revision 4/4

Odaudah Equiano’s "Interesting Narrative" speaks of traffic in many different contexts. Throughout the entire narrative Equiano relates the nature of HUMAN TRAFFICKING- SLAVE TRADING (appositive).. Equiano also details how the TRAFFICKING OF GOODS played a role in the English economy and his narrative (PARTICIPLE). Strangely enough, Equiano RECOGNIZES his function as merchandise because of his slave position (active voice). Trafficking in Equiano’s "Interesting Narrative" refers to product and slave transactions, which consequently reinforces Equiano’s belief the he is nothing more than a valuable commodity. Therefore Equiano realizes the English economic view after he HAD BEEN ENSLAVED (passive voice). The English economy of exchange and transactions is learned and respected by Equiano through observing the WHITE MAN, GREEDY AND SAVAGE BUSINESSMEN (adjectives out of order).

Ophelia revised to active voice

All of the language she uses, although muddled, shows Ophelia knows what is her fate, to join the dead, and sings to prepare others for her impending death.
Ophelia keeps singing, using ambiguous language, to describe her death and future grave. Ophelia sings that “at his head” lies “a grass-green turf” (IV.v.33). Using “head” to represent the leader or the actual body part, from which all intellect, memory, emotions, and thoughts stem from; while “his” is referring to Ophelia (OED). Meanwhile “grass” could mean dismissed from position or to be freed from a fixed engagement (OED). Being “green,” surprisingly, could mean gullible, to roll a woman, or to be envious (OED). Ophelia sings that “he,” meaning herself, lies at “a grass-green turf,” thus revealing her envy for those who lie in such a place. Ophelia conveys her envy for the dead, while at the same time alluding to the fact that she will soon join them. These definitions present a disconnect between the literal and a figurative reading of this song. < For example, looking at this song in the beginning a person might assume Ophelia is speaking of Polonius, who has recently died and been buried.> However, dissecting this song shows another facet of death that concerns Ophelia. Ophelia expresses her grief at the death of Polonius and the loss of Hamlet’s love, but also because she envies the dead. < She is also using “grass-green turf” to explain her prostitution of freely given, and unrequited, love towards Hamlet.>



. All of the language she uses, although muddled, shows Ophelia knows what is her fate, to join the dead, and sings to prepare others for her impending death.
Ophelia keeps singing, using ambiguous language, to describe her death and future grave. Ophelia sings that “at his head” lies “a grass-green turf” (IV.v.33). Using “head” to represent the leader or the actual body part, from which all intellect, memory, emotions, and thoughts stem from; while “his” is referring to Ophelia (OED). Meanwhile “grass” could mean dismissed from position or to be freed from a fixed engagement (OED). Being “green,” surprisingly, could mean gullible, to roll a woman, or to be envious (OED). Ophelia sings that “he,” meaning herself, lies at “a grass-green turf,” thus revealing her envy for those who lie in such a place. Ophelia conveys her envy for the dead, while at the same time alluding to the fact that she will soon join them. These definitions present a disconnect between the literal and a figurative reading of this song. < For example, looking at this song in the beginning a person might assume Ophelia speaks of Polonius, who recently died.> However, dissecting this song shows another facet of death that concerns Ophelia. Ophelia expresses her grief at the death of Polonius and the loss of Hamlet’s love, but also because she envies the dead. < She also uses “grass-green turf” to explain her prostitution of freely given, and unrequited, love towards Hamlet.>

AAAWWUBBIS clauses

Going over complex sentences last week gave me some things to think about. Looking in the newspaper for AAAWWUBBIS clauses helped me determine what exactly clauses and complex sentences are. These clauses include "although, after, as, while, when, until, because, before, if, and since". These words are used to separate clauses. Usually AAAWWUBBIS words come in between dependent clauses. I understand independent clauses "as" full thoughts, or sentences. I know that even with independent clauses a semi-colon can be added "if" the next sentence is connected to the first. "As" far as dependent clauses, an AAAWWUBBIS word is necessary to separate the clauses. "Although" such words can be used to separate clauses, they can also be used to start an independent clause. "After" awhile AAAWWUBBIS words are easy to pick out of a sentence "because" they are a specific set of words. My question for the week deals with dependent clauses, or fragments. Has anyone ever written a fragment in an essay to prove a certain point, only to have the instructor correct it? Also "when" is it alright to begin writing against the rules? Even in college I feel like I have to follow the rules to achieve a good grade, instead of being able to experience with my writing. Does anyone else have a similar experience? Another question, does awhile count "as" an AAAWWUBBIS word? ps- I'm putting the AAAWWUBBIS words in quotes "because" the bold function is not working.

Week 5

This week in class we read an important essay about a fictional student, Dora. Dora showed how a student usually responds to writing and grammar if only given the right prompts. It impressed me how the teacher handled the situation in order to give her students as much free learning and exploration as possible. One of my favorite parts in the essay is when Dora is learning to separate her words. At first all Dora’s words run together, followed by being separated by ‘dots.’ Dora puts her ‘dots’ in between every word before hearing the teacher calling them ‘periods.’ This was amusing to me because after a while Dora starts calling her ‘dots’ ‘periods’ and still puts them in between every word. It was also fascinating to see how Dora’s language and writing skills improve over time. I was furthermore blown away by the confidence that Dora achieves by simply being able to explore with grammar and writing. My only question would be that why do college professors not teach writing by letting the writer explore with writing? It seems to me that exploring in writing would be a great tool in analyzing or expressing something without the constraints of rigid rules.

Week 4 of learning

This week we went over “closed class” words. It’s still interesting to me that there are different classes of words in which words can be added and not added. Going back to “open class” words, the expansion of this class could be infinite, which is a little shocking. New words and phrases can always be created in the upcoming years. Already we have words like ‘homie’ and ‘y’all’ that were not present a few decades ago. It makes me wonder if the “closed class” words might ever change?

We also went over prepositions and helping verbs. Looking at newspaper headlines seems to be an excellent way to section off titles. By doing this yet again in class I have gained a knack for figuring out what certain words are classified as. Helping verbs were a little difficult, with trying to figure out transitive or intransitive verbs. However I think that after time and newspaper practice that anyone can know what each word is without a problem. It simply amazes me how much of the little grammatical rules that I have forgotten since grade school. It’s rather refreshing to be able to go back and relearn some of the rules and classes of grammar. I am not really having problems with the content of the course so far, but I do have a question about the “closed” and “open classes” words. Do you think that possibly in the future all words and classes will be placed into an “open class” and be constantly expanding? Could a new word take the place, or be exchangeable, with a word like “I” or “you,” and if so do you think this word would ever catch on in society?

Another week of learning

After yet another week of grammar class I am still learning things. This week we worked on House Style for different publications, anywhere from magazines to newspapers. For my part I worked on the publication of the Spokesman Review Newspaper. While looking at this specific publication it was my duty to see how they use certain punctuation and grammatical rules. For my part this was a learning experience in itself. I was ignorant of the fact that different writing publications actually used different rules, I thought such rules were more of a national thing. The Spokesman Review, for instance puts movie titles and television shows in quotes, as opposed to underlining them. I found many of little rules that were being used differently in this publication, all of which I never would have explored or noticed otherwise.

This week we also went over some basics of grammar. This lesson included knowledge such as the fundamentals of nouns, verbs, adverbs, and adjectives. Although this knowledge was not new to me, it has been a long time since I’ve been in contact with it. Sure I read a lot, but I don’t really contemplate the use of nouns and verbs in the sentence. In other words I don’t spend my time after reading a sentence dissecting the structure. We did this in class this week. Obviously it has been a long time since I have diagramed a sentence, but luckily I caught on rather quickly. It amazed me the things I had forgotten since grade school. The knowledge remained in the back of my mind, but was never really used until this moment in time. For instance I remembered that nouns are most easily identified as a person, place, or thing. However what I didn’t realize was that nouns, verbs, adverbs, and adjectives are all considered part of ‘open class.’ This means that these parts of speech are constantly absorbing new words, an entire new vocabulary. Fascinating I thought.

Anyway it was nice to brush up on the four parts of speech that we use every day, without ever really considering it. As for my parting question I must ask why do you think that adverbs are used so rarely in speech or in print; especially if they are flexible and can be moved around in the sentence?

What I have learned thus far

So far in this class I have learned many new things. In my writing I often use ‘however,’ and apparently did not know how to punctuate it properly. I would usually put ‘however’ in the middle of a sentence with a comma or semi-colon before ‘however’ and a comma following it. There are many different ways to punctuate ‘however’ as I soon found out. Yet another grammatical rule that I have learned is how to use punctuation to completely change the meaning of a phrase. I have always known that adding punctuation changes how words are spoken and how the meaning is altered. I did not know that just a few comma’s or ending punctuation could really alter a sentence meaning that completely.

Learning about apostrophes added whole new concepts to my grammatical understanding. I realized that apostrophes were used for contractions, such as in ‘it’s’ to replace ‘it is.’ I also knew that apostrophes were used to express possession as shown in the phrase ‘Charlie’s camel.’ These are the kind of uses that I thought apostrophes served. I had never though much about how they accomplished the things they did, or how I knew where to place them besides a gut feeling. In class I found that my gut feeling can be right sometimes, and wrong at other times. I now know how to spot a misuse of an apostrophe, at least when used in possession or conjunctions. Another thing I learned about apostrophes is the fact that they actually replace letters, and even in some cases words. However I do find myself confused with when to use ‘es’ instead of ‘s. Also I don’t quite understand the concept of eliminating letters. Does this mean that a writer can eliminate any amount of letters and replace them with an apostrophe as long as they can justify it?

Self-Assessment Blog

Writing is a fundamental piece of English. As a college English major I have to write many essays and responses. Being able to understand the material being analyzed is key; however articulation and grammar in the analysis is even more important. Understanding the material and being able to put your examination of material into words and essays creates an excellent writer. Personally I have a few problems in my grammar and mechanics when writing essays.

The first problem usually begins when I try to write a rushed essay. My grammar and ideas become sloppy. When ideas in an essay become unorganized it affects the grammatical portion of the paper. A sloppy idea causes the grammar and sentence structures to suffer. When I write a procrastinated paper I often find that my sentences do not help the main idea and often do not flow. This confuses the paper because each sentence seems to be written on its own without any relevance to the topic of the paper. Usually I can find such mistakes after I proof read my paper, but I think it would be nice not to make such errors in the first place.

Another mistake I tend to make in writing papers is word choice. For the most part I do not have much of a problem figuring out which words and tenses to use in my sentences. The words ‘choose’ and ‘chose’ however always confuse me. I can’t seem to grasp the difference and meanings between ‘choose’ and ‘chose.’ I find myself mixing these two words up constantly in my papers, or conversations.

Continuing on with problems I have as a writer I come to the conclusion that grammar confuses me. More often that not I follow my gut instinct and find that it is more or less correct. Although I must confess I have never yet used a colon in any essay I have ever written. I know that they are used for listing things, but other than that I try to steer clear of them. Also since looking at grammar at a sentence level I find that I may have been using semi-colons wrong for my entire college career. I also use the word ‘however’ extensively and don’t exactly know how to punctuate it properly with comma’s.

Essentially I steer clear of colons, am confused about semi-colons and comma’s around ‘however,’ and always mistake ‘choose’ for chose.’ These are just a few grammatical errors that I hope English 326 will enable me to fix. I hope to eventually feel confident in using colons, semi-colons, and comma’s in any essay that I might write. I would also like to be able to keep my sentence level structures to the key point, while using, properly, ‘choose’ or ‘chose.’ After this semester I would like to see my improvement in understanding grammar and sentence level structures.

With love to my roomies

It's not about being read. It's about being written!