Thank you dear students for another great semester at SJCC! I really enjoyed getting to know all of you and watching your writing progress throughout the semester. Overall, our class did very well on the Research Papers and I really enjoyed reading through such well-documented (Yay MLA!) and interesting research topics. I mailed the letters to the four members of our Learning Community who did not finish with us this semester and I hope the words they wrote during the first week of classes will inspire them to come back soon:) For the rest of you: congratulations on passing English 1A and HAVE A GREAT SUMMER!!!

Thank you for all of your hard work this semester.

Grades
Our Class Mean: 74 percent
Our Class Median: 86 percent

Keys to Successful College Writing

Keys to Successful College Writing

Here are eight habits of mind essential for success in college writing:

* Curiosity – the desire to know more about the world.

* Openness – the willingness to consider new ways of being and thinking in the world.

* Engagement – a sense of investment and involvement in learning.

* Creativity – the ability to use novel approaches for generating, investigating, and representing ideas.

* Persistence – the ability to sustain interest in and attention to short- and long-term projects.

* Responsibility – the ability to take ownership of one’s actions and understand the consequences of those actions for oneself and others.

* Flexibility – the ability to adapt to situations, expectations, or demands.

* Metacognition – the ability to reflect on one’s own thinking as well as on the individual and cultural processes used to structure knowledge.

Source: Framework for Success in Postsecondary Writing Council of Writing Program Administrators

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Here is the link to Moodle where you will turn in your Research Paper via Turnitin.com.

If you have never used Moodle, then you will need to click on the Quick Start Guide on the right to get directions for how to set up your password.

The whole process should take about 10 minutes. Please e-mail me if you are having any problems. Thank you!

Research Paper Due by 11:59 p.m. on May 22. Thank you!

Merisa's Song

Welcome to our Canvas!

Click here to go to Instructor Knapp Blog

Please share your links, so we can listen to them in class.

The voice is Jeff Buckley, but the lyrics belong to Leonard Cohen.

The Independent describes Cohen’s lyrics as being "ancient in their concerns, modern in their outlook."

 Here is a another snippet of Cohen's lyrics:

 "Anthem" 

Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in.

The Independent reviewer writes, "When the words sing out like that, the singer hardly has to."

However, in the song "Hallelujah," the singer takes the lyrics to an ethereal plane. I hear the whole world in this song: life and death, glory and defeat, sadness and joy.

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Dear Students,

Like painters, writers craft in layers. Whether ideas begin in a rough sketch or a vague brush stroke, every artist must start somewhere.

Deep thinking drives the artistic process, but mishaps, confusions and mistakes chart the course. What ultimately comes out on the canvas is the result of careful attention to form, but inherent in this process is that which is unforeseen at the outset. Slowly the layers build and as they do, they inspire new ideas and in this way writing is mysterious, surprising and utterly unpredictable.

As students enrolled in Composition 1A, you are all writers now. Your individual blogs provide you with a canvas for contemplation and reflection, a place to explore and experiment.

Your goals here are simple: Read, Think, and Write!

Welcome to the Humanities.

The Layers

by Stanley Kunitz

I have walked so many lives

Some of them my own

And I am not who I was

Though some principle of being abides

From which I struggle not to stray

When I look behind as I am compelled to look

Before I gather strengths to proceed on my journey

I see the milestones dwindling toward the horizon

And the slow fires trailing from the abandoned campsites

Over which scavenger angels wheel on heavy wings

Oh I have made myself a tribe out of my true affections

And my tribe is scattered

How shall the heart be reconciled to its feast of losses?

In a rising wind the manic dust of my friends

those who fell along the way, bitterly stings my face.

Yet I turn, I turn, exalting somewhat with my wings intact

to go wherever I need to go

and every stone on the road precious to me

In my darkest night when the moon was covered and I roamed through wreckage

A nimbus clouded voice directed me, “Live in the layers. Not on the litter.”

Though I lack the art to decipher it, no doubt the next chapter in my book of transformations is already written.

I am not done

with my changes.

Writing is More Than Words on the Page

Keys to Successful College Writing

Here are eight habits of mind essential for success in college writing:

* Curiosity – the desire to know more about the world.
* Openness – the willingness to consider new ways of being and thinking in the world.
* Engagement – a sense of investment and involvement in learning.
* Creativity – the ability to use novel approaches for generating, investigating, and representing ideas.
* Persistence – the ability to sustain interest in and attention to short- and long-term projects.
* Responsibility – the ability to take ownership of one’s actions and understand the consequences of those actions for oneself and others.
* Flexibility – the ability to adapt to situations, expectations, or demands.
* Metacognition – the ability to reflect on one’s own thinking as well as on the individual and cultural processes used to structure knowledge.


Source: Framework for Success in Postsecondary Writing Council of Writing Program Administrators