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!

Wed, Oct 20: Active Verbs!

So how is the writing going for essay#3????

When composing, we often make lazy choices, especially when choosing verbs. We feel enticed by generic all-purpose verbs such as "is" or "are." However, these verbs choices reflect boring language! Aim for something more interesting!

Click here for a great web source for talking about active verbs!

I will give you folks a handout in class about using active verbs but if you miss class, here is a link to the handout: Click here!

See you all in class!

Friday, October 15

Today we are going to look at two essays from our essay collection, This I Believe. The two essays -- "Creative Solutions to Life's Challenges" by Frank X Walker and "When Ordinary People Achieve Extraordinary Things" by Jody Williams -- both have a specific thesis/ argument and specific development. We'll look at those aspects more carefully in class.

We will also look at some examples of essay "letters" from students in previous semesters.

So are you thinking through any idea for your own paper??? Remember, you want to focus on a problem or a joy that you see on our campus of SWIC. What would you like to talk about? See you in class!

The Video for Essay #3: Discounted Dreams

On Monday and Wednesday we will be watching a 60 minute DVD program called "Discounted Dreams." This program focuses on the problems -- and joys -- of today's community colleges. With low tuition and flexible scheduling, community colleges provide an array of classes and job training to 12 million students nationwide. But with all these students, we do experience some problems. This video will introduce some of these issues to you. (I've included a short trailer for the video we will be watching at the top of this blog entry!)

In the meantime, I would like you all to think about any problems -- or joys -- that you have here at the Sam Wolf Granite City Campus of Southwestern Illinois College. I will hand out your next assignment in Monday's class, but you will want to think about your own specific experiences as a student here in order to provide the development for the letter/ essay that you will be writing for essay assignment #3!


Click here for a transcript of the entire video that we will be watching, just in case you need to review a specific quotation, name, scene, or statistic.

Friday (Oct 8)

Essay #2 is due today in class! See you there! (we will be doing your required self-assessment notes and going over the new schedule as well!)

Happy Friday!

Wednesday's Class! (OCT 6)

Today we will be looking at two essays from our class -- our volunteers were Lisa and Carlene! Hopefully, this discussion will help you with your own essays as well! Remember -- what is your specific argument? How will you support that argument?! Then, be sure to take that final step and make sure that your proofread and edit carefully. You could, for example, make sure that you are using commas correctly! See you in class!

Don't Forget! Essay #2 is due on Friday!

Ready to Get Comma-tosed?!

So today we will be looking at the wonderful world of commas, which I know can be confusing to a lot of folks!

We will start by looking at what Grammar Girl has to say on this subject -- she will cover comma usage in terms of serial lists, adjective use, and the use of commas with conjunctions.

One thing to keep in mind in terms of "extra baggage" are the grammatical terms "restrictive clause" and "non-restrictive clause." Click here!

But there are some other rules -- you also can use commas with introductory word groups, "extra baggage" (non-essentail information), after words like "however" and "moreover"(technically called conjunctive adverbs), and dates/ cities/ countries. We will look at some examples in class!

Click here for a fantastic web source on "comma rules"!

Click here for another comma help page from the Purdue Online Writing Lab!

Click here for one more great online source!

Conclusions

So on Wednesday we talked about the different startegies that you can use to write a "kick ass" introduction. Remember, generally speaking, your readers are going to be looking for your point/ purpose/ claim/ thesis by the end of your introduction (which could be one or two paragraphs for a 3-ish page essay!). If your thesis doesn't come until later, that's fine, but your readers still have to have some idea of where the paper in question is going!

For Friday's class, we will talk about the other end of the essay: the conclusion!

Click here for a basic explanation of writing a conclusion for college-level essays.

Click here for another web site that includes some ideas on the types of conclusions that you want to avoid with the final draft of an essay.

See you all in class! :D

Introductions!

We are going to start class on Wednesday by doing something with the "bad" paragraphs that you folks wrote during Monday's class .... and then on to the wonderful world of writing catchy introductions! Click here for a great link from the Purdue Online Writing Lab about writing a paragraph at the beginning of your essay that will "pop"!

It was great touching base with everyone this past week -- now let's start looking at essay #2 and how you can more effectively get your ideas across via language.

We are going to start this week by talking about a concept called ENGFISH.

Click here for an article that explains this term!

OK, now that we have talked about what ENGFISH actually is, let's look at one of the most common ways that ENGFISH comes out in writing! Click here!

We will then spend the rest of the class playing with ENGFISH with the goal -- I hope -- of avoiding it in your own final drafts of essays.

Happy Monday!

Good morning! We are going to talk about those three essays I assigned on Monday and you will want to make sure that you have signed up for one of the conference times with me on Wednesday or Friday (so you can get essay #1 back!). We will also talk about your new writing assignment in class today! See you there!

For Friday Sept 17

In class on Friday, you will complete self-reflection notes before handing in essay #1. Afterwards, you will be given a handout for the new schedule. You will notice that there are some readings that you must do BEFORE coming to class on Monday. All three of the readings can be found in our text, This I Believe. You can also find the readings online (click on the links):

"Be Cool to the Pizza Dude" by Sarah Adams (pages 7-9)

"In Giving I Connect to Others" by Isabel Allende (pages 13-15)

"A Goal of Service to Humankind" by Anthony Fauci (pages 65-67)

For each reading, what would you say is the argument/ position/ purpose/ claim/ thesis? How does each writer support his/ her thoughts? Which of the three is more effective? Which one are you most persuaded by?

Wednesday and Friday

Today (Wed) in class we will be looking at two student essays -- by Jesse and Kelsey! We will help them figure out the weak parts -- and the strong parts -- of their essays! My hope is that the discussion that we have will be useful to everyone as you all work on preparing your final essays for Friday's class.

So, of course, essay #1 is due on Friday. You will be given a new schedule on Friday as well!

:D

Monday's Class!

For Monday's class, we are going to look at a "bad" essay written by one of my former students, David. We will then talk about why EXACTLY this essay has some problems. When David's classmates read his essay, they also pointed out some problems and so I will show you how he revised his work.

I hope this discussion will help us talk about the two essays that will see on Wednesday (Jesse M and Kelsey). Everyone's essay will be due on Friday so be sure to let me know if you need any help at all!

I know the first essay is often the most stressful. Let me know if I can help in anyway! :D

Friday's Class Sept 10

Happy Friday! We will start class by reviewing all the "good stuff" we did on Wednesday -- comma splices, run-ons, and fragments! After this quick review, we will jump into one more issue I think you need to be aware of: audience!

Click here, by the way, for a terrific web site that talks about audience and academic writing!

For the exercise that we will be doing in class, you will be clicking on the following web sites and examining the author's intended audience:

Townhall.com Blog

USA Today Article

Huffington Post Article

The Infamous Comma Splice (and friends!)

For Wednesday, we are going to talk about the three most common grammatical mistakes that almost every writer makes: comma splices, run-ons, and fragments.

Here is what Grammar Girl has to say about comma splices -- click here! We will listen to what she has to say at the beginning of class. A version of this podcast is in her book -- pages 104-6 (and she talks about fragments on pages 68-9)

Click here for a great handout on what comma splices are!

Click here for a great online quiz for dealing with run-ons!

Friday, September 3

Hi everyone! We talked about thesis statements on Wednesday so what I would like to do for Friday's class is expand our discussion and talk about basic paper format and organization.

Click here for some general comments about putting a college essay together. This might be especially important for those who are nervous about our first paper!

Click here for a link on basics for turning in a college-level essay This is information on the presentation of a research paper, but all the comments hold true for an ENG 101 essay as well!

See you in class!

Wednesday, Sept 1

On Wednesday, we will talk about thesis statements, a concept that you might already be familiar with. Click here to go to a web site that we will look at in class on Wed.

Have you started your first essay yet?!?! Come and see me in my office (Room 205) if you run into any problems, OK?!

Monday's Class!

During Monday's class, we will review the guidelines for your first writing assignment -- and talk about two of the essays in the This I Believe collection; remember, I posted online links for the two essays on Friday if you don't have the book yet.

I will also make sure to give you folks back the diagnostic essays (with my comments) that you did last week. No huge problems at all but we will talk briefly about some of the responses I had to your writing!

Update to Friday's Class

OK. So apparently the bookstore ordered some of the right book and a bunch of the wrong book. But, luckily, most of the readings we need in the next few days are avaiailable online:

A link for Today's Class:

Murrow's famous introduction to "This I Believe"

Links for Monday's Class:

"Remembering All the Boys"

"Unleashing the Power of Creativity"

Friday's Class

Here is a link of Edward R. Murrow reading his original introduction to the 1950's radio series, This I Believe: Click here!

And if you click HERE you will find yourself on the web site for the program. There are tons of links to explore here!

We will talk about the history of this important series and then jump into your first writing assignment! See you in class!

For Friday's Class!

You will need to read two articles for Friday's class -- "The History of This I Believe" (pages 260-268) and "Introduction to the 1950's This I Believe" (pages 269-271). Both will give us a background so that you can start essay #1!

After we talk about these two essays, you will get your first assignment; I did just post it electronically at the bottom of this page. At the moment, it's not showing up but if you check back later, I hope it is there! (look for the document that says "Essay 1 ENG 101 Fall 2010." We will go over this, of course, in class on Friday! See you then!

Welcome to Fall 2010!

Welcome everyone to the Fall 2010 semester of ENG 101! This week you will be getting your syllabus and first schedule -- always let me know if you have any questions! I check my email religiously! (Dianna.Shank@swic.edu)

On Wednesday, we will be doing a "diagnostic essay" which will give me some idea of what your writing is like right now. No worries -- this writing will not be graded but it will give you a chance to see what my style of responding is like!