Friday, November 5, 2010

Classwork & Discussion: November 5, 2010

1. Take out your rough draft to show the substitute. He will be checking this as a project assignment.

2. Complete your blog entry on Sweat.

3. Take the final Quiz in the 2.1 Unit. Due by the end of today.

4. In the comments below, comment on your first draft. What difficulties did you have? How is this similar or different from writing a rhetorical essay?

5. Peer edit with one other person (annotate and write a letter to your partner) and bring in your rough draft in for conferencing on Monday.

32 comments:

  1. Original:
    Honestly, writing this essay was a breeze to me. I know I didn't work up to my full potential, but aside from that, I feel that writing this essay WAS writing a rhetorical essay. The only difference was that instead of a having to refer back to the author's interpretation or purpose, we had to refer back to the author's tone. Like a rhetorical essay though, we had to use rhetorical devices to back up the tone and we had to use examples and lines embedded in the passage to support those devices.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Original:

    My first draft wasn't as difficult to write as the first rhetorical essay we wrote in ap english last year. I recall feeling frustrated and lost with the new rhetorical writing. However this time around I felt confident that I knew what I was doing and what was expected. The discussions that we had on this blog actually made me capable of explaining my perspective to others while instilling what I was trying to reiterate. This made the essay easier to articulate because I was already versed in the story and my interpretation.

    ReplyDelete
  3. To Christian:
    I completely agree with you. This essay seems as though it was a rhetorical essay. In essense we approached it in the same manner as a rhetorical essay by interpreting the authors "tone" and how he or she achieved that tone. Also, embedding the lines has almost become second nature making this essay simpler. I think that writing this type of essay during a timed exercise will be way more difficult. This is also the first draft so I don't want to say that it went well, when I am unsure of how these essays are graded differently compared to the rtherorical essays that we are so accustomed to writing.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Originial:

    I really didn't have any difficulty with this rough draft, I believe the only difficulty I had was finding strategies that fit story of an hour. I think I may need to add more quotes and examples that tie into the short story. I think it is the same exact way of writing a rhetorical essay, I really don't see a difference whatsoever. Probably the only difference is it includes poetry that basic english ap didn't have.

    ReplyDelete
  5. To Ellysa:

    I do agree with the process of the rhetoric essay, with so much writing and practices we had last year; helped me just basically rewrite this essay but more in a literature point of view.

    ReplyDelete
  6. My rough draft was actually not that difficult to complete, mainly because it followed the same requirements a rhetorical essay needs. In both essays, it was necessary to mention the way the rhetorical devices worked in the story to enhance certain parts. The only difference was that for me, I never wrote about tone explicitly in rhetorical essays last year so to come out and mention the tone in this essay was a little different. All in all, the essay was not that difficult to write.

    ReplyDelete
  7. I feel as though I am once again back at square one. Although I am expecting a low grade for my first literary essay, I cannot say that I am not frustrated at the fact. When writing my rough draft I found myself struggling a lot. I hope that I grow as a literary writer, so that by the end of the year I am prepared to take the AP test.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Writing this draft was rather difficult for me because I was not honestly focused on work during this time. I was able to correlate the main Ideas and my interpretation of "Story of an Hour" by Kate Chopin a bit easier than actually writing the essay. I did not complete an outline because I did not believe that it was going to help me and even when I began one it did not help. Focusing on one rhetoric device also, was rather difficult because like Jasbir stated previously, I too never wrote explicitly about tone in any rhetoric essay.

    ReplyDelete
  9. Original:
    Writing this essay was not hard, however the pre-drafting phase was the trickiest part. I chose to write about Story of an Hour. I enjoyed this story the most and felt like it would be easier for me to write about it than any the other stories. Also, finding the exact tone of this essay was tricky too, since it changed through the progression of the story. I find writing this essay is similar to writing a rhetorical essay, however this essay is more focused and concentration on the tone of the story.

    ReplyDelete
  10. I believe that i did not have much difficulties with the rough draft. I felt like it was very similar to the rhetorical essays that we wrote last year. In order to finish the rough draft, i used rhetorical devices to interpret an back up the tone used by the author. I also used examples from the passage such as embedded lines in order to support the rhetorical devices.

    ReplyDelete
  11. My first draft could've been a lot better. This was basically a rhetoric essay, and I should've nailed it, but because of all the other things I had to do this week, (college apps, SAT, extracurricular activities) the first draft suffered. However, now that I have less things on my plate, I can give more attention to the essay and make it much better.

    ReplyDelete
  12. To Shinece:
    I agree with your post. We arent used to writing just about the tone, which can make it somewhat harder than writing a typical rhetoric essay. I a rhetorical essay we mentioned tone and discussed it, but not as much as we did in this essay, since the focus of this essay is tone.

    ReplyDelete
  13. To Jon:
    I agree with you 100%. I felt like i did not have anytime to fully work on my essay. I had to juggle everything in between. College apps, SAT, and other tests and quizzes took up most of my time. Since all that is done and over with i feel like i can put more attention and thought into my essay.

    ReplyDelete
  14. This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  15. Original: Writing this essay was similar to writing a rhetoric essay because the nature of the essay was essentially that of a rhetoric essay. That is, the essay required the writer to use literary techniques, tone or other literary elements, to explain one or more aspects of the text. This made the essay slightly easier for me because I felt comfortable with the prompt. A difficulty in writing this essay, however, was avoiding repetition and improving upon sentence structure, such as when embedding quotes strategically and coherently in sentences. In addition, for some odd reason, my essays are shorter this school year than those of last school year!

    ReplyDelete
  16. To Maggie: I concur with you on wanting to be prepared by the end of the year for the AP Exam.

    To Jon and Paulina: I agree with both of you on the point that there was so much going on (SAT, college applications, etc.) that I did not put as much effort into my essays as I usually do. I also can now focus my attention on school work, including AP English class.

    ReplyDelete
  17. This essay was not that difficult because we were already prepped in the workings of a rhetorical essay, which is what the draft essentially was. However, keeping in mind that the main focus of the draft was tone, was a bit difficult. This essay was extremely similar to a rhetorical essay because the purpose of a rhetorical essay is to distinguish the techniques the author used to achieve his main idea, and the purpose of this essay was to distinguish how the author’s use of tone accomplishes his purpose.

    ReplyDelete
  18. To Jon:
    I agree that there were many things that obstructed our focus on this rhetorical essay, especially the SAT’s, and now that many of those things are out of the way and we also have gotten a handle on many of our online classes, creating a great essay should come easier.

    ReplyDelete
  19. The only true difficulties I encountered when writing this essay was getting comfortable again writing analytical essays. It may not have been as much of a feeling that the essay itself was difficult to do, but rather the mindset that I need to do essays again, and the work that I need to put behind it.

    ReplyDelete
  20. To Jon: I can certainly relate to that, the college application process was rather draining, so I can only hope that now that my attention is not as scattered that I can focus more on my english essays. A lack of focus can be pretty apparent to the reader, not only based on the quality of the analysis but it's organization and structure.

    ReplyDelete
  21. Original:

    I honestly thought that this essay was just like the rhetorical essays we did last year. The only problem I had was trying to figure out how to make a good rhetorical essay again. I can say that it was not very difficult though, because once you analyzed the overall message of the short story, it was easy to fully develop your ideas and expand on them.

    ReplyDelete
  22. To Yan:

    I felt the same exact way. Prepping my mind to actually get used to doing such analytical essays was a hindrance, but it was eventually overcome once I got the juices flowing. I just need to get back into the rhythm of writing rhetorical essays again so that I can go back on track and develop my self as a writer.

    ReplyDelete
  23. I think the essay was much harder to write because we had to analyzed one specific thing, which was the tone.

    ReplyDelete
  24. To: Justin
    I think this time around, the essay was different. Sure it is like the rhetorical essay from last year, but we are not extracting so many things from the context like before.

    ReplyDelete
  25. Original: I did feel like this essay was similar to the rhetorical essay that we are all a custom to writing but it was different in that there was so much context to cover. I'm still not clear on how to not only have the analysis of a rhetorical essay, but to also provide concrete reasons for why the author writes in a certain style. It is one thing to identify the literary device and explain the effect it has on the reader, it is another thing to explain why the author employs a specific writing style. My understanding is that these essays should be more than just establishing a purpose and providing evidence that proves it in the text.

    ReplyDelete
  26. To Sherifa: I definitely agree with you on the level of comfort that came along with this essay. What scares me though is the fact that I don't think the motive of our essays this year should me as similar as they seem to our rhetorical essays from last year. I feel like there is something missing to take our essays a step further.

    ReplyDelete
  27. I feel as if writing this draft was not difficult, but I feel as if remembering how to effectively write a proper English essay was a task in itself. However, once reviewing an old paper written one could remind them self. I have not grasped the difference between a literary essay and a rhetorical essay. I feel as if there must be a difference since English literature and English language are two separate distinct courses. This fact made me uncomfortable when writing this essay, I did not want to simply write in the same form that I wrote in last year. I feel as if they wanted me to achieve something greater and what that something is, I have not grasped as yet.

    ReplyDelete
  28. To Yan:
    I feel the same as you do concerning becoming comfortable once again with writing analytical English papers in this manner. I feel as if I have to write a few and get the feeling of it again because its not as simple as the thought of, "I did this last year, its a piece of cake," it took hard work last year to build up our writing and to me it will take a bit of work to get all of our writing back to that quality. I also believe that as time goes on not only will we be writing to the standards that we met last year, but I also believe that we will be exceeding them.

    ReplyDelete
  29. Writing the draft felt like an elaboration of one paragraph of a rhetoric essay, in which the topic of the paragraph was focusing on the author's tone. I found it difficult to put together because the prompt was so narrow. General rhetoric essays are easier for me to write because I can focus on many elements of a piece, but with this, I have to focus my mind on just one element.

    ReplyDelete
  30. To Justin:
    I agree...It's been so long since I've written an essay like this, so I had to pretty much start from scratch, and re-train myself to think analytically.

    ReplyDelete
  31. Compared to other essays I know we will have to write this year I think this one was relatively easy. It was a lot like the ones we did last year. I used a lot of my rhetoric vocabulary, but the way in which I structured it was different this year in comparison to last year.

    ReplyDelete
  32. Shanice I agree with you, it seems like this essay was a lot like last years, although, the prompt was very narrow which meant we really had to focus our writing. Focusing my writing is definitely something that I have a hard time with, though I think that the narrow prompt almost helped my overall writing as a whole for this essay.

    ReplyDelete