Assignment for Tuesday 9/29

1. Read and print this Atlantic Monthly article, titled "Why Would Apple Make an Electric Car, not a Driverless One?" by Adrienne LaFrance. Be sure to bring the printout to class for reference during discussion.

2. Make a paragraph outline of the article. This means writing a single sentence for each paragraph, expressing that paragraph's topic sentence or main idea. The article contains ten paragraphs. 

Remember, a topic sentence and a topic are not the same thing. "Apple's electric car program" is the topic of paragraph one. A topic sentence, however, says something about the topic. For example, "Apple's electric car program is moving forward."

Your paragraph outline may be typed or (very) neatly hand written.

Book Review Assignment Guidelines

The book review assignment will not be due until much later in the semester, but I would like to provide the guidelines now. 

If you have not already chosen a book to read and review, you should do so soon. You may not choose a book you have already read or one you are reading for another class. Don't feel pressured to pick something literary or highbrow, but do choose something age-appropriate. Harry Potter and Percy Jackson books are too juvenile. Books in the Hunger Games, Divergent, Fifty Shades of Grey, and Twilight series are borderline but acceptable. Most students choose novels, but this is not a requirement. See me if you aren't sure about a book's suitability.

In an upcoming class we will discuss a sample book review that may be used as a model for the review you write. The most important guideline is that your review should do more than summarize. Instead, the review should articulate your honest reaction to the book. This might include answers to some (but not all) of the following questions:

• Was the book enjoyable?  
• Was the book believable?
• Was the book easy or difficult to read?
• Did the book challenge the way you think?
• Did it teach you anything new?
• What was the most/least interesting part of the book?

Be sure to provide specific examples from the text to support your claims about the book's enjoyability, believability, ease or difficulty, etc. Remember that your audience is a room full of people who might consider reading your book based on your review. What are the most important things those people need to know in order to decide whether reading the book was a worthwhile experience?  

Reviews should be 500-700 words and formatted according to MLA guidelines. On the day reviews are due, each student will give a short presentation introducing his or her book to the class. Presentations should cover the main points included in the written review. The due date will be announced.

Topic Sentences so Far

1.       We all have a lot to read

2.       This makes speed reading very appealing

3.       Speed reading programs promise faster reader but they sacrifice  accuracy

4.       The rates promised by speed reading are unrealistic

5.       Reading is an extraordinarily complex process

6.       Reading and writing require use of both vision and hearing, but speed-reading programs ignore this.

Speed Reading Article Quiz

1. The article opens with a description of what?

1. The time the author could not read the instructions in the Bangkok subway.
2. The time the author tried to read all of Moby Dick in one night.
3. The number of unread articles, emails, and novels the author has accumulated. 
4. The amount of reading the average person does in a typical day.

2. Which of the following speed-reading techniques does the article discuss?

1. Suppressing the impulse to think about the sound of words.
2. Reading only the first two words of every sentence.
3. Reading only the first and last line of every paragraph.
4. Skimming the text and noting all of the nouns and verbs.

3. What are saccades?

1. The eye movements a reader makes between words.
2. The neurons associated with language acquisition.
3. Microscopic arrows within text that may one day be a feature of all printed material. 
4. Ancient Egyptian scribes who specialized in easy-to-read hieroglyphics. 

4. The quotation from Woody Allen is about what?

1. Picking up women.
2. Filling up his apartment with unread books.
3. Taking eleven years to finish Uncle Tom’s Cabin.
4. Reading War and Peace in twenty minutes.

5. Which statement best describes the article’s conclusion about speed reading?

1. It is not useful at all, and speed reading advocates are quacks.
2. It is not useful at present but will become the dominant form of reading in coming decades.
3. It may be useful for skimming, but it remains inadequate for large and complex texts.
4. New technologies make speed reading very practical and everyone should learn it.

Schedule and Assignment for Thursday

Here is the plan for the next few classes:

Today 9/8: Rhetorical situation activity.
Thursday 9/10: Discuss paragraph focus and essay focus with speed-reading article.
Tuesday 9/15: Manuscript preparation and mechanics.
Thursday 9/17: Essays due.

Here is the link to the article for Thursday. The title is "Big Question: Is Speed Reading Actually Possible?" and it appears in Wired magazine. Be sure to read the article carefully, print it out, and be prepared for a quiz.

It might help to check out the site of the Spritz speed-reading service before reading the article.

Rhetorical Situation In-Class Writing

 We will use this activity in a future class--no need to do anything with it now.

 

You are an assistant coach at a nationally known college football program. After the final game of a winning season, you throw the players a small party at your house. Your university has a strict policy against staff members providing alcohol to students, so you don’t purchase any beer for the party. At the party, however, a group of players finds a partial case of beer in your garage refrigerator, and they help themselves. When you discover the students drinking, they plead to be allowed to drink one beer each. Since all of the students in the garage are over twenty-one, you decide to bend the rules slightly and allow them to finish the beers they started. You drink one beer as well.

After leaving the party, the team’s star quarterback, Bert Foster, is stopped by police. The officer smells alcohol on Bert’s breath and administers a sobriety test, which Bert passes. Bert insults the officer, however, and this leads to his car being searched. The police discover a suitcase full of cocaine. Bert is arrested.

Your job is to explain what happened as you would in your group’s assigned situation:

1. Bert called you from jail to tell you he has been arrested. You called the head coach immediately, but he did not answer. Write an email explaining the situation to him. Assume the head coach is a close personal friend. The national media have not picked up the story yet.
2. You went to the jail to see if you could bail Bert out and keep the story out of the papers. Text your spouse to explain where you are.
3. The police visit your house the day after Bert’s arrest. As part of their investigation, they ask you for a written statement of what happened. Write that statement.
4. The story is all over the national media. Your sister (with whom you have a close relationship) emails you to ask what happened and if you are okay. Answer her.
5. You have been fired (unfairly, you believe) from your assistant coaching job for providing alcohol to students. The local newspaper invites you to tell your side of the story.
6. You fail to get your job back and go on to a modest career as an advertising sales representative. Twenty years later, Sports Illustrated invites you to tell your story as part of a where-are-they-now article. Tell your story.

Before beginning your explanation, jot down the answers to the following questions:

1. Exactly who is your intended reader? Be as specific as possible. This will be more challenging with situations 3, 5, and 6.
2. What do you know about your reader? What is the nature of your relationship? Think about issues of power, authority, trust, familiarity, and knowledge of the situation.
3. Exactly what do you hope to accomplish by writing your explanation?

Reading for Thursday

Please follow this link to an article from Cosmopolitan magazine titled "I Used to Think Non-Drinkers Were Buzzkills--then I Sobered Up." Read the article carefully, as it is an excellent example of the type of writing you will be doing in essay one. Be sure to print out a copy of the article to refer to during our in-class discussion on Thursday. A quiz is possible.