Number 6: for the week of February 25, 2010
My dear readers,
The main concern I encounter in this week's readings is a desire to discover what lies behind writing. When is it done? Why is it done? How is it done? I must admit, for someone with only a minimal familiarity with composition theory before entering this course the myriad of theories I encountered this week was almost too much for me. However, I was able to make some headway. First of all, by the definition laid out in "Cognition, Convention, and Certainty" I am an outer directed theorist. By which I mean simply that I have always believed nothing happens in a vacuum. Everything we do is affected by the world in which we live and our fellow beings who inhabit it along with us. While I do believe that there are parts of life and processes that can be universal, I likewise believe that they usually are not. This is mainly due to differences in perceptions of individuals and groups involved and disagreements that arise therein. In other words, generally speaking, there are things that everyone can agree on. For instance, the sun will rise tomorrow. But as for why it will do so, there may or may not be competing theories. Why? Differences in perception, which in turn grow out of differences in environment and life experience. These differences must be marshaled carefully for effective teaching.
The question posed at the beginning of the article by Flower is one which I suppose is obvious but which I had never thought of because for years I thought I knew the answer for certainty. Here's what I mean she essentially says that it is difficult to still hold the view that good writing is just a matter of making choices. Well, now, that was news to me. You see, when I was in English 206 with Dr. Leon Coburn he told us flat out on the second day of the semester that good writing was in fact nothing more than making choices and that the best writers simply learn to consistently make the best choices. I took that advice to heart and it has helped me reach the point I am at now. The four questions she poses on page 274 are interesting although somewhat repetitive. Certainly writing is driven by goal. No one would write if they didn't have a reason to. By that I do not mean, that people must be mandated to write. I simply mean a writer who feels like he has nothing to say doesn't tend to write. Setting aside potential financial reward why would a novelist compose a novel if he did not have a story he thought was worth telling? As for freezing goals as a growing network… well, yes and no. A creative person who simply enjoys the act of writing an expression may take just having written something down as an end in itself. I do that quite often you might like to know. I do deeply enjoy her discussion of the stage models of writing though it would probably mean more to me later in my career when I have read more of this type of literature.
I enjoyed the Dias chapter on distributed cognition. Its model of knowledge and information flowing to and from teachers, students, administrators etc. goes back to my earlier point nothing happens in a vacuum. I'm reminded of the old Discovery Channel TV series Connections hosted by James Burke. That was one of his main theses for the series that everything in life is connected somehow or other and that all knowledge comes out of other knowledge and then breeds still more knowledge which continues the process. I can see that in terms of evaluation at the university level. In other words the grades I give my students this semester will be not only a measuring stick for them but also for me as an instructor and the department as a whole. Since nothing happens in a vacuum, nothing can be taught in a vacuum. Hence we should try to incorporate every teaching tool from every genre and subject area we possibly can.
Russell seems to have that same idea when examining academic and nonacademic writing. I don't suppose most academics think much about nonacademic writing do they? His mention of dialogism seems only common sense to me. The cognitive and the social always worked together. In fact I would argue they help to construct and shape each other. After all, without some societally based knowledge to start with how can you really understand anything?
Kellogg has it right with the stages developing writers go through. At first we simply tell knowledge on paper with no sense of decorum or style. We don't concern ourselves with audience or how what we write may be perceived in the future. In knowledge transforming the move beyond that occurs as I take it we begin to move from writer based to reader-based prose. In other words, we figure out that we are not the only being that may ever see what we write. In the final stage knowledge crafting not only do we know that our audience is not as but we take deliberate steps to affect what they would feel and how they will perceive us. I'll wager very few writers who have ever lived really do this effectively. The idea of deliberate practice is very well put. After all, whatever one's view on the writing process the more that process is attempted the more improvement is possible.
I particularly enjoyed Ong’s in the way that he talked about orality. I had never thought about the idea of written language being more permanent than its oral counterpart. I've never considered that the moment a word is spoken its sound is already nearly gone. That is an interesting concept I will have to ponder further when I have more time. Mind you, spoken language can achieve immortality if it is heard by someone who remembers it. The many bardic traditions of Europe and elsewhere testify to this fact. Indeed, though the sounds of individual spoken words may disappear more quickly than their printed counterparts if they are remembered those words may outlast printed versions which can be lost or damaged. I remember in bibliography and methods with Dr. Erwin reading a case study about the Maori in New Zealand during the early days of Christian missionaries in the islands. The missionaries were so intent on printing texts so that oral traditions would not be lost they failed to realize that fueled the Maori bothered to read the printed texts preferring instead to recite things orally, a method that they found more reliable.
Ong brings up the point that people who come out of cultures that are highly print-based did not quite know what to do when faced with information that cannot be written down. On the other hand those who come out of oral traditions do not have this problem. On a brief personal note, there are some members of my family who even to this day have never learned to read. They rely entirely on orality and memory for the transference and retention of information. Honestly, I operate that way mostly too.
My physical condition makes it difficult for me to hand write or even hand type long works. I either tape-record notes or simply memorize what I hear. As a matter of fact, this very blog which you are reading was composed not by typing on a keyboard but by speaking into a special software program that transcribes my words. I wonder, would some of the theorists we have read so far consider me less than literate based on how I must live my academic life?
Thank you so much for your time,
James Altman
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
DISSONANCE PAPER
February 14, 2010
My dear readers,
As I have been considering what topic I'd choose for my final conference length paper, I have felt myself at something of a disadvantage. That disadvantage does not come so much from an inadequacy in the quality of our discussions as much as from my own unfamiliarity with most areas of composition theory. Granted, I took English 711 Studies in Language as a master’s student but honestly I am a neophyte when it comes to theory. In other words, even though I have read ahead in our book I do not have a huge theoretical background to draw on when trying to think of what topics might not only be of interest to me but also to others in the field of composition. In any case, here is what I have come up with. I considered several topics before settling on the one which will serve as the basis for my conference length paper.
When I first read the syllabus for this course and realized I would have to write this type of a paper I initially thought of a couple of topics in education that I absolutely hate. These are the Bell curve and standardized testing. Throughout my career as a student and an education undergrad, both of these topics were a source of much frustration and fascination with me. Both as a student and teacher I often felt stymied by both of them. I felt that they both pigeonholed both me and my students. For instance, when I was very young I was given a supposedly unbiased standardized test which labeled me mildly mentally retarded. It took several months for my family to prove that the contents of the test set me up to fail because they involved identifying objects that only a child that could walk normally would encounter regularly. Where would I be if my family had not fought as hard as they did for fair testing? For that reason I initially wanted to look at how student writing differs in grades when they are administered standardized tests and grades in which they are not.
Also, I want to explore if there were any alternative models to the Bell curve for measuring student progress. As far as the Bell curve, I have always considered it a sheer tool of convenience. In other words, if you lump everyone in the middle you don't have to pay much attention to those on either end. I say this having been on both of the extremes of the Bell curve. Along with being in special-education until the end of fourth grade, I was also in GATE (gifted and talented) from the start of sixth grade until graduating from high school. While in special-education I mostly felt neglected. I felt that the teachers didn't care about my intellectual development. In fact, several of them told me so. It was at that time in my life that I began doing the outside research and study that I continue to this day just to try to get the intellectual stimulation I didn't feel like I was getting the classroom.
You might think that once I got into GATE the situation would change but he didn't. Oh, sure, ostensibly I was treated better because I was "gifted" but it really meant no extra intellectual stimulation. The teachers in charge of the program are overworked and under funded. Therefore, nothing much ever came of the experience beyond being able to mention it on University applications. However, I quickly decided the topic could far too easily degenerate into a simple rant against standardized testing. Therefore, I moved on.
Secondly I thought about doing my paper on the idea of healing through writing. That resonated with me particularly because of my recent stint in the hospital and my subsequent desire to try to return to some semblance of normalcy in my life. However, the little research on the topic that I have had time to do shows me, that unless there is something I missed, healing through writing does not necessarily talk about what I want to talk about. The only examples I could find concerned cancer survivors. Now that's all well and good but I am not a cancer survivor, and since the paper is supposed to resonate with me that won't work.
And I considered doing something looking at the general topic of how and why orality has been marginalized in modern American society. For most of my life the physical act of writing has been difficult and painful for me. Oral communication, therefore, has usually been preferable. Unfortunately, I wasn't entirely sure what I could do with the topic other than trying to examine the differences in products produced with oral and written methods. Luckily, however, that basic idea led me to the topic that I feel confident I want to do my paper on.
Let me preface this by saying I have had next to no time to research and therefore my reading list is at this point nonexistent. That being said I would like to look at composition methods. In other words, what if any of the differences in text produced, say, with pen and paper, by typing manually, using talk and type software, and/or speaking into a tape recorder. I have no idea at this point what these differences might be or what they might entail I just know there must be some. Also the fact that one of my favorite poets, Allen Ginsberg, composed many of his later poems into a tape recorder and commented that he thought the method lent "something" to his verse interests me to try to discover what that "something", that I have also felt, might actually involve.
Thank you so much for your time,
James Altman
February 14, 2010
My dear readers,
As I have been considering what topic I'd choose for my final conference length paper, I have felt myself at something of a disadvantage. That disadvantage does not come so much from an inadequacy in the quality of our discussions as much as from my own unfamiliarity with most areas of composition theory. Granted, I took English 711 Studies in Language as a master’s student but honestly I am a neophyte when it comes to theory. In other words, even though I have read ahead in our book I do not have a huge theoretical background to draw on when trying to think of what topics might not only be of interest to me but also to others in the field of composition. In any case, here is what I have come up with. I considered several topics before settling on the one which will serve as the basis for my conference length paper.
When I first read the syllabus for this course and realized I would have to write this type of a paper I initially thought of a couple of topics in education that I absolutely hate. These are the Bell curve and standardized testing. Throughout my career as a student and an education undergrad, both of these topics were a source of much frustration and fascination with me. Both as a student and teacher I often felt stymied by both of them. I felt that they both pigeonholed both me and my students. For instance, when I was very young I was given a supposedly unbiased standardized test which labeled me mildly mentally retarded. It took several months for my family to prove that the contents of the test set me up to fail because they involved identifying objects that only a child that could walk normally would encounter regularly. Where would I be if my family had not fought as hard as they did for fair testing? For that reason I initially wanted to look at how student writing differs in grades when they are administered standardized tests and grades in which they are not.
Also, I want to explore if there were any alternative models to the Bell curve for measuring student progress. As far as the Bell curve, I have always considered it a sheer tool of convenience. In other words, if you lump everyone in the middle you don't have to pay much attention to those on either end. I say this having been on both of the extremes of the Bell curve. Along with being in special-education until the end of fourth grade, I was also in GATE (gifted and talented) from the start of sixth grade until graduating from high school. While in special-education I mostly felt neglected. I felt that the teachers didn't care about my intellectual development. In fact, several of them told me so. It was at that time in my life that I began doing the outside research and study that I continue to this day just to try to get the intellectual stimulation I didn't feel like I was getting the classroom.
You might think that once I got into GATE the situation would change but he didn't. Oh, sure, ostensibly I was treated better because I was "gifted" but it really meant no extra intellectual stimulation. The teachers in charge of the program are overworked and under funded. Therefore, nothing much ever came of the experience beyond being able to mention it on University applications. However, I quickly decided the topic could far too easily degenerate into a simple rant against standardized testing. Therefore, I moved on.
Secondly I thought about doing my paper on the idea of healing through writing. That resonated with me particularly because of my recent stint in the hospital and my subsequent desire to try to return to some semblance of normalcy in my life. However, the little research on the topic that I have had time to do shows me, that unless there is something I missed, healing through writing does not necessarily talk about what I want to talk about. The only examples I could find concerned cancer survivors. Now that's all well and good but I am not a cancer survivor, and since the paper is supposed to resonate with me that won't work.
And I considered doing something looking at the general topic of how and why orality has been marginalized in modern American society. For most of my life the physical act of writing has been difficult and painful for me. Oral communication, therefore, has usually been preferable. Unfortunately, I wasn't entirely sure what I could do with the topic other than trying to examine the differences in products produced with oral and written methods. Luckily, however, that basic idea led me to the topic that I feel confident I want to do my paper on.
Let me preface this by saying I have had next to no time to research and therefore my reading list is at this point nonexistent. That being said I would like to look at composition methods. In other words, what if any of the differences in text produced, say, with pen and paper, by typing manually, using talk and type software, and/or speaking into a tape recorder. I have no idea at this point what these differences might be or what they might entail I just know there must be some. Also the fact that one of my favorite poets, Allen Ginsberg, composed many of his later poems into a tape recorder and commented that he thought the method lent "something" to his verse interests me to try to discover what that "something", that I have also felt, might actually involve.
Thank you so much for your time,
James Altman
Number 5: for the week of February 18, 2010
My dear readers,
The main issue permeating that which we read is that of grammatical correctness. What is it? Why is it necessary and how did it become so central to all thought about writing? The two articles by Connors trace an historical trail of the current fixation on grammar and mechanics within composition studies. Not simply the teacher being a queen with a red ink pen as a royal scepter, the articles, particularly "mechanical correctness", focus on the fetish with of grammar as symptomatic of an overall growth of hierarchy in all areas of an emerging America. It is only natural that in the early years of the Republic, America would wish, after so many years under the stagnant hierarchy of the British monarchy, to break loose and have, for all intensive purposes, no hierarchy whatsoever. But as let's say, "the Revolutionary generation" faded from the scene after about 1820, those who came after them saw America as needing to fit in with the hierarchies of Europe she had initially left behind.
More generally came the idea that Americans need more than a few years of primary education. Add to that incessant fear on the part of eastern bluebloods that the uncouth nature of the ever expanding Western frontier was polluting genteel society and you have a recipe for eventual standardization in most areas of life particularly grammar. Thus, I suppose you could say that grammar had a small part in unifying America. Though it was at the loss, in some cases, of regionalism and colloquialism in language. They sought to forsake regional dialect in favor of a standard lexicon which became what we call standard English today.
The very fact that there are so many different theories of grammar indicates that linguistically we are not as United as some people might like. I mention this only because I wonder if I have ever had to, in checking for grammar, unwittingly stunt the growth of this generation’s Twain or Faulkner. I mentioned in class earlier in the semester the idea of James Fenimore Cooper's pathfinder Natty Bumpo and the fact that although he is supposed to be an archetype frontiersman he speaks in a manner which is almost Shakespearean. The idea being that American readers of Cooper's time did not at all mind reading about the frontiersman so long as he spoke like a blueblood.
The same idea applies when Connors talks about counting physical mechanical errors in student papers and having correctness cards. In those types of scenarios very little emphasis is given to the content of what students actually write. This tells me that under such a system students can write practically anything they want as long as it is grammatically pristine. I am not sure that is the best course of action. With your kind indulgence, I will now relate a personal example to illustrate what I mean. When I was in my student teaching my university appointed supervisor demanded that I keep a weekly journal. In theory, it was to contain my thoughts and reflections upon the student teaching experience. For the first several entries that is exactly what it contained. However, I quickly found my supervisor only concerned her comments with the grammatical correctness of each entry and, so far as I could see, paid no attention to the actual substance of what I wrote. When I approached her about this she told me flat out "your thoughts are your own business, your grammar is mine."
Flabbergasted by that revelation the next week I tried an experiment. While I kept my weekly reflective journal for my own edification, I did not give my supervisor that entry. Instead I gave her several pages of the first draft of a novel I was composing at the time. I knew those pages were grammatically pristine because I had a friend of mine who was a textual editor help me go over them previously. When I received my journal back the following week the only comment on it was "grammar and mechanics much improved. Keep up the good work." I wonder does it make me a bad person that for the second half of that semester the official journal I submitted actually contained no mention of my student teaching experience but was instead a collection of my previous short prose writings?
I gave the previous example only to illustrate the extreme fixation with grammar that I believe this week articles referred to. The article “grammar grammars and the teaching of grammar” points over and over again to studies revealing that a simple obsession with surface grammar and mechanics not only does not improve the quality of thought expressed in student writing it doesn't even really improve surface correctness in the long-term. Why then such obsession with it? I think it comes back again to Connor’s idea that America, while professing to be a classless society, likes the idea of creating hierarchies and elites and to set certain people apart from the rest of society. I think Butler sums it up very well and he essentially said that the idea of grammar and correctness as we know them today comes from the need to have some way to tell who is doing better and who is not.
Of course, who needs help and who doesn't can depend on who already understands the idea of academic discourse best. In other words who can make their own experience sound academic most readily. In "reflections on academic discourse" Peter Elbow argued, as he does elsewhere, not so much against traditional academic discourse as for inclusion along with it other types of writing. He gives the example that many areas like the FDA and the Air Force require types of writing that are not emphasizing traditional academic discourse. Moreover, along with his previous contention that student experience should build writing assignments he argues that proper writing instruction should try to incorporate as many different genres and types of writing as possible in order to prepare, for instance, a future government worker or military officer for the type of writing they will have to. It is an often ignored fact in university environments that most of the students pursuing higher education do not intend to build a career in academia. Instead they want to get their training in a particular field and get out quickly as possible. Their future careers require types of writing which may or may not have anything to do with the traditional academic writing.
That’s where “responding to student writing” comes in. In Sommers gives the example of the essay that is marked up so bad I can barely read it. She said that the simultaneous demands that the student condensed the essay in some areas and expanded and others serve to confuse the student and muddle the revision process. I don't think I agree with that. While I understand beginning writers may have trouble for performing both steps at once I keep reminding myself that life is not simple and life is not linear. We are often called upon in life to do many things at once.
Thank you so much for your time,
James Altman
My dear readers,
The main issue permeating that which we read is that of grammatical correctness. What is it? Why is it necessary and how did it become so central to all thought about writing? The two articles by Connors trace an historical trail of the current fixation on grammar and mechanics within composition studies. Not simply the teacher being a queen with a red ink pen as a royal scepter, the articles, particularly "mechanical correctness", focus on the fetish with of grammar as symptomatic of an overall growth of hierarchy in all areas of an emerging America. It is only natural that in the early years of the Republic, America would wish, after so many years under the stagnant hierarchy of the British monarchy, to break loose and have, for all intensive purposes, no hierarchy whatsoever. But as let's say, "the Revolutionary generation" faded from the scene after about 1820, those who came after them saw America as needing to fit in with the hierarchies of Europe she had initially left behind.
More generally came the idea that Americans need more than a few years of primary education. Add to that incessant fear on the part of eastern bluebloods that the uncouth nature of the ever expanding Western frontier was polluting genteel society and you have a recipe for eventual standardization in most areas of life particularly grammar. Thus, I suppose you could say that grammar had a small part in unifying America. Though it was at the loss, in some cases, of regionalism and colloquialism in language. They sought to forsake regional dialect in favor of a standard lexicon which became what we call standard English today.
The very fact that there are so many different theories of grammar indicates that linguistically we are not as United as some people might like. I mention this only because I wonder if I have ever had to, in checking for grammar, unwittingly stunt the growth of this generation’s Twain or Faulkner. I mentioned in class earlier in the semester the idea of James Fenimore Cooper's pathfinder Natty Bumpo and the fact that although he is supposed to be an archetype frontiersman he speaks in a manner which is almost Shakespearean. The idea being that American readers of Cooper's time did not at all mind reading about the frontiersman so long as he spoke like a blueblood.
The same idea applies when Connors talks about counting physical mechanical errors in student papers and having correctness cards. In those types of scenarios very little emphasis is given to the content of what students actually write. This tells me that under such a system students can write practically anything they want as long as it is grammatically pristine. I am not sure that is the best course of action. With your kind indulgence, I will now relate a personal example to illustrate what I mean. When I was in my student teaching my university appointed supervisor demanded that I keep a weekly journal. In theory, it was to contain my thoughts and reflections upon the student teaching experience. For the first several entries that is exactly what it contained. However, I quickly found my supervisor only concerned her comments with the grammatical correctness of each entry and, so far as I could see, paid no attention to the actual substance of what I wrote. When I approached her about this she told me flat out "your thoughts are your own business, your grammar is mine."
Flabbergasted by that revelation the next week I tried an experiment. While I kept my weekly reflective journal for my own edification, I did not give my supervisor that entry. Instead I gave her several pages of the first draft of a novel I was composing at the time. I knew those pages were grammatically pristine because I had a friend of mine who was a textual editor help me go over them previously. When I received my journal back the following week the only comment on it was "grammar and mechanics much improved. Keep up the good work." I wonder does it make me a bad person that for the second half of that semester the official journal I submitted actually contained no mention of my student teaching experience but was instead a collection of my previous short prose writings?
I gave the previous example only to illustrate the extreme fixation with grammar that I believe this week articles referred to. The article “grammar grammars and the teaching of grammar” points over and over again to studies revealing that a simple obsession with surface grammar and mechanics not only does not improve the quality of thought expressed in student writing it doesn't even really improve surface correctness in the long-term. Why then such obsession with it? I think it comes back again to Connor’s idea that America, while professing to be a classless society, likes the idea of creating hierarchies and elites and to set certain people apart from the rest of society. I think Butler sums it up very well and he essentially said that the idea of grammar and correctness as we know them today comes from the need to have some way to tell who is doing better and who is not.
Of course, who needs help and who doesn't can depend on who already understands the idea of academic discourse best. In other words who can make their own experience sound academic most readily. In "reflections on academic discourse" Peter Elbow argued, as he does elsewhere, not so much against traditional academic discourse as for inclusion along with it other types of writing. He gives the example that many areas like the FDA and the Air Force require types of writing that are not emphasizing traditional academic discourse. Moreover, along with his previous contention that student experience should build writing assignments he argues that proper writing instruction should try to incorporate as many different genres and types of writing as possible in order to prepare, for instance, a future government worker or military officer for the type of writing they will have to. It is an often ignored fact in university environments that most of the students pursuing higher education do not intend to build a career in academia. Instead they want to get their training in a particular field and get out quickly as possible. Their future careers require types of writing which may or may not have anything to do with the traditional academic writing.
That’s where “responding to student writing” comes in. In Sommers gives the example of the essay that is marked up so bad I can barely read it. She said that the simultaneous demands that the student condensed the essay in some areas and expanded and others serve to confuse the student and muddle the revision process. I don't think I agree with that. While I understand beginning writers may have trouble for performing both steps at once I keep reminding myself that life is not simple and life is not linear. We are often called upon in life to do many things at once.
Thank you so much for your time,
James Altman
Monday, February 8, 2010
Number 4: for the week of Thursday, February 11, 2010
My dear readers,
The overarching themes running through the readings for this week regard the idea of writing itself. Is it product or process? If it is process, what does that involve? What is the teacher's role in said process? Most importantly, what is the student’s role?
While this week's articles pretty much agree on the idea of writing being taught as process, they're not exactly the same on how it should be done or what it means to do it. Peter Elbow, as he does in his book Writing without Teachers advocates a classroom where the teacher is a facilitator not an overarching authority. He says that students should have absolute autonomy in selecting not only their writing topics but also their writing assignments.
Many teachers probably would like to do that, but are reluctant to allow students such freedom because of outside concerns and pressures about curriculum and standards. Also I think many teachers are nervous about giving students autonomy in any area because they are afraid it will simply breed anarchy. That, and lack of technological resources, likely also keeps many teachers from employing new media like blogs in their classrooms in the way that "Moving to the Public" prescribes.
Also, I think, in many situations many teachers are reluctant to employ new techniques because they think that since they have achieved success under the old techniques new methods are unnecessary. Let me try to give you an example.
Murray, in his article "teach writing as a process not product" refers very accurately I think to a teacher looking At student papers the way a coroner looks at a recently deceased corpse, in other words trying to determine what killed it and how that death could have been prevented. Well, that approach works well on Forensic Files, or Dr. G. Medical Examiner in a situation where you know your subject matter is already dead. However in terms of student writing such an approach is an effective because whether you realize it or not you're already assuming that there is something fundamentally wrong with the writing, and what good does that do?
Murray continues Elbow's idea that students should use their own experience to create their writing topics. I also like how Murray points out the idea that academic language is fundamentally different from everyday speech. Now, I do not think this is a bad thing in and of itself. It only causes a problem when teachers forget that most students do not use academic language except when requested to do so. To most students the academic language required in college is as foreign as the lexicon of Shakespeare or Chaucer.
I love Murray's idea of letting students write as many drafts as is necessary. Unfortunately, who has time for that? The department insists I get my students through four formal papers every semester, come hell or high water. Granted, they can do as many drafts of each paper as there is time for, but still time is a limiting factor. As unfortunately is student patience. Very few of the students I have ever taught have the patience to do more than one or two drafts before they just want to turn the final draft in and get on with their lives. The pace of college life, and modern life in general, demands they keep moving from point A to point B no matter what.
When Emig attempts to draw distinctions between writing and other types of discourse I think she goes a little too far in the attempt. She says that writing is learned behavior whereas talking is instinctive, that's not true we learn to talk just like we learn everything else. She calls writing artificial as opposed to the natural process of talking. On the contrary, many people are much more open and honest in their writings say a personal journal than they are in spoken discourse especially if they think their listeners may be judgmental of them. I mean, I understand her point she is trying to set up her context, I just think she goes a little too for.
Overall, I agree with her premise that learning speaking and writing can go together and help promote the intellectual development of everyone involved. Although her study, with its graphs and charts, and numbers, was more than a little hard for me to follow I do like Perl's idea of comparing how more skilled and unskilled writers think about the revision process. I saw the same idea in Sommers too. Skilled writers look at revision as trying to really improve a piece of writing by letting it breathe and more effectively say what they wanted to say. They understand that having to revise something does not necessarily mean it was wrong but simply stated less effectively.
Less skilled writers invariably saw the need for a revision as an indication they had somehow screwed up. Moreover, the differences in the writing quality between the samples appeared to come down to how much the different writers understood that their readers might not know what they knew and might not have had the same experiences they had and therefore might need more information. Less skilled writers apparently pictured themselves when writing and never really thought about having to explain themselves to someone who did not already know what they were talking about.
When I was a senior in high school my professor reminded me to never assume that my reader already had the information necessary to understand my argument. I have never forgotten that and therefore have always tried to give as much information in any piece of writing as I possibly could. I would rather give too much than too little. Mind you, perhaps the reason some writers do not explain themselves as well as we think they should is because they are trying to construct their own topic or context for their writing and perhaps they've never had that opportunity before and just don't yet know how.
Thank you so much for your time,
James Altman
My dear readers,
The overarching themes running through the readings for this week regard the idea of writing itself. Is it product or process? If it is process, what does that involve? What is the teacher's role in said process? Most importantly, what is the student’s role?
While this week's articles pretty much agree on the idea of writing being taught as process, they're not exactly the same on how it should be done or what it means to do it. Peter Elbow, as he does in his book Writing without Teachers advocates a classroom where the teacher is a facilitator not an overarching authority. He says that students should have absolute autonomy in selecting not only their writing topics but also their writing assignments.
Many teachers probably would like to do that, but are reluctant to allow students such freedom because of outside concerns and pressures about curriculum and standards. Also I think many teachers are nervous about giving students autonomy in any area because they are afraid it will simply breed anarchy. That, and lack of technological resources, likely also keeps many teachers from employing new media like blogs in their classrooms in the way that "Moving to the Public" prescribes.
Also, I think, in many situations many teachers are reluctant to employ new techniques because they think that since they have achieved success under the old techniques new methods are unnecessary. Let me try to give you an example.
Murray, in his article "teach writing as a process not product" refers very accurately I think to a teacher looking At student papers the way a coroner looks at a recently deceased corpse, in other words trying to determine what killed it and how that death could have been prevented. Well, that approach works well on Forensic Files, or Dr. G. Medical Examiner in a situation where you know your subject matter is already dead. However in terms of student writing such an approach is an effective because whether you realize it or not you're already assuming that there is something fundamentally wrong with the writing, and what good does that do?
Murray continues Elbow's idea that students should use their own experience to create their writing topics. I also like how Murray points out the idea that academic language is fundamentally different from everyday speech. Now, I do not think this is a bad thing in and of itself. It only causes a problem when teachers forget that most students do not use academic language except when requested to do so. To most students the academic language required in college is as foreign as the lexicon of Shakespeare or Chaucer.
I love Murray's idea of letting students write as many drafts as is necessary. Unfortunately, who has time for that? The department insists I get my students through four formal papers every semester, come hell or high water. Granted, they can do as many drafts of each paper as there is time for, but still time is a limiting factor. As unfortunately is student patience. Very few of the students I have ever taught have the patience to do more than one or two drafts before they just want to turn the final draft in and get on with their lives. The pace of college life, and modern life in general, demands they keep moving from point A to point B no matter what.
When Emig attempts to draw distinctions between writing and other types of discourse I think she goes a little too far in the attempt. She says that writing is learned behavior whereas talking is instinctive, that's not true we learn to talk just like we learn everything else. She calls writing artificial as opposed to the natural process of talking. On the contrary, many people are much more open and honest in their writings say a personal journal than they are in spoken discourse especially if they think their listeners may be judgmental of them. I mean, I understand her point she is trying to set up her context, I just think she goes a little too for.
Overall, I agree with her premise that learning speaking and writing can go together and help promote the intellectual development of everyone involved. Although her study, with its graphs and charts, and numbers, was more than a little hard for me to follow I do like Perl's idea of comparing how more skilled and unskilled writers think about the revision process. I saw the same idea in Sommers too. Skilled writers look at revision as trying to really improve a piece of writing by letting it breathe and more effectively say what they wanted to say. They understand that having to revise something does not necessarily mean it was wrong but simply stated less effectively.
Less skilled writers invariably saw the need for a revision as an indication they had somehow screwed up. Moreover, the differences in the writing quality between the samples appeared to come down to how much the different writers understood that their readers might not know what they knew and might not have had the same experiences they had and therefore might need more information. Less skilled writers apparently pictured themselves when writing and never really thought about having to explain themselves to someone who did not already know what they were talking about.
When I was a senior in high school my professor reminded me to never assume that my reader already had the information necessary to understand my argument. I have never forgotten that and therefore have always tried to give as much information in any piece of writing as I possibly could. I would rather give too much than too little. Mind you, perhaps the reason some writers do not explain themselves as well as we think they should is because they are trying to construct their own topic or context for their writing and perhaps they've never had that opportunity before and just don't yet know how.
Thank you so much for your time,
James Altman
Wednesday, February 3, 2010
Number 3: for the week of Thursday, February 4, 2010
My dear readers,
Overall, this week’s articles concern the Bell curve although it is not mentioned in so many words in any articles, by which I mean than the typical students up to an acceptable level somewhere near the middle of academic expectations. Hence all the different labels used in the two Rose articles to describe writers in need of assistance. The label “handicapped” especially reminded me not only my own substandard often degrading experiences in special-education classrooms but also Rose's seminal book Lives on the Boundary. The basic thesis of which I take to be if you're not up to par, then in society's view, there must be something inherently wrong with you.
The reason this is such a big thing for me is not only have I both attended and taught special-education courses, but also I was initially, briefly, denied the right to graduate from high school because some district administrators believed that no one who ever been in special-education at any time in their lives could possibly succeed beyond a high school level. Beyond the personal I believe the article “Inventing the University” sums up the core problem addressed in these articles in its title. Every one of this week articles talks about students having to invent the university, that is, having to learn the culture of the University and adapt to it as quickly as possible.
It’s the cold hard truth that in most university situations an individual students experience does not matter except to the extent to which it can be phrased in terms of experiences which traditional academics will understand. In a purely academic sense it does not matter that I nearly died on the operating table only a few short weeks ago. That experience only matters, academically speaking, if I can interweave it into an academic point which connects to a particular assignment I've been given. Any other mention of my experience then is, technically speaking, completely irrelevant. Different attitudes and cultural mores are only important in academia, as it stands now, to the extent to which they can make themselves sound virtually identical to that type of reality with which conventional academics are already comfortable.
The whole idea of academics being comfortable or uncomfortable with a situation underlines the article Diving In: an introduction to basic writing which outlines the five stages that teachers of writing have to go through to reconcile themselves to the task of teaching their students. The stages described sounds somewhat reminiscent of the stages of grief after the death of a loved one. After all in the first stage guarding the Tower tries to act as if nothing has changed at all, as if students are just waiting breathlessly for your knowledge with nothing else on their minds or in their lives. Mind you, it is actually sounding the depths which is most interesting to me. It talked about teachers being reflective about themselves about their teaching style about conditions in which they teach. But honestly how many teachers actually do that? How many teachers actually look critically at their own teaching style and when something isn't going well are willing to say to themselves maybe I'm not doing what I should. Maybe it's not the students’ fault? I constantly try to think about my own teaching style and I try not to lay the blame for what if anything that goes wrong onto student until I have made sure that I'm doing everything that I can do right.
Mind you, I would say that because of my position, but the fact remains I am trying. But how many people do that? How many teachers think consciously or not, that students simply are not worthy of their talents? How many teachers are willing to dive in and try to get at what is really lying behind actual student troubles with writing? Unfortunately I would say not nearly enough. This may lead to the idea mentioned in several the articles including “stretch at 10” about basic writing courses being outsourced community colleges and the varying results of such decisions. Well, of course if you feel like the problems with beginner student writing come entirely from the students and not all from the instructors, then of course someone especially with tenure status won't want to deal with the frustration of trying to bring the students up to par. I wouldn't either.
Of course, as mentioned in the “Stretch” article many of the students who took the outsourced writing classes never came back for the full university experience or if they did they didn't do well because the basic curriculum they had been taught didn't match up. How could it have? It wasn't taught by the same people with the same goals. Also I would almost bet that the students who took such basic writing classes probably faced some sort of stigma about having to do so.
Hence, unfortunately, we get to the point in the “Scarlet P” article about students plagiarizing for various reasons. One of the main ones being simply to avoid remedial classes and the stigma that may come with them. Mind you, I did think it was funny to read all the mentioning of a rising tide of plagiarism. Is that really the case? Or is it simply the fact that we started looking for it? I don't have to rethink the tide is really It's a bit like steroids in baseball I don't believe there are more players using steroids now I just think the cases of steroid users are more public right now. However the public believes that there are more than ever before. That sends another main theme of this week article the idea of perception who has the right to observe the situation and make determinations about it?
Thank you so much for your time,
James Altman
My dear readers,
Overall, this week’s articles concern the Bell curve although it is not mentioned in so many words in any articles, by which I mean than the typical students up to an acceptable level somewhere near the middle of academic expectations. Hence all the different labels used in the two Rose articles to describe writers in need of assistance. The label “handicapped” especially reminded me not only my own substandard often degrading experiences in special-education classrooms but also Rose's seminal book Lives on the Boundary. The basic thesis of which I take to be if you're not up to par, then in society's view, there must be something inherently wrong with you.
The reason this is such a big thing for me is not only have I both attended and taught special-education courses, but also I was initially, briefly, denied the right to graduate from high school because some district administrators believed that no one who ever been in special-education at any time in their lives could possibly succeed beyond a high school level. Beyond the personal I believe the article “Inventing the University” sums up the core problem addressed in these articles in its title. Every one of this week articles talks about students having to invent the university, that is, having to learn the culture of the University and adapt to it as quickly as possible.
It’s the cold hard truth that in most university situations an individual students experience does not matter except to the extent to which it can be phrased in terms of experiences which traditional academics will understand. In a purely academic sense it does not matter that I nearly died on the operating table only a few short weeks ago. That experience only matters, academically speaking, if I can interweave it into an academic point which connects to a particular assignment I've been given. Any other mention of my experience then is, technically speaking, completely irrelevant. Different attitudes and cultural mores are only important in academia, as it stands now, to the extent to which they can make themselves sound virtually identical to that type of reality with which conventional academics are already comfortable.
The whole idea of academics being comfortable or uncomfortable with a situation underlines the article Diving In: an introduction to basic writing which outlines the five stages that teachers of writing have to go through to reconcile themselves to the task of teaching their students. The stages described sounds somewhat reminiscent of the stages of grief after the death of a loved one. After all in the first stage guarding the Tower tries to act as if nothing has changed at all, as if students are just waiting breathlessly for your knowledge with nothing else on their minds or in their lives. Mind you, it is actually sounding the depths which is most interesting to me. It talked about teachers being reflective about themselves about their teaching style about conditions in which they teach. But honestly how many teachers actually do that? How many teachers actually look critically at their own teaching style and when something isn't going well are willing to say to themselves maybe I'm not doing what I should. Maybe it's not the students’ fault? I constantly try to think about my own teaching style and I try not to lay the blame for what if anything that goes wrong onto student until I have made sure that I'm doing everything that I can do right.
Mind you, I would say that because of my position, but the fact remains I am trying. But how many people do that? How many teachers think consciously or not, that students simply are not worthy of their talents? How many teachers are willing to dive in and try to get at what is really lying behind actual student troubles with writing? Unfortunately I would say not nearly enough. This may lead to the idea mentioned in several the articles including “stretch at 10” about basic writing courses being outsourced community colleges and the varying results of such decisions. Well, of course if you feel like the problems with beginner student writing come entirely from the students and not all from the instructors, then of course someone especially with tenure status won't want to deal with the frustration of trying to bring the students up to par. I wouldn't either.
Of course, as mentioned in the “Stretch” article many of the students who took the outsourced writing classes never came back for the full university experience or if they did they didn't do well because the basic curriculum they had been taught didn't match up. How could it have? It wasn't taught by the same people with the same goals. Also I would almost bet that the students who took such basic writing classes probably faced some sort of stigma about having to do so.
Hence, unfortunately, we get to the point in the “Scarlet P” article about students plagiarizing for various reasons. One of the main ones being simply to avoid remedial classes and the stigma that may come with them. Mind you, I did think it was funny to read all the mentioning of a rising tide of plagiarism. Is that really the case? Or is it simply the fact that we started looking for it? I don't have to rethink the tide is really It's a bit like steroids in baseball I don't believe there are more players using steroids now I just think the cases of steroid users are more public right now. However the public believes that there are more than ever before. That sends another main theme of this week article the idea of perception who has the right to observe the situation and make determinations about it?
Thank you so much for your time,
James Altman
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