Outside Reading 2-1

Date: Oct 26^th
Title: A Literary Romance, Rich in A-List Names
Author: Dwight Garner
Type of reading: Book Review
You can find the actual article I read from the website below:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/29/books/29book.html?_r=1&ref=books

Book reviews—what critical perspectives are at work here? What connections between this piece and other course material or readings (or course material/readings from your previous English classes) do you see?

             The book review is about a book called Must You Go? — My life with Harold Pinter. The author of the book is Antonia Fraser, who used to be Harold Pinter’s wife. Two of them met when they were at their forties, and they had their own family and children. However, they fell in love at the first sight and got married at last. From a usual perspective, their relationship is an affair and it is not encouraged most of the times. Garner, the reviewer of the book, is depicting their relationship in a more romantic way.  

             Firstly, the organization matters. In the beginning of this article, Garner describes the romantic first encounter of Pinter and Fraser. Not until after he mentioned the first meeting, he reveals that both Pinter and Fraser were married and had family. So readers would feel sorry for the hopeless love of the two, and later the two people turned out to be married, the readers would have encouraging attitudes toward the lovers. What if it was the other way around? What if that the families and the children of Pinter and Fraser were mentioned before the first encounter of them? Then the readers would think that the affair destroyed two supposed-to-be-happy families and they would criticize Pinter and Fraser. By organizing the article in a “proper” way, the author persuaded readers much more effectively.

             Secondly, Garner’s usage of terms and quotations from the book heighten the romantic mood of the description of Pinter and Fraser’s love. Garner uses the word “smitten,” and that indicates something like “meant-to-be” kind of story. On the contrast, he calls the articles that were criticizing Pinter and Fraser’s affair as “vinegary fodder.” There are also some direct quotations from the book Must You Go? such as “the working class Jewish boy from the East End and the Catholic aristocrat with her title,” “Harold and I belonged to the same class: I will call it the Bohemian class,”  Pinter’s “awesome baritone” that Fraser liked and Fraser’s words like “My Diary: it’s not about great writing. It’s my friend, my record, and sometimes my consolation.” Garner’s choices of words and quotes are all quite romantic and they persuade readers that the relationship between Pinter and Fraser is a romance not an affair.

             Lastly, it is the syntax. Garner uses some very short sentences like “She was 42. He was 44,” gives readers stronger impression about how these people are “destined” to be together. And from the middle of the article, the author states that the book is like a “lightly annotated social calendar” and starts to enumerate all the people Pinter met when he was alive. It was interesting, and it made a good transition from the introduction of the background of the book to the introduction of the book. However it was a little too much considering it was a review printed on a mass media, because some of the names that are listed are not as well-known as some others.

Class Notes 2-1, 2-2

Class Notes

Oct 11^th – 22^nd

The last part of the poetry:
Topic 1 Tone, Voice, Style
Tone
Tone is the writer's or speaker's attitude toward the subject, the reader, or herself or himself. Also, it is an effect created by an author's choices of literary techniques. It can be said as "emotional coloring" for it is usually discussed in terms of emotion. Tone can and does shift and it is very "tied into" what's happening in the moment.

Voice
Voice is an effect created by an author's choice of techniques, and that is why people get confused between voice and tone. Different than tone, voice belongs to the world of the story itself (speaker or narrator's personality), it does not belong to the author. Therefore it changes from story to story. And when speaker is equal to the author, then the voice can be the author's voice. Voice can shift, though infrequently. It is usually stable unless the narrator is very dynamic. Voice is discussed in terms of character in most of the times.

Style
Style refers to the authorial persona's personality. Style is relatively stable but still can and does shift when the author's persona changes.

http://www.clas.ufl.edu/users/pcraddoc/mwtone.htm

Topic 2 Musical Devices
♥ Poets use the sound of the words as a means of reinforcing meaning.

♥ Poets achieve musical quality in two broad ways: by the choice and arrangement of sounds and by the arrangement of accents.

♥ Two essential elements in all music are repetition and variation.

♥ The repetition of initial consonant sounds is alliteration.

♥ The repetition of vowel sounds is assonance.

♥ The repetition of final consonant sounds is consonance.

♥ Rhyme is the repetition of the accented vowel sound and any succeeding consonant sounds. It is called masculine when the rhyme sounds involve only one syllable; it is feminine when the rhyme sounds involve two or more syllables. It is referred to as internal rhyme when one or more rhyming words are within the line and as end rhyme when the rhyming words are at the ends of lines. Approximate rhymes (also called slant rhymes) include words with any kind of sound similarity, from close to fairly remote.

http://www.frostfriends.org/sounddevices.html

http://legacy.owensboro.kctcs.edu/crunyon/E161/Net/Perchps/P11-MusDev/P11MUSICNotes.html

Topic 3 Rhythm and Meter

Rhythm

♥ There is strong appeal for us in language that is rhythmical.

♥ The term rhythm refers to any wavelike recurrence of motion or sound. In speech it is the natural rise and fall of language.

♥ In every word of more than one syllable, one or more syllables are accented or stressed; that is, given more prominence in pronunciation than the rest.

♥ Rhetorical stresses are used to make our intentions clear.

♥ An end-stopped line is one in which the end of the line corresponds with a natural speech pause; a run-on line is one in which the sense of the line moves without pause on into the next line.

♥ Caesuras are pauses occur within lines, either grammatical or rhetorical.

♥ Free verse is the predominating type of poetry now being written.

Prose poem is a type of poetry that depends entirely on ordinary prose rhythms.

Meter

♥ Meter is the patterns of sounds that follow when a poet has arranged them into metrical verse.

♥ Foot, line, stanza are the basic units of meter.

♥ The poet may introduce metrical variations, which call attention to some of the sounds because they depart from what is regular. Three means for varying meter are substitution (replacing the regular foot with another one), extra-metrical syllables added at the beginnings or endings of lines, and truncation (the omissions of an unaccented syllable at either end of a line).

♥ The process of defining the metrical form of a poem is called scansion; first, identify the prevailing foot; second, name the number of feet in a line; third, describe the stanzaic pattern.

Topic 4 Sound and Meaning
♥ Onomatopoeia is the use of words which sound like what they mean ex. bark, snap, pop.
♥ Phonetic intensives are groups of words whose sounds obscurely connect to their meanings ex. flame, flash, flicker are all related to the idea of moving light.
♥ Euphony means pleasant, smooth sounds.
♥ Cacophony is a rough or harsh sounding.
♥ Poets control the speed and movement of lines by the choice and use of meter, vowels and consonants, and the disposition of pauses.
♥ Control sound and meter in such a way as to emphasize words that are important in meaning.


Topic 5 Pattern
♥ Structure is arrangement of ideas, images, thoughts, sentences.
♥ Form is the shape of the poem.
♥ Continuous form is element of design is slight.
♥ Stanzaic form is a type of form that poet writes in series of stanzas.
♥ Fixed form is traditional pattern that applies to a whole poem.

http://www.cranberrydesigns.com/poetry/intro.htm


Topic 6 Evaluating Poetry
When evaluating poetry, ask these three questions:
1) What is its central purpose?
2) How fully has this purpose been accomplished?
3) How important is this purpose?

Also need to consider the poem’s originality, sentimentality (indulgence in emotion for its own sake), rhetorical (language without a corresponding reality of emotion), didactic (primary purpose is to teach/preach–but not poetic) when judging poetryl.

About AP test:
Topic 7 AP Essay

♥ High level of vocabulary is important, but need you use them correctly.

♥ The opening paragraph is important; the opening paragraph should include all the claims.

Outside Reading 1-3

Date: Oct 7^th
Title: Desperate Housewives
Author: Kathryn Harrison
Type of reading: Book Review
You can find the actual article I read from the website below:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/03/books/review/Harrison-t.html?_r=1&ref=books

Book reviews—what critical perspectives are at work here? What connections between this piece and other course material or readings (or course material/readings from your previous English classes) do you see?

     I read “Desperate Housewives” written by Kathryn Harrison, which is a book review of Flaubert’s Madame Bovary. It was a very interesting piece of review because the writer actually showed much sympathy on Madame Bovary. Usually Madame Bovary is denied by readers, but Harrison shows much pity on her. Moreover, Harrison mentioned how elaborated the language of the original work and how the translated version by Lydia Davis does a good job of conveying all the details that Flaubert put into the work, and it convinces the readers to want to read this book. Those who have read it before would want to read it again to figure out what was so elaborated about Flaubert’s language—because actually the plot of the story is quite a cliché and some people just don’t get any deeper impression from this book; those who have never read it would want to read it out of curiosity.
     From a peer writer’s point of view, I noticed the writer’s strength in organizing ideas into well-developed structures. Firstly, the writer talks about the scrutiny of Flaubert, and how Lydia Davis’ translation well done that readers don’t feel her existence. This would be a basic introduction of the “book” itself. And then she leads the readers to another topic, which is about the “story” of the book. However, Harrison does not just summarize the plot; she compares it with Anna Karenina, who is also a heroine of another book. Emma Bovary and Anna Karenina have some similarities but they have some crucial differences. And those differences seem to emphasize even more of Emma’s insatiable emptiness and her desire. In the end, Harrison analyzes the meaning of the story. In the class, we talked about how the claims, warrants and evidences should support the thesis and how the claims should be like bread crumbs let the readers can follow through. We also learned that the first sentences of each paragraph should be strong enough to convey all the main ideas that are being explained throughout the paragraphs, and so the readers should be able to figure out the thesis by reading those sentences only. The author of this article achieved that; all first sentences of her paragraphs outlines everything she’s saying in the article.
     Moreover, I noticed her use of Irony from the second to last paragraph that she said that the poison Emma Bovary drank is “the one thing to permanently satisfy hunger” and that Emma Bovary “solved” her problems by herself. Suicide shouldn’t be a way of solving problem because it’s an expression of avoiding all annoying troubles. However I believe the author is showing sympathy on Madame Bovary’s restless emptiness and admits her death was the only way for her to overcome her ennui.

Outside Reading 1-2

Date: Oct 8^th
Title: Arrivederci, Italia: Why Young Italians Are Leaving
Author: Stephan Faris
Type of reading: Newspaper piece
You can find the actual article I read from the website below:
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2024136,00.html

Editorial columns, features, and other magazine and newspaper pieces with clear points of view and strong voices—how does the author craft a narrative persona and a “voice” here, and how do these elements impact your response to the content of the piece? If this piece were AP essay, would the speaker be appropriate? Why or why not?

     This article is from Times magazine, and it is about young Italians leaving their motherland. They are leaving because they cannot find satisfying jobs in Italy, they are leaving because the Italian government does not take young people seriously, and they are leaving because in Italy, everything is stopped. There is a word for Italy’s problem: gerontocracy. It means “rule by the old people.” In Italy, they tend to respect the seniors very much even in business fields. Italians consider under 40 is “young.” As a result, opportunities for the young and educated people decreases, and young people flee from their motherland seeking for a success in their careers. However it is not like that those people are very willing to leave their homeland. It is said that Italians are one of the most home-attached people. Even worse, it’s not easy to come back home once they leave Italy.
     Due to this is a newspaper article, the tone of the voice is fairly businesslike. However because its voice is businesslike and not personal, it comes more effectively persuasive to people, because people tend to be more “obedient” to things that are more regnant and authoritative. The clear idea that is connecting the whole article and concise language make the persona stronger and firmer. The author did not use too many “big words” and the overall language is plain, but that affected the article in a good way: the article seems like it has not much exaggeration. Readers would think that the article is stating facts and so they would believe it. Little subtitles for branched topics make the whole piece of writing more organized. This nice organization also makes the persona more effective, especially the very first paragraph of the article that states the director’s open letter to students makes a great intro that strengthens the persona into a very persuasive way. Nevertheless, the speaker is not using a very formal writing type of language. Formal writing type of language is not the same with businesslike language for businesslike language can be spoken language in some ways while written language and spoken language are two exact opposite categories. Formal language would make the article a more elevated one but it also can be abstruse for ordinary people—not elite—to understand. Newspaper articles target all classes of people and the persona used in this article appears to be a correct one.
     In AP essays, stronger and more persuasive persona would definitely be better. The concise language is also a great thing to learn from this article. Logical organization is also required while stating the meaning, comparing and contrasting the literary works. Overall, the persona from this article would be an appropriate choice for AP essays; however informal language and spoken type language would not be the best choice.

Outside Reading 1-1

Date: Oct 10^th
Title: In these deserts: war stories from Afghanistan
Author: Nathan Bradley
Type of reading: Reflective Essay
You can find the actual article I read from the website below:
http://www.mcsweeneys.net/links/inthesedeserts/

Reflective essays—what tone have the author adopted? How does the author create this tone, and how does this affect your response to the content of the piece? Would this tone work for an AP essay? Why or why not?

     It is an essay written by US army officer who was sent to join the Afghanistan war. An Afghan man comes to him and wants to cooperate with him and find his father. The Afghan man’s father is shot by the US troop and his other family members are killed by the troop. This man says he would like to know if he’s father’s still alive and how to contact him if he’s still alive. So the author tries to help him and asks around. However what the author could know is that it was a “misunderstanding” and it was an “ugliest” one. In the end, the author could not give this Afghan man who asked for help what he wanted, and the author states: “Because a little human decency goes a long way in a land so bereft of it, in a place where the death of your entire family can be called a "misunderstanding," and all I could offer were socks and coats and condolences. But never answers. ”
For it is an essay that reflected personal views of the author, the tone of voice is more personal. And the author uses the first persona (“I”) and also refers to his own experiences, his acquaintances’ examples. So the overall tone of the speaker can be weaker than the third persona which usually appears to be more authoritative and objective but because of the story of this article has so much impact, it doesn’t come any less persuasive to readers. Especially this is not written from a common experience, even more this happened in the Afghanistan war, people cannot judge anything from it because they have never experienced it. Also, the fact that this happened during war, the sad ending of this story, and the fact that this is a true story happened to the author emotionally struck readers so readers get persuaded by the author even more.  
     I believe the voice of this essay is strong, but in AP literature test students should be more objective and analyze the literary works. To be objective, I believe the first person point of view needs to be avoided. In AP essays, there is no chance to mention personal experiences and mostly what we would need to do is talk about the “meanings” of the literary works and to analyze figurative languages in the works. So in the AP, I don’t think this tone is applicable.  

Class Notes 1-4

Class Notes 4
Oct 4th - Oct 8th

Topic 1 Outline of the AP Test

                                    [1]
     1. Multiple Choice part

• Questions cover the main idea of the passage of the poem, the tone of a passage or poem, correct interpretation of details within the passage or poem.

• Try to notice titles, main ideas, patterns of organization and significant dictions!

• You are NOT looking for symbols and figurative languages.

• In order to do well in the test, you need the ability to draw inferences from the reading—including inferences about the author’s purpose, the ability to analyze the structure of the passage or poem and you need to memorize advanced vocabs (SAT, GRE vocabs)!!!

     2. Free Response Question part
            Close Readings:

• Try to answer the hidden “So What?”questions which require students to show how the parts contribute to the functioning of the whole and to analyze the overall meaning.

• Interesting points of view is encouraged as long as the text can support the view.

• Here students need to note the details and symbols.

The Open Prompt:

• Critical theory questions need to talk about the “meaning.”

• Content questions cannot just summarize the plot!

Topic 2 Allusion


                            [2]
• Allusion is a reference to something in history or previous literature. It is a meaning of reinforcing the emotion or the ideas of one’s own work with the emotions or ideas of another work or occasion. By using allusion writers may compact many meanings in a small place, so it is extremely useful to poets.
• Common experiences of the readers should be considered when using allusion. So authors usually refer to the most classical works like mythology, Bible, Shakespeare, etc.
  

Topic 3 Total Meaning and Prose Meaning


                                             [3]
• Total meaning is the experiences it communicates and which can be communicated in no other way.
• Prose meaning is the ingredient that can be separated out in the form of a prose paraphrase. Prose meaning is not poetic; it’s no more poetic that “a plum is a pie”or “a prune is a plum.” The prose meaning will not necessarily or perhaps even usually be an idea. It may be a story, a description, and a statement of emotion, a presentation of human character, or some combination of these.
• Prose paraphrase is restating the poem in different language so as to make its prose sense as plain as possible.
• The value of poem is determined by the total experience, not by the idea in it. Good readers of poetry are receptive to all experiences.



Useful Links:
• AP English:
http://homepage.mac.com/mseffie/AP/APtitles.html
http://www.kn.att.com/wired/fil/pages/listaplitma.html
http://www.collegeboard.com/student/testing/ap/sub_englit.html
• Poetry:
http://www.owled.com/poetry.html 


Citation:
[1] http://classblogmeister.com/blog.php?blogger_id=36501
[2]http://school.discoveryeducation.com/clipart/clip/shakespeare-bust-color.html
[3] http://www.gagneint.com/Final%20site/misc/reviews/forbidden_planet/Forbidden.htmAllusion

Class Notes 1-3

Class Notes 3
Sep 27^th – Oct 1^st

Thinking ⇒ Style ⇒  Structure
These are the basic steps of writing a paper. Last week we talked about “Argument” and “Rhetorical situation” and they are how we should think. This week we go over the style and structure of the writing.

Topic 1 Clarity—“saying what you actually intend to say, and doing it in such a way that your reader understands you”

                           [1] 
Actions and verbs—
     “figure out who (or, as here, what) is doing something, and then write a sentence emphasizing that: the actor as the subject, and the action as the verb.”

Passive voice—
     It's probably a good choice when you don't know who did an action, don't care, or don't want your reader to know. In other words, when you want to put the focus on the thing receiving the action you should you passive voice. Also, if you want to put the doer of the action at the end of the sentence in order to create a bridge to the next sentence, passive voice would prove useful.

Nominalization—
     A nominalization is an action expressed as a noun. Any nominalization can be turned into a verb, and vice versa (sometimes the two forms, the noun and the verb, are identical). Nominalizations also encourage long, shapeless strings of words, because without the discipline of verbs, one can go on adding noun after noun to a sentence. One may end up with a heck of an ugly sentence that's close to incomprehensible—but you can keep it grammatical. Since nominalizations allow one to present actions without actors, many student writers deliberately use them to sound objective and scientific. Sometimes that works well. But all too often nominalizations produce stiff, lifeless prose.


Topic 2 The plain style
  
                                           [2]
Finding a voice—
      "She'd lost confidence in her "academic" voice, but she hadn't gained confidence in her plain voice. The result is a cacophony of voices."
     Plainness tends to work better than complexity, both for students and scholars. It turns out you can write plainly and at the same time show expertise—indeed, one of the best ways to deal with difficult ideas is to present them clearly. You might choose to avoid things like the first person, jokes, or playfulness, but you will communicate with your reader better if you can match actions and verbs and present your argument in a straightforward fashion.

Fear of plainness—
     It's true that plain writing is more exposed so it's true that sometimes that can be dangerous. And people don't want to expose themselves or sound dumb, either—and after all they've learned to associate status and learning with grandiose claptrap. So they use big words and long sentences to demonstrate, they hope, that they are smart, educated, and collegiate. However the point of writing is to communicate with readers, so as a writer you should try to find a stronger verb to carry more of the load. Don't try to make it longer using empty words! No empty words!

Agency and sentence structure—
     People faced with explaining mistakes frequently duck the question of agency, especially if they're the one at fault.


Topic 3 Concision
      
                              [3]   
The lure of wordiness—
     Remember: Concision is a constant battle. The keys are to build around strong verbs, prefer the active voice to the passive voice, be suspicious of adverbs, and toss out empty words and phrases.

Making the cut—
     Less is more, go fast if get an idea. You need more confidence to get concise.

Adverbs—
     After verbs adverbs are the part of speech most often abused in college essays. Students, deploying an inert, noun-heavy writing style, recognize that their verbs are often pitifully weak. Thus they tack on adverbs in hopes of adding intensity or precision. But this often falls flat or even backfires. Use stronger verbs instead of adverbs.


Topic 4 Rhetoric

                             [4]  
Diction—
     We talked about this before in the class. Check out my Class Notes 1-1.

Parallelism—
     Parallelism is one of the most useful and flexible rhetorical techniques. It refers to any structure which brings together parallel elements, be these nouns, adjectives, verbs, adverbs, or larger structures. Done well, parallelism imparts grace and power to passage.

Repetition—
     Repetition is one of the most useful tools available to writers. Repetition allows a writer or speaker to hammer home an idea, image, or relationship, to force the reader or listener to pay attention.

Tense consistency—
     Tense refers to the time (past, present, or future) in which actions occur. If you start a passage in one tense, don't change the tense without reason.

The historical present—
     Most textual analysis and commentary is written in the present tense, a convention sometimes called the historical present.

Alliteration—
     As with any rhetorical techniques, alliteration doesn't make an argument more intelligent. Done well, however, it can please your reader and help make him more receptive to your argument. Like a strong spice, alliteration should be used sparingly.

The rule of three—
     The idea is simple: lists of all kinds (of things, qualities, actions, reasons, examples, etc.) tend to come across most powerfully when they contain three items.

Humor—
     Humor and other flourishes like slang should be used sparingly.

First and second person—
     First person is not always unacceptable as long as you don’t venture into editorializing and emotion; it varied from field to field.

Questions & exclamations—
     Direct questions work well in academic writing, but exclamations don't.

Placing emphasis—
     If you want to summon up emphasis, a far better technique than exclamation marks is to take advantage of the natural rhythm of English sentences.


Topic 5 Syntax

                                   [5]
SVO (“Subject Verb Object”) and SVC (“Subject Verb Complement”)

Coordinating Conjunctions—
     FANBOYS (for, and, nor, but, or, yet, so)
     They function like yes, no gate between equal concepts.

Subordinating Conjunctions— 
     Because, since, however, when
     They are used when the "status" of the clauses are not equal. Like parent and child relationship; independent clause is the parent and dependent clause would be the child.

 Compound Sentence— 
     Compound sentence is a sentence that contains at least two independent clauses. Compound sentence can be formed using coordinating conjunctions, semicolons and colons.

 Complex Sentence— 
     A complex sentence is a sentence that contains one independent clause and at least one dependent clause. Complex sentence can be formed using subordinating conjunctions.

Simple Sentence—
     A simple sentence is a sentence with only one independent clause.

Sentence Variety—
    Sentence variety includes language effects such as pace, tone, emphasis and attention toward specific ideas or world and writing techniques such as the structure or the length.
          



Useful Links:
College Writing:
http://writing-program.uchicago.edu/resources/collegewriting/
Syntax:
http://www.uncp.edu/home/canada/work/markport/language/grammar/spg2001/syntax.htm
Rhetoric:
http://www.uky.edu/AS/Classics/rhetoric.html


Citation:
[1] http://www.ojazzvaiaescola.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/diamond1.jpg
[2] http://blog.scs.sk.ca/tado/2007/11/
[3] http://www.bluepacific1.com/Concision-purple-10k.jpg
[4] http://www.denison.edu/academics/departments/communication/doric.jpg
[5] http://walkinthewords.blogspot.com/2009/11/linguistics-cartoon-favorites-syntax.html