Welcome to 10H!
Tuesday, April 5, 2011
Power of the Spoken Word
Hi, Everyone. I truly enjoyed reading your "a-hah!" moments about what you better comprehended as a result of listening to "Roman Fever." So, as part of our "audio shorts" continued experiment, I'd like for you to post your thoughts about how listening to "The Lottery" before reading it helped or didn't help your reading comprehension. Also, let me know what worked for you best re: comprehension: reading first, then listening ("Roman Fever") OR listening first, then reading ("The Lottery"). Lastly, any other thoughts you have about the recorded version of the story are most welcome. For this assignment you may use the first person. Please post by Monday, April 11th.
Monday, January 3, 2011
Absolute Faves...
Hi, Pumpkins. Yes, I did miss you over the break. Seriously.
Was reading your classmates' strategies for tackling tough spots in their reading lives helpful?
The "when all else fails, ask someone," "re-read the passage," and "look for context clues"
were wildly popular, as they should be since they work. Moreover, I was intrigued by
novel approaches. Alec, your idea to think of all the events that led up to the challenging part
was a new student's response for me. Thank you. And Kyle, your walking away, taking a break
is a good idea; time gives perspective and clarity.
Jimmy, doll, let's see how you deal with difficult parts so that we can wrap-up this thread
(please answer on that post, not on this...thanks) Thank you, too, for your enthusiasm in
making The Crucible come to life. We'll work on getting you that Tony.
O.k., to the point.
Please find a gripping, awe-inspiring, artfully crafted passage. Yes, I've changed what I mentioned today in class. I explain why later.
Next, start your post with the text. Then explain why you LOVE the writing.
For example, I just finished reading Chris Cleave's Little Bee. The blurb on the back of the book reads, "This is a story of two women. Their lives collide one fateful day, and one of them has to make a terrible choice, the kind of choice we hope you never have to face. Two years later, they meet again - the story starts there...." As I said today in class, the book is set in Nigeria, London, and Kingston-upon-Thames (a suburb of London). There's war, love, infidelity, friendship, hope, and betrayal woven throughout the plot. At 266 pages, it's a relatively quick read, as the suspense created by the characters' plights push the reader to the book's end.
Ok, I know, I'm going off on a tangent. Anyway, my example. Use it as a model:
At the beginning of the book, Little Bee, a fourteen-year-old Nigerian illegal alien locked-up in a London immigration detention center, speaks about the moment she was set free:
"I will tell you what happened when they let me out of the immigration detention center. The detention officer put a voucher in my hand, a transport voucher, and he said I could telephone for a cab. I said, Thank you sir, may God move with grace in your life and bring joy into your heart and prosperity upon our loved ones. The officer pointed his eyes at the ceiling, like there was something very interesting up there, and he said, Jesus. Then he pointed his finger down the corridor and he said, There is the telephone.
So I stood in the queue for the telephone. I was thinking, I went over the top with thanking that detention officer. The Queen would merely have said, Thank you, and left it at that. Actually, the Queen would have told the detention officer to call for the damn taxi himself, or she would have him shot and his head separated from his body and displayed on the railings in front of the Tower of London. I was realizing, right there, that it was one thing to learn the Queen's English from books and newspapers in my detention cell, and quite another thing to actually speak the language with the English. I was angry with myself. I was thinking, You cannot afford to go around making mistakes like that girl. If you talk like a savage who learned her English on a boat, the men are going to find you out and send you straight back home. That's what I was thinking" (Cleave 3-4).
Ok, so here's what impressed me about the passage. The writer uses humor via hyperbole (extreme exaggeration) to discuss a serious-as-a-terminal-illness issue, i.e. an outsider blending into a foreign society by mastering that country's native tongue. This reminded me of living in Spain as an undergraduate and asking for "ear" cheese instead of "goat" cheese. I know, not as interesting as Little Bee's story, but I was mortified. Also impressive, is Little Bee's characterization: she is reflective and wise for a fourteen-year-old. This sketch makes me curious to find out what happened to her prior to this moment so that I can learn what events in her life made her this way. Lastly, I liked that Little Bee's inner dialogue was written in italics and was embedded in the text. This formatting decision made it easier for me to read and move along quickly through the story.
So, to sum up:
1) I transcribed a passage...you'll find that a passage will give your blog readers more of a sense of the author's writing style and what you appreciate about it.
2) I used a parenthetical citation.
3) I wrote, in paragraph form (as you should), three reasons, each explaining why I found the passage memorable.
Now, pumpkins, you do the same. Get this done by Friday, January 7th, please, or I'll tell Abigail that you're witches.
Thank you.
The Queen of 235 (xo)
Was reading your classmates' strategies for tackling tough spots in their reading lives helpful?
The "when all else fails, ask someone," "re-read the passage," and "look for context clues"
were wildly popular, as they should be since they work. Moreover, I was intrigued by
novel approaches. Alec, your idea to think of all the events that led up to the challenging part
was a new student's response for me. Thank you. And Kyle, your walking away, taking a break
is a good idea; time gives perspective and clarity.
Jimmy, doll, let's see how you deal with difficult parts so that we can wrap-up this thread
(please answer on that post, not on this...thanks) Thank you, too, for your enthusiasm in
making The Crucible come to life. We'll work on getting you that Tony.
O.k., to the point.
Please find a gripping, awe-inspiring, artfully crafted passage. Yes, I've changed what I mentioned today in class. I explain why later.
Next, start your post with the text. Then explain why you LOVE the writing.
For example, I just finished reading Chris Cleave's Little Bee. The blurb on the back of the book reads, "This is a story of two women. Their lives collide one fateful day, and one of them has to make a terrible choice, the kind of choice we hope you never have to face. Two years later, they meet again - the story starts there...." As I said today in class, the book is set in Nigeria, London, and Kingston-upon-Thames (a suburb of London). There's war, love, infidelity, friendship, hope, and betrayal woven throughout the plot. At 266 pages, it's a relatively quick read, as the suspense created by the characters' plights push the reader to the book's end.
Ok, I know, I'm going off on a tangent. Anyway, my example. Use it as a model:
At the beginning of the book, Little Bee, a fourteen-year-old Nigerian illegal alien locked-up in a London immigration detention center, speaks about the moment she was set free:
"I will tell you what happened when they let me out of the immigration detention center. The detention officer put a voucher in my hand, a transport voucher, and he said I could telephone for a cab. I said, Thank you sir, may God move with grace in your life and bring joy into your heart and prosperity upon our loved ones. The officer pointed his eyes at the ceiling, like there was something very interesting up there, and he said, Jesus. Then he pointed his finger down the corridor and he said, There is the telephone.
So I stood in the queue for the telephone. I was thinking, I went over the top with thanking that detention officer. The Queen would merely have said, Thank you, and left it at that. Actually, the Queen would have told the detention officer to call for the damn taxi himself, or she would have him shot and his head separated from his body and displayed on the railings in front of the Tower of London. I was realizing, right there, that it was one thing to learn the Queen's English from books and newspapers in my detention cell, and quite another thing to actually speak the language with the English. I was angry with myself. I was thinking, You cannot afford to go around making mistakes like that girl. If you talk like a savage who learned her English on a boat, the men are going to find you out and send you straight back home. That's what I was thinking" (Cleave 3-4).
Ok, so here's what impressed me about the passage. The writer uses humor via hyperbole (extreme exaggeration) to discuss a serious-as-a-terminal-illness issue, i.e. an outsider blending into a foreign society by mastering that country's native tongue. This reminded me of living in Spain as an undergraduate and asking for "ear" cheese instead of "goat" cheese. I know, not as interesting as Little Bee's story, but I was mortified. Also impressive, is Little Bee's characterization: she is reflective and wise for a fourteen-year-old. This sketch makes me curious to find out what happened to her prior to this moment so that I can learn what events in her life made her this way. Lastly, I liked that Little Bee's inner dialogue was written in italics and was embedded in the text. This formatting decision made it easier for me to read and move along quickly through the story.
So, to sum up:
1) I transcribed a passage...you'll find that a passage will give your blog readers more of a sense of the author's writing style and what you appreciate about it.
2) I used a parenthetical citation.
3) I wrote, in paragraph form (as you should), three reasons, each explaining why I found the passage memorable.
Now, pumpkins, you do the same. Get this done by Friday, January 7th, please, or I'll tell Abigail that you're witches.
Thank you.
The Queen of 235 (xo)
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