EN 111 Exploratory Writing assignments for the week of 11/14

Monday: Dialogue
Eavesdrop on and record a conversation. (It could be a phone conversation, something you overhear in the cafeteria, your suitemates chatting in the next room.) Write down what the people are saying, as close to word-for-word as possible. Do this for at least two minutes, but probably not more than five. Type this up and bring it to class on Monday.

Tuesday: Setting
Describe your room (or a particular space you know well) in as much detail as possible without using any form of the verb “to be” (which includes is, am, are, be, being, was, were). Type this up (about a page, double-spaced) and bring it to class on Tuesday.

Thursday: Voice
Rewrite the paragraph below, following these rules: replace nouns with nouns, verbs with verbs, prepositional phrases with prepositional phrases, etc., so that the paragraph you write follows this paragraph’s structure. This is not as easy as it may sound, so give it some time and thought. Type this up and bring it to class on Thursday.

In our family, there was no clear line between religion and fly fishing. We lived at the junction of great trout rivers in western Montana, and our father was a Presbyterian minister and a fly fisherman who tied his own flies and taught others. He told us about Christ’s disciples being fishermen, and we were left to assume, as my brother and I did, that all first-class fishermen on the Sea of Galilee were fly fishermen and that Jon, the favorite, was a dry-fly fisherman.
[Excerpt taken from A River Runs Through It and Other Stories by Norman Maclean]

Friday:
No assignment. The final drafts of Assignment #6 are due today. Please remember to include a Works Cited (or bibliography) page with Assignment #6.