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!