed him down and let him take a wide detour around the boulder, we could continue the ride. Every rider soon learns that controlling a horse requires a thorough knowledge of equine psychology, patience, and determination.

WITH A QUOTATION

A wise rider once said, "A horse learns nothing and forgets nothing." Anyone who has ridden a shaking horse past a rock where eight years before the animal was frightened by a snake grabbing some rays would have to agree. No matter the snake didn't try to fang him or that garter snakes don't even have fangs. Instincts passed down from a million years of hoofed ancestors shouted "Danger on that rock!" My horse honors those ancestors every time he passes the rock by tensing his neck, staring hard, blowing through his nostrils, and shaking like a leaf. He knows what he knows, deep in his bones, and eight snake-free years aren't enough to make him forget that garter snake. If it was up to him, he'd never go within a thousand yeards of that rock. I've found that getting my boy to do what I want instead of what he wants requires a knowledge of horse psychology, patience, and determination.

WITH A DEFINITION

The dictionary tells us that "instinct is an inborn tendency to behave in a certain way." But dictionaries never tell me what I really want to know. What instinct makes them flee in terror from a scrap of newspaper blowing across the field? Why should that tendency be inborn? Of course, a rider doesn't really need to know about the reasons why herd animals developed flight reactions. But when I'm on my horse, I have to keep my eyes open for those newspaper scraps so I can see them a second before my horse does and get prepared. If a rider can anticipate a horse's pschological quirks, have some patience with this creature of instincts, and determine to be the boss of the hoss, the rider can have some fun out there, no matter how much newspaper is blowing.

WITH A SERIES OF QUESTIONS

Are you one of those people who thinks that horses are an intelligent life form? Are you fooled by those big brown eyes into imagining that something is going on behind them? Do you realize that horses are about as sharp upstairs as garden slugs, interested only in food and safety? If you answered yes to any of the above questions, you are porbably one of those happy people who have never experienced clinging to a half-ton of terrified quadriped, galloping berserk for home after being spooked, freaked, and totally panicked by a windblown scrap of yesterday's Bangor Daily News. Handling horses requires not only physical skills but also the ability to anticipate their mental quirks,a good degree of patience, and an even greater degree of determination.Here’s another example with a hook, an idea, and a bridge to the rest of the essay--this essay would be a process essay ('steps' in the last sentence is a tip-off) (but you will be writing a cause essay, not process) (still, it's a good intro worth reading):

I open the door to my house. No sounds—bad sign. I walk into the living room. The contents of a full 30 gallon trash bag are scattered on the floor, shredded into pieces the size of confetti. The maroon upholstery on the couch has long slash marks out of which stuffing pours. The pillows are torn open and tiny bits of foam rubber are everywhere. The only picture of the baby we have is torn in half and one half has a pile of dog poop on it. My daughter’s rented prom gown, which she will need in 18 hours, is off its hanger in a heap, with a long stream of dog pee as its new accessory. I’m crying, but I find my voice and call, softly, “Bob? Bob?” No answer. In the kitchen the cupboard door is open. I squat and try again. “Bob?” I hear the faint thump of Bob’s tail deep under the counter. I feel like feeding him down the disposal but I know it’s my own fault for leaving him all day and not training him better. Bob’s not evil, but he is bad, a very bad dog, which is exactly what I proceed to tell him. After I clean up what I can, I sit down and start thinking of two or three steps I could take to turn Bob into a more acceptable Chihuahua.

Lecturette 3
Outros--wraps, conclusions

Outros are abused and misunderstood. Most people are so whupped by the time they reach paragraph five that they say to hell with it and give the reader a summary of what the reader has just read. What an insult! Those writers are saying that the reader has blown too many brain cells to remember what he just read! The writer is saying that really wrapping this piece of writing is too much trouble.

In this course, simple summaries will not cut it. An outro has to find a way to kick the reader alongside the head and keep his attention. The outro HAS TO ADD VALUE to the essay. This is a gotta.

The outro can use some of the same tricks as the intro.

*It can loop back and reexamine the intro and see if what was originally said still makes sense. Maybe in the start you said love sucks, but by the end you want to modify that.

* It can do the opposite of the rest of the essay. If the whole essay has been about your first car, talk about your next car. If the whole essay has been about Y2K bug in the whole country, the outro can talk about some personal computer problem close to home. If the whole essay has been about your parents, maybe the close is the place to describe how you will do things when you are a parent If the whole essay has been a close up of creepy teachers in your high school, in the outro, pull back and give a long shot of what that all means when it comes to public attitudes toward school funding and education.

Here's an outro from the essay on horses whose intro you saw a few assignments back. This wraps an essay and so it describes the payoff, the outcome, the goal.

"So, finally I have outsmarted my horse and with patience and determination forced this creature six times my size and twenty times my strength to do exactly the opposite of what he wants, which naturally is to stay at home in his stall and suck up expensive horse food, brought to him by hand by his servants. Instead, we are at the edge of the field where he knows the lions--or at least the fluttery newspapers lurk. My mind is tired from anticipating him, outguessing him, being tougher than him, and being cooler than him. But I head him into the field, get his attention with my hands and legs and put him into a lope. We bound across the field--ba-da-dum, ba-da-dum--faster faster. Oh yes! Everything else is an imitation of this motion and feeling: nothing is a bigger thrill, not jetskis, motorcycles, snowmobiles, or downhill skiing. This is why man domesticated the horse and puts up with a no-IQ, half-ton mental case day in and day out. We're across the field now. I put the brakes on and pat my horse's neck and for a second forget what a dope he is. 'Good boy, excellent,' I say, and mean it. Until he sees the next garter snake anyway."
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Week 4

Feb 6

* real life research graf due, graf 11

As homo sapiens, we are the primate that thinks, that puts stuff together, that analyzes, considers, guesses, tests, reconsiders, looks a little deeper, tries again, and succeeds at last!

That is what we are hard-wired to do! We are the researching creature, born to it. It's your heritage. I make such a point of this because often teachers have hijacked your heritage! They claim it really doesn't belong to you--it belongs to them. They say you can't figure stuff out unless you have a teacher to show you how. You can't find answers unless teachers teach you where answers are, what to look for, what to discard, how to describe what you find, etc etc.

Nonsense!

When you date a person, you are doing research on a very big question: is this the person for me?

When you talk to the car sales staff, you are doing research on a very big question: is this vehicle worth the money they want?

When you take a job, you are doing research on a very big question: is this going to be a good fit of personalities and skills?

When you wander up a stream with a fishing rod and a bottle of fly dope, you are doing research on a very big question: is that lunker under a snag or in a pool or where?

When you decide to make a baby, you are doing research on the very biggest question: am I fit to be a parent and is this a fit world to bring a child into?

So, you all are already researchers. My job is just to smooth some of the rough edges. But remember: if you think you hate research, you've let someone steal something very valuable that is yours at birth: your human curiosity.

Your job in this assignment is not to give me a summary of the research you've done for isearch; it's not to tell me what you've done and where you've gone for answers--that's section 4 (The Search) of the Isearch.

In this graf, tell me about something in your real life you had to research: big purchase, problem, medical issue, relationship issue, new hobby. Something you did without a nagging teacher or 'helpful' librarian.

Feb. 8

* place graf due, graf 12

What's this assignment about: more details, more you.

Sample:

The sun was never directly overhead when he'd steer the canoe toward the lilies. I remember this because the water always looked black instead of brown. I'd see them floating the way I always thought tree ornaments hung before I caught my mother with the wire. I understood later, when the imaginations of childhood wore thin, that he didn't make them for me. He only plucked them, gently, so the paddle would not crush any. He'd turn around on his wooden slat, the canoe swaying with his motion, and hand them to me. "They are all perfect," he'd say. "Especially this one," to which he meant the one with a missing petal or two and bugs feasting at the middle as it rotted.

Copyright (C) 2011 by Laney Ashmore

or:

We parked our car next to an old cabin that looked liked it should be in one of those scary movies you watch late at night with your friends. It didn’t look like someplace you wanted to spend your honeymoon. We walked into the room waiting to see the amazing things this place had to offer. We looked around and saw a room stuck in the seventies, don’t get me wrong I have nothing against the seventies. I decided to put our bags down and have a look around the room. I placed our bags on the bed and as I did so I felt a moist damp hot pink comforter. That was only one of the many reasons I knew I did not want to spend my honeymoon at this place.

Copyright (c) 2010 by M. Tracy

* FIRST intro graf to your cause essay due.Yes, "first."

"Two intro grafs! What??? WTF??? Do you know how hard it is to write one???"
Yep, I do, believe me. This is not ordinary Engteach sadism. There is a reason. Several.

You, the writer, need to believe there are an infinite number of possibilities, because it's the truth. If you started graf 1 of your essay about why you love hunting describing getting off your first shot at a whitetail when you were 11, your second intro graf might feature you in hunting camp with a skillet and deer liver. Or it might show you in a gravel pit in October, sighting in your rifle. Or it might describe you last year nearly freezing to death on a treestand in Aroostook. Or you admiring a 16 point rack hanging above the fireplace at your grandfather's place.

It also happens that it takes two tries to write one good intro graf, and that bits and pieces of your two tries can cut and paste to do the job.

it also happens that people wind up writing an outro when they try to write a second intro. That's the kind of problem you like to have! A good graf you can use!

It can also happen that it takes a couple of completely fresh tries before you hit on the keeper. So, that's it--two intro grafs for the same topic. First one, then another.

Feb. 10

* Check some of the sample cause essays out and write a reaction graf, graf 13 due

Isearch worksheet

2012-01-27T11:58:00.001-05:00

I-search worksheet

What is an I-search?

An Isearch is a research paper that asks a question. It does not simply gather information for its own sake. It asks a question, and then you hunt for information that answers the question.

It is a question whose answer matters to your life in some way. It is a question you really do not know the answer to, but you would like to. It is a question which you can realistically pursue in the course of a single semester. It is a question with more legs, depth, angles, and nuance than a simple yes/no answer.

It is a research paper that puts "I"--you--at the center of things.

What do you want to write about?_________________________________

What do you want to find out about your topic?______________________

What are your questions about the topic?

1.

2.

3.

How does it connect to your life?

Give three reasons you like the topic

1.

2.

3.

Give three ways your life might change if you answer your questions

1.

2.

3.

Do you already know the answer to your question? If the answer is sitting in a single book somewhere or if all you need do to find the answer is make some simple decision or ask one person one question, it isn't going to work out for a research paper becuase there isn't much you can research. Is it that kind of question and answer? If it is, please redo the worksheet.

One of the secret downsides of online learning...

2012-01-27T11:19:00.002-05:00

...is that online students do not get snowdays. Keep writing!

Week 3 Assignments

2012-01-27T08:05:00.001-05:00

Week 3

Below you will find two things. First is lecture material on week 3.

Below that are the assignments in large red letters with instructions on how to do the assignments. If you are an online student and don't understand instructions, assignments, or lectures, either email me at johngoldfine@gmail.com or post a question on the forum at the bottom of the page.
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Lecturette 1Details
Most of the course up to this point has been geared to getting you to put in details, examples, and stories that you know from your first-hand experience. Nothing is going to change--that's what the course is about. Why? Why is the course about that? Because "to see what is in front of one's nose requires a constant struggle." George Orwell said that.

You must believe that the world starts with what's in front of your nose. Sadly, most people give up the constant struggle to see it. They accept shadows and imitations. If I say 'Outastata,' they laugh, say, 'Masshole,' and start some involved story about a slow Winnebago and a tourist who insisted that he wasn't buying any so-called live lobster that was green--lobsters are supposed to be red! No downeaster's gonna fool him.... Etc, etc.
You can't do that. You have to really look at the story, see the details. What if the above story really happened to you? I don't believe it did, but what if? What are your obligations to the reader?

You have to note that the Winnebago was a 1979 model, that its tires were bald, that one of the brackets holding the roof ladder was held onto the vehicle with a coathanger, and that the Masshole driving it was that very old man kind of scrawny but he looked like he once had been a fat man. You noticed his hands quivering as he pointed at the lobster tank. For a second you almost thought he wa going to cry, but his voice grew loud and hard, hard enough to remind you of your grandfather who thought of nothing, ever, but his time in Korea at the Chosun Reservoir where his best friend had been killed. Every one said he used to smile before he went to Korea, but you'd never seen him smile. This Masshole reminded you of him.

And you have to remember that when he pulled out his wallet to pay for the lobster--finally--it was an old-time kids' cowboy wallet with gimp stitching that was coming undone and that he paid the last $2.25 of the bill with quarters and a few dimes and nickels and that his wife had to find a last quarter in the Winnebago. That he and his wife argued over how big a bag of potato chips they needed.

And that when you said, 'Have a nice day,' the wife smiled and said, 'Thank you, dear,' and the old guy said something under his breath that made you start hating him all over again, just when you were feeling a little sorry for him.

Details, examples, stories, pushed to the limit and right under your nose, if only you will open your eyes, hard as that is (it's hard because the world is hard and it's easier to make do with a model or a sketch rather than facing the whole nasty confusing messy itchy thing.)

Lecturette 2: Brainstorm your isearch

There's no assignment that goes with this but if you want to brainstorm your isearch before writing the intro, I'd be glad to read and react to what you come up with.

An assignment to hate because it has no clear beginning, middle, or end. You can't schedule it and you don't know how long it will take. When it's done, it won't look good. You won't want to hand it in. You'll be afraid I'll yell at you or laugh at you.

I won't.

The brainstorm is just a way of stirring up your brain to think about your topic and anything goes.

Make a list, try an outline, write a few words, then shift over and write something else. Ask questions, state opinions, curse the assignment, doodle, try a poem, scribble furiously for five minutes writing down all the reasons you love your topic--then try all the reasons you hate it.

***********************************************************************************
Jan 30

* isearch worksheet due--Online students: Copy this worksheet, paste it into an email, fill it out, and email it to johngoldfine@gmail.com.

I-search worksheet

What is an I-search?

An Isearch is a research paper that asks a question. It does not simply gather information for its own sake. It asks a question, and then you hunt for information that answers the question.

It is a question whose answer matters to your life in some way. It is a question you really do not know the answer to, but you would like to. It is a question which you can realistically pursue in the course of a single semester. It is a question with more legs, depth, angles, and nuance than a simple yes/no answer.

It is a research paper that puts "I"--you--at the center of things.

What do you want to write about?_________________________________

What do you want to find out about your topic?______________________

What are your questions about the topic?

1.

2.

3.

How does it connect to your life?

Give three reasons you like the topic

1.

2.

3.

Give three ways your life might change if you answer your questions

1.

2.

3.

Do you already know the answer to your question? If the answer is sitting in a single book somewhere or if all you need do to find the answer is make some simple decision or ask one person one question, it isn't going to work out for a research paper becuase there isn't much you can research. Is it that kind of question and answer? If it is, please redo the worksheet.

* reaction to isearches graf due, graf 8
Look at some of the sample isearches

Write a reaction graf. You love 'em, you hate 'em, they are the greatest thing since sliced bread, they majorly suck--but do more than express an opinion. Think about you and school and writing and research and these papers and write about all that too.

Feb. 1
* object graf due, graf 9

Here are some samples. Try one of your own.

I remember being a little kid and playing with Barbie. The grownups would walk by my door and say “oh how sweet” but they should have stopped a second and listened to the stuff we were doing. One thing my friends and I did was make up little skits for the dolls. Her and Ken would always get married, have a lot of sex, and then have a baby. Then Barbie and Ken would get a divorce because he was sleeping with the Barbie who had brown hair. There would be swearing in front of the baby and the lies...oh, the lies!. In the end, we always made sure that Barbie with brown hair and Ken would get caught. Barbie (the wife) would beat the living piss out of Barbie with brown hair. That's the way Barbie and Ken were. Hey, that’s the way we planned to be, and we weren’t so far wrong either. Kids know.

Copyright (c) 2000 by Brandi Daniels

When people look at the old beat-up 30-30 rifle that hangs on my bedroom wall, they see a lot of different things. They see and old gun that has most of the bluing scratched off from the barrel and action; they see that the stock is beat-up, cracked, and appears ready to fall off from the rest of the gun; they see an old ancient weapon that is past its usefulness. But when I look at it, I see something totally different.

I see my father and my uncle working through the fall in the potato fields of Aroostook County: hard back-breaking work that started early in the morning and ended after the last light of day. I see them, sweating and sore, going to their boss after the end of potato harvesting season and collecting their money that they had worked for since day one. ThenI see them putting their money together and and going to a hardware store in Patten and buying a brand-new, never-been-used 30-30 for $125 to give to their father for his birthday. I see tears in my grandfather's eyes as he unwraps his gift, knowing how much his boys had to sacrifice to purchase this weapon. I see love.

I see a tool that provided my grandfather's family with food throughout many years. This weapon was the primary tool for putting meat on my father's family's table when he was a boy. When the winters were long and cold, this weapon provided food until the end of the cold. This weapon was a life-giver. I see life.

I see my grandfather and friend out in a field in a pickup truck, driving across to follow a deer they were tracking after wounding it. I see them hitting a rock in the field and rolling the pickup truck over. I see the 30-30 hit the dash, and I see the stock splinter into four different pieces. I see the pain in my grandfather's eyes as he sees the weapon crushed. I see his careful fingers as he glues the pieces back together, and I see the satisfaction in his eyes as everything is put in its place. I see ingenuity.

But most importantly I see a sixteen year old boy walking in the woods with his father on a cool, crisp Thanksgiving morning. I see them walk along a snowmobile trail in the woods behind their house. I see them stumble across the tracks of a doe and a buck, and I see the boy take aim and shoot his first buck. I see pride in my father's eyes as he watches his only son bag his first buck with the weapon that he and his brother had bought his father so many years before. I see myself hunting with my grandfather's most prized possession.(Copyright 1999 by Jared Heath)Feb. 3

* your background with your isearch topic due--background aka introduction only!

(This eventually will become the first section of y our isearch)

SIX SECTIONS OF THE ISEARCH

Your isearch will have six major sections (let’s not worry about the title page, summary, and so on today.)

The six sections have somewhat different names depending on people’s taste, but each section is meant to do the same sort of thing, whatever its name. I prefer the simple terms over the fancy fifty-cent ones.

INTRODUCTION, BACKGROUND, HISTORY, THE PAST

In this section you tell the reader your detailed personal history with your topic, going back to the beginning. It’s a foundation section, foucsed on the past. You have to let yourself brainstorm here and not be in too big a hurry to move on, any more than you would be in too big a hurry to build a foundation for a house. Details here, generosity to the reader here, lead directly to the questions that are at the heart of an isearch.
Isearch background:

First section of the isearch. Some people call it 'Introduction'; some call it 'History'; some call it 'Background.' They all mean the same thing.

Whatever you call it you go back to the beginning, back the first time, to where and when it all started, to the first thing you remember about it. Your isearch begins in the past (and you move through the present and end you paper in the future), and you have to give the past some room to breathe.

This is your rock and your foundation, your launching pad, and you want it solid and you want it to lift off.A good Background can really help an isearch!

So, let's say your topic is how you can become a race car driver. What's the history? The history of you and cars, you and speed, you and risk-taking, you and racing, you and sports (they say racing is a sport), you and reflexes and eye-hand coordination, you and accidents, and so on. All relevant.

What if your topic is whether to have a natural childbirth? Tell us your history with childbirth (your own birth and any children you've had); your history with pain, your history with alternative medicine, your history with medical emergencies, your history with doctors generally, your sisters' and mother's experiences with childbirth. All relevant.

See the idea? Spread your net wide.

Feb. 3

* isearch motivations and questions due (second section of isearch)

WHY I’M WRITING, RATIONALE, PURPOSE
You do two things in this section. First, you tell the reader your motivation for choosing the topic, your reasons for wanting to write about it. Second, you lay out for the reader the questions you want to answer and subquestions to the questions. These questions and subquestions are often bulleted and not in paragraph form. Students often disbelieve this next part, but I ain't lying: the more questions you have, the more subquestions, the narrower you can make the questions--the faster, easier, and better your eventual research and isearch will be. Your whole isearch is organized around questions.

* person graf due, graf 10

Writing a so-called standard 3-part paragraph -- about a person

Paragraphs are built like buildings, put together in a particular way like a good meal, organized like a shop project. They aren’t just crossing your fingers, letting words pour out, and hoping it works. Part of the structure is that they have a beginning, a middle, and an ending.

The beginning slaps you longside the head. The middle gives you the goodies. The ending slaps you again. That’s what you’re shooting for.

Here’s a beginning , set-up, lead-in, or intro:

"Some people just get on your nerves and stay on your nerves like chalk scraping on a blackboard until finally there is an explosion and hopefully they are out of your life forever. When I worked at Job Corps, the teacher in the room next to mine was just such a person."
That’s my lead-in. I’m dealing with an idea—that some people cause other people to explode. Do you want to know why the guy annoyed me so much? Are you waiting for the explosion? Do you know what the paragraph is going to be about? Those are the things I’m trying to accomplish here.

Okay, here’s the middle, the guts and heart of the paragraph. It ought to be full of stuff, lots of juicy details.

"Mart was a complainer, griping about everything. He complained about corpsmembers’ attitudes, the way other staff parked, our long hours, and short vacations, the boring cheese sandwiches his wife always packed for his lunch, the rust on his old Ford Bronco, the slow computers, his wife’s pimples, how unfair it was that the secretary was young and attractive, how much better life was when he was in the army, the high prices at Shop and Save, how dumb the Red Sox management was to trade Dewey Evans—and that’s just the high points of the stuff Mart would moan about in a typical half-hour lunch."

So that’s the middle or support. I’ve told you the guy complained a lot and now I’ve given you detailed examples to prove my point.

Now comes the close or wrap or outro. You do not summarize here. You’ve got to add material and snap the piece to a close. What haven’t I done yet? I haven’t told the reader about the explosion I mentioned in the very first paragraph. My close is going to loop back to that.

"I finally lost it with the guy the day he complained that my class was so quiet it made him look bad. “They’ll say I can’t control my class.” I said, “Mart—it’s the truth, you can’t. Because you spend all your time bitching to your students, okay?” First his face got that frozen look. Then he opened his mouth. But I said, “Don’t say it, whatever it is. Just cork it.” Mart quit a month later—a quiet month later. I can only hope our conversation had something to do with his leaving. I do know one thing: he’s in a teachers’ room somewhere still grousing about the cheese sandwich in his hand and the rusty Bronco in the parking lot."

Your assignment is to write another description of a person , putting in this beginning-middle-end stuff. A story wouldn’t hurt, a quotation would be nice, and don’t forget to put you into it!

There's a trick here-if you worry ahead of time about all these gotta-do's, your paragraph will be tense, tight, maybe even dead-on-arrival. So, to do this right:

1. ask yourself what you really really want to write about

2. write about it the way you want

3. and THEN go back and see if it does these things English teachers like.

Problems!

2012-01-23T06:31:00.000-05:00

If there is any discrepancy between the semester assignment calendar and the posted weekly assignments, please follow the posted weekly assignments.

Sorry if they don't quite mesh, but in the end, it's all the same amount of work!

Night table survey

2012-01-21T12:00:00.001-05:00

Night-table survey 1

Week 2 Assignments

2012-01-20T08:26:00.003-05:00

Week 2

First is lecture material on week 2 with instructions on how to do the assignments. If you are an online student and don't understand instructions, assignments, or lectures, either email me at johngoldfine@gmail.com or post a question on the forum at the bottom of the page

Lecture material
Lecturette 1
Personalizing Writing: What I really want to say to my students is that your writing has to be 'personal,' but everyone misunderstands that. Oooh, Goldfine wants to hear about my abortions, my fling as a gay, my time in Tommytown at the Crossbar Motel, my drunken beating of my girlfriend, my year as a crackhead prostitute, my car accident where my first-born was crippled for life, etc etc.

In other words all those deepest, darkest secrets no one wants to talk about.

That isn't what I want (unless you want to write it)!

So, I talk about 'individual' writing nowadays, writing that's unique to you, writing no one else could ever put his or her name to.

Many students have a real desire to write Big. It might look like this: "My whole life I've been trying to figure out what it all means, why the stars are so far away from our puny grasp, why we love nature and yet ruin it, why our loves come and go so quickly. I've decided that the big questions have big answers if only we listen to the universe."If you like that, you're too easily satisfied! Everyone wonders about the big questions--where is the writer in here? The individual?

More often it looks like this: "Everyone has someone they love. You love people who will do anything for you and they love you back because you'll do anything for them. You feel good when that happens. That's what my family is all about; we believe in watching each other's back and doing for each other without anyone asking."

If you like that, you're really really too easily satisfied. The reader is going to have to do ALL the work here, fill in all the stories that the writer has not bothered to take the trouble to put down (and every time the writer says 'you,' the writer is taking a short cut that leads no where. Every time 'you ' is used here, it saves the writer the trouble of imagining a picture in his mind or remembering a story.

Using 'you' this way makes it easy to write, but the writing almost invariably will suck.

Here's another version of #1: "Ever since I was 5 and my mom left me alone on the beachblanket ("Don't move!") while she went up to the hotdog stand for a snack, I've thought about the big questions. Staring at the waves breaking and then approaching them and then walking into them made me wonder why the ocean was so big and I was so small. Why did the water feel too cold on my legs at first and then just right, and why was there a Crackerjacks box floating next to me instead of a fish like my picture book said lived in the ocean. Why was I so excited and so scared both, just as I've been all the rest of my life when I find a new love!) The big questions I asked myself that day (before my mother came screaming back to grab me out and spank me good) are the questions in one form or another I still ask myself."

I like that much better.

Here's another version of #2: "We love each other in my family, and that doesn't mean remembering anniversaries or getting together at Christmas, though we do that stuff too. It means that we watch out for each other even when it hurts. After her stroke, when my grandmother needed 24 hour care and was afraid to go to a nursing home, her five sons and daughters and their wives and her eight grandchildren and their families worked out a schedule to care for her at home. It wasn't easy, but we held to it for nearly two years until her death. It was not easy, but it was simple: this is family and we each have a complete call on each other. We call it 'love.'"

Same material, but this time there's an example.

Write right up to your elbows. Writing worth reading is always going to be alive. Write something alive.

*************Lecturette 2

Grafs: brainstorming and ideas
Oh, how I hate it when I walk over to a student staring at a blank computer screen, and the student tries to get rid of me by saying, "I'm thinking."

I say, "Thinking is overrated. Try just writing instead--ideas will come once your fingers start working."

And the student stares at me with a combination of disbelief in my ridiculous statement, horror that 'thinking' doesn't shut me up and drive me off, and confusion over what I just said.

What did I just say? The way to come up with ideas is to let the idea generating part of your mind do its work. But when you sit staring at a screen, you are likely NOT thinking. You are censoring. You are letting the Judge part of your brain judge all those ideas. Here's how it sounds inside your head when the Judge looks over your ideas: "That sucks, that sucks, that's stupid, that's really stupid, what are you thinking, dumb, maybe, nah, no good, bad, maybe, duh, duh."

The idea generating part of your brain throws out ideas, lots of them--good, bad, indifferent. The judge judges. You might sit a long time before the judge sees something hot, but, y'know, the judge ain't a writer.

So, how useful is that so-called thinking? Not very. So skip it. Start writing. Writing anything. Anything.

Because all words are part of a web, and you can't shake that web until you have words--not ideas, words. Skip the judge.

So, you have something due for John Goldfine. You have no idea (we've already gone over that part of the deal!) So, you start to type whatever:

I hate this fucking bullshit bullshit bulls in spain rain in spain dusty plains in spain spain pain maine cane cain and abel adam and eve adam and eve and pinch me

Adam and Even and Pinch Me went out on a raft adam and eve fell overboard

No rowing rafting today ice ice ice the day I nearly died ice crackling only person on Swan Lake skates ice thick as peanut brittle and about as strong whimpering cursing thought of her how she'd shake her head on my knees wet knees on my belly big booming ice
That was a little free writing--just hunting for a topic--and I came up with something: I could write about the day I almost drowned iceskating; I even started dealing out a few details in that last graf. I could build on those.

Some of you hate this idea of writing fast and letting the words carry you--too sloppy, too much wasted time, too junky looking on the page (as if computers couldn't clean it up!) Okay, that's your style.

If you would rather outline or do some sort of brainstorm you've used successfully in the past or would rather just stare at a screen, feel free to do whatever works for you, but understand that when people say, "I have no ideas. I can't come up with a topic," my reaction will always be, "So, stop trying. Write!"

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Lecturette 3 How to paragraph

Words are basic and bedrock. When people began writing, they wrote words this way: wordsarebasicandbedrockwhen peoplebeganwritingtheywrotewordsthisway.

Even though they didn't space or indicate sentences, sentences are instinctive in speaking. Not so with paragraphs. Paragraphs are conveniences. People speak in sentences. People do not--unless they are quite formal indeed--speak in paragraphs.

When I ask a writer to write something, they usually give me sentences, but they often ignore paragraphing.

That's a shame because paragraphs can bring light with no more trouble than it takes to hit Enter or Tab.

Compare what's above to this:

Words are basic and bedrock. When people began writing, they wrote words this way: wordsarebasicandbedrockwhenpeoplebeganwritingtheywrotewordsthisway.

Even though they didn't space or indicate sentences, sentences are instinctive in speaking. Not so with paragraphs. Paragraphs are conveniences. People speak in sentences. People do not--unless they are quite formal indeed--speak in paragraphs. When I tell a writer to write something, they usually give me sentences, but they often ignore paragraphing. That's a shame because paragraphs can bring light with no more trouble than it takes to hit Enter or Tab.

It's just a little harder the second way--and that's quite short. I'm often given two or three hundred words without paragraphing.

English teachers have an classic paragraph format in mind. It has a topic sentence, a concluding sentence, and five or six supporting sentences and is perhaps 100-150 words or so. It can be deadly dull or it can be okay, depending.

Here's a classic graf along the duller line:

Bodybuilding is a sport which requires forethought if it is to be done right. A serious bodybuilding artist plans his workouts days, weeks, even months ahead, depending on his goal. He considers his diet, his sleep, his aerobic exercise, his weak areas, his posing routine, and keeps records of every ounce he lifts. In the gym he does not mindlessly pump, does not do endless reps of everyone's favorite, the bench press. Instead he works his plan: he has figured out his goal and the number of reps, sets, and weeks it will take to reach that goal, and neither macho grunting and shouting on the other side of the gym nor an invitation for a brew and burger with the guys will sway him from his path of physical perfection. It's a bit of a dull life, but for the die-hard at a competition, glistening with baby oil and shooting poses to the beat of some old disco tune, this is his church, his job, his family, his meaningful connection to the universe.It's 174 words, and it's about a single thing which is laid out in the first sentence ("sport which requires forethought") so it is a paragraph. It has a second sentence which narrows the first, and then details follow. It has an ending which does not summarize in the sense of repeat the material in shorter form, but it does nail down what the graf is driving toward and summarizes in that sense.

I was able to write it without giving it much thought at all.

Now I'm going to try another graf dealing with weightlifting. It will be a good graf, but it will not follow the pattern.

I was sitting at the lat pulldown today, resting between sets, and this guy came over. I didn't know his name, but in the gym you recognize faces and without consciously trying, you learn a little about what people are doing in the weight room after you've seen them around for a year or two. This guy is one of the bulls--all he cares about is packing on size. He doesn't care if he's ripped, he'll never compete in bodybuilding--he's got a pretty good belly--but he does want to make his neck wider than his ears. I've heard him power-grunting over in the free-weight section. Some one will shout: "Come on, you can do it, one more! It's all you!" And he tries one more press of an 800 lb barbell. "Errr-RUNNNNNHHH!" And makes it. So what did he want with me? He says, "Can I sit in for one set?" It's a courtesy to let someone do that, but I resent it anyway--he should have seen me around the gym the way I've seen him, and he should know I only rest a few seconds between sets. But you don't argue with the bulls. It isn't necessary to smile either, and I don't as I go over to the Nautilus rowing machine. I offer him a silent curse instead and picture him shriveling up to nearly nothing. If they tell you weightlifting builds character, go ahead and laugh--it turns out selfish narcissists, like him, like me. But bigger ones!255 words. Too long really, but I cheated. It could have broken into separate grafs where I oranged it, and I would ordinarily make that break.

Anyway, what do we have? The graf starts with an image, something a reader can picture. Then it tells a little about gym culture. A character is introduced and described in detail. Then the story finishes.

Why describe the bull in detail?--this isn't a character sketch. In detail because he's a type, and the story can't really be understood unless the reader has an idea of the type. But the graf is not just a story--the story only exists so I can make the point in the next to last sentence. Writing this graf, I decided to save the point until the end (to tell the truth, when I started writing I had no point in mind....)

Does the graf have a shape? I think so, but it's not neat, it doesn't have a topic sentence, and it can't be easily outlined. Could I pull it apart and rewrite and make it better and maybe even merge these two differently shaped grafs? Yes!

You, students and writers, might think about these two grafs and see what's useful to you in each.

Lecturette 4

Getting started with isearchWhy Isearch? Why a search paper centered on 'I'?

Why not a nice traditional research paper on effects of marijuana, or the capital punishment debate, or the future of the internet, or the motorcycle helmet law in Maine, or the the truth behind the Kennedy assassination, or the advantages of solar heating, and so on? The Y2K problem used to be a big one--remember that? Last year several people wanted to research the end of the world in 2012....

It's not that those are necessarily bad topics, because eventually in my lecturettes, I'll argue that there is no such thing as a bad topic, only topics that are not going to work for some people on some days.

But as you look at those topics, don't your hearts sink? Unless you're building a house and then maybe solar power works for you. Or you have a brother on death row and want to look into his fate more closely.

But for most of us, most of the time--who cares about them? Those are classroom topics, done to death a thousand times--no, a million times--before. And when students use them and find the same resources as those who have gone before and write the nearly-identical paper to one the teacher has read many many times, then the pretending has to begin.

The teacher pretends that she really reads the paper. The student pretends he really understands the words under his name. The teacher pretends the student has done something with some intellectual point and even merit. The student pretends he has learned something.

A dreary charade I don't want to be part of.

So, first rule of isearch: plan to write about something which matters to you in a real way. When I say 'matters,' I'm not talking about simple curiosity. Curiosity alone is a short-cut back to the paper on the effects of marijuana. If you've earned your curiosity by a lifetime of fascination, that's one thing. If you just think it might make a nice topic, that's another.

At this point you may be thinking, "But it has to be long enough. I need a topic I can find plenty of information on."

Nope, wrong, front and back in that thought. It does not have to be long enough, and, trust me, amounts of information are almost never the issue.

So, second rule of isearch: once you have your topic which matters to you, ask yourself what you want to find out. Figure out your questions. When you have good questions, you will not be hunting for information, you will be hunting for answers.

Questions are the beating heart of an isearch.

When you hunt for answers, you sort through information quickly. When you write a traditional research paper and you find a bunch of stuff, you think, "Oh boy, this will fill a couple of pages." When you write an isearch, everything is put through a different filter: 'Is this relevant, is this useful, is it part of my answer.' If the answer to these questions is no, you don't mess with it.

That frees you to be serious. That frees you to recreate in miniature something that's hardwired in all of us, that's part of our homo sapiens nature, and that is the pleasure in asking questions, hunting solutions to problems, and proclaiming our eventual prowess, mastery, and success.

And that's a lot different than getting a grade.

So, think about a topic you care about and questions you don't know the answers to and questions whose answers are a little trickier and more complex than just flipping open a reference or googling for a few minutes.

Immediate point is this: once you have a topic, once we've discussed it, you can and must start writing--before doing any major research. While your mind is still fresh and virgin, write down what you want to find out, what you already know or suspect about your topic and questions, and your complete and total background with the topic--spread your net widely on this last one.

All of that material in some form will be in your isearch final draft, I promise.

Brainstorming a topic: When I talk about brainstorming a topic, I usually get great resistance and skepticism from students who work, study, and want to have a little bit of life too. They don't mind working, but they don't want to waste time. They say, 'Tell me what you want me to do, John, and I'll do it, but f'the luvva pete, don't tell me to empty my brain, squeeze out the sponge, wander widely in memory and thought, speculate, goof around, and generally act like I'm some kind of lazy rich kid whose daddy is paying for everything! What do you want me to write?'

Here's the thing: the way to good stuff is not to write whatever you think the teacher wants. That's too easy. Believe, instead, that hidden away in the nooks and crannies of your mind is a bunch of good stuff about your topic which you might never discover if I assign you this:

"Number 1. Describe in detail your personal background with the topic. 1A. Include the background of peripheral but related subjects. For example, if your topic is getting your license to drive truck, related areas would be your driving history, your history with trucks, your career history, the career and truck history of the people around you as you grew up, etc."

I don't know--maybe that would be useful, but I can't fine-tune instructions like that for 80or 90 students.

So, the general instruction is to brainstorm, to write down everything you can think of without censoring yourself and then to keep writing, repeat yourself if you have to. Most of it will not go to waste! It will wind up in the isearch.

After you've brainstormed all that background stuff, go back to your question, and start pushing that. Break it down into subquestions. This might be the most important part of the isearch, and poorer students tend to just give it a kiss and a promise: 'Aw, hell, who cares about the questions. I just have to find out a bunch of stuff.'

See? Those students haven't been listening! Swiften up! Ask a bunch of questions, then break each one into subquestions.

Finally, look at that bunch of questions and write down what you know or think you know or know you don't know about the questions and possible answers.

This is all still brainstorming. It isn't pretty or particularly well organized or all relevant.

I won't yell at you! Don't yell at yourself.

Some students have been so brainwashed by stoopid teachers that they think organization=success.

Eventually, organization doesn't hurt, but in the beginning it can put a stranglehold on your mind. You're so damned worried about it looking good, you forget to worry about actually thinking up stuff. Pretty folders and neatness satisfy many teachers who are kind of compulsive types. I'm not one of them. Messiness does not scare me. Hyperorganization linked with blah bland content is what scares me.

***************************************************************************

Jan 23

* Graf 3
Inventory list and list graf assignment (first the inventory list, then the graf

What's this assignment all about? More details--

Lists mean details mean specific writing. The FIRST part of your assignment is to look at something like a desktop, junk drawer, purse, back seat of the car-- and list what you see. The second part is to write about the list, about what it means, and to write it in the third person, as if you are writing about someone else.

Here’s an inventory of my 54 X 44 inch dining room table, working roughly from NE to SW:
· a four outlet power strip for the phone recorder and the overhead light
· the phone
· under the phone: the receipt for the phone, a book of instructions, a Virgin Atlantic notepad, and a 2000 Nature Conservancy pocket calendar
· 4 Amazon.com bookmarks
· a calculator
· a spare battery (does not fit calculator)
· 4 rubber bands
· a yellow plastic glass with 33 pens and pencils in it
· a box of #25 (purse size stapler) staples
· one standard size stapler, no anvil
· 3 red sitstay.com dog clickers
· 1 yellow clickertraining.com clicker
· crumbs from crumbled Alpo treats
· one German switchblade knife
· two American one-handed knives
· two plastic oarlocks for Old Town canoes, one missing a nut
· 3 crumpled pieces of paper: one an offer to buy self-stick labels, one a student checklist I had second thoughts on, one a paper towel used for napkin last night
- one envelope containing check to Rebecca Goldfine—no relation;
· one brass bottle opener in form of naked lady
· 16 oz tube of salt, nappy surfaced from innumerable delicate jabs with German switchblade
· blue Aqua Madonna bottle with two dried alliums (I think), related to onions anyway, and a sprig of evergreen wrapped in a red ribbon
· stone mug with 17 pens, pencils, markers, and a pair of orange-handled scissors
· 24 loose pens and pencils scattered over the (greenchecked) tablecloth
- 3 bottles lying on their sides: Colman’s Mustard, no brand tabasco, no brand crushed black pepper
· a machine file so old it’s smooth
· a 3 inch machine bolt
· a set of Craftsman metric miniwrenches in a plastic purse
· 8 unread Wall St Journals, earliest date Oct 8, 2001
- 2 Sun magazines, one Zymurgy
· an anthology of Russian short stories
· Modern Library short stories of Chekhov
· a giant spray bottle of Simple Green
· a giant roll of paper towels
· a Nikon case, dark glasses inside
- last week’s Uncle Henry’s Buyers’ Guide
· a black navy watch cap
· two nylon motorcycle tie-down strap extensions
· a pile of newpapers and mail

Did I mention the sewing kit? The pepper shaker, the giant dogtoy (ball within a ball)?

Then write a paragraph in the third person (he or she instead of ‘I’) detailing what the list says about you. That's the second part of graf 3 assignment.

What's this assignment all about? Figuring out the meaning--

For example:
The owner of this table is a pig, no two ways about it. This isn’t a worktable in the garage—this is his dining room table. He doesn’t sound very organized, but his wife must be either blind or very tolerant or pretty much as big a slob as he is. Why doesn’t he put his tools away down in the cellar? Too lazy. Why does he stab the salt container with his knife? Must get bored on the phone. Why has he got so many pens and pencils? Is he an artist, a writer, a teacher, a nutcase? I guess he adds up to a knife-carrying, dog-loving, tool-using, procrastinating, two-legged walking mess.

******************************************************
Here’s a great student version:

Inventory

The three feet of counter space to the left of the sink is home to:
- a green dish drainer and tray
- a toaster
- a mug tree with 6 mugs: three different pairs, none of which match
- 2 stray mugs
- a ceramic milk carton that is black and white like a cow
- a can of instant shoe cleaner
- an empty vase
- a balsam fir scented yankee candle
- 3 figurines from Red Rose tea
- a flash light
- 12 envelopes of bills and junk mail
- a microwave
On top of the microwave is a wooden serving tray that has the following items on it:
- 5 letters
- a pampered chef membership card
- 2 tiny mugs
- an egg holder
- a vase with one dried rose and baby's breath
- a mug from my high school containing: 4 tiny bottles of bubbles and the pieces to the travel game of perfection
- a black mug which contains: 13 paperclips, 4 safety pins, 3 push pins, a key ring, 12 receipts, 5 paint brushes and 1 pen
- 7 kool-aid points
- a blue mug containing: 8 gel pens and a picture of the curtains I want in my livingroom
- a mug with hearts on it which contains 1 pair of scissors, 1 pair of pinking shears, 6 markers, 20 pens and 10 pencils
- a bottle of metalic antique gold acrylic paint
- a tin with Chinese tea
- 16 letters and bills
- 4 notices from school
- 1 pay stub
- and finally a Longeberger basket containing:

- tape - a gymnastic ribbon - coupon for free fries
- polishing cloth - a bag of stickers at McDonalds
- 2 fake sunflowers - a box of 6 hooks - an envelope with 3 ticket
- a watch link - a box of brass fasteners stubs to the Nutcracker
- a soccer patch - a magnetic key holder at the Grand
- a hole punch - subway stamps
- almost forgot to mention the stuff behind the microwave:
- two glass jar: one containing a red clown's nose, the has 123 kool-aid pionts

And here's the graf:

Does she ever throw anything away? She is a junk collecting, tea drinking mother who never seems to have enough time to go through the bills to throw the old ones out or answer the letters she receives. Goodness knows she has enough pens and pencils to write with, maybe someday she'll put them to good use. Aha, but she's a space saver! Take a look at the stuff she can pile on top if the microwave and still leave enough room to use it. She should have a desk to put all those things in, but Santa hasn't found a way to fit it down the chimney yet. And what's up with the dead flowers? She must be one of the woman who saves a rose from a special someone, probably because she doesn't get many. On a more positive note, she's pretty organized, if the kids need something she knows right where to find it. Just don't go moving things, you'll screw up her whole life, it's called organized clutter- the center of her universe.
Copyright © 2002 by Ingrid Maguire

*********************************************

Here's a very unusual student list:

Inventory’s InventoryI took a drive today and as I drove I thought about this inventory. Although I did an inventory of the top of my desk it didn’t interest me so I doubted seriously that I could convincingly entice the reader in by my own description of what it says of me. I needed something more, something a little beyond what an inventory might imply.I thought about pulling out my medicine bag and reviewing its contents but it hasn’t been opened for years. There’s something not quite right about using it for that purpose. No, I needed something different. I needed something that would piece together an image for both the reader and myself.I wondered after who I am now. Would an inventory of my dreams and aspirations work towards opening me to the assignment? What about a personal inventory of the me that I am or the me that was left behind? Both of those seem too personal to be of any real use. The ideas were discarded.I toyed with pulling the car over (safely) and doing an inventory of wherever I happened to be but frankly it was chilly outside and I was toasty warm in my car listening to some really good tunes.I then considered an inventory of my car but who wants to hear about the car seats and the crayons? Every mother need only look in her own car for an inventory of mine.Okay, then I said to myself. How about doing an inventory of the people in my life or the places? The problem with both of those ideas is that next graf, the descriptive third person view of the person that made that list. You’d have to know the people or the places to understand the me behind them.I wasn’t doing well. Everything I came up with seemed either too trite or too far-fetched. I figured that when I got home I’d sit down and somehow figure my way through the assignment. Obviously, it hasn’t helped except as a diversion.So now what? Shall I simply post the inventory (*yawn) of my big oak desk? Frankly the desk was just organized and would tell you only what I wanted you to see. That doesn’t feel very honest.Here’s what I’ve decided. This is the inventory of my tossed out ideas for an inventory. This is an inventory of me in the middle of the writing process (at least the student writing process). This is the inventory of a day of thought about an inventory.This feels the most honest of them yet.

And the graf following:

Inventory’s GrafWell there’s some nerve. She just turned that assignment around to suit her own self. Does she give too little weight to what the assignment asks of her or too much? What of the medicine bag? The fact that she has one indicates that if not spiritual, there is a spiritual nature to her. If only I could know what tunes she was listening to and the purpose of her drive maybe I could tell a little more about who she is. She’s a mother. That says a little of her but nothing towards her character. What she says of the people in her life- not being able to know her without knowing them again gives a glimpse but hardly enough to discern any true feelings that she has of them or her choice of them. And finally, does her decision to use the process of writing the inventory as an inventory speak of a creative but almost derisive attitude towards authority? I suppose that only the giver of the assignment can speak towards that end. For my money the girl is trouble. Best keep your distance or go in expecting nothing but prepared for anything.

Copyright (c) 2006 by Amy Cross

Jan 25
* Graf 4 (reaction to advice to writers)

What's this assignment all about? Thinking about your writing, how you write, what works and what doesn't:

My Best Advice to Student Writers

Things to think about as you write your paragraphs and essays:
* What do I really want to write about today?
* Am I trying too hard to find a perfect topic?
* Am I ignoring the obvious topic I should be writing about?
* Am I settling for a lame topic I don't want to write about?
* Am I really in this piece of work?
* Could anyone else in the world sign their name to it?
* Do I really want to write about this today?
* Does this sound too much like a casual letter instead of an essay?
* If this writing were a meal, would my reader starve to death?
* Have I told the reader 'where and 'when' if necessary?
* Have I beaten 'you' to death? And do I mean 'I'? And if I mean 'I', why am I writing 'you'?
* Am I keeping back the best stuff because nobody would be interested?
* Am I writing what I want or trying to please the teacher?
* Am I so worried about picky stuff that I'm not getting to the guts and meat of what I want to say?
* Would it kill me to erase everything I've written and start over?
* Who would I be willing to show this writing to, besides John?
* Am I going to hand in something I personally think sucks, but, what the hell, it's good enough for an english teacher?
* Would I dare to hand this to John and say, "I don't want to hear any negative comments about this, pal. I think it's a damn fine job."?

So, that's my advice. Now you're going to write a paragraph where you react to what I say above. I could offer advice about the graf about my advice, but I think I'm going to let you get on with your graf without any more advice.

* Graf 5 (brainstorming an isearch topic reaction graf)

Here's an isearch brainstorm I did to find a topic and some questions I wanted to answer. I started by listing some words and then trying to narrow down and focus on a topic. Take a look and write a paragraph reacting to this technique--like, hate, fear, intrigued, bored, whatever. If you want, feel free to do a brainstorm of your own--but that is not the assignment!

Books
Reading
Writing
Motorcycles
Gardening
Brewing
Weightlifting
Running
Dogtraining
Maps
Hiking
Canoes
Horses
Iceland
Woodcutting
Trailmaking
Internet
Cooking
Preserving food
Knives
Movies
Travel
Teaching
House repair
Gardening
Exotic vegetables
Manure
Tiller
Fences
Animal control
Mulch
Wintering over
Cover crop
Soil test
Seed catalog
Weeds
Starting seeds
Cold frame
Asparagus beds
Can I improve my artichoke and okra production
Where can I get better manure
Do I need a tiller
Should I improve or remove fences
Woodchucks and raccoons—am I winning or losing
Something better than hay somewhere for mulch
Best way to winter over oregano and artichokes
Could I should I do cover crops
Do I need soil tests if I don’t have a source of manure anyway
Where is the ultimate seed catalog
What can I do better about weeds
Need a better starting system
And a better hardening off system in May
Where to put the new asparagus and how much

Jan 27

* Unique graf due, graf 6

What's this assignment all about? Getting the details to add up without necessarily spelling it out.
‘Unique’—
means there’s just the one, no copies or imitations. You’re unique, I am too. What’s my evidence for my uniqueness? There’s the tattooed star, the dogs with goofy names (Precious, Keeper, Scooter). How about the whoopie pie addiction? The bush-hogged lawn? The super-slow sets in the weightroom? The dog kibble almost always in my back pocket? The details start to add up to…me. Your assignment today is to think about your uniqueness and list some of the details.

And here’s a pro example:
I have tattoos, I ride a Harley, and I drive a '56 Ford Fairlane when I'm not driving a rig. I enjoy shooting pistols and submachine guns competitively when I can. I love any good smokey bar full of loud people and a lot of good old country, rockabilly, doowop, or blues on the jukebox. I currently reside in North Carolina but lived in New York City for a few years and would love to spend more time in New Orleans. I've been lots of places thanks to my years with the band, which is probably the only tangible thing I got out of my music career other than a seemingly insurmountable mountain of debt and probable hearing damage. I love good books, good whiskey, and good music. And cats. And dogs. My favorite colors are black and red and my favorite actress is any of the regularly naked ones. I am politically libertarian for the most part. I usually have grease under my nails from playing with the car or the bike. I usually have grease in my hair too. I drink bourbon and soda. CLUB soda, not Coke

* isearch brainstorm/topic ideas due, graf 7

Try a brainstorm yourself, like the one I did. No particular format needed, just some topics that you're connected to and that you might have some questions about.

We get questions!

2012-01-19T16:00:00.000-05:00

Another syllabus question from an online student: ""What is a Zombie Student?"

In Teacherland, I have my live classes, where I go into a classroom with students and computers and we talk and etcetera etcetera.

But then, there is the dark side. I also have classes with students I never see, the un-live classes! They creep out at night and leave their spoor on hoganroad.blogspot.com while live students peacefully sleep.

What else could these students possibly be but zombies????

New survey!

2012-01-19T11:30:00.002-05:00

Annual Canada Survey

Problems problems.....

2012-01-18T16:30:00.002-05:00

Sooo, at home I can't bring up my discussion board host, Bravenet, where you are supposed to post your syllabus questions! I can see it at my work computer, however!
If anyone has any idea what the problem is and how I might fix it, other than dumping my cache and temp files, I will award you a special Gold Star in gratitude.

Meanwhile, I will answer the questions you ask on the discussion board either here or by email if you decide to identify yourself--that's an adequate workaround, I hope.

First questions:

Why is it important to have a book for this class? What exactly is a 'graf' and why do you call it that? What will we be taking from this class?

* It is not important to have a book for this class. There is no book for this class! Take the money you save and treat your sweetheart to a meal on me. Everything you need will be online at no further expense.

* graf=paragraph

* Here's what I say in the syllabus about what you might take away:

WHY WHY WHY WHY????? This course probably will not be any direct, short-term help in your technology. But! It will offer you the beginning of those communication skills the employers all say they want. It will help you organize your thinking to make a better student out of you in all your classes. It will come in handy when you continue your education in future years because, one, you'll have it out of the way and, two, you will be sharper in other courses with this as a foundation. Other technologies and techniques come and go--reading and writing are NEVER going out of style.

People often don’t find out what they’re thinking until they try writing! It’s like exploration and discovery! The human mind is a funny thing. In a college level writing course, you might find yourself thinking about things in new ways. That’s also why you take the course.

This course is a standard and basic college-level composition course that hundreds and thousands of students from Ft. Kent to San Diego take every year and you may possibly be able to transfer the credit to other schools as you continue your education.

Further thoughts on Why, Spring 2011

English is the Department of brooders. We brood over our existence, its purpose and meaning in the academic universe.

We are right to brood!

We know that a hundred years ago, colleges did not offer courses in literature, except literature in dead languages. Students who wanted to read

Keats or Shakespeare or Dickens did so on their own out of love, not for college credit.

Nor did students of a century ago take courses in writing English. It was only after World War II, well within historical memory, that high school graduation

become a more or less universal expectation. High schools before the war only dealt with highly-motivated students preparing for college, students who entered
college already writing at what we today call college level.

We see this historical fact and doubt the foundation of our very existence.

Are we doing no more than teaching the high school courses of old?

And our brooding takes on even gloomier overtones when we talk to outsiders about what we do. Outsiders often imagine that we teach 'communications' and

that we spend a lot of time correcting spelling, pointing out misplaced modifiers, explaining that 'ain't' isn't a word, and generally acting like old-timey schoolmarms with pencils stuck in our flyaway buns.

And whatever lip-service outsiders pay to 'communications,' the truth is that most people hated English in school, hate to write, are embarrassed at their own

attempts, are convinced that they can't write, hate poetry, would not be caught dead reading Shakespeare or one of those boring old classics.

Most people really have no idea what English is all about.

So, yes, we brooders can have a hard time explaining our reason for being. The nursing department turns out nurses, welding turns out welders...but English?

Sometimes we hope to explain ourselves to outsiders by talking about critical thinking skills, focus and clarity of thought expressed in writing and speech, and the ability to logically analyze and synthesize materials.

But that is just a shadow of the truth. The truth?

The truth is that the world is broken. Everyone with eyes to see knows this.

But every time a good sentence is spoken or written or a clear thought is
articulated, this broken world of ours begins to heal; light enters and darkness
recedes. And we in English are priests of the word.

So, nursing turns out nurses, welding turns out welders, and English turns out people able to see better and, by seeing better, people better able to make better
things to see.

Getting started--

2012-01-10T08:45:00.001-05:00

Getting started in ENG 101-95--online students only! Are you ready? Because ready or not, next week, here it comes--online English.

If you're taking online ENG, make sure you know what you're getting into:

* An online course does not take less of your time than a live-class course. The time you save not going to class, you then spend by teaching yourself from written lecture material and through trial-and-error.

* Taking a course online does not mean you can do the work whenever you want. Yes, you can do it at 3 in the morning; and, yes, you can do it wearing your pajamas or nothing at all. But, no, you can't let it slide for a week or two and expect the teacher won't notice or worry. That's a little too much 'whenever.'

* Taking a course online is a lonely job. If you need other people to sit next to and chat with in order to get yourself motivated, an online course will be tough sledding.

* Taking a course online means having to deal with the instructor...a lot. If you do best by sitting in the back of the room, keeping your head down, keeping your mouth shut, and never asking questions, you may find yourself hating life online. It's very interactive.

* If you're planning on taking an online course and do not have easy internet access, you're living dangerously.

* If your best method of learning is NOT by reading, you might not want an online course.

Okay, that's the tough stuff. If you're still reading, here's the good news: You have an instructor who's ready, willing, and able to help you. I've taught these courses for many years, and I know the kind of difficulties with writing and with blogs you might be having. I'm patient, I'm (nearly) tireless: we will solve or overcome problems together!

The only time I'm not just an email away is if my ISP has problems. (That occasionally happens.) You're going to write this semester--that's what it's all about--and I'm going to work with you on your writing to make it even better than it is. Okay, so what's next?

1. Take a look around this site http://hoganroad.blogspot.com/ .

All your semester assignments and lecture materials will be here, as well as links to handouts, samples, and other course materials. You'll see that your syllabus is here, as well as a list of all assignments for the semester, as well as lectures and explanations for the first week's assignments.

If you're still with me at this point, it's time to:

2. Create your own blog. Most of your writing this semester will go on this blog where I can read and comment on it.

Go to http://www.blogger.com/ and follow instructions.

Some additional advice from me: First you have to create a google account if you don't already have one. You can use any email address you have to create the account--it does not have to be gmail.

If you have a google account, sign in. If you don't, click 'Create a blog.'

There's a bunch of stuff there to fill out, and I'm going to let you struggle through it on your own. It might be pesky but persevere. Be sure, double sure, to remember the name, email, and password you type in. If you forget those, you will be hating life later.

You are about to create your blog!

Pick a name and address and, again, do not forget the address. Write it down! You can change the name later, but not the address.

Choose a template. That can be changed later so don't agonize.

And there, bingo, you have a blog. *

Click 'Start blogging' and put a message into the box and hit 'Publish Post.'

Now hit 'View Blog'! Pretty darn cool, eh?

You are almost done.

3. Email me johngoldfine@gmail.com with your name and your blog address which is at the top of your screen. Copy and paste it into your email. (Do that by clicking on the address. It should go all-blue. When it does, right-click your mouse, hit copy, then go to your email, position your cursor, right click again and hit 'paste.' )

Mail that to me because without the address we can not do business.

* PS: When your blog is set up, go to settings/comments and make absolutely sure

that 1. 'anyone can comment'

and that 2. comment moderation is 'never'

and that 3. word verification is 'no '

Please do not screw up 1, 2, 3!

Whew! Now on the course blog click on the left-hand link to 'week 1 assignments' or scroll way down--and you can get started writing and posting on your blog.

Spring 2012 Weekly Assignments ENG 101

2012-01-09T12:21:00.004-05:00

This is a list of assignments and due dates--each week lecture material and explanations of the assignments will also be posted.

Week 1

Jan 18

Jan 20
* hands graf due, graf 1
* worst teacher graf due, graf 2
* syllabus questions due

Week 2

Jan 23
* inventory/inventory graf due, graf 3

Jan 25
* reaction to advice to writers graf due, graf 4
* reaction to isearch brainstorm due, graf 5

Jan 27
* unique graf due, graf 6
* isearch brainstorm/topic ideas due, graf 7

Week 3

Jan 30
* isearch worksheet due
* reaction to isearches graf due, graf 8

Feb 1
* your background with isearh due (first section of isearch)
* object graf due, graf 9

Feb. 3
* isearch motivations and questions due (second section of isearch)
* person graf due, graf 10

Week 4

Feb. 6
* real life research graf due, graf 11

Feb. 8

* place graf due, graf 12
* Intro graf # 1 to cause essay due

Feb. 10

* reaction to sample cause essays due, graf 13

Week 5

Feb. 13
* Intro graf # 2 to cause essay due

Feb 15
* Outro graf to cause essay due

Feb 17
* what you already know about your isearch questions due (section 3)

* isearch research plan due, graf 14

Week Break

Week 6

Feb. 27
* complete cause essay due, essay 1

Feb 29
* meta graf/reaction graf on writing cause essay due, graf 15
* reaction to sample classification essays due, graf 16

Mar 2
* reaction to writers checkist due, graf 17
* two intros to classification essay due

Week 7

Mar 5

* outro to classification essay due

Mar 7
* classification essay due, essay 2

Mar. 9
* check sample contrast essays
* two contrast intros due

Week 8

Mar 12
* graf 2 of contrast essay due
* isearch progress report due, graf 18

Mar 14
* complete contrast essay due, essay 3

Mar 16
* in class contrast essay due, essay 4

Week 9
Mar 19
* reaction graf to writing in class essay due, graf 19
* check sample example essays
* example essay intro graf due

Mar 21
* three items of annotated bibliography due

Mar 23
* example essay due, essay 5

Week 10

Mar 26
* continue work on isearch

Mar 28
* in class example essay, essay 6

Mar 30
* check out sample process essays
* in-class process essay graf 1

Week Break

Week 11

April 9
* continue work on isearch

April 11
* process essay due, essay 7

April 13
* continue work on isearch

Week 12

Apr 16
* continue work on isearch

Apr 18
* check out effect essays
* continue work on isearch

Apr 20
* first draft isearch due (lateness penalty)

Week 13

Apr 23
* isearch conferences
* effect essay due, essay 8

Apr 25
* in class process essay, essay 9

Apr 27
* continue work on isearch

Week 14

Apr 30
* in class division essay due, essay 10

May 2
* continue work on isearch

May 4
* final final final deadline for all rewrites (grafs and essays)

Week 15

May 7
* isearch due (lateness penalty)

May 9
* in class essay makeups
* reaction to your own own essays and grafs due, graf 20
* course evaluation, graf 21 (optional) (makes up for any single missing graf)

May 10 final exam (live students)
May 10 or 11 final exam (online students)

Week 1 Assignments

2012-01-08T22:35:00.001-05:00

Below you will find two things.

First is lecture material on week 1.

Below that are the assignments in large red letters with instructions on how to do the assignments. If you are an online student and don't understand instructions, assignments, or lectures, either email me at johngoldfine@gmail.com or post a question on the forum at the bottom of the page.
************************************************************************************
First lecture on writing--importance of details: Imagine I hold up a finger. You're standing there and I hold up a finger. Got the picture? Are you okay with that?
Are you sure?
Can you really picture it?
If I hold up my pointer finger, I'm saying, "Yeah, I'm the Number 1 English teacher around here!"
If I hold up my thumb--well, everyone who knows me knows what an up, positive, and cheerful guy I am. The thumb-up is just Goldfine being himself.
If I hold up my pinkie, maybe I'm at a tea party and want everyone to know how well-brought-up I am.
If I hold up my ring finger (no ring on it), that's pretty weird, but maybe I'm saying I'm a married guy who doesn't like jewelry. Fair enough.
But! But what if, first day of class, I hold up the middle finger, flip you the bird, get rude! Usually I don't do that til much later in the semester!
So, naturally you're upset and you go to my boss, Academic Dean Pamela Proulx-Curry . "Goldfine held up his finger at me," you say.
Is that good enough to get me sent on my way with a cup of pencils and no pension? Is it? What will Dean PPC say to you?
Oh yeah--those little details count for everything. Five fingers, but only one is a problem. The writer has to deliver the details or die on the page. Tell Dean Turner I held up the middle finger and you'll get a reaction. Tell him I held up "a finger", and nothing!

Observation: where do the details come from? From keeping your eyes, ears, and mind open. From understanding that the small stuff adds up to a bigger picture. Look at your hands. Yours, no one else's--though they have the same ten fingers, knuckles, nails, and so on. But observe....
My hands sport a twisted ring finger, right hand--accident with a horse. A twisted little finger--same cause. An angle-cutback on my right thumbnail--manicure by knifeblade. Weightlifter's calluses both hands. Arthritic bumps. Scar on my right pinkie from a slipping feeler gauge that cut to the bone. Singed hairs on both hands from wrestling logs into the woodstove. Deep cracks in my right thumb and index finger from cold. A residual writer's bump on my right middle finger, even though it's been 30 years since I really worked a pen or pencil that hard.
The things I see, however small each one may be, start to add up, start to indicate the person and the personality behind them.

Stories, aka anecdotes, examples, dirt, or goodies, are what make most grafs sit up and bark. You can tell a full-fledged story to make a point or a bunch of mini-stories or storiettes (mini-stories can get the reader working with you to flesh out or imagine the material and that can be a big plus since it helps give the reader 'ownership.'

Here are pieces by Winona Nicolar and Margo Bear, each full of mini-stories:
So Rez
So rez…..you know how when we used to walk around the point in the middle of winter with our jackets wide open our mom would yell. Well I know what she meant now…. I remember my gram yelling out the window when I was little that it was time to come in, as I yell at my son to come and eat…..going behind the church to smoke cigarettes, gimme a drag, now watching the kids run behind the church, wonder what they’re doing…..
Stopping by at supper time….you hungry? Come and eat…..hand me downs, even your brothers stuff……sleeping on the floor at the hotel…….duct tape the fixer upper of everything, this isn’t just a rez thing but it’s native chrome in some parts…..
The dragging muffler or the really loud one…….bumper stickers all over the car, some actually hide the rust in the bumper…..the smell of fry bread all over your clothes and the big grease stain on the front of your shirt……the smile on grams face as you polish off the last of her bread…..all of that is so rez…….
Margo Bear
*** So Rez
“Oh my God, that is so rez girl.” My girlfriend blurts out the sentence that oh so familiar. I look at her with a smile bigger than Texas. “It is no wonder you have the red decal ‘Rez girl’ on your back window of your car.”
I am thinking silently in my head, yes that is right I am so rez. I grew up on the Sisseton-Wahpeton Dakota Nation reservation, and now reside on the Penobscot Nation Indian Island. All my life I have witnessed the whole meanings of being so rez.
Standing in line with my mother waiting to get the best and biggest box of commodity government cheese to make Mac’ and cheese, frybread with a thick layer of cheese on top, and commodes cheese to sell that is rez.
Riding in a car with duct tape on the dashboard to keep the kids from scraping themselves on the board driving down the road with a pow-wow tape in the in dash radio, while kids are in the back screaming “I am hungry.” Mom handing back bologna in white bread with plain chips smashed in the middle, our lunch on the road.
Going to a different rez every weekend for the drum group to take the best shot at winning the jackpot for best drum group at the pow-wow, which the money and that of any of the kids winnings from dancing in the contest is used the finance our next weekend trip to a different rez pow-wow.
Hearing girls in school say the common “Holy Aaaaaa," or "Enit.” Common words used in the rez vocabulary. Watching the older girls with their man, with a turn of the head you see the biggest hickie on anyone’s neck that you have ever seen, that is rez marking your man/women so that everybody knows that he/she is taken and keep away.
Hearing cars drive past on main street with a bumping system only to hear not rap, but the latest pow-wow drum group blaring out the windows. Walking up to someone at a pow-wow and asking “hey can I borrow a cundi (cigarette),” and the person just handing over their cundi in their mouth, and you take a drag and give it back.
Driving around in a car that has rust on it, and is not the latest model of car, but it is your latest model that you bought on the side of the road. And you hear the expression “Hey it gets me to the next pow-wow.” Winona Nicolar

The writer can also tell a single story to get an idea across. Students are writing about hands right now, so here's a finger graf with frame and a story smack in the middle.

We were all a little tired, and maybe if I had been fresh I wouldn't have put a permanent twist and kink in the ring finger of my right hand. A dozen of us stood with thirty horses in a ditch below the road, trying to offer them water--just as the old saying has it, you can lead them to it--and that's as far as it goes. They must have been thirsty after moving fast all morning without water, but the three whose reins I was holding wrapped around my right hand were more interested in worrying about traffic and eyeballing the possible grass up the hill than in drinking. To encourage them I walked them upstream, away from the mud stirred up by the others, and suddenly the ground got soft, the ponies panicked and decided simultaneously to jump across to the other side of the stream. They jumped, I didn't, and the reins tightened around my fingers with a snap. I'm no chess player who can see a dozen moves ahead, but even a simple horseman should have foreseen a little better and should not have had those reins twisted the way they were. Next time I won't need to tie a string around my finger to remind me to pay attention--my finger itself will be the string.

Here are your assignments and some more explanatory material:
Jan 20
* Graf 1 (hands)

What's this assignment all about? Details, details, details, specific details—

I know that on this assignment everyone feels pressure to make a good impression--in other words, to knock my socks off. But don't worry about perfection, okay? The perfect is the enemy of the good. Give each paragraph no more than 20 minutes or so max, then call it good, and move right on.

This is a preliminary writing sample--I haven't taught you anything yet, so you can't screw up, so relax, don't worry, and let fly. Here is your topic:

Your hands. Examine your hands and tell the reader what your scars, scabs, calluses, fingernails, knuckles say about your interests or your life or your hobbies or your work or your skill (or lack of skill) with tools.

Here’s a student sample:

Mumma, what would you have thought if you had seen me rolling on the street outside Logos, a bar in Belfast Maine, using the two hands you gave me to beat a man half to death? You didn’t teach me that way. When I was little you washed my dirty hands and when I was older you taught me to wash then myself, so they would be clean and pure. You showed me how to pray with them that they would do good and be strong so that I could help others. You never thought that the hands I made strong working up firewood and skidding logs and throwing haybales would be fists punching a head and fingers trying to strangle a stranger. Mumma, if you looked at them today , my hands are still strong, still heavily veined, still clean and unscarred, just the way you would remember, just the way they were the day I held you and said goodbye at St. Joseph’s. But inside, when I think of them, they are dirty, shameful, not tender, not kind—my hands are cruel and brutal now. Society says I have paid my debt but I haven’t paid it to you and I’m afraid I never can. Copyright © 1999 by Jack X.

* Graf 2 (worst teacher)

Writing about your worst teacher

What's this assignment all about? Examples & stories--

Don't forget to give us a horrifying example of what turkey, jerk, mean sucker or whatever that teacher was. Tell us that story. Give us that quotation.

Here’s a student sample:

Out from my eyes I watch his expression. "He's dumb, stupid, simple, not worth the effort. He's always failed in the past and he'll fail again. My energies are better spent helping those who want to learn”--that's what he said, not with words but in the way he looked at me. What he did say was the worst, more subtle but to the point. 'That's ok, Eric, sit in the back and behave. Look busy.' All the while with a sneer under his breath, 'what a loser.' Nope, never a challenge, never a look of disappointment when I didn't do the assignment, never nothing. Always treating me like an ignorant fool. I was ignorant without a doubt. Ignorant to a lot of things, but never a fool. Why couldn't he look past the old clothes, worn shoes... I was a person, an individual, with all the same ambitions and dreams as every other kid. Why was it that I was second-best, substandard, doomed...? 'Sit in the back and behave. Look busy.' Thank you, Mr Buck, those words are forever imprinted in my mind; every time I get tired of trying, lax and complacent, I think of you…. Copyright (c) 2000 by Eric Toby

* Syllabus questions What's this assignment all about? Getting information--
Live students: Look over the syllabus
http://hoganroad.blogspot.com/2011/06/2011-fall-eng-2011-syllabus.html

and write down three questions or comments. Don’t put your name on the paper.
If you don’t have any questions, I’ll feel sad and useless, so why not be nice and pretend to have a few, just to sweeten me up?
I will answer the questions in class.
Online students: look over the syllabus and post your questions anonymously at http://pub15.bravenet.com/forum/1203544920 where I will answer them.

Student Survey 1

2012-01-08T09:26:00.001-05:00

Student Profile 1

ENG 101 Survey

2011-12-21T10:59:00.005-05:00

EMCC English Survey

Spring 2012 ENG 101 syllabus

2011-06-13T09:21:00.009-04:00

Spring 2012 ENG 101 Syllabus

WHO I AM: I'm John Goldfine, your EMCC writing instructor.

COURSE DESCRIPTION Boilerplate:

ENG 101 College Composition 3 Credits
Emphasizes rhetorical principles, accuracy of expression, organization, and longer essays in order to help students think logically and write clearly. In addition, students prepare a research paper and sit for a competency-based examination. A passing grade in this course or its equivalent is a graduation requirement of all degree candidates. (3 lec, 0 lab) Prerequisite: Appropriate scores on Accuplacer

COURSE OUTCOMES:
Students will demonstrate the ability to develop a thesis
· Students will write short essays with thesis statements
Students will be able to indicate to readers a developmental outline
· Students will have preview statements in their short essays
Students will show they are able to deploy a three point development in essays
· Students will write nine five-graf essays with three supporting grafs
Students will extrapolate from their own experience
· Students will mine their own experience and observations for specific support material in short grafs, prompts, freestyle writing, and technically correct five-graf essays
Students will use logic and analysis to solve problems
· Students will conduct research and write a technically correct research paper revolving around a question or questions or problem in their life
· Students will use various rhetorical techniques in five graf essays, each technique appropriate for the material chosen
· Students will select an appropriate method of rhetorical development to be used in writing a paper on a given topic in a competency final exam

HOUSEKEEPING:

CHANGES: Nothing in here is carved in stone. Changes happen—that’s the only thing I know in advance won’t change.

PHONE: I'm available for conversation on writing at 1 800 286 9357 x 4648 (work) and 338-3080 (home) (not after 9 pm or before 6 am, please.) If you don't reach me and want to leave a message, that's fine, but, unless you tell me it's an emergency, please DON'T leave your phone number and ask me to call you back--phone tag is a waste of everyone's time, and I won't want to return calls that aren't emergencies. EMAIL me instead, okay?

EMAIL: My email address is johngoldfine@gmail.com. No subject line should be used. If you use a subject line, your email may automatically be dumped in my junk box, along with the come-ons for cheap second mortgages, Vi*gra, spicy photos of two room-mates who just love to meet new guys, and really cheap printer cartridges.

* Please be sure to include your real name with any emails.

WEBSITE: There is a course website with links to everything you need this semester: handouts, lecturettes, assignments, writing samples, etc.

http://hoganroad.blogspot.com/

OFFICE HOURS: I can be reached by phone or email. I will be in or near my office (Room 155 Maine Hall) MWF, office hours on the door, unless my car breaks down or I have a meeting with my boss--that sort of thing. I’ll be glad to meet with you other times if needed. Let me know.

Online real-time chatroom conferences or skype converstations are also possible.

MATERIALS: No textbook. On the website http://hoganroad.blogspot.com/, there are many pages of assignments, sample work, examples, lectures and syllabus you can download onto memory stick or home computer. That’s your text. Free.

COMPUTERS: Get a memory stick aka flash drive aka thumb drive aka keychain trinket. Plan on forgetting and losing it at least once a semester. So, get two and then maybe also save on the school's server or in cyberspace, on email, and so on.

BEHAVING YOURSELF: You (online students) will be using blogger, aka blogspot, when you write. The school’s server is not involved, and you (everyone) can write anything you like, as long as you do your best to write it well and don’t violate any laws of libel, treason, obscenity, and so on. Generally, don’t write anything that would get you in trouble if the police happened to read it, but if your mom reads it and yells at you for not telling her you’re engaged or lost your job or you’re hungover, maybe it’s time she had a wake-up call anyway!

My only interest is helping you improve your writing, not taking charge of your opinions, morals, attitudes, or behavior. If you write about not washing the dishes for a week, I won’t nag you to clean up and I won’t tsk-tsk. I will work hard at making sure your writing details every greasy dish in the sink, squashed-out ciggie butt in your mother’s best coffee cup, and every cockroach that skitters under the fridge when the light goes on in the kitchen.

ANONYMITY: Online students can post stuff all semester under the name ‘Honeygoodstuff’ or ‘BoredwithFord’ or 'Barbieklone' or whatever handle you want (but only one handle per semester--if you choose one, you're stuck with it.) If you want to write about some cutie you know or some situation you screwed up, it might go easier and write better if you know you won’t be signing your name. And you can comment on other people’s stuff using that same handle.

The only thing is—and it’s a big thing—you won’t get credit for the course, not even a little, if I don’t know your handle! I mean, I can’t send the grade through as ‘Studmuffin Slickster gets an A.’

So, if you want, you can be anonymous to everyone but me, but if you’re flaming people behind your mask or using the anonymity to be a pain in the neck or, god forbid, harass someone, I’ll be on your case.

Of course, if you want to sign your name, that’s perfectly okay. I do that myself and find it makes me braver, not less so. You can certainly switch from Anonymous to a name at any time.

GRADES:
How you get your A:
* I-search paper: 30%, required
* Final: 10 %, required. Five graf essay, set topic, two hours. Pass/fail, all or nothing grade.
* 20 assigned paragraphs (aka 'grafs') 10 %%. Ungraded, though I may ask for rewrite
* 10 five-graf essays 50%. All are pass/fail, plenty of chance to turn the fail into a pass: 2 contrast, 1 classification, 1 division, 1 cause, 1 effect, 2 process, 2 example

Four of these ten essays will be done in class, must be done in class, and will not be accepted unless done in class. If you miss one of those inclass essays, there will be an end-of-semester day set aside for make-up, but you can only make up one (not more) of those missed essays. Online students will be doing these four at home, of course, but I'll try to make your home as in-classy as possible.

FIGURING OUT YOUR GRADE:
Each accepted graf is worth .5 % of your grade. Each accepted five-graf essay is worth 5% of your grade. Isearch is worth 30 of your grade. Final is worth 10% of your grade. ADD 'EM UP!!!

Five graf essays:Each five graf essay will be titled Essay # 1 (or 2 or whatever number it is.)

Each essay has a due date but I usually don’t play cop on these. Sometime during the semester, I may set a hard deadline and say that after this date, those assignments are closed—I won’t accept them any more. But I only do that rarely. If you are missing a lot of essays or grafs or isearch work--two week's worth usually--I might send you a formal warning and then might drop you if you don't catch up.

If I warn you at some point and you catch up but then fall a week or more behind again, don't expect a second warning. I can and may drop you without further warning.

Short grafs: You will have 20 short grafs, with an optional 21st.

Each short assignment will be titled GRAF # 1 (or 2 or whatever graf number it is). Don't be imaginative with titles--use my titles--or despair.

Each graf has a due date but I usually don’t play cop on these. Sometime during the semester, I may set a hard deadline and say that after this date, those assignments are closed—I won’t accept them any more. But I only do that rarely. If you are missing a lot of grafs--two week's worth usually--, I might send you a formal warning and then might drop you if you don't catch up.

If I warn you at some point and you catch up but then fall a few weeks behind again, don't expect a second warning. I can and may drop you without further warning.

Isearch has a first draft due-date and a final draft due date that you have to heed--penalties for missing those dates.

Comments on classmate's posts: Online students: Feel free to read and comment on other people's writing, politely and tactfully. You can learn from other people's ideas! Not part of your grade though—

What I will do: I’ll read all your stuff, lecture, demonstrate, read aloud, answer any writing or course questions I can, discuss your writing with you.

Live students: I'll either attach a checklist to your papers and/or I will be prepared to discuss them with you in class. I might ask if I can read your writing aloud to point out good things in it to your classmates. (You can say no without ruffling my feathers.)

Online students: I’ll comment on everything you write on your blog. I read all writing at least three days a week--usually T, Th, and Sunday, so you won't have to wait very long for a reaction. I will turn every piece you give me around by the following class unless I am very sick, have serious personal things come up, and so on. In twenty-four years, I think the only time I failed to turn stuff around that quickly was when my mother died.

Every assignment you do this semester, except the isearch, is all or nothing. I either take it at full credit or kick it back until it’s ready to be accepted at full credit.

If you’re doing your assignments and I’m not saying, “This doesn’t work. I want you to try X,” you’re doing okay.

At the end of the semester, I check to see that you’ve done everything assigned. If you have, you get full credit for that portion of the course. If you haven’t, I pro-rate the percentages (If you missed half the assignments, you only get half the points—it ain’t rocket surgery!)

I add on the final 10% (if you pass it), and whatever number grade you earned on your isearch and come up with a total which I translate into a letter grade.

At no point during the semester, at no point until all the work is in, have I any idea what number grade goes with your name. Grades are important to you as a student, but the grade is not the only thing. It’s the byproduct of your writing, not the reason for taking the course. Grades interest you more than they interest me, if that isn’t too harsh a way of putting it, so be aware we may be working at cross-purposes sometimes.

I’m asked by the school to send out mid-semester warnings (just before mid-semester, actually). I do my best to try to figure out whether you’re in trouble by looking at the quality and quantity of your work, but every semester I get people who’ve done very little not very well who act surprised that they’re getting a warning. Sometimes I send out a performance warning instead of a toothless midsemester warning; the performance warning has teeth because it's the first step in the paper trail leading to dropping a student from the course.

At any time, if you really don’t know how you’re doing, ask, and I’ll be glad to talk to you about that, but I will not be able to give you a projected grade. Most of your teachers start you out at 100% and all semester you try to hang onto it, though every time you get an A minus, you're slipping a little. I start you out with a big fat zero--but each assignment builds toward that A you want. The only assignment that is not all-or-nothing is the isearch. Most students hate my system, whether because it's different or because it doesn't give them as easy an option as 'settling for a C,' I don't know.

At a certain point in the semester, I usually get a paranoid student or two who thinks I'm screwing them over and withholding from them grade information I have and they are entitled to know. I will try to calm those students down and talk to them about how they are doing, but--honestly now!--you know as well as I do how many assignments you've done, whether I accepted them, and so on.

ATTENDANCE: I want to see you in class, because I have things to talk to you about as a group and individually that are not online in any form. If you miss class, you miss hearing details about assignments, changes, my detailed reactions to what you’re writing, and so on. You miss learning and you miss teaching and you can get behind so fast, you can drown in your own regrets before you know it.

If you are taking the course online, feel free to attend class in your pajamas. But you still need to be doing assignments on a regular basis.

I'm interested in getting a steady supply of your writing to comment on and to teach you from. If the supply isn't steady, that's a problem. Truth is, bottom line: I can't teach you anything at all if you're not writing.

I don’t have an attendance policy--no set number of missed classes leading to certain consequences.

But if you've missed an ungodly number of assignments--for good, bad, or no reason--I may send you a warning notice. (I'd define 'ungodly' as being two weeks behind in any one (or more) of these areas: assigned paragraphs, isearch assignments, or long essays. If someone is constantly just under two weeks behind, they may still get a warning if, looking at their writing, I consider them sufficiently at risk.)

As well as the formal official notice, I will try to speak to you in class or email online students. After I send the notice, if you don't catch up within a week, I may drop you without further notice.

If you catch up after a warning but then drop behind a week or more again, I may not send further warnings--might just drop you.

If you’re sick or for any reason can’t attend a particular class, you DON’T need to let me know.

DISABILITIES, HARASSMENT: The school’s policies outlined in the school catalog—policies on affirmative action, disabilities, sexual harassment, and grievance procedures—apply to this course.

If you have a documented disability, talk to the ADA coordinator, Elizabeth Worden, right away so we can plan reasonable accommodations.

The school’s EO/ADA policies are included at the end of this syllabus.

If you simply dislike something I say in the course of my teaching, conferencing, or lecturing but if what I've said does not seem like any sort of harassment, then you ought to discuss it with me first before going to Authority.

FULL DISCLOSURE: I’m a total dub when it comes to recordkeeping. I wish it were otherwise, but it isn’t and I’m not going to improve a whole lot at this point.

That means I'm going to make recordkeeping mistakes. When I make mistakes, I'll gladly eat them and correct my goofs and apologize, as long as you can document your side of the story. In other words, please hang onto your writing all semester and hang on to my replies, reactions, and writer’s checklists. Back stuff up! Don't delete blog entries .

If you need a teacher who is perfect and who has all the answers and is always right and who gives you that feeling of total security you haven't had since kindergarten, bail out now 'cause it ain't me.

WHY WHY WHY WHY????? This course probably will not be any direct, short-term help in your technology. But! It will offer you the beginning of those communication skills the employers all say they want. It will help you organize your thinking to make a better student out of you in all your classes. It will come in handy when you continue your education in future years because, one, you'll have it out of the way and, two, you will be sharper in other courses with this as a foundation. Other technologies and techniques come and go--reading and writing are NEVER going out of style.

People often don’t find out what they’re thinking until they try writing! It’s like exploration and discovery! The human mind is a funny thing. In a college level writing course, you might find yourself thinking about things in new ways. That’s also why you take the course.
This course is a standard and basic college-level composition course that hundreds and thousands of students from Ft. Kent to San Diego take every year and you may possibly be able to transfer the credit to other schools as you continue your education.

Further thoughts on Why, Spring 2011 English is the Department of brooders. We brood over our existence, its purpose and meaning in the academic universe.

We are right to brood!

We know that a hundred years ago, colleges did not offer courses in literature, except literature in dead languages. Students who wanted to read
Keats or Shakespeare or Dickens did so on their own out of love, not for college
credit.

Nor did students of a century ago take courses in writing English. It was only after World War II, well within historical memory, that high school graduation
become a more or less universal expectation. High schools before the war only dealt with highly-motivated students preparing for college, students who entered
college already writing at what we today call college level.

We see this historical fact and doubt the foundation of our very existence.
Are we doing no more than teaching the high school courses of old?
And our brooding takes on even gloomier overtones when we talk to outsiders about what we do. Outsiders often imagine that we teach 'communications' and
that we spend a lot of time correcting spelling, pointing out misplaced modifiers, explaining that 'ain't' isn't a word, and generally acting like old-timey schoolmarms with pencils stuck in our flyaway buns.

And whatever lip-service outsiders pay to 'communications,' the truth is that most people hated English in school, hate to write, are embarrassed at their own
attempts, are convinced that they can't write, hate poetry, would not be caught dead reading Shakespeare or one of those boring old classics.
Most people really have no idea what English is all about.

So, yes, we brooders can have a hard time explaining our reason for being. The nursing department turns out nurses, welding turns out welders...but English?

Sometimes we hope to explain ourselves to outsiders by talking about critical thinking skills, focus and clarity of thought expressed in writing and speech,
and the ability to logically analyze and synthesize materials.

But that is just a shadow of the truth. The truth?

The truth is that the world is broken. Everyone with eyes to see knows this.
But every time a good sentence is spoken or written or a clear thought is
articulated, this broken world of ours begins to heal; light enters and darkness
recedes. And we in English are priests of the word.

So, nursing turns out nurses, welding turns out welders, and English turns out people able to see better and, by seeing better, people better able to make better
things to see.

WHEN YOU'LL DO IT: Blog entries must be done regularly. Longer assignments may extend over a semester. Some things have heavy-duty, take-no-prisoner deadlines (I’ll give you advance warning in the assignment chart and in class.) Others have ‘suggested’ cream-puff deadlines. This course is like life in so many ways….
Writing improves with practice, lots of practice, lots and lots of practice. We have about forty-five classes and more than forty-five assignments! They’re not all the same size, but writing is due every day, unless you hear otherwise. That means lots of writing.
Some of it you can do in class. Some of it you will have to do out of class. You’re kidding yourself if you think you can do well in this class if you don’t write regularly—what happens is that you fall further and further behind and get depressed and stop coming to class which makes you fall even further behind.

SCHOOL AND JAIL: Some of you have come from a place where authority figures watch your every move. They check your name off to make sure you’re where you’re supposed to be every second of the day. They get angry if you wear forbidden clothes or carry contraband or eat certain foods at certain times and places. They are always on the lookout for drugs. They worry that you’re trying to manipulate the system, take over and run the place, form cliques. If they don’t like your attitude, they may write you up, put you in solitary, send you to Supermax, deny you privileges, threaten your future. And, of course, all this is being done to make you a better person.

After a few years of being treated this way, all you can think about is the day when you’re sprung and can hit the streets, free!

Prison? Nah, all too often that’s public high school I’ve just described. You’ll notice I said nothing about learning anything. Students and teachers are so busy hating each other, doing numbers on each other, hassling—they sometimes forget why they’re supposed to be there.

It can be comforting to be in prison instead of school because learning is hard and so is teaching. If you approach this class expecting that I’m going to hassle you about your appearance, your lateness or absences, your food and soda, your homework coming in late, and so on—you’re going to be disappointed. You may get mad at me for not providing you with the discipline you need. Tough! Provide your own! This ain’t high school!

The only thing I claim expertise in is writing. I can’t make you a better person. I’m not going to try. Naturally, I want you to be neat, clean, polite, punctual, organized, friendly, chem-free, hardworking, and cheerful. But the only thing I’m going to talk to you about is your writing.

When we get to the writing, I’ll have a lot to say.

THE WRITING FACTORY: If one thinks of an English course as a Writing Factory, it doesn't really matter much when material is comes in; after all, the teacher is the shop foreman and all he cares about is seeing that the production schedule is met. He checks off the assignments and lets the Big Boss know that all is chugging along well on the shop floor.

Many English courses are run that way. Essays have to be so many words long and have a certain look to pass quality control and that's that. You get your grade, punch the clock, and go home.

You must believe me when I tell you that my time as a steel fabricator on the shop floor at Lasko Industries in West Chester, Pennsylvania in the late sixties turned me off forever to factory work.
My job is not to ratify that certain assignments have been done. It is to help you improve your writing. You write, I read, I think, I react, you think, you react to my reaction, you rewrite--maybe we get somewhere.

So, when I assign you two intros on two different dates and an outro on a yet another date, it isn't because I have a big jones for intros and outros. It's because when I get an intro--long before the final essay--I can help with that long essay. There are pitfalls I can help you avoid. Ideas I can run by you. Mistakes you're not experienced enough to see yet. All from intro #1.

And when I assign a second one, it's so your mind will dance with the material a little, so you come it in several ways. I assign the outro out of order because the outro should depend on graf 1, not grafs 2-3-4. This is intensive for you and intensive for me, but I think it's a good way to teach and learn, and I don't mind the extra work.

But the assignments become a meaningless farce, when I see everything--intro 1, intro 2, outro, final draft, and metagraf--all posted at the same time. What's the point? I can't use the intermediate assignments to teach anything, so why would I read them? I have to deal with a complete essay I haven't been able to offer any guidance on as it developed. It's harder for me to explain problems, and typically because it's 'finished' it's harder for you, the student to work with me anymore. Goldfine, a student might think, give me my flippin' C and call it good--I want to punch out and go home.

If I were a student and a teacher asked me to hand in a piece without offering a hand, I'd feel cheated. As it is, you're cheating yourself of the chance to learn and me the chance to teach. You may not, but I feel cheated.

If you give me nine things to look at it, it's nine times more work for me than dealing with one thing, but it's exactly as useful to your learning as if you had given me one thing. One thing or nine--you still have to sleep on it and think about it.

So, please don't give me a bunch of saved-up assignments all at once.

WHY WRITING IS SUCH A PAIN: Writing improves over time with lots of practice, like any skill. For most of us it is a skill to be worked on, not some mysterious God-given talent. That means lots of blood, sweat, and tears.

I'm going to give you plenty of chance for all three by returning papers to you for more work if there are ways they can be improved. When they are ready, I'll take them at full credit. In other words, the short essays and paragraphs either get 100 % credit or none. 100 % means that I judge the paper to be competent--if you want a number value, I rate minimal competency at about a C + or 78. Your paper may be better, but once I've accepted it, I'm saying it's at least that good.

PLAGIARISM: This has become a real problem the past year or two because of computers, thumbdrives, and the internet. Ideas belong to everyone. If you read an essay about hunting whitetails or dealing with snotty customers in retail and want to write your own essay on the same topic, that's fine.

But if you hand in someone else's essay (even if you make a few minor changes), you are cheating. I won’t accept the work. I won’t be happy. You won’t be either. You may get dropped from the course.

Work you've done for other courses or that you've written and sold to online suppliers of student papers can't be used in my course, unless you've checked with me first.

GETTING HELP: Please let me do my job and help you if you’re having big troubles—or little ones. Sometimes you have work a little to get my attention in class, but please don’t give up. There’s also help available in the Academic Support Center.
If you find yourself, late some night, up against a deadline, tired, out of ideas, desperate, panicky, and tempted to submit work that isn't yours--the thing to do is forget the deadline and get some sleep. In the morning, get in touch with me. I can cut you slack on deadlines, help you with ideas, and generally buck you up. This is my job. Let me do it!

CONFUSION: A certain amount of confusion always happens at the beginning of any course while you sort out what you need to do and not do--and so do I. Be prepared for that mentally, and don't let it steamroller you. I'm sympathetic and it will pass, I promise. We’ll all make mistakes until we find our groove—me as well as you. Be patient with my mistakes and I'll return the favor!
And help me do better by letting me know the good and bad stuff when I survey you! Or any time.

CELLPHONES: Check this out!

Writer's Checklist

"WRITING IS REWRITING"

Pass Not Ready

Comments:

___I don't want to grade this yet. Let's talk.
___Let's talk mechanics--they're all that are keeping this from passing.
___Major trouble in Paragraph 1 2 3 4 5. Let's discuss in detail.
___Why aren't you using the spell-check on the computer???!!!
___To improve this, try reading it aloud. Listen for places it doesn’t work or where the punctuation doesn’t match your reading.
___To improve this, write faster and take less care. Forget perfection and shoot for competence instead. Ready-Fire-Aim! The Perfect is the enemy of the Good.
___This is close, but no cigar. Rewrite won't be hard.
___I like this. Great details/well-organized/full of juice/ your voice is here/very individual/slick &smooth writing/interesting idea. Try tapping the same vein next time.
___Stuff I’ve highlighted I particularly liked.
___Can I have a copy of this for use with future classes as a good model?
___Funny kind of essay. It is what it is, and I can't see any way to improve it, though I might like to. I guess I better take it if I have no ideas to offer!
___You're not really in this--it isn't individual. So far, it’s generic and anyone could put their name to it. Individualize the material.
___Paragraph one has no hook, no mustard, no jazz, no juice, no zip, no TNT, no reason for a reader to read on.
___”I am going to write about the topic of X; let me explain to you about Y”—this way of writing is a major turnoff; don’t tell us, just do it
___Paragraph one has no plan of development, no direction, no bridge, doesn't move smoothly into paragraph two.
___Great topic, but no follow-through. Details are generic and blah. Why not brainstorm for real stories, examples, and specifics from your own life and experience?
___Material not pushed enough. You stop short of satisfying. You've made it easy on yourself but lost the reader. Kick it up another notch.
___Try creating a picture for the reader; right now, there’s no visual
___Very hard to individualize material about mass consumables—how many ways can you say you personally and individually like Coke?
___Nice outline--how about giving it some meat?
___Outro too weak to adequately close this essay. No kicker or topper or reversal or return. Outro has got to add value or why not stop at four?
___No point being made--why go through the motions when you've already forfeited the game before play starts?
___Humor is tough, but this made me laugh/smile/wince.
___Humor is tough because when the reader doesn't react, then the writer has nothing left to fall back on.
___Rough material is okay as long as shock value isn't a substitute for good writing. This is a short cut that doesn't go anywhere.
___Fiction/poetry/paranoid fantasy is a no-go.
___Not an order, but I'd abandon this if it were mine. Glad to help try to make it work, but it's gonna be an uphill struggle.
___Huh??? Confusion in _________________.
___All jumbled up--you've got to give it some structure. Readers are too lazy to do that for the writer.
___What kind of essay is this? Where are the keywords as signposts for the reader? Guideposts to paragraph topic? Frame around material? Topic sentences to lead into focused paragraphs?
___Yadda yadda. This rambles around and around...and then around some more.
___There's twice as many words here as you need to make your point. Cut, please—
___A bunch of stuff in here that doesn't really connect to everything else. Dump it.
___The dreaded comma splice, run-on, or fragment. Let's you and me get on it ASAP.
___Lots of little mechanical mistakes add up to a problem. Let's talk.
___Forget apostrophes/quotation marks for a while. Clear your system.
___Homonyms. Their are things we can due right know too correct you're problem.
___Who 'you'? Dump the yous and try 'I'. It's not as simple as just subbing the word and changing the verbs. You will write differently and better if you use I from the git-go because you will be picturing yourself in the scene.
___Why are you doing instructions—not an essay type you write in this course.
___Too talky in tone. Well, heck, this isn't a letter, know what I mean?
___Reads too mechanical—too much like insert tab A into slot B
___I don't know what to do with this. I'll pass it if you want me to (let me know), or go do some more work on it and then hand it back.
___I have no suggestions today. Please think about what I can do to help you improve your writing. Tell me your ideas.
___You're ready to move beyond the sandwich format essay. Next time out, let the material drive the organization. Knock your socks off!
___Forget if I'm happy--does this essay work for you?
___This essay redefines the boundaries and renders my puny checklist irrelevant.
___Comments on my comments? If so, tell me and let's discuss, okay?
___Not an order, but why not show this paper to_________________________? He/she might be interested or be able to learn something from your strengths.
___Could you read this aloud to the rest of the class (or let me) or let me so I can point out some of the good things in it?

I-search checklist*

Grade____/30
Late first draft: -2 =

Content /14

___This is a strong research topic
___You begin with strong questions
___You've laid out the background clearly and in detail
___Question really connects to you and your life
___You give clear reasons for writing and make the personal connection
___We find out how you found your answer.
___Answer laid out in detail
___We find out what you learned
___Your answer answers your question
___You tell us what difference the answer might make in the future, what you will do with it
___Research adequate
___Research goes beyond obvious
___Research emphasizes personal connection
___Overall, material is not just old-fashioned research

Organization /10

___Each section does what it's supposed to do
___Minimal overlap and repetition
___Sections subheaded, organized, not jumbled
___Answer organized by topic, not by when/where you found material
___Writinq doesn't ramble, get confusing, lose the point, become padded
___Search describes where information found and evaluates sources
__Abstract summarizes and is not an introduction
___You seem in control of your own material as shown by overall clearness, coherence , logic

Mechanics /2

problems major/minor

Layout
___title page ok /4
___table of contents ok
___abstract ok
___order of pages correct
___page numbering ok
___names of sections consistent and correct
___sections named
___margins ok
___double spaced
___citations ok
___list of sources Ok
___list of sources annotated

* The items on the checklist are not equally important and so one check or x does not necessarily equal another, which means that you can NOT add up checks or subtract x’s to figure the number I arrive at. I do the checklist and then determine a number based on all the elements I’m looking at.

Course assignments: ADA/EO BOILERPLATE:
NOTICE OF NONDISCRIMINATION

Eastern Maine Community College does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, national origin, sex, disability, or age in its programs and activities. Inquiries about the College’s compliance with, and policies that prohibit discrimination on, these bases may be directed to: Affirmative Action Officer, President’s Office, Rangeley Hall, 354 Hogan Road, Bangor, Maine 04401, telephone number 974-4633, voice/TDD 974-4658, fax number 974-4888, nlundy@emcc.edu, http://www.emcc.edu;

United States Department of Education Office for Civil Rights, 33 Arch Street, Suite 900, Boston, MA 02110, telephone 617-289-0111, TTY/TDD 617-289-0063, fax 617-289-0150, e-mail OCR.Boston@ed.gov internet http://.www.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ocr/index.html?src=oc;

Maine Human Rights Commission (MHRC), 51 State House Station, Augusta, ME 04333-0051, telephone 207-624-6050, TTY/TTD 207-624-6064, fax 207-624-6063, internet http://www.state.me.us/mhrc/index.
shtml: and/or Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, 475 Govern-ment Center, Boston, MA 02203, telephone 617-565-3200 or 1-800-669-4000, TTY 617-565-3204 or 1-800-669-6820, fax 617-565-3196, internet http://www.eeoc.gov/.

The College also does not discriminate on the basis of sexual preference or marital, parental, or veteran’s status. Inquiries about the College’s policies that prohibit discrimination on these bases may be directed to the Affirmative Action Officer or MHRC identified above.

Eastern Maine Community College is an equal opportunity institution and complies with the requirements of Title IX of the Educational Amendments of 1972 (34 CFR Part 106), Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (34 CFR Part 104), and Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) of 1990 and its implementing regulations. Discrimination on the basis of race; color; national origin; gender; sexual orientation, marital, parental or military status or disability in the recruitment and admission of its students, in the administration of its educational policies and programs, and in the recruitment and employment of its instructional and non-instruction personnel is prohibited. Sexual harassment of either employees or students is a violation of state and federal laws. It is the policy of Eastern Maine Community College that no member of the College community may sexually harass another. Inquiries concerning Title IX, Title VI and ADA may be made to Affirmative Action Officer, at Eastern Maine Community College, 354 Hogan Road, Bangor, Maine 04401, (207) 974-4633; inquiries regarding Disability Services may be made to the Section 504 Coordinator at the same address, (207) 974-4658 (voice/TDD). Questions, concerns, complaints and/or grievances about discrimination in any areas of the college should be directed to Eastern Maine Community College’s Affirmative Action Officer; or to the Maine Human Rights Commission, State House Station 51, Augusta, Maine, 04333-0051, (207) 624-6050 or the Office of Civil Rights, J.W. McCormack, POCH, Room 707, Boston, Massachusetts, 02109, 1-617-223-9662.

Weekly assignment calendar:

This is just a list of assignments and dates those assignments are due.

To understand the assignments, to see lecture material and explanations, to actually learn enough to do the assignments--you have to go to the week 1 assignments here if you are an online student-- or both go here and come to class if you are a live student. (And each week, of course there will be new assignments and lecture material posted on this blog.)

Everything in red below is an assignment that is part of your eventual course grade.

Week 1

Jan 18

Jan 20
* hands graf due, graf 1
* worst teacher graf due, graf 2
* syllabus questions due

Week 2

Jan 23
* inventory/inventory graf due, graf 3
* reaction to advice to writers graf due, graf 4
* reaction to isearch brainstorm due, graf 5

Jan 25
* unique graf due, graf 6
* isearch brainstorm/topic ideas due, graf 7

Jan 27
* isearch worksheet due
* reaction to isearches graf due, graf 8

Week 3

Jan 30
* object graf due, graf 9
* your background with your isearch topic due (first section of isearch)

Feb 1
* person graf due, graf 10
* real life research graf due, graf 11

Feb 3
* place graf due, graf 12
* reaction to sample cause essays due, graf 13
* isearch motivations and questions due (second section of isearch)

Week 4

Feb. 6
* Intro graf # 1 to cause essay due

Feb. 8
* Intro graf # 2 to cause essay due

Feb 10
* Outro graf to cause essay due

Week 5

Feb 13
* what you already know about your isearch questions due (section 3)
* isearch research plan due, graf 14

Feb 15
* complete cause essay due, essay 1

Feb 17
* meta graf/reaction graf on writing cause essay due, graf 15
* reaction to sample classification essays due, graf 16

Week Break

Week 6

Feb 27
* reaction to writers checkist due, graf 17
* two intros to classification essay due

Feb 29
* outro to classification essay due

Mar 2
* classification essay due, essay 2

Week 7

Mar 5
* check sample contrast essays
* two contrast intros due

Mar 7
* graf 2 of contrast essay due

Mar 9
* complete contrast essay due, essay 3

Week 8

Mar 12
* isearch progress report due, graf 18

Mar 14
* in class contrast essay due, essay 4

Mar 16

* reaction graf to writing in class essay due, graf 19
* check sample example essays

Week 9

Mar 19
* example essay intro graf due

Mar 21
* three items of annotated bibliography due

Mar 23
* example essay due, essay 5

Week 10

Mar 26
* continue work on isearch

Mar 28
* in class example essay, essay 6

Mar 30
* check out sample process essays
* in-class process essay graf 1

Week Break

Week 11

April 9
* continue work on isearch

April 11
* process essay due, essay 7

April 13
* continue work on isearch

Week 12

Apr 16
* continue work on isearch

Apr 18
* check out effect essays
* continue work on isearch

Apr 20
* first draft isearch due (lateness penalty)

Week 13

Apr 23
* isearch conferences
* effect essay due, essay 8

Apr 25
* in class process essay, essay 9

Apr 27
* continue work on isearch

Week 14

Apr 30
* in class division essay due, essay 10

May 2
* continue work on isearch

May 4
* final final final deadline for all rewrites (grafs and essays)

Week 15

May 7
* isearch due (lateness penalty)

May 9
* in class essay makeups
* reaction to your own own essays and grafs due, graf 20
* course evaluation, graf 21 (optional) (makes up for any single missing graf)

May 10 final exam (live students)
May 10 or 11 final exam (online students)

Double standard dad

2009-08-27T08:25:00.000-04:00

I bought the missus a very cheap point-&-shoot camcorder (under $100) so she can record her work with the horses and load it up for the online horse group she's in.

But my thoughts turned to mischief as they so often do. What about recording some of my lecture material for my online classes?

I set out to record 'Double Standard Dad,' the student piece I begin all my ENG 101s with. It was definitely a learning experience.

First thing I learned was that the dogs are wicked critics. They don't like anything unusual and me sitting reading in a 'serious' voice is unusual. So too is the missus playing cameraman. And they do what they always do when things bother them: act up--wrangling, wrassling, growling, yowling, sitting pretty, and so on. It's hard to concentrate on my reading when five mutts are saying with great determination: 'Cut it out, boss. Stop it, stop it! Attend to us! Enough already!'

Second thing I learned was that, concentrate as I might, I'm not able to project much meaning and sense into the piece as I read it. I can read. I can visualize the material. I read with expression and even drama. But I'm not an actor. The words I'm trying to invest with meaning and emphasis somehow die an inch from my lips and do not go flying out to the listener but instead flop to the ground.

Interesting, distressing! I never realized that before.

(One of the most amazing things I've ever seen was in an old movie called 'Ruggles of Red Gap.' Actor Charles Laughton recites the Gettysburg Address--one almost cries at Lincoln's words and Laughton's voice and expression. They say a good actor can read the phone book aloud and bring an audience to tears.... I'm no Charles Laughton!)

Anyway, here's it is:

Next video post, maybe I'll tell you the five rules of good writing (yes, only five!) and that may give a hint why I read this student essay aloud for all my ENG 101 classes.

Feel free to comment if you want, but no obligation.

The Five Rules

2009-08-26T18:30:00.000-04:00

Wouldn't it be cool if English were a course where you memorized the material, took a test, passed it, and went on with your life? I'd tell you the five rules of good writing, give you a quick quiz, and bang--all done.

Instead, you have to live the darned rules--not take a test on them, but apply them every time you sit down to the keyboard. And some days the five rules might as well be carved on the moon for how easy they are to apply. Other days, the writing gods smile on you and it all happens almost automatically. No way to predict--just have to sit down and start typing....

So, hold up your hand, unlimber your fingers--here come the five rules. (Feel free to comment if you want, but no obligation.)

Mini Lecturette on syllabus--

2009-08-25T08:39:00.000-04:00

Here's your course intro!

2009-08-22T09:51:00.000-04:00