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Writing an Explication Wiki
Explication Assignment Sheet

Mr. Malley: Some things are worth the awkward questions.
Mike: Totally. That's how I got my pet turtle.

There's no "I" in team. There's no "Jeff" either."
- Fawn

"Art is the anti-toot that can call us back from the edge of numbness, restoring our ability to feel for another."
- Mr. Malley's take on Barbara Kingsolver, who obviously cannot handle the rigors of the English language while under technological duress.

"I thought I had a valid point. I made the first bullet on today's English Weekly."
- Dominic

"Wow, all of these ideas in one piece of writing. I guess that's why Shakespeare was a good writer."
- Barry

"Thanks heavens for the left-hand notes..."
- Uyen

"So far there seems to be much wooing within the novel."
- Barry

I'm not sure if I'm orange or melon.
- Jeff

"How am I supposed to read between the lines of words I don't understand?"
- Lindsay

You forget crucial words.
- Grace

Donkeys don't eat people. Really. They eat hay. You couldn't have just said coyote or something...No...don't write that down."
- Uyen-ism

The monster had no say in whether or not he wanted to be created, yet he was. Despite the arguments of whether it was against nature or not, he was given the gift of life only to not be able to enjoy all of its benefits. From the very beginning, the monster was shunned and despised as a horrid creature. He was never shown a single ounce of the kindness that he so desperately desired, so how can anyone expect to see it from him in return?"
- Lindsay

"I think that incentives begins with interest. That's why I think school should cater more to interest, rather than having all students be condemned to learn the boring unnecessary basics. It's these learning standards that totally annihilates the creativity out of a total population of higher level students. Students are so use to systematic solving problems, that they forget to figure out an easier way that it can be done. To come up with ways in which they can solve it differently, because who knows if that a better way. I think that thinking outside the box is something that should be reinforce in schools, instead of making students sit there and memorize factual subjects that they will never need in their adult life."

- Uyen, responding to Tom Friedman

"We are moving towards a globe that is extremely inter-connected. Being born in America is simply not going to cut it anymore. One must think innovatively."
- Jessica

"Oh C'mon, it's only one child."
- Ryan discussing just how monstrous the monster really was.

"If he was like a little killer leprachaun would you kill him?"
"It depends, does he have a pot of gold?"
- Uyen & Lindsay, discussing Robert Walton's decision to listen to the monster instead of attempting to kill him.

"Therefore, we not only need a higher percentage of our kids graduating from high school and college — more education — but we need more of them with the right education...So our schools have a doubly hard task now — not just improving reading, writing and arithmetic but entrepreneurship, innovation and creativity."
- Tom Friedman

"I'm sorry. Uyen is a giant bookshelf and is stuck in the foyer. I'm a table, Fawn is a giant armchair, and Jessica is a giant TV, and we manage to get around. Uyen doesn't really think about those things."
- Lindsay

"Why couldn't he find pretty things to create the monster?"
- Uyen

"Video games make sense, whereas most females don't."
"Dead people smell."
- Jeff, in a rare two-fer