January
8
ELA A30: Jan 8
- Today, I made it clear to students that their departmental exam for this class is in two weeks. We took today to go over a few of the common errors I am seeing in their writing. By pointing out these errors they are individually making, my hope is they will recognize these habits and learn to correct them, or at the least be more aware of them, before writing their exam.
- We read through the handout previously given that discussed the common errors I see in their writing of formal literary essays.
- I wrote three ‘negative examples’ of introductory paragraphs taken from their own student writing. (I explained it was from their own writing, though I made sure to not reveal who the authors of the work were.) After reading through each negative example, we corrected it and explained the proper format in constructing a good opening paragraph. For an opening paragraph, a lot of times students restate the essay question, write one sentence each about their three topics, and then, if we’re lucky, put them all together again in a sentence to make the thesis. This is not sufficient at this level of writing.
For an effective opening paragraph, students must begin the paragraph with a statement relevant to the topic at hand but vague or general enough that it only broadly introduces the topic to the reader. Three sentences or so should follow in the same manner of disussing the topic of choice but in a general way. Then the following sentence should reveal (and be the initial introduction to the three topics of discussion) the topics of the body paragraphs. The only thing to follow, if they choose, would be a transition sentence to lead into the first body paragraph.
We read through a positive example of an opening paragraph so it should be clear to students what is acceptable and not acceptable.
- I also offered the students a bonus assignment. They previously wrote an ‘in class’ essay for their unit final that was based on one of the questions from the ELA A30 prototype. I made extensive editing marks on their essays to offer them suggestions on some of their personal habits in writing. If they choose, students can make those suggested corrections, type out the essay, and hand it in with their original draft attached for extra marks. I said I would give them 3% added on to their final mark out of the 60% that I contribute to their final grade. (The other 40% comes from their departmental exam.) This is due on Thursday if they choose to put the work into correcting their essay.My intention with this is to ensure they ‘look’ at the comments that were put on their essays. I make these comments with the hopes they’ll learn from their mistakes and make fewer of them on the next essay. While some read the comments, often some of them don’t. If I give them marks, I’ll know they read them.