We’ll start with about 30 minutes of reading time. Awww…I can feel my brain growing.

Next stop.  The Soiling of Old Glory and begin talking/thinking about visual grammar. Let’s read it through and write a bit about it.

Can a photo change the world? What can images do that words can’t? What can words do that images can’t? Use the example of TSoOG to explain, discuss, and give examples of the power of words vs. the power of the image.

Now, this is a pretty exhaustive list of vocabulary concerning photography analysis.  In small groups, we’ll chug through it, talk about it, and then…

Use the Big Picture website (which rocks 3 ways to Sunday BTW) and–in small groups–choose one picture to discuss with the entire class. Remember to integrate the photography vocabulary we learned. Let’s have an itty bitty quiz on it come next Wednesday.

HW: Rough draft of Immersive Writing is due!

Image Credit: Reuters/Big Picture

I thought we’d try something a bit different today and do a bit of poetry.  Rita Dove’s Parsley explores a historical incident from the horrific reign of Rafael Trujillo and how language is used to control and oppress. Read the poem and in small groups…do a SOAPSTone analysis.

Here is an event list for the weekend.

Then, we’re on to Tan.

1. Why does Tan open her essay by stating, “I am not a scholar of English or literature,” then state, in the next paragraph, “I am a writer?” What is the difference Is she appealing to ethos, logos, or pathos? Why?
2. At several points in her essay, Tan relates anecdotes. How do they further her argument? Be sure to consider the anecdotes regarding Tan giving a speech, the stockbroker, the CAT scan, and Tan’s experience with the SATs. What would be the impact of omitting one of them?
3. What is Tan’s strategy behind including a direct quotation from her mother (paragraph eight) rather than paraphrasing what she said?
4. Tan criticizes herself twice in this essay. In paragraph 3, she quotes a speech she gave “filled with carefully wrought grammatical phrases, burdened it suddenly seemed to me, with nominalized forms, past perfect tenses, conditional phrases.” What are “nominalized forms, past perfect tenses, conditional phrases,” and why are they burdensome? At another point, Tan recalls a draft of The Joy Luck Club in which she wrote, “That was my mental quandary in its nascent state” (paragraph 20). Why does she call this “[A] terrible line?”
5. Tan divides the essay into three sections. Why? If there were no such breaks, what effect would this have on her audience?
6. Why does Tan believe that envisioning a reader – specifically her mother – encouraged her to write more authentically?
7. Discuss how Tan broadens the essay to have relevance beyond her personal experience. How does she raise issues that are germane to a group as well as to her as an individual?

We’ll use those questions to discuss the essay afterward. We might try our hands at some multiple choice questions based on Tan as well. Here is the link to the web-based voting.

If we get to it, I’d also like to take a look at The Soiling of Old Glory and begin talking/thinking about visual grammar.

HW: Work on your Immersive Essay. Rough draft due Mar 11th

Image Credit: mccormick.com

After talking AP-testing, let’s talk just a bit about how the Immersive (Immersible? Immersion? Immeasurable?) Writing is going. Have you immersed? Will you immerse? What about the issue of your attitude towards the subject and the degree to which you are a participant. And…what is creative nonfiction anyway?

Then, let’s talk dumpsters. We’ll read out loud the first five paragraphs and decide on how Eighner uses language and which of the LEP triad is most prominent. Then, we’ll have a short writing response:

1. What is the effect of Eighner’s attention to language in the first five paragraphs? Does this opening appeal more to ethos, logos, or pathos? Explain.

2. In paragraph 7, Eighner identifies the rhetorical direction he plans to follow. What is the effect of such information?

3. Note the technical and clinical nature of much of part one in the essay. In paragraph 19, for example, he writes of de-emulsification and the behavior of pathogens. What is the effect of such scientific language and information?

4. Identify and explain two examples of irony in the section about the students (paragraphs 25-30).

5. Paragraph 37 concludes, “I do not want to paint too romantic a picture. Dumpster diving has serious drawbacks as a way of life.” What is the effect of these sentences? What is their rhetorical purpose?

Did you know you can read Lars’ blog?

Next, we’ll talk about the second section and how it differs in style and purpose. In small groups, we’ll imagine that this piece was in the newspaper and your group wants to respond to it:

1. What is your group’s name and purpose?
2. What argument would you make that defends, challenges, or qualifies Eighner’s piece?
3. What evidence would you use to make your case?

Next, we’re going to read a section (the first 7 paragraphs) from Hemingway’s “Death in the Afternoon.” Let’s talk mostly about how Hemingway presents his attitude towards the subject in a complex way and how he uses language to create a persona.

HW: Read Amy Tan’s Mother Tongue in 50 Essays. Make your written response more personal.  What are your memories and associations with English and words? How do you think about the way you might change Englishes for different groups?  What about your reaction to people who speak English in ways that are different than yours (accents, ELL, slang and jargon)?  Are you a purist or a realist when it comes to language?

Image Credit: larseighner.com

It’s fishbowl time!

We’ll take ten minutes to prepare and then we’ll break up into 2 groups. Group 1 will sit in the inner circle and group 2 will sit in the outer circle.  The students in the inner circle will conduct a 20-minute discussion, analyzing the strategies of Talese in “Frank Sinatra has a cold.” The outer circle will analyze the discussion, noting times when…

• Group members were/weren’t able to constructively disagree with each other in respectful but honest way.
• Group members were able to build on others’ ideas.
• Group members were able to avoid repetition and to move the discussion in fruitful ways.
• Group members referred to the text and backed up their opinions with evidence.
• Group members were able to make interesting connections to other works, other ideas, or other relevant references.

Afterward, we’ll debrief on how the process went.

Next, I’ll want to talk a bit about what I noticed from the Sanders in-class essays and get those back to you.

Then, I’d like to take a specific paragraph from FSHaC and see if we can steal it.  Here it is:

Sinatra had been working in a film that he now disliked, could not wait to finish; he was tired of all the publicity attached to his dating the twenty-year-old Mia Farrow, who was not in sight tonight; he was angry that a CBS television documentary of his life, to be shown in two weeks, was reportedly prying into his privacy, even speculating on his possible friendship with Mafia leaders; he was worried about his starring role in an hour-long NBC show entitled Sinatra — A Man and His Music, which would require that he sing eighteen songs with a voice that at this particular moment, just a few nights before the taping was to begin, was weak and sore and uncertain. Sinatra was ill. He was the victim of an ailment so common that most people would consider it trivial. But when it gets to Sinatra it can plunge him into a state of anguish, deep depression, panic, even rage. Frank Sinatra had a cold.

We’re going to take this paragraph, Analyze its structure, and reproduce it with completely new information.  In other words, we’ll figure out the organization of the syntax in the piece, and the use the same syntax while describing something completely different. We’ll put our new pieces here.

Here are some random suggestions:

• Someone is worried about graduating from HS and getting into college
• A 7-year-old deals with classroom drama
• A furniture salemsan hates his job
• A scuba driver is amazed by the beauty of the ocean

HW: Read Lars Eighner’s “On Dumpster Diving” and either do our normal thing of analyzing its rhetorical strategies and methods as a piece of participatory journalism.  Or…use a 12-panel comic book form (see Comic Life) to reproduce the piece with your commentary attached. See this to get a feel of the possibilities.

Image Credit: twostone-innnovation

We’ll start with the Immersive Writing assignment. Rough draft is due March 9th and final is March 11th. We’ll spend a bit of time brainstorming ideas.

• What/who could you follow?
• What research might you need to do before/after?
• What might you be on the lookout for?
• What attitude do you currently have towards the subject? How does it change (if at all)?

Email ideas to immersiveessay@drop.io. Go here to see the ideas.

Then, we’re going to tear into H.L. Mencken’s Feminine Mind.  We’ll read the first 5 paragraphs and each small group will be prepared to paraphrase the section and comment directly on that paragraph’s use of rhetorical strategies, especially persona, diction, and syntax.

As a contrast, we’ll read “Why I want a wife” by Judy Syfers.  Comment directly on at least 4 paragraphs.  Be prepared to compare and contrast with Mencken’s piece in terms of purpose, audience, and strategies.

Then, we’ll get a head start on the classic celebrity profile: Frank Sinatra has a cold by Guy Talese. The plan is to have a Socratic seminar/Fishbowl wherein half of the class discusses the first half of the piece while being watched by the other half and then we reverse.  To be prepared…

HW: Read Frank Sinatra… and write a 300 word analysis that quotes at least 4 sections and relates them to how Talese uses quotes, specific detail, writing style, and diction to create a portrait of Sinatra. What is Talese’s purpose? What does he want us to see about Sinatra? How does he acheive this purpose?