MIDTERM 2: English 1S

Allowable materials: This midterm is open-book, open notes. You will find it helpful to have the
items below.
1. Etudes Modules: Reading, Writing (Essay Level), Writing (Paragraph Level), Writing
(Sentence Level)
2. Your binder with class notes and handouts
3. Your completed Essays 1 and 2, with feedback
4. Your completed Essay 3
5. The Essay Rubric
First, SAVE your document as LastnameFirstnameMidterm2.1S.docx (e.g.,
SkywalkerLukeMidterm2.docx). Type your responses in the space below each question. SAVE
your work often. When you are ready, upload your completed midterm as an attachment in
Etudes Assignments.

Part 1: Understanding Reading and Writing Concepts (recommended time: 30 minutes)

Respond to the questions below, as if you were teaching the ideas to someone who had never
heard of them. You should use your own words primarily, but you may integrate a short quote
from Beyond Words and/or class lecture/handouts if you wish.
1. What are 4 specific ways that writers can describe a place? Use specific examples from
an assigned reading and/or your own writing to illustrate. (10 points)
Physical- Description of a place, what a place looks like. When I visited my favorite place, I
described how it looked like to give the reader an idea. It is a grassy Hill overlooking the lake
and the city of Oakland. Physical can also be the people at the place. For my place there were
groups of people just sitting around on blankets.
Time- whether it be the month, year. One can also talk about the sense of time. Sometimes when
you at a place, time either flys by or drags on. Or a writer can also list a series of chronological
events. Andrew Lam uses time to have us think about California not in present time but 30 years
ago, to get a sense of how it was back then. Think about it: three decades ago, who would have
thought that sushi -- raw fish -- would become an indelible part of California cuisine
Social Environment- how social or culture are presented in that place. Lam is able to talk about
this when he decribes the different languages spoken around Nob hill in SF, when he says On
warm summer afternoons, Nob Hill, where I live, turns into the modern tower of Babel. The
languages of the world -- Chinese, French, Spanish, German, Russian, Thai, Japanese, Hindi,
Vietnamese and many more I do not recognize. When I read this in my head I just see a big
group of different people interacting with each other speaking out loud, and everyone In their
own world conversing with people of their own culture.
Atmosphere- what a place must feel like, taste like, sound like or smell like. I used to live in Las
Vegas and people would ask me how it was and one thing that comes to mind, is going to an
early run in las vegas, before the masses would come out. There would be city workers washing
the streets and I would say vegas in the morning feels like when youve been working in the yard
all day and you finally take a hot shower and have that feeling of being refreshed. That was
vegas for me in the mornings.
2. What are some specific types of information writers use to support/illustrate their points
and develop their paragraphs? (5 points)
Some specific types of information would be facts, examples, reasons, personal
experiences and testimony from others. For example, David Brooks was argument in his
article is that even though we think we are diverse actually due to the same type of
people moving to the same communities we are actually becoming more segregated and
to support this his uses data from census But recent patterns aren't encouraging:
according to an analysis of the 2000 census data, the 1990s saw only a slight increase in
the racial integration of neighborhoods in the United States.

3. What does it mean to say that writing moves from the General to Specific? (5 points)
A writer would give a general main idea in their paragraph and then in the rest the
paragraph provides specific examples to support the stated main idea. So they are
moving from a General idea and going into specific details about that idea. It works like
a step, you start with the main idea and then step down to to the specific details.

Part 2: Understanding Reading and Writing Strategies (recommended time: 30 minutes)

Explain the purpose and the process of each of the strategies below, as if you were teaching them
to some who had never heard of them. In other words, why do you use each strategy and how do
you do each strategy? You should use your own words primarily, but you may use a short quote
from handouts or lecture slides if you wish.
1. Reading for Key Concepts (5 points)
When reading we need to look at main patterns and organization the writer is using. Sometimes
they might use more than one paragraph or compare and contrast. They can use a chronological
order, or cause and effect.
2. Author dialogues (5 points)
Author dialogues help us analyze the different texts we read, by having us try to step in the
authors shoes and think how they would feel about the topic we are discussing through their own
views on the topic through their writings. When we read the different articles about the border
lands and borders each author had different ideas about this. With using the text and their original
ideas we can make a mock conversation if these authors were to get together and discuss their
views with each other.

3. Summarizing the larger conversation (5 points)

We would use this for analysis of a single text, we would also use it when we are researching a
topic. For our last essay we read different text from different authors in a debate about
borderlands and borders. When we start to write about it, summarizing the larger conversation
will help us introduce the larger debate and let us write about it in our own views.

4. Peer Response (5 points)

Peer responses are very helpful because you are learning to help each other work further with the
ideas of our essays. We are learning to become better readers to become better writers. When we
do these responses we always start off saying what we like about the text, and then we when help
our peers expand on their ideas, we dont talk about the writer, we wouldnt say you said this or
you did it that way, we would talk about the text. In this paragraph it states this, yet it could use
more evidence. Or you could you were unsure about what the point was and how you as the
reader interrupted it.

Part 3: Applying Concepts and Strategies (recommended time: 45 minutes)

Hint: It will help you to have a copy of the Essay Rubric out for easy reference when completing
this section.
5. Reverse Outline your Essay 3. Looking at your reverse outline, how would you asses the
organization of your essay according to the Essay Rubric? (20 points)
I feel my organization of my essay is basic. It is clear where I want to take my reader, yet I could
use more transitional devices to guide my reader through my essay. I dont convey a complex
logical structure, with multiple relationships among ideas and multiple levels of generality and
specificity for my essay organization to be excellent yet.
6. Select the strongest Topic Sentence from your Essay 3. (10 points)
Copy and paste it in the space below
Explain what makes it an effective and strong topic sentence.
Sometimes in our lives there are barriers that separate communities, which causes the
segregation of different groups, yet some people may not see them as barriers segregating
groups, but as a map of memories and identities.
I feel that this sentence is displaying not an argument but a preview of what my paragraph is
going to be about. And thats what a topic sentence does. So here Im telling my reader that even
though groups do segregate themselves these barriers for others act as a map of themselves.
7. Select a paragraph from your Essay 3 that demonstrates effective Paragraph
Development. (10 points).
Copy and paste it in the space below
Annotate the relevant aspects of the paragraph (color-code and/or insert margin
comments)
Then, using the Essay Rubric, explain specifically how this paragraph
demonstrates effective paragraph development. How would you rate your essay
overall with respect to paragraph development? Explain.
In People like Us, David Brooks argues that, We are finding places where we are
comfortable and where we feel we can flourish. But the choices we make toward that end lead to
the very opposite of diversity. Growing up in the bay area and living in different cities, I have
seen the different type of people that find places where they feel comfortable in which they
create new communities, even though they are serrated these communities make a city more
diverse. In Los Angeles there Korea Town is where many Koreans chose to live due to the fact
that it might remind them a bit of home or feel safe, yet that does not mean that area is not
diverse. Walking around Korea town on a Saturday afternoon you will see many different groups
of people enjoying the different type of foods and also enjoying some Korean culture. By having
these segregated areas, it adds more culture to a town, helping create more diversity. Just because
a group of people feel they can flourish around people like them does not create less diversity, in

a sense it creates new towns within towns that help expand different cultures. If it wasnt for
communities like this I would have never experienced Korean BBQ, which to this day is my
favorite food.
I use an example from one of the readings of a debate the author has, yet I have my topic
sentence after that. I disagree with what the writer was saying and Im able to support my idea
with a specific example of something I have experience which I think helps my argument. I feel
that this paragraph is Basic, I dont have many other of the assigned readings intergraded into the
paragraph. It is selected to match the point. I would say overall my essay is basic with the
paragraph devolvement. At this point Im still learning to integrate more specific details into my
paragraphs. Red is my topic sentence, purple information and how Im supporting my point, and
orange is my E, my conclusion of the paragraph.