• Week 8 Assignments

  • This week, we will be preparing a Writing Inventory and talking about sentences and some common sentence errors in Standard Written English.

  • Group Assignments DUE by MIDNIGHT, Wednesday, October 30
  • RWA and LJ DUE by MIDNIGHT, Sunday, November 4
• LEARNING JOURNAL 8: 
• First, please spend 5 to 7 minutes free writing about the different languages and dialects that you know and use, when you use these languages and/or dialects, with whom you use them, your reasons for using specific languages and/or dialects, and how you you feel when you speak and/or write in these languages/dialects.  If you would like to read more about what dialects are, click here.Second, please read the Introduction to _The World’s Greatest Short Stories_ (pp. v – vii).  Afterwards, briefly skim through the book and, without reading any story in its entirety, please select one story that you would like to read.  Then, write one paragraph explaining why you selected that story to read and why you want to read it.

Group Assignment 8:  Questions About Standard Written English and Some Answers to Those Questions

This Group Assignment is in two parts:

Part I: What specific questions do you have about sentences in Standard Written English (SWE) that you would like to have answered?  Please post three questions about some specific aspect of the SWE sentence.  For instance, “what is a run-on?”  “What is the difference between a period and a comma?”  “What is wrong with this sentence:  ‘The is dog cat eating the.'” “If it is possible to start a SWE sentence with the word ‘Because,’ why did my high school English teacher tell me NEVER to do that?”  “What is a sentence fragment, and how can I revise these in my writing?”  Be creative!  Ask anything and everything you’ve ever wanted to know about SWE sentences, and their functions/malfunctions.

Part II:  Please read through all of your own and your classmates’ questions posted to GA8.  Locate the answer to ONE of your own questions and TWO of your classmates’ questions by looking up the answer to these questions on the Purdue OWL or in your English handbook.  Post a brief synopsis of the “answer,” along with a link to the Purdue OWL site or a reference to the page number of your handbook where you located this information.

RWA8: Meeting with Me to Pick Up Your Essay, Creating a Writing Inventory, and Meeting With a Writing Tutor

Purpose:  to identify the writing issues that you plan to work on for the rest of the semester

Part I: Meet with me to pick up and briefly discuss your draft essay

Part II:  Creating a Writing Inventory:

1.  Take a look at all of the starred sentences.  What do you notice about these sentences? Why do you think Prof. Rodgers thinks they are impressive? Do you think they are impressive? Are there other sentences in the essay that you think are particularly impressive or effective?  If yes, list them and explain why you think they are impressive.

2.  List, interpret, and categorize each circled word/issue and marginal comment in the essay.  What’s going on with each word/sentence marked?  What happened? Did you make a typo? Need to revise?  Can you name the error?

3.  Make a list of all of the categories circled on the essay grading rubric

4,  Re-read Professor Rodgers’ ebook College Writing:  Some FAQs and her Understanding and Repairing SWE Errors in College Writing.

5.  Make a list of what you are beginning to see as recurring issues that you can work on in your writing.  Some of these may be SWE errors and therefore would be categorized as being related to Clarity.  Other issues may be related to Argumentation.  Some may be related to Structure.  Some may be related to Revision.  Please list at least one and no more than three issues that you plan to work on in the following three categories:  Argument/Structure/Clarity.

Part III:  Meet with a SPECIAL ENG1101 tutor.  When you go to meet with one of the tutors, who are available from 10:00am-7:30pm Monday through Thursday, and from 10:00am-4:00pm on Fridays and Saturdays, you MUST BRING ONE OF YOUR RWAs OR ESSAYS and a copy of the original ASSIGNMENT to your tutoring session.  I would like you to discuss SENTENCE EDITING STRATEGIES with the tutor.  If you’d like, you can also discuss questions that you have about Professor Rodgers’ handouts with the tutor.