Homework for Monday, 2/3:

1. Actively read (read the definition below, and follow instructions) the first chapter, "Food is Good," in Kitchen Confidential.

• Take notes on the main plot action in the chapter. 
• Pay attention to how old Bourdain is and what his stories tell us about the type of person he appears to be portraying.

2. Keep working on your mnemonic device. Have a rough draft of your thesis statement (that most important sentence idea), in which you identify the device and its main purpose.

• Writerly tip: 

• Use an adjective to identify the type of device it is (rhyming, visual, numerical, ...) Click on this link to review the names of different devices...

• Ex.:  The acronym PRE is a simple device for remembering three fundamental parts of a body paragraphs structure: point, reason, and example. 

Active Reading Skills  (all smart writers take their time to study and dissect what they're reading)

• Pay close attention to, pose questions, and break down any text that comes one’s way by doing the following:  

• Highlighters can be good friends
• 
  
• Take Notes in a notebook as you read

• Use the margins of a text | all available white space of a page

• Create a running commentary of emotions
• Pose questions
• Pull out the main concept / restate main word from a paragraph
• Note where ideas shift at beginnings of new paragraphs (chart the author’s "progression of thesis"!)
• 
  
• Re-title the piece or its sections for your own reflective understanding
• 
  
• At end of reading text, in white space at end of chapter/piece, or in your class notebook:

• What is the major plot point? (good in literature to ask)
• What were major examples to pull from piece?
• What lesson did the main character learn? 
• What things did I learn from the piece?
• other ideas that you were inspired to come up with...
• 
  
• Compare and contrast/transfer your knowledge: in your notebook or in the margins, it's also a good strategy to connect what you read to the outside world.
• Examples:  Anthony Bourdain reminds me of...?  When X happened to Bourdain, it was like when I read about/watched Y, which makes me think Z! 
• 
  
• Dictionaries can be your BFF;  build your vocabulary

• Jot down/highlight those words you are not sure of as you read. Then, look them up and put the definition in context of the reading.

Pre-Writing Strategy: Questioning Your Topic

"Questioning" is a brainstorming activity in which you think about your topic, pose questions, and then answer those questions.

•  Questioning is a great strategy to build up brain power. Your ability to concentrate on a topic and think up what people will need and/or want to know is imperative to your growth as a writer. 

• All of us can always get better at asking questions and pursuing that inquiry.

Questions for In-class Discussion and Pre-writing

1. Pose whowhatwhenwhywherehow questions on your topic to help develop:

• What do I want to remember?
• Why do I want to remember? 
• When/where will the device be usable?
• How will this device help me?
• How is the device memorable? 
• What type of person is this device good for?
• ...

2. Once I identify what my mnemonic device is, what else should I write about--what are my 2-3 sub points (body paragraph's topic sentence points) going to be?  What are 2-3 points I can make that will clarify to a general audience   how and when to use this device? 

•  (Always the first...) Rhetorical Considerations: 

• For each of these three below (PAC!), you will want to ask whowhatwhenwhywherehow questions to help you understand the type of details that can help develop your idea past a thesis statement (and help shape the thesis beyond a subject):

• Purpose
• Audience
• Context

• Example of a student's subject:  

• To be a good quarterback, one has to remember the three C's: cool, calm, collected.

• Now, as a class, let's look at this topic and discuss the above ideas...

Types of Mnemonic Devices

For definitions of different mnemonic devices, click here.

• Acronyms
• Acrostics
• Chaining
• Keyword method
• and more...

The homework read for today provides great examples of some of the above. Let's explore together some of those read on Flocabulary ...and look at the Alot.

Reading/Review for Friday, 1/31: Mnemonic Devices

Review the mnemonic device websites below. We will start to look at them today for inspiration, if we have time. For Friday, brainstorm your own mnemonic device and have a genuinely considerate idea about your Essay 1 topic by the start of next class. 

• Do you want a rhyming mnemonic device? Like a little poem?
• Do you want to use an acronym?
• Do you want to use a visual aide (if so, your essay would rely on your ability to describe the visuals--perhaps after you've drawn them). 

• What will your device be good for remembering? (Class material, life lesson, proverb, job material, etc.?) Why and were do you think this knowledge can be used?

Dear Reader:

Besides PRE being a mnemonic device for us to use, here are a couple of other places on the web to help out your thinking on how to approach Essay 1:

1. I like the Alot a lot! 

• "alot" is not correct. There has to be a space between "a" and "lot." This web piece shows how the common error actually has the creator imagine a creature called the alot.
• Here is one that uses cartoons to teach people why "alot" is wrong. For artists, this may inspire your writing...can you describe a cartoon?

2. Flocabulary.com

• If you are in any way musically driven like me, this website does a great job of making us think about how sound plays a big role in memory, in mnemonic devices. 

• There are many examples of both rhyming and non-rhyming mnemonic devices.

Good luck shaping your own memory device!

Sincerely,

Roy G. Biv

Unified Paragraph 1: 50 points

What is one (just one) way that you try to remember things?

• For the next 30 minutes, answer in one (just one) well-developed paragraph on Microsoft Word.

• Give at least one example in your PRE-formed paragraph! 

• Also, I urge you to other concepts read about in Rules for Writers that help build an effective paragraph. (No books open at this point, just writing.)

• This is a diagnostic one that will allow me to learn how to work with you and your writing this semester :-D

Constructing an Effective, Cohesive Body Paragraph: PRE

Quite relevant to our class lecture today, I saw this piece on the similarities in writing and running on-line for anyone wanting to make a further reconnection between the two....

http://home.europa.com/~bence/pre/

The above picture is Steve Prefontaine, a world-class runner who died too young. His nickname is Pre. Look at how focused his eyes are in this picture and remember those eyes when you remember our focusing technique, PRE.

http://www.justrunners.com/Steve%20Prefontaine%20Poster.htm

http://en.nkfu.com/steve-prefontaine-quotes/

PRE teaches us that to be the best one must put their best effort into all that they do. PRE can also teach us, again, how to write a unified body paragraph. 

Point: start each paragraph off with a sentence (we call it that Topic Sentence) that states who/what the paragraph is about--your subject--and what you have to say about that subject in that paragraph.

Reason: follow up your Topic Sentence with some logical reasons for why you believe your point is true.

Example: follow up your reasons with specific examples that support your point and reasons. You can also add a second E to Example, and that would be Explain! Make sure that when you illustrate your example that you also make sure to explain how it connects back to your Topic Sentence.

Example:  Here is the article we read for today: "In the Beginning," and below are model PRE body paragraphs that incorporate some example facts from the article and the quotes above. These body paragraphs make basic summary points about "how Prefontaine learned to be successful, according to the article." (We will discuss the different structure of Introductions and Conclusions over the coming semesters.)

       Steve Prefontaine, who held many American records in distance running, is a great example of how much effort plays a role in having success in life--even during high school years. Prefontaine started off as one of the weaker runners on his high school team before setting goals to become a national record holder by his senior year.  In the article "In the Beginning," Michael Musca discusses how Prefontaine could not break five minutes in the mile his freshman year of high school, and as a sophomore failed to qualify for state. However, by his junior year in 1968, he went undefeated and won the Oregon state cross country meet in. Musca writes that "From this point forward, the winter of 1968, young Pre embarked on McClure’s 30-week program, which he hoped would yield the time goals and a state championship in the two-mile" (Musca). Prefontaine would run four to eight miles a day while working multiple jobs. His setting goals and following them is what lead to his success during those years.

       Those high school years are a small example of showing how setting goals matters; Prefontaine also had the work ethic and mindset to accomplish his goals. Steve Prefontaine is widely known as the ultimate competitor. He fulfilled his goals by training extremely hard and by maintaining an aggressive mindset that he would maintain for the rest of his life. There is no better evidence than Pre's own words: "To give anything less than your best is to sacrifice the gift" (Just Runners). These are the words of a competitor, someone who does not settle for finishing a task. Another quote of Prefontaine is "I'm going to work so that it's a pure guts race at the end, and if it is, then I am the only one who can win it" (NKFU). He confidently believes that nobody can beat him if he works as hard as he can.

        Prefontaine's successes came from also following a clear plan of actions to take to accomplish his goals. Pre's high school coach, Walt McClure, helped lay out a training program so that Prefontaine could set the records and live up to his goals. McClure set Pre up on a 30-week training regiment in the winter of 1968 that helped Pre win state in the two-miler that Spring. Prefontaine continued to run at least four miles a day during that following summer, even as he worked multiple jobs to help his struggling family (Musca). Prefontaine won the two miler his senior year in a national record of 8:41.5 (Musca), which shows how much one can improve in something if they are really dedicated to their own success. 

       Prefontaine was never known as a fast runner, but his effort on those days off helped propel him towards national success at an early age.  ...

Reading for Wednesday, 1/29:

Click on this link to read the article "In the Beginning" prior to class on Wednesday. Give yourself at least one hour to read and take notes.

• This article is important to our very first writing assignment (graded), and also inspires our first writing strategy, which we will cover Wednesday. 

• This first writing strategy is something we come back to our entire semester together (I use the language from this lesson consistently as we critique our essay writing)

Course Blog Introduction

This blog, http://preparetowrite.blogspot.com, will be a valuable resource for our EN002 course. Here are a couple of the things I use blogs for:

• Lecture Notes: Most of my lecture notes are directly imbedded within the Writing Strategies and Writing Activities (see below) posted to the blog. This means that you can spend more time asking questions and creating your own set of personal notes from the posts that we review that day. Additionally, a lot (and I do mean a lot) of time expanding on what is posted; quite often our discussion of writing will lead to new examples discussed, new ideas, and sometimes clearer ways than the post may give without the context we provide together.

• Writing Strategies and Writing Activities: To reduce the use of paper, I often use the blog for in-class activities. Sometimes I will post the same activities has I provide as hard copies. On the day we are working on a particular reading or writing, I tend to post a Writing Strategy (or more) that we can use in attacking the kind of writing we are currently doing. I also tend to follow up outlining the Writing Strategy with Writing Activities, which are prompts that ask you to practice the Strategy just gone over. I may also use the terms Pre-writing Strategy and Pre-writing Activity, depending on the mood I am in!!! 

• Homework Reminders: I do NOT always post reminders, but I do like to use this blog for doing so about ten times during the semester. I will especially use the blog to remind you of additional homework from that in the syllabus' weekly schedule.

• Schedule Changes: If we have a drastic change in the reading / essay due date, I may post it here along with informing the class during our scheduled meeting times.

• Helpful Grammar and Class Reading: When a topic is relevant, I tend to post extra places for you to go and use outside of what we do in class. I will post links from places such as Purdue University's OWL website when we work on particular rhetorical issues -- such as Thesis Statements or Misplaced Modifiers. These extra places are great places to get more info on topics related to your improvement as a writer.  Also, if I find an article that supplements our in-class readings and discussions, I may post the link along with an explanation of what we can do with the reading!

• Links: On the right hand side of this blog will be useful links (updated as I find relevant) that you may go and read on your own in your personal pursuit of becoming a more well-rounded citizen. In the least, I like to create links to important, CREDIBLE periodicals that many academics either routinely read or go to when they are doing the first legs of research! I also like to include links to good grammar (like OWL) and research-citation (like Diana Hacker's) guides, and to places to find good literature and well-written pieces on topical issues (the Virginia Quarterly, aka: VQR).