1-on-1 Placement Conferences

What do we do in our 10 minutes?

• Confirm Portfolio pass or fail (you get a sheet with rubric, and can take this with you when you meet your academic advisor)

• Discuss areas to improve on, moving forward

• Discuss your schedule for Fall 2016/ Discuss which course to sign up for next (002, 101A, or 101)

Due to Department meeting conflicts, these are the times I can meet each of you for placement conferences. I prefer that we meet on Monday

Monday, 5/9:

1:00: Lourdes
1:10: Rebecca
1:20: Jessica Flores
1:30: Timmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmy
1:40: Nariah
1:50: Tyron
2:00: Moussa
2:10: Ossie
2:20: Karen E.
2:30: Moire
2:40: Jessica Alvarez
2:50: Jersica
3:00: Mario
3:10: Josue
3:20: Geferson
3:30:

Unified Paragraph 2:

What is one lifelong intellectual question you want to pursue answers for in your college experience, and how do you plan to implement that into your studies (classes, majors, extracurricular, etc.)?

For your last written assignment:

• For the next 40 minutes, type up your one-paragraph response to the movie. Make sure your paragraph demonstrates concepts learned over this semester to create a unified and in-depth idea:

• PRE
• introductory phrases for outside sources
• linking key words:
• subject to subject
• object to subject
• Starting sentences with a clear noun and a powerful verb
• transitional words/phrases  
• combing sentences techniques (reviewed when editing run-ons)
• IND; IND
• IND , (FANBOYS) IND
• IND; conjunctive adverb (moreover, however, IND)

What does a college degree mean?

Here's an interesting article that is relevant to all of us in college: "College is worth it if you have these six experiences."

• "[Creating more satisfied student outcomes] starts with changing what we believe. If we believe a college degree is an automatic ticket to a better career and life, we fail. Students, parents, higher education staff and faculty, and employers need to work hard to ensure we are collectively making the most of it. If we believe the only measure of success is salary, we fail. There is so much more value to college than what we are systematically measuring now. We ought to pay careful attention to these less traditional measures and the things that correlate with them" (Busteed).

And here is another one which highlights that importance of writing and speaking skills, from The Washington Post: "Should higher education aim to secure students a paycheck, fulfillment … or both?"

• "“What is the earthly use of a liberal [arts] education?” [journalist Fareed Zakaria] asks, and he supplies a very good answer: It teaches students to write. By teaching them to write, it teaches them to think. He observes that “writing forces you to make choices and brings clarity and order to your ideas,” and notes that no less a titan than Amazon founder and chief executive Jeff Bezos (who owns The Washington Post) forces his senior managers to write six-page, narrative memos for every meeting. No jargon. No bullet points. Just clear thinking — a nonpareil workplace virtue" (Auoun).

In class Final Exam on Wednesday, 4/27:

1. Bring in your portfolios.

• Two portfolio folders: each includes your best and second best essay

• Make sure you've revised and edited each essay. Make them as best you can.

• Make sure each folder has the same set of essays so that each professor is grading the same two essays.

• Example:  if folder A has Essay 2 and 4, then folder B must also have the same copy of Essay 2 and 4

2. In-class Final

• Classification essay on people in social settings/on social networks 
• Bring one page of notes, including grammar idea and other strategies 
• You may use Rules for Writers

Classifying and Defining Archetype Characters

Classification, as we started discussing last week, is a type of organizational pattern. In the simplest way of using the pattern, each body paragraph may define and/or analyze a particular thing from a larger category.  

• Roane State CC has a great writing page for simplifying the rhetoric. Let's look at their discussion of the classification pattern.

• There is also this one, which shows a simple essay on categorizing computer types.

Definition, is another type of pattern. Let's look again at Roane State's discussion of definition essays. 

• Within a definition, you may define a term (a word or phrase) based on the following types of way of defining listed on this St. Cloud State University page.

Preparing for your In-class Final Exam on Wednesday, April 27th:

• Now, your Final Essay will be for you to write a classification essay in which you will have to classify and define two to three types of people. 

• To get started, lets look below at "archetypes" for some preparation.

"In literature, an archetype is a typical character, an action or a situation that seems to represent such universal patterns of human nature.

An archetype, also known as universal symbol, may be a character, a theme, a symbol or even a setting. Many literary critics are of the opinion that archetypes, which have a common and recurring representation in a particular human culture or entire human race, shape the structure and function of a literary work.

Carl Jung, Swiss psychologist, argued that the root of an archetype is in the “collective unconscious” of mankind. The phrase “collective unconscious” refers to experiences shared by a race or culture. This includes love, religion, death, birth, life, struggle, survival etc. These experiences exist in the subconscious of every individual and are recreated in literary works or in other forms of art" (Literary Devices).

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In psychology, these same types of ideas exist, as shown in "The Twelve Archetypes" (Jonas). 

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Here is a great breakdown of archetypes and ways of looking for them through various literary elements, brought to us from a professor at Hillsborough Community College.

This link should make a writer think about how he or she can most effectively contextualize his or her characterizations as more universal ideas. Are their similarities, for instance, in Bockarie's journey and those of the "hero's journey"? If not, do not despair. Instead, use your knowledge gained from this reading to understand how to look at Bockarie's journey as something else familiar, archetypal. 

HW for 4/25

1. Read through the blog and find the lessons that will help you edit and revise. Review and even have open as you work on newest drafts.

Use the right sidebar navigation to find lessons that we have covered that address some of the following:

Structure/basic content flow of each part of essay

• Introductions
• PRE
• Conclusions

Editing

• Run-ons
• Fragments
• Comma usage
• Subject-verb agreement
• Pronoun agreement and references
• mechanics
• parallel structure

2. E-mail me your newest draft of your best Portfolio essay by Sunday morning, 4/24, preferably, or by Monday at 11am. Label it "________'s Best Portfolio Essay" and then check your e-mail for feedback! 

• I want to give one more read through--give you a few more suggestions
• Don't count on me being the editing savior.  
• Anyone who reads this and decides to send a new version by Friday morning or afternoon will get even more feedback.

Editing: Parallel Structure

Parallel Structure (Rules for Writers, 116-119)

As the OWL website clarifies, a parallelism is when you have a list or multiple ideas that are presented in the same pattern, same basic syntactical structure.

Here are a few things to consider about your sentences that have lists (or could use a list) or that present multiple ideas:

• verb forms should match (especially in a list)
• clauses should have matching word patterns
• correlative expressions also need to be edited (check the link)

Furthermore, Towson University up in Baltimore has a great breakdown for how to identify and work on parallel structure. 

How can knowing and working on parallel structure help me out?!?

• A strong parallel made within a thesis statement can outline your entire essay body.

• Besides using the structure for thesis statements, the technique is good to use for:

• Outlining multiple reasons or examples within a body paragraph
• Reiterating in a conclusion the points made in an essay (especially if you didn't use the same structure in the introduction/thesis)

• Example 1: Being an effective boss includes keeping cool and  solving in-house problems when there are issues between employees.

• Example 2: One's spirituality can be defined through religious beliefs, expressed through artistic views, and nurtured through daily interactions.

• Notice how the verbs match in form, and the objects have the same pattern

• Example 3: Grams' favorite arugula farro rissto can be made in three easy stages: dicing up the tomato and herbs, cooking the farro down in broth, and adding arugula and lemon mixture before serving.  (Each of these stages has steps within to cover, and each stage represents a body paragraph.)

Grammar Aside, How Does Effective Parallelism Impact My Writing?

• You can organize your main idea(s) in a sentence list that gives you directions for each paragraph to follow. Organization!!!

• You can order ideas in a list that emphasizes a certain priority to the list. Which idea is most important or strongest?

• As RR shows in Chapter 14, when you order sentences and you order parallel actions/images, that order impacts understanding.