...Nonfiction ENG/125 - Literature in Society Reaction Paper - Nonfiction In class this week our discussion was about nonfiction and some differences from fiction. Google dictionary (n.d.) states “nonfiction is prose writing that is based on facts, real events, and real people, such as biography and history.” For our assignment this week we were asked to select two of the five nonfiction texts from our week four readings. After thoughtful consideration, I have chosen to write my reaction paper about “On Going Home,” by Joan Didion and “Who Will Light the Incense When Mother’s Gone?” by Andrew Lam. In any form of writing the reader can find various literary elements such as plot, character, setting, theme, and point of view. Also when a writer writes they have a purpose in mind. The writers purpose might be to inform, persuade, or entertain their readers. The writer may also want to describe something to the reader. In both “On Going Home,” by Joan Didion and “Who Will Light the Incense When Mother’s Gone?” by Andrew Lam I consider the theme to be the main element of both essays. In “On Going Home”, Didion’s theme is that of belonging and family. In Didion’s text, she makes use of three of the four main purposes of writing. Didion’s very first sentence is informing the reader as to why she is going home. The sentence reads “I am home for my daughter’s first birthday.” (Barnet, Burto, & Cain, 2014, 20111, 2007, 2005, 2003, p. 636) Didion also describes...
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...In On Going Home, Didion tackles themes such as belonging, family and home by telling the story of a time when, without her husband, she took her daughter “home” to celebrate her first birthday to the hometown where Didion grew up in the house where she lived with her mother and premarital family. The essay deals with Didion’s personal issues as she compares and contrasts her current life with her husband and their child versus her life and experiences growing up. The essay speaks to the internal conflict many of us feel as adults once we leave the nest, so to speak, and go out into the world to find new “homes” while always looking back to our pasts. I felt connected to this piece and that connection inspired me to want to dive deeper. This essay spoke to me on various levels but the main reason why I chose it is because I could see myself in it. Both as a mother of a young child and as a married woman who has chosen to live far from “home,” I felt connected to this piece and to Didion as its writer. I have traveled with my daughter, now age four, back to visit my family in Philadelphia numerous times since she was born. When we lived in New York, I made the drive three to four times per year and now that I live in Iowa, the frequency has diminished to an annual flight but she and I still find ourselves making the trip without my husband, due to his work schedule. Our recent two lectures discussed the importance of “place” and its meaning in our writing. Unit One discussed...
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...VMy Writing While Growing Up I grew up in a family of writers. My parents are both writers. My dad was an editor-in-chief at a major internet magazine while I was growing up. While I was a young child, both my parents owned and contributed to a programming magazine. I was always encouraged to write as a child. My parents would always help me edit and change my writings in school. Even my brother has always been a writer. He was always telling stories growing up. When he was in middle school he even wrote a book. Growing up in a supportive family of writers has given me a negative outlook on writing which has made me the writer I am today. Since I can remember, I have always been told I am a good writer yet for some reason I have always fought the writing process. English was one of my worst subjects in high school. Yes, it is my native language, but the reading part is not my problem. Writing the essays was my biggest challenge. Starting an essay has always been the hardest part for me. I was taught to always start at the beginning and finish with the end. Later people told me I could write the beginning last, but I was stubborn. I had to write it first. This hindered me. I would usually wait until the last minute because I did not know where to begin. Procrastinating has always been my fall back when writing. Even now, I am writing this essay on Sunday at 2:30pm the day it’s due. My parents would never push me to write, they would ask the usual parental question of, “Did...
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...Didion writes about the differences between her family and her husband because they do not get along. Didion is saying that she feels like an outsider in her own home because she moved away and hers and the lifestyle of her family are not the same. Didion is nostalgic about what went on when she was younger, because she started to go through old pictures and junk. She is starting to get bored and missing her life in L.A. Her family still thinks of her as a child. The mother cannot giver daughter the same sense of home and family because of her disconnection. This essay spoke to me on various levels but the main reason why I chose it is because I could see myself in it. As a married woman who has chosen to live far from “home,” I felt connected to this piece and to Didion. In “On Going Home” Didion uses place in both ways. She discusses her childhood home, in the Central Valley of California, the specific place where she grew up and where her mother resides, and as she shares her memories and experiences with the location itself, she also gives up insight into her history, culture, what her family is/was like and how that place affected and still affects her emotionally and how it compares to the home she’s made with her husband and daughter in Los Angeles. Writing about place challenges us to rethink the way in which we view our own place—what we take for granted, how we choose to define ourselves, and what we mean to others.” Didion’s essay had a profound...
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...letter to inform you about my plans to revise my response essay I understand there are numerous ways to write the begin sentence of an introduction, I will begin by using a quote from the article written by Po Broson. This quote it is an important part of my essay because I’m going to use it to explain character development through trails and errors the essay is I believe this is an important concept for people, especially the younger ones, to grasp, the idea that trails and errors bring about character development. I will follow-up by explaining the relevance of the quote and tell my readers about how my gifts are desires that result from a greater sense of character. responsibility, honesty and ambition. This is something I have to offer the world. It’s a good way to start my essay because it gets the reader’s attention—maybe some of my readers have endured some things that caused them to wonder why is this happening to me is. My plan is to make my introduction better by writing a few sentences that explain what I learned about myself after going through some rough times and how I learned that the most important thing to need in life is family To develop my essay, I’m going to talk about the decision I made to start taking responsibility for my actions and how I came to recognize that need to be responsible. The next half of my essay will pick up with “what I really need.” Spending time with Family is the first thing that I really need, and since all of my examples in the first...
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...------------------------------------------------- My most embarrassing moment My Most Embarrassing Moment Baum, Narrative Essay Have you ever had a moment in your life that you can just not forget about? I have a time in my life that I have never been so embarrassed in front of so many people. Some things are easier to remember, and some are easier to forget. I can remember this day as if it happened yesterday. It was a Friday night and I went to eat at Bonnie & Clyde’s pizza with my family for my brother’s birthday party. Out of all nights the place was packed and there was not one empty chair in the building. We sit down at the table and we enjoy the birthday. We eat pizza, cake, and everyone was having a good time. I thought I would be nice and start to clean up everyone’s plates and cups to make some room on the table for everyone. They give you the pizza on a round silver tray, so I started to pile up all the plates, cups, and silverware on to the tray. As my mother asked me “do you need any help?” I told her no I got it and started to walk up to the counter to drop off the tray. I knew that with all the stuff piled onto the tray that it was going to be too heavy but I wanted to try and carry it anyway without any help. As I am walking the tray up their stacked full I tripped over a step in the floor and I am sure you can guess what happened next. I dropped the tray everywhere and I feel to the floor. The trash went everywhere along with...
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...working harmoniously with my hand’s every movement, signifies the constitution of a composition. Throughout my freshman year, sounds of my fingers drumming the keyboard has filled up my days, but it’s not just about how my essays were written on a computer. It is about how these repeated actions developed who I am as a writer, along with the quality of my work. I truly believe my writing has blossomed this year because I have finally imposed a step-by-step process of writing that works for me. In addition, I was able to fully connect with the literature I read, resulting in the reveal a new writer’s personality within me. Moreover, I am beginning to understand the piecemeal writer burgeoning inside me throughout the essays I have written in english class and how it has shaped my compositions through the different strategies I took, style, and organization. Writing essays in the beginning of the year was somewhat troublesome, to be honest, because my style, organization, and strategies for writing, were a complete mess. As a result...
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...From the moment the assignment was handed out, I knew what I wanted my topic to be. After having multiple discussions centered around gender roles and taking adequate notes on gender role, I felt that it only made sense to write my essay on the topic I had already done so much research on. However, my stance on gender roles had shifted. At first, I believed that there was no “superior gender” in the book and that both sexes demonstrated adaptability. But, after I briefly mentioned this position to my well-read teacher and was told that this stance would be difficult to support within the word limit, I decided to change my approach; the women of the Joad family demonstrated they were the strongest sex by providing stability to their family. At first, I knew that Ma was going to be a focal point of my essay because I learned a lot through the discussions, however to meet the requirement of a pattern I needed a second example. I learned through briefly skimming over the book that Rose of Sharon was just what I was looking for. Austin Rodriguez, my friend and colleague, reviewed my essay. His revisions were mostly grammar related...
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...My Experience in the Writing Process This semester I was surprised by how much I actually learned and developed my writing skills. I was given the opportunity to learn the many steps that it is required to become a good writer. Writing requires a lot of work. It consists of various steps; prewriting, drafting, rewriting, proofreading and publishing. . All of these components are extremely important, and necessary, and will need to be follow to improve student’s writing. I feel my writing has improved due to the help of the writing process and all the writing assignments I experienced. I was able utilized each of these components this semester. I wrote various journals and two essays, which were very challenging to me. The first essay I was asked to write, was a Narrative essay about an experience in which later I questioned my actions. At first, I was very nervous due to I have never written an essay before. I did not even know where to begin. I struggled during the whole process of writing the essay. My biggest problem of all was putting my thoughts in order so I could make sense of what I wanted to say. I brainstorm for days trying to figure out a topic. With the help of the eLearning text information on module 2, how to choose a topic and develop a working thesis I was able to come up with a topic. I finally came up with, Moving away from Friends and Family. Thanks to Module 3, Introduction to Narrative Essay, and the examples that were provided, I was able to...
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...like stress, money, and making time for my family are my three biggest challenges that I personally face. Think about where you are at this point in time. How many challenges have you overcome? The biggest of my three greatest challenges that I face as a college student is stress. There is stress coming from every direction. It comes from places like class, work, home life, relationships, and unexpected setbacks. For me, I do not deal with stress well. There is so many ways to cope with stress, but some people are better at it than others. You just have to find that one thing that you can do to escape from reality for a little while. The reason why I put stress first on my list, is because all of my challenges are directed to stress. I have faced this challenge for a while now. It has seem to become a part of my daily routine. With that being said, I have learned to control it but not to completely erase it from my life. If you figure out how, let me know! One suggestion that I have come up with is putting yourself in a setting where nothing can cause more stress. For me, I like going in a quiet room and finding out interesting facts about random things. I look for silly little books, internet articles, and fun facts that have un-useful information. For example, who invented video games? Though this may not but useful academic wise, it is useful for my stress relief. This information provided for stress management was found in my essay for module three. It explains that there...
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...talking about what the weather is like today. It is the right to say them or not. And most people have touch with bad words since little, maybe at age of 12 or at the age that cannot remember things. But in this essay "cuss time", the author Jill McCorkel has an activity with his 8-year-old son, and the son has freedom to have a speech in the activity. The essay is to describe freedom of speech, and not only about speech, about thoughts and ideas. People always tell the other people what should not say or what should not to do, furthermore this means we draw a circle for ourselves which we need to stay in. McCorkel let readers know that "We build a world around negatives -you can't say [...] then you can get away from a lot of things." One of the most common "negative" things in the world is teaching children not to use "bad words". In order to express freedom of "bad words", I believe this essay is more about freedom, freedom of talking, freedom of behaving, freedom of thinking. She is trying to make her viewpoint, let people talk freely, do things freely, think freely, make the circle disappear, make the world we built disappear. When I first read this essay, it remained me one thing in my childhood. I remember I was around 11 years old or 12 years old, I started to hear some "bad words" in school and from my friends. Also like other kids did, I started to say "bad words", of course, it depended on who I was talking to. Once I had a conversation with my mother...
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...Historical Analysis of american history asjdklfjasdl dkk dk Basically, a 250 word essay turns out to be one of the shortest academic written tasks, which you may get. That is why, a great number of students may be mislead by this fact and consider it to be very simple to fulfill. However, if you gain an insight into creating this type of essay, you’ll see that the most significant thing while completing it is to be neat and concise. It means that to succeed in creating a fantastic paper with a 250 word limit, you ought to use short but clear sentences. Only in this case, you’ll be able to highlight the topic of your essay in a proper way as well as meet all the requirements. How to Develop a Concise and Suitable Thesis Statement Obviously, a thesis statement is sure to have a large impact on the grade you’ll get for your essay. Thus, while creating it, you should demonstrate all your writing skills. At the same time, you shouldn’t forget about the peculiarities of the essay type you are to cover. In other words, you need to take into account the word limiting factor, which appears to be of one of the main determinates of your success. All in all, to make your thesis statement informative, captivating and short you ought to follow these simple and clear guidelines: * Avoid using abstract notions and terms. Indeed, word selection matters a lot. Consequently, try to be exact, accurate and specific. * Don’t use long and complex sentences to express your thoughts...
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...I try to draw an analogy with the process of reading application essays. The bad. Ninety percent of the applications I read contain what I call McEssays - usually five-paragraph essays that consist primarily of abstractions and unsupported generalization. They are technically correct in that they are organized and have the correct sentence structure and spelling, but they are boring. Sort of like a Big Mac. I have nothing against Big Macs, but the one I eat in Charlottesville is not going to be fundamentally different from the one I eat in Paris, Peoria or Palm Springs. I am not going to rave about the quality of a particular Big Mac. The same can be said about the generic essay. If an essay starts out: "I have been a member of the band and it has taught me leadership, perseverance and hard work," I can almost recite the rest of the essay without reading it. Each of the three middle paragraphs gives a bit of support to an abstraction, and the final paragraph restates what has already been said. A McEssay is not wrong, but it is not going to be a positive factor in the admission decision. It will not allow a student to stand out. A student who uses vague abstractions poured into a preset form will end up being interpreted as a vague series of abstractions. A student who uses cliché becomes, in effect, a cliché. If we are what we eat, we are also what we write. Not only does a preset form lead to a generic essay, so does a generic approach to what is perceived as the right topic...
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...WRITING A SUMMARY-RESPONSE ESSAY In academic contexts, you are often asked to write response essays (sometimes called reaction papers) in which you select an aspect of a text that particularly interests you and respond to it in writing. That is, you will be asked to read something (a journal article, a chapter in a book, a technical report) and to write a summary and an analysis of what you read. The purpose of this type of assignment is to find out whether you understood what you read, what your response to the content of the text is, and whether you can express your response clearly. Generally, a response to written material consists of two basic parts: A. a summary of the written material B. an analysis of part of all of the material. Here is the typical format of a response essay: Introduction (The First Paragraph of your essay) 1. State the author’s name and surname 2. State the name of the article (For example: In “The Dangers of the Television” ) 3. Summarize the article and state the author’s main issues/thesis and key supporting points that the author discusses. Use an opening phrase such as: says, discusses, explains, argues, shows. (For example: In “The Dangers of the Television”, Fidler points out that. . .) 4. State your main idea / thesis in which you show your agreement or disagreement at the end of the introduction paragraph. That is your reaction. Body (The second paragraph) Your body paragraph or paragraphs should include: 1. major key supporting points...
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...Assignment 4: Final Reflection – “My Journey as a Writer” * Assignment 3.3: Topic of Your Choice Essay “A Book With Nostalgic Flavor” – Final Version * Assignment 2.3: Changing Our Lives Essay “Changing Our Lives” – Final Version * Assignment 1.3: Experiences as a Writer Paragraphs “Conquering My Fear of Writing” – Final Version “My Journey as a Writer” Aura Valdes ENG090 Prof. Rachel Hays December 15, 2012 “My Journey as a Writer” I have accomplished a great deal in the past three months. As the semester ends I find myself reflecting not only on how I have survived the first semester but also what I have learned. Writing is hard work. There is so much more to it than just writing an interesting story. I also learned another important lesson; just because I worked hard on an essay before presenting it and reviewed the daylights out of it did not mean it was ready for submission. Every time I went back to read it I found new changes, typos and other mistakes I had missed before. Reviewing and revising an essay is an essential part of writing. Reviewing allows me to rewrite and make changes in the essay’s content, organization and sentence structures. It allows me to add, remove, move or substitute words to make sure it communicates effectively the purpose of the essay. The task of reviewing the essays I wrote for this course allowed me to learn and improve my writing skills; as a result my essays have evolved into more stylish and fluent...
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