1. Dead Poets’ Society Clip Dead Poets’ Society Clip

2. Paraphrasing Self-Reliance by Ralph Waldo Emerson

3. Why do we paraphrase?  It improves our comprehension of difficult texts.  It challenges us and forces us to make meaning of the text.

4. Basics of paraphrasing  Your paraphrased sentence should be about the same length as the original sentence.  Use your own words.

5. Method for paraphrasing  Read a sentence (or as much as your brain can hold) and then cover it.  Write the sentence’s meaning in your own words.  Compare your sentence to the original sentence to make sure you did not copy the author’s vocabulary and language.  If you are having trouble understanding the original, find the verb in the sentence.

6. 1 st sentence of Self-Reliance There is a time in every man’s education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; At some point in a person’s education he learns that being jealous of others is stupid;

7. that imitation is suicide; that copying others is a form of dying;

8. that he must take himself for better or worse as his portion; that he must accept himself as he is;

9. that though the wide universe is full of good, that even though the universe has lots of good in it,

10. no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till. no great rewards can be reaped unless a man works hard with all the gifts he naturally has.

11. At some point in a person’s education he learns that being jealous of others is stupid; that copying others is a form of dying; that he must accept himself as he is; that even though the universe has lots of good in it, no great rewards can be reaped unless a man works hard with all the gifts he naturally has.

12. Today’s assignment  With your desk partner, paraphrase Self-Reliance sentence by sentence.  Take turns writing so your final product has both of your handwriting on it.  Work together. Do not simply let one person do one sentence while the other person does the next, etc.