Dear Professor Mendham

At the end of the College Writing II class I taught in the spring of 2007, I asked my students to imagine that they were one of their future instructors: how might the teacher describe and evaluate the skills of the students? Here are the letters that the class produced:

Dear Professor Mendham,
I have several of your College Writing II students in my criminology class and I must say their investigative research skills go far beyond any professional private eyes I have seen. They always know where to find their reliable sources to back up their evidence. I'm impressed with their abilities to solve crimes with the clues they research and cite.
Sincerely,
Professor McGruff
"Take a bite out of crime."

Dear Professor Mendham,
I have several of your students in my Roofing class. Through your class they have been able to develop the skills necessary to understand structure, which guides them in their research.
Your showering of criticism has toughened their skin, making them able to withstand any pelting criticisms I might have. They are truly capable of shingling in any weather and when lightning strikes they are even more productive. Your demand of quality in class has allowed them to hit the nail on the head every time.
I have discovered, though, that allowing them to choose the shingles results in better work.
Thank you for your commitment; keep hammering away.
Yours truly,
Mr. Rufus Leaking

Dear Professor Mendham

At the end of the College Writing II course I taught in the Fall of 2006, I had the students perform a small group exercise in which they were asked to imagine some future professor writing a letter about what the students were like as writers. Here are three very hilarious examples:

Dear Professor Mendham:

I have several of your College Writing II students in my Poetry Interrogation class. Though the students seem very enthusiastic about taking this course, I am concerned about their reluctance to “tie the poem to a chair and torture a confession out of it.” Isn’t that what interrogation is all about?

They have taken a strange liking to dropping mice onto the poetry. I even had one student come in with waterskis! I am still trying to figure that one out.

All that aside, your students are quite knowledgeable and very efficient at proofreading and a pleasure to have in class, though I sometimes wonder if they are on something, acid perhaps.

Sincerely,
Professor Poetre N. Anutshell

Dear Professor Mendham

I have several of your students from College Writing II in my accounting class. Your example is most evident in their work. I am particularly impressed with the formatting of the notes they pass in class. The creative and well-cited excuses for late work, frequent absences and lack of preparation are numerous and highly inventive. Their use of MLA format in forging physician notes is exceptional.

I was, however, troubled by a particular note which declared my lesson plan "ungood." I trust this means something to you. Something just isn't adding up!

Sincerely,

Professor Numero Uno
Accounts & Accountability
123 Audit Trail
Keene, NH 03431

Dear Professor Mendham

Several of your students are currently in residence at our facility in Concord. These delightful inmates feel the need to recite Orwell at all hours of the day and are often found chanting, "War is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength."

When they're not yelling in the cafe they are writing excellent appeals with proper MLA format. They show impressive research skills and their ability to cite case studies is stellar. Too bad you're not a criminal law teacher.

Regards,
Smith N. Wesson
Concord State Prison
P.S. Who is Big Brother?

Orwell and Faulkner

Links to primary texts by George Orwell and William Faulkner have been added to the College Writing at FPC web page:

• Politics and the English Language, an essay by George Orwell
• 1984, the novel by George Orwell
• William Faulkner's acceptance speech for the Nobel Prize in Literature (audio recording) at American Rhetoric
• The Sound and the Fury, a novel by William Faulkner

What is a Scholarly Source?

Hello, College Writing II blogreaders:
From the Franklin Pierce College Library website, here's a definition of a scholarly source:
A well-structured source written by experts and intended for experts, students, and scholars in the field.

Defining Scholarly Sources

A scholarly source is one that meets the following criteria:

* Authority
o Are the author or authors identified?
o Do they have scholarly credentials, or credentials within the appropriate field of expertise?
* Structure
o Do the authors cite the works from which they drew inspiration and/or information?
o Do illustrations relay vital information (charts, etc.), rather than simply making the article or book more attractive?
* Content
o Is the intended audience a group of scholars or a group of people who have expertise in a particular trade or profession?
o Is the language is specific to the discipline or intended for large audiences?

Don't think of a scholarly source as something that's been stamped SCHOLARLY SOURCE. Think of it as a resource which is authoritative, which is structured and presented professionally, and which has content and style appropriate to a scholarly rather than a popular audience.

Sometimes some of these criteria will be more important than others. For instance, a trade magazine on the advertising industry with an article on the marketing of beer to minors may be appropriate for a class in mass communication or marketing, but inappropriate for a class on the biological effects of alcohol on underage drinkers. While the publication is intended for people in a particular trade, and not mainly for scholarly consumption, the information in the magazine can be useful to students of advertising, rhetoric, and marketing.

From the Franklin Pierce College Library website/Instruction/"What's a Scholarly Source?!?" at http://library.fpc.edu/instruct/instruct05.html

Morality Tale or Lurid Romance? Little Red Riding Hood and Beauty and the Beast

The most well-known animal bridegroom tale, Madame Le Prince de Beaumont's "Beauty and the Beast, can be read http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/beauty.html.

"Yes, yes," said the Beast, "my heart is good, but still I am a monster."
"Among mankind," says Beauty, "there are many that deserve that name more than you, and I prefer you, just as you are, to those, who, under a human form, hide a treacherous, corrupt, and ungrateful heart."
"If I had sense enough," replied the Beast, "I would make a fine compliment to thank you, but I am so dull, that I can only say, I am greatly obliged to you."
Beauty ate a hearty supper, and had almost conquered her dread of the monster; but she had like to have fainted away, when he said to her, "Beauty, will you be my wife?"

Links to the other many versions of this myth are available on the page also.

There are many versions of the tale Little Red Riding Hood, or Little Red Cap. Charles Perrault's version ends:

"Grandmother, what big eyes you have!"
"All the better to see with, my child."
"Grandmother, what big teeth you have got!"
"All the better to eat you up with."
And, saying these words, this wicked wolf fell upon Little Red Riding Hood, and ate her all up.
Moral: Children, especially attractive, well bred young ladies, should never talk to strangers, for if they should do so, they may well provide dinner for a wolf. I say "wolf," but there are various kinds of wolves. There are also those who are charming, quiet, polite, unassuming, complacent, and sweet, who pursue young women at home and in the streets. And unfortunately, it is these gentle wolves who are the most dangerous ones of all.

A discussion of the story as a tale of coming of age seduction can be found at http://www.msmagazine.com/summer2004/danceswithwolves.asp

The Hobbit, Harry Potter, and The Prince

In case students of CWII would like to further explore works mentioned in this week's readings, I've posted links to excerpts from The Hobbit and Harry Potter (discussed in "Fantasy's Power and Peril") and a link to the text of the Machiavelli's entire The Prince on my website at http://academics.keene.edu/tmendham/FPC.htm. Go to the bottom of the links list.

In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort.

It had a perfectly round door like a porthole, painted green, with a shiny yellow brass knob in the exact middle. The door opened on to a tube-shaped hall like a tunnel: a very comfortable tunnel without smoke, with panelled walls, and floors tiled and carpeted, provided with polished chairs, and lots and lots of pegs for hats and coats—the hobbit was fond of visitors.
From JRR Tolkien's The Hobbit

Germaine Greer

Click on the title of this post to go to Germaine Greer's article, titled "Filth," which appeared in the UK newspaper, The Sunday Times, January 2005.

When Davina McCall asked me in her bright, overenthusiastic fashion why I called Big Brother a bully, there was not a hint of irony in the presenter's intelligent brown eyes.
People who have read George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-four will already be aware, however, that the whole point of Big Brother is that he is a bully.
They will also know that the language spoken by Big Brother'’s “Inner Party” bureaucracy is called Newspeak. In Davina'’s Newspeak, Big Brother is a force for good and the abuses that he designs are "“challenges"” --— character-building exercises, not degrading ordeals.
Both Kenzie and Lisa, two of my former housemates, can be heard regularly intoning Big Brother'’s mantra, "“It'’s all good"” -- which is Newspeak for "“It'’s all bad (but we musn't complain)."”

Welcome to the College Writing II Blog!

This web log is a place to post messages for students of Tracy Mendham's College Writing II course at Franklin Pierce College. You can visit this site to see recent notes, or accept an invitation to be a "team member," which will enable you to post messages and to receive emails automatically whenever a new message is posted.