APEnglish–South El Monte HS

Period 1

Today in class most of us had our attention skills tested. Like usual we started working on the weekly packets (this week being Imagery). Mr. Eldridge then began asking students what imagery was.

Imagery appeals to the senses. Being in an AP class and using our vocabulary, the five senses are

• Gustatory – taste
• Auditory – sound
• Olfactory – smell
• Tactile – touch
• Visual – sight

Shortly after Mr. Eldridge made a “quick” commercial break to ask the class who was studying at least 15 minutes a day. Disappointingly there was only few. This led to a reference in history that went on for a couple minutes. The history examples were meant to teach that first you have to know something before you can talk about it. And once you know how it works it is, AMAZING! Because Mr. Eldridge knows his history, he was able to talk about it for minutes. And how would you know things? By studying. To test our attention skills he then asked the question on the board, “What is the purpose of….”. The purpose of the history reference was to stress that we study daily. He then brought up an astonishing idea of going to Costco and buying prizes for those who participate and answer questions in class, which I think is beyond a great idea.

Sadly after a few minutes into class did we realize that mostly everyone was doing the wrong Imagery. The correct one was Imagery 9 (it says so at the bottom right corner of the page). Getting into the packet we began asking questions of the unknown vocabulary in Imagery 9. There were plenty of words that apparently not many students knew the definitions of. This led to Mr. Eldridge’s comment on us lacking vocabulary, which can be remedied by reading immensely. Which then got carried on into an idea that Mr. Eldridge gave of listening to a book, which Meng found very interesting and got mocked for… by Mr. Eldridge.

The words defined in the imagery page are…..

• “hoar”(line 2) – scraggily, like a beard
•  “garlands”(line 3) – types of flowers
• “nettles”(line 4) – needles
• “pendent”(line 5) – jewelry piece that hangs from a necklace ex: ring, diamond
• “boughs”(line 5) – large branches with lots of leaves
• “crownet”(line 5) – crown
• “envious”(line 6) – malicious, evil
• “lauds”(line 10) – bits and pieces of old church songs
• “melodious”(line 15) – melody

Adding on to our lack of vocabulary, Mr. Eldridge pointed out that we even sing stuff that we don’t even know, for example the Christmas carol that goes along the lines of,

“Deck the halls with boughs of holly,
fa la la la la, la la la la”

After we began answering the questions on the correct imagery and how the grown woman in the text was insane because she climbed up a tree, with a crown made of weeds, eventually falling into the river below. Nonetheless as she drowned, she sang church songs.

Moving on into handout Nature, by Ralph Waldo Emerson, we began by summarizing the first 19 sections. The summaries were summarized section by section and shared with a partner. After the partner to partner sharing, as a class we discussed Emerson’s opinion on nature. Nature is:

• Often taken for granted
• Makes one feel youthful, fountain of youth
• Spiritual, sanctuary
• For everyone’s enjoyment
• Universal appeal
• Forget sorrows

In conclusion nature is a connection to everything. In fact to Emerson nature connects him more to God than the church. In section 20, Emerson states that he is a “particle of God”. The idea of someone being a part of God puts them at a boundary of mortal and immortal which breaks the barriers that can not be broken, otherwise known as transcend. Breaking those barriers threatens society and the church. Hawthorne however, is against Emerson’s idea.

In the last few minutes of class the Scarlet Letter was brought out and we discussed where the rose bush was locate. Due to the lack of time Mr.Eldridge gave us the answer and the rose bush’s placement was at the front of the jail.

And this is what happened today in our fabulous first period.

By: Paola aka Polly (:

 Period 3

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Period 1

We started off today’s class with graded papers being passed back, which were our Monday essays. I felt confident thinking I did well on the essays, but my essays didn’t turn out as great. Eldridge was then talking about how well we do on the essays. If we triumph and get a good score on the essay just keep it on the DL, and if we do bad just smileJ. Out of nowhere he started talking about a runner in a marathon and how he hit a wall, everyone was like what is he talking about? But then he said the runner eventually finished the marathon, he compared us the students to a runner in a marathon, he said to keep running but don’t hit a wall. He wants us to do good in his class, keep up with the work, and learn what we do in this class on a daily basis, but what he doesn’t want us to do is to “hit a wall” collapse and get lazy and just give up, not giving ourselves a chance to get back on track and just fall behind.

It was Trope Redemption Day again. Amorette Olmos decide to go first to give her presentation on her trope Antimetabole. Antimetabole is a figure of speech in which a pair of words is repeated in successive clauses, a verbal pattern, which the second half of an expression is balanced against the first but in grammatical order. She then asked the class if they understood the trope or if they had any questions, there was an awkward silence, then Mr. Eldridge said she made everyone look dumb, by just asking that question. Ha-ha, she kind of made me feel like that, just kidding. Then all of a sudden the telephone rang. Vanessa Romo got up and answered the phone with pride, it was funny because she didn’t know how to hang up the phone when she was finished talking.  Next, it was Paola Romero’s turn to present her trope, which was Paradox. She started off by saying good morning to everyone and that her paradox was trope. Ha-ha, that was funny. Paradox is a statement or proposition that seems self-contradictory or absurd but in reality expresses a possible truth. We were suddenly interrupted by Mr. Kim who came to steal or projector/computer. Paola then resumed with her trope Paradox. I then overheard Mr. Eldridge in the background say the word, “cheerios”, which then reminded me I had cheerios for breakfast.

Then it was Alondra Romero’s turn to present her trope, which was Pun. Pun is a joke exploiting the different possible meanings of a word or the fact that there are words that sound alike but have different meanings. Alondra stated that a pun is understood clearly if one has a sense of humor. I didn’t get the example she said about chili beans coming from the North Pole, so I asked my neighbor Lizeth Morales, who surprisingly was awake today. She said that pun was that it was chili as in cold and its cold in the North Pole. I was like ohhh! I knew that. Ha-ha. Lastly, it was one of the Rodriguez’s twins turn to present his trope, which was Antanaclasis. I always get the twins confused, but they have one of the best last names! Oh yeah. Antanaclasis is the repetition of a word or phrase whose meaning changes in the second instance.

Mr. Eldridge then asked us how we can use the tropes instead of just knowing them. Out of nowhere, he started to point out how Lizzette Piña wanders off too much and misses out on at least 1/3 of the class.  He started to give us facts about day dreaming, while Alondra interrupted my concentration and stated that she likes Mr. Eldridge’s tiesJ. I say, the discussions we have in this class are so random, but they prove a point. We talked about Edison and electricity, to concrete and steel, then back to tropes again. Vanessa Romo stated that tropes are good for giving you points on the essays, and that it is good for one to study them for at least 10-15 min. a day, so they can stay fresh in your file cabinet in your brain. Mr. Eldridge stated that the wise thing to do is to commit yourself to study these tropes, he quoted “Everyday has another tomorrow, the only time you will ever do something is….TODAY!!” He made us feel bad, by calling us terrible students! Because we don’t study and don’t take action to study, he said we need to start being RESPONSIBLE!! Once again, Alondra distracted me from this important lecture, with her colorful nails which she kept making noise with.

We started to work on our diction packet. Mr. Eldridge, asked several people what ambiguity was? I had no clue.  So I pulled out the dictionary that was under my seat and looked it up, preparing myself just in case he called on me, and I can pretend I knew what the word meant. Ha-ha. Ambiguity is being uncertain, vague, and not clear. Eldridge wanted us to come up with a coherent sentence to answer what makes ambiguity and metaphoric component of the diction. The ambiguity of the diction refers to how the man broke the surface of his consciousness or the surface of the water. Conscious is that you are fully awake, and conscience is the little voice inside your head, which makes you think you have another person living inside you. Conscious= Awareness and Conscience= Moral voice. The metaphoric component was comparing slow and clumsily to a fat man getting out of a pool. Everyone looked scared and didn’t want to answer the question of ambiguity, but then Eldridge decided to give us a hand on how to figure out and evaluate the diction to come up with a coherent understanding, going from a complex statement to a simple statement. It took us a while to figure out the diction, but at the end I think all of us learned something important that we can use to figure out complex statements and figure out a coherent way to have a more clear simpler understanding of the diction. For next class, we are going to discuss diction and how to get a clear understanding of the essay passages we had on Monday. At the end of the being the first period of the morning, we had a good dayJ!

 Period 3

Nicole Ceniceros

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Period 1

Today we received 2 pieces of papers titled ‘Nature’ Ralph Waldo Emerson (1836) and ‘The Scarlet Letter study guide.’ Mr. Eldridge admits he created the study guide to torture us. Emerson expects us to know with colonial period ( e.i. Salem witch trials and John Wilthrow).  Mr. Eldridge went on a tangent about Hawthorne’s relative. Apparently, Hawthorne’s relative was the judge in the Salem witch craft trial which explains why Hawthorne emphasized the colonial period. During the discussion, Edith entered the class room. Waffles had hoped that he would not be the only one who didn’t understand what not closing the door meant. Unfortunately for him, Edith had learned from Waffle’s mistake and Mr. Eldridge laughed mercilessly at him. Soon after, a student entered into the wrong classroom and greeted us– we laughed and continued with our class discussion. Mr. Eldridge told us that Emerson and Hawthorne  were literary friends but The Scarlet Letter was against Emerson’s argument of how to live one’s life. He gave us a recommendation when reading The Scarlet Letter; one must pay really close attention because the book is very subtle and the situation isn’t introduced into Chapter 16.
Notes for Scarlet Letter:

• *should know about the French Revolution
• *Biblical stories
• *Don’t READ THE INTRODUCTION (it only speaks about Hawthorne’s laziness in writing about his book.

We also discussed Tone 8; It was about poetry.
Notes on Poetry:

• -Look at punctuation
• -Look at packet
• -Look for “like” or “as”

After discussing the question posted on Tuesday (Brady and Sommers), Mr. Eldridge showed us about the meaning according to context. One example was the word “niggar”; he was referring to the story, “The Meaning of a Word”. To emphasize the importance of milieu and point of view, he showed us a clip of David Chappelle’s Show; this is clip, Chappelle spoke about the word Niggar through a skit: The Niggar Family.

Vocabulary Word of the Day:
Nuance- not quite clear; not black or white, “gray”
Big Question: How did the context shift the meaning of the word?
(By the way, Hawthorne is the author of the book, The Scarlet Letter.)

-KPB

Period 3

As I walked into class today, I was not looking forward to the rest of the day, I was exhausted. Mr. Eldridge obviously noticed , told me to wake up and handed me a pile of papers. I assumed I was the “Chosen One” and had became his slave. As I passed out the very specific 2 pieces of papers, people slowly rolled in the door looking as excited as I was.

We received a review packet for The Scarlet Letter and it’s broken down into chapters, we must read it soon. He got parts of the packet from the University in North Carolina. He elaborated on how difficult “The Scarlet Letter” is which is very hard for (some of) us.

*Being stoned= (not on drugs) Being beat with stones, literally being killed by getting rocks thrown at you. We need to know our history, there was always tension with the Puritans.

We received many papers today, like A LOT.

-Men don’t express their feelings because they we’re never asked to. (ex. Don’t cry)

We also did Class Discussion on our Group Questions, mostly about sexist issues. “Guy’s are competitive and women just care about feelings”.
-Brady (women are just supposed to be house wives and do everything)

***Mr. Eldridge took my job -______- !

I’m supposed to answer the phone not him!

There was no time for Emily Flores’ trope so too bad so sad. This concludes my scribe.

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Period 1

Period 3

Today was similar to prior Mondays, we got to class and by the time the bell rang most students had already started on their essay. The author, Fredrick Douglas wrote about his mental state on slavery and how he felt after escaping to New York for a better life. As we worked, Mr. Eldridge walked around checking our notebooks to see that we were up to date on all of our reading assignments. He also passed out are new packet on tone. When the bell rang we all turned in our essays and the syntax packet, which was also due. Make sure to keep up with all your assignments!

Written by: Ignacio Yanez

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Period 1

–THERE IS A ESSAY ON MONDAY THAT MUST INCLUDE SYNTAX!!!

–syntax 6 should be done before thursday.

Today, 11/1/11, in Mr. Eldrige’s class we went over our essays that we had written on monday. Mr. Eldrige suggested using intros like ” the author employs…” rather than ” in the passage…” and also writing longer essays or just essays with more evidence that supports your thesis because the past essays we have turned in have barely convinced Eldrige to believe in what we are trying to preach within our essays. Also Mr. Eldrige pointed out how the essay we wrote on Richard Rodriguez passage had traits of irony that few to no people noticed. One more suggestion for the essays was compressing or shrinking the outlines we wrote because during class we found out that on average we spent about 10-20 minutes alone on our outlines which, despite the major improvements on all the essays, might have reduced or affected our overall essay score.

After we finished discussing our essays we moved on syntax and found that we are not ready for things we don’t experience everyday and also a key point about syntax to remember is that syntax must always support the meaning.

We did syntax 5 and found that the colon in the passage divided it into thirteen words on both sides. Syntax 5 talked about what was reality and what the narrator was hoping for. Someone suggested that the passage was like a teeter-toter because of how balanced it was. Also we found out that maybe the author of syntax 5 put reality first instead of hope because he wanted to end with optimism. Some authors might use this method but flipped depending on what type of story they are writing.

This was mainly what we did throughout class. Some miscellaneous news from class was that bread is bad for you and also there is blood drive sign ups for students but students between 16-17 need a permission slip and there is a weight and height requirement that varies between students. In class also we talked about how we need to eliminate passive writing from our writing and also we talked about the four kinds of double speak.

Finally the home football game on friday looks to be very very entertaining for anyone who attends as we take on the EM lions. sorry for the off topicness of this last paragraph.

-Tommy Moreno

Period 3

So I hate how everyone starts their scribes with “so”, so I am going to start different.

Last Monday at 6P.M. I was freaking out because I thought my scribe was due that day but I walked into class today and looked at the board and it relieved me since it was not my day Monday – still stressed but because now I have to write it today.

Right when I came into class our table was filled with the Syntax packet papers that my group (The Nazi Zombies!  ) had to staple and give to the rest of the class. I fortunately got to class before the bell rang so I only had time to get my journal out to start writing but… POP QUIZ! We had only 10 minutes to answer 5 questions at least 3 to 5 sentences each – I did not finish. Mr. Eldridge started yelling at people to stop writing after time was up even if they were just writing their names because, as always Mr. Eldridge has a reason for everything, in the SAT’s they cancel your scores if you try to extend your time (write your name before you start answering the questions).

After our desk finished stapling all the Syntax papers (Syntax is this week), we had an extra paper; which Mr. Eldridge made a paper plane put of …and it flew! Leo though, said it was trash and he could make a better paper plane so he unfolded the plane and made his own plane…it flew farther! Leo excited that he had beat Mr. Eldridge at paper plane making yelled “That’s how you do it!” and jumped joyfully into the air. Someone from the other side of the room flew the paper plane back to our side and it hit me right in the chest! Mr. Eldridge and some other classmates started yelling, “The scribe is down! The scribe is down!”

R.I.P. Andrew “Smiley” Torres.

            Trope of the day today was paradox by Beatrize. A paradox is a self-contradictory and false proposition (n). Some synonyms are: absurdity, error, inconsistency, or opposite. The antonyms are: agreeing, confirming, or consistent. Some examples from Beatrize were: “War is peace”, “Freedom is slavery”, and “Love is war.” Mr. Eldridge then went on his own rampage about paradox and furthermore explained it and also gave examples. Mr. Eldridge quoted one from the bible, “Gods wisdom is man’s foolishness” and also one from Socrates, “All I know is that I know nothing”. I looked up Socrates quotes and I liked “It is not living that matters, but living rightly,” the most. The almighty Mr. Eldridge knowing everything and making us look stupider and stupider by the day went on to say that Socrates was sentenced to kill himself for misleading the young and violating tradition of God. Even though Socrates had the chance to leave, his philosophical mind said no, and therefore he stayed and killed himself (I would have left to stay alive).

Another paradox was by Zeno that nobody could figure out back then (around 600B.C.) was (in regular now-a-day language) “If an arrow were to be shot towards a particular target, without using math, figure out the distance from where the arrow was shot to the place the arrow hit.” The paradox could not be solved without math so what Zeno said was that you would have to cut the distance into half then cut that distance into a half etc. etc., but because zero was not yet invented it was clearly impossible to solve (Greeks did not invent zero because they figured, why would you want a symbol for nothing?) (Is zero even a number then!?). Two thousand years later Isaac Newton solved it when the Indians invented zero. Yippee! With zero, Newton developed Calculus and is considered to be the father of modern science.

After that Mr. Eldridge goes into “context” and states that we human beings are BETTER than computers in which we have the ability to put a statement such as “This statement is false” and place it into brackets and go outside the system to explain and evaluate while a computer does not have that ability therefore it either shuts down or it is continuously evaluating it. Context creates meaning; therefore we can solve a paradox by re-contextualizing it. For example, if you are on a sidewalk with your best friend and a car is coming, you would yell “CAR!” and grab your friend and pull him/her out of the way. Why did you yell “car” when the dictionary meaning of car is ‘’mechanical vehicle with a self-starting motor”? Did you mean to say that? No! What you really meant to say was “Lookout! There is a car coming!” but everybody, as well as your friend, knew that’s what you meant because the literal denotation changed the entire meaning of the word to a whole sentence.

(Side note: the “N” word is not appropriate unless 2-Pac or Jay-Z says it. Make sure who your audience is before you say or write something or else you might offend someone!)

Review: effects of context, how to solve a paradox (brains are amazing!), different paradox’s, Zeno’s paradox of motion (important!), Beatrize presentation. It all ties together!

Afterwards we had a trope by Emily Ng! The trope was on antanaclasis- Greek word for “reflection” or “echo”. An antanaclasis is a type of pun but it uses the same word but different sense. For example: “If you aren’t fired with enthusiasm, you will be fired with enthusiasm” -Vince Lombardi. The first “fired” means to be mentally hyped up and ready to go but the second “fired” means to be literally deprived of your job. Therefore all antanaclasis are puns, but not all puns are antanaclasis.

Mr. Eldridge then talked about syntax and how it is also related to antanaclasis. It is important to know the elements of syntax! Sentence structure, punctuation, grammar, length and word order make up syntax. Know it! If you were not in class today or did not answer the questions, remember that the sentence has SYMMETRY (count the words) and also “bridge” and “chasm” are connected! Yet separated! Was it coincidence that the author meant for either to happen? Maybe, as Mr. Eldridge said “Perfection could be an accident”. It’s possible that 4 monkeys could be at a computer typing and somehow write Shakespeare, slim chance but it is mathematically possible.

In the end Mr. Eldridge made the class move our desks into a semi-circle (syntax!) to talk about how horrible the class did on the previous essay – I got a 45/50! Unfortunately our class did worse than first period. Strategies for our next essay are: have in mind what you are looking for, breathe, check the time and place limits on yourself but don’t stress if you passed your limit (if stress levels go up, brain function goes down), think positive (thinking positive actually makes you physically and mentally stronger), and make a thorough outline along with the thesis before you begin writing your next essay or else!…you will fail -_-.

Remember to read your Bedford Reader! It helps! The “from journal to essay” essay is due this Saturday. Mr. Eldridge also said to write on a notecard three things that you can say to yourself which will increase the possibility for you to do better on the following essays, due Thursday with your name on it. Oh and Yesenia, SMILE!!!!!!

Written by Andrew “Smiley” Torres

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