Thursday, September 30, 2010

In-Class work for 9/30: Brainstorming

In a post of at least 300 words, answer these questions about your selected country:

- Why are you interested in this country and its relationship to the U.S.?
- How do you think have people from this country and the U.S. come into contact with each other: through immigration, migration, war, cultural exchange, economic exchange, or something else?
- Talk about what you noticed in your Wikipedia entry. What kind of information was your Wikipedia entry good at providing? What information did it have that wouldn’t be useful? What doesn’t it tell you that you’ll want to find out?
- Also, find one source that you think might be useful from the notes to your Wikipedia entry. Print it out and bring it to class on Monday, October 4th.

If you don’t finish your prewriting in class on the 30th, post on your blog by Monday October 4th.

Also for Monday, read Howard Zinn, "The Impossible Victory: Vietnam" (coursepack). Think about what you've learned about the Vietnam war prior to this class and how this essay compares.

Wednesday, September 22, 2010

In-Class work for 9/23: Prewriting and Drafting


Does this look familiar? In working towards your drafts, we're going to try something a little different this time. Try following these steps, and see where they take you. Over the course of the semester, you'll have the chance to figure out the techniques that work best for you.

To start off with this time, DO NOT write an outline. DO NOT start by writing your thesis and sketching out three supporting paragraphs.
Instead, let's start a conversation between you and your text. This is where They Say, I Say comes in.

1) Begin with They Say: write a paragraph that summarizes the text(s) you're working with. Be sure to talk about ideas or argument as well as the facts or what happens. Look at chapter 2 "The art of summarizing," from They Say for ideas about how to go about this.

2) Now, for I Say: write a paragraph that gives your initial reaction the text and the question. You can draw on your own personal expereinces or your experiences as a reader.

3) The money quotations: choose the quotation that you think is most important in answering your question. Write the sentence of your essay that will come before and after the quotation. See chapter 3 "The art of quotation" from They Say for more about how to go about this.

Draw on these three paragraphs when putting together your draft. Still don't do an outline. Don't set a given number of paragraphs. Just make sure your draft makes sense.

HW: For Monday, post a draft of your essay to the blog and read Eric Schlosser's "Global Realization" from the packet. While you're reading, think about what kind of encounter between America and the World is being described in the essay.

Tuesday, September 14, 2010

Welcome!


Welcome to the Blog for America in the World, ENG 1 and 3. Soon, you will be setting up your own blogs, where you'll work informal writing assignments, drafts, ask questions, post links, and more!

Here you'll find writing prompts, announcements, links and more.

Once you've set up your blog, leave the address in the comments to this post. Then, you're ready to start posting!

Post #1 (In-class) on 9/16: Choose ONE of these topics and respond on your blog in a post of at least 300 words. Use any format you want. Be as specific as you can including referring to the text. You need not answer each part of the question in order; let it go where it takes you.

1) In Lucy Jamaica Kincaid describes Lucy's impressions on first arriving in the United States. What kind of things does she notice? How would you describe her first impressions of the U.S.? How does this compare to other immigration stories that you've heard or read?

2) In his essay "I Choose Exile," Richard Wright writes, "It was only in America where so much freedom is lacking that one hears long and impassioned arguments about freedon . .. It is like listening to a starving man tell of his need for food." Do you agree? In your expereince, what freedoms do Americans lack? What do they/we mean when they/we talk about freedom? Do you think people from different parts of the world have different ideas about what freedom means? What might account for the difference?
3) Or, choose something else specific from the writings that you'd like to respond to. Again, be specific: make direct refernece to the text.

Feel free to revise and edit your posts; post them by the end of the class. Once posts have started to appear on our blog list, you can begin to comment on their posts.
Homework for Monday: From the course pack, read the excerpt from A Small Place by Jamaica Kincaid (pages 3-37 and 77-81) and the article "Slumdog Tourism." Think about the argument each is making about the relationship between tourism and power.