Reflection on your writing.

Now that you've turned in some papers and we're looking at definition essays, I'd like you to reflect and compare what you've read in the past couple of days with your writing.  What have you learned about your writing?  What can you do to further improve your writing?

Classification - The People Next Door

Jot down a list of neighbors you have now and have had in the past.  Then write a short journal entry about the different kinds of neighbors you have encountered.

Division - Racism and Sexism in Advertising

Think of a TV commercial that you object to because it is offensive or annoying in some way.  Write about why it bothers you so much.

Earth without People

1.  Paragraphs 7 and 8 describe a causal chain.  Diagram this causal chain.  What other causal chains can you identify?

4.  Throughout the essay, Weisman piles up series and catalogs of details.  Point to a few places he does this.  What is the effect of such lists of details?  Are they absolutely necessary, or could the essay make its point without them?

5.  What do the visuals contribute to this essay?  How would the essay be different without the?  If you were choosing alternative (or additional) visuals for this essay, what kind would your choose, and where would your place them?

SOAPSTone (Speaker, Occasion, Audience, Purpose, Subject, Tone)

When reading your assigned texts, this is a good mnemonic to use.

Who is the Speaker?
The voice that tells the story. Before students begin to write, they must decide whose voice is going to be heard. Whether this voice belongs to a fictional character or to the writers themselves, students should determine how to insert and develop those attributes of the speaker that will influence the perceived meaning of the piece.

What is the Occasion?
The time and the place of the piece; the context that prompted the writing. Writing does not occur in a vacuum. All writers are influenced by the larger occasion: an environment of ideas, attitudes, and emotions that swirl around a broad issue. Then there is the immediate occasion: an event or situation that catches the writer’s attention and triggers a response.

Who is the Audience?
The group of readers to whom this piece is directed. As they begin to write, students must determine who the audience is that they intend to address. It may be one person or a specific group. This choice of audience will affect how and why students write a particular text.

What is the Purpose?
The reason behind the text. Students need to consider the purpose of the text in order to develop the thesis or the argument and its logic. They should ask themselves, “What do I want my audience to think or do as a result of reading my text?”

What is the Subject?
Students should be able to state the subject in a few words or phrases. This step helps them to focus on the intended task throughout the writing process.

What is the Tone?
The attitude of the author. The spoken word can convey the speaker’s attitude and thus help to impart meaning through tone of voice. With the written word, it is tone that extends meaning beyond the literal, and students must learn to convey this tone in their diction (choice of words), syntax (sentence construction), and imagery (metaphors, similes, and other types of figurative language). The ability to manage tone is one of the best indicators of a sophisticated writer.

2nd question: Blah Blah Blah

“Blah Blah Blah” has varieties of meanings. Kessler describes these words as a “cover-up” of the truth. I’ve seen it happens many times. It hides what behind the story. It lets assumption takes place. Let us guess that it is normal and nothing really interested really happen.

Behind each story of each person, there is more to it than just a plain boring life. American historian’s can’t just say that they had a revolution and blah, blah, blah. Then people won’t know what actually happen during the American revolution. If no one is telling the whole story and just say blah blah blah, people might not understand each other anymore. People will have nothing to talk about.

Describe a place in such a way that you convey your attitude about it through the use of concrete detail.

The Radley Place jutted into a sharp curve beyond our house.  Walking south, one faced its porch; the sidewalk turned and ran beside the lot.  The house was low, was once white with a deep front porch and green shutters, but had long ago darkened to the color of the slate-gray yard around it.  Rain-rotted shingles drooped over the eaves of the veranda; oak trees kept the sun away.  The remains of a picket drunkenly guarded the front yard -- a "swept" yard that was never swept -- where johnson grass and rabbit-tobacco grew in abundance.

Inside the house lived a malevolent phantom.  People said he existed, but Jem and I had never seen him.  People said he went out at night when the moon was down, and peeped in windows.  When people's azaleas froze in a cold snap, it was because he had breathed on them.  Any stealthy small crimes committed in Maycomb were his work.  Once the town was terrorized by a series of morbid-nocturnal events; people's  chickens and household pets were found mutilated; although the culprit was Crazy Addie, who eventually drowned himself in Barker's Eddy, people still looked at the Radley Place unwilling to discard their initial suspicions.  A Negro would not pass the Radley Place at night, he would cut across to the sidewalk opposite and whistle as he walked.  The Maycomb school grounds adjoined the back of the Radley lot; from the Radley chickenyard tall pecan trees shook their fruit into the schoolyard, but the nuts lay untouched by the children; Radley pecans would kill you.  A baseball hit into the Radley yard was a lost ball and no questions asked.

The Candle

Sylvia Dyal

February 2007

Reconnecting Sisters

It looks like a birthday candle, but that’s not its purpose.  My Japanese mother had been tsking and shaking her head ever since I started running and practicing wushu.  Each mention of an injury or pain to my neck, ankle, elbow elicited a murmur about “my age.”  To her these seemingly frequent injuries were signs of bad luck.  I shrugged it off; injuries are endemic to sports.  It happens.

When I re-injured my ankle, mom came to visit.  After picking her up from the train station, we head toward my apartment.  Zack greets us noisily at the door, glad someone has come to pet him.  As usual she unpacks her tote bag stuffed with old mail, coupons, “cookies for Zack”  (really chocolate cookies or candy for me), yellow Playtex gloves, and other goodies, spreading them all over my once empty counter in a haphazard array taking up all the available space.  This time there is something new.  Mom carefully unwraps a small ceramic cup, the kind that could be used for drinking sake or tea.  Next she unpacks a small brass candleholder.  After that she pulls out two matchboxes and a slim blue box of 140 two-inch white candles.

“Now what?”  I wonder.

“I want you to light a candle every day, put new water in the cup, and say a little prayer to Cindy,” my mother says, looking intently up at me.

I groan silently and try not to make a face.  Why do I need to set up a family shrine to my sister?  I’m not Buddhist, Shinto, or whatever.

“Cindy can watch over you, and maybe you won’t get hurt.  Do this for me.”

I make a half-hearted argument that Cindy was already watching over me, and I don’t need to do this ritual.  Inwardly, I wonder if this was mom’s way of getting me to pay attention to a sister I mostly ignored when she was alive and living elsewhere.  However, we don’t have those kinds of conversations.  Partly out of guilt and partly out of knowing mom wasn’t going to stop talking about it until I acquiesced, I set up the cup of water and candle holder on the counter and light it.  Later I switch the shrine to the kitchen window.

Now I could have easily just not lit the candle or not changed the water after mom left, but I did it anyway.  It was in essence a small request and easy to fulfill; it actually made me feel good that I was doing something for my mother.  When I remember, I light the candle when I get up in the morning on weekdays.  On weekends it varies.  No matter what time, however, even in the dark of the morning or bright sun of the afternoon, that candle gives out a powerful glow.  Especially early in the morning, the bright gold halo drives out all doubt and reassures me that I am neither alone nor lost.  Whether it is true or not, I like to think I sense Cindy’s presence nearby as I gaze at the candlelight.

My younger sister had cerebral palsy.  When we moved to California in 1969, mom found that she couldn’t take care of Cindy on her own so my sister was placed in a facility for the severely handicapped.  Over the next 12 years, she was moved to different facilities all over the Bay Area.  We didn’t have a car so our visits to her were infrequent.  It was rare that Cindy came home to visit.  I was involved in my own high school and college drama so it was an easy matter to forget that I had a sister.  We never talked, we couldn’t.  While she recognized us and was happy to see us, Cindy couldn’t communicate much more than pleasure and simple wants.  She couldn’t walk or sit without assistance.  There were no sisterly talks about boys, school or gossip.  We didn’t share clothes, makeup, vacations or camping trips.  It was only uncomfortable visits to an urine/chlorine smelling hospital ward, pushing a wheel chair around.  The only real evidence that we were sisters is a picture of us sitting together smiling on the couch with our arms around each other.  I was about four or five years old then.  But whatever we had ended when she died at 21 from a seizure.

I wonder what Cindy would have been like if she had been healthy.  Would she have been taller than me?  Would she have been a tomboy or a frilly girl?  Would she like sweet or salty snacks?  Would she battle her weight like I do?  Would she have found her career easily or struggle with it as I have?  Would I have nieces or nephews to spoil?  I’ll never know the answers to those questions, but it’s nice to believe that my relationship with my sister continues even if only in my head.  The warm light of the candle make me feel as if those years of indifference and selfishness have been forgiven, and I imagine Cindy smiling and laughing, telling me my day is going to be alright.  

This act of actively remembering the dead is strangely comforting.  Having this shrine in my house and having to administer to it makes me think about my sister.  It makes me think about the things I did and didn’t do.  And rather than castigating myself, I feel okay.  Silly as it sounds, I talk to Cindy as I light the candle and watch it burn.  This ritual allows me to believe that my sister watches out for me, and I like the idea of having my own little guardian. Did mom know the effect this candle would have?  I’m not sure. Did it stop the injuries she was worried about?  Not really.

One Unit Down,

X amount to go. After this first unit, I feel as if I've already learned so much. I've learned a few life lessons, but mostly, I've gained several skills to make me a better writer.
I realized how hard it is to write in groups! It's hard to try to keep your style while writing with others. I felt as if my identity was unintentionally masked; however, I got through it and I feel as if I may be slightly better than I was before. I enjoyed this unit, and I'm already enjoying our next unit. :)

Reflection on Narration Unit

It was great to study different examples of Narration and see how they are used. Its a great way to assimilate to concept of narration. At the same time I felt the styles and methods in each could have been discussed more specifically.

Writing the essay as a group was a good exercise but I felt there should have been at least a few small quick individual practices of narration, to get a better feeling for narration and perhaps better understand the mechanism of the examples we read.

Progress

Now that we've more or less finished the Narration Unit, write about what you've learned so far and about any remaining questions you have about writing.