DAY 02 - CYCLE 02 - SEMESTER 02: 01-13-10

HANDOUTS FROM TODAY:

Today, you received a copy of several advertisements from a magazine.  Because I photocopied the pages, they are not available for download from the class wikisite. Please see me if your need a copy.

You also received a handout about appositives in sentence diagrams. 

IN CLASS TODAY:

Today, we worked on Unit 7 in the Sentence Diagramming Workbook, and you received an additional handout on appositives.  Remember that an appositive (a word, phrase or clause) renames another word phrase or clause in the sentence.  Wondering if something is an appositive?  Take out a word and see if it still works:
- Those flowers are pretty.
- Those flowers are pretty. Yup. This makes sense.
- Those Flowers are pretty. And this makes sense too.
So... Those (flowers) | are \ pretty
We also looked at possessives used as nouns, and expletives.  Today's lesson was tricky.  We'll practice these concepts tomorrow, too, before moving on.
After that, we spoke about yesterday's video clip and started to analyze HOW he tried to persuade the judges.  We looked at appeals to reason, to emotion, and how he tried to present himself as being worthy of listening to.  We also looked at his intentions.

Afterward, we analyzed a few advertisements, and the hidden assumptions behind them.  We used a chart to help:
               REASON                  EMOTION                 AUTHORITY

THINK



DO




FEEL

HOMEWORK:
Read and annotate the introduction in your Seagull Reader: Essays (2nd Ed.), Edited by Joseph Kelly.
The introduction appears on pages 3-21 of the text. It is not an easy read throughout, since it presents information in much the same way a textbook does. The toughest part will be understanding "logical arguments," but the rest should go fairly smoothly. Take notes, concentrate, read it AWAY from the computer/cell phone/TV/anything with an on switch and do your best. We'll start talking about the ideas tomorrow, and you'll have a quiz on the introduction on Thursday. Why a quiz? Because the material presented in the introduction constitutes the set of tools we will be using in the rest of the unit to build a better understanding of the art of persuasion: if you don't fully understand the tools and how they work, you can't build much. If you have questions about what you read or are having trouble, feel free to post a comment here. That way, I'll have a good idea of where we need to focus our efforts tomorrow!