Giant Panda Cub Born at National Zoo Dies

http://www.foxnews.com/science/2012/09/23/giant-panda-cub-born-at-national-zoo-dies/?test=latestnews

There is a lot of diction in this article that makes you feel bad for the Zoo and the mother. Like in line two they mention the "saddening zoo officials and visitors." The author talks about how hard it is for a young panda to stay alive through the first two weeks of a panda's life because of infection and their extremely small size.
The most vivid imagery given is when they describe the size of small pandas, which are according to the author "the size of a stick of butter."
There is a lot of detail about the Panda's mother and the history of the Pandas at the zoo. According to the article they were given to the washington zoo by China in honor of president Nixon's visit to their country. The author also tells us about the dead baby's mother and that the baby came as a surprise because she had had five miscarriages before giving birth to this baby.
As far as syntax goes all the sentences are long creating a pattern of long rhythmic story telling. The tone is not very elevated but is more like a friend talking to a friend, keeping it informational and conversational.  There is a quote said by a girl named Murray, she repeats the word beautiful creating an emphasis on the importance of the beauty of the situation. The article ends on such a sad depressing thought but really bringing the emphasis back on the death of the little cub.

~Emily Mackson

Prompt

1972. In retrospect, the reader often discovers that the first chapter of a novel or the opening scene of a drama introduces some of the major themes of the work. Write an essay about the opening scene of a drama or the first chapter of a novel in which you explain how it functions in this way.

In the first scene of The Brighton Beach Memoirs by Neil Simon the opening act gives away a lot of the major themes for the build up of the play. Eugene gets yelled at by his mother about setting the table and he brings up one of the major themes in the play dependency. Throughout the whole show there is a struggle for being independent or being to dependent for most of the characters. Another theme also brought up by Eugene in the first scene is coming of age, where he finds himself intrigued by the thought of women.

Eugene Brings up the theme Dependency by wondering why Laurie can't set the table of course she cant because she is to sick. But she really is not she is being to coddled by aunt Kate because of aunt Kate's sister, Laurie's mother, Blanche. Blanche lost her husband, Dave, a few years back and she and her two daughters have moved in with her sister Kate and husband and their two kids. Blanche has been so dependent on her sister all these years now because of it. She has no job, no money, she cant support her two girls. This is a major theme in Nora's case also. Nora is the daughter of Blanche and dreams of being a Broadway star but when she gets the chance she is cut off by her mother who refuses to let her do it thinking she is to young to have so much independence.

Eugene finds himself growing up and in love with his cousin Nora. He knows that this will never happen but is still found trying to get a glimpse because he is going through puberty. But during the second half of the show he really steps up and becomes a man. finding himself not in love with Nora because he has now excepted the responsibilities he must because his brother left to join the army and his father had a stroke. His mother and aunt had a fight about money and his aunt left because she went to find some, being to dependent on her sister all her life. All thats going on in the family for him has really hit hard and he is willing to grow up a little to make it work.

~Emily Mackson

response to course material

We have only had one week of school, but surprisingly i have learned a lot. I have never really needed to connect homework assignments to my life let alone anything i have learned at school. But the things we have learned in AP English over the summer is really helping me. we read How to Read Literature like a Professor by Foster which has helped me read books just for fun as well as school. I think that this was a very helpful book for the school to have us read over the summer because we will be reading a lot of literature over the course of the school year.  Foster wrote about a lot of things that i knew in the back of my mind but never really applied to literature. 
Also we read The Nuts and bolts of Writing a College essay, which has helped me immensely when writing any essay including my admission ones for colleges. The book had a lot of detail concerning things that I personally did. Of course i didn't know that i was doing them but when i thought about it I did quite a few of them. The book mentioned on thing about pompous style which i thought was a little funny because the previous book we had read had a very pompous style.
We have also been looking at literature terms. Learning them gave me another perspective on poetry. i looked back over the summer poems we were supposed to read and saw a lot of things that I had missed when looking at them during the summer. I also think that these terms will help me throughout AP English when reading poetry, though I don't think that we will be reading much more Poetry which is sad.
~Emily Mackson

blog post 3

Personally I would not think of this essay as a college essay, more along the lines of a story telling out of a book. which is what it is. But analyzing it against the book the Nuts and Bolts Of College Writing by Harvey, Sedaris seems to be a pretty good writer.

The book starts out talking about how all of these college kids think that they need to sound smart so they adopt this very pompous style of writing. I would not call his writing style Pompous in fact I might call it a little humble because he talks about how he is forty-one and returning to college (David Sedaris) Later in the book he talks about how he "took to spending four hours a night on my home work" because he wanted to create an identity for himself. He wanted the teacher to notice him, but in a good way. Harvey also talks about how people who need to be good writers use big words to make themselves seem smarter while good writers know the importance of the smaller words. I would categorize Sedaris as the writer who knows the importance of the small words, because he never uses gigantic words to pump up his vocabulary.

Another section Sedaris follows very well is chapter three: Flow. Harvey talks about keeping the same subject and not straying because its extremely confusing to keep up with. Sedaris keeps the same subject the whole time, French class. He never strays from the topic whether to talk about his French teacher or his French homework or speaking French.  Another part of the flow section was keeping consistent characters which Sedaris does very well. Instead of introducing us to a bunch of the kids from the class he stays consistent with just the Teacher of the French class. Harvey also talks about "the logical turns and links" which he uses quite frequently. One of the most frequently used is the cause links like when he says "The first day of class was nerve-racking because I knew I'd be expected to perform" (David Sedaris). This is an example of a cause link because of the word because, it shows the reason or cause for the action.

My favorite thing that Harvey mentions in his book is Gracefulness. he talks about a specific idea called rhetoric, which in the writing world is more specific to mean the "the science or art of persuasion by means of stylistic or structural techniques" (Michael Harvey). Sedaris uses this very well when it comes to his teacher. He tells us constantly about how his teacher is harsh, unpleasant, and very hard to please. one great example of how he uses words to make his teacher unlikeable is this quote " She crouched low for her attack, placed her hands on the young woman’s desk, and leaned close, saying, 'Oh yeah? And do you love your little war?'" (David Sedaris) with this quote he characterizes her in a way that makes he seem extremely scary and unlikeable.

Overall i think that Sedaris did a very good job with his essay. It flowed very well there did not seem to be any grammatical errors he did not use the pompous style that so many writers do and gracefulness.

~Emily Mackson