Elementary Composition, Evening Class – Resources & Homework

Your homework will be added to this page as I assign each task to you. The Assigned date shows when I gave the homework, and the Due date shows when the homework is supposed to be ready for presentation.

Some handouts will also be archived on this page. All text files are in PDF format, and you can open it with either the Adobe Acrobat Reader, or with the alternative PDF reader Foxit (download it here).

RESOURCES:
Week 2: Freewriting worksheet handout. March 13th, 2006
Week 2: Idea Bubble Network / Mind Map handout/worksheet. March 15th, 2006
Week 7: Midterm exam preview. April 19th 2006.
Week 10: Letter-Writing Example. May 10th, 2006.


HOMEWORK:
1. First Goals.Assigned 2nd March 2006. Due 7th March 2006.Students were supposed to:

  • Buy a notebook and a nice pen, and a dictionary of some sort.
  • Make sure that they have an English-language capable wordprocessor with spell-check function. (OpenOffice was mentioned as a free option.)
  • Read over the syllabus carefully.
  • Decide on a personal goal for the course.

#2. Second Homework: Assigned March 8th. Due March 13th:

  • Try one (or more) freewriting exercise(s) on your own, of about 10 minutes each
  • Prepare a formal goal for your writing development. Write it in the front of your English Composition notebook.

#3. Third Homework: Assigned March 13th. Due March 15th:

  • Try one (or more) freewriting exercise(s) on your own, of about 10 minutes each
  • Prepare a formal goal for your writing development. Write it in the front of your English Composition notebook, and also on a piece of paper to submit to me.
  • If you cannot think of interesting things to write about, READ A NEWSPAPER!
  • Register on our classblog and begin writing. You are expected to write 2-3 one-paragraph posts per week, plus comments.

#4. Fourth Homework: Assigned March 15th. Due March 22rd.

  • Continue experimenting with free-writing.
  • Take your most interesting example of free-writing, and write a list of the interesting or important keywords and concepts from it.
  • Create a Mind Map or Idea Bubble Network using these ideas, and then add more ideas or words to it. See the Idea Bubble Network / Mind Map handout/worksheet from March 16th for a good example of what I mean. Don’t be afraid to add more words and ideas, and of course question marks (?) for things you may need to research more.

#5. Blog Homework for the week of March 21-27, 2006.

  • write one post using one of the categories from the mind map that you worked on as a group, about alcohol.
  • write one post using one of the categories from a mind map of your own creation.

This is more fully explained in this post on the blog, which you can read if you still have any questions.

#6. Conjunctions Work and Rewriting Your Paragraph: Assigned 27 March 2006. Due 29 March 2006.

You begn writing a paragraph using a pool of words I put on the board. You had to:

  1. use all of the words on the board, and
  2. use at least six compound sentences in your paragraph, using the following conjunctions: and, but, or

After you finish writing this paragraph, put it aside for a little while. Then come back to it, read it aloud, and rewrite it. You will be showing this paragraph to at least one or two classmates next time, so please be prepared!

#7. Using Good Topic Sentences: Assigned 3 April 2006. Due 10 April 2006.

We worked on making bad topic sentences, ie. topic sentences that were:

  • too narrow
  • too general
  • too personal, or
  • too uncontroversial

Your homework was to (a) write four good topic sentences (on the topic of “rice”) that include an opinion, but that don’t use the pronoun I, and (b) to use two of your good topic sentences as the topic sentences of paragraphs that you blog in the next week or so.

Remember: OPINION IS ESSENTIAL!

#8. Working With Lists: Assigned 12 April 2006. Due 19 April 2006.

There were three pieces of homework for this day:

  1. Write a recipe for the dish that you and your partner chose. It should consist of two paragraphs: first, a list of ingredients (an items list), and second, a list of steps needed to make the food (a sequence list). Post it to the blog.
  2. Print your recipe and hand it in at the next class (19 April 2006).
  3. Write instructions on how to do something else — anything of your choice. You may use a list of items if you wish, but you should definitely include a list of steps (a sequence list). Post it to the blog.

#9: Who is She/He? (Due 8 May 2006)

This is based on the exercise we did in class. You looked at your partner, and were supposed to write a descriptive paragraph about your partner, blog it, and print it. The printed copy should be given to me.

#10: Do You Know Someone Who…? (Blog homework)
This is also based on an exercise we did in class. In this exercise, you interviewed classmates about stingy, nasty, or unusual friends or relatives of theirs. You should choose the most interesting example, and write a paragraph and post it to the blog. This is NOT a hand-in assignment.

#11: Write Me a Letter (Assigned 10 May. Your letter must be postmarked 17th May 2006.)In class, we discussed the basics of writing a letter. You must type a letter to me using as many of the writing techniques that we’ve learned as you can use in one letter. Your letter will be graded, but only on the basis of the siubjects we’ve studied. It can be funny, strange, serious, about the class, or not about class. I don’t care, as long as you type it, double space it, and send it to me! Please refer to THIS blog post for a sample letter, and for my mailing address. UPDATE: I’ve added a sample handout that you can download and print for a better look at how this should really look on the printed page.

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