Contents
About English 1301
About the Purposes and Patterns Primer
About Expressive and Literary Writing
About Description
About Narration
Sample Assignment 1
ASSIGNMENT 1 REQUIREMENTS
About English 1301
Welcome to your English 1301 ONL course. English 1301 is a study of the principles of composition, with emphasis on language, the mechanics of writing, documentation and research, and the rhetorical purposes and patterns of writing. You will cover the same material that you would in a traditional classroom. This three-credit course is transferable and is a requirement for most majors. This online course is designed to add flexibility to your schedule.
All documents and reading selections for the course are available online. There is no required textbook. Remember that the online documents replace classroom lectures. You are responsible for studying the course materials. Many of my online assignment notes and samples have specific information that allows you to complete particular assignments more easily. These materials should be studied carefully.
To pass this course, all students must satisfactorily complete 6 assignments, 3 quizzes, and a C exam. Additional exam essays are required for the grades of B and A.
About the Purposes and Patterns Primer
This course deals with the rhetorical purposes and patterns of writing. Rhetoric is the study of speaking or writing as a means of communication. The Purposes and Patterns Primer is an online document that gives basic information on these writing purposes and patterns you will learn about in this course.
When people write, they usually have a reason. They may want to chronicle personal experiences. They may want to convince someone to do something. They may want to record some facts about a car accident. They may want to make a list. Few people write without a reason, so in this course you will learn how to use the various writing reasons, or rhetorical purposes, in your own writing. You will also learn how to detect and analyze those purposes in the writing of others.
Once a reason for writing is chosen, a means of organizing the information is needed. You can't just dump a bunch of sentences on a page and hope they make sense. You must arrange the information in a logical format the reader can recognize and understand. You might narrate a sequence of events. You might describe the smell of a bucket of rotten bait. You might make a list of your ten favorite songs. Or you might pass judgment on a new movie or TV show. In this course you will learn about how to use the various writing methods, or rhetorical patterns, in your own writing. These patterns help writers accomplish their purpose. You will also learn how to detect and analyze those patterns in the writing of others.
Most college writing you do will be referential in purpose. In this course, you will use referential writing in the two major assignments: referential-informative in the Assignment 4 research report and referential-interpretive in the Assignment 6 critical analysis. You will also use the referential-interpretive purpose to write the C exam.
The Purposes and Patterns Primer is a concise guide to the purposes and patterns. If you study its contents carefully, you should do well on the assignments or activities that require the use or analysis of purposes and patterns. If you desire additional information about purposes and patterns, you might try to find a copy of Lennis Polnac's Purpose, Pattern, and Process. It is often used in ACC English 1301 courses.
The four major rhetorical purposes (or aims or goals of writing) are
- expressive purpose
- literary purpose
- persuasive purpose
- referential purpose
The four major rhetorical patterns (or methods or means of organization) are
- narration pattern
- description pattern
- classification pattern
- evaluation pattern
You will need to use most of these purposes and patterns and their forms consciously in your own writing, and you must be able to recognize and analyze them in the writing of others.
If you have not already done so, you should read the Purposes and Patterns Primer carefully.
About Expressive and Literary Writing
As you should have gathered from the Purposes and Patterns Primer, expressive writing is used to express the writer's feelings and opinions. The writer may include personal experiences, personal emotions, self-definition, and self-values. First-person pronouns are typically used extensively in expressive writing.
The literary purpose tends to use enhanced writing and figurative language to tell a story or write a poem. Literary writing often tries to get the reader to envision the thing or idea written about. Conflict, enhanced vocabulary, and a focus on the language used are characteristics of the literary purpose.
In your Assignment 1 essay, you will use these two purposes to express your personal feelings about a painting using enhanced language to describe the painting and narrate what seems to be happening in the image.
About Description
Description, by providing details of time, place, character, mood, or social atmosphere, establishes the "world" of the painting. Good description appeals to all senses and not just to sight.
General description attempts to capture a whole scene with a minimum of words, such as a brief description of a landscape. Specific description gives particular details about the whole scene, a specific part of it, or the overall impression. You should try to use both general and specific description in your Assignment 1 essay.
When you write a physical description of a person, place, or thing (as you will do in Assignment 1), first give an overall impression and then describe the parts.
The point of view (or the location from which the person, place, or thing is viewed) is important in a description. If the point of view is changed, then necessarily the description will change. You can use different orientations to describe your subject: front to back, right to left, up to down, far to near, etc. Once you establish a point of view, though, you should maintain that same point of view so you do not confuse the reader. Your point of view will probably be standing or sitting in front of the painting.
When describing a place or painting, be sure to use a logical spatial movement so that your reader can easily follow your description.
Mood can also be important in a description of a painting or place. Try to give your feelings about the painting or place. Provide details to support that mood. Review the Charles Dickens description of the schoolroom in the Description Pattern section of the Purposes and Patterns Primer.
About Narration
Narration gives details about a sequence of events in time. A how-to uses a narration of process, and a story uses a narration of events. For Assignment 1, you will want to use a narration of events.
A narration of events can be complicated or simple. A short story or novel might have a very complex sequence of events. This complex sequence will have a beginning, a middle, and an end. An anecdote or personal experience might have a simple sequence of events. What I did this morning would likely be a simple sequence. In Assignment 1, your narration does not need to be very complicated. Simply relate the story the painting suggests to you.
Sample Assignment 1
Note: Your Assignment 1 must be double-spaced.
The following essay deals with the painting mentioned above: Young Man with a Skull by Frans Hals. (Thanks to former students J. Randall and S. Cantu.)
When looking at Frans Hals' painting, Young Man with a Skull, I am entranced by the face of the young man. From the shoulders down, the painting seems dark and a bit morbid, yet the face seems to portray a kind of innocence, even happiness. The image of a young man holding a skull brings instantly to mind Shakespeare's Hamlet. So I think that the young man in the painting might have been a popular actor preparing to play Hamlet.
The young man wears a red hat that has a velvety looking texture. It is worn to one side where it covers most of his hair down to his ear. On the same side that the hat is prevalent, a long feather extends out to the side of the young man's head and then droops past his shoulders, almost forming a ninety degree angle. The feather is an red-orange that complements his hat. The color in the hat and feather enrich and draw attention to the full red lips of the young man.
His hair appears messy and yet carefully fixed and positioned. There are many different layers that frame the face. The top layers are teased and voluminous, curling in and cupping the face, while the bottom layer flips out toward the end of the hair, reaching up to meet the top layer. His bangs are short, falling along the middle of his forehead, and towards the feather, where the hat is angled down, his bangs also seem to angle, meeting his eyebrows, shaping to the angle of the hat.
His face is bright and healthy in appearance. He has a rounded face, with full red lips and rosy cheeks. The nose is slightly bulbous but perfect for the face. His eyebrows are not thin or thick and do not meet in the middle. They curve slightly to shape his eyes, which are strange in appearance. One is larger than the other, but both are droopy and uneven. The larger eye seems to protrude buggily, and the other is smaller and inset. His eyes have bags underneath that produce a dark shadowy look. It contrasts the rest of his bright face to give him an eerie demeanor. He is also looking out of the corner of his eyes, towards the feather.
A white collar of his shirt is visible, along with bits of a red suit that match the velvety hat, but he is mostly covered by a black and drab cloak that is draped across his shoulders and chest and falls to his sides. It is large and has many folds in it, like waves cascading down his chest.
One of his hands is extended out from the cape, fingers apart, and it is vertical with his thumb and index finger pointed upwards. The hand seems to be extended, as in gesture, when telling a story to someone or conveying a point. His other hand is cradling a skull that is missing the bottom portion of its jaw and its top front teeth. Several of his fingers seem to be inside of the skull while two fingers grasp the outside edge to keep it from falling. The eyes of the skull are hollow and dark, and it is overall a typical skull, creepy and morbid.
To me, this painting contains keen contrast. The young man is fastidious in appearance, healthy, with an air of confidence and joy in his face. His eyes carry a darkness, though, that matches the morbidity of the skull he is holding in his hand, and are a stark contradiction to the health and life found in his face. His one hand is extended and seems to bear confidence and he seems to be telling a story, but in the other hand the skull he is holding and the dark cloak that he is wearing again contrast the picture, bringing a dark and dreary look to his otherwise bright and cheerful appearance. Another contrast is that all of the beauty and confident features of the young man seem to be focused on one side of his body, while all of the dim and dismal features are on the other. It is also notable that the side he is looking towards is the dark side, the one with the skull, insinuating that he is looking towards death.
The picture is beautiful and to me represents the extreme contrast between life and death. On one hand you have confidence and an assertion of pride, and on the other you have death and the reality of mortality. The bright colors of red represent blood and life while the dark cloak and the skull represent death. There is vitality and beauty found in his face and his dress, yet his eyes convey his inescapable future--death. In the end, this exuberant and healthy young man will be this decaying and empty skull.
Second, in an essay of 600 words minimum (750 words maximum), identify the painting and its artist, describe the painting with considerable detail, and tell the story that the painting directly suggests to you. You may use first-person and second-person pronouns to write your essay. Be sure you identify the painting and artist in the introduction of your essay, not just in a title or heading for your essay. Italicize the titles of paintings.
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In the File Name box, name your file. You will always name your file based on the policies included in the How to Save and Name a File section of the Course Guidelines document. In short, you will use your last name, the assignment number, and the extension .rtf or .doc or .docx in your file name. For example, my file name for Assignment 1 would be skrabanek1.rtf or skrabanek1.doc or skrabanek1.docx. Obviously, your file name would use your last name, which can be capitalized if you desire. Find the Save In window. You should create a specific folder to hold your English 1301 work. Then click Save.
Right after you submit your file, you should go to your grade list under the Student Tools button. If your file has been properly submitted, an ! (exclamation mark) will show as your grade for that assignment.
ASSIGNMENT 1 REQUIREMENTS
First, click on a link to each of the five paintings listed below. Choose one of the paintings and observe it for a while, noting the particulars and nuances of the work. I recommend you try to use Link 1 to view each painting.
In this assignment, I am interested in your descriptive and narrative abilities, not someone else's. DO NOT use research sources to write this assignment.
Choose one of the following paintings to write Assignment 1.
The Blind Girl by Sir John Millais
Link 1
Link 2
Landscape with the Fall of Icarus by Pieter Brueghel
Link 1
Link 2
The Scream by Edvard Munch
Link 1
A Boy and a Girl with a Cat and an Eel by Judith Leyster
Link 1
Weapons For Liberty by Joseph Christian Leyendecker
Link 1
Finally, at the end of your essay, include the two labels below. Then, fill in an Email address at which I can contact you in case I cannot contact you through Blackboard. This Email address should be one you check regularly. Also indicate the word processor you generally use, such as Microsoft Word or Open Office. I would like to know the word processor you use in case your file arrives with formatting problems. (I usually grade papers in Microsoft Word 2010 on a Windows PC.)
The word processor I usually use is:
Guidelines for Submitting Your Assignment Files
Now save the document to the file you will submit in Blackboard. For this course, I accept files in only three formats: rtf or doc or docx. I do not accept wps or odt or txt or any other formats.
Important Note: If you are using Open Office, be aware that this word processor does not deal with rtf format very well. Use doc or docx format instead. If you follow this process in Open Office, I should be able to read your file. If not, I will let you know.
Now log in to Blackboard. Click on the Submissions button in the left sidebar. Find the assignment, revision, or exam you need to submit. For this assignment, you will use the Assignment 1 link. Click on the link. It will take you to a submission page. Clicking on the name of the assignment takes you to the same submission page.
After 3-5 or so days (not including weekends or holidays), you should use the same link to check on your work. (The later assignments in the course will take longer to grade than the earlier assignments.) I will attach the graded file, provide a few comments, and indicate a score.
Submit this assignment using the Submissions button in Blackboard.
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English/Austin Community College
Last update: February 2014
