Wednesday, May 21, 2008

Library visit, 5/21

Last minute research ideas for essay the fourth:

Check your MLA citation format against this cheesy commercial site's formatting.

Ready to type in essay the fourth? Go for it!

What do I do when I'm done?
  • Read the new CM Blog.
  • Read some more cool Yeats poems.
  • Check out Tom F.'s photos and read about the CM Rugby team here.
  • Read the other blog entries from over the course of the year.

Friday, May 16, 2008

All's well that Orwells...

Read Orwell's thoughts on the changing English language in his famous "Politics and the English Language" by clicking here.

And maybe it's time to do another googlenews search for the term "Orwellian" in case you don't exactly have a grip on how that word gets used these days.

Friday, May 9, 2008

Macbeth at the Met!

Macbeth as an opera? Read on...

Sunday, May 4, 2008

Library visit: May 5

Some tips to guide your research today:

1) Read introductions, prefaces, afterwords, and epilogues to works your authors have written. You'll find many of them on bookshelves in this very library! These will give you quotes from your authors about their works.

2) Don't forget to check for essays your authors have written. Check out some primary texts of theirs: Virginia Woolf , George Orwell, Doris Lessing, Jane Austen. For Housman, read the quotes from Housman's letters in Emily Grosholz's essays on "A.E. Housman" on EBSCO's Advanced Placement Source.

3) If you must simply type full text, at least search
EBSCO or Infotrac or JStor for the specific works your authors have written that might address the theme, setting, gender, resolution, or form issue on which you're focusing.



What do I do when I'm done?

Read the latest news on the CM Blog.

Read the latest story by yours truly in Antioch College's literary journal.


Thursday, March 27, 2008

Library visit, 3/27

In the library today, check that you have all body paragraphs properly researched and sourced. For research tips, check the blog entry from our first library visit.

When you are ready to submit your "final" draft, click here.


"What do I do when I'm done?" you ask?

Read the new CM blog.

Click on the hyperlinked text in the U-Va edition of The Ryme of the Ancient Mariner and look at the pretty illustrations from the original illustrated edition.

Practice writing a works cited page for your essay the first, second, or third. Follow the rules here.

Check out the extra credit possibilities below.

Solve this week's National-Public-Radio puzzle.

Thursday, March 20, 2008

Extra credit, quarter 3

Here are some extra credit opportunities for the third quarter. You must turn any of these in before the quarter closes.

-Write seven heroic couplets that serve as Pope-like epigrams offering advice to freshmen on how to be a good high school student.

-Create a monster. Using a graphic design program (and no internet images), create a monster of your own based on the description of the monster in the text of Frankenstein.

-Read another of Mary Shelley's novels and present a brief presentation to the class about how her writing style changed after Frankenstein, offering proof through quotations offered in a Powerpoint slideshow.

-Design a website using html that presents 19th century criticism of Frankenstein. Put some pretty pictures on the website as well to jazz it up and made the criticism more enticing to read.


Note: Quarter 1 and Quarter 2 extra credit opportunities are still being accepted. You may also scavenge extra credit opportunities from the non-honors blog if you must.

Monday, March 10, 2008

Library visit, 3/11 for Essay the Third

Here are some research ideas for each job you have to do in your essay-the-third.

Introduction:

-Find a print source in the library (encyclopedia of sports, book on your sport) that will verify the date/origin of your sport. Do not rely simply on internet data!

-Look up the sport in the OED to find what you can learn about the origin of the word.

-Head to the London Times, the Mirror, the Telegraph, the Metro, and the Evening Standard. Do a "popularity" search on their sports pages and come to a conclusion about how popular your sport is.

-Determine, after reading the articles above, the scope of your paper--England, Scotland, Ireland, Wales, India, Kenya, etc. In your thesis, you should identify the region you'll be discussing in your body paragraphs.



Body paragraphs:

-Find out from the articles in the newspapers above what the name of a professional organization is of your sport. Then go directly to that organization's website (google should not be required). This website might be able to give you some of the specialized rules, if any, of your sport in a particular region. (It might also give you a nice history of your sport there.)

-Find the name of an amateur organization of your sport by reading articles from the newspapers above. Go directly to that organization's website.

-Once you have figured out a professional or amateur player's name, try finding an interview with them. Type "their name" and "interview" into EBSCO or Infotrac or JStor to look for interviews.

-Try looking at sportsillustrated.com or the Sporting News websites for recent articles about your sport--type your sport and the region associated with it into their search bars.

-Have you found a piece of literature yet that mentions, references, or is inspired by your sport?

-Try searching for a poem at this poetry site. Or this one. Or try searching for a story here. Also try going back to the OED.

Thursday, January 10, 2008

Library Visit, essay the second

Today, you will find at least two secondary resources, namely fellow critics, who agrees with your positions regarding the text you have chosen to exclude from "next year's textbook." This will require you to read some secondary criticism of your chosen author. When you think you have stumbled upon a critic who agrees with one of your three central claims about the work, record all relevant bibliographical information along with a short quote that you can include in the body of your argument.

Browse through the contents and indices of the secondary texts in the library on the back or front tables looking for criticism on your author.

Try EBSCO's MAS Ultra search or Advanced Placement search.

Try Infotrac and JStor for other scholarly articles.

Specific author criticism from the Internet Public Library: Shakespeare, Gawain, Chaucer, Malory, Beowulf.

Monday, January 7, 2008

Extra credit, quarter 2

Here are some extra credit opportunities for you in the second quarter.

  • Memorize the fourteen line sonnet of Romeo and Juliet's that we discussed in class (25 pts).
  • Memorize the first seven lines of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight in middle English (25 pts).
  • Memorize the "dagger" soliloquy in Macbeth (25 pts).
  • Record and audio file of the description of one of the characters from the General Prologue to The Canterbury Tales in middle English (mp3 format) (25 pts).

All points apply to homework grades.

Bear in mind that first quarter extra credit can be turned in for second quarter extra credit too!