Internet ResourcesTeachingSources for YAlitSources for Children's LitStudy Questions for Children/YA litRomanticism

Writing

SJSU electronic links

• For preliminary steps for an Explication de texte, visit Close Reading
• Explicating a poem (according to Romantic scholar Dr. Helen Vendler)
• Critical Reading: from Professor John Lye
• Metaphors We Live By

Understanding Poetry

• Versification in English Poetry
• Poets Reading their poetry: text and sound
• An excerpt from Mortimer Adler's How to Read a Book
• Summary of Georges Poulet's "Phenomenology of Reading"
• Sonnets: from around the world, both past and present
• Excerpts from Brooks and Warren's Understanding Poetry
• A complete glossary of literary and rhetorical terms

Composing an Essay

• How to write good introductory paragraphs and conclusions.
• Guidelines for composing a thesis statement--simple rules to follow
• Simple rules to follow in composing a thesis statement
• How to write a thesis statement--a thorough explanation
• How an Essay Map can help organize an essay
  • Three Easy Steps for Organizing an Essay
• Ways to Achieve Sentence Variety in your Essays
• How to Avoid Common Problems in your Essays (taken in part from Purdue University)
• How to avoid Sentence Fragments
• Need help with imagery? Visit Notes on Imagery.
• Rules for using quotations in an essay
  • Learn to blend quotations into your own writing.
  • Additional guides for blending quotations
• Techniques for achieving paragraph coherence
• Visit sentence strategies for problems with sentence clarity.
• Prose style: sentence patterns
• Suggestions for cleaning up your prose style from Michael Gamer
• Visit Writing a Critical Essay for specifics
• Understanding Themes in literary works

  Other Writing Aids

• Need further definitions of poetic devices, narrative terms, and/or general literary terms? Visit Literary tools (from UVic English)
• An Imitiation Exercise of John Updike's "Central Park": Julie Weiss's example
• A game for incorporating critical theoretical terms in prose
• Optical Illusions: images connected to the way we expect to read texts
• Poetics of Business Writing--a helpful article
• "Why I Write" an original essay by Stanley Dudek

• Format for submitting papers for Patten's classes.
• MLA Documentation and Citation format
• Visit the official web site for MLA guidelines.
• Quoting on-line sources according to MLA guidelines

• Strunk and White's Elements of Style: see correct ways to use an apostrophe, how to form plurals, how to use active verbs, etc.
• Guide to all elements of Grammar and Punctuation from Purdue University
• A humorous essay about the importance of the Period
• Guide to Grammar and Style by Jack Lynch
• The Blue Book to Punctuation
• The Blue Book to Grammar
• Purdue's On Line Writing Program
• A brief punctuation exercise
• Guide to Sentence Construction or ways to eliminate problems

• The Oxford English Dictionary (the OED) is online now. A wonderful addition to the internet
• Merriam-Webster on-line dictionary
• On-line dictionary: search 8 dictionaries at once
• An integrated Dictionary and Thesaurus
• Rhetorical Information at Georgia Tech
• Review the it's or its dilemma