Syllabus for November 12-16

WHAT MAKES GOOD WRITING GOOD? This week we will pause from our study of Catcher in the Rye to carefully read through Phillip Lopate’s essay, “Manhattan, Floating World,” studying his sentence structure and stylistic devices. What does he do, as a writer, that we can emulate in our revision of the CITR essays? We will also look into these CITR essays, looking at what writers have done well and what that is, and looking at what writers could do to improve their essay, and how to accomplish that. Finally, we will discuss and write about another short story, “The Silence” by Haruki Murakami.

Monday

  • Collecting CITR essays. Small group discussion of the Lopate essay, posting three great sentences to the blog, then discussing what we see in terms of stylistic convention.

  • HW: Reading “The Silence” for class discussion on Wednesday. Circle words, write questions, and examine the story for a theme.

Tuesday

  • Lecture on the CITR essays. What has the writer done well? What should the writer do to improve the essay, and how? That will be our focus.

  • HW: Finish reading and annotating “The Silence” for discussion on Wednesday.

Wednesday

  • In class discussion on the short story in preparation for in-class writing assignment on Friday.

  • HW: Begin revising your essay, based upon Tuesday’s lecture.

Thursday

  • CITR essay lecture, part two.

  • HW: Continue revising the essay

Friday

  • In class writing assignment on the short story, “The Silence.”

  • HW: Revisions of the Catcher essay are due Monday. We will start 1984 on Monday.