College Students
College students will read only few excerpts from Roger Fry's biography so they can learn how to narrate personal experience as a model before writing their personal statement.
The chapter "Transformations" offers my students the opportunity to see how to choose a specific event in their life for the personal statement, how to give that piece of writing a voice, and how to express critical thinking. To begin with, we will read about Roger's choices in his life and the transformations which follow. We will analyze the description of his illness and discuss the effect of the appealing adjectives his biographer uses. We will discuss how Virginia Woolf reflects on the possibility that Roger's pains are caused by cancer or simple indigestion –– important examples of how to express voice in a biographical page. Essentially, we will focus on Woolf's change in the narrative technique. One great example is when she quotes Roger himself because it makes this biographical page more appealing and interesting. Another captivating technique is to add friendly and ironic remarks on Roger's open–mindedness toward his "mysterious ailment."
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Another interesting episode from the same chapter titled "Transformations" deals with Roger's contempt, as Virginia Woolf writes, for the hypocrisies of his youth. Of course, these hypocrisies refer to how the body can be seen when sexuality is involved, and on how Roger has no hesitation recalling the pleasure, "perhaps the very necessity, and certainly the amusements" of his "passing affairs."
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Of similar interest is the page describing Roger's experience with a French woman in Nancy, France. After reading the first pages closely, they will have to finish the entire chapter and take notes on how Virginia Woolf expresses critical thinking and voice in her narration. (Other specific passages referring to Roger's experience with the Omega studio will be detailed in the lesson plans session).
