As my mentor said to me, and his before him, "You are not thinking unless you are writing." To that end, the journal is an extremely important part of this course and will, in fact, end up affecting your final grade either positively or negatively. Thoughout the semester, I will ask you to make numerous entries into this journal which will ultimately serve as a springboard for your essays. For the most part, these entries will be reponses to assigned reading/viewing of assigned texts, or Daily Writing Assignments. These should be at least one page in length and show evedence of critical thinking beyond summary!!! These Daily Writing Assignments will be given both in the syllabus and announced in class. They are designed to guide the process of invention, discovery, and exploration that comes from critical reading. I will also assign dialectical journal entries wherein you will analyze specific quotes and/or passages from a specific text(s). I will collect these assignments often, so Please bring them to every class
Your final exam will incorporate your Writer's Journal, so it is crucial that you keep track of ALL assignments. Your journal can help your writing and your grade immensely but, should you fall down on this duty, it may mean that you fail the final as well as the course.
You should always feel free to add to this journal beyond what I have assigned formally. This coud earn you extra brownie points as well as raise your journal grade.
1. Letter to me. Who are you? What are your likes and dislikes? Why are you here? How do you see yourself as a writer? What are your writing fears?
2. Compose a poem, 9 lines in length, including and surrounding the two lines you analyzed in class. Then, write at least one page of length in your journal describing why you wrote what you wrote.
3. In-class writing. Now given the whole poem by Sylvia Plath, brainstorm around it/about it, either incorporating or trashing you previous conceptions and ideas.
4. With the Sylvia Plath poem, make a list of the "good" elements of the poem and the "bad" elements of the poem. Who is associated with each element: the narator? Who else is part of the poem? Is there a second referent? Then, write a page in your journal connecting this new evidence with the outline/thesis you made for class today.
5. In your journal, continue the suduction scene we wote in class. You may either begin your own, or you may continue ours. Either way, write two pages of prose, i.e. actual narrative, not just notes.
6. Write 2 pages of reader response to what you have read on pages 2-4. Compare these new obsevations with those you have already made on your own about "The Zebra Storyteller".
7. Write at least a page of reader response in reaction to the short stories "araby" and "boys and girls".
8. Write a page, at least, responding to and attempting to answer one of the questions I raised in class today regarding the short stories. Point to the specific evidence you are using to answer the question you have chosen and explain how it means what you say it means.
9. Write at least one page in your journal connecting the article by Eddie Adams to the photograph I showed you today. How does this new peice of context affect/effect your reading of either the photograph or the photographer? Do your thoughts change regarding either one with this new information?
10. Respond carefully to "The Bus to Veracruz." What puzzles you? Find a passage to focus on and write a page "thinking it out." You can do a web, cluster, outline, whatever suits you, in addition, but your journal itself must focus on a passage and demonstrate some close reading.
11. Make a reverse outline of both the Parshall essay and the hooks essay. This must be in roman numeral outline form, quote the thesis(s) of the essay and outline the main point and construction of each paragraph. These essays will serve as good models for your own essay. Pay close attention to ho each author forms his or her argument!!!
