The book ends and the dance begins.

So if I am correct than this post should be on the reading from last week in which we finished Smoke Dancing. I have to say that I was in a way disappointed with the ending of the novel because I guess I wanted more to happen at the end. I don't feel that the reader is really given any more insight into the character of Fiction but perhaps that's how the author wanted it to be. I do however think that Fiction has regained some kind of identity for herself. She is no longer really defining herself how others do. We see this in how one of the last chapters is told by Patricia Tunny rather than her name Fiction. I think she has looked back on that part of her life and can finally be truly happy because she has shown her father that there are people who care about her and who will take her side over his. Also, Bud was shown for the true jerk he really is which I think gave her character closure in the end. As for Mason, I am interested to see what is in store for him and how he deals with the guidelines that tribe counsel has set up for him.
As for Almanac, I think we learned a great deal about the twins and their lives and how they became the way they are and we also learned some about Sterling and what exactly he did to be exiled. I'm very interested to find out more about Seese and her baby and what exactly happened with all that mess. I am beginning to see all the other stories that are present in this book which I think goes back to the whole oral tradition thing. These stories, even in the book seem to be passed on to others and I wonder how much they would change through these re-tellings.

Fiction Exposes Conspiracy

Both books so far are very interesting, though I would have to agree with most that I prefer reading Smoke Dancing to Almanac. My previous post discussed the importance of Bert and I think that she has shown significance throughout the story because her land and what she left behind is being used as tools for each side to fight each other. I realy enjoy watching Fiction develop throughout the novel. When she created the dress and confronted her father in front of everyone it was almost out of character for her because before she had not wanted to tell anyone about anything regarding who had bust her windows or why she had gone to the hospital. I really wonder what exactly fiction wants from her father Bud. I guess I just don't understand exactly what she is searching for. Does she want him to acknowledge she is his or does she want more than that? There are times I feel both ways. Sometimes it seems that she just wants him to admit that he is not a perfect person or Chief. Other times it seems like she really wants him to suffer or pay in some way for how he has wronged her. I'm interested to see how she changes further into the end of the book.
Another thing that bothered me in the story was the fact that Bud signed papers so allow the police to come onto the reservation. I didn't understand why he would do that because I though that the people of the reservation would see this as something horrible and know that he had done it. I understood that he wanted to take down Mason but I felt that that would only make more people against him. I feel odd about Bud because he character seems different when the chapter is told from his point of view. I'm just waiting to see how he turns out.

As for the Almanac, the story of Yoeme is interesting because I think she has affected the lives of the twins quite a lot. What I'm really interested in is Seese's story because I want to know what happened exactly to her baby. The amount of drugs she continues to take just amazes me. I keep hoping she will stop and she is so lucky her baby wasn't born addicted. I wonder what will happen to Lecha in the end and if she will eventually answers Seese's questions.

Smoke Dancing and Oral Tradition

The first reading for Smoke Dancing really surprised me. The story is interesting and intriguing. Oral tradition can be seen throughout the story as pieces of the characters’ lives is shared with other characters from other characters. The reader is being told these stories from the perspective of three of the characters so far, Fiction, Bud, and Mason. They are making the entire book appear as oral fiction because the story is coming from them in each chapter. We also see this going on with Fiction telling the reader more and more about Bert and how she was before she died. Another thing worth mentioning is the relationships between the characters. I am unsure how realistic these relationships are to a real reservation. It seems that in the book, everyone is somehow connected to everyone else. The character of Fiction appears alone but really she is pretty much the most connected to every other character in the book. Her character is complex and confusing. I don’t understand why she wouldn’t make her father take responsibility for beating her. I wish she would confront him in some way before the end of the book. Also, I don’t understand the significance of the character of Bert. She seems to have been housing them all but there just seems to be something still missing from the story about her thus far. She seems too important to just dissolve from the story after her death. I think her relationship to the other characters must be highly significant in some way but the author hasn’t quite revealed that to the reader yet.

Prose Revised!

This play was difficult to understand, but the course packet helped a lot. I understood the play better by the end of it. I didn’t necessarily like the play, but I enjoyed the interesting parts and trying to figure out what was going on. The characters are so different than other plays we’ve read. The setting of the play influenced how I saw the characters in my mind. The Pilkings, Simon and Jane, annoyed me because of their ignorance about the culture around them. Simon thought the culture’s ways were completely wrong. It was his job to get rid of the natives’ “ridiculous” customs and superstitions. The character Olunde puts it well when speaking to Jane. He says she has no respect for what she doesn’t understand. He speaks to the western world at this moment. Jane is a representation of that. Olunde experiences both cultures, allowing him to understand both. His respect falls on both the western world and his own. At the end of the play, he teaches everyone a lesson. He dies instead of his father, taking his place in the afterworld with the King.

Blog #1 revisited!

I have to say that this last week was probably the most beneficial to me because we often worked with the lesson to learn it. I am definitely a learner who does better by putting it into practice. The AAAWWUBBIS lesson was something I never really thought about before. These are lessons you may know internally without really thinking about the actual rules. It made your realize how those subordinate clauses need a period after them and how AAAWWUBBIS makes that first half only a clause and it is no longer a complete sentence. I really enjoyed the lesson and I love keeping the workshop checklist written in a certain place so that one day I may use the lessons from it in my own classroom.
I was so thankful when the deadline was pushed back for the scrapbook because I often found sentences or commas I thought were incorrect but sometimes it would turn out that they weren’t really incorrect but rather it was a newspaper related preference. I am still really frustrated with finding examples because I suppose I do not have very much confidence that it is actually incorrect. I think looking at the example scrapbooks and asking questions really helped in class on Wednesday. I do have more ideas of what to look for now, but I still worry whether I am judging the mistake correctly. Overall, I really enjoyed class this week because I learned a lot about applying the lessons to my own writing and finding examples and common mistakes in others writing.

I have to say that this last week was probably the most beneficial to me because we often worked with the lesson to learn it. Being someone who learns from doing, using the blogs to pick out examples really helped me [Participle]. The AAAWWUBBIS lesson was something I never really thought about before. These are lessons you may know internally without really thinking about the actual rules. It made your realize how those subordinate clauses need a period after them and how AAAWWUBBIS makes that first half only a clause and it is no longer a complete sentence. I really enjoyed the lesson, and I love keeping the workshop checklist written in a certain place so that one day I may use the lessons from it in my own classroom. The checklist, which puts grammatical rules into simple terms, is a way to refer back to everything we have learned this semester [Appostive].
I was so thankful when the deadline was pushed back for the scrapbook because I often found sentences or commas I thought were incorrect but sometimes it would turn out that they weren’t really incorrect but rather it was a newspaper related preference. I am still really frustrated with finding examples because I suppose I do not have very much confidence that it is actually incorrect. I think looking at the example scrapbooks and asking questions really helped in class on Wednesday. I do have more ideas of what to look for now, but I still worry whether I am judging the mistake correctly. Overall, I really enjoyed class this week because I learned a lot about applying the lessons to my own writing and finding examples and common mistakes in others writing.

AAAWWUBIS!

I have to say that this last week was probably the most beneficial to me because we often worked with the lesson to learn it. I am definitely a learner who does better by putting it into practice. The AAAWWUBBIS lesson was something I never really thought about before. These are lessons you may know internally without really thinking about the actual rules. It made your realize how those subordinate clauses need a period after them and how AAAWWUBBIS makes that first half only a clause and it is no longer a complete sentence. I really enjoyed the lesson and I love keeping the workshop checklist written in a certain place so that one day I may use the lessons from it in my own classroom.
I was so thankful when the deadline was pushed back for the scrapbook because I often found sentences or commas I thought were incorrect but sometimes it would turn out that they weren’t really incorrect but rather it was a newspaper related preference. I am still really frustrated with finding examples because I suppose I do not have very much confidence that it is actually incorrect. I think looking at the example scrapbooks and asking questions really helped in class on Wednesday. I do have more ideas of what to look for now, but I still worry whether I am judging the mistake correctly. Overall, I really enjoyed class this week because I learned a lot about applying the lessons to my own writing and finding examples and common mistakes in others writing.

Question: How do you recognize an introductory clause? What rules do you have for identifying them?

FANBOYS and Punctuation

I am very happy we discussed compound sentences and using a comma before FANBOYS. Now that I think about it I think I only used commas before for, and, nor, but, or, yet, and so if I thought it was necessary. I never thought of them always needing a comma if they were used as a conjunction between two sentences. The lesson was really straightforward and I think I now understand how to punctuate these sentences. I was also interested in learning what a comma splice is because you hear people talk about them but I never really understood what they were. I understand now that they occur when two sentences are connected only with a comma and the FANBOYS are left out. However, I am not exactly sure what a complex sentence is now. I know the difference between simple and compound but what is complex?

Our discussion on the second half of Cordeira’s article I felt was more interesting than the first. It really brought out the teachers in our classroom. You could see how different we were in our teaching styles. Some thought it would be better to let students explore punctuation completely on their own and to not correct it because then they will never learn how to use it but rather will just correct whatever you say is wrong. Others like myself thought there had to be some line you draw as a teacher when you do correct them. How will they ever learn if they keep making the same mistake? It is important to let students explore with the language but at a point shouldn’t we step in and do our jobs as teachers and actually teach something? I was really frustrated with the article because the author kept saying punctuation is a “negotiation between the writer and reader” but then turned around and said there must be a common reference for the rules of punctuation. Is punctuation solely up to the author or do some forms of punctuation need to follow the rule?

My question for this week is, can you give me an example of a complex sentence, and what exactly makes it different from a compound sentence?