En 11

Handouts and Files

Writing Resources

Bonus (not Required) for Quizzes:

Write a paper that is at least 2,000 words long where you react to the documentaries Four Corners: Peak Oil, Money as Debt, and Chris Martenson's lecture on peak oil. In your reaction, you may reflect on the present circumstances, raise questions, argue for and against ideas that you realized after viewing the documentaries, and offer various suggestions on what you think should be gone to mitigate such problems. You may see your reactions in light of possible problems with oil supply, climate change, possible supply problems in products such as food due to lack of oil, the relationship between money and oil, and so forth. You may also write about what you read and heard concerning similar problems in the Philippines, such as issues concerning potable water, the status of local banks and industries, etc.

The paper does not require formal research but you may mention names and sources that you remember as you mention particular points.

Please use the paper template and include the word count at the end of the paper. Submit this paper to the beadles (who will give it to the instructor) right before the Lit 13 final exam. The average of the grade of this paper and the total grade for feature article quizzes will be the new grade for the feature article quizzes. The same will take place for the evaluative writing quizzes.

Content of the Feature Article Draft:

1. Make sure that your topic is specific, i.e., write about a specific place or event. For example, if your general topic is public education in the Philippines, then write about one public school. Name the school, visit it, observe it, and talk to those who work in it. Document your interviews and observations carefully.
2. Conduct preliminary research at the library (do not use Internet resources) on the general topic. For example, look at government reports and various studies on public education in the Philippines, including statistical information and enumerated problems. If there are reports on schools in the city where your selected public school is located, then read those reports. Cite from these sources and document them correctly. Try to find at least two government or private sector reports (three or more if possible) on your topic, or use statistical information from the Philippine Yearbook, etc. These references are available at the Filipiniana and General Reference sections. Ask librarians for more advice.
3. For the first two or so paragraphs of your article, give a background of the general topic.. For example, give specific information and numbers about the condition of Philippine schools in the country. Cite all of the information used correctly and include them in your bibliography. Visit the Filipiniana and see if you can find at least three newspaper and magazine articles about your general and specific topic. Cite from these articles and include them in your "Works Cited".
4. For the next set of paragraphs, give a background of the specific topic. Again, cite information correctly and include them in your bibliography. The background of the general topic and of the specific topic should take up around a quarter of the article.
5. Take the supporting points from your outline and develop each point using your observations and interviews. For example, for a specific public school, your supporting points may consist of the problems faced by that school (three or more?), what it is trying to do to solve them, and whether or not they are succeeding. When you give descriptions of the place, do so in detail. Take from your observation notes and include them in your bibliography. When you take comments made from formal or informal interviews with various people (talk to at least two people), cite from your interview notes and include them in your bibliography. The development of supporting points should take up around half of the article.
6. For the last quarter of your article, reflect on what you learned from developing the supporting points and speculate on the future of that place or event. For example, will its problems be solved? What will conditions look like in the future? You may end with a few quotable lines from one interview to end your paper.
7. The result should be an article that is around 4,000 words in length consisting of information from one or more reports, three or more newspaper or magazine articles, one or more interviews, one or more descriptions from observation, and a conclusion based on the information gathered.

Assignment for 15 September 2008:

1. Go to the library and read the entries about your selected work, its author, its regional or historical grouping (e.g., as part of American literature, modern Philippine poetry, etc.), its content, etc., found in four print encyclopedias, dictionaries, or similar references. You may also use any encyclopedias found in your home or in other libraries. Do not use encyclopedias on the Internet. Write down important facts taken from each entry on note cards. In bibliographic cards, enter the bibliographic information of each entry cited in MLA format. (Use the MLA format for all citations and bibliographic entries in the critical review.)
2. Read the six commentaries about your selected work and annotate them, i.e., underline or mark the thesis statement and supporting points. Write the bibliographic information of the commentary on top of the first page. Write a bibliographic card entry for each commentary.
3. Go to the World Wide Web and look for any study guides about your selected work. (You may also look at the references read in No. 2 and study guides found in the library.) Go over the study guides to refamiliarize yourself with the content of your selected work. You do not need to mention these guides in your critical review. Instead, these guides should help you recall the content of your selected work.
4. In the beginning of the draft of your critical review, type an introduction of your selected work and a summary of its contents culled from information taken from the print encyclopedias and dictionaries. Cite information taken from these entries and include the bibliographic information of these entries in the Works Cited section at the end of your critical review. Keep your introduction short (around three paragraphs) but helpful for the reader of your critical review.
5. In the next portion of your critical review, type a summary of each of the six commentaries by stating their thesis and supporting points. Again, cite information taken from these commentaries and include bibliographic information about each commentary in your Works Cited section. You should probably write at least two paragraphs for each commentary explaining its thesis and supporting points.
6. Print out the draft of your critical review and put in an short envelope together with the photocopies of the six commentaries, your note cards, and your bibliographic cards. Bring your envelope to class on Monday, 15 September 2008.
7. Your feature article envelope will be returned on Monday.

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“Communication in English I is an English language course designed to develop communicative skills that are necessary for academic study. This is primarily focused on, but not limited to, the development of reading and writing skills across the curriculum.

“CIE I uses a task-based learning strategy as its basic approach to language learning/teaching. Language learning and teaching are carried out and achieved through a set of highly-focused, well-structured problem-posing activities which provide learners with opportunities for language use and practice. All these activities are geared toward providing the students with the language and learning skills needed in their specific degree programs.” (Dept. of English)

Note: Right-click on links to PDFs and select "save as" to save the file to your hard disk then read it from there. Do not click on the links and try to read them online. Refer to the help screen for more details.

Reading and Writing Handbook (PDF) (see the "Handouts and Files" page linked at the side bar)

Visit the Research and Writing page for various links, including one to the Concord Review.

"Marrakech," "Shooting an Elephant," "A Hanging," and "Politics and the English Language" by George Orwell are linked in the Orwell page. The article "A Damaged Culture" is linked in the Articles page.

See the Economics and Politics pages for links to videos and other resources related to critical thinking.

Visit the Thoreau page to download a PDF version of "Civil Disobedience."

You may visit and save the HTML copy of "A Modest Proposal" by visiting the Jonathan Swift page.

Suggested Readings

Past En 11 classes discussed substantial excerpts or complete works from some of the greatest thinkers in the world. To view a sample of those readings, visit the pages for previous En 11 classes linked below. (The same applies to En 12.) The result was in some cases well-written essays not just for both classes but for others. (Imagine, for example, a student who reads the most important sections of Malthus' essay on population and then understanding very well lectures in required history and political science classes in the same school.) The more substantial works also served as a means to make up for many English subjects that were removed from the curriculum, including En 26, which in many ways would have employed texts like A World of Ideas by Lee Jacobus. Finally, these suggested readings and the presence of such works in previous writing classes (including En 26) also explain why pages created for these authors appear in this website. (You may visit the authors' individual pages, which are linked below, for more resources and suggestions.)

A sample list:

Politics

Chapters 14 to 19 from Machiavelli's The Prince

Parts 1, 2, and 4 of Marx and Engels' The Communist Manifesto

Animal Farm by George Orwell

Thomas More's Utopia

The first part of Rousseau's Social Contract

A chapter from Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan

A chapter from John Locke's On Civil Government

Economics

From Marx and Engels' Communist Manifesto

From Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations

From Thomas Malthus' An Essay on the Principle of Population

Psychology

Sigmund Freud's "Infantile Sexuality"

One of Carl Jung's essays on archetypes

From John Locke's An Essay on Human Understanding

An excerpt from one of David Hume's works

An excerpt from one of George Berkeley's works

Philosophy

Henry David Thoreau's Walden or selections from it

Ralph Waldo Emerson's "Self-Reliance"

Plato's Symposium, a chapter from The Republic, or "The Death of Socrates"

From Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics

Voltaire's Candide (which was one of many required readings in previous years)

The first three parts of Rene Descartes' Meditations

A chapter from Marcus Aurelius' Meditations

The "Grand Inquisitor" essay from Fyodor Dostoyevsky's The Brothers Karamazov

The Sciences

A chapter from Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species

Art

From Aristotle's Poetics

An essay by Virginia Woolf

Previous En 11 pages