ENG 2D7 -:- ENG 3U7 -:- EWC 4U

-:- YOU are cordially invited to join the Writing Club -:-

Beginning on November 29th, the Writing Club will meet in room 307 on Wednesdays at lunch and after school. To accomodate your busy schedules, there will be two meetings each week; simply attend the meeting that is most convenient for you.

Writing Club is an opportunity to work on your writing skills - grammar, punctuation, diction, etc. - through creative and personal writing. Each week, I will post three topics for writing. The writing topics will fall into three broad catagories: creative, issue-based, and "Word of the Week." Choose the topic that most appeals to you and prepare a 1 page piece of writing to bring to the meeting. You may writing in any genre: fiction, poetry, journalism, academic, etc.

I will present information about one aspect of writing - including sentence structure, punctuation and word choice - at the beginning of the meeting. Through a variety of exercises, you will apply what you've learned to your own writing.

Here are next week's topics for writing:

• On many TV programs, detectives have special abilities—such as psychic power, an awareness of details, etc.—that help them nab the bad guy. Write a short story featuring a special detective.

• Are grades an accurate reflection of your skill level? Why or why not?

• Write a piece based on the following definition:

exacerbate \ig-ZAS-ur-bayt\, transitive verb--to render more severe, violent, or bitter; to irritate; to aggravate; to make worse.

Exacerbate is from Latin exacerbare, "to irritate, to provoke, to aggravate very much," from ex-, intensive prefix + acerbare, "to make bitter, to aggravate," from acerbus, "bitter."

Here are some examples:
To reduce the stress that exacerbates my stuttering, I have meditated, done deep-breathing exercises, and floated under a condition of sensory deprivation in a dark, enclosed isolation tank.
-- Marty Jezer, Stuttering: A Life Bound Up in Words

By the 1920s a stubborn agricultural depression . . . badly exacerbated the problems of the countryside.
-- David M. Kennedy, Freedom From Fear

But they decided they did not like the San Francisco weather -- it exacerbated Alan's allergies -- and they moved to Florida at the end of 1986.
-- Sanford J. Ungar, Fresh Blood: The New American Immigrants