Monday, October 26, 2015

Wrong Answer

Finish reading the article entitled Wrong Answer in our Class Edit folder on Google Drive. Then make 3 comments. The comment types should be:

  1. Comment on how the author is making his appeal to his audience (a comment on his rhetorical strategies)
  2. Comment on the subject of his argument. Is there  a point your disagree with? Why? Agree with? Why?
  3. A reply to someone else's comment. What can you add to their observation to further the discussion about this article?

Tuesday, October 20, 2015

Education the Emerson Way

This is not due until Thursday when we will discuss this in class, so though it is a lot, you have 2 days.

Read Emerson's On Education on page 102 of The Language of Composition (TLC). In order to get a solid understanding of what he is on about, do Questions for Discussion on page 108 numbers 1, 3, and 5 on your blog. Once you're done with that, it'll be time for some analysis of how he does what he does. To that end, thoughtfully respond on your blog to Questions on Rhetoric and Style 1-3, 5, and 8-12 on pages 108-109.

And as you do this and your other homework, remember that:
"Not less delightful is the mutual pleasure of teaching and learning the secret of algebra, or of chemistry, or of good reading and good recitation of poetry or of prose, or of chosen facts in history or in biography." -Ralph Waldo Emerson
Take delightful pleasure in this learning activity up through Tuesday evening (due Wednesday October 23). We'll discuss this in class on Wednesday, unless I'm miraculously somehow able to find time to grade your timed writes before class on Wednesday.

For some all-important context, please see this transcendentalism article from the Stanford website, quoted in part below.
Transcendentalism is an American literary, political, and philosophical movement of the early nineteenth century, centered around Ralph Waldo Emerson. Other important transcendentalists were Henry David Thoreau, Margaret Fuller, Amos Bronson Alcott, Frederic Henry Hedge, and Theodore Parker. Stimulated by English and German Romanticism, the Biblical criticism of Herder and Schleiermacher, and the skepticism of Hume, the transcendentalists operated with the sense that a new era was at hand. They were critics of their contemporary society for its unthinking conformity, and urged that each person find, in Emerson's words, “an original relation to the universe” (O, 3). Emerson and Thoreau sought this relation in solitude amidst nature, and in their writing. By the 1840s they, along with other transcendentalists, were engaged in the social experiments of Brook Farm, Fruitlands, and Walden; and, by the 1850s in an increasingly urgent critique of American slavery. 
Goodman, Russell, "Transcendentalism", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2011 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.).

Friday, October 16, 2015

Superman and Me

Today in class we read Superman and Me by Sherman Alexie. Reread this short piece paying special attention to the syntax and the rhythm of the language.

Please blog your answers to questions 1-4; 6-7. Hint: questions 5 and 6 will help you answer the slightly more vague directions above.

This is a short piece. Read it again. Remember as you analyze to focus first on the details and use them to reveal the big picture, then when you write (if we were writing an essay on this -- don't freak out; we're not), start with the big picture and explain it using the small details.

Monday, October 5, 2015

Toxophilus Unleashed!

Read pages 35-48 in the TLC book (read carefully for understanding, not for completion) and apply one of the techniques enumerated therein (pp. 40-46) to the Toxophilus excerpt from this book written by Roger Ascham in 1545 and dedicated to King Henry VIII (the assignment is on page 48).

I've linked the Toxophilus excerpt in a Google Docs version so you can copy the text into your Google Docs or Word if you wish. Using tables, you can do the dialectical journal or graphic organizer on Google Docs and you can annotate using comments. You may wish to bring something in done by hand, though. Not sure if you can circle and draw arrows in the way you may wish to in a Google Doc. I do encourage you to try your hand at the dialectical journal or the graphic organizer.

Since a number of people will wish to turn this in as a physical document, please print out your electronic efforts if that's the direction you take so that I receive all of the assignments in the same medium. Thank you!

Enjoy your trip back into the scientific observations and practical concerns of the mid-Sixteenth Century England!

Due Wednesday in class (have the reading done for Tuesday!).

Remember we have TWT tomorrow!