Links
Click the headings below to jump to the appropriate sub-section on this page:
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Writing a Literary Essay (NEW) |
Critical Reading & Literary Theory
A Guide to Critical Reading
Critical Reading - What is it and why do I need to do it?
Depth, Complexity & Quality
Ideology
On the Uses of Studying Literature
Narrative Point of View: Some Consideration
Writing Resources
Paradigm--Online Writing Assistant
A great resource--this site will take you through the entire writing
process from finding the initial idea to editing the final copy.
Rhyme Zone.com
An easy-to-use online rhyming dictionary.
Visual Thesaurus.com
The coolest thesaurus you will ever use - hands down. Reference
books have come a long way from the days when they were unwieldy
volumes with thin pages dog-eared from use. The best recent advance
in reference technology is the Plumb Design Visual Thesaurus, which
uses Web animation to illustrate the latticework of language. Enter
a word, and the thesaurus will generate a solar system of similar
words orbiting around the sun of the original term; click on one of
those words, and the system will reorganize. Searching for the best
word? Check out this resource!
The Margaret Atwood Reference Site
A Site put together in the hope that it will help students,
scholars, researchers, and other interested parties to find the
information they require, quickly and simply. We have included –
under Books About Margaret Atwood – some other places you might
look. We have also included – under On Writing – various recent
speeches, exhortations, and so forth, for those who are themselves
interested in writing, and might like to read about it.
Essay Transition Cues
Transitions help readers connect the ideas in a piece of writing;
they're the glue that shows how pieces of your text fit together.
Often all you'll need is a word or phrase to lead readers through
your text. Use this site to find the best transition word or phrase
for your essay.
Transitional Devices
Here is another comprehensive list of Transitional Phrases and
Connecting words with an explanation of how and why they are used in
effective essay writing.
The Importance of Sentence Variety
This webpage outline the purposes of several different sentence
types for use in effective essay writing.
Shakespeare Online
Shakespeare-Online.com
In September 1999 Amanda Mabillard launched Shakespeare Online with
hopes of providing free and original information on Shakespeare to
students, teachers, and Shakespeare enthusiasts in general. The site
has grown very fast and now receives over 2 million hits/month. It
has been featured in an infomercial for Excite@home's new Internet
service, which aired throughout the United States. On June 14,
Mabillard spoke about her site and plans for future features on CBC
Radio Canada.
The Complete Works of William Shakespeare.com
Welcome to the Web's first edition of the Complete Works of William
Shakespeare. This site offers all of Shakespeare's plays as public
domain HTML files. A superb resource!
Mr. William Shakespeare on the Internet
An excellent online resource. A major highlight of this page is a
Shakespeare Timeline, which is an online biography mounted on the
site. Part of the timeline is a separate Shakespeare genealogical
chart and a timeline summary chart that places the events of
Shakespeare's life into historical context. A bibliography is
included for those wishing to pursue their own research.
Poetry Online
Rhyme Zone.com
An easy-to-use online rhyming dictionary.
The Instant Muse Poetry Generator
Do you find it difficult to find an inspiration, a stimulating
thought, word, or idea that will enable you to begin your poem? Do
you say to yourself: "If only I could think of the first line..."
Here is a little web-device that just may help. Pressing the
"create" button below will produce a line of poetry for you, which
you can then continue, building on the imagery and sensibility of
the words generated. This exercise is based on the notion of random
input as a tool for creativity. The idea is to trick your mind out
of its rut by presenting it with an element of surprise, forcing it
to form new connections and associations. REMEMBER: this online tool
is simply to help you break your "writer's block" - naturally, you
will want to refine and polish the "computer" line to make it your
own.
Poetry Magic.co.uk
Poetry Magic is resource centre for the theory and craft of writing
poetry. PoetryMagic functions as an introduction to poetry for
students, amateurs and poetry lovers; focusing on: What is poetry?
How does it differ from prose? And why is poetry special, and so
difficult to write? This site provides the answers to these and
other vexing questions, plus a vast array of material to make your
own poetry writing more compelling, authentic and relevant.
We
Didn't Start The Fire - Billy Joel
Here's a hypertext version of the song with historical and
biographical links to everything Billy Joel alludes to in his
lyrics. Please inform me of any dead links and I'll correct them as
soon as I can.
e-Texts
I have e-Texts for the following works. Use the Search function of your web browser
(CTRL+F) to locate key words within the text.
As soon as I've updated the formatting of the e-Texts to match the
look of the new website I'll reconnect the links below.
| Grade 9 | ||
| Romeo & Juliet | The Hobbit | The Chrysalids |
Grade 10 |
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| Brave New World | Macbeth | |
Grade 11 |
||
| Pygmalion | 1984 | The Tempest |
Grade 12 |
||
| Hamlet | King Lear | The Great Gatsby |
Help with Note-Taking
Information presented in class often contains the central concepts of the course and the material most likely to be included on exams. Yet, students frequently do not realize the importance of note-taking and listening. The following handouts provide tips on how to recall more information from your classes through active listening and purposeful note-taking. In addition, your class notes can be a critical tool for preparing for exams. Suggestions are provided for how to use your notes regularly to review. (source: Dartmouth College: Academic Skills Centre)
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Note-Taking Method 1 - a guide to effective note-taking
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Note-Taking Method 2 - saving time on note-taking
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Note-Taking Method 3 - the 5R Note-Taking System - Record, Reduce, Recite, Reflect, Review
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Note-Taking Method 4 - how to take notes for someone else
Help with Learning Skills
Do YOU?
This document is a series of posters designed to help students
understand how to demonstrate efficient and effective learning
skills.
Learning Skills Evaluation
These rubrics are what many of your teachers use to evaluate your
efforts to develop and demonstrate your learning skills.
Learning Skills - Checklist
This simple checklist can assist you in monitoring your own
performance during the semester. Keep a copy in the back of your
notebook and refer to it often.
Help with MLA Format
Mr. Bowering's MLA Guide
This brief webpage highlights the most common errors in publishing
conventions. Be sure to consult it as you put the finishing touches
on your essay.
Citation Machine
Citation Machine is an interactive web tool designed to assist high
school, college, and university students, their teachers, and
independent researchers in their effort to respect other people's
intellectual properties.
Modern Language Association (MLA) Documentation
MLA style, or MLA format, are terms commonly used to describe the
guidelines for writing which are developed, maintained, and
periodically updated and issued by the Modern Language Association
of America (MLA).
The MLA documentation style covers all aspects of scholarly writing,
beginning with the mechanics of writing and publishing, through the
basics of writing style, to guidelines for the preparation of theses
and dissertations. Although the MLA guidelines cover all aspects of
writing and publishing a paper, MLA documentation style places
special emphasis on the proper citing of sources of information in
one’s written work, and how to properly and consistently cite them
throughout a paper or manuscript.
OWL (online writing lab) at Perdue University
The Purdue Writing Lab is primarily a tutorial center for writers
who want to work one-to-one with a tutor at Purdue University in
West Lafayette, Indiana, but their website is an awesome online
resource for all students of writing.
Capital Community College, Humanities Department - Hartford,
Connecticut
This online guide will suffice for most students' needs for most
academic purposes, but for advanced research projects it is by no
means a substitute for the Modern Language Association Handbook for
Writers of Research Papers Sixth Edition. That handbook can be
purchased in most bookstores and copies should be available in every
school and municipal library. Your best source of advice on all
these matters is, of course, your course teacher and
teacher-librarian.
MLA Citation Help
Welcome to MLA Citation Help. This site is designed to help students
understand the citation process and the MLA citation style. Read the
instructions, print the pages, and you're ready to go!
This site is in no way affiliated with the Modern Language
Association. This guide is merely an interpretation of the MLA
citation style, highly simplified for easier understanding by
students. For an official guide to the MLA citation style, please
refer to the MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers by Joseph
Gibaldi.
Online Reference Materials
Visual Thesaurus.com
The coolest thesaurus you will ever use - hands down. Reference
books have come a long way from the days when they were unwieldy
volumes with thin pages dog-eared from use. The best recent advance
in reference technology is the Plumb Design Visual Thesaurus, which
uses Web animation to illustrate the latticework of language. Enter
a word, and the thesaurus will generate a solar system of similar
words orbiting around the sun of the original term; click on one of
those words, and the system will reorganize.
Dictionary.com
Dictionary.com is a multi-source dictionary search service produced
by Lexico Publishing Group, LLC, a leading provider of language
reference products and services on the Internet. To use the
dictionary, simply type a word in the blue search box that appears
at the top of every page and then click the 'Look it up' button.
This will perform a search for the word in the several dictionaries
hosted on our site (see below). If you don't know how to spell the
word, just guess. You will get a list of suggestions if you are
wrong.