Monday, November 30, 2009

Can y'all believe it's the last day of November--already? Oh, my!

We have a very busy week ahead of us, peeps, with both the Honors Breakfast and the Senior Breakfast during the morning periods AND final deadlines for some colleges AND preparation for a Hamlet test AND a satire essay for the sophys. Much to do, much to do--and progress reports, supposedly, will go home Friday.

We are on a downhill train ride to Winter Break, and we have much to do in the interim.

APees: Today, we need to talk about the semester test; we are going to take it in two parts. The first part will be the day before Winter Break, and will be strictly content-based, multiple choice, on everything from The Awakening and Bovary to Hamlet. The second part, based on an actual AP exam, will be given during the normal testing window in January. I am doing this, like some other AP instructors, because when we resume instruction in January I need to move on quickly to new content in order to prepare you for the national exam in May, and also because I watched the scores plummet last year when we moved exams back those few weeks. Taking a content-specific exam after two weeks of inertia is deleterious to your studies, and I want you all to be successful. ALSO--today, we start really discussing Hamlet, using some guided questions on Act V as a starting point. Why did he fail to avenge his father, but instead ended up avenging his mother (one interpretation)? Why did he fail to act for so long? Is he, as Harold Bloom famously postulated, the first real human being in literature? Why or why not?

Sophys: Catch up, clean up--new content vocabulary is on the board (also from Candide) and the Candide check-reading test will be Thursday. The number of the counting to the day of the test shall therefore be three, not five, nor two, except that thou goest on to three. We need to reintegrate into our satire unit, and I have a creative way of doing that, and then we need to establish due dates and expectations for the Author of the Day presentations. Edusoft Benchmark testing is next week, peeps, but you will earn points for participation.

Common Errors: Focus Paper #1 for APees

If you have read the previous blog entry, you may have noticed that I posted the sophomore errors, as well. These entries are certainly not intended to embarrass anyone, but I think it's good practice to look at trends and see where groups of students are erring. I plan to cover this material in class in an ongoing fashion, but for your reference (and in the event that you lost the half-sheet I gave you today after the Bovary quiz) here are the common errors for the Bovary/Awakening papers.


Common Errors/Focus Paper #1 2008-2009

1. Students tend to write “in the book” instead of in-universe
2. Syntax errors—fragments, run-ons, lengthy sentences with awkward comma splices
3. Their/there
4. You and I: Second and First-person narratives (I believe/I feel/In my summer reading project I had to read two novels/Summer reading is normally boring)
5. Command form: Take Edna, for example. (What if I don’t want to?)
6. Informality in diction: slutty, studly, OMG
7. Accept v. except
8. Transitions (awkward or non-existent)
9. Cannot v. can not
10. Quotes in Space: Many papers featured well-selected text evidence, randomly placed within the text, or not introduced at all. (Review appropriate quotation usage.)
11. It’s v. its
12. Errors in content (infrequent but memorable): Edna and Emma confusions; errors in plot or setting
13. Lack of conclusion or weird conclusion: “Well, they got what they deserved!”
14. TENSE: Stay in present tense when evaluating literature.

That said, the papers were fairly strong overall, and many of you who have already contacted me about revision have good ideas about developing your writing skills with each paper. Bravo to all of you!

Tuesday, August 26, 2008

Today is the Primary Election Day! If you are 18 and are registered, please exercise your right to be heard and go to your polling place before school (they open at 7!) or after seventh period (they close at 7!) Also, if you are going to be 18 before the general election in November, go see Ms. Davison in the Magnet Suite for a registration form. We can register you to vote here at Boone, or you can register at any public library, most post offices, or right down the street from Boone at the Supervisor of Elections office on Kaley. VOTE. It is your privilege and your right.

Gifted II: Existentialism in a Nutshell; grammar review #1; assign outside reading for this quarter (The Count of Monte-Cristo by Alexandre Dumas. The abridged version is just fine; I do have a few copies in my classroom for any interested parties. The unabridged features 300 more pages of French countryside descriptions and not much else. It's such a great book! I have a character list for each of you, too.) Tha Author of the Day today is Mark Leyner.

APees: Common Errors on Focus Paper #1 (like not turning one in. . .), close reading of passages from Bovary; preparation for first multiple-choice practice session. Bring a pencil tomorrow.

Lecture Notes on Madame Bovary and Flaubert

This lecture is from Thursday, August 21, 2008, bad weather notwithstanding:

Outline on board:

-physiognomy (connecting physical traits to psychological or personality characteristics)

-themes and motifs in the novel

• condemnation of the bourgeoisie
• failure to communicate/connect
• naturalism (heredity and social environment) and its implications with the characters
• powerlessness of women--Emma v. Leon with contrasting outcomes but similar desires
• debunking Romantic ideology/Emma's fantasies
• institution of marriage itself

-Flaubert and Romanticism/Realism

• dared to write the novel to uproot his deep-seated Romanticism
• Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Alexandre Dumas, Victor Hugo
• sentimentalism
• Romantic hero--notably absent from Bovary
• "Imagination is rich; the world is cold and empty"--the persistent belief that rationalism had robbed men of illusions/dreams
• Romantic ideology often espouses that Nature is a healing entity, but Flaubert seems to see rural life as backward and suffocating--not the exalted, idealized life envisioned by the English Romantics

-Transition into Naturalism and Realism

• Balzac, Stendahl, Zola, Guy de Maupassant ("The Necklace")
• often criticized for being too bleak, too despairing
• le mot juste--Flaubert's legendary perfectionism
• avoiding banality--but what do we idealize today? The popular culture quest for instant fame, the current foreclosure crisis--Bovary is as relevant today as ever before
• Memoirs of a Madman--Flaubert's memoirs, with telling evidence of the autobiographical nature of Madame Bovary

Question: Does American popular culture overemphasize romantic (not Romantic--there's a difference) ideals in relationships between lovers? Specifically, between men and women? Think about "The Hills," "Gossip Girl," any typical soap-operatic fantasy, the Twilight books. . .