This document provides an agenda and instructions for an online EWRT 1A class. It reviews assignments for Essay #2, which asks students to write about an autobiographical event in relation to The Hunger Games. The agenda covers revising introductions using quotations, describing settings and people, and writing dialogue. It provides examples and strategies for these elements. Students are instructed to draft descriptions of people and reconstruct dialogues from their event as homework. The conclusion section advises framing the beginning and ending of the essay to connect it back to the quoted text.

1. EWRT 1A CLASS 6
ONLINE
Email me if
you need
help!

2. AGENDA
• Review: Essay #2 Assignment
• Review
1. Beginning with a
quotation/transitioning to your
remembered event.
2. Vivid presentation of a place: Using
sensory details: 643-648
• New Writing: page 46 SMG
3. Describe a person central to your
event. Include a physical description and
gestures or behaviors.
4. Writing Dialogue.
5. Framing: beginnings and endings

4. The WritingAssignment:
See Syllabus for Due Date
• Using The Hunger Games as your starting point, write
an essay about an event in your life that will engage
readers and that will, at the same time, help them
understand the significance of the event. Tell your
story dramatically and vividly in three to five pages.
• Format: MLA style (For help, see “MLA Formatting”
on the website”). Please give your paper an original
title; don't underline or put quotation marks around
your own title.

5. Review
• Reread your beginning with a quotation and a transition
to your remembered event. Does your quotation
connect to your event? Is the transition smooth? Revise
and refine before you move on.
• Reread your vivid presentation of a place. Have you
used sensory details? Revise and refine before you
move on.
Make sure you have this
task completed before you
move on!

6. The Goal: Make AVivid Presentation of People
•Descriptive details of behaviors or actions
• She stuck her hand in the bag and picked up the poor, little
dead squirrel.
• He drew his hands through his long, greasy hair
•A bit of dialogue
• “Poor dear,” she murmured
• “Get out of my house,” he screamed
•Detail the person’s appearance
• A thin woman: all action
• He wore dress clothes: a black suit and tie

7. The Strategy: Recalling Key People
• List the people who played more than a causal role in
the event
Describe a key person: Write a brief
description of a person other than
yourself who played a major role in
the event. Name and detail a few
distinctive physical features or items
of dress. Describe in a few phrases
this person’s way of moving and
gesturing

8. The Strategy Continued: Use dialogue to
convey immediacy and drama
• Try to remember any especially
memorable comments, any unusual
choice of words, or any telling
remarks that you made or were
made to you.
• Try to partially re-create the
conversation so that readers will be
able to imagine what was going on
and how your language and the
other person’s language reveal who
you were and your relationship.
Reconstruct one important conversation

9. Review: Formatting Dialogue
• Each speaker gets his or her own paragraph; a return and indent. This
mimics real conversation, indicating pauses and so forth.
• Attributions (“He said,” “She said” and variations) should be used, but not too
much, and varied so they’re not repetitious; they can be used at the start of
quotations, in the middle, or at the end. When attributions are overused, they
get in the way; the key is that the reader should always know who’s speaking.
• Always use a comma after attribution (She said,) when introducing a quote.
• Example:
“What’s wrong with you?” he asked.
“Nothing,” I said.
“You lit my shirts on fire? Where’d you learn that?
“Daycare.”
“What? Daycare? You learned how to light shirts on fire at daycare? I
can’t believe this kind of behavior is going on there!”
“A kid brought matches one day.”
“I’m calling your daycare.”
“No,” I said. Okay, I screamed it, and he scowled at me.
“Tell me the truth, boy.”
I took a deep breath and let it slide out: “I hate your shirts, Dad.”

10. Make sure you have
described at least one
person (in paragraph
form) and that you
have reconstructed at
least one
conversation. Double
check your dialogue
formatting now.

11. The Goal: Writing a Good Conclusion
The Strategy:
Leave your readers with a sense of the overall impression
that you wanted to make about the experience.
Complete the essay for the reader; that is, give them a
sense of how it all ended for you and how you managed
your feelings, even if the encounter was never fully
resolved.
On the next slide is the student introduction we read last
time we met. Right after it, you will find the conclusion to
that essay. Read them both; then proceed to the next slide
to draft your own conclusion. The entire essay is on the
website, under essay 2.

12. Before the opening ceremonies, Katniss meets with her stylist, Cinna, to prepare. Cinna
presses a button and a fancy meal of “Chicken and chunks of oranges cooked in a creamy sauce
laid on a bed of pearly white grain, tiny green peas and onions, rolls shaped like flowers, and for
dessert, a pudding the color of honey” appears (65). Katniss thinks about how difficult it would be
to get a meal like this in District 12:
What must it be like, I wonder, to live in a world where food appears at the press of a
button? How would I spend the hours I now commit to combing the woods for
sustenance if it were so easy to come by? What do they do all day, these people in the
Capitol, besides decorating their bodies and waiting around for a new shipment of
tributes to roll in and die for their entertainment?
I look up and find Cinna’s eyes trained on mine. ‘How despicable we must seem to
you,’ he says. (65)
Katniss doesn’t respond to Cinna’s statement, but she agrees in her head. “He’s right, though. The
whole rotten lot of them is despicable” (65).
Although our world does not really consist of a Capitol and many districts, there are still some
people who live more comfortably than others. For people like me who live in privilege, life is easy.
Food is readily available if I want to eat. Outside of school, I don’t really have many responsibilities.
I don’t have to worry about how I will survive day to day. My family has told me on many occasions
to think about how lucky I am to live the way I do. In other countries, life is hard. In Africa, children
starve to death as a result of famine and poverty. People my age in some countries are working
more than my parents do. Katniss’s disgust for the extravagant Capitol is similar to the disgust I felt
for myself when I listened to an account of one man’s visit to factories in China.
How Despicable We Must Seem

13. From the student example: Conclusion
I heard some people around me breathe sighs of relief. The
captivating story about factories in China was no longer real to them. The
mood was noticeably lighter as Mr. Mustard finished the last few minutes of
class talking about how presentation is important when talking. However, I
didn’t feel the same as some of my classmates. Their feelings vanished as
soon as they heard that the story wasn’t entirely true, but I felt that just
because the parts were taken from different sources didn’t mean the
situation was different for those workers. I still felt that I was to blame for
their suffering.
Just as Katniss felt disgust for the Capitol, I felt disgust for myself.
In The Hunger Games, the districts suffer as the Capitol citizens enjoy their
extravagant lives. In real life, people in other countries suffer as a result of
people like me who like fancy electronics. Once again, I thought about
how lucky I was to have a comfortable life. Hours and hours of SAT
classes or tutoring were nothing compared to what other people my age
endured. I pictured myself talking to factory workers just as Cinna talked to
Katniss: “How despicable we must seem to you.”

14. Conclusion: The Strategy
• Try to connect your event back to your quotation in the last
paragraph.
• Consider the meaning of the experience (avoid tagging on a
moral)
• Show that the conflict was/was not fully resolved
• Contrast your remembered and current feelings and
thoughts.
Pick an approach and try
writing your conclusion now!

15. Make sure you
have drafted a
tentative
conclusion
before moving
on. Did you try
framing your
essay?

16. Writing Tips
1. Use present tense when describing the events in a
novel or film or story: “Katniss volunteers” or
“Haymitch is drinking heavily.”
2. Your thesis for this paper will be the transition
sentence from the event in The Hunger Games to
your own narrative event: “Katniss’s disgust for the
extravagant Capitol is similar to the disgust I felt for
myself when I listened to an account of one man’s
visit to factories in China.”
3. Use chronological order to tell your story.
4. Use past tense to describe the event(s) in your life:
“I was camping with my family up in Yosemite.”

17. HOMEWORK
• Read: HG through chapter 12.
SMG p 37 “Commentary: Autobiographical Significance,”
and 625-633.
• Post #6
• 3. Describe a person central to your event. Include a
physical description and gestures or behaviors (slides 6-
7).
4. Reconstruct at least one important dialogue (slides 8-9)
• 5. Write your conclusion: Framing: beginnings and
endings (slides 12-14)
• Bring: HG and SMG; and a draft of the writing you have
done thus far.