Welcome!

Welcome to our Eng 100 Blog “Conversations Beyond the Classroom”! The title of this blog refers to the community of active readers & collaborative learners we are creating by sharing our academic writing for Eng 100 with each other + a larger group of students, instructors, academics, and just about anybody who chooses to follow our blog! When you write and post your reader responses here (and, later, as you write your essays for the course), I encourage you to use this audience to conceptualize who you are writing for and, most important, how to communicate your ideas so that this group of academic readers and writers can easily follow your line of thinking. Think about it this way: What do you need to explain and articulate in order for the other bloggers to understand your response to the essays we’ve read in class? What does your audience need to know about those essays and the authors who wrote them? And how can you show your readers, in writing, which ideas you add to these “conversations” that take place in the texts we study?

As students of Eng 100, you will use this blog to begin conversations with other academic writers on campus (students and instructors alike). We become active readers of each other’s writing when we comment on posts here. And, best of all, we are using this space to share ideas! We encourage you to use this blog to further think through the topics and writing strategies you will be introduced to this quarter. As always, be sure to give credit to those people whose ideas you borrow for your own thinking and writing (you should do this in the blog by commenting on their post, but you will also be required to cite what you borrow from your peers/instructors if and when it winds up in your essays. More details on that later…).

Finally, keep in mind that writing to and for this audience is a good way to prepare for the panel of readers (faculty at WCC) who will be reading and assessing your writing portfolio at the end of the quarter. We hope that as a large group of active readers, we can better prepare each other for this experience. But, in the meantime, let’s have fun with it! I am really excited see how far we can take this together!

--Mary Hammerbeck, Instructor of Eng 100



Thursday, September 30, 2010

Clydesdales deliver beer

During the beginning of this particular commercial we see a family of Clydesdales horses....just horsing around, the focus turns towards the younger horse. This foal runs into the barn temporarily turning his attention on an old photo of many Clydesdales pulling the historic beer cart in front of him. Pulling the cart only far enough to the door we see his parent horses pushing the cart from behind, secretly helping him. Suddenly a clip of and old farmer and his dog, the farmer proclaims that he "Wont tell."

This commercial easily symbolizes the American Dream that working hard equals success. This poor Clydesdale, personified by the human quality of determination, works hard on what he beleives is what he should do alone, completes his goal unknowingly with the help of his parents. The American Dream lives on through the Clydesdales hard work and unknowing help from his parents. A lot of the time things do not go according to plan, your parents may not help you, your best just might not be enough, you probably wont have the resources to complete your plan. The American Dream now is getting financial aid from the gorvernment, completing classes with the help of others, times have changed.

1 comment: