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I. B.E.H.S. Writing Folder Program

The purpose of this program is to help you become a clear and effective communicator. By making clear specific types of writing to be completed at each grade level, the program helps us align our writing curriculum within grade levels, between grade levels, and with the Maine Learning Results. Your work contained within these folders will provide clear documentation of progress for you and your parents. Since satisfactory completion of all work is required for credit, the program provides accountability for students and teachers. Furthermore, this program will act as a valuable tool for instruction. You and your teachers will be able to easily access your work from past English courses, using these pieces to build on prior knowledge and plan instruction as well as assessment. Finally, as you progress through the grades, you will have evidence of your progress as a writer.

The following types of writing will be included in the folder:

Narration: "Narrative writing answers the question, 'What happened?' It tells a story through a sequence of events, so that the reader understands the action."*

Narrative: From Shelley's Frankenstein

It was on a dreary night of November that I beheld the accomplishment of my toils. With an anxiety that almost amounted to agony, I collected the instruments of life around me, that I might infuse a spark of being into the lifeless thing that lay at my feet. It was already one in the morning; the rain pattered dismally against the panes, and my candle was nearly burnt out, when, by the glimmer of the half-extinquished light, I saw the dull yellow eye of the creature open; it breathed hard, and a convulsive motion agitated its limbs.

Exposition: "Expository writing informs the reader about something. Methods of exposition include comparison and contrast, illustration, classification, definition, cause and effect and analysis. Methods of exposition are often combined to accomplish a specific purpose for writing."* In short, when you write exposition you are explaining. For example, in the passage below E.B. White explains how rural education is “more casual” by using specific examples, including how students dress and what the school building looks like.

Expository: From "Education" in E.B. White's One Man's Meat

In the country all one can say is that [education] is different and somehow more casual. Dressed in corduroys, sweatshirt, and short rubber boots, and carrying a tin dinner-pail, our scholar departs at crack of dawn for the village school, two and a half miles down the road, next to the cemetery. When the road is open and the car will start, he makes the journey by motor, courtesy of his old man. When the snow is deep or the motor is dead or both, he makes it on the hoof. In the afternoons he walks or hitches all or part of the way home in fair weather, gets transported in foul. The schoolhouse is a two-room frame building, bungalow type, shingles stained a burnt brown with weather-resistant stain. It has a chemical toilet in the basement and two teachers above stairs. One takes the first three grades, the other the fourth, fifth, and sixth. They have little or no time for individual instruction, and no time at all for the esoteric. They teach what they know themselves, just as fast and as hard as they can manage. The pupils sit still at their desks in class, and do their milling around outdoors during recess.

Description: "Descriptive writing presents the qualities of objects, persons, conditions, and actions."* Use sensory details in your descriptive writing to create a mental picture in your reader's mind. Note in the passage below how Fitzgerald addresses the senses of sight ("his station wagon scampered like a brisk yellow bug"), touch ("hot sand") and sound ("music").

Descriptive: From Fitzgerald's Great Gatsby

There was music from my neighbor's house through the summer nights. In his blue gardens men and girls came and went like moths among the whisperings and the champagne and the stars. At high tide in the afternoon I watched his guests diving from the tower of his raft or taking the sun on the hot sand of his beach while his two motor boats slit the waters of the Sound, drawing aquaplanes over cataracts of foam. On week-ends his Rolls-Royce became an omnibus, bearing parties to and from the city, between nine in the morning and long past midnight, while his station wagon scampered like a brisk yellow bug to meet all trains. And on Mondays eight servants including an extra gardener toiled all day with mops and scrubbing-brushes and hammers and garden shears, repairing the ravages of the night before.

Persuasion/argument: "Persuasive writing uses emotional appeals to bring about a change of attitude, point of view, or feelings. Argumentative writing uses logic and reason to bring about the change of attitude, point of view, or feeling; it shows that a conclusion merits belief because of believable data, evidence, etc."* For this type of writing you need to back up your general assertions with specific details. In the passage below Ambrose uses the word "failure" in his topic sentence. Then, he gives multiple reasons why Lewis considered the expedition to have been unsuccessful.

Persuasive/Argumentative: Ambrose's Undaunted Courage

He may have regarded the expedition as a failure by the time he died. No trade empire had been established, or appeared possible anytime in his generation. The Indians controlled the Missouri River and were at war with one another. British traders still encroached on American territory. Lewis's glowing reports on the soil and climate in present Missouri, Kansas, Iowa, and Nebraska had not set off a land rush; there was still plenty of land to be had in Kentucky, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio. The State Department was making no effort to claim sovereignty north of the forty-ninth parallel. The government was pressing no claim to the Oregon country. These things would come, but only with the steamship and the railroad. Until they did, the Louisiana Purchase - save for New Orleans - was exactly what Lewis called it in his Indian-policy paper, a "barren waste."

Literary Analysis: An interpretation of the work as a whole or the analysis of a specific element as it relates to the work as a whole.

Literary Analysis: Model Essay - Shakespeare's Macbeth

Shakespeare portrays Macbeth's strength and apparent loyalty early in the play. A wounded captain who has just returned from battle describes Macbeth's valor. Even though he fought against overwhelming odds, Macbeth "unseamed [MacDonald] from the nave to th' chops, / And fixed his head upon our battlements" (I ii 21-23). The tactile image of Macbeth's sword which "smoked with bloody execution" (I ii 18) conveys the horror of the battle. Clearly, Macbeth is a violent man; nevertheless, his violence at this point in the play is just. Using personification a few lines later on, Shakespeare has the captain declare that

No sooner had justice, with valor armed.
Compelled these skipping kerns to trust their heels
But the Norweyan lord, surveying vantage,
With furbished arms, and new supplies of men
Began a fresh assault. (I ii 29-33)

At this point in the play Macbeth is equated with justice itself. Duncan, of course, concurs. Hearing these reports and the description of the successful counter-attack, he uses diction such as "valiant" (I ii24) and "worthy" (I ii24) to characterize Macbeth and then awards him the title Thane of Cawdor . .

Of course, some pieces of writing might fit in more than one category, as these categories are not mutually exclusive.

*These definitions are taken from the Guide To The Maine Educational Assessment (1999) and are themselves adapted from Modern Rhetoric, by Cleanth Brooks and Robert Penn Warren.

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II. Use of Quotations

Effective writers develop their topics with multiple details. In academic writing, details often include references to other texts. As a lawyer presents evidence, you too should present supporting evidence, including but not limited to quotations.

A quotation should never be a separate sentence that stands alone in a text. Rather, you should integrate quotations into the text, thereby making them part of your own sentences. As a rule, quotations seldom end paragraphs. Rather, you should frame quotations with your own words both before and after the quotation. To lead into your quotations use signal phrases or clauses. Avoid monotony by varying these phrases and clauses. The following examples suggest some possibilities.

As Dickens scholar Angus Wilson notes, Dickens "felt that society was guilty for the criminals it made" (527).

Upon first meeting Magwitch, Pip pleads "Oh! Don't cut my throat, sir" (10).

The narrator of A Tale of Two Cities argues that the year 1775 was both "the best of times [and] the worst of times" (1). 

As you can see from the above examples, you may include either the author's name or a character's name in your signal, depending on the circumstances. Never merely refer to the quotation itself (This quotation says . . . ).

Be sure to make clear to the reader how each quotation illustrates your point. If your signal does not do this, make sure you write additional sentences after the quotation that do so. 

In an attempt to justify his part in the assassination of Caesar, Brutus argues that he participated because "Not that I loved Caesar less, but I loved Rome/ more" (Julius Caesar III ii 21-22). The use of parallel structure highlights the speaker's patriotism. 

Whitman opens his ode to Abraham Lincoln by declaring "O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done" ("O Captain! My Captain" 1). Given the enormous casualties of the American Civil War, "fearful trip" is certainly an appropriate metaphor for this conflict. 

Be sure to include enough information in your parentheses to lead your reader to your Works Cited page.

To introduce most quotations, use a comma or no punctuation mark at all. 

Longfellow urges his readers to "Act - act in the living Present" (23). His use of repetition in this line helps to create an earnest tone. 

If, however, both the quotation and your introduction to it could stand alone as separate sentences, then you should use a colon to introduce the quotation. 

The opening stanza of Longfellow's "Psalm of Life" refutes the naysayers and pessimists of his age:

Tell me not, in mournful numbers,
Life is but an empty dream! -
For the soul is dead that slumbers,
And things are not what they seem. (1-4)

The poet's use of an imperative sentence is clearly appropriate to a poem that teaches us how to live life.

Avoid using say or tell. Instead, use stronger verbs. Apply literary terms when appropriate. Remember to block quotations of poetry of three or more lines and prose of four or more lines. Never place quotation marks around blocked quotations. If you wish to leave out some words within a quotation, use the ellipsis (. . . ).

Thoreau asserts that "The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation . . .
But it is a characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things" (Walden 172-3). 

If you wish to include a word or phrase of your own to make the text easier to read, include this in brackets.

Santiago declares that "a man [who is truly heroic] can be destroyed but never defeated" (The Old Man and The Sea 62).

When quoting lines of poetry (including Shakespeare's plays) that are too brief to block, use a / to indicate where one line ends and the next begins.

Enraged upon receiving a mortal wound from Tybalt, Mercutio declares "A plague o' both your houses! / They have made worms' meat of me" (III i 106-7).

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III. Citing Sources

As a writer within any academic community, you are required to cite your sources. This serves a two-fold purpose: first, it credits others for their ideas and research; second, it allows your readers to follow-up on or build upon the research that you yourself have done.

Plagiarism is the act of representing someone else's work as your own. Appropriately enough, it comes from the Latin work meaning to kidnap. Plagiarism is a serious breach of both academic and professional ethics. Its consequences are severe: the former Boston Globe columnist Mike Barnicle lost his job for attempting to pass off some of George Carlin's jokes in one of his columns as his own; Senator Joe Biden was forced to withdraw from the Presidential race in 1988 when it was learned he had plagiarized material for a paper at Syracuse University Law School; also, students have been expelled from college for this offense. Students guilty of plagiarism in English classes at B.E.H.S. will receive an automatic 0 for that assignment.

It is necessary to cite your source in the following instances:

1. When you quote directly.
2. When you paraphrase or summarize material,
3. When you take any idea, piece of information, statistic or anything else from another source.

Confusion sometimes arises over what students need to document. Avoid any problems by following the rule clearly stated in the Datrmouth College handbook Sources: their Use and Acknowledgement (1988): "Cite sources for ideas or information that could be regarded as common knowledge but [that] you did not possess before" beginning your research (4). For example, if you are writing a paper on an author and learn biographical information that you did not know before beginning your research, you need to show the reader where you learned this information. When in doubt, cite your source.

While many different formats for documentation exist, your English teachers will require you to follow the MLA format. The MLA Handbook explains methods for footnotes, endnotes and parenthetical documentation. In most of your classes you will use parenthetical documentation. With this method you need to include just enough information to point your reader to the proper entry in your Works Cited Section. Note that this booklet uses the MLA parenthetical documentation format.

Below is a passage from the article "Complexity as Theme in Romeo and Juliet" published in Readings In The Tragedies Of William Shakespeare.

The whole impasse between the Montagues and the Capulets is due to the fact that each acts as if he is completely good and his enemy completely bad . . . The Friar is the only character who knows from the start that his way of viewing humanity is false; the others have to find it out by experience, and their process of becoming educated constitutes their tragedy (65).

If you write either of the following sentences in your own work, you have committed plagiarism.

The whole conflict between the Capulets and Montagues is because each family sees itself as entirely virtuous and the other as entirely evil.

As Bowling notes the whole conflict between the Capulets and Montagues is due to the fact that each acts as if he is completely good or completely bad (Bowling 65)

In the first sentence you have not cited your source. In the second, although you have cited your source you have not used quotation marks even though the words are not your own.

Avoid plagiarizing by citing your source. Use quotations for other's words. You should paraphrase and summarize when appropriate. However, when you do so make sure the words are your own even though the ideas or information are someone else's.

Note how the following sentences use information from the same article but avoid plagiarism.

The whole conflict between the Capulets and Montagues is because each family sees itself as entirely virtuous and the other as entirely evil (Bowling 65).

or

As Bowling notes the whole conflict between the Capulets and Montagues "is due to the fact that each acts as if he is completely good and his enemy completely bad" (Bowling 65).

In the first sentence the writer has summarized the main idea of the passage but altered the wording. In the second passage the writer has quoted directly and used quotation marks.

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IV. Punctuation

Use commas in the following situations:

1. to set off non-essential phrases and clauses;

   - James Joyce, an Irish author, was born in Dublin. 

   - D. H. Lawrence, who wrote Sons and Lovers, was born in England

    

2. to set off introductory phrases and subordinate clauses from the main clause;

   - Hoping to reach school on time, he drove all too quickly.

   - Although she did not see the police car, the deputy noticed her.

    

3. to separate independent clauses joined by a coordinating conjunction;

   - He set his alarm, but he overslept anyways.

Use semicolons in the following situations:

1. to join closely related independent clauses;

   - Baseball was once considered America's game; however, professional basketball seems to have a larger following today.

   - Winter in Maine is long; summer is all too short. 

2. to separate items in a list when the items include commas.

   - He visited a number of cities: London, England; Paris, France; and Madrid, Spain.

Use colons in the following situations:

1. to introduce a quotation when your words and the quotation could both stand alone as separate sentences.

   - Kafka catches our attention with the opening line of Metamorphoses: "When Gregor Samsan woke up one morning from unsettling dreams, he found himself changed in his bed into a monstrous vermin" (Kafka,1). 

    

2. to call attention to an appositive or independent clause that follows an independent clause;

   - The team met its goal: they won the championship.

   - They received the grade they deserved: an A.

    

3. to introduce a list (but not after a verb or a preposition);

   - Some of the things he enjoys are skiing, snowshoeing, and ice-fishing.

   - He often spends his winter in outdoor activities: skiing, snowshoeing, and ice- fishing.

   - He traveled to 3 countries: England, France, and Spain.

   - He traveled to England, France, and Spain. 

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V. Correction Symbols

Correction Symbols: presented below is a key to the correction symbols that your English teachers will be using to provide feedback on your writing; some teachers, of course, might choose to use symbols in addition to these.

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VI. Works Cited

Presented below is a sample works cited page that includes the more common type of entries often used in student papers. For entries not listed here you may consult the MLA Handbook For Writers of Research Papers (Gibaldi 1995). Remember to organize alphabetically by the first entry. Remember to never number entries on this page. Numbering is only used for footnotes and endnotes.

Note: Because of limitations on this web page's technology, the second line of the entries below are not indented; however, you should always indent the second lines of your entries, five spaces.

[For a Book]

Ambrose, Stephen E. Undaunted Courage. New York: Touchstone, 1996.

[For a Newspaper]

Blom, Eric. "Peaks Island Rocks Are On A Roll." Portland Press Herald. 16 October, 2000: 1A+.

[For Translated work]

Hugo, Victor. Les Miserables. Trans. Lee Fahnestock and Norman MacAfee. New York: Signet, 1987.

[For an Internet source with author]

Jokinen, Anniina. "Beloved." Anniina's Toni Morrison Home Page. 10/16/2000. <www.luminarium.org/contemporary/tonimorrison/toni.htm>.

[For a Poem in Collected Works]

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth. "My Lost Youth." Evangeline and Selected Tales and Poems. New York: New American Library, 1964.

[For a Magazine]

Miller, Matthew. "Healthcare: A Bolt of Civic Hope." The Atlantic Monthly. October 2000: 20-28.

[For an Internet source without author]

"Sethe's Character Development." Toni Morrison. 10/16/2000. <www.cwrl.utexas.edu/~maria/morrison/toni.htm>

[For CD-ROM with author]

Yokokura, Nikki. Exotic Japan: Introduction to Japanese Culture and Language. CD-ROM. Santa Monica, CA: The Voyager Company, 1991.

[For CD-ROM without author]

Shakespeare: The Complete Works. CD-ROM. 1989.

[For Book with Editor]

Shakespeare, William. Hamlet. Ed. David Bevington. New York: Banton, 1988.

[For a Personal Interview]

Weaver, George. Personal Interview. 8 November, 2000.

[For an Article in Book]

White, E.B. "Education." One Man's Meat. New York: Harper and Row, 1938.

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VII. Works Consulted

Ambrose, Stephen. Undaunted Courage. New York: Touchstone, 1996.

Brooks, Cleanth and Robert Penn Warren. Modern Rhetoric. 2nd Edition. New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1958.

Bowling, Edward. "Complexity as a Theme in Romeo and Juliet." Readings In The Tragedies of William Shakespeare. Ed. Bruno Leone et. al. San Diego, CA: Greenhaven, 1996.

Dickens, Charles. A Tale of Two Cities. New York: Penguin, 1980.

Dickens, Charles. Great Expectations. New York: Penguin, 1961.

Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Great Gatsby. New York: Scribner, 1980.

Gibaldi, Joseph. MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers. 4th Edition. New York: The Modern Language Association of America, 1995.

Hacker, Diane. A Writer's Reference. New York: Bedford, 1999.

Hemingway, Ernest. The Old Man and the Sea. New York: MacMillan, 1980.

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth. Evangeline and Selected Tales and Poems. Ed. Horace Gregory. New York: New American Library, 1964.

Maine Department of Education. Guide to the Maine Educational Assessment. Augusta, Maine. 1990.

Shakespeare, William. Macbeth. English and Western Literature. New York: Macmillan, 1987.

- - -. Romeo and Juliet. Understanding Literature. New York: Macmillan, 1987.

- - -. Julius Caesar. Understanding Literature. New York: Macmillan, 1987.

Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein. New York: Signet, 1983.

Strunk, William et. al. The Elements of Style. 4th Edition. Needham Heights, MA: Allyn and Bacon, 2000.

Thoreau, Henry David. Walden. American Literature. New York: MacMillan, 1984.

Waddell, Marie L. et al. The Art of Styling Sentences: 20 Patterns for Success. New York: Barrons Educational Series, 1993.

Whitman, Walt. Civil War Poetry and Prose. New York: Dover, 1995.

Wilson, Angus. Afterword. David Copperfield. By Charles Dickens. New York: Penguin, 1961.

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