English 100 Hybrid 1: Fall 2008

Welcome to the English 100 Hybrid Website!

This website is intended for the English 100 Hybrid class taught by David Peterson which meets on Mondays. If you're in David Peterson's other English 100 Hybrid class, click here.

This website will most likely be updated daily with relevant info and readings. Check the area directly below for current information. If you suspect the site has been updated but it looks the same, hit your refresh or reload button to make sure. If you have a question, you can e-mail me at dpeterson@fullcoll.edu. If you're curious about the English 100 Book Festival, go here. If you need to get to our CE6/WebCT site, please direct your browser to http://distanceed.fullcoll.edu/.

Below are the standings for our writing group competition:

Final Standings (as of 12/16/2008)
Group	Total Points	Recent Change	Last 4 Classes	Standing
Group 1	21	+2	+12	1st
Group 2	8	-1	+5	4th
Group 3	13	-1	+2	3rd
Group 4	21	+1	+13	1st

December 16, 2008

The English 100 Book Festival has been concluded, and so has our class. Congratulations to all the presenters! I was especially impressed with how informative they all were. You guys did a great job researching. The Henry James Prize went to Group 3, for their very well-researched presentation on Frederick Douglass's autobiography, and Group 1 took home The Order of Virginia Woolf for their candy--I mean, their very creative presentation on E.M. Forster's A Room with a View. Additionally, the group competition ended in a tie, with Groups 1 and 4 finishing in first (the final standings are posted above).

Remember that there are two things left to do for our class. First, you must fill out a group evaluation to get a group grade. Currently, everyone's group grade is a zero. As I receive group evaluations, I will change the grades. Second, you may optionally fill out a course evaluation. These evaluations are anonymous, and will not affect your grade in any way (if you're concerned, turn one in after I turn in grades. I should have them turned in by the 22nd, and I'll post here once I've done so). If the evaluation looks too long, and you don't want to bother filling the whole thing out, please fill in the third section (the B questions--you'll see when you get there). I'm going to use the data I receive on that section specifically in my discussion with the various professors in the department teaching hybrid courses. It's likely that a major decision will be made soon regarding the future of hybrid and/or online courses in the English department, so if you'd like to influence that decision with your input, please, fill out that last section in the course evaluation. (Note: Get the links to both evaluations on our CE6 page.)

Thanks for your patience with all the technical difficulties it was our pleasure to enjoy during the course of this semester, capped off by the absence of the internet today, and the failure of our projector. Hurrah! I hope you got a lot out of this class, and I look forward to keeping in touch with all of you. If you want to get a hold of me, you can always e-mail me at my campus e-mail address, dpeterson@fullcoll.edu, or at my Gmail address, peterson.dj@gmail.com. If you're looking to transfer and need advice, or have questions about writing, or just want another set of eyes for a paper you need to turn in, I'm always happy to help. Even if I don't run into you again, I'll always remember you guys (I always do), and it was a pleasure being able to see you every Monday for the past few months. Have a great winter break!

December 14, 2008

Just to note, regarding the recent peer editing assignment, I gave Group 2 +4 points for editing each draft in their group, and editing even more drafts from members of another group. Group 4 also got some points (+2) for editing the second most, percentage-wise.

December 8, 2008

Of paramount importance: The due date of Essay 3 has been pushed back a day. Specifically, Essay 3 is now due tomorrow, December 9th, at midnight (the midnight in between Tuesday the 9th and Wednesday the 10th). If you've already turned it in, you can take it back, give it a once-over, and turn it back in (just let me know which one is the final draft). If you want to use your Late Essay Coupon on Essay 3, you have a week from tomorrow at midnight.

The English 100 Book Festival is all that's left for us. I would, though, like to direct your attention to the standings for the group competition. Things have gotten very interesting--and I haven't even given out any points for the peer editing yet! There are a couple groups that might want to make a point of showing up first for the English 100 Book Festival if they're interested in getting that final +2...

December 2, 2008

I gave each group points based on the questions that were asked during yesterday's...round table? Free for all? Well, whatever it was, it was good stuff. As a reminder, Essay 3 is due next week, and if you want to participate in the upcoming peer editing assignment, be sure to turn in a rough draft by tomorrow at midnight. Also, if there's a tech component for your English 100 Book Festival presentation, bring it on Monday to test it, so there are no unfortunate mishaps on the day of.

November 24, 2008

The rough draft of Essay 3 is due this Saturday by midnight. Keep working, keep researching, and start figuring stuff out for your English 100 Book Festival presentations. Witness the table above. If you'd like to help me fill out, just e-mail me and let me know wha tyou want to bring. Also, I'm happy to say that I was finally able to successfully upload the library presentation, if you want to take a look at it. I really and truly had hit the space limit. Go fig!

November 19, 2008

Well. I have no explanation for it, but for whatever reason, I can't upload the PowerPoint of the library presentation, or a .pdf version of it. It's...just completely inexplicable. I keep getting an error, no matter what I do. So, if you would like to look at the library presentation, either in .pdf or .ppt form, please send me an e-mail and let me know.

November 17, 2008

I thought today's presentation went rather well! If you'd like to take a look at the librarian's PowerPoint presentation (ideal for those who weren't able to make it), you can download it here. I gave groups 1, 3 and 4 a point each for letting me know that they voted. This week's disquisition is free form: Write 2-3 pages about whatever you want. For our last web writing assignment, I'd like you to take a crack at conducting and writing up an interview. For a sample interview, you can click here. Other than that, keep working on Essay 3 and your Book Festival presentations. (Note: Bring materials next week to work on your presentations; I'll give you class time to do so.)

[Note: I'm having trouble uploading the PowerPoint presentation. I'm pretty sure this is temporary, though; I'll let you know when it's uploaded.]

November 11, 2008

I forgot to mention in class that this coming Monday, November 17th, we'll be meeting in room 827 on the second floor of the library. We're still meeting at 7:00 p.m., we're just meeting elsewhere. I'll try to remember to put a sign on the door (someone remind me?).

November 4, 2008

The prompt for Essay 3 is now downloadable, so be sure to take a look. The English 100 Book Festival is rapidly approaching, so be sure to discuss what your group's going to be doing. (Oh, and in case I didn't mention it in class, every group member must participate in the creation and presentation of their group's project. That should be a given.)

The explanation for our disquisition and the web writing assignment is on our CE6 page. For next week, I want you to read two articles. They're in the 7th edition of The Bedford Guide from pages 530 to 543: Shelby Steele's "The Price of Preference" and Goodwin Liu's "Bakke and the Causation Fallacy". It's vitally important that you read both articles for next week. If you don't have the 7th edition, you can download the articles by clicking here.

You can view (or re-view, as the case may be) the web presentation I gave today by clicking here.

Don't forget to vote! Today's the day! And just for the heck of it, if you bring in your stub that lets us know that you voted, I'll give your group group points. Maybe I'll bring in candy. Perhaps...

Oh, and I gave each group group points based on the group's performance on the midterm, as explained in class. That should make the group competition more interesting!

October 28, 2008

I hope you found the midterm enjoyable. For next week, take a look at the prompt for Essay 3, and be sure to respond to the very simple web writing assignment.

October 20, 2008

Next week is our midterm. The subject of the midterm is your group reading book. The midterm will be in class and handwritten (unless you decide to bring a laptop). If you're handwriting your midterm, please bring a bluebook (they can be purchased at the bookstore). If you don't know what a bluebook is, this is what it looks like:

You may bring a single piece of paper with notes on it, but don't overdo it (you'll be including this sheet of paper with your midterm). Just stuff to remind you which character is which, etc. This is a closed book test, meaning that you can have your book with you, but while you're taking the test, you can't look at it. This midterm is worth 15% of your grade (equivalent to Essay 2), so skipping it is not really an option. If you're concerned about preparing for it, just make sure you've read your group book and know it.

VERY IMPORTANT: I've changed the due date of Essay 2. Essay 2 is now due a week later: it's not due on October 27th, it's now due November 3rd. That gives you an additional week to clear things up.

And, if you're looking for some inspiration, you might check out one or more of these sample essays (also available on our CE6 page):

Our third peer editing assignment is coming up. It will be delivered in the same manner as our last peer editing assignment: via the CE6 e-mail system. To participate, please turn in a rough draft by midnight Wednesday. I'll pass out papers after that with instructions.

October 13, 2008

This week, your disquisition is to write up a rough draft of Essay 2, and your web writing is to kind of give us an idea of what you're doing for Essay 2, so you might say this week is devoted to Essay 2. Now is the time to get things all squared away.

The reading for this week can be downloaded here. It's an article called "Language and Conversation" by H.P. Grice, and it's another framework you can use (good for analyzing conversation, but otherwise generally fascinating). It's on the long side, but the point is to get the gist of his framework (the cooperative principles and the maxims). I can't speak highly enough about this article.

If you go to the CE6 page, you'll notice a new column: OCT 8. This will give you your current percentage (the percentage of the stuff that's already been completed). It's slightly misleading, since, you know, if you fail to complete one assignment out of three, your percentage is 66.6%. If you fail to complete one assignment out of 100, though, your percentage is 99%. So currently, we haven't done as much as we will have at the end, so it's still easy to affect your percentage dramatically. Keep that in mind when you look at your percentage.

I gave groups 1 and 2 four points each for finishing first and pictionary, and groups 3 and 4 two points for participating. Hurray!

I'm going to be putting some examples of Essay 2 onlne slowly but surely. Look out for them over the coming week.

October 6, 2008

For next time:

Read chapters 10, 13, 16 and 19 in Metaphors We Live By.

This week's chapter in The Bedford Guide is chapter 12 (or chapter 13 in the 8th edition). The companion piece can be downloaded by clicking here.

This week's web writing assignment is deceptively simple: Write 8-10 sentences of a connected text without using any metaphors. When I say "connected text", I mean any kind of narrative (the subject is totally up to you), not, say, a series of bullet points. It can be fiction, non-fiction, opinion, whatever. Go nuts. (Remember that web writing assignments are due by midnight before class [i.e., the midnight that comes at the end of Sunday].)

This week's disquisition (three straight bullets beginning with "this week's". Huh...) is to analyze the episode of The Simpsons entitled "Homer's Enemy". You can watch it online thanks to the magic of the internet here. I want you to focus your analytical skills on answering this question: Based on the logic of the episode, who is the villain or "bad guy" in this episode: Homer Simpson or Frank Grimes? Use evidence from the episode to support your answer. In order to fully understand the episode, you need some background information about several other Simpsons episodes, and I've summarized that in this document. Download it and be sure to read it, because the information is crucial to fully understanding the most important scene in the episode. If you want more background information, or want to cull the episode for quotes and don't want to skip around in the video, you can go to this site which will provide you with a summary of the episode and other information.

If you're doing an ad for your paper (or ad campaign), I scanned in another article about analyzing ads which you can download and read (and use as a source) by clicking here.

September 30, 2008

I've scanned chapters 4 and 5 of Metaphors We Live By and uploaded them so you can download them. Here they are:

Remember that you can read chapters 1 through 3 at this website.

September 29, 2008

Several things to do for next time:

Read chapters 1 through 5 of George Lakoff and Mark Johnson's Metaphors We Live By. Chapters 1 through 3 and the first part of 4 can be found here. I'll set up my scanner and try to scan the rest of chapter four and also chapter five in for those who weren't in class.

The chapter to read this week is chapter 21 in the 7th edition of The Bedford Guide; chapter 22 in the 8th edition. The companion piece can be downloaded here.

Essay 2 has been assigned. Get started right away looking for data to analyze.

For your web writing assignment, find a TV commercial on YouTube (or elsewhere; YouTube's just easiest) and analyze it in a way similar to what we did in class. How does it work to sell stuff to its target audience? Be sure to link to it on your assignment. (Oh, now that I'm remembering the assignment as it's written on the CE6 page, you can do a print add, too. Something that we can see, though.)

For your disquisition, take a look at this comic, and analyze the heck of it. Tell me absolutely everything about it. For specifics, go to the assignment description on the CE6 page.

Remember: If you ever have any questions about anything, feel free to e-mail me at any time.

September 23, 2008

Essay 1 is due next Monday by the start of class. You must turn in a version to Turnitin.com. To do so, either set up an account and submit it (as detailed below), or e-mail a copy to me. Remember that you need at least four sources and a works cited page (plus at least three full pages of text).

For next time, please read Jay Chiat's "Illusions Are Forever". If you have the 7th edition of The Bedford Guide, it's on pages 460-462. If you have the 8th edition, the reading has been cut. Luckily, it's online, and can be read here. Read that by next time, and bring an advertisement to class (preferably a magazine ad). Or bring a couple.

In addition, we'll be doing our second peer editing assignment this week. In order to do the assignment, I need to have a rough draft by tonight (September 23rd). If you didn't do disquisition 4, do it now, and get the paper to me, or you won't be able to participate in the second peer editing assignment (which will, of course, negatively affect your grade).

Regarding Taryn's question in class today, if you'd like to download the PowerPoint presentation I gave on typos, punctuation and citation, you can do so by using one of the two download methods below:

Download the .ppt File: PowerPoint
Download a .pdf Version: PDF

The .pdf will be easier to manage, but won't have the animations that the PowerPoint file has, if that's important to you.

September 16, 2008

This week, I'd like you to do the following (kind of light):

Write up a first draft of Essay 1. This will count as your disquisition for the week, so you can stick to the 2-3 page limit, if you'd like (your final draft, of course, will have to be at least three full pages of text, not including the works cited page). Try citing the various articles we've read and writing up a works cited page.

The two chapters from the book I'd like you to look at are chapters 9 and 10. The guides can be downloaded here: Chapter 9; Chapter 10. Those two chapters will be good ones to look at and think about as you prepare your draft.

The web writing assignment involves some light internet research. I'd like you to find out more about ProEnglish.org, the group backing the bill, and what the status of the Official English movement is today. We know the 2005 bill didn't pass, but what's happened since then?

There's going to be a peer editing assignment for your Essay 1 drafts, but I'm not sure if that assignment is going to take place before or after our next class. I'm going to think about it and make a decision about the same time your rough drafts are due, so check back here often to see if I've come to a decision.

Be sure you've got your reading books and have started reading! I've already started mine.

[P.S.: This is that bizarre site I was talking about in class: TimeCube.com. I definitely do not endorse the site, nor do I claim any responsibility for any of the content. It's simply one of those strange things one can come across on the internet.]

[P.P.S.: Here's that sample works cited .doc that I promised: download here. I didn't include one for Pages, because its interface is fairly straightforward.]

September 9, 2008

Bear with me; there's a lot of information that needs to look at this week. Here are the groups:

Group 1: Heather Cunningham, Lizette Hernandez, Craig Krpan, Dean Roman, Dean Sebata
Group 2: Darlene Espinosa, Ruben Flores, Dominic Lopez, Jacqueline Winkler
Group 3: Lucy Bowden, Connor Kelly, Brynn Pittman, Amanda Valona
Group 4: Savannah Albitre, Courtney DeFrank, Justin Dieter, Taryn Ruiz

And, just as a reminder, each group has selected the following books to read for the English 100 Book Festival:

Group 1: A Room with a View by E. M. Forster (finish by October 27th)
Group 2: Sylvie and Bruno by Lewis Carroll (finish the first volume by October 27th [note: there are two volumes: Sylvie and Bruno, and Sylvie and Bruno Concluded. Both are fairly short])
Group 3: The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, Written by Himself by Frederick Douglass (finish by October 27th)
Group 4: Tender Is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald (finish books 1 and 2 by October 27th)
Group Me: Old New York by Edith Wharton

I've linked to the full text of each book, as each one chosen is out of copyright, and has been put up online to be read for free. And I have to say, I've never seen a class choose a more challenging and/or obscure set of books--including the one chosen for me. I'm mightily impressed!

For review purposes, I'll re-explain the group competition. You see the standings above (and by the way, if you want to change your group's colors, just let me know). Those standings will be updated after each class. Your group will earn points throughout the course of the semester for doing (or not doing) various things, and the group with the most points at the end will win the group competition, the reward being 1% extra for all group members. Of immediate interest is the simplest way to gain or lose points as a group. If all your group members show up on time to class, your group will get +1 point. If your group is the first group to show up on time to class, you get +2 points (and there can be ties). If any of your group members is tardy, your group gets +0 points. If any of your group members is absent, your group gets -1 point. The group competition will start at the beginning of our next class.

Regarding your online activity grade, most of you are doing fantastic, but just to make sure we're clear, to get a 1 and not a zero for your weekly online activity grade, you must do more than what is assigned. What does this mean? This means that if I asked you to post in the "Books You've Read" forum and also assigned a Web Writing assignment, and that's all you did for the week, you get a zero. What counts towards a 1? Posting in the reading discussion forums; responding to or commenting on another student's post (e.g., reading another student's Web Writing assignment and commenting on it); responding to or commenting on one of my posts; adding something significant to an off-topic discussion. This is what you must do to receive a 1 (remember that this is 5% of your grade). In addition, I will award 2 group points per week to the most active group. The overall idea is to be active. Again, most everyone has done a great job, but I don't want the minority of you not participating to slip through the cracks.

The assignments to be completed by our next class period are as follows:

Please read Geoff Pullum's "Here Come the Linguistic Fascists", Jeff Nunberg's "Lingo Jingo" (that document can also be read online here), and the LSA Statement on Language Rights.

For our disquisition, I wanted to break from the reading and Essay 1. Prompted by a personal experience, I'd like to ask you: What was your worst experience in school? Not this year, necessarily, but any year: preschool, kindergarten, elementary, and all the way up. Try your hand at the non-fiction narrative style and let us know what the worst of your schooling was like.

The Bedford Guide chapters for this week are chapter 30 and chapter 32 in the 7th edition (in the 8th edition they're chapters 32 and 34, respectively, but the guides I wrote up still hold).

Now that you have your books, check out the website devoted to the English 100 Book Festival. For a detailed description of the actual requirements for your Book Festival presentation, download this .pdf.

Your Web Writing assignment coincides with your first peer-editing activity. Since the second disquisition is still fresh in your mind, I'd like you to read one of the following two disquisitions and comment on it (one is pro Official English, and one is con, so you can take your pick. To make it interesting, I'd read the paper that took the opposite stance you took):
- Pro: .doc|.pdf
- Con: .doc|.pdf
These papers have had the author information removed, and are not from this class (or, necessarily, this semester). What I'd like you to do is download one, read it, and then give your assessment of it on the CE6 page as our third Web Writing assignment. Give it a C, S and M score out of 5 (they both meet the minimum length requirement, so ignore L), and explain each score with a short paragraph or sentence (just a couple sentences, if that). After that, comment on the arguments. Which are effective? Which need work? What will the opposing side think of each argument? Let us know what you think.

Couple general announcements: the CE6 system on campus is going to be updated every week on Fridays from 6:30 a.m. to 8:30 a.m. If you ordinarily use our site at that time, be aware that you will no longer be able to for the rest of the semester.

Also, the Fullerton College Writing Center is open. What is it? Basically, it's a place where you can go to get help with your writing. It helps if you come in with a specific assignment or a specific question, and not a general, "I need help with writing"-type question. For more information, you can go to their website, or download this .pdf they've distributed.

[Note: If you'd like to download my PowerPoint presentation on typos, punctuation and citation, you can do so by clicking here.]

September 4, 2008

This is a general reminder: The deadline to drop a class without penalty (i.e., without receiving a W) is this Saturday, September 6th. If you have any classes you've stopped attending or a class you intend to drop, I recommend you do it by this Saturday, otherwise you'll be stuck with a W for a class you never even planned to finish, and you'll have to retake the course just to get rid of it.

Also, the CE6 system on campus is going to be updated every week on Fridays from 6:30 a.m. to 8:30 a.m. If you ordinarily use our site at that time, be aware that you will no longer be able to for the rest of the semester.

August 26, 2008

I made a slight mistake in the schedule (which is probably why I felt so rushed yesterday). Essay 1 is due on September 29th, NOT September 22nd. I'm in the process of changing all references to the due date of Essay 1, so bear with me, but this makes it official: Essay 1 is due on September 29th (week 7). Additionally, you don't need to read the Pullum article or the LSA statement now; that'll be for next time.

August 25, 2008

There are several things to be done before our next class period, but you'll have plenty of time to do them, seeing as we have a long break until our next session (September 8th). So, here goes:

Please read Richard Rodríguez's "Public and Private Language", pp. 524-529 in BG (note: if you have the 8th edition, it's on pages 571-576).

Essay 1 has been assigned. Download the .pdf and read the assignment. If you have questions, e-mail me.

Preferably without having read any of the articles we're going to read yet, I'd like you to write your second disquisition on whether or not America should adopt English as its official language. Why or why not? And what would that entail? What would change if we did adopt it? Would there be negative and positive consequences? More of one and the other? Rely on your intuition rather than any sources when you write this up.

In conjunction with the assignment of Essay 1, there are several articles I'd like you to read. The first is a speech by Rep. Steve King of Iowa (download it by clicking here) supporting House Bill 997, which you can also download and take a look at. The bill would make English the official language of the United States. Previosly, there were a couple other articles I wanted you to read, but I've pushed them to the following week: you don't need to read them now.

The chapters of The Bedford Guide I'd like you to look at are 2 and 11. The companion pieces for each chapter can be downloaded here: Chapter 2; Chapter 11.

Small assignment: On the forums, there's a topic called "Books You've Read". I'd like you to post in there a list of every college-level book you've read that was originally written in English. Feel free to also list other books you've read, but I want to make sure you list those.

For your web writing assignment, I want you to review a television show (an episode of something). To do so, I'd like you to use Chapter 11 of The Bedford Guide as a guide. Also, I'd now like you to start learning about web writing and what makes it different (we'll talk about this in class next time). To get your started, head over to Mark Fullmer's site and read what he's written about web writing (click here). He also links to several other excellent pieces on the web that try to give you a rundown of the differences between web writing and academic prose: check them out. In order to assist you in getting things to look the way you want to, I'd like you to read my introduction to HTML, which you can download and read here. Whenever you make a post on the forums, you can check the little box that reads "Use HTML". If you check that box, you can type HTML into the form, and get your text to look as interesting as you want. [Note: If you don't have time to watch a TV show at its regular hours and don't have TiVo, check out Hulu.com. It's got a ton of shows that you can watch online in full for free.]

If you check your progress on the CE6 page, you might notice a grade that reads OA1. This is your online activity. If you got a zero for the first week, that means you didn't really interact with the CE6 page. This is 5% of your grade, and should be simple: make sure you don't lose points needlessly.

Oh, they templates! If you'd like to download a .doc template for all your disquisitions and essays, click here (if you use Pages for the Mac, click here). And, finally, here's the .docx template (click here).

August 18, 2008

Welcome to the Hybrid version of English 100! Below you'll find links to .pdf's of the schedule and syllabus for the course. If you can't open .pdf's, all you need to do is download Acrobat Reader, which can be downloaded for free here. Here are the links:

If you're looking for our CE6/WebCT site, please go to http://distanceed.fullcoll.edu/. You will still be able to view this webpage once you get there (it's a link in the lefthand navigation bar that says "Class Website"), so don't worry about getting all the information you need from this page right now; just head on over to the CE6 page. (Note: Your initial user name should be your full student ID, and your initial password should be your six digit date of birth in the form mmddyy.)

NOTE: New information! Apparently they've changed the login procedure for the CE6 page. To log into our CE6 page, please download and read this .pdf put together by the Fullerton College Distance Education department. It will explain exactly what you need to do to log into our CE6 page.

Here are the various assignments due by our next class:

Read Robert Hartwell Fiske's "Don't Look It Up! The Decline of the Dictionary" on pages 171-173 in The Bedford Guide, 7th edition. If you have the 8th edition, the text, sadly, has been cut ("To make room for what?", Fiske might ask). The article, as it was originally published, appears in The Weekly Standard, and can be found here.

Go over (but don't bother reading word for word) chapters 1 and 15 (not 1 through 15) in The Bedford Guide. The companion pieces I wrote for each chapter can be found here (chapter 1), and here (chapter 15).

Read Write It Right by Ambrose Bierce. You can view the entire book here. (If you have trouble accessing the book, please e-mail me right away.) When I say "read", I want you to read the introduction (five paragraphs, it's called "Aims and the Plan"), and I want you specifically to read the following entries (which are listed after the section entitled "Aims and the Plan". This section is entitled "The Blacklist"), since I'll be discussing them in class:
1. Afraid
2. As for for As to
3. Bet for Betted
4. No Use
5. Obnoxious for Offensive
After that, you can read the whole thing, but you don't have to (it's actually pretty long). At the very least, read another ten or twelve entries (at random--they don't have to be in order). Twenty would be better. Read a bunch. They're each about a sentence long; it won't take you long at all.

Of the extra entries you read, I want you to choose five of them and use these for your first Web Writing assignment. Try to choose five that come from different parts of the book, so that we don't get everyone in the class taking entries from the A's. In picking these five, select the ones you think are either funny, perplexing, insulting, archaic--interesting. Once you've selected them, copy out each of the five and paste them into your Web Writing submission. Below each entry, explain in a sentence or two what it is you found interesting, amusing, etc. about each entry.

Your first disquisition has been assigned. It's to be 2-3 pages in the format I specified (check the syllabus), and what I want you to write about is your summer, and what's happened since. Did you do anything interesting? Anything terrible happen? Now that's it's over, what are your goals for this semester? What do you hope to do after English 100? After Fullerton College? After that? This is a light subject to get us all used to writing disquisitions. It is due Friday, which means that you either have to e-mail your disquisition to me, or turn it in to Turnitin.com by Friday at midnight.

Check out New Comm Ave, the literary journal for freshman composition that you'll have the chance to submit to at the end of the semester. The latest issue has been published and can be seen on the main page.

Take a look at some of the resource links I've posted on the left, along with the writing guide, and everything on our CE6 site. Introduce yourself on the message boards, and post about something.

For detailed instructions on exactly how to set up an account with Turnitin.com, please download and read this form. It will take you through the process step by step. If you have any questions, feel free to e-mail me.

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