Write a brief essay (11/2-2pp.) In which you reflect on your own ideas about writing and your experience as a writer. Consider the following questions:

1. Report to class so that you can sign the roll and receive attendance credit. It is important that you be prompt since the English department secretary who will collect roll will be unable to wait for tardy students. If you fail to sign the roll, you will be counted absent.
2. Working on your own, complete the second part of DWA #1. This document should be typed.

Note: Part 2 has no minimum or maximum length. Just follow all the instructions. Some of you will have more to say than others. Feel free to make this physically a part of the ducument you created for part 1, or-if it is easier-compose part 2 as a separate document.

"Reading Like a Writer" RCWW pp. 256-62. Note: Parts of this activity require you to underline and annotate an essay in your reader. You should write responses only to those sections that specifically instruct you to write.

Complete both parts of DWA #1 and bring a paper copy (typed) to class. (This requirement covers out-of-class and in-class assignment for Friday, Jan. 10.)

Meet in Haley Center 3116 for Monday's class and bring two 3.5 formatted, High Density floppy disks with you. These disks should have no other files on them. You are to use them exclusively for your work in ENGL 1120.

DWA #3: A List of Ten

Annually during December-January, the public is inundated with lists of the ten best and ten worst of the past year. These lists, of course, are evaluations, the kind of writing that your first writing project calls for. This DWA assignment asks you to generate your own list of ten. The exercise will give you useful practice in evaluation, but allow yourself to have some fun with the assignment as well.

You choose the category–movies, cds, TV shows, books, fashions, athletes, and so on. You choose whether you will list the ten best or the ten worst in that category.
Make your list.
Once you have your list, go back and consider your choices. For each choice, list at least two reasons for making that choice.
When you have listed reasons for each of the ten choices, take another look at your reasons and consider the criteria you used to make your selection.
List these criteria.

An Abbreviated Example

The Top Three Children’s Books (Fiction) of 2002

Everything on a Waffle
by Polly Horvath (Farrar Straus Giroux)

Primrose Squarp, Horvath’s determined, imaginative, quirky 11-year-old protagonist, assures this book a place on the list. Even her name is memorable. Part Anne of Green Gables, part Harry Potter, Primrose knows that the heart is no organ of reason. The twisting, sometimes bizarre plot follows the best of children’s fiction in proving that the scarcely credible can contain the greatest truths.

Goin’ Someplace Special
by McKissack, Patricia C. (An Anne Schwartz Book/ Atheneum)

McKisaack’s book encourages young readers to look at “history” in a new way. ‘Tricia Ann’s journey to “Someplace Special” demands courage and dignity in the face of entrenched racism, but she triumphs largely due to the memory of her grandmother’s words: “You are somebody, a human being-no better, no worse than anybody else in this world.” In the process, she makes the Jim Crow South painfully real for McKissack’s target audience of six to nine year olds.

Stand Tall
by Joan Bauer (Putnam)

Bauer proved with Sticks and Hope was Here that she is among the best writers for the young adult audience. This book adds further proof. Tree, "the tallest seventh-grade boy in the history of Eleanor Roosevelt Middle School," like other Bauer protagonists, is an atypical hero with a big heart and a seeking spirit. His teachers are unexpected; unpopular, blunt Sophie and Tree’s one-legged Vietnam vet Grandpa are not the standard bearers of wisdom. The poignance and humor of these characters make the layered lessons easy to swallow even for that difficult to attract audience of boys ten and up.

Criteria for These Choices

Daily Writing Assignment #5 (Rhetorical Context for WP 1--due no later than 10:00 p.m. Sunday, January 19)

D Daily Writing Assignment #6 (Audience Analysis for WP 1-- in class Wednesday,
January 22)

Select a key passage that you can paraphrase and two important quotations that you plan to include in your evaluation argument. Incorporate the paraphrased passage and quotations in separate paragraphs that explain their relevance to your topic. These paragraphs should demonstrate the different ways of using source material (one per paragraph):

The source material should be introduced with an appropriate signal phrase and should include a parenthetical reference if you do not name the author or organization in your signal phrase. If you are using a source that you accessed online, more than likely you will not have a page number. Page numbers are not given for online sources unless the online source itself numbers its pages. One alternative for online sources is to refer to paragraph numbers.

You must turn in three separate paragraphs; you may not use or write one paragraph that includes each of the three ways of using source material. In this assignment only, paragraphs can be in random order with no transitions between them.

On the same page, prepare works cited entries for the sources you used. Use the links on the Web page or your New Century Handbook as references.

III.               Put square brackets around the topic sentence of each paragraph.
·        Does it relate to the thesis?
·        Does it contain an idea (as opposed to a statement of fact)? Answer these questions in the margin. Then make any necessary changes.

IV.              Go through the entire paper and analyze your use of evidence.
·        Put parenthesis around the parts that use specific examples or specific details to support your ideas, rather than general statements.
·        What percentage of the paper is in parenthesis? If it is not at least 40-50%, you do not have enough evidence. Indicate where you need to add additional evidence.

A. Read through your paper andunderline each use of the verb “to be,” paying particular attention to sentences beginning with “There is/are.”

B.     Read through your paper and bracket all sentences that use passive voice.
·        Sometimes the use of passive voice can create awkward sentences. Also, overuse of passive voice throughout an essay can cause your prose to seem flat and uninteresting.
·        Sentences in active voice are also more concise than those in passive voice because fewer words are required to express action in active voice than in passive.
·        If you want to change a passive-voice sentence to active voice, find the agent in a "by the..." phrase, or consider carefully who or what is performing the action expressed in the verb. Make that agent the subject of the sentence, and change the verb accordingly. Sometimes you will need to infer the agent from the surrounding sentences which provide context.

C.    Writing Tips
·        Avoid dangling modifiers caused by the use of passive voice. A dangling modifier is a word or phrase that modifies a word not clearly stated in the sentence. (Example: To save time, the paper was written on a computer.)
·        Don't trust the grammar-checking programs in word-processing software. Many grammar checkers flag all passive constructions, but you may want to keep some that are flagged. Trust your judgment, or ask another human being for their opinion about which sentence sounds best.
· Avoid the most common errors.