Homophones are words that sound alike, or the same, but are spelled differently and have different meanings. It’s important to know how to spell these words because, when they are misspelled the meaning of the sentence changes.

There are quite a few homophones like: weather and whether, accept and except, or close and clothes. This post will focus on the homophones: There, Their, and They’re. These words sound almost identical even though they mean very different things.

There = in, at, or to that place or position. He is sitting on the bench over there. What are you doing under there? How are we going to get there?

Their = indicates possession or belonging. The shopping bags on the ground are theirs. Their heads were blocking our view. They forgot their luggage.

They’re= is a combination of the words they and are. To combine those words, remove the a and leave an apostrophe in its place like this: they’re. They’re going to a party later. They’re probably going to stay out late. I don’t know how they’re going to get home.

Here are a few of sentences that use all three homophones: I wonder why they’re sitting over there with their shopping bags. They’re going to use their GPS to get there. They’re not allowed to bring their pets over there. 

Click the following link for a list of homophones that are commonly confused with one another. https://owl.english.purdue.edu/engagement/2/1/48/

Watch the following video for a tutorial on the homophones: There, Their, and They’re. For an extra challenge, watch this video several times and see if you can find a missing apostrophe that is not related to those homophones.

Photo: Brooklyn Eagle from Flickr Creative Commons

This site on Open Labs contains information relevant to writing skills geared to writing strong college essays and geared to helping students confidently pass the CATW!

Throughout the semester, you will get reminders about tutoring services from wordshavelives@gmail.com.  These emails will also include links to this site, providing resources available to you on or off campus.

“Brooklyn 4 Life (Williamsburg Bridge): April 1, 2014” by Jennifer Sears

In CATW tutoring sessions, many students have expressed concerns about reading strategies and writer’s block.  There are many approaches to reading well and reading as a writer who must write a response essay.  I’ve italicized this last sentence because you must keep your task in mind even as you read and analyze the essay you are given. “Reading as a writer: means you are constantly in conversation with the writer.

Here are six reading strategies that have worked well for previous students:

Reading Strategies for Writing a Response Essay:

1.  Identify the writer and title? What questions arise when you read the title?

2.  Preview the beginning and ending of the essay quickly the first time to identify the topic of the essay and to get a sense of the writer’s argument. You might ask:

• what situation or conflict is described in this essay (topic)?
• Is there a change or response to this conflict suggested by the writer (thesis)?

Note your answers to these questions (in “notation” form) in your margins.  Remember the writer’s argument (not the topic) is his/her thesis.

3.  Read the whole passage slowly.  As you have already considered the thesis, use this reading to understand how the writer is actively supporting his/her argument from the introductory paragraph all of the way to the concluding paragraph.   You might ask:

• What specific points are made?
• Which ideas best legitimize the writer’s argument?

Underline and annotate in the margins your findings.

4.  Note argumentative strategies used in the essay.  How and where does the writer use comparison and contrast, description, exemplification, division and classification, cause and effect, and/or narration? How are examples being used to support the author’s ideas? (Remember: you can use similar strategies and transitions are learned by reading and noticing how other writers use them.)

5.  Decide and write and the top corner of the essay whether you find the writer’s argument a legitimate argument.

6.  Freewrite/brainstorm on the bottom of the essay or in the margins. You might:

• Respond with a few words that describe the problem or situation the author presents in the essay in your own words.
• Respond with a few words that explore the cause of the problem or situation.
• Respond with few words that trigger comparison: can you relate to the issue discussed? Could a story of someone you know relate to the issue discussed?
• Respond with a few words or sentences that will help you remember how you might change the situation.

Aristotle wrote the famous “Poetics.”

All successful writing has a sense of flow, or as many writing instructional texts (including the CATW rubric)  suggest, a “beginning, middle, and end.”  You already look for this when you watch a movie or watch a TV show.  You may not consciously sense this as you read, but if you are reading carefully, you would likely notice if the end was cut off of a novel or an essay.The Greek philosopher Aristotle (pictured above) mentioned this in his famous treatise on writing and criticism, Poetics: “Now a whole is that which has beginning, middle, and end.”How does this translate into writing an essay?  In tutoring, we discussed this as a sense of structure in writing.

• Five or six paragraph essays have an introductory paragraph, body paragraphs, and a concluding paragraph.
• Each paragraph has( to some exten)t a topic sentence, support for that topic, and a concluding sentence.

There are many ways to structure each paragraph, but a sense of the role that each paragraph plays is important in presenting the reader with a profound sense of “beginning, middle, and end.”  Additionally, transitions create a sense of flow between the beginning, midde, and end.  These visible divisions on the page (paragraph divisions and the transitions within paragraphs), make your argument clear to your reader and frame your ideas.

Pages: Analysis and Development; Structure

The first task in the CATW and other college writing and reading assignments is learning how to read and ANALYZE  effectively.  So what does the word ANALYZE actually mean?

WHAT:
The Free Dictionary online defines “analyze” in this way:
ANALYZE: tr.v. an·a·lyzed, an·a·lyz·ing, an·a·lyz·es
To examine methodically by separating into parts and studying their interrelations.

WHY:
When reading for analysis, a text is broken into parts to better understand the whole.  In biology lab, you know that when you look at a cell for a first time through a microscope, you only see a cell as a “whole.”  With a trained eye, you begin to see the individual parts of the cell and to understand how those parts work together.  If you like to cook, you first taste food as a “whole,” but as you understand different ingredients, you begin to taste and see evidence of certain parts of a recipe and to understand how ingredients create reactions that work together.

Reading for analysis is also the process of seeing the parts of a whole text and understanding how those parts use reaction of the reader to create a whole. With a more trained and experienced eye, you will begin to see how writers approach the same writing tasks you now must do as a college writer and reader.  You will understand what a writer is proving and to diagnose how other writers are setting up their ideas (for example, by using introductory and concluding sections and transitions) so that you, the reader, understand not just a thesis or idea but the argument that supports that thesis.

HOW:
There are many reading strategies!
Among those discussed in tutoring sessions are:

1.  As you read, look for a writer’s thesis (main point of the overall essay).
2. Notice how she or he uses the introductory and concluding sections of a text to set up the thesis.
3. Notice how he or she sets up supporting points to support that thesis and transitions in between these points.
4. Annotate: Underlining won’t help you when rereading.  Note what you think are important points in the margins.  Note your personal reactions and associations you may have with the text.

This blog will have (eventually) pages offering explication of and strategies for the following categories of concerns for first year college writing:

1. Analysis and Argument
2. Paragraph Development
3. Structure and Transitions (Essay and Paragraph)
4. Language Fluidity
5. Grammar and Mechanics
6. MLA Format
7. The Secret Lives of Words

Comments or suggestions welcome:
wordshavelives@gmail.com