Category: HW (prompts)

0.  First and foremost, read Brittny’s Essay 2 and give her some feedback on it.

00.  Revised versions of Essay 1 and Essay 2 are due next week at finals.  If you haven’t received feedback yet on one or both of these essays, please e-mail ASAP the City Tech Writing Center at

CityTechWritingCenter@gmail.com

to set up an online tutoring appointment.

007. In preparation for our final exam, please read the attached article that the exam essay will ask you to respond to.  It would be helpful to you to

a) understand (and underline!) the author(s)’s name(s), the article title, the thesis of the article, and 2-3 main points that support the thesis.

b) underline and try to understand any words you don’t understand but which seem interesting or important; you can look them up in a dictionary if after re-reading the passage you still can’t fully grasp their meaning.

No need to post anything to the blog for Sunday, but you can if you’d like.

That said, all unfinished blog work will expected to have been posted by next week (as this will be factored into your final grade).  Please check your grades and keep me posted as you complete unfinished posts.

Best to you all–I can’t believe we’re so close to the end!

M

FINAL EXAM ARTICLE LINK

1. Please read Islam’s Essay 2 and give him some feedback.
2. Please read the example final exam that I am attaching and post below an explanation of the differences between the two essay prompts at the end of it.  What kind of essay does A ask you to write?  What about B?  How are they similar?  How are they different?

Ok, so now that we’re reaching the end of the semester, it’s time to look at how to put the finishing touches on an academic essay—in this case, Essay 2.

Whenever you refer to another person’s ideas or words in an academic essay, you are expected to cite them, meaning you place a marker of some kind (depending on the formatting system you are using) which indicates whose ideas and/or words these are—and how the reader can locate those ideas or words (online, in a book, etc.).

There are two parts involved in this: 1. placing marks known as in-text citations in the sentences of your essay, and 2. writing source info at the end of your text in list, alphabetized by last name.  (In MLA format, this is known as your Works Cited page; other formats have other names for it.)

What I want you to do for Sunday is read this very basic, quick guide to formatting in-text citations and Works Cited pages in MLA format.  I then want to use this guide to help you form citations for your Essay 2.  Your in-text citations will go in your essay’s sentences where you refer to other writers.  Your Works Cited entries will go at the end.

I also want you to post your Works Cited entries (alphabetized by last name) to as a response to this blog post.

Lastly, I want you to post feedback for Jayvon Judge’s Essay 2.

Ok, so for Wednesday, I want to build off of what we did with Leonardo Mendez’ Essay Two draft over the weekend: I want you to work on (re-)outlining your Essay 2.  Why the “(re-)”?   I know some of you have not yet written drafts yet: for you, this may be your first outline; for those of you who have already written your Essay 2 drafts, this will be a re-outlining assignment, meaning that you will read your draft and write a list of your paragraphs in a new order.  Feel free to *add new paragraphs* to your outline (paragraphs you haven’t yet written).

For ideas as to how to go about re-outlining, please (re-)read my response to Leo’s paragraphs in his Essay 2 draft; it’s quite long and in-depth but I hope it gives you ideas for how I want you to approach thinking about (re-)paragraphing and (re-)organizing an essay.

Chat with those of you who are available on Zoom on Wednesday, 230p.

Read Reese Okyung Kwon’s “There Must Be More”—a somewhat ironic close reading (interpretation) of David Ruis’ Christian Rock song, “There Must Be More”.  In Kwon’s text she painstakingly unpacks the singer’s decision to use the word “because.”  In your response below, I want you to

a) tell me what you think the importance of this word “because” is (in the context of the song, or you can interpret this prompt more broadly)

b) tell me one word from the song you’re writing Essay 2 about that you could write a paragraph about.

Simple!

1. Post Essay 2 Feedback for Jeicot Suarez.
2. We are going to change gears for this one.  We are going to place Essay 2 on pause for this one and simply going to write for a bit—one paragraph, two, three…four pages; however long you want—about our respective experiences of the Covid crisis so far.  Write about whatever you’ve seen, write about what you’ve felt, write about people you’ve known who’ve caught it, write about something odd you’ve heard about it, write about someone you love who you worry might get it, write about working within it (if you’re still working), write about trying to continue with your classes in spite of it,  write about trying to ignore it, write about literally whatever comes to mind about it.
   (What you write here might be the beginning of an Essay 3: an extra-credit essay documenting your experience of some aspect of this once-every-century-or-so experience of living through a pandemic.)GO!

Closely Listening & Responding to One Line of Lyrics

1. Read & post feedback for Tessaya Forde’s Essay 2.
2. We are still practicing different strategies for closely listening to and describing music.  For this brief assignment (due Wed), I want us to focus on how to pick apart and extract questions from one single line of lyric from your song.  To that end, I want to direct your attention back at Jeremy Schmidt’s essay on “The Full Retard” by Jaime Meline (El-P). His entire essay, while rather brief, is focused on a close reading of the song’s “chorus” (or “hook” or “refrain” or whatever you want to call it).  One line of lyric produces a whole line of questioning and response in Schmidt’s essay.  Have another look at its opening two paragraphs:

“Like an oracle crowning herself queen, the hook from “The Full Retard” predicts its own reign: “So you should pump this shit, like they do in the future.” The song’s track is all clanging beats and zapping lasers, its lyrics Jaime Meline’s standard skyscrapers-and-sewers futurism, its overall effect a parade of sonic likenesses of the coming world’s broken infrastructure. The chorus, though—the chorus is more about taste than about politics or apocalypse. Take another gander: so you should pump this shit, like they do in the future.

This is a glimpse into the hypnotic heart of hype itself. What does it mean to pump, promote, or even love something right now, knowing that it—the song or the idea or the meme—will be ubiquitous in the future? Why would we want to prefigure the they of Meline’s rancid imagination, anyway? (To prepare?) More practically, shouldn’t our own pumping, or pooh-poohing, have some influence on the popularity of this shit among later humanoids? ”

Check out all of these questions that Schmidt generates in response to this one, seemingly mundane, lyric of Meline’s: “you should pump this shit, like they do in the future.”  This is what I want you to do with your Essay 2 song for Wed: select one line that you can ask a series of questions in response to, write out both the line and your questions and begin trying to respond to your questions if you can.  See where this takes you.

See you on Zoom on Wed—FYI, I need to push back our meeting time to 3:30p this week.  Hope this still works for as many people as possible.  Hang in there everyone, much love, M.

Hi guys–welcome back 🙂

For Wednesday, we have some simple, but *bounteous* catch-up Essay 1 workshopping to do.  (Give yourself some TIME for this one.).

Please read and post feedback for the following writers’ Essay 1s:
Lisette Rojas
Redoanul Islam Sahat
Shanice Smith
Jeicot Suarez
Amani Wright

Remember, in the Essay 1 folder (in “Course Docs”), essays are named and organized by the writer’s LAST NAME first (e.g., Lisette’s essay is listed as “RojasL_E1”).

This assignment will be the last of our Essay 1 workshopping, as we change gears to focus specifically on strategies for developing your Essay 2 and workshopping the drafts of this later essay that many of you have begun to produce.

Of course, please do continue revising your Essay 1s using the feedback you receive on the blog.  You can give me your revised, “final” draft of Essay 1 at any time between now and the end of the semester.

See some of you on Zoom on Wednesday 😉

Monroe

1. Write a draft of Essay 2 for Sunday if you can.  This is the main thing to do!  To do this, you may want to re-read the Essay 2 assignment sheet (in “Course Docs” page); you will also want to read the article you found on the topic/question related to your song that you’ve been thinking about (and write a bit about this article); you may also want to re-listen to the song you’re discussing.
2. Finish completing Essay 1 feedback for Jennessy and Shania.

That’s it!

PS. As we discussed in the Zoom meeting, we will try to continue our work through the “Pause” on online learning called for by CUNY the other day; that said, I will be flexible with the assignments due this coming Sunday and Wednesday.  In other words, it is optional for you to submit them this week, BUT in the long run these are not optional assignments and it will be expected that you complete them at some point in the next 1-2 weeks.  As always, please contact me if you’re worried that you’re falling behind, and we will work something out.

Lastly, when submitting late work, if you want my feedback on it, please e-mail me; otherwise, it is likely that I will not see it in time to write you feedback.

Hi All,

So… I hope to see many of you on Zoom on Wed from 230-3p or so.  I hope we will have a chance to do some listening to and writing about music together, using some of Zoom’s “party” features that I learned about this weekend. 😉

For Wednesday, I’m going light on you with the assignment because I want people to catch up on the work that’s been assigned so far–as well as on essay feedback for others in the class.  To that end, here’s what I’d like you to do:

1. Re-read as much of the course website as you can (including blog assignments, essay assignments, other students’ essays, links to videos, links to library resources, quizzes, etc.).  Then, find at least one assignment you’ve completed and revise it—OR—find one assignment you haven’t done yet and DO IT.  In your response to this blog post, under #1, simply write the title of the assignment you did or revised.

2. Find a text that connects to your Essay 2 song in some way and which you think you WANT TO READ.  Next to #2, below, write the text’s title, author name, and publication/website (e.g., NYTimes, Medium.com, etc.).

3. Provide Essay 1 feedback for Jennessy Jiminian and Shania Newsam (essays available in “Course Docs -> Student Essay 1s”, titled by student last name).

That’s it. As always send me your questions… I’ll do my best with them!

M

Ok, everyone–thanks for hanging in there.  Here’s what I’m looking for you to do for Sunday.  As always, e-mail me with any questions:

1. Take Quiz 2.  Note that it will automatically close Sunday at 5p.
2. Re-read K-Hole’s “Youth Mode” and Jerry Salz’ “Art at Arm’s Length.”  Pick one of these texts to write a bit about (and post below).  When writing about either K-Hole’s or Salz’ work, I want you to do whatever you like in addition to doing two things:

   A) Introduce the text and a quote from it using the following format:
   In “_Title of Text_,” _Author Name_ observes that “___quote___” (AuthorLastName_p. #).

   B) Identify and discuss one key term that the author tries to define and explain to me the ideas the author uses to try to define this key term.  Also discuss any questions you have about the way the author has tried to define this term.

3. Write and post Essay 1 feedback for Joseph Azor and Denis Hasancevic.  Both are available in the Essay 1 Drafts folder (linked in the “Course Docs” page).
4. Post below any questions about this week or last week’s reading or writing assignments that you want me to address during the Zoom session I will be holding with students on Wed at 2:30p.

Assignment for Sunday–this is long but contains important course content: please read all of it!

1. Connecting the dots; linking items in a list.  You’ve probably noticed that we are spending a good deal of time working on our ability to describe carefully what we see and what we hear in time-based media (music and/or video).  My aims in doing this are two-fold (at least):

–to help you improve your ability to write cinematically so that you’re able to install images and sounds in the imagination of your reader (this will help you write a compelling narrative for Essay 1)

–to help you write more carefully about “texts” that other people have made, including songs, videos, and writings–the latter of which can be even harder to write about than the former (this will help you write creatively and critically about media and your research in Essay 2)

What I want you do now is look at your list of visuals or words that you took notes on while watching or listening to your media choice from last week.  I want you to connect these terms in a paragraph or two, using complete sentences.  There are numerous ways of connecting details of this kind, but for now I want you to write sentences that show us how these visual or sonic details are connected IN TIME.  What comes first? What comes next?  What comes before?  What comes after? What comes at the end?  Below are some linking words and phrases you might find helpful in forming your sentences:

–“____title____,” a song/video by ___author name___, starts off with_____

–A moment later, the sounds/visuals change to ________

–In the middle of “____title_____,” we notice that _________

–This part of the song/video reminds the viewer of an earlier moment in which _________explain similarity between two parts____.

–We begin to sense that “____title_____” is ending when _________

–__AuthorLastName___ ends the song/video with ____________.

2. Reading for Thesis Statements & Definitions. We are transitioning toward Essay 2, which will introduce you to several fundamental facets of academic paper writing (in a fun way, hopefully): thesis statements, definition, question-asking, research, and logic/idea-connecting.  WIth that, return to the readings on internet addiction I suggested for this past week (#7-9a) and choose 1 of the following prompts to write about
   
   A. Thesis Statements.  A thesis statement is a debate-able claim made by a writer that his or her whole essay revolves around (if it is a thesis-based essay, that is).  “The wooden chair is brown” is not a great thesis (at least if the chair appears to most people to be brown) because it is factual rather than debate-able.  “The wooden chair is uncomfortable” works a bit better as a thesis because it is debate-able; however, it is subjective–comfort is in the eye of the beholder–and doesn’t give specific reasons that would make clear to the reader why the wooden chair is uncomfortable.  “I’d propose that many schools may well have stopped using wooden chairs in classrooms because of the associated costs, the effect on the environment, and student complaints of discomfort”; now here is the best thesis so far (although it’s probably far from perfect): it offers a debate-able theory as to why schools have stopped using wooden chairs (debate-able because someone could disagree with this theory), and it gives specific reasonswhich support the author’s thesis.

That said, not all thesis statements are clearly stated at the beginning of an essay–in fact, many aren’t stated clearly anywhere in a writer’s essay.  So instead of looking for a sentence that sums up a writer’s thesis, we have to read their whole essay and then think about the different points they make, add up those points, and decide for ourselves what the main point or thesis is.  With that, I want you to re-read Lauren Duca’s “The Viral Virus” and write a paragraph in which you tell me about 3 points she makes in her essay and what you think the thesis (her biggest or most general/overall “point”) is.

B. Definition of Terms.  Another very important thing to keep in mind when doing college-level reading and writing is how certain terms are defined–by writers who you are reading and by you yourself when you are writing.  In academic writing, you will often notice definitions of key terms and ideas that are longer than dictionary definitions–way longer.  In fact, entire essays and books have been written by academics trying to better define certain ideas.  For an example of this, you could do a quick search for articles and books on the idea of “trauma”; you will find many different ways that people (especially since Freud) have attempted to define and understand this concept.  OK, this is why I had you read these other texts on internet addiction–they revolve around how this term is defined.

First, re-read Block’s DSM article on internet addiction, then re-read Lane’s “Addicted to Addiction” and respond with your observations on the following:

–how does Block define internet addiction? List at least three points he makes in trying to define what he means by this term.

–what do YOU think of Block’s definition of IA?  List any thoughts or questions you have about any part of his definition.

–what does Lane, in his article “Addicted to Addiction” think about Block’s definition of “internet addiction”?  Give us a quick sense of any problems Lane notices with Block’s ideas.

3. Developing Questions for Essay 2. In preparing to do a bit of research, it can be helpful to develop a list of questions you might consider trying to answer.  What I want you to do here is write a series of questions about 1-2 of the social issues you identified in a song you’ve selected to work on.  The paragraph can only be questions, but there are different kinds of questions I want you to use.  For instance, I want you to ask at least one “why” question that asks for reasons why something is the way it is.  I want you to ask at least one question about  the connections between two ideas related to the issue you are exploring.  I also want you to ask one “how” question that points towards the way the artist has put together the song.

In Kanye West’s “Ultralight Beam,” what are the connections between the sampled recordings and the lyrics?  What is the connection between the history of racism alluded to in the song and the faith indicated by the lyric “this is a God’s dream”?  Is Kanye religious?  Are his listener’s religious?  Why and how is he connecting racism and religion?  How and where does Kanye use moments of silence in this track?

4. Readings for next Wednesday’s assignment:K-Hole “Youth Mode” and Jerry Salz, “Art at Arm’s Length” (#10-11).