Week 2

ENGL 107

I’ve decided that if you wait for the perfect time to write, you’ll never write. ~Margaret Atwood

You get all your best ideas in the shower. ~Clint Eastwood

• Take Syllabus test• Discussion: Winning attitudes and strategies of

successful writers (“Shitty First Drafts” & LBH)• How did your first writing assignment go?

• Review answers to homework; review handout (Anguished English)• Finding subjects and verbs in sentences; agreement

(Ch. 3 and 4)• Descriptive detail writing exercise• Assign homework

Plans for Tonight

• Feel free to use any sources you want to complete the test. This is an ungraded quiz, and is intended to ensure that you have reviewed the syllabus and understand it.

Syllabus Test

• Joining the Academic Community• Community of teachers and students whose basic goal is to

share and build knowledge about a subject, whether it is English, history, engineering, or something else. • Part of participating in the community is through

communication• Studying subject• Acquiring its vocabulary• Learning to express yourself in its ways• Learning to communicate in such a way that the community accepts

you and your ethos

Winning Strategies and Attitudes

• Participate• Take notes• Do assigned readings• Keep an open mind• Work with integrity• Get help when you think you might need it

Getting the Most from Class

• READ THE ASSIGNMENT!!! • Develop and organize your writing• Synthesize your own and others’ ideas• Use academic language (the language of your discourse

community)• Revise and edit• Acknowledge sources

Becoming an academic writer

• LBH 77 & 78• Also consult Dr. Leddy’s site: http://tinyurl.com/2muuam

Communicating in an Academic Setting

• Determining purpose, audience, and genre• What’s purpose?• What’s audience?• What’s genre?

• Why do these matter?

LBH Academic Writing (pg 6)

• How was your first assignment? • Break into groups of 2 or 3 and discuss your process

• How do you prepare to write?• What do you do when you write?• What is good when you write, and what’s not?

• Shitty First Drafts discussion

Attitudes & Shitty First Drafts

• Let’s see how you did!• Ch. 13 (Ex. 3: 238; Ex. 4: 245; Ex. 8: 249)• Ch. 20 (Ex. 1: 389; Ex. 3: 391; Ex. 4: 391; Ex. 7: 394;

Ex.9: 395; Ex.12: 398)

Review Homework Exercises

• Let’s go through and see what mistakes we can find, and how they change the meaning of the sentence.• Grammar, mechanics, and punctuation are important.

Handout: “Student Bloopers…”

• What’s a complete sentence?• Subject + verb = complete thought

• How do you find the subject?• Simple sentence = one subject-verb group• Keep in mind five generalizations:

• In a sentence, the subject usually answers the question, “Who or what is the sentence about?”

• The subject often occurs early in the sentence.• Subject usually a noun or pronoun.• Noun/pronoun subjects in a sentence can be modified by adjectives.• Subject can be compound.

Where’s Waldo? How to find Subjects & Verbs

• An adjective = a word that describes or limits (modifies) a noun or a pronoun.• Usually come directly in front of the nouns they modify;

can appear later in sentence.

Modification

• Compound = more than one, for instance:• Exercise is the key to good health.• Diet is the key to good health.

• Exercise and diet are keys to good health.

Compound

• Underline the subject in each of the sentences.• The loudspeaker blared.

Exercise 1, pg. 39

• First sentences were short – this leads to choppy writing.• Complex ideas call for complex – more involved – sentences.

• What’s a prepositional phrase?• A group of words containing a preposition and an object of the

preposition along with any modifiers. Prepositional phrases contain nouns or pronouns, but these nouns or pronouns are never the subject of the sentence.

• In the young man’s apartment, books covered the walls.• Ultimately, what’s being discussed are the books – they are so

plentiful they cover the walls. What walls? The walls in the young man’s apartment.

Finding the Subject in Sentences with Prepositional Phrases (40)

Common Prepositions

• of• in• to• for• with• on• at• from• by• about• as• into• like

• through• after• over• between• out• against• during• without• before• under• around• among

• Find and circle ten different prepositions & circle them

Exercises 5 & 6

• Exercise 7 • Since you’ll never find the subject of a sentence in a

prepositional phrase, the best way to find the subject is to get rid of the prepositional phrase.• On Friday, January 27, 2006, Western Union sent its last

telegram.

• What’s the prepositional phrase? Remember – prep. phrases modify something.

Finding Subjects in Sentences with Prepositional Phrases

• On Friday, January 27, 2006, Western Union sent its last telegram.

Prepositional Phrase

• An appositive phrase is a group of words within a sentence that gives us extra information about a noun or pronoun in that sentence. It is set off by commas.• Martin Johnson, the retired salesperson, sat at his desk.

• The subject of a sentence is never found within the appositive phrase.

Finding the Subject in Sentences with Appositive Phrases

• Pg. 44• Exercise 8, pg. 45

Other Problems in Finding Subjects

• Verbs tell time.• Present tense: Today, the woman dances.• Past tense: Yesterday, the woman danced.• Future tense: Tomorrow, the woman will dance.

• Practice• Verbs fall into three classes: action verbs, linking verbs,

and helping verbs.

Where’s Waldo, the verb

• An action verb tells us what the subject is doing and when the action occurs.• Exercise 11 (48)

Action Verbs

• Linking verbs link the subject of a sentence to one or more words that describe or identify the subject.• The child is a constant dreamer.

• Exercise 13, pg. 50• Helping verbs combine with a main verb to form a verb

phrase. It comes before the main verb and expresses a special meaning or a particular time.• He is sleeping.

Linking and Helping Verbs

• Modify verbs, adjectives, or other adverbs.• Dreams often frighten young children.• Often = adverb; frighten = verb

Adverbs

• Do Ex. 17 and Test 1

Reviews

• What is subject-verb agreement?• When the subject is a singular noun, the verb takes an –s (or –

es) in the present tense.• When the subject is a plural noun, the verb does not take an –

s (or –es) in the present tense.

• Exercise 1, pg. 62

Ch. 4 “Making Subjects and Verbs Agree”

• When looking for subject-verb agreement in sentences where the subjecs are difficult to find, keep two points in mind:• Subjects are not found in prepositional phrases or appositive

phrases.• Subjects can be found after the verb in sentences that are

questions and in sentences that begin with the word there or the word here. • Here is a plan about time management.

• Exercise 4, pg. 64

Subject-Verb Agreement with Hard-to-Find Nouns

• Collective nouns name a group of people/things.• A collective noun is singular unless the meaning is

clearly plural.• Exercise 6, pg. 66

Subject-verb Agreement with Collective Nouns

• If the parts of a compound subject are connected by the word and, the verb is usually plural.• Alberto and Ramon are the winners.

• The exception to this rule occurs when the two subjects are thought of as a single unit.• Peanut butter and jelly is my favorite sandwich.

• Exercise 10, pg. 70

Subject-verb Agreement with Compound Subjects

• Test 1, pg. 72-73

Mastery and Editing Tests

• Descriptive Exercise

In Class Writing: Description

• Complete reading and exercises before next class:• WW Ch. 5 “Understanding Fragments and Phrases”; do

exercises 2, 12, and 13 • WW Ch. 16 “Working with Paragraphs: Topic Sentences and

Controlling Ideas”; do exercises 3, 4, 5, 9, 12, and Test 3• LB 38M 45M, “Paragraphs”

• Due at the beginning of class• WA 2 (see assignment sheet given Week 2)

Homework – Please Note! Typos in Calendar!!!