Wednesday, December 1

Sorry, folks, I will not be making it in today BUT I must see you on Friday for your required conference. Since I am not there today to assign times, just come by sometime on Friday between 8-12. I will be in my office ALL MORNING! The conference will only take a few minutes -- if you can, bring your essays with you so we can talk about how you have been doing and what type of grade you are looking for at the end of the semester.

See you folks on Friday!

PS: Are you working on essay #5? I hope so!

Monday, November 22

Welcome to Monday! Today we are going to go through our last schedule and talk abut your last essay assignment (yeah for you guys!).

Our last essay will deal with argumentation and persauasive writing. Of course, you encounter persuasive writing everyday. Whether it's the radio announcer telling you why you should keep listening to his station, a magazine article on your favorite rock star, or even the President of the United States giving the State of the Union address, persuasive writing plays an important part in your everyday life.

With persuasive writing, the goal is to try and convince people to agree with you. So in class we will talk about what makes for a good argument in a college essay (how do you convince folks to agree with you?). One way of talking about arguments is to approach this topic via the visual -- in other words, visual arguments can be a great place to talk about how argument can be put together on a piece of paper!

Here is a youtube video which illustrates a visual argument: Click here! This video uses sarcasm to create a "mockumentary" argument.

Click here for info on making sure you have a valid thesis statement!

Click here for information on using support/ evidence!

Wednesday, November 17

Today and Friday, we will be looking at drafts of essay #4 -- be sure to ask any questions that come up as we go along! Remember, I am in my office in the mornings from about 7:30 - 9:00 AM. I have chocolate if you need the early morning sugar!

Also -- we will look at the sentences you folks wrote in class on Monday morning and figure out which ones "pop" the most!

See you in class!

PS: Don't forget to use the new, updated schedule instead of the old one!

Friday, November 12

You all should be getting a call this morning, but I have called in sick (chemo crap). We will do Friday's schedule on Monday and I will adjust the schedule. See you all then!

Wednesday, Nov 10

Quick ENG 101 Update:

Here is the beginning of the British version of Jane Eliot's experiment that we watched in class (sadly, only the first part seems to be available): CLICK HERE!

"What Would You Do?" ABC news report on racism -- fascinating! CLICK HERE!

Make sure you are working on Essay #4 at this point! We will come back together on Friday and review all the fun stuff we did this week in terms of editing!

See you then!

Monday, November 1

Good Morning! On Monday we will be looking at three more essays from our collection This I Believe. Here are the three essays that you must look at BEFORE coming to class:

"A Grown Up Barbie" by Jane Hamill (pages 103-105)
"A Duty to Heal" by Pius Kamau (pages 132-134)
"There is Such a Thing as Truth" by Errol Morris (pages 162-4)

We are going to talk about these three pieces in detail -- which will lead us to your next essay assignment! See you all in class!

Monday, October 25

Happy Monday! Today -- and Wednesday -- we will be looking at drafts from some of the folks in class! We have two scheduled for each day. Hopefully, by looking at what some of the folks in class are thinking for essay #3, this exercise will help everyone in considering their "letters" for this assignment. Remember, think about your purpose, development, and audience. How will you convince Chuck Whitehead or Pat Pou that what you have to say is important?

Don't forget that essay #3 is due on Friday!

See you in class!