A Grammar Tip: Countable and Uncountable Nouns

http://www.engvid.com/countable-uncountable-noun

Here is a short video to help sort out some of the confusion that arises with countable and uncountable nouns especially in relation to the articles that we should use with each type of noun.

Here are two handouts--one on countable and uncountable nouns, and one on articles--that can be found on the City College Writing Center Website:

http://www.ccny.cuny.edu/writing/upload/COUNTABLE-NOUNS.pdf

http://www.ccny.cuny.edu/writing/upload/ARTICLES.pdf

Check out the other handouts on the Writing Center's website. I saw one on the thesis statement, and one on introductions: two topics that we will spend a lot of time on in the coming weeks.

http://www.ccny.cuny.edu/writing/handouts.cfm

Generating Ideas for Your Literacy Narrative

There has been some question about how to begin writing your Literacy Narrative. We have read some examples of the genre, but it is hard to begin writing your own narrative. Often, this initial phase of composition is the most difficult. According to Wikipedia, Inventio, one of the five canons of rhetoric, is the method used for the discovery of arguments in Western rhetoric and comes from the Latin word, meaning “invention” or “discovery.” This is the beginning, and systematic search for arguments. As the Literacy Narrative is a personal narrative, to a certain extent, the invention techniques that you can use will draw from memory, and observations that are rooted in the particular experiences of your life.

Here are some ideas that might get you over the panic inspired by the blank page!  

Try Brainstorming

This is a no-brainer way to come up with the main idea for your essay. Remember—this is not the formal paper, but only an exercise to help generate ideas that you can use in your essay.

Here is what you need to do: sit in a quiet place with paper and pen, or computer, and make a list of everything that comes into your head about this topic for as long as you can. Free-associate, meaning write down as many ideas as you can, and see what kind of connections come to mind. Write down everything. What is most important in this exercise is that you do not try to evaluate what you write. Remember, no one is looking over your shoulder—no one will see this writing. It is only an exercise. Here are some points it might be helpful to keep in mind:

1. Don’t criticize yourself or even evaluate your ideas as you write them down. Just write down everything that comes to you, as it comes to you. You will have the opportunity to evaluate the merits of each idea later in the writing process.

2. Use your imagination and see where it takes you.

3. Get as many ideas down on paper as you can. They will not all be winners, but eventually you will hit on one or two that you would like to focus on. Usually the further down the list, the better the idea.

4. Combine ideas and build on them to improve and refine a point. This can lead you to more complex ideas about a topic.

Clustering

This method can help you to see the relationships that exist in your thinking between certain words and ideas. This method might be especially helpful for a personal, narrative essay because the clusters develop according to personal associations, experiences and ideas.

1.         Write one word (literacy, bilingualism, reading or writing might be good words to start with) that you think encapsulates the main idea of this literacy narrative on the upper third of a blank piece of paper. Circle this word.
2.     Keep an open mind and simply see what words, phrases and images come to mind. Write these on the paper, making sure that all these words relate (in your own personal way) with the first word that you chose. Draw circles around the new words and phrases. When you slow down, take a look and draw lines to connect what you think goes with what. Don’t overthink the connections or begin to analyze at this stage. Remember, keep it light and fluid. 
3.     See if you can notice a pattern emerge and keep going with it.
4.       If you feel that you are ready to write down the patterns and/or connections that you see taking shape, then take up a pen, or hop on the computer and begin to write.  Again, this writing is an exercise—no one will see this paper. Write without stopping and worry about the mechanics later.

Freewriting

Ideally, this practice comes after brainstorming and clustering. Once you look over your list or cluster diagram, then you can begin to put these connections and ideas into prose. In this method you set down a time or page limit (i.e. fill one page before you can get up or sit and write for 20 minutes without stopping) and keep writing until that requirement has been fulfilled. Write down everything that occurs. Here you should try, as much as possible, to write in complete sentences. Don’t stop writing, and even if you can’t find the words to write, just write something silly. And remember, no one will see this. This exercise will just help you generate ideas, and if, in one page of writing you find only one or two ideas that you think will work for your essay, don’t be discouraged. They will probably, in some way, form the main topic of your paper.  And that will make it much easier for you to begin the actual writing of your first draft.    

Assignment for Monday

I have posted the reading for Monday's homework on Blackboard. (Our class is finally up!) The essay is "Tell Them I Said Something" by Simon Ley, and though it is very different than Tan's narrative, in that there is no overt assertion of an autobiographical "I," his essay does explore a very personal idea about what words are, and what they can do. See if you can locate this thesis and see how he structures the essay by building on his thesis. 

For homework, please write a one-page analysis. Choose your own topic. Just a reminder--emailing homework is fine so long as it is a word or google.doc attachment so that I can make comments. Additionally, it is important that you email the assignment to me before the beginning of class so that I can begin to read Monday afternoon. Earlier is fine, but no later please. This does not apply to drafts of our essays because we will be working on revisions during our class-time, so please bring in hard copies.  

Lastly, I have posted another, more autobiographical, literacy narrative by Eudora Welty. This is not required reading, but if you would like another example of the genre, take a look. It is short, and similar to Tan's essay in that Welty explores her relationship to reading and writing through experiences that center around her mother. 

Please let me know if you have any questions. 

Have, Has and Had

Conjugating this verb can be a little tricky. Hope this video helps.

In Answer To Abdul's Comment About Colons

Here is what The Chicago Manual of Style has to say about the colon: 

You can use a colon to relate clauses and introduce statements, quotations, or lists. 

Relating Colons: 

The colon is used to mark a break in grammatical construction equivalent to that marked by a semicolon, but the colon emphasizes the content relation between the separated elements. The colon is used, for example, to indicate a sequence in thought between two clauses (shows that they are related) that form a single sentence or to separate one clause from a second clause that contains an illustration or amplification from the first.   

Here are the sentence examples from the book: 

• The officials had been in conference most of the night: this may account for their surly treatment of the reporters the next morning. 
• Many of the policemen held additional jobs: thirteen of them, for example, doubled as cabdrivers. 

In the first sentence the colon separates the two independent clauses. The first clause is a complete sentence with a subject: "The officials," and the verb: "had been." The second clause is also complete with the subject: "their," and verb: "treatment." These clauses are connected by "this," which points back to the experience of the officials, that they were in a conference most of the night. So that connection is emphasized by the use of the colon instead of a semicolon. 

In a similar way in the second sentence the is complete with a subject: "policemen," and verb: "held." The second is also complete with a subject: "Thirteen," and verb: "doubled." They are connected or related because the thirteen refers back to the number of policemen who hold an additional job as a cabdriver. 

If you chose to use a semicolon instead of a colon in these examples, you can, or you can separate these into two sentences. It is up to you which style you are most comfortable with, just make sure to be consistent. 

Abdul was using the colon in the sense that it can precede a list (and a list can be two or more things separated by a comma). His use of the colon would have been correct if he did not add the correlating conjunction "both": 

           On the other hand, they [words] depend  on the mind of both: speaker and listener, writer and reader. (Abdul's sentence.)

This is what the Chicago Manual of Style has to say about the colon that introduces a list or a series: 

A colon is commonly used to introduce a list or a series. If the list or series is introduced by an expression such as namely, for instance, for example, or that is, a colon should not be used unless the series consists of one or more grammatically complete clauses. If the second clause in Abdul's sentence had been an independent clause (a complete sentence with subject and predicate), and not a fragment, then the colon might have worked. 

Hope this helps! 

Here is a Youtube with some additional information on how to use a colon. 

Sentence Fundamentals

Here is the fundamental structure of the English sentence: the subject/predicate (verb) combination that provides the framework for a complete sentence. If either is missing then you have a fragment, not a sentence.

Aelfrich Grammaticus and the Importance of Copyediting

Aelfric (c. 955-c. 1020) was a monk and then abbot at the monastery of Cerne Abbas in Dorset, and later the first abbot of Eynsham in Oxfordshire. He was a prolific writer and translator and was called Aelfric Grammaticus ("The Grammarian"). He offers great advice to any writer, advice that was very important in his own day as the work that the monks were transcribing were laying the foundation of language that was becoming standard:

Now I desire and beseech, in God's name, if anyone will transcribe this book, that he carefully correct it by the copy, lest we be blamed through careless writers. He does great evil who writes carelessly, unless he correct it. It is as though he turn true doctrine into false error.  Therefore everyone should make straight that which he before bent crooked, if he will be guiltless at God's doom. 

Careless errors in transcription were mistakes that lasted, and could compromise the work of standardization that the monks, in the second half of the tenth century, were attempting.  

But I think this is admonishment is helpful to keep in mind though I might do away with such a prediction of doom if you ignore it.