11: grammar issues

Purdue University's OWL (Online Writing Lab) is a good resource for grammar issues.

Here's a handout called 'Comma vs. Semicolon.' Very useful.

Here's a handout about various punctuation, including the colon, parenthesis, dash, quotation marks, and italics.

And one about active and passive voice.

11: Ulysses paragraphs

Here are the paragraphs we wrote in class today.

12:

9B: 'Fair is foul, and foul is fair'

Choose one of these questions and respond, using an organized paragraph and using examples to support your ideas.

1. How can a virtue ('fair') sometimes be dangerous or harmful ('foul')? Choose one virtue and describe some situations in which that virtue would be a negative.


2. Look at the virtues and choose two that might be in conflict with each other -- for example, tact and honesty. Explain how a person decides how to prioritize competing virtues in different circumstances, using an anecdote to illustrate how that decision might be made.

Due: Tuesday November 4

A: Content	B: Organization	C: Style & Language
· Do your ideas show clarity, originality and creativity? · Do you support your ideas well?	· Does your paragraph have structure? · Do you move from idea to idea clearly?	· Are you ‘following the rules’ of spelling, grammar and punctuation? · Do you use the right word for the right situation?

9: Declaration movie

Here's a Quicktime version of our little movie.

12: commentary structure

Download a pdf with a basic commentary structure.

12: Hamlet review

10: sample conclusion

Here's the sample conclusion we wrote in class:

While the novelist shows the vulnerability and flexibility of individuality in different circumstances, people today still consider to what degree we are truly individuals and to what degree we are victims of our environment and circumstances. For instance, are career criminals just bad people, or are they bad because of the environments in which they were raised? Is the best way to deal with crime to isolate criminals because of their individual traits, or should we attempt to change the environments which sees to produce criminals? The issue of individuality and its real power is a something we still consider today.

12A1: 'I Have a Dream'

Here's a link where you can read, listen to or watch the speech.

10: sample paragraph

Here's the paragraph we wrote in class:

Thesis: During wartime, social norms and rules are abandoned and replaced by practical and physical needs.

In the environment of war, social rules are easily abandoned. One social rule which is abandoned is respect for authority. Before the war, Paul and his friends respect Kantorek enough to join the army at his encouragement. However, when talking about people like Kantorek and their responsibility for the deaths of young recruits, he says, ‘[T]hat is the very root of their moral bankruptcy’ (9). In the environment of war, the idea that a headmaster ought to be respected merely because of his age and social position is easily discarded; the soldiers’ experiences have shown him to be wrong, and so the respect is unnecessary. Additionally, respect for human life is abandoned in war. In chapter nine, Paul finds himself in the shellhole with the French soldier he has killed, and he feels deep sympathy and guilt for his death, feelings we find consistent with social norms. However, as Paul returns to his own line, he finds that sympathy ridiculous, and his fellow soldiers agree. ‘What else could you do? That’s why you’re out here,’ they tell him (161). The requirements of the war environment make the normal sympathy in the face of the loss of human life wasteful and unnecessary. As Kat encourages Paul to watch the celebrating snipers, Paul finds it easy to abandon the social norm of respecting human life.