ENG 2D7

- : - This Week In Room 320 - : -

Tuesday --> midterm exam (1.5 hours)

Thursday --> draft of Henry IV, Part I written assignment due

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Please review the following INSTRUCTIONS for writing your exam:

You are allowed to bring into the exam:

• pens/whiteout
• water
• a dictionary (to be used only during the proofreading stage)

Step 1: Read the entire passage 3x (5 minutes).

Step 2: Free-write about the passage to discover your personal response (5 minutes).

Step 3: Answer the "elements to consider" questions on your handout (20 minutes).

Step 4: Find details from the text to support your response (15 minutes).

Step 5: Formulate your thesis statement (5 minutes).

Step 6: Compose a commentary on the passage, including the central purpose of the passage and its literary features and effects. You are required to have an introduction followed by fluid, unified paragraphs and a conclusion. Use your thesis statement to anchor your response—your final product should be 3-5 paragraphs in length. Remember that a commentary is one specific type of essay which is written in a formal style appropriate to literary criticism (30 min.).

Step 7: Proofread your commentary and revise accordingly (10 minutes).

-:- Commentary Writing -:-

What is a commentary?

The most useful answer is to be found under the term used by the French: explication, which can be defined as: “a formal and close analysis of a text: its structure, style, content, and imagery - indeed every aspect of it.”

What is the difference between a commentary and an essay?

The writing of essays is a skill that goes back to classical times, and just as an essay can focus upon any one of a virtually unlimited range of topics, it can also be written in a wide variety of styles and attitudes and degrees of formality. It is one of the most flexible of literary forms, but it generally consists of an introduction, a body, and a conclusion with some form of argument linking the parts together. A commentary is one specific type of essay which is written in a formal style appropriate to literary criticism, and is normally only concerned with analyzing a single, relatively short text. In IB exams this will be a poem or a prose extract no more than about 60 lines in length.

Resources for further reading:

How to Read Literature Like a Professor by Thomas Foster

Writing About Literature by Edgar Roberts

N. B., The evaluation rubric for your midterm exam is posted on the Glee forum.

a msg from PEN Canada re: Freedom to Read Week

PEN Canada and the Toronto Public Library

celebrate Freedom to Read Week with

“Inventory: Writers Tracking Conflict and War”.

Award-winning and nominated Canadian writers David Bezmozgis, Dionne Brand, Bernice Eisenstein, Camilla Gibb, Rawi Hage and Ann-Marie MacDonald will join PEN Canada writer in exile Senthil Ratnasabapathy and Canadian folk legend Bruce Cockburn and rapper Shad. Carol Off, host of CBC Radio’s “As It Happens”, will serve as host.

“Inventory”, which is part of the Toronto Public Library's month-long celebration of reading called Keep Toronto Reading, will mark a ten-year partnership between PEN Canada and the Toronto Public Library to promote awareness of free expression during Freedom to Read Week. The Toronto Public Library is a co-sponsor of the event.

Friday February 23, 2007 at 7:30pm sharp

Doors open at 7:00pm

Toronto Reference Library: Atrium, 789 Yonge Street (north of Bloor)

Tickets $10 - $20 sliding scale. Tickets available at the door or in advance at the Toronto Women’s Bookstore for in-store purchase only (73 Harbord Street)

For more information, please contact PEN Canada, tel 416.703.8448 x10 or

agogia@pencanada.ca. Web site: www.pencanada.ca.

About Freedom to Read Week

Freedom to Read Week is an annual event that encourages Canadians to think about and reaffirm their commitment to intellectual freedom, which is guaranteed them under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Freedom to Read Week is organized by the Freedom of Expression CommitteeBook and Periodical Council. of the

About the Toronto Public Library

The Toronto Public Library is North America's busiest public library system. Every week over 325,000 people visit its 99 branches and borrow more than half a million items. To learn more about Toronto Public Library, visit www.torontopubliclibrary.ca or call Answerline at 416-393-7131. Keep Toronto Reading is Toronto Public Library's month-long celebration of the joy of reading. Throughout February, an exciting line-up of programs, events and activities will enlighten, engage and entice. Full program details on torontopubliclibrary.ca.

ENG 3U

-:- Clarification -:-

You may not use your text or notes during the in-class writing activity on Tues, Jan 9, 07.

ENG 3U

Culminating Activity for Reading Lolita In Tehran

-:- in-class writing assignment on Tues, Jan 9, 07 -:-

Instructions: In a short, focused essay, present your interpretation of Nafisi's memoir based on one of the following topics:

1. The interweaving of reality and fiction and the importance and danger of dreams are important themes in Reading Lolita In Tehran. Examine the parallels apparent between the works studied in Nafisi's class and the reality of the situation in Iran.

2. Using the following explanation of "narrative," explain why Reading Lolita In Tehran is (or is not) a successful narrative.

For general purposes in Semiotics and Literary Theory, a 'narrative' is a story or part of a story. A story is any form of text, regardless of medium, describing a sequence of events caused and experienced by characters, some of whom may be fictional. (This sequence of events may be linear or nonlinear.)

It may be spoken, written or imagined, and it will have one or more points of view representing some or all of the participants or observers.

In stories told verbally, there is a person telling the story, a narrator whom the audience can see and hear, and who adds layers of meaning to the text nonverbally. The narrator also has the opportunity to monitor the audience's response to the story and to modify the manner of the telling to clarify content or enhance listener interest.

This is distinguishable from the written form in which the author must gauge the readers likely reactions when they are decoding the text and make a final choice of words in the hope of achieving the desired response.


(Note: the essay rubric that will be used to evaluate this assignment is available on the Glee forum as a downloadable handout.)


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Note: The interpretation presented in your essay must:

• provide an explanation of something in or about the work that is not immediately obvious
• result from an intellectual process in which you select, gather, and reassemble information and evidence (i.e., close textual analysis) within the framework of your own ideas