Clarification for Tuesday's class, April 1

Please focus on your research paper on the Crimea, the elimination of tobacco in America, or background checks.  There will be time to finish the two paragraphs on Educational Technology during Tuesday's class.

Change in the Calendar of Assignments

Please note that you should be up to p. 51 in They Say / I Say by Monday's class.  (Orchestra trip / Choir trip / Baseball trip -- I'll give you an alternative deadline if you didn't get the TS/IS packet this week.)

Also, please finish the Cumulative and/or Periodic sentence imitations.  I'm entering missing imitations as Zeros as of Friday, 3/28; but I'll be happy to change these for AP English students who get caught up by Monday.

The Periodic Sentence -- imitating the syntax of professional writers.

A periodic sentence “builds toward and ends with the main clause.”  (LOC, Glossary, Shea et al., Eds.)  For example:  Arching his back, his white teeth sparkling, his tail curled low between his legs, my cat scowled at the little dog.

For Friday, March 28:

Compose imitations of each of the following five (5) periodic sentences, just as you did for five cumulative sentences on Wednesday.  Choose your own subject, even as you maintain the syntax of the original.

1.  ““To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men, that is genius.”  

                        ~  from “Self-Reliance,” by Ralph Waldo Emerson (1841).

Imitation:

2.  "For the sake of the children, for the Republic in which these children will vote after we are dead, and for the sake of our cause, we should enlist the workingmen voters, with us, in this task of freeing the children from toil!"

                        ~  from Florence Kelley’s Speech to the Philadelphia Suffragettes (1905).

Imitation:

3. “Full of his beliefs, sustained and elevated by the power of his purpose, armed with the rules of grammar, the writer is ready for exposure.”

                        ~  from The Elements of Style, by E.B. White (1918).

Imitation:

4.  In that instant, in too short a time, one would have thought, even for a bullet to get there, a mysterious, terrible change had come over the elephant.     

~  from "Shooting an Elephant," by George Orwell (1936).

Imitation:

5. “In the week before their departure to Arrakis, when all the final scurrying about had reached a nearly unbearable frenzy, an old crone came to visit the mother of the boy....”

                        ~  from Dune, by Frank Herbert (1965).

Imitation:

Rehearsing the Cumulative Sentence, imitating the syntax of professional writers.

 FOR WEDNESDAY, MARCH 26:

Reenact the structure of the original sentence in a sentence you create.

EXAMPLE::  "He drove the car carefully, his shaggy hair whipped by the wind, his eyes hidden behind wraparound mirror shades, his mouth set in a grim smile, a .38 Police Special on the seat beside him, the corpse stuffed in the trunk."  ~  Univ. of Iowa Writing Lecturer Brooks Landon (2005)

 Imitation:  “She brushed the wolfhound arduously, her strong hand undeterred by the task, her eyes watery on account of the dog’s strong smell, her mouth locked in a firm grimace, her purse on a nearby table, the Greenie wrapped in a wad of Kleenex inside the closed purse.”

Imitation exercises:

1. “For a time he fussed with the dishes, whistling to himself as if the subject had been settled.”

                                              ~ from The Things They Carried, by Tim O’Brien (1990)

Imitation:

2.  “The Pacific is no place for rowers, especially when they are weak and blind, when their lifeboats are large and unwieldy, and when the wind is not cooperating.”

                                                ~ from Life of Pi, by Yann Martel (2001)

Imitation:

3. “It is a wilderness that is beautiful, dangerous, abundant, oblivious of us, mysterious, never to be conquered or controlled or second-guessed, or known more than a little.”  

                                          ~  “An Entrance to the Woods,” by Wendell Berry (1981)

Imitation:

4. “At night I’d toss and turn around in bed, half awake, half asleep, imagining how I’d sneak down to the beach and quietly push one of the old man’s boats out into the river and start paddling my way to Canada.”                 

                                       ~  from The Things They Carried, by Tim O’Brien (1990)

Imitation:

5.  “There is a valley of ashes – a fantastic farm where ashes grow like wheat into ridges and hills and grotesque gardens; where ashes take the forms of houses and chimneys and rising smoke and, finally, with a transcendent effort, of men who move dimly and already crumbling through the powdery air.”  (ß Championship round!)

                                                        ~ from The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald (1925)

Imitation:

The Essay for April 4th

Your three-page essay -- typed and double-spaced -- should take a strong position on one of the two debate propositions for your class (see the propositions, below).  Make a solid case for the side you choose, citing at least three sources from the debates and at least three you find on your own, for a total of six (6) sources.

The following rubric will be used in scoring this essay:

Credibility of your evidence (6 sources).  (10)
Clear, effective thesis statement. (5)
Your argument is cohesive.  (10)
Proper and effective use of sources:  embedding, framing.  (10)
Acknowledge and refute the opposition (counterargument) (5)
Properly formatted Works Cited page. (10)
Clarity of prose style.  (10)

It's fine to write up to five (5) pages.

The Propositions:

CRIMEA (4th Pd. only):  The U.S. and the world community should not intervene in Russia's attempt to annex the Crimea.

TOBACCO (4th Pd. and 5th Pd.):  The U.S. should immediately eliminate the sale and distribution all ingestible tobacco products within the American homeland.

BACKGROUND CHECKS (5th Pd.):  In order to reduce gun violence on American soil, the U.S. government should enforce stricter background checks on the sale and distribution of firearms.  Background checks should include points of sale at gun shows, in private homes, and in all venues -- not merely at licensed gun shops.

Calendar of Assignments, March 17 through May 9, 2014

Monday, April 7
Vocabulary quiz.  Exercises in Concision.  Anticipate Tuesday's I-CE.

Tuesday, April 8
In class:  Write I-CE #1.

P.M.  Read Lincoln's 2nd Inaugural Address.  For the context of this short speech, review A-PUSH or American history notes.  It's also fine to use Wikipedia as a refresher.  We'll use this speech to begin reviewing rhetorical analysis for May 9.

Wednesday, April 9
In Class:  1.  Recap I-CE #1.  How did you do?  What were your goals?  What did you quote?  2.  Rhetorical analysis review.  Discuss Lincoln's purposes.  Discuss the context of the 2nd Inaugural.  Discuss the way he constructs his speech as an expression of his hope for American domestic policy in 1865.

P.M.  Assignment in LOC, TBA

Answers and explanations for the 2007 Multiple-Choice segment

By opening this link, you should see a document with all the answers -- plus brief, student-written explanations -- to last week's AP Multiple Choice test.  The student writing needs some drastic proofreading, especially for punctuation, but the underlying thinking is pretty strong.

(The percentages indicate the number of students on the nation-wide exam in 2007 who got the right answer.  Thus, a 40% answer, like the answer to #1, was difficult for most students, whereas an 80% answer, like the answer to #4, was relatively easy for most students.)

FOR MONDAY'S CLASS, please mark all the correct answers on your question sheet and look up the explanations for the ones you got wrong.  

March 3-4-5-6 (7?)

The directions for the Winter Letter of Self-Evaluation appear as the LAST of the Course Downloads on Mr. Bratnober's ClassJump page.  (Scroll to the very bottom of the page.)

This Weekend:
You'd do well to begin drafting your Letter.  The Vocabulary words for Thursday's exam are assembled in the upper RH corner of this blog.

Mon., March 3 and Tues., March 4
We'll rehearse using AP Multiple-Choice questions from past exams.

Homework:  Work on your Letter.  Review the Vocabulary words.  (See RH column.)

[Wednesday, March 5 -- Good luck on your three finals!]

Thursday, March 6
Our Final will consist of a Multiple-Choice segment (53 questions // 60 minutes) from a past AP English Language & Composition exam.  There will also be a Vocabulary Review of the three (3) winter vocabulary segments.  See the upper RH corner of this blog.