verbs

We've started working on verb tense. It's important to keep your tenses consistent in writing so your readers can follow the timeline.

We covered six tenses:
past, present, future and continuous past, present and future.

check out the chapter in Scarry for an awesome chart that breaks these tenses down.

[Posted with iBlogger from my iPhone]

Style and Structure

We discussed two main ideas today. 

Style:  We learned about descriptive writing. 

• description is a method of development that uses sensory images to recreate a situation for the readers. 
• descriptive writing uses all six senses (sight, sounds, touch, taste, smell, and emotions) to help you recreate a moment for your readers. 
• descriptive writing always includes a DOMINANT IMPRESSION--a main impression or point that the writer wants the readers to pick up on. 

Look at the image to the right --> --> -->

• What sounds can he hear?
• What does he smell like?
• What can he taste right now?
• What emotions does he feel?
• What does he look like?
• What does the ball feel like against his foot?

We also talked about essay structure.  Today we focused on the INTRODUCTION.

There are three pieces to the intro

1. the hook (which catches the readers' attention)
2. the background (which provides the basics each reader needs to know to understand your point)
3. the thesis (which states the point of the whole essay)

**Check out this link about what you SHOULD NOT DO in an introduction**

For more practice on introductions, email me or Nancy! 

Homework (ex. 11 from Scarry page 511)

I know some of you have old books, and exercise 11 is not in the old book.  Below is the exercise:

Compose your own introductory paragraph using narration and description.  On a seprate sheet of paper, write out your introductory paragraph making sure to include a hook, background and thesis. 

**If you are lost, check this afternoon's blog notes from class. 

Kevin Costner...inventor?

Check out the article from the LA Times.  

Image for class Thursday, June 24

Wednesday, June 23

It was a dark and stormy night...

Today, we reviewed some troublesome sentences that make finding the subject particularly difficult.

Sentences that begin with THERE or HERE

• There are problems in all parts of the world. 

Notice the verb is are, which is a linking verb.  In this case though, the subject is behind the verb, so the linking kind of works backwards.  You can help yourself find the subject by looking for the verb first (are), and then asking "what are there?"  Problems!

• Here are the qualities of a good cupcake. 

Again, the verb is in front of the subject, but when the sentence starts with HERE, you can just ask "what are here?"  Qualities!

We also examined apostrophes for use in showing possession.

Verbs!

Today we really got into different parts of speech.  And that's a good thing because knowing how to craft a sentence will help us develop and strengthen our paragraphs. 

We learned about several parts of speech:

• Nouns-people, places and things
• Pronouns-small little words that take the place of nouns (he, she, it)
• Verbs-show the time frame and action in sentences.  Sometimes verbs also link subjects to descriptions of the subject.  Those are called linking verbs.
• Prepositions-small words that point readers in a direction to the object.
• Conjunctions-(also called FANBOYS) connect parts of sentences together
• Adjectives-describe or modify nouns and pronouns
• Adverbs-describe verbs (and a bit more, but we'll cover that later this summer). 

We really focused on verbs today, especially ACTION VERBS!  Action verbs show readers what the subject is doing and when the action took place (because of the tense).  Check out Scarry page 47 for some samples and practice work. 

We finished off the day with Vocab List #2 (see Blackboard) and writing the second draft of our paper in class.  Email me (lroessner@ccc.edu) with questions or concerns about this second draft.  On Monday, we'll be moving on to draft #3 (the final draft of this first essay). 

6/16--a little bit o' class and a little bit o' library

Wow, today was packed with stuff.  We started off by reviewing process and making sure we remembered the importance of keeping each step in chronological order.  Check Scary Chapter 12 for some more review/extra practice. 

Then we moved on to sentences: a group of words made up of a subject and a verb and that expresses a complete thought.  Today, we spent most of the time considering SUBJECTS

Subjects-usually the "who" or "what" the sentence is about.  Almost always, subjects are nouns or pronouns.  Subjects normally appear in the beginning of the sentence since most sentences in English follow a Subject/Verb/Object order.  Consider the following sentence:

• Beatrice spent her money wisely

In this sentence, we can see that Beatrice is the one who is doing action (spending), so we can assume she is the subject of the sentence.  We also know that Beatrice is a subject because she is a noun (sidenote: yes, money is a noun too, however, money is the thing being spent--it is the object of the sentence--so it is not really the focal point of the sentence). 

One thing that can cause problems in finding the subject of the sentence is if there is a prepositional phrase in the sentence. 

Prepositional phrase: a group of words that starts with a preposition and ends with its object.  Prepositions are often directional words that point to a time or place in regards to the object.  Check out this list of prepositions. 

Once we can identify the prepositional phrase, we can cross it out of a sentence to help us find the actual subject because even though a noun or pronoun will be hiding in the prep. phrase, the subject will NEVER live there. 

• In 1851 in Rochester, New York, Western Union had its beginning. 
• Messages were transmitted by Morse code and delivered by couriers. 
• Eventually, telegraph service drove the Pony Express out of business. 

For more practice, check out Scary page 42-43

We also went to the library for some research work. If you missed class, make sure to head to the library and talk to one of the librarians about all the wonderful resources they have! 

Finally today, we worked on reading process paragraphs.  Look to the examples in the post from yesterday for details! 

Reading Process Paragraphs

     In the human body, the digestive system breaks down food so that it can be used for energy.  As food enters the mouth, chewing along with enzymes in the saliva, break it down into small pieces.  Next the esophagus contracts and pushes the food into the stomach where muscles, enzymes, and digestive acids turn the food into a thick liquid.  That liquid is emptied into the small intestine where most of its nutrients are absorbed.  What remains travels to the large intestine where water is removed from the digested food and turned into waste.  

PRACTICE:  Read the following paragraph and create a flow chart on a separate sheet of paper.  

     Cloud seeding is a a process state governments and private businesses use to increase the amount of snow or rain falling in a particular area.  The process begins with meteorologists who use radar, satellites, and weather stations to track storm fronts.  Next, they measure storm clouds for temperature, wind and composition.  When the meteorologists determine that cloud conditions are right, pilots seed the clouds with dry ice.  Seeding involves an aircraft flying above the clouds and dropping dry ice pellets directly into them.  Almost immediately, the dry ice begins attracting the clouds' moisture, which freezes to the dry ice's crystalline structure.  Finally, precipitation drops from the clouds to the earth in the form of rain or snow.  

Extra Suport for Process Analysis

Were our notes still a little too sketchy?  Do you want some extra explanation?  Process Analysis is an important method of development, and it can really help you push your ideas out into more detail and clarity.  Consider checking out this resource from TCC.

6/14 (flag day)

Today we worked on several key points in writing, namely: why and how.

WHY:  There are many purposes in writing

• to express personal thoughts and feelings
• to explain or inform 
• to entertain
• to commemorate or remember
• to study or to seek to gain a better understandingto argue or persuade

However, no matter which purpose we have, one thing remains crucial...we write to communicate our ideas with an audience!  


How: In order to express our ideas fully, we follow the writing process

1. Prewriting (this is where you generate and organize some ideas BEFORE you start really writing)
2. Drafting and Revision (the vicious cycle of drafting, revising, reworking and creating new drafts)
3. Publishing (taking a best draft and cleaning it up so it is actually ready for a reader to enjoy)

Make sure to reflect on the writing process, especially the prewriting strategies found in Scary.  


Process Analysis:  a method of development in which writers explain how something works or how something is done with a focus not on just the HOW, but also the WHY.  


Check out this sample: 
 First make sure that you are using eggs that are several days old. If this is Easter time, and everyone is buying their eggs at the last minute, buy your eggs 5 days in advance of boiling. Hard boiling farm fresh eggs will invariably lead to eggs that are difficult to peel. If you have boiled a batch that are difficult to peel, try putting them in the refrigerator for a few days; they should be easier to peel then.


Notice that the red sentence focuses on why the eggs must be old.  Without this little sentence, many egg boilers may choose to ignore that crucial step and just boil whatever eggs they have on hand.  When their eggs do not come out right, they'll never even get why because they will think they did follow the steps.  


We will use Process Analysis for the second draft of the essay.  For the second paragraph, you'll explain to readers HOW you found out the information about your topic.  You'll also explain WHY you took the steps you did.  I strongly suggest that you take about 30 minutes before class on Thursday to review your first draft and to think about all the steps you took to complete the investigation sheet.  

6/10: Review of annotation and paragraphs...and curiosity

Today, we continued working on annotation.  If you missed class, make sure to read the section on The Warren Court from Reading for Thinking (page 626-627).

Tip: if you are struggling with the whole asking a question thing, try to identify the main idea of the paragraph (see notes below for more in main ideas).  You can use this subject to create a question.
Tip: use a highlighter to mark the vocab words and confusing sections.  That way, these things will visually "pop" and it will be much easier to locate when you need to look words up.
Tip: write your questions down right on the text you are reading.  Use post-it notes if you HATE writing in your book.  If you keep your notes on the reading, it is much easier to keep up with actually writing all the questions down.

*To test your progress and growing comfort with annotation, read "Johnson and the War" from Reading for Thinking page 630-631.

We also continued working on paragraphs and paragraph organization:

An Olympic champion has five distinctive characteristics.

The blue part is the main topic of this sentence.  It is what the sentence is about.  If this sentence was used as a topic sentence to control the flow and organization of a paragraph, readers would know right away that the whole paragraph would be focused on and Olympic champion.

The red part is the main point the writer wants to communicate.  Again, if this were used as a topic sentence of a paragraph, the rest of the paragraph would have to explain more about these five distinctive characteristics.

     An Olympic champion has five distinctive characteristics. The first, and maybe the most important, characteristic is commitment.  Commitment will help the athlete stick with a tough training schedule even if it seems daunting.  Optimism is also a key trait and will likely play out in more than one area of the champion's life.  For example, optimism will help the athlete stay confident during both a hard workout as well when life outside of sports starts to become challenging.  Pefectionism is another big trait.  While it may annoy those around them, the Olympic champion knows that only perfecting his or her skills will be good enough, and that champion will work continuously to achieve the highest level.  Perhaps this is aided by the fourth trait, the ability to focus.  Finally, the fifth characteristic is being mentally tough.  In other words, the Olympic champion has the ability to ignore all the mind games and just concentrate on what matters--the game!

If you look above at the paragraph, you can see something pretty cool...each of the sentences that follow the topic sentence, actually follow the topic sentence!  What I mean by this is that the topic sentence set up the structure for the rest of the paragraph.  It set up a blue print, and the writer just had to follow that blue print in order to build a strong paragraph!

...and finally for today: Google
1) remember to choose a strong, searchable term for your investigation.  If you wrote the first draft on Wednesday, you should have a searchable topic identified already.  If you missed class on Wednesday, choose a topic you are curious about.
2). plug your topic into Google and spend some time looking around at the sites that come up.  Refer back to page 33ish in Reading for Thinking if you want a review.
3) choose just one site and use that to fill out the Internet Search part of your Investigation sheet.

Active Reading and Active Paragraphs

As a recap of today's work, here are some notes on our two main topics: 1) ACTIVE READING and 2) PARAGRAPHS. 

Active reading is when you participate in the reading instead of just letting all the information wash over you (in other words, by using active reading strategies, you'll become more aware of what you are reading, and you'll, in turn, become a more comfortable reader).  To read actively, we ANNOTATE, which means we take notes before, during and after reading. 

Before: take notes on what kind of text you are reading, who wrote it, what the title it, what your purpose it in reading. 
         Answer 2 questions: 1)what do I think this is going to be about?
                                        2)what do I think my reaction will be?

During: highlight unfamiliar words, mark confusing passages, ask questions and make connections to personalize the text

After: look up the definitions to the words you highlighted while reading and write them out
                     Answer 1 question: 1)what did I think about this? 

We can use this style of active reading to help us prepare for class discussion, to study for tests and to develop ideas on what we can write essays about later on. 

Paragraphs:  a group of sentences that develops one main idea.  A paragraph may stand alone as a complete piece of writing or it may be a part of a larger work, like an essay. 

          Paragraphs have a very distinct look:

     Today was the first day of my summer English class.  At first, I was really nervous to meet all the new people who would be in class with me.  I'm a natually shy person, so meeting that many people all at the same time was a little overwhelming.  But everyone seems nice so far.  I met a girl who has a cat, just like me.  I think that knowing we have something in common aside from just being in class together will make it easier for me to talk to her later on in the summer when I have a question about something in class.  I hope that by the end of the class, I can become comfortable with everyone who is in the class with me. 

Notice that this paragraph begins with INDENTION (see how that first line juts in?), which will help the reader focus on the one main idea (meeting new people in English class is overwhelming).  The rest of the paragraph develops this main idea. 

For some more information on paragraphs, check out the OWL website
   **More information about paragraphs will be covered tomorrow!**

The first post

This is our class blog site.  Mostly, this will be an archive of class notes, but I will also post some extra practice and links to interesting websites here as well.  Just like Blackboard, I suggest making it habit to check in here routinely (once a day, once a week, in the evening after class before you do your homework, whatever routine works best for you), so you can stay up-to-date on the class notes, check your own notes for completion and get more information on any of the subjects discussed.

Also, keep in mind that just like Blackboard, once something is posted on here (or on Blackboard), it is as if I said it in class, and you are responsible for that information.  So, if we run out of time in class to cover some notes on verb tense, and I post them here instead, you are expected to study those notes and be ready for the verb work the following class day.