Fallacious Fallacies

Today was Argument day. Not debate, but argument--the principles of logic and argument.

We started with inductive and deductive reasoning; I asked my students and they supplied me with definitions of each, and I provided the examples. We then moved on to Aristotle's three appeals: pathos, ethos, logos.

I gave them word associations to remember which was which (pathos = sympathy, ethos = ethics, and logos = logic), then we distinguished each from the other with examples. The students provided most of the examples when I asked, although I have some tried and true examples that I threw in as well:

Pathos: Humane Society commercials
Ethos: Every adult who has ever said to my students "Because I'm an adult and you're a kid"

I also shared my cupcake (or ice cream sundae) analogy: Logos is the cupcake itself, ethos is the icing, and pathos should just be some sprinkles on top.

We then moved on to fallacies in argument. I love teaching fallacies--there are just so many great examples to go with each (especially during an election year)!

Today's class was closer to lecture, but truly I made the students tell me most of the material, so rather than talking at them, I had a conversation with my students about what we have experienced to be successful or unsuccessful arguments. We remember conversations, but rarely monologues, I have found.

"Can't I just Google it?"

My ENG 120 students have turned in their research prospectuses (or prospecti?), narrowed their topics and are perfecting their thesis statements. Now, all that remains is to write the outlines and the essays. Oh, that's right--and do the research!

While I am no stickler to "books only" research (I would be a hypocrite!), I am very strict about what constitutes an up-to-date, valid academic source. Wikipedia is so far from my students' minds by the time they start their research, I often wonder if I've brainwashed them. WebMD and other "reputable" sites are always a challenge, however.

When it comes to how recently an article was written/published, I tell my students "If you weren't born when it was written, it's too old!" The exceptions here are primary historical sources or sources for subjects that simply don't change.

When it comes to the author of a source, I warn them, "If you can't figure out who wrote it, run away!"

Most importantly (and most terrifying for those of us who have taught today's students and know how lacking they can be in this department--), I tell my students to use their common sense.

To illustrate just why Wikipedia (sorry, boys!) isn't an academic, verifiable, or valid source, we read "The 'Undue Weight' of Truth on Wikipedia", by Professor Timothy Messer-Kruse in The Chronicle. My students were shocked--and we had some great impromptu vocabulary work, too!

To illustrate why the World Wide Web isn't to be blindly trusted, I sicced this little gem on my students: "The Science of Vampires," courtesy of the Federal Vampire and Zombie Agency. Oh? You didn't know FVZA existed? Or that HVV (Human Vampiric Virus) is the cause of Vampirism? Right, because ".org" at the end of a web address does not always (or often, for that matter--most are biased) a valid, useful academic source make !

Amusingly, some of my female students who have been caught up in the throes of Edward and Bella's bliss (and seizure-causing spawning), the slightly more mature True Blood, or any of the other blood-sucking obsessions this generation drools over, actually believed the article--as much as they could, anyhow. One student flat out sighed, looked me in the eye and said, "I want to be a vampire." I maintained my composure...mostly. For the most part, though, my students realized that this article is absurd, albeit entertaining. They acknowledged that it was logically written, but their common sense simply would not allow them to buy into this nonsense about a virus causing vampirism--or the existence of vampirism at all.

Smart kids.

To drive the point home, I introduced my bright little minds to The Flat Earth Society: "The mission of the Flat Earth Society is to promote and initiate discussion of Flat Earth theory as well as archive Flat Earth literature. Our forums act as a venue to encourage free thinking and debate."

I shan't deign to elaborate on that. I will, however, thank Mr. Bill Loughran for corrupting my adolescent mind with the fascinations of Shakespeare, Latin, ancient Greek and Roman history, and ancient Greek, along with thousands of witty barbs for students--all of which I must admit I freely use today--and, the buttercream icing of it all, an introduction to The Flat Earth Society.

And thus concluded my lesson on how not to be an idiot when using the Internet to find sources.

Trust and Honesty

It's part of my philosophy as a college freshman English teacher that sometimes my class needs to play "home room" for my students. Occasionally this takes the form of student griping, but most often, we have discussions about current, pertinent issues.

For example, I assigned ENG 120's third essay today (and it will be written as an out-of-class essay, instead of an in-class essay):


Topic: Nearly everyone uses social networking sites today, but the largest group of users is still college students. While many people consider social media sites such as Twitter, Facebook and Myspace to be private, the truth is rather the opposite. Many college students are unaware that what they post on their so-called “private” pages is accessible to future possible employers and may cost them a potential job. What material on social websites should users be wary of posting, how will these sites affect students in their future job searches, and could these sites have positive uses as well?

To provide background for this topic, we discuss this article about employers who did not hire candidates because of something on the candidates' social networking site. To further illustrate my point, I ask students to volunteer to allow me to Google them in front of the class. Quite often, when I am able to pull up their Facebook and/or Myspace profiles, students become very nervous--and with good reason; according to the poll, 69% of employers who responded at one time rejected a candidate because of material on his or her social networking profile!

This discussion leads to "best practices" with Facebook, Twitter, Myspace, etc., and it also leads to questions from my students as to how they can better use their social networking. I use myself as an example, showing them my Twitter handle (@Caribe_prof), my Facebook page (not profile), and LinkedIn profile.

Overall, I think my students appreciate that this assignment is not only interesting, but it also teaches them something they can apply to the real world and may even help them when applying to jobs in the future.

Dirty Little Plagiarists

We haven't even hit Spring Break yet (which starts March 5th, by the way, so you'll know why I'm not blogging!) and I've just given my first 0 for a plagiarized paper. I'm printing out the material from the website this little plagiarist used as I type, so I'm not sure yet just how much he copied and pasted.

Fun fact? I hadn't even run the essay through Safe Assign--didn't have to: he used the word "droll." None of my students know what droll means, I guarantee you. I mean, I finally had to look it up when I was in high school because I had been thinking it meant dreary or boring for years.

Now, to be fair, it was also obvious because the kid started his first body paragraph with the phrase, "To summarize," but still. And this is the type of plagiarism that requires a complete re-write of the paper, not for me to off-his-head: He did actually include the sources in his Works Cited, but not in his paper (in-text citations). This all adds up to plagiarism, but this is the type I use to teach, not to fail. Does that make sense?

I'll let you know if he cries when I tell him I noticed. Some of them do, you know.

Complain? Who? Me? Never...

Ok, so I need to gripe for just a minute here about the complete and utter lack of motivation, resourcefulness and independence in this generation's kids (pick any or all of them from age 5 onward).

NPR just ran a story about "Helicopter Parents" who not only micromanaged every moment of their child's 1-18 years of life, but continued through college and even into the job search and interview processes. Unfortunately, it isn't just the children of these so-called heli-parents who are incapable of sorting life out on their own: it's most of the students today.

I constantly bit my tongue to keep from saying something condescending, rude or sarcastic when students ask me questions that are obvious, that I've answered in the preceding 30 seconds, or are easily answerable with just a little bit of thought and elbow grease. There is such a thing as a stupid question. I once joked that in all of my classrooms, I would like to post a sign saying: "STOP before you ask, and 1. Look around, 2. Ask a Neighbor, or 3. Use Your Resources." So many of the questions students ask me are already written in black and white on the syllabus, could be answered simply by observing the students around them, or simply applying some common sense.

Perhaps because my parents had no patience for dumb, or easily self-answered questions, neither do I. I firmly believe that before asking a question, a person should strive to answer it herself first. If we answer our own questions we actually tend to internalize more of the answer, as opposed to minimally digesting what someone else tells us. Not to mention that answering one's own question saves the rest of the people around her the time it takes to listen to her and the answer. Of course, some questions are genuinely useful to all the members of the learning community, and I LIKE those!

I am home sick today, but thanks to the miracle of Internet and technology, I am still holding class, albeit via Blackboard Learn. I put together a reading quiz on Blackboard that my students are to take within the 50 minutes of class time. Some students emailed me because there was a glitch with the quiz and it was trying to require a password (even though I had initially set it not to need one--apparently I changed the settings while editing the quiz)--fine, good reason to email. However, other students simply emailed me that "I and my classmates could not take the quiz because it required Respondus Lockdown Browser." Not, "Professor G, how do I use Respondus Lockdown Browser?," but "I can't take it." Not one student actually looked in the Course Tools menu to find the Respondus browser (which basically restricts students to Blackboard, so they cannot venture off into Google-land to find answers for the test or quiz).

I fully intend to reward the students who responsibly attempted to take the quiz within the class time, so long as they attempted to take it, and did not just tell me how they were not able to, even though they still had 30 minutes of class time left.

I find that I have a low, if not nonexistent, tolerance for laziness and lack of resourcefulness. Unfortunately, it seems that both are endemic in students right now.

New Discovery: Wordle

Pure. Awesomeness.

More on the "P" Word

During the discussions I had with my last two classes about plagiarism, I asked the small groups of students to discuss whether or not they thought plagiarism ought to be penalized. Most students said yes, but some in each section said no.

The reasoning behind the 'no's' was shoddy, at best, but I made sure each student explained his position clearly before poking holes in the logic. I then gave my classes my side of the plagiarism story:

I worked my rear end off in both my undergraduate and graduate programs, writing every single one of my essays and papers myself, never once "borrowing" or copying someone else's work. I earned my B.A. and M.A. and it pisses me off that there are other people who have that same alphabet soup following their names who achieved their degrees by copying and pasting or buying their work from other students or essay mills. Frankly, I don't think it fair that those imposters made it through their years of "higher education" to "earn" the same diploma I did.

I told my students that I feel the same way about them: students who work hard and honestly earn their grades (even if those grades are C's) should not be bested or even considered equal to students who cheat, plagiarize and fake their way to grades. If I can level the playing field, I will.

This seemed to resonate with my students, including the ones who initially claimed they did not think that plagiarism should be penalized--perhaps because I truly believe it. What are your views on plagiarism?

Gillian Silverman's "It's a Bird, It's a Plane, It's a Plagiarism Buster!"

It's a bird, it'a a plane, it's plagiarism buster!
Gillian Silverman.
Newsweek. New York: Jul 15, 2002. Vol. 140, Iss. 3; pg. 12, 1 pgs

Full Text (825 words)
Copyright Newsweek, Incorporated Jul 15, 2002
[Headnote]:
Brandishing a red pen in place of a red cape, I fight to rescue words from literary bandits

AT AROUND THIS TIME EACH year, I transform from mild mannered English professor to take-no-prisoners literary sleuth. The beginnings are fairly undramatic. They usually involve myself, a Starbucks and a large stack of mediocre college-student papers. My mind numbs in response to the parade of hackneyed phrases ("And in conclusion, these books are both very similar and very different... ") when suddenly something catches my eye--a turn of phrase or an extra literary locution. "Paradoxically... ; writes one, "In lieu of an example ... , writes another. My breathing quickens, my heart skips, I reach for the red pen. And behold Plagiarism Buster, armed with a righteous sense of justice that would rival that of any superhero.

Plagiarism is the purloining of ideas or language from another source. It is literary theft, deriving from the Latin plagiarius, meaning kidnapper. Perhaps the dramatic derivation of the word is what attracts the academic set. We spend our days in libraries, classrooms and archives. Given the scant opportunities for stimulation, a kidnapping, literary or otherwise, offers perhaps the only taste of salacious activity we may experience all year.

Maybe this is why the disappointment I feel upon discovering a suspected case of plagiarism is always mixed with a bit of excitement. A plagiarized paper presents itself as an act of aggression, a taunt behind a title page. To ignore the challenge would be worse than irresponsible; it would be cowardly. And so, I begin the chase.
The Web is always a productive place to start. With thousands of sites dedicated to armchair literary criticism, nothing has done more to accommodate paper pilfering. The thing my students don't seem to realize, however, is that as easily as they can steal language from the Web, I can bust them for it. All it takes is an advanced search on Google.com. Plug in any piece of questionable student writing and up pops the very paper from which the phrase originates. I've discovered papers plagiarized from collaborative high-school projects and from essay services like screwschool.com. My personal favorite involved a paper cribbed from an Amazon.com reader's report for the Cliffs Notes of Herman Melville's "Bartleby the Scrivener." Really, why take the trouble to cheat directly off the Cliffs Notes when you can simply crib from reviews?
It's not that my students are bad performers. Many of them do outstanding and original work. But on the whole, they are terrible cheaters. They will mooch just as readily from an adolescent chat room as they will from an online academic journal. And they can be sloppy in their deceptions: referencing page numbers to editions other than those we used in class or printing out essays without deleting underlined links. With gaffes like these, the job of Plagiarism Buster is often less than taxing.

This past semester, I discovered eight cases of plagiarism from the Internet, a new record. The confrontations that followed often verged on the comical. One student swore up and down that she had not cheated, and when I pointed to the proof on the computer screen, she looked genuinely perplexed and asked how her essay got there. "That's what I want to know," I told her. "Yeah," she said as if empathizing with my plight, "me too: Another student spent 10 minutes insisting that her brother wrote her paper for her and therefore it was he who was guilty of plagiarism.

Despite their efforts at defense, however, these students generally end up miserable. I fare little better. While I anticipate these confrontations will leave me victorious, they usually just make me depressed. The answer that I most frequently receive to my repeated inquiries of "why?" makes me think that plagiarism comes out of a misplaced effort to please. "You didn't like my last paper," one student told me. "I thought you'd be happier with this one." As if this weren't enough, I know that in the public university where I teach, it is largely my students' overtaxed lives that leave them so vulnerable to the temptations of cheating. They're not off rowing crew instead of writing their literature paper. They're working 12-hour night shifts and caring for elderly parents. In the end, I'm forced to realize that my students are not bad guys; they're just guys trying to get by.

And yet, while empathy for my students is important, in cases of plagiarism it has little educational value. And so I fail them. With compassion, sure, but I fail them nonetheless. And then, feeling more villain than superhero, I head to the movies for some moral clarity.

[Author Affiliation]
SILVERMAN is an assistant professor of English.

The 'P' Word

Today's ENG 120 quiz is as follows:

1. What is plagiarism?
2. What can one do to avoid plagiarism?
3. Who one the Superbowl last night?
4. What is one of the three purposed for which one might write a research paper?

Clearly number 3 was facetious (or was it?), but it did help me to gauge how many of my students were committed to watching a game in which they had no conceivable "hometown" connection. (Remember, we live on a Caribbean island--the only connection my students have to Superbowl XLVI is Giants' defensive tackle Linval Joseph, a St. Croix native).

Without going over the quiz, I asked the class to group itself into pods of three-four people and consider the following:

How do I define plagiarism?
Should there be a penalty for plagiarism? Why or why not?

I suggested that they keep in mind the article by Gillian Silverman entitled, "It's a Bird, It's a Plane, It's Plagiarism Buster!" at the beginning of The Confident Writer's Ch. 7: Researching for Writing. (I will post the article in a separate post, for those interested in reading it; I think it is a fairly accurate representation of the process professors go through when dealing with plagiarism).

After discussing the questions, overwhelmingly, students said that if someone plagiarizes "only a little," he or she should not be penalized, and if he or she plagiarizes "like half the paper, or a whole page," he or she should get a zero on the paper. I asked if copying from Wikipedia counted as plagiarism. Begrudgingly, they admitted that yes, this is plagiarism, but perhaps it shouldn't be counted against a student because if he or she is dumb enough to copy from Wikipedia, there is another issue. (I have to say that I was a little attracted to this logic, mostly because I was happy that my students realized that Wikipedia is NOT a valid, reliable, academic source!)

After listening to their side of the story, I explained my thoughts on plagiarism. I explained to them that in most U.S. institutions, one instance of plagiarism is enough for a student to fail a class, and in many, to be expelled from the college or university. At our University, the policy is a bit more lenient, leaving more room for the professor to levy the punishment, but also more wiggle room for the student:


"Penalties: For a first offense, the penalty levied will be at the discretion of the professor and
can include, for example, the options of:

1) Giving a student a zero on the assignment or portion of the assignment in which the event occurred.
2) Giving the student a reduced grade for the assignment and requiring the student to redo the work correctly.
3) Giving the student an “F” in the course. IF the infraction occurs after midterm, and IF the student decides to appeal, an Incomplete (“I”) will be recorded and subsequently changed to an “F” if the appeal is denied.

For a second offense, the penalty will be a grade of “F” in a credit course, or an “NP” in a skills course. If the infraction occurs after midterm, and if the student decides to appeal, an Incomplete (“I”) will be recorded and subsequently changed to an “F” if the appeal is denied.

For any third offense reported to the Office of the Provost, the penalty will be a grade of “F” in the course and suspension from the University for an academic year. The Office of the Provost will notify the Registrar of the suspension.

The penalty for a fourth offense will be dismissal from the University. The Office of the Provost will notify the Registrar of the dismissal, which will then be noted on the student’s academic record."

(The full Academic Integrity Policy is in the PDF of the 2011-2012 Catalog).

I very plainly told my students that I think this is far too lenient: For a first offense, if it is only a few lines, I will require the student to rewrite the essay, but they can only earn a maximum of 60% on the assignment. If the first offense is a significant portion of the paper, they receive a neatly stapled packet from me including their essay, all plagiarized portions highlighted, a hard copy of the appropriate section of the Academic Integrity Policy, and a printed copy of the website from where they plagiarized, all relevant material highlighted--oh, and a zero for the assignment. If it is a major assignment, such as the course research paper, I will fail them for the course. For a second offense, I fail the plagiarist in the course and ask that the infraction be recorded on the student's permanent record. I do not look kindly upon cheaters.

My students took this in stride, doubly so because on the first day of class, I mentioned that I had nine students fail either major course assignments or the courses themselves last semester because the students plagiarized.

We covered all this because today marked the beginning of their research project, which will culminate in a 5-page research paper, complete with properly formatted research prospectus, sentence outline, working bibliography and Works Cited. I wrote the three purposes for writing on the board:

1. Inform
2. Persuade
3. Analyze

and told the students that I am limiting them only to the first two types of writing. We discussed that their audience will reflect either: 1) the people to whom the information will be most valuable and relevant, or 2) the people the student wishes to persuade to his or her argument.

I then asked the students to discuss their interests in their small groups for three minutes, ultimately to attempt to create individual topics of interest. Usually, once students come up with general topics they are interested in, I can group the topics under a few "Focus Groups" (such as technology, entertainment, etc.). This morning's class did not quite turn out this way:



They gave me a few HUGE topics like music, technology and science, and a few smaller topics that could actually be useful, such as "How will the world end?" and "Mysteries/Folktales/Superstitions." I pointed out that "How will the world end?" would be a great informative research paper, so long as the author narrowed her topic down to perhaps a specific theory (ie: the Mayans). Armed with this "aha" moment, I tasked my students with the following for Wednesday's class:

1. Come up with a topic
2. Narrow said topic to something manageable (in the student's eyes) in 5 pages
3. READ the chapters on research (little boogers are getting lazy and we aren't even halfway through the semester!)

Why I love teaching...

I'm grading blog posts for one of my ENG 120 sections right now, and as I'm reading one student's weekly "Discovery" blog (What are you learning in class, how is it affecting you, and how are you applying it in other areas of school/life?), I see that it has two comments. Curious, I opened to read:



I am still chuckling over this, and, I must admit, I even had tears in my eyes I was laughing so hard!

(Names of students are blacked out for privacy purposes).

"Mr. Finger Plays Dead" Narrative Outline

I. Introduction:

A. I had the worst dream ever last night!

B. Thesis Statement: I dreamt that all my body parts rebelled against me one by one and left my body, until only Mr. Index Finger was left; then, Mr. Finger killed himself, too.

C. Emphatic Order

II. Topic Sentence: I dreamt that all my body parts could act on their own, and at first it was sort of entertaining.

A. My ears wiggled in time to the music I played in the car—I have never been able to wiggle my ears!

B. My nose nicely explained to my grumbling stomach that my Panini was not quite done yet; it could tell from the smell

C. I did not have to strain my eyes to see at all; they simply focused on what they wanted me to focus on.

III. Topic Sentence: Soon parts were acting in ways that did not work with everyone else, and I started to get worried.

A. My left arm kept reaching over and slapping my right hand, and then the right arm would get upset and try to avenge the right hand and reach over to punch my left arm.

B. My right knee started to live out its fantasy that it was in the Army, pulling up my right leg and foot to march in place.

C. The fingers on my left hand all started to argue and poke at each other, knotting themselves up in a contorted mess.

IV. Topic Sentence: I truly panicked when the bickering parts started excusing themselves and vacating my body!

A. First my left arm detached and dragged itself off, and I watched as all five fingers on the left hand wiggled away.

B. Then my right leg detached and split into the upper leg and foot, all the toes scrambling off to freedom.

C. The other body parts quickly followed, until all that were left together were my eyes and my right index finger.

1. Seeing his predicament, Mr. Index Finger swallowed up the nearest pills, hoping to end his deep loneliness without the other three fingers and thumb.

2. I heard my mouth sigh somewhere off in the distance, an odd sound, as both ears had split up, and then my eyes left me too.

V. Conclusion: Never again will I eat the five-alarm chili on top of my hot wings before bedtime!

"Toksik Love" Narrative Outline

Professor Grantham

ENG 120 – 15710

Outline for “Toksik Love”

January 30, 2012


I. Introduction:

A. She had never thought of herself as violent—and still did not—but some events call for more drastic action than others.

B. Thesis Statement: Lying is never acceptable; cheating is worse than lying, and all cheaters get what they deserve: a cold, lonely end to their miserable lives.

II. Topic Sentence: He promised her that he would always share everything with her, that he would never lie to her; but that was a lie.

A. He worked long hours as an art gallery manager, but she worked from home as an artist.

1. He rarely invited her to any of the shows.

2. She pretended that she was not interested in the art shows.

B. She waited up for him every night, and always made sure he had a plate of dinner waiting for him.

1. She hated to cook.

2. She hated to wait even more.

III. Topic Sentence: One night he didn’t come home at all, and that was when she knew.

A. She waited all night, and finally, at six a.m., she slumped into an exhausted sleep on the couch, the glass of Pinot Noir slipping from her fingers.

1. The tinkle of shattered glass and splash of red wine were not even enough to wake her.

B. He did not even look at her as he stumbled into the bedroom at noon, drunk, his belt still unbuckled.

1. His snores were the symphony she woke to that afternoon.

2. She could smell the sticky sweet stench of another woman’s perfume on him, and it made her want to vomit.

C. Cold as ice, she blindly dressed and waited for him to wake up.

1. She knocked over the Windex while searching for the bleach.

2. The ammonia was already sitting at her workstation, waiting for her, calling for her.

IV. Topic Sentence: The desert is supposed to be hot, but she was so numb and frozen that she was oblivious even to the blistering sun; she was ready.

A. She told him she wanted to photograph him for a series she had in mind.

1. She had the gas mask in hand, the canister already filled.

2. It was to be a commentary on the mass murders of the Middle Eastern dictators.

B. They drove out to the desert in silence, he miserable and morose in his hangover, she simply striving not to allow the tears frozen deep inside her to thaw and run down her cheeks.

1. Her old truck smelled faintly of stale Starbucks and an ancient vanilla car freshener.

2. Her keys clinked in time to her breathing, until they turned off the road; the sand dunes brought the keys to a ringing crescendo.

C. She told him to take off his Van Morrison shirt and moccasins and handed him the gas mask.

1. She was amazed at her own resolve, not even trembling as she handed him the canister and calmly instructed him to walk thirty feet before putting it on.

2. Mechanically, she adjusted the lens on her Nikon, waited for him to put on the mask, and started shooting.

V. Conclusion: Never lie, never cheat, and never believe a man.
A. “Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.”

Homo-whats?

After finally grading all my ENG 120 students' first essay revisions (that was a mouthful!), I have a better idea of what their grammatical and structural struggles are. All of them struggle with homophones, just like every other batch of students I've had. They also can't seem to let go of "you" or contractions.

(I do not allow students to use contractions in their academic writing, no do I allow them to write in anything but the third person, except for certain assignments).

On Monday I handed out a contractions practice sheet and had the students pair up. I gave them five minutes and they went through about 20 sentences, finding the contraction, putting the apostrophe in the proper place, and then writing out the long-hand of the contraction.

Ex: Shell make a great wife someday, Id wager. She'll, I'd = she will and I would

They had read Chapter 3: Improving Your Paragraph Skills in The Confident Writer, so we also focused on creating topic sentences.

Using the example topic of "College Students on Spring Break," I showed the class how to narrow the topic.

In this case, I narrowed the topic to: College Students Drinking Excessively on Spring Break.

I then created a thesis statement: College students who drink excessively on Spring Break are put themselves in danger of health problems, physical harm, and risky sexual behavior.

As my students already know, the three main points in a thesis statement translate to the topics for the three body paragraphs; in this case:

1. Excessive drinking can cause health problems such as alcohol poisoning in college students.
2. When a person is drunk, his reasoning faculties are impaired and he is more likely to cause physical harm to himself through thoughtless action.
3. Impaired decision-making capability is another side effect of excessive drinking, making students more likely to engage in unprotected or risky sex.

I then split the class into little groups of three people. The groups chose from 6 broad topics (cell phones, reality tv, roommates, addictive behavior, etc.), narrow the topics, create a thesis statement, and at least one topic sentence. Each group then shared what it thought was its best topic/narrow topic/TS/topic sentence set.

This morning in my 10:00am class, instead of a quiz, I handed out a sheet with 18 sentences. Each sentence needed a word that is a homophone and the students had to choose which homophone was correct (Ex: Can you ____ that carrot for me? Pare / Pair / Pear). I allowed the students to work in pairs (no pun intended!) and asked them to come up with 10 'sets' of homophones when they finished the sentences. We then wrote the most unique of the sets of homophones on the board and discussed them.

Ex:
die and dye
cent, scent and sent
way and weight
threw and through
lye and lie
light versus lite (I explained that "lite" is a pop word, as in Miller Lite (c), but that "light" is actually the correct homonym for a light-bulb or something that does not weigh much).
rain and reign
lane and lain
heir and air
boy and buoy (and boi)

and oodles more.