Here’s how you can get 15 (FIFTEEN! I’m offering a ton because I think this is important) points of extra credit on this week’s vocabulary quiz:

Tomorrow (Tuesday, January 28), watch the President’s State of the Union Address. If you don’t have cable, you should be able to do that here, or I would bet that YouTube will be streaming it live.

As you watch, take notes in the form of a sentence outline. You can see an example of how to do that here. Note – it needs to be a sentence outline, not a topic outline. I highly recommend that you type this, as making an outline from a live speech is the kind of thing where it’s helpful to be able to go back and make adjustments. Also, typing it as you watch would be helpful because the only way you can submit this is through turnitin.com (so, note – your outline needs to not look like your friend’s outline). The deadline to submit will be 12:30 PM on Wednesday.

Also, your outline needs to have a thesis – what is the one big message that you think the President is trying to get across? And just to reiterate, the point of this activity is not to critique the speech, but instead to practice accurate note-taking skills.

I really, really hope that you guys choose to do this. Those of you who are reading this, would you please do me a favor and share this with your compadres who might not check the website as frequently as you do, since I won’t be at school tomorrow to announce this to everyone?

And hey, just because we talked about this in most classes today, here’s that scene from “My Fair Lady”: