"Spinning Yarns enables you to share the major events of your life with family, friends and, potentially, the rest of the world. All the ingredients are available to mix your memory files with new writing skills in creating your own life stories."  
  -- Wm Thomas

OVERVIEW

This is a unique independent home study course for you to store memories for yourself, family members, and/or future generations. You can work at your own pace on your computer with the help of an e-mail mentor to review your writing materials, answers to writing exercises, and practices for grammar and punctuation review.

Who are the participants?

Generally, course takers are people who are or would like to become involved in preserving past personal experiences through life writing. A few may even be interested in publishing their memoirs; most desire to record memories for their own enjoyment and to share stories with family members and friends.

What's your reason for enrolling?

Using your own life as content material, you’ll be assisted in this writing approach to develop a “memory bank,” a continually building storage of information from the past, much like the accumulation of money in a savings account. What results can be the basis of your future life writing activity - a series of essays preserving your memories, even a book.

The purpose of this workshop is :

· to introduce you to the independent study of life writing
· to give you practice in recording past personal experiences
· to help you prepare paragraphs and essays about significant, meaningful memories
· to provide practice of grammar and punctuation, and sentence and paragraph structure
· to support, motivate, and guide you via Internet study and e-mail mentoring.

Format

Six instructive units are included in this Spinning Yarns Course. Each unit should be completed individually and consists of:
1) a learning module, 2) questions to check comprehension, and 3) homework activity.

You should also keep a journal either written or on a floppy disc to take notes from which you can prewrite, outline, and prepare written drafts of five assigned paragraphs or essays about your life. You will also be asked to write a short essay on one significant turning point, special event or person or experience in your life.

Because you are engaged in independent study, you're expected to read and thoroughly digest each of the units, complete recommended practices and exercises, prepare and draft writing assignments, and prepare six computer-generated writing assignments. Writing assignments can be accumulated on your floppy disc and e-mailed to your mentor for review. You can also copy your assignments, keeping them in a personal portfolio.

Materials Needed:

Computer
Notepad Pen or pencil Journal
Notebook
Floppy disk

Spinning Yarns Application Form : Fill out this form and it will be submitted electronically to Professor William Thomas at Saddleback College, San Clemente, Ca.

Frequently Asked Questions