UVM Blogs

ENTRY DEADLINE: MARCH 21 st Students in undergraduate or graduate UVM English Department courses are invited to submit outstanding papers—any nonfiction topic or genre—completed since March 2010 for our annual Allbee Awards for Outstanding Nonfiction Prose Writing in the following categories: Outstanding paper by a student in English 1 …[Read more]

Portfolio 2 pickup is tomorrow from 2-5 in my office, 403 Old Mill Annex. If you go to 403 Old Mill rather than the Annex, you’ll find the English Department supply closet, which won’t be terribly helpful. So, be sure to go to the Annex.

Portfolio 2 pickup will be on Tuesday 12/14 from 2-5. If these times do not work for you, please email me and I can meet you either earlier or later on 12/14. However, the 14th will be the only day this semester for portfolio pickup. I will be around next semester, and you can come [...]

We discussed this in class, but, just for clarity’s sake, by reader-ready I mean two pieces that are polished and as good as they possible can be. So, you should be picking your two pieces that are already closest to this point rather than focusing on some of your more problematic essays. These two pieces [...]

The appeal process for Portfolio 2 and final grades in general is going to be similar to what we did last time.  The only significant difference is that you cannot resubmit your portfolio to me along with your letter for me to reconsider because I’ll be leaving on the 15th and handing portfolios back on [...]

For tomorrow, please bring in drafts of your two reader-ready pieces for the peer-workshop. These drafts need to contain new work, i.e. things that you have done to make the pieces more reader-ready since the original essays. So, they cannot just be the original draft with my comments on it.

Everything from Portfolio 1 including the checklist and the letter that I gave you Exploration 5 brainstorming activity from class Exploration 5 with my comments Exploration 6 with my comments Interpretive paraphrasing activity from class Project 4 with your peer-partner’s comments Project 4 with my comments One of the radical revision prompts…[Read more]

No rule says you can’t use “to be” verbs like “are” and “were” or start a sentence with “It is” or “There are.” Likewise, no rule says you can’t use gerunds, verbs ending with –ing like “running.” But we sometimes fall into these constructions without looking for other options. See how many “to be” and [...]

Some sentences depend on “that” to make sense, but often you can drop “that” from a sentence with no loss in meaning—and maybe a big gain in voice. On the other hand, when “this” appears in a sentence without an accompanying noun, your readers may puzzle over what “This” is supposed to mean. So see [...]

Passive voice constructions can really bog down your essay and make things significantly more confusing than they need to be. A passive voice construction is a verbal phrase where the subject receives the verb’s action. For example, saying “the apples were purchased at the store by me” instead of “I purchased the apples at the [...]

Find a friend, and then do the following: 1. Discuss what two essays each of you are planning on doing as your two reader-ready pieces and why 2. Discuss your plans for revising those two pieces. What areas do you think need the most work? Why? How do you plan on going about resolving problems? [...]

Look for sentences that rely on adjectives (like beautiful or terrible) or adverbs (intensifiers like really and very plus words ending in –ly like badly or slowly) to convey meaning. Consider how you could make meaning felt all the more by 1) eliminating some, many, or even all of the adjectives and adverbs and 2) [...]

Look through your draft for sentences that are key to meaning but also aren’t quite conveying or capturing what you want and need them to. Maybe the sentences is “circumlocutious,” circling around what you really mean to say. Maybe the sentence understates or overstates, is too general or implies something you don’t mean at all. [...]

Once you get your Project 4 back from me, please do the following: 1. Find a quote that isn’t well integrated into your text, i.e. is bomb-dropped 2. Rewrite that section of your paper integrating that quote both physically and by making a quote sandwich, i.e. text that introduces the quote followed by the quote [...]

So, as we discussed in class, effect is typically a noun and affect is typically a verb. Here are some cartoons to help you remember both those typical meanings and the more obscure meanings of effect as a verb meaning “to bring about” and affect as a noun meaning someone’s apparent mood.

We will be having class tomorrow, as stated in my earlier email. Thus, the schedule is as follows: Tuesday 11/30: Exploration 7 due; revision and editing activities for final portfolio selection; bring your essays to class Thursday 12/2: More revision and editing activities Tuesday 12/7: Peer-workshop for your reader-ready pieces Thursday 12/9:…[Read more]

For Exploration 7 I want you to: 1. Tell me what two essays you plan on using as your reader-ready pieces and why you picked those two 2. Outline your plans for revising/polishing those pieces in detail; you can either describe what you’re going to do in paragraphs or you can just create a bullet [...]

Please put a hard copy of Project 5 in my box by no later than 5 PM tomorrow. Please drop-off a hard copy rather than emailing it to me. Also, if you’d like your Project 4 back, email me and I can set-up a time to meet you on Friday to return it.

Right after the Thanksgiving break, we will be having optional conferences. I may cancel class on Tuesday 11/30 if a lot of people sign-up for conferences. Otherwise, we’ll have class as planned. I’ll email everyone and post to the blog when I’ve made a decision about that. In the interest of making a timely decision about [...]

Thursday 11/18: No class Monday 11/29- Tuesday 11/30: Optional conferences; depending on how many people sign-up we may or may not have class on Tuesday 11/30 Thursday 12/2: Exploration 7 due; revision and editing activities for final portfolio selection; bring your essays to class Tuesday 12/7: Peer-workshop for your reader-ready pieces Thursday…[Read more]

We will not be having class tomorrow. However, there is a lot of important information that we would have discussed in class. So, please read over the new posts so that you can be up to date on what is going on.

For anyone who’s interested in the multimodal blog option, here’s the example that we looked at on Thursday: http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/

Also, if you’re just looking for a laugh, it’s not bad for that either.

Everyone needs to bring in a draft of Project 5 for the peer-workshop. For most people, this will involve two things: 1. A copy of the radical revision itself (i.e. your Project 5) 2. A finished 1-2 page letter explaining your radical revision For people who are doing a regular revision, you just need a [...]

Choose one of the following options: 1. Take a minute and read over your draft. Once you’ve reacquainted yourself with your essay, pick one page of it that you see as being particularly important and rewrite it either in a radically different voice/style/genre or with a radically different purpose/perspective. What types of changes did you [...]

For all of your essays, you must use Times New Roman 12 pt. font or the equivalent. So, if you are using something like Cambria or Calibri, you cannot use size 12 because it is significantly larger than Times New Roman size 12. You have to use a lower font size to make it equivalent. When [...]

In addition to reading the Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close excerpt, please come prepared to do some work on Project 5 because I will be giving you some time in class on Thursday to do that.

The handout for Thursday is in the box outside my office door. Please come by and pick up a copy if you were not here on Tuesday. The header on the first page is “Why I’m Not Where You Are” if you are trying to distinguish the reading from other papers in the box.

For Project 5 there are two options. You can either do a radical revision by recasting your essay into a new form, style, or genre or you can do a significant regular revision of one of your essays. The regular revision option would essentially be like what we did in Project 3.  As for the [...]

So, it seems like a fair amount of people are interested in the op-ed option. Correspondingly, this is what we’re going to do for the next few classes: Tuesday 11/9: Discuss “Diary of a Wimpy Health Care Bill” and look at more radical revision options; Project 4 due Thursday 11/11: Discuss Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close excerpt [...]

Project 4 will be due on Tuesday 11/9.

1. If you’d like to appeal your portfolio grade, Thursday is the deadline for appeals.

2. We’re going to do some activities in class. So, we’re going to keep the schedule as it is, and I’ll bring in some things for us to work with.

When quoting, the in-text citation appears right after the closed quotation marks and the period follows the citation itself. For example: Indeed, the myth of the West that we have come to know is that which “we have come to know from American movies” (Kuester 281). If the quoted portion doesn’t end the sentence, put [...]

As we discussed in class, you can use any citation method  as long as you use it correctly. So, APA, MLA, Chicago Style or any other official citation method is fine with me. Everyone will need a complete works cited page using whatever method you’ve chosen. As for in-text citations, you can either follow the [...]

http://library.uvm.edu/guides/evaluate/criteria.php This is a general guide on how to evaluate your source’s credibility.

http://library.uvm.edu/~pmardeus/webeval.html This one is website specific.

http://library.uvm.edu/~pmardeus/scholpopjnl.html This one is specific to periodicals.

For Portfolio 2, you will need to turn in everything from Portfolio 1 including my letter to you and the checklist that I put in your portfolio. So, please do not lose any of these things.

Compose a research-based essay on an issue or question that you also have experience with. As in Project 1, this essay may seek to expose and examine a problem, explore a question, or advance an argument. The only major difference is that you’ll be drawing on both your personal experience and the research that you’ve done to [...]

In order to appeal your grade on your portfolio you need to do the following: 1. Go home and read over both my letter to you and my comments on your individual essays 2. Decide if there’s something specific that you think I overlooked or misinterpreted or just plain missed that would maybe justify you [...]

Find a paragraph in your source that seems particularly important to your essay and then rewrite that paragraph in your own words. Try to not simply restate the information, but also try to digest it for your reader. What types of language or details can you include to make a concept that is perhaps more [...]

1. Read “Researching Rhetorically”

2. Be prepared to continue our discussion of the reading from today

3. Bring a source that you are planning on using in your essay for an in-class activity

1. Write “Things that I’m interested in” or “Things that are important to me” or “Things that I care about” in your central bubble on your paper or on bubbl.us. 2. Start coming up with as many things as you can that relate to whatever of the above three options you wrote in your central bubble. [...]

Write down in one or two sentences the issue or question you’re researching and why. Then – moving beyond Google and Wikipedia – use the library’s databases to find three articles that strongly connect with your topic. About each, make a note of bibliographic info, a brief explanation of what the article is about, your [...]

For Tuesday there will be a slight change in the assignment sequence:

1. Review Levine’s “Emulating David Dobbs”

2. Read “College Admissions Essays”

3. Exploration 6 Due

As we discussed in class, if you are more than 15 minutes late for class I will mark you absent. You can still come and participate in whatever we’re doing in class that day, but you will be considered absent because arrivals that late are very disruptive to the class.

As we talked about in class, I will not be accepting explorations on the day that I hand them back. So, if, for whatever reason, you do not turn them in during class, you need to get them to me before the next class either via email or by dropping it off in the box [...]

Brainstorm a list of issues that you have direct experience with and personal concern about but also cannot write fully, knowledgeably, and authoritatively about if drawing only on your experience. Basically, issues that you have personal experience with but would also need to research in order to construct a compelling argument or a thorough…[Read more]

From the list of brainstormed topics you developed in class, choose one that’s most compelling to you and that you can explore both through your experience and by researching what others have said about it. Then think of a moment from your life that jumps immediately to mind when you think of this question or issue. [...]

Yes, I still have everyone’s Project 2′s. So, don’t worry about them.

Tuesday 10/12: NO CLASS Thursday 10/14: 1. Draft of your Project 3 (that contains new work) 2. Levine’s “Untitled Exploration” 3. Levine’s “Emulating David Dobbs” Tuesday 10/19: 1. Midterm Portfolio/Project 3 due 2. Read “The Hidden Costs of Travel” (final version) 3. Read “Admissions Dilemma” (final version) After this the schedule will…[Read more]

1. Draft of your Project 3 (you need to produce new writing you cannot simply bring in a copy of your original essay)

2. Rebecca Levine’s “Untitled Exploration”

3. Rebecca Levine’s “Emulating David Dobbs”

“…if the imagination is to transcend and transform experience it has to question, to challenge, to conceive of alternatives, perhaps to the very life you are living at that moment. You have to be free to play around with the notion that day might be night, love might be hate; nothing can be too sacred [...]