Block Day

* Open: Stroll the Links for Fun Whilst I Seek out Quiz Takers for their Doom!  Bru-ha-ha!

• Dickens
• Madame Defarge
• How Important Does Jane Austen Remain in British Culture?
• Mail
• Money
• Grammar Grazing at the Guardian
• Quiz takers?
• Low score?  High score on the M.C.?  1/2 point back for each you explain.  Due Monday

* M.C. #2

* Discussion

* Review your Cards

* Card Quiz

* Read in Class

HW: Finish Reading A Tale of Two Cities

Tuesday, 4/23: Light

* Open

•  Grammar

• First, just read this background: "One of the wise and awful truths which this brown-paper art reveals, is this, that white is a colour. It is not a mere absence of colour; it is a shining and affirmative thing, as fierce as red, as definite as black. When, so to speak, your pencil grows red-hot, it draws roses; when it grows white-hot, it draws stars. And one of the two or three defiant verities of the best religious morality, of real Christianity, for example, is exactly this same thing; the chief assertion of religious morality is that white is a colour. Virtue is not the absence of vices or the avoidance of moral dangers; virtue is a vivid and separate thing, like pain or a particular smell. Mercy does not mean not being cruel or sparing people revenge or punishment; it means a plain and positive thing like the sun, which one has either seen or not seen."

• Now, please copy and punctuate the following: "Chastity does not mean abstention from sexual wrong it means something flaming like Joan of Arc. In a word God paints in many colours but He never paints so gorgeously I had almost said so gaudily as when He paints in white." 

 * Tomorrow: I will quiz you near the end of the period tomorrow, so you will have some time to review your cards.  I will also give you time to work in class on your journal and will check the five responses during your quiz.  So, you should come to class having completed four. 

HW: Study your Shakespeare cards; work on your Dickens journal in Book III

Brief Reminders on Common Terms: Tone, Shift, Diction, Images, Structure

Tone is the writer's or speaker's attitude toward the subject and the audience. Understanding tone in prose and poetry can be challenging because the reader doesn't have voice inflection to obscure or to carry meaning. Thus, an appreciation of word choice, details, imagery, and language all contribute to the understanding of tone. To misinterpret tone is to misinterpret meaning.

Angry	Sad	Sentimental	Afraid
Sharp	Cold	Fanciful	Detached
Upset	Urgent	Complimentary	Contemptuous
Silly	Joking	Condescending	Happy
Boring	Poignant	Sympathetic	Confused
Apologetic	Hollow	Childish	Humorous
Joyful	Peaceful	Horrific	Allusive
Mocking	Sarcastic	Sweet	Objective
Nostalgic	Vexed	Vibrant	Zealous
Tired	Frivolous	Irrelevant	Bitter
Audacious	Benevolent	Dreamy	Shocking
Seductive	Restrained	Somber	Candid
Proud	Giddy	Pitiful	Dramatic
Provocative	Didactic	Lugubrious	Sentimental

SHIFT IN TONE: Good authors are rarely monotone. A speaker’s attitude can shift on a topic, or an author might have one attitude toward the audience and another toward the subject. The following are some clues to watch for shifts in tone:

• key words (but, yet, nevertheless, however, although)
• punctuation (dashes, periods, colons)
• paragraph divisions
• changes in sentence length
• sharp contrasts in diction

DICTION:

• Laugh: guffaw, chuckle, titter, giggle, cackle, snicker, roar, chortle, guffaw, yuk
• Self-confident: proud, conceited, egotistical, stuck-up, haughty, smug, condescending
• House: home, hut, shack, mansion, cabin, home, residence, dwelling, crib, domicile
• Old: mature, experienced, antique, relic, senior, ancient, elderly, senescent, venerable
• Fat: obese, plump, corpulent, portly, porky, burly, husky, full-figured, chubby, zaftig

IMAGES: The use of vivid descriptions or figures of speech that appeal to sensory experiences helps to create the author’s tone.

• My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun. (restrained)
• An old, mad, blind, despised, and dying king. (somber, candid)
• He clasps the crag with crooked hands. (dramatic)
• Love sets you going like a fat gold watch. (fanciful)
• Smiling, the boy fell dead. (shocking)

SENTENCE STRUCTURE: How a sentence is constructed affects what the audience understands. Sentence structure affects tone.

• Parallel syntax (similarly styled phrases and sentences) creates interconnected emotions, feelings and ideas.
• Short sentences are punchy and intense. Long sentences are distancing, reflective and more abstract.
• Loose sentences hang all kinds of modifiers off the end of an independent clause. Periodic sentences point to the end, so modifiers build the to the final point (main clause).
• The inverted order of an interrogative sentence cues the reader to a question and creates tension between speaker and listener.  
• Short sentences are often emphatic, passionate or flippant, whereas longer sentences suggest greater thought, intelligence, abstraction, or distance.
• Sentence Structure -- fragments, simple, compound, complex, compound-complex. Sentence structure also deals with elements such as dependent and independent clauses.

Tuesday, April 22

* Open

• Upcoming week
• J15: Any five chapters from Book III due on Block Day
• Shakespeare Note Cards This Week (Next Week Beowulf and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight). 
• Dickens Quiz Next Week

* Dickens

* Finally...Peer Edit of Austen Essay

• Peer Review
• Write: "PR" and your name at the bottom of the first page. 
• Estimating Word Count
• Count the words in five lines.
• Divide by five.
• Get an estimated word count per line for this writer.
• Multiply by the number of complete lines in the essay (usually about 28 lines per page).  Count opening lines of paragraphs but not closing lines if incomplete.  
• Underline the thesis if it is not underlined.

• Circle words that exhibit strong vocabulary.
• Circle any punctuators that are not periods.  
• Draw a sad face if there is more than one exclamation.  
• Draw a skull and crossbones if there are any hearts.  
• Draw dripping blood if the writer wrote "the end" at the conclusion. 
• Write down one thing you appreciate about this student. 
• Return it to the owner. 

HW: Book 3 (1/3)

Evan