April 6, 2010

Remember that there is NO CLASS on Thursday, April 8th. Everything due April 8th will shift down to April 13th, etc....

Here is a link to A Modest Proposal for those of you who didn't get the handout in class. Don't let the language intimidate you. Have this read for Tuesday the 13th.

Also, here are the details for your Take Home Argumentative Prompt, also due Tuesday the 13th: Start an argument with someone, preferably about a topic that you might want to write an argumentative essay about. As you argue, I want you to pay attention to their counter-points to your argument.

Then write up your argument but keep this person in mind as your audience. I want you, in your argument, to address and refute each of their counter-points. Having an effective argument means being able to articulate the other side's point of view in your argument.

Journal #20: A Popular Opinion and Why I Disagree
Think of an opinion held my many people that you disagree with. Write about the opinion and then how and why you disagree with it. Write for 10 minutes.

Grammar Review
We did this in class and we will go over it in class. If you weren't in class do it on your own and bring it to class with you on Tuesday.

Grammar Review 090
Name:__________________________________________________________

1. Circle the nouns in this sentence. Which one is the subject of the sentence?
My aunt told me that when you were saved you saw a light, and something happened to you inside!

2. Circle the verbs in this sentence. Which one is the predicate?
A great many old people came and knelt around us and prayed, old women with jet-black faces and braided hair, old men with work-gnarled hands.

3. In the sentence above, underline the adjectives.

4. Find the sentence fragment and make it into a complete sentence.
What do you want me to do, she said, call the cops? And kept on ironing.

5. Find the sentence fragment(s) and make it into a complete sentence.
In the first week of April, before Lavender died, Lieutenant Jimmy Cross received a good-luck charm from Martha. It was a simple pebble. An ounce at most. Smooth to the touch, it was a milky-white color with flecks of orange and violet, oval-shaped like a miniature egg.

6. In the above section, circle all the nouns and underline all the adjectives.

7. Find the sentence fragment(s) and make them complete.
In my mind, I could see the fighter pummeling that boy. Punch after punch. The boy too beaten to fight back, but too strong to fall down.

8. Find the sentence fragment(s) and make them complete.
This, I suppose, was the reason why we went there. Far away from where our mothers could find us.

9. What is the subject of this sentence?
It was a simple pebble.

10. The following excerpt is in past tense. Change it to present tense:
And then this moth-essence, this spectacular skeleton, began to act as a wick. She kept burning. The wax rose in the moth’s body from her soaking abdomen to her thorax to the shattered hole where her head should have been, and widened into a flame, a saffron-yellow flame that robed her to the ground like an immolating monk. The candle had two wicks, two winding flames of identical light, side by side. The moth’s head was fire.

11. The following is in present tense. Change it to past tense:
Yogurt, cheese, and sour cream are items that are often thrown out while they are still good. Occasionally I find a cheese with a spot of mold, which of course I just pare off, and because it is obvious why such a cheese was discarded, I treat it with less suspicion than an apparently perfect cheese found in similar circumstances. Yogurt is often discarded, still sealed, only because the expiration date on the carton has passed. This is one of my favorite finds because yogurt will keep for several days, even in warm weather.

12. What is the point of view of the following sentence? Circle the pronoun(s).
If, by chance, I find another person more suitable as a wife than the wife I already have, I want the liberty to replace my present wife with another one.

13. What is the point of view of the following sentence? Circle the pronoun(s).
We can never be satisfied as long as the Negro is the victim of the unspeakable horrors of police brutality.

14. What is the point of view of the following sentence? Circle the pronoun(s).
The things they carried were largely determined by necessity.

15. Fill in the blank with the correct word: they’re, there or their.
The Norfolk Prison Colony’s library was in the school building. A variety of classes were taught _______ by instructors who came from such places as Harvard and Boston universities.

Lieutenant Cross gazed at the tunnel. But he was not ___________.
__________ principles were in their feet. ________ calculations were biological. They had no sense of strategy or mission.

18. Fill in the blank with the correct word: your or you’re
When are you going to __________ mom’s house?

19. Is this a simile or a metaphor?
Skin as white as snow, hair as black as ebony and lips as red as a rose.

20. Is this a simile or a metaphor?
The sky exploded with stars.

21. List three clichés:
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22. What are the parts of a Five Paragraph Essay?