Adrenaline Junkies

Reading for Better Writing

1. It catches my attention by starting with a question that makes me give some thought. Then it gives a list of different people that were adreanline junkies so that makes it interesting and then it ends with another question that it so you wanna keep reading.
2. "yes," because everybody wants to experience different things certain things to different people could be risky or dangerous it just all depends on the person.
3. An adreanline junkie fun or dangerous? I find it very convincing because there are alot of adrenaline junkies out there and it could be good for you or it could be extremely damaging.
4. I think it is a very effective ending, because it is playful so therefore it makes it enjoyable.

The stream in the ravine

Reading for better writing

1. Each one of those places that she say's describes the outside everything she loved about it.
2. She starts off by giving background information, and then goes into detail on all of her visits and the action that she encounters. then she shares her personal importance to the stream. Then she wraps it all up with her wanting to go back in time. I think the strategy the writer used was trying make it relatable to the audience, and I thought it was very effective.
3. The photo shows the father, the daughter, and their bridge. She wants her parents to be back together so they can be a family and share more happy memories like that.
4. The tone is differnet because the stream for her now brings back sadness of her family, when she was little it was everything to her but now she doesn't want to ever go back.

A Hanging

Reading for better writing
1.) Yes, very much so because the whole story is about the hanging so it wouldn't make scence to make it a surprise.
2.)It catches the readers attention.
3.)The dog running up to the person being hung.
4.)I think it's because they used to hang people because they had commited sins so therefore it made it there job to hang them and make it a relief that it was one less criminal in the world.
5.) To leave it up to the imagination

Narritive essay

The Worst Day Ever

It was September 13, 2008 on a Saturday I was working my usual shift at Noah’s Bagels, loving my job not thinking that anything could go wrong. I went on my lunch break around 12:30 and ate one of the delicious six cheese bagels with garlic cream cheese calling all my friends to talk but nobody answering. So I decided to give my mom a call since I hadn’t talked to her in awhile. When she answered she wasn’t her normal cheery self, I could tell something was wrong. She was very hesitant to tell me though so I knew it must be really bad!

  

   I started to become frantic all these horrible thoughts started going through my head, did somebody die? Is somebody ill? WHAT???  But I managed to calm down; telling myself it’s probably nothing so I need to not jump to conclusions. And that’s when she told me that my grandpa had died the day before in a metro link accident. I was in absolute shock; my phone fell out of my hands breaking on the floor. How could this happen I just saw him not to long ago and now he’s gone just like that?

  

  I just broke down and balled my eyes out; I had never in my life cried so many tears. I couldn’t move I couldn’t breathe and to make it worse I was still at work and my shift wasn’t over. My boss heard me crying outside so she came to talk to me. She told me that I needed to go back to work because there was no one else to take my shift. So I sucked it up and went back to work trying my hardest not show my anger towards her for having such little compassion. I tried to just shove it to the back of my head like it didn’t happen I don’t think I completely fully grasped the loss yet.  Thousands of questions started running through my head like how did the train crash? Who else died? How am I going to afford to get down there for his funeral? How is my grandma? My brother? And then I got a flash back of the last conversation I had with him. “I hate you “I said at the top of my lungs! Those were the last words I ever said to my dear grandpa.  I will never in my life regret anything more than that.

My grandpa’s name is Howard Allen Pompel he was born March 22, 1938 and his life was taken September 12, 2008. He was the only father my brother and I had ever known. He was not just my grandpa, my father but also my best friend. I could talk to him about anything and everything. So you’re probably asking yourself if I loved him so much than why did I tell him that I hated him it’s because I took him for granted thinking that he was always going to be around so it didn’t matter how I spoke to him but man was I wrong.    

 When I got off work that day I went straight home to get all of my questions answered.  That wasn’t hard at all considering the fact that it was on every news channel in America. My grandpa worked at the World Trade Center in L.A. and he resided in Moorpark which was a ways away from work so he took the train there to conserve the gas. That day he had left work early to go play scrabble with his friend’s because he was the best scrabble player of all time. And that day he sat in the first car of the train which is something he never does. The train driver decided to text that day and missed the track he was supposed to turn onto making it so they crashed head on into another train. Everyone in the first car died instantly.  My grandpa was a very well known man so everybody who was anybody was talking about his death and how it’s such a shame that his life had to come to an end so fast. But my other questions still weren’t answered, since I live in northern California how was I at the last second going to be able to get down there for his funeral cause there was absolutely no way I was missing that.  But of course my mom came through and bought me my airplane ticket and I was there to properly say my goodbyes.

But when I got there I could not feel sorry for myself at all because my question of how my grandma and little brother were doing was answered, they were an absolute wreck. So I put my sadness aside to be there for them. My brother is autistic so he doesn’t fully understand the concept of death yet and this was his first encounter with it. He loved my grandpa soon much and all he knew was the fact that he was gone and never coming back so he was angry. Seeing this made my pain for my grandpa’s death kind of go to the side because my sadness became more for my loved ones that were suffering so much grief. I just wish I could take their pain away, but I knew that nothing I did or said could do that. It made everything hurt so much more why did there have to be such a thing as horrible as death?

It is now September 20, 2010 three years later and I am still grieving I don’t know if it will ever fully go away. But I have a learned a very valuable lesson from all of this which I hope to share to others for this is the purpose behind me writing this and that is “Don’t ever take your loved ones for granted for you never know when they might walk out that door and never return”.

Chapter10: Narration & Description

When writing a personal narrative your goal is to write about something significant that's happened to you. You should be passionate, choose a topic that still makes you feel happy, angry, humble, afraid, or any other strong emotion. Make sure to include characters and create memorable descriptions. First, use your sensesto trigger the reader's senses, what did you see? Hear? Last, show! Some topics you should consider are: initiation, loss, run-in, arrival, and occasion. The guidelines are 1. select a topic they could be a stranger, more wonderful, more complex than you had as a child.2.Narrow your focus heres some questions that can help:
What is the most important moment?
What led up to it?
what's really going on?
How did others experience this event?
What did you learn?
What would you have changed?
3. Determine your purpose & audience. Consider is it to entertain? To celebrate? To remind? Or possibly to gain sympathy?
Then write your first draft, share, revise, edit, then prepare your final copy.

Chapter9:Forms of College Writing

Did you know that writing helps you in two ways? 1. to learn course content & 2. to learn how to carry on a written dialogue with others in your line of work. It's very important that you know all the forms of writing. The purpose of this chapter is to show 3 important things about the writing curriculum:
1.) How a college curriculum & faculty are organized
2.)What kinds of writing you can expect to do in your courses
3.)How writing & thinking skills required in one class are linked to writing & thinking skills required in another class.
This chapter helps accomplish these tasks.
College curriculum is generally divided into 3 groups: humanities, social sciences, & natural & applied sciences.Then they are subdivided into biology, chemistry, & physics. Then you break it down such as humanities you have to think about what they study and what they examine and then jot down all the departments in the division such as: archeology, asian studies etc.

Chapter 8: One Writer's Process

This chapter is about a writer named Angela Franco and her writing process. She was assigned an essay for her Environmental Policies class.
First, she examines the assignment by reading and making notes writing the subject, purpose, audience, form, & assessment. She then explored and narrowed her assignment. She did this by clustering and freewriting. The cluster she writes the subject in the middle and connects details to it. Then the freewriting, she used water pollution then based on that she rephrased to narrow its focus. Then she reviewed her narrowed assignment and reassessed her topic.She did some research and then decided how she was going to organize her writing. She had 3 guidelines: 1. Review & record response 2. decide upon your thesis statement and think about your essay's possible content and organization 3. chose an overall method and reflect on it's potential effectiveness. After coming up with opening, middle, and closing she then put together her first draft. She then revised, and then revised again, edited, proofread, and then finished.

Chapter7: Submitting Writing & Creating Portfolios

This Chapter helps you prepare your writing for any audience or publication. First off you need to format your writing.This entails keeping your work clear and uncluttered it needs to be easy to follow. Once you have formatted and proofread you should be ready to share your writing. Before you submit you should consider your audience,then make sure you have appropriate submission methods paper or electronic. Then you need to use a writing portfolio, there are 2 basic types (1) working portfolio (2) showcase portfolio. Then after you have chosen one of those your ready tosubmitt.

Chapter 6 Editing & Proofreading

Before you begin you must make sure you have the proper tools: handbook, dictionary, thesaurus, computer spell check, etc.You will also need a partnerto edit your work. Then you prepare your final draft, following the guidelines. There is alot that entails to editing and proofreading your revised work first you consider word choice, watch for reptition. Then combining sentences, edit short, simplistic sentences. Next theres expanding sentences substitute these with cumulative sentences. Review your writing for sentence variety, avoid weak constructions and then proofread.

Chapter5:Revising

Revising takes courage.I say this because when you are done writing your first draft you want so badly to be done butt a good writer always revises. During this step you make changes, to get started you need to assess the overall quality of the ideas, organization, and voice in writing. Its a good idea to share your draft with others, all writers benefit from criticism. When you revise you have to look at the big picture, then you need to deterimine whether its interesting, informative, and worth sharing.

Chapter 4: Drafting

When you write your first draft you need to reconsider your audience, reconsider your purpose, & focus on your subject. As you develop your first draft, these strategies help keep your subject in focus. The opening draft is the opening paragraph this is one of the most important elements in composition. It should accomplish these three thing (1) engage the reader; (2)establish your direction, tone, & level of language (3) introduce your thoughts. When you develop the middle of an essay you have to do some "heavy lifting" this is where you develop your main points. You should advance your thesis to cover your main points and support them. Ending your draft can be important for tying up loose ends and clarifying key points.

Chapter 3: Planning

Planning entails careful thinking, when you plan an essay, you have 2 thinking objectives:1 establishing a thesis for your writing & 2 organizing the supporting information. To do these things you must re- examine you topic, ask yourself some questions about the subject, audience, and the purpose. Then form your thesis statement to do this you state your thesis in a sentence that is effective and expresses what you want to explore. Then you state your thesis this sets the tone and direction of your writing. An effective thesis will often suggest an organizing pattern. After you should be ready to organize the information you have collected.

Chapter 2: Beginning the Writing Process

This chapter basically goes into every detail on how the writing process works. The three main points are subject,audience, and purpose. Without these you cannot write. Now understanding your subject involves gathering and assimilating all relevant details, this includes history. makeup, function, & impact on people and culture. Knowing all of this will help you know what to include in your writing and how to organize it. Understanding your audience you need to ask yourself these questions:

• Who are my readers?
• What do they know or need to know?
• How well do they understand?
• What are their attitudes toward my topic?
• How well do they read written english?
• How will they use my writing?

Understanding the purpose  helps you make decisions, such as choosing good strategies.

Chapter 1: Critical Thinking Through Reading, Viewing, and Writing

   This chapter teaches you how you can use critical thinking through reading, viewing and writing.
First it teaches you a reading strategy: SQ3R: Survey, Question, Read, Recite, and Review.  In the first step which is Survey, this means before you read a story you should first go over and read the study guide. Then go back and read the introductory and conclusion of each page. The benefit to this serves three important purposes:(1) gives you the big picture, (2) stabilizes and directs your thoughts and (3) gets you over the starting hump. The next step is question, after you survey you should begin to ask yourself questions that you can answer while you read. Asking questions will keep you constantly thinking about what will be coming up next. Now you read, this will give you the answers to your questions and give you the big picture. Now after you finish reading a page you recite it outloud, answering your questions. Then you last but not least review, double check the questions you asked, are there answers? Those are the five steps to the SQ3R I thought they were very helpful, it will deffinitely make it easier for me next time I have to read and write.