Wednesday, January 22, 2013 Melissa Gunby English 51

Today’s Agenda The Writing Process (Chapter 1): Critical Reading and Writing Summaries Sentence combining Discussion on Ender’s Game

The Writing Process Chapter 1

Two Elements to the Writing Process Writing in college generally means writing in response to something else you’ve read: research for an essay, background on an experiment in biology lab, facts and figures from your history textbook. So for that, we need to focus a bit on how to process and work with all that information. Then comes the actual writing part, sorting through all the ideas in your head and translating them into a solid essay.

Reading Actively and Efficiently What does it mean to “read actively”? Reading actively means finding the main points of whatever it is that you’re reading and finding a way to record it so that you can find it later. Some people call this annotation; taking notes in the margins so you can quickly go back and find things.

Finding Main Ideas All writing has structure. Expository writing, the kind we’ll be doing in this class, follows a very specific structure. Look at the handout I gave you (copied from page 5). The dark grey boxes represent general statements to introduce the reader to what’s coming (topic sentences for paragraphs). The light areas serve to provide the specific information to support these ideas. This structure helps us to locate main ideas more quickly, as well as giving us a standard form to study and work from.

Why do we need topic sentences? Because without topic sentences, it’s really hard to figure out what a paragraph is about.

She was really annoyed, but she decided she had to go. Joanne received an invitation to her ex-boyfriend’s wedding. She was really annoyed, but she decided she had to go. The spectators enjoy the sun or the evening, chat, drink beer or soda, cheer or boo as the occasion demands, and hope for a victory by the home team. The analysts keep score, watch each pitch intently, note the strengths and weaknesses of the players, and follow managerial strategy with microscopic attention.

Small Group Work: I’m going to put up a paragraph on the following slide (pg 6). Working with the 2 or 3 people around you (no more than 4 to a group, please), find the Topic Sentence of the paragraph, and locate the supporting details. Just make notes; we’ll discuss it as a class.

From “Looking Back: A Chronicle of Growing Up Old in the Sixties” by Joyce Maynard We [students] were forever being organized into activities that, I suspect, looked good on paper an din school board reports. New programs took over and disappeared as approaches to child education changed. One year we would go without makes, on the theory that marks were a “poor motivating factor,” “an unnatural pressure.”…Another year every activity became a competition, with posters tacked up on the walls showing who was ahead that week, our failures and our glories bared to all the lass. Our days were filled with electrical gimmicks, film strips and movies and overhead projectors and tapes and supplementary TV shows, an din junior high, when we went audio-visual, a power failure would have been reason enough to close down the school.

Practice! If you have your book, with a partner or 3 (groups of 4 please), do the exercises on page 7 and 8. If you don’t have your book, I have handouts.

More Practice! Silently read the short essay on page 9-10 (or handout). If your birthday is in January, March, May, July, September, or November, I want you to highlight or underline where you think the main ideas are in each paragraph. If your birthday is in February, April, June, August, October, or December, I want you to use the handout of the essay diagram to diagram the essay (the dark boxes get topic sentences. You can list details in the white spaces). When we’re done, we’ll compare.

Writing Summaries What is a summary? A summary is a restatement, in your own words, of another longer document. Summaries must: Maintain and communicate the meaning of the original document NOT contain your opinion or views on the original stick strictly to what the original writing had to say Contain ALL the main points the original author included Will usually not contain all the details, unless of importance.

Good Summaries Should Answer 3 Questions (pg 13) 1. What is the subject of the original? What problem or situation is the writing addressing? When writing a summary, you may want to make this question/answer like an introduction to set up the rest of the piece 2. What are the main points of the original? The summary may nor may not follow the same order as the original. Usually, a summary hits the most important points first. Summaries of pro/con will generally list all the pros together and all the cons together for clarity’s sake. 3. What conclusions does the original reach?

Steps in Writing a Good Summary (pg 13-14) 1. Read the whole piece. On a separate page, write your own words of the main ideas. 2. Reread and underline/highlight the important ideas. 3. Write the introductory statement, explaining what the original is about. 4. Decide on the order in which you want to present the main points. 5. write the body of your summary, using your own words. 6. write your last part, which tells about the author’s conclusions. 7. PROOFREAD!

Aside: Why it’s important to proofread Someone tell me what’s wrong with this sentence: I whore those shoes until they fell apart. Microsoft word (and other software) can only tell you if the word is spelled correctly. It can’t tell you if you’ve chosen the right word. Make sure to take the time to read through your document before turning it in.

I didn’t photocopy it, but on page you can see an example of a writer doing a summary, with annotations on the text and then the summary following.

Grammar Review: Sentence Combining

The Reagan White House cooperated with the Bush campaign to an unprecedented extent. It had the President sign or veto bills. These bills were judged helpful to Bush. It had him make appointments. It had him put off unpleasant business until after the election. The Reagan White House cooperated with the Bush campaign to an unprecedented extent – in having the President sign or veto bills as deemed helpful to Bush, in making appointments, in putting off unpleasant business until after the election.

Why combine sentences Because if we don’t, readers get bored, and they give up.

Quick review! What is a noun, and what does it do? What is a verb, and what does it do? What is an adjective, and what does it do?

How to combine sentences One of the best ways is to use adjectives, or modifiers. 1. The car drove down the road. 2. The car was old. Solution: the old car drove down the road. By adding the modifier of “old” to the first sentence, we’ve combined these two, and make the sentence itself more interesting.

Using verb forms You can also use verbs to help describe things. 1. a monster arose from a swamp. 2. a monster was groaning. Solution: a groaning monster arose from the swamp. Though “groaning” is a verb, by adding the –ing ending, we turn it into a word that describes what the monster is doing (this is the gerund form and no, you don’t need to remember that).

Practice! I have some handouts for you. Working with a partner or small group. Do a couple of these, and then we will compare notes to see how you did.

Class Discussion: Ender’s Game Chapter 1

I have questions I want to ask, but I want to start with what your thoughts are on the book so far, and what questions you have.

Homework! Ender’s Game chapter 2: vocab and reading journal Do exercises from Texts and Contexts pages (typo on the syllabus) Have a great weekend!