If your alarm clock could hear you, what would you say to it? Write a lengthy paragraph that is well-written and thought-provoking in which you address your alarm clock. Here’s your chance! Tell him how you feel!
Think backward through your life as if it were a film rewinding. Stop for a moment at signficant events, interchanges, places, and relationships. How far back can you remember? What early memories rise up most readily from your mind? What places and people remain most vivid in your mind? Are there certain smells or textures, sounds or tastes that evoke a specific incident from your childhood? Even in adulthood, eating a juicy red tomato reminds me strongly of sitting in my grandpa’s garden with salt shaker in hand, my toes digging deep within the warm sandy earth as I savored the taste of my favorite treat. Perhaps you remember climbing a tree as a child and finding yourself too scared to come down. A bicycle accident may be a vivid memory, or the first time you knew you could swim may make you smile. Write a page long essay describing as vividly as possible a childhood memory that particularly affects you.
In this excerpt from her speech given at the Women’s Rights Convention in Akron, Ohio in 1852, Sojourner Truth uses vivid language to emphasize the plight of women throughout American history.
That man over there say
a woman needs to be helped into carriages
and
lifted over ditches
and to have the best place everywhere.
Nobody
ever helped me into carriages
or over mud puddles
or gives me a
best place. . .
And ain’t I a woman?
Look at me
Look at my arm!
I have
plowed and planted
and gathered into barns
and no man could head me.
. .
And ain’t I a woman?
I could work as much
and eat as much as a
man–
when I could get to it–
and bear the lash as well
and
ain’t I a woman?
I have born 13 children
and seen most all sold into
slavery
and when I cried out a mother’s grief
none but Jesus heard
me. . .
and ain’t I a woman?
that little man in black there say
a
woman can’t have as much rights as a man
cause Christ wasn’t a
woman
Where did your Christ come from?
From God and a woman!
Man
had nothing to do with him!
If the first woman God ever made
was
strong enough to turn the world
upside down, all alone
together women
ought to be able to turn it
rightside up again.
Now it’s your turn. Choose a social issue that is prevalant in today’s society and write a poem in which you address it creatively. Imitate Sojourner Truth’s style as much as possible.
Write two paragraphs in which you discuss what you believe to be your responsibility as a human. Why are you here? What can you do to make the world a better place? How can we live together in harmony?
Following is a popular poem titled “Theme for English B” written by Langston Hughes. Read it carefully, and then write an introduction poem of yourself using the poem as a model.
THEME FOR ENGLISH B
By Langston Hughes
The instructor said,
Go home and write
a page tonight.
And let that page come out of you—
Then, it will be true.
I wonder if it’s that simple?
I am twenty-two, colored, born in Winston-Salem.
I went to school there, then Durham, then here
to this college on the hill above Harlem.
I am the only colored student in my class.
The steps from the hill lead down into Harlem
through a park, then I cross St. Nicholas,
Eighth Avenue, Seventh, and I come to the Y,
the Harlem Branch Y, where I take the elevator
up to my room, sit down, and write this page:
It’s not easy to know what is true for you or me
at twenty-two, my age. But I guess I’m what
I feel and see and hear, Harlem, I hear you:
hear you, hear me—we two—you, me, talk on this page.
(I hear New York too.) Me—who?
Well, I like to eat, sleep, drink, and be in love.
I like to work, read, learn, and understand life.
I like a pipe for a Christmas present,
or records—Bessie, bop, or Bach.
I guess being colored doesn’t make me NOT like
the same things other folks like who are other races.
So will my page be colored that I write?
Being me, it will not be white.
But it will be
a part of you, instructor.
You are white—
yet a part of me, as I am a part of you.
That’s American.
Sometimes perhaps you don’t want to be a part of me.
Nor do I often want to be a part of you.
But we are, that’s true!
As I learn from you,
I guess you learn from me—
although you’re older—and white—
and somewhat more free.
This is my page for English B.
According to National Public Radio (NPR), “Fifty Years ago, millions of Americans sat by their radios and listened to This I Believe. For five minutes each day, they heard from statesmen and secretaries, teachers and cab drivers, all of whom spoke about their most deeply held beliefs. ” A few years ago NPR decided to bring back the This I Believe series. Each week NPR broadcasts essays written about various listeners that outlines what that person truly believes. Read the example below and then write your own “This I Believe” paragraph.
This I Believe
I believe in the power of music. To heal, to influence, to commemorate, to
celebrate, and to recall. It can be extremely loud, or whispering soft, but either way it can
speak to the soul. Even though there are many different types of music, and I do not love
all of them, each one still bears a message, tells a story, and has the ability to commune with me on a deeper level.
Write a “recipe” poem using words such as heat, beat, boil, simmer, and so on in which you describe yourself or school or the human race or your neighborhood or any other topic of interest. Below is an example:
Street
Four cups of sewer water (don’t boil to make sanitary)
Eight pounds of just undercooked pork
With ten slices of processed “American” cheese
Five clean needles, along with twenty dirty ones
A couple of pimp hats, along with the snakeskin shoes
A dirty pound of crack, along with a failed dream or two
A baby who does n’t have a chance, and a mother who doesn’t care
Mold together into a shape not particular (any way it fits)
Bake in the oven at broil
It’s ready when it’s burned to a black, flaky crisp
Tara Somers, age sixteen
Commas can be used to set off words not crucial to a sentence’s meaning. For example:
The movie, which has been in theaters for two weeks now, is about the struggles teenagers often face.
Write five sentences that use commas this way.
Interior monologues are records of a character’s unspoken thoughts. Reading an interior monologue might remind you of reading dialogue, except the character is speaking to himself or herself, not aloud or to another person.
Reflect on the kinds of thoughts that run through your mind when you’re bored in class and let your imagination wander. Then write an interior monologue in your own voice, recording these thoughts.
It may seem a little peculiar, but if you have something like he said or she sighed or they yelled after a piece of dialogue, you have to punctuate the dialogue with a comma, not a period. You can kind of see why this is the rule if you look at the following sentence: “Get back here.” he said. When you hit that period after “Get back here,” you stop, and then you have to lurch back into action with he said. The correct formulation is: “Get back here,” he said. Write five correctly punctuated sentences using dialogue similar to the one above.
Suppose the invention of a magical mailbox has made it possible to deliver letters to any person or group of people at any time in human history. To whom would you write a letter? Write the letter you’d like to send.
Parallelism means making sure the different components of a sentence start, continue, and end in the same way. It’s especially common to find errors of parallelism in sentences that list actions or items. For example, read this sentence:
I enjoy swimming in pools, lakes, and snorkeling in the ocean.
You expect the writer to continue listing items likes pools and lakes, but instead she throws in an –ing word into the mix (snorkeling). Because the items in the list of actions are varied in form, a parallelism error has been committed.
Try writing five sentences that list things or actions; make sure to pay attention to parallelism.
Choose something you’re wearing right now and pretend you’re about to put it up for auction on eBay. Write a paragraph singing its praises. Be careful about spelling and grammar – studies have shown that correctly spelled ads receive much higher bids on eBay than badly spelled ones.
What is the adage you dislike the most? Every cloud has a silver lining; Stop and smell the roses; There are other fish in the sea; If at first you don’t succeed, try, try, again? Write a two or three paragraph story in which someone cheerfully cites an adage and you let loose with your real feelings on the topic.
Imagine you are a dollar bill. Using the first person point of view (the pronoun “I”), describe what happens to you during the course of a week.
An oxymoron is the association of two contrary terms, such as jumbo shrimp or same difference. Write a short paragraph in which you use as many oxymoronic expressions as possible.
In literature, dystopias are unhappy societies where people live in fear. The world described in George Orwell’s 1984 is a classic dystopia. (By the way, do you know what word describes a place opposite of a dystopia?)
Come up with a fictional dystopia of your own and write two paragraphs describing it. What makes it so terrible? What are its inhabitants scared of? What is everyday life like?
An onomatopoeia refers to a word that has developed as a result of the sound that is heard. For instance, the word hoot is derived from the sound an owl makes. Read the following sentences:
When Emily open her soda, the sound was so loud that it woke her baby sister, who began to cry. Startled, Emily dropped her soda, which made a noise when it hit the floor.
A few onomatopoeic words can spice up that boring paragraph! For example:
When Emily open her soda, the crack was so loud that it woke up her baby sister, who began to screech. Startled, Emily dropped her soda, which hissed as it hit the floor.
Now it’s your turn. Write three sentences that are made more interesting by using onomatopoeic words. BE SURE TO UNDERLINE OR ITALICIZE THE ONOMATOPOEIAS IN EACH SENTENCE.
.
An elegy is a rather long poem that most often laments the death of a friend or public figure, but it may also mourn the passing of a way of life, express the author’s sorrow over the loss of a romantic partner, or simply present the writer’s thoughts about any solemn subject. Following is the first stanza of “Adonais,” an elegy written by Shelly on the death of John Keats:
I weep for Adonais – he is dead!
O, weep for Adonais, though our tears
Thaw not the frost which binds so dear a head!
And thou, sad Hour, selected from all years
To mourn our loss, rouse they obscure compeers,
And teach them thine own sorrow, say: with me
Died Adonais; till the Future dares
Forget the Past, his fate and fame shall be
An echo and a light unto eternity!
First, identify two forms of personification used in the poem. Second, write an elegy of at least 10 lines about something or someone you have lost, or something that has changed irreversibly.
If you’re tired of conveying emotion with sentences like Randy was frightened or Sandy was happy, try describing body language: Randy cowered under his blanket or A grin lit up Sandy’s face, for example. In other words, SHOW, DON’T TELL! Write a lengthy paragraph about your first day of kindergarten and express the emotions you felt by describing your body language.
Twenty years have passed, and your high school has invited you to be the keynote speaker at a graduation ceremony. Write a speech in which you give advice to the seniors and discuss what your own life has been like in the years since you’ve graduated.
Point of view is the perspective from which a story is told. Write a two-paragraph story about a day in class using FIRST PERSON point of view (use the pronoun “I”) from the view of the last substitute teacher you had. In other words, pretend you are the substitute.
Personification occurs when an author gives human qualities to a non-human object or being. For instance, if we were to use personification when writing about a tree, we might ask the following questions:
Write a short paragraph in which you personify an inanimate object, such as a cell phone, ink pen, coke can, tube of toothpaste, or something of your choosing. You can’t use the tree example above!
Picture a room in your house, a classroom, or a favorite spot outside. Write a one-paragraph description of the place using imagery, figurative language that appeals to the senses of touch, sound, taste, smell, and sight. Be careful not to simply “list” the details in your paragraph. Aim for smooth transitions between sentences or thoughts. Let your readers feel as if they are “on the scene.”
A cliché is an overused phrase. While most of us use them in conversation, good writers of both fiction and nonfiction try to avoid clichés. (If we were speaking in clichés, we’d say they try to “avoid them like the plague!”) First, brainstorm a list of at least 5 clichés (Hint: What cliché could you use to say it’s raining very hard?) Next, edit the following sentences in which you remove the clichés and write an ORIGINAL substitution.
Assonance is the repetition of vowel sounds in a line of poetry. Alliteration is the repetition of consonant sounds in a line of poetry. Below is a poem written by Alfred Lord Tennyson titled “Break, Break, Break.” Identify the many examples of alliteration and assonance in the poem.
Break, break, break
On thy cold gray stones, O Sea!
And I would that my tongue could utter
The thoughts that arise in me.
O, well for the fisherman’s boy,
That he shouts with his sister at play!
O, well for the sailor lad,
That he sings in his boat on bay!
And the stately ships go on
To their haven under the hill;
But O for the touch of a vanished hand,
And the sound of a voice that is still!
Break, break, break,
At the foot of thy crags, O Sea!
But the tender grace of a day that is dead
Will never come back to me.
In your writing, strive for accuracy, but don’t qualify every other assertion with words like rather, mostly, little, extremely, really, and so on. Rewrite the following paragraph, removing all qualifiers:
Although almost everyone should be allowed to eat pretty much whatever he or she wants, I basically draw the line at eating pesto for breakfast. My little brother completely refuses to eat anything even slightly normal in the morning; he fully insists on eating pasta with pesto. My mother doesn’t really care, but I usually get really annoyed by it.
Imagine yourself sitting in a room that holds everybody who has ever been part of your family. What do these people look like? Notice facial features and body types. Which uncle laughs with his hands covering his mouth? How does the grandmother walk? What do you have in common with the people in the room? Write a poem similar to the one below, using the first line “I come from a long line of . . .”
I come from a long line of
Confusion,
A long line of
Patience
And understanding myself
When there’s no one who understands.
I come from
A long line
That never ends
But bends to the right
And then to the left.
I come from a long line of liars and fakers,
A line of cutters who step in front of me
In line, in a long line,
Where I come from.
Jennifer Robles, age sixteen
Write a poem of at least 16 lines in which you use “Because …” on one line and “You (or I) . . .” on the second line and repeating those two beginnings thereafter. A shortened example would be:
Because you decided to listen
You began to believe
Because you tried it
You became addicted, anguished, and lost
Because you left us
You became so very alone
Because you embraced that life
Your other life withered
Because you chose with wreckless abandon
You died throughout.
Its and it’s are often used interchangeably, but they are two very different words. Its signals possession, as in its name, its home, its hair, and it’s is a contraction of it is. It’s easy to understand why people confuse the two words. The most common way to show possession is to add an apostrophe and an s (Dorothy’s braids, Toto’s bark), which is perhaps the reason people frequently write it’s when they should write its. To avoid making the mistake, when you see the word it’s, check to make sure that if you substituted it is for the it’s, the sentence would still make sense. To get this straight in your head, write 10 sentences using its and 10 sentences using it’s. DUE Monday February 16th.
When we’re talking, we say suppose to, instead of the grammatically correct supposed to. Also, we tend to say use to, instead of the grammatically correct used to. But suppose to and use to are made-up phrases. To burn this rule into your brain, write 5 sentences that use supposed to and 5 sentences that use used to. DUE FRIDAY, JANUARY 23RD.
Write a letter to your future child. What do you want him or her to know about you? What kind of person do you hope this child will turn out to be? What do you want him or her to know about the world he or she is about to enter? Do not feel as though you have to answer any of these questions; come up with your own if you like. You should write AT LEAST 1/2 page.
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