Thinking Moves from Critical Passages: Teaching the Transition to College Composition by Dombek and Herndon

Figure 2.1 (28)

Figure 2.2 (29)

An Unlikely Model: Pulp Fiction There's a passage I got memorized. Ezekiel 25:17. "The path of the Righteous Man is beset on all sides by the inequities of the selfish and the Tyranny of Evil Men. Blessed is he who, in the name of charity and good will, shepherds the weak through the Valley of the Darkness. For he is truly his brother's keeper and the finder of lost children. And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who attempt to poison and destroy my brothers. And you will know I am the Lord when I lay my vengeance upon you." I been sayin' that s*#!t for years. And if you ever heard it, that meant your ass. I never gave much thought to what it meant. I thought it was some cold-blooded s*#!t to say to a m#*!rf#*!r before I popped a cap in his ass. But I saw some s*#!t this mornin' made me think twice. See, now I'm thinkin': maybe it means you're the Evil Man. And I'm the Righteous Man. And Mr. 9 millimeter here, he's the Shepherd protecting my righteous ass in the Valley of Darkness. Or it could mean you're the Righteous Man and I'm the Shepherd and it's the World that's evil and selfish. Yeah, I'd like that. But that s*#!t ain't the truth. The truth is: you're the Weak. And I'm the Tyranny of Evil Men. But I'm tryin, Ringo. I'm tryin' real hard to be the Shepherd. from Pulp Fiction (1994). Jules is played by Samuel L. Jackson. Ringo is played by Tim Roth.

Exercise 2.1 (p. 22) - Paragraph of Questions Write a paragraph of at least eight sentences in which each sentence must be in the form of a question. Each new question must respond to the question before it by posing new complications, doubt, or possibility. EXAMPLE #1: Why do I need to teach absolute phrases and subordinate clauses in my 9th grade class? Why haven’t they learned it by now? What would happen to them if I didn’t? Why is grammar important to their understanding of what they read? How will it help them write better papers? Aren’t the rules going to change soon enough? What is the purpose of language instruction? What is the purpose of language? How does teaching grammar translate to a better understanding of language? Example #2: Why do we seem to be arguing and re-arguing the same issues over and over again in a way that connotes completely different countries/histories? Is our present government broken, at such a political deadlock that nothing can ever get done? Is it the fault of one party, the other, or both? What does a government that works look like? Has our government always been this way? Could our democracy have been inevitably leading to this point all along? Is the system supposed to work – responding to the people’s will while preserving certain “inalienable rights”? Will we ever reach a point at which we stop fighting over the same questions? Is it just human nature that is at fault? Is our country simply too diverse in background and opinion to ever hope to agree?