well, as opposed to my last entry, this one will probably be pretty short.
as far as kass and my presentation goes, i think everything went fairly well, and we were able to spark some conversation, although perhaps we could have done a little bit better... it's hard at 10 am, i guess. i'm glad we got to watch some videos and play "pass the beast" (which i hope makes it into a friday meeting at some point), and i'm glad no one got visibly annoyed with my perhaps extended metaphor with the dylan video. i did what i could to draw parallels between order out of chaos and musical examples, but everyone responds to different things in different ways. hope it made some sense to you guys.
other things floating around:
helped a guy from auburn hills with a resume today...this guys drove all the way to the writing center (that's over an hour, even if you drive as fast as i do) in east lansing to get advice on his resume... i think that says a lot about how much people value us here....it really surprised me, in a very nice way.
here's something i can rant on for a second: i'm usually pretty good at staying neutral and objectively looking at people's arguments in their paper from a logical perspective and not let my own thoughts interfere. however, on wednesday, this guy came in with 17 page paper about how women don't like men who pay attention to them. i realize the rules of attraction often determine that you like what you can't have, but this guy took it way to far, and basically wrote every woman like they had exactly the same thought process when it came to men, and, furthermore, implied that women only liked manly, muscled, intellectually lacking men. i thought this was stupid and ridiculous, to treat every person like they were the same, and it was slightly offensive to me as a person in general, but i held it in and tried to work with him. i hope his professor is as objective as i am.
see y'all monday.
m
Friday, March 21, 2008
Thursday, March 20, 2008
evaluation on my last post...
I think i am going to combine these 2 responses for the final portfolio...
Reading response 4 is the one I think i brought up really good points in. we have been paying attention to everything these articles about esl students are saying and at times, we've even been getting sick of the repetition. i was looking over the articles and it became clear that there was something extremely important that NO ONE has said, yet. No one has talked about how EVERY SINGLE writer varies. you'd think that, at the very least, people would acknowledge that native-speakers differ greatly. maybe it's assumed that we would just know that? i mean, we do know that writing is different for everyone, certainly, but i have found myself approaching every esl student in the same manner because they're an esl student so they must be like the other international students i've worked with. the same grave mistake that Morgan made- she categorized. the authors have categorized writers of English-the language defined by exceptions to rules and the doctrine that says "rules are meant to be broken"! (One exception may be the article about Fannie because she is mentioned as an individual and not as a race, but then one could easily argue that the author applied the story of Fannie and Morgan to all esl conferences. BUT then one could also argue that the author emphasizes the negative consequences that resulted from Morgan generalizing and categorizing Fannie so is therefore warning against it.)
what do you guys think?
Reading response 4 is the one I think i brought up really good points in. we have been paying attention to everything these articles about esl students are saying and at times, we've even been getting sick of the repetition. i was looking over the articles and it became clear that there was something extremely important that NO ONE has said, yet. No one has talked about how EVERY SINGLE writer varies. you'd think that, at the very least, people would acknowledge that native-speakers differ greatly. maybe it's assumed that we would just know that? i mean, we do know that writing is different for everyone, certainly, but i have found myself approaching every esl student in the same manner because they're an esl student so they must be like the other international students i've worked with. the same grave mistake that Morgan made- she categorized. the authors have categorized writers of English-the language defined by exceptions to rules and the doctrine that says "rules are meant to be broken"! (One exception may be the article about Fannie because she is mentioned as an individual and not as a race, but then one could easily argue that the author applied the story of Fannie and Morgan to all esl conferences. BUT then one could also argue that the author emphasizes the negative consequences that resulted from Morgan generalizing and categorizing Fannie so is therefore warning against it.)
what do you guys think?
reading responses 3 and 4...because i never posted them before
Reading Response 3
International, Unfamiliar
In her article, “’Whispers of Coming and Going”: Lessons from Fannie,” Anne DiPardo describes an international student’s struggles to master writing in the English language. She doesn’t think that this particular student and her particular tutor necessarily depict common situations, but her story is all too familiar in that it seems to portray every frustration and enthusiasm I have felt as a tutor thus far. The role Fannie’s tutor played does not illustrate how I handle the situations I encounter, but the weaknesses she is forced to deal with that create those difficult situations are the same.
I love that DiPardo begins with her assessment that in order to be successful tutors, we must realize the multiple identities that we ourselves take on in order to get by in life. “Knowledge of our own shape-shifting can help us begin-if only begin- to understand the social and linguistic challenges which inform their struggles with writing…navigating between competing identities, competing loyalties.” (350) Looking at the struggle of international students in this empathetic way helps relieve some of the “inexorable frustration” I inevitably feel when working with these clients. She quotes Fannie saying, “’If you don’t know the language…then you don’t know who you are…It’s your identity…the language is important.”’ (353) Sometimes during a session I get so caught up with my frustration that I forget that the student is feeling the same way. It’s true that people define themselves using words. Loving communication as much as I do, I can’t imagine not being able to express my ideas in words, but, as DiPardo points out, that is one of the major weaknesses of non-native speakers.
Fannie’s weaknesses apply to almost every foreign writer I’ve encountered so far. “While she named her “sentence structure, grammar, and punctuation” as significant weaknesses, she also added that “I have a lot to say, but I can’t seem to put it on paper…it’s like I can’t find the vocabulary.”’ (355) The first part of that list is not limited to ESL students; English rules of writing are ridiculously confusing and even some of the best writers have yet to master each and every rule (mostly because there are so many more exceptions than there are rules…). The hours I’ve spent correcting parts of speech, word placement, subject-verb agreement, tenses, and comma rules have only been a slight annoyance in the context of sessions. Most of the aggravation is precipitated by the latter part of Fannie’s list. There is a clear inability to express ideas on paper with these students. I ask questions; I receive silence or repetition of a re-phrased version of the last sentence. I instruct them to add commentary; I’m left just as confused as before. I ask them to state the thesis; I get blank stares or worse, a list of details pulled from random parts of the paper that cannot possibly fit into a solitary focus. How can I lead the client to their own ideas when we are time-limited and the ideas are buried so deep that I’m not sure I’m even touching the surface of that realm of their mind yet. Most of these students do have ideas formulated in their own language. The trouble seems to be the translation into English. Add in the unending list of synonyms that are each most properly used in separate contexts and the goal seems inaccessible. This is the point at which my story differs from DiPardo’s.
Despite my irritation at the client for not being able to tell me what they’re trying to say and at myself for not being able to lead them to full understanding, I keep pushing. I learned about collaborative learning and almost immediately rejected it as the proper way to tutor ESL writers. “Morgan’s initial compassion had been nearly overwhelmed by a sense of frustration.” (358) My face always remains smiling because I won’t let what happened to Morgan happen to me during a session. If I am not getting through, I will try something else. Anything else. I have drawn funny images that appear in my head when something is ambiguous, I have used highlighters to help organize the paper, I have formulated ridiculous sentences that emphasize grammar rules they are having trouble with so they will never forget the rule, and I have encouraged them to come back to the center for a later assignment to keep working on the fundamental issues that appear over and over again. It has been fairly easy to adjust to different students- perhaps because I approached my job as a tutor worried that I wouldn’t be able to accomplish my goal of making students better writers. I had not previously worked with non-native speakers so the setting was unfamiliar, but I learned, and I continue to learn through every session, what my power as a tutor, and more importantly, as a peer can really achieve.
Reading Response 4
ESL Conferences
There is no denying the vast difference we encounter when we tutor international students as opposed to native-speakers. In her article, “Rethinking Writing Center Conferencing Strategies for the ESL Writer” Judith Powers points out that the traditional collaborative, non-directive approach works with native speakers only and new strategies are (or were) needed to tutor international students. There are two major assumptions behind this claim. The first is that those non-directive strategies work for all native-speakers; the second is that they don’t work for all ESL students. These are both wrong.
To assume that minimalist tutoring works for all native speakers seems naïve. Surely I am not the only tutor who has run into a client absolutely unwilling to put forth the effort to improve? The fundamental problem with a non-directive approach is that it is at the core the job of the student to employ it. We can ask leading questions all we want, but the reality is that if the student refuses to answer them, the session goes nowhere. Without their own motivation to improve their writing, the client is unable to benefit from any time with a tutor. Besides unmotivated students, there are also clients who really do need sentence-level revision. A client came to me the other day with a report she planned to present at a research conference. Most of the report was numbers pertaining to her results; the most I could do was give her sentence-level suggestions, point out any place that was confusing, and wish her luck. There are always exceptions to every rule- that has been true since the beginning of time. If I had asked leading questions about content when working with that student she would have been angry and left without any help. It was not my job to review and correct her study she had run with 3,000 participants.
The second assumption is not so naïve, but it is still flawed. ESL students do tend to respond much better to directive tutoring than non-directive, but why must we group all of them under one label? ESL student refers to anyone whose first language isn’t English. European students are very fundamentally different than Asian or Hispanic students and, as the story of Fannie made clear, Native Americans are another group that requires a specialized form of tutoring. I think even labeling ESL students by their nationality is too broad. Are we implying that native-speakers are all at the same skill level as far as writing goes? I hope not. Every single student we come into contact with is different. I certainly applied minimalist tutoring to a student writing a final paper for history who needed some guidance in developing her ideas and coming up with examples, but for the student who I believe had a learning disability and couldn’t see the ridiculous number of run-on sentences throughout her paper, I had to use a more directive approach to be successful.
As tutors of English, a language defined by rule-exceptions, writing center tutors are the last people who should be generalizing and categorizing. It is dangerous to implant ideas of how to tutor ESL students v. native-speakers into our heads because like Fannie’s tutor, we run the risk of forgetting that each student is an individual writer with their own experiences to bring to a session. If we don’t see them as individuals, how can we see them as writers? And if we don’t see them as writers, how can we possibly be doing our job?
International, Unfamiliar
In her article, “’Whispers of Coming and Going”: Lessons from Fannie,” Anne DiPardo describes an international student’s struggles to master writing in the English language. She doesn’t think that this particular student and her particular tutor necessarily depict common situations, but her story is all too familiar in that it seems to portray every frustration and enthusiasm I have felt as a tutor thus far. The role Fannie’s tutor played does not illustrate how I handle the situations I encounter, but the weaknesses she is forced to deal with that create those difficult situations are the same.
I love that DiPardo begins with her assessment that in order to be successful tutors, we must realize the multiple identities that we ourselves take on in order to get by in life. “Knowledge of our own shape-shifting can help us begin-if only begin- to understand the social and linguistic challenges which inform their struggles with writing…navigating between competing identities, competing loyalties.” (350) Looking at the struggle of international students in this empathetic way helps relieve some of the “inexorable frustration” I inevitably feel when working with these clients. She quotes Fannie saying, “’If you don’t know the language…then you don’t know who you are…It’s your identity…the language is important.”’ (353) Sometimes during a session I get so caught up with my frustration that I forget that the student is feeling the same way. It’s true that people define themselves using words. Loving communication as much as I do, I can’t imagine not being able to express my ideas in words, but, as DiPardo points out, that is one of the major weaknesses of non-native speakers.
Fannie’s weaknesses apply to almost every foreign writer I’ve encountered so far. “While she named her “sentence structure, grammar, and punctuation” as significant weaknesses, she also added that “I have a lot to say, but I can’t seem to put it on paper…it’s like I can’t find the vocabulary.”’ (355) The first part of that list is not limited to ESL students; English rules of writing are ridiculously confusing and even some of the best writers have yet to master each and every rule (mostly because there are so many more exceptions than there are rules…). The hours I’ve spent correcting parts of speech, word placement, subject-verb agreement, tenses, and comma rules have only been a slight annoyance in the context of sessions. Most of the aggravation is precipitated by the latter part of Fannie’s list. There is a clear inability to express ideas on paper with these students. I ask questions; I receive silence or repetition of a re-phrased version of the last sentence. I instruct them to add commentary; I’m left just as confused as before. I ask them to state the thesis; I get blank stares or worse, a list of details pulled from random parts of the paper that cannot possibly fit into a solitary focus. How can I lead the client to their own ideas when we are time-limited and the ideas are buried so deep that I’m not sure I’m even touching the surface of that realm of their mind yet. Most of these students do have ideas formulated in their own language. The trouble seems to be the translation into English. Add in the unending list of synonyms that are each most properly used in separate contexts and the goal seems inaccessible. This is the point at which my story differs from DiPardo’s.
Despite my irritation at the client for not being able to tell me what they’re trying to say and at myself for not being able to lead them to full understanding, I keep pushing. I learned about collaborative learning and almost immediately rejected it as the proper way to tutor ESL writers. “Morgan’s initial compassion had been nearly overwhelmed by a sense of frustration.” (358) My face always remains smiling because I won’t let what happened to Morgan happen to me during a session. If I am not getting through, I will try something else. Anything else. I have drawn funny images that appear in my head when something is ambiguous, I have used highlighters to help organize the paper, I have formulated ridiculous sentences that emphasize grammar rules they are having trouble with so they will never forget the rule, and I have encouraged them to come back to the center for a later assignment to keep working on the fundamental issues that appear over and over again. It has been fairly easy to adjust to different students- perhaps because I approached my job as a tutor worried that I wouldn’t be able to accomplish my goal of making students better writers. I had not previously worked with non-native speakers so the setting was unfamiliar, but I learned, and I continue to learn through every session, what my power as a tutor, and more importantly, as a peer can really achieve.
Reading Response 4
ESL Conferences
There is no denying the vast difference we encounter when we tutor international students as opposed to native-speakers. In her article, “Rethinking Writing Center Conferencing Strategies for the ESL Writer” Judith Powers points out that the traditional collaborative, non-directive approach works with native speakers only and new strategies are (or were) needed to tutor international students. There are two major assumptions behind this claim. The first is that those non-directive strategies work for all native-speakers; the second is that they don’t work for all ESL students. These are both wrong.
To assume that minimalist tutoring works for all native speakers seems naïve. Surely I am not the only tutor who has run into a client absolutely unwilling to put forth the effort to improve? The fundamental problem with a non-directive approach is that it is at the core the job of the student to employ it. We can ask leading questions all we want, but the reality is that if the student refuses to answer them, the session goes nowhere. Without their own motivation to improve their writing, the client is unable to benefit from any time with a tutor. Besides unmotivated students, there are also clients who really do need sentence-level revision. A client came to me the other day with a report she planned to present at a research conference. Most of the report was numbers pertaining to her results; the most I could do was give her sentence-level suggestions, point out any place that was confusing, and wish her luck. There are always exceptions to every rule- that has been true since the beginning of time. If I had asked leading questions about content when working with that student she would have been angry and left without any help. It was not my job to review and correct her study she had run with 3,000 participants.
The second assumption is not so naïve, but it is still flawed. ESL students do tend to respond much better to directive tutoring than non-directive, but why must we group all of them under one label? ESL student refers to anyone whose first language isn’t English. European students are very fundamentally different than Asian or Hispanic students and, as the story of Fannie made clear, Native Americans are another group that requires a specialized form of tutoring. I think even labeling ESL students by their nationality is too broad. Are we implying that native-speakers are all at the same skill level as far as writing goes? I hope not. Every single student we come into contact with is different. I certainly applied minimalist tutoring to a student writing a final paper for history who needed some guidance in developing her ideas and coming up with examples, but for the student who I believe had a learning disability and couldn’t see the ridiculous number of run-on sentences throughout her paper, I had to use a more directive approach to be successful.
As tutors of English, a language defined by rule-exceptions, writing center tutors are the last people who should be generalizing and categorizing. It is dangerous to implant ideas of how to tutor ESL students v. native-speakers into our heads because like Fannie’s tutor, we run the risk of forgetting that each student is an individual writer with their own experiences to bring to a session. If we don’t see them as individuals, how can we see them as writers? And if we don’t see them as writers, how can we possibly be doing our job?
I turned this exercise in as a paper but it was supposed to be on the blog apparently so i'm posting it now =]
Writing Concerns
Studying Constitutional Law (or any law for that matter), which I naively decided to attempt my first semester at college, requires a very keen eye. Changing one word in a sentence can dramatically alter the meaning of not just that sentence, but the entire block of evidence or an entire opinion of a case. Luckily, I was always very observant and I was able to quickly adapt to the specific way a lawyer reads a Supreme Court opinion or the evidence of a case at trial. My professor loved me because I caught on so quick to the tricks so often used in court. I love to play with words, learn new words, and swap words endlessly with their synonyms until they fit perfectly in context. Sometimes I feel like the ridiculous rules of English grammar came programmed in my head so I never had to go through the grueling process of learning each and every one. Needless to say, I cannot personally relate to ESL writers or writers with disabilities. I am confident, however, that I am good enough at relating to people in general that I can handle a tutoring session with one of these types as a client.
My best friend, God help her, loves to skip words as she types. She thinks faster than her fingers move and her brain auto-corrects the sentences when she reads the paper, silently or aloud. I was horrified when I looked at a paper her teacher had labeled with an A+ in view of the fact that my eyes located several incomplete sentences right in the first paragraph. Apparently that teacher was looking for ideas rather than correct grammar, but she didn’t even mention that the mistakes were there! Danielle was defensive when I mentioned this discrepancy at first, but over time she realized just how imperative it was that she learn to write properly. She e-mails me many things she writes, from letters to literary analysis papers, begging me to find these mistakes because for some odd reason her brain can’t. In helping her, I’ve learned a lot about tutoring when disabilities are present.
As far as personal concerns that affect writing go, I can relate to no end. I’ve been-there-done-that a thousand times over when it comes to juggling the crazy class schedule, fights with the boyfriend, family crises, overtime hours at a job, physical medical problems, and underlying psychological problems. My high school career was defined by classes that were overwhelming to start with and only got worse when combined with others that were equally as demanding. On top of that, I am a workaholic. I would rather be making money developing photos of weddings, vacations, and new puppies at CVS than anything because my greatest love in life just happens to be spending that money at a later date (and sometimes an earlier date thanks to the plastic era). I also forgot what it was like to get along with my family years ago, around the time I was diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes. Throughout all of these skirmishes, regardless of the stress level, I surprisingly retained the ability to painstakingly produce good writing. In fact, sometimes I purposely procrastinated because I seemed to be on fire when time was running out. My greatest demon was the psychological problem that appeared, quite unexpectedly, near the end of my junior year of high school.
The age of onset for Borderline Personality Disorder is typically early adulthood, right in the midst of high school graduation and relocation into the world of higher education. I have always been a good student (an amazing one actually) and for some unexplained reason I began experiencing fits of uncontrollable rage and emotion, attacks of impulsivity during which I would literally eat anything within sight or charge hundreds of dollars to my dad’s credit card from online shopping sites, terribly messed-up sleeping patterns, and an absolute inability to sit down and concentrate for longer than 30 seconds. My dad configured explanation after explanation from hormones to bipolar disorder to PTSD in response to being raped in March of that year, but nothing was sufficient. I lost not only the ability to write, but the ability to function as a successful human being. Crying for hours on end, I tried to write in a journal but no words would come. From being the student with the most potential in my school of 6,000 students, I withered into near non-existence in the academic world. I came very close to failing out of school completely, and I felt like all I could do was skip class and smoke weed. I didn’t fail; I pushed myself to the very edge of sanity and miraculously managed to maintain most of my grades and graduate #1 in my class.
I finally got diagnosed with Borderline in the very end of my senior year. Borderline is a terrible mental disorder and it tormented me in all aspects of my life, but most devastatingly, it shattered my ability to form creative thought, and therefore, to write. With a diagnosis, I was able to address the issue and more importantly, find a medication that would alleviate the symptoms enough so that I could once again be considered my teachers’ best pupil. I have had to learn, adapt, and grow an enormous amount in the last year, and I feel as if I can accomplish any task before me as long as I keep my disorder at bay. My experience was not enjoyable- it was gruesome. Through it, however, I learned how to empathize with anyone suffering a psychological disorder and as a tutor I will hopefully be able to guide them to the light at the end of their tunnel. (I apologize for the cliché) The writing process in itself can be scary and overwhelming, but when the simplest of tasks seems daunting, writing becomes a monster that is impossible to strike.
I certainly don’t expect that I will meet any students disturbed by personal concerns to this extent, but I will be ready if I do!
Studying Constitutional Law (or any law for that matter), which I naively decided to attempt my first semester at college, requires a very keen eye. Changing one word in a sentence can dramatically alter the meaning of not just that sentence, but the entire block of evidence or an entire opinion of a case. Luckily, I was always very observant and I was able to quickly adapt to the specific way a lawyer reads a Supreme Court opinion or the evidence of a case at trial. My professor loved me because I caught on so quick to the tricks so often used in court. I love to play with words, learn new words, and swap words endlessly with their synonyms until they fit perfectly in context. Sometimes I feel like the ridiculous rules of English grammar came programmed in my head so I never had to go through the grueling process of learning each and every one. Needless to say, I cannot personally relate to ESL writers or writers with disabilities. I am confident, however, that I am good enough at relating to people in general that I can handle a tutoring session with one of these types as a client.
My best friend, God help her, loves to skip words as she types. She thinks faster than her fingers move and her brain auto-corrects the sentences when she reads the paper, silently or aloud. I was horrified when I looked at a paper her teacher had labeled with an A+ in view of the fact that my eyes located several incomplete sentences right in the first paragraph. Apparently that teacher was looking for ideas rather than correct grammar, but she didn’t even mention that the mistakes were there! Danielle was defensive when I mentioned this discrepancy at first, but over time she realized just how imperative it was that she learn to write properly. She e-mails me many things she writes, from letters to literary analysis papers, begging me to find these mistakes because for some odd reason her brain can’t. In helping her, I’ve learned a lot about tutoring when disabilities are present.
As far as personal concerns that affect writing go, I can relate to no end. I’ve been-there-done-that a thousand times over when it comes to juggling the crazy class schedule, fights with the boyfriend, family crises, overtime hours at a job, physical medical problems, and underlying psychological problems. My high school career was defined by classes that were overwhelming to start with and only got worse when combined with others that were equally as demanding. On top of that, I am a workaholic. I would rather be making money developing photos of weddings, vacations, and new puppies at CVS than anything because my greatest love in life just happens to be spending that money at a later date (and sometimes an earlier date thanks to the plastic era). I also forgot what it was like to get along with my family years ago, around the time I was diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes. Throughout all of these skirmishes, regardless of the stress level, I surprisingly retained the ability to painstakingly produce good writing. In fact, sometimes I purposely procrastinated because I seemed to be on fire when time was running out. My greatest demon was the psychological problem that appeared, quite unexpectedly, near the end of my junior year of high school.
The age of onset for Borderline Personality Disorder is typically early adulthood, right in the midst of high school graduation and relocation into the world of higher education. I have always been a good student (an amazing one actually) and for some unexplained reason I began experiencing fits of uncontrollable rage and emotion, attacks of impulsivity during which I would literally eat anything within sight or charge hundreds of dollars to my dad’s credit card from online shopping sites, terribly messed-up sleeping patterns, and an absolute inability to sit down and concentrate for longer than 30 seconds. My dad configured explanation after explanation from hormones to bipolar disorder to PTSD in response to being raped in March of that year, but nothing was sufficient. I lost not only the ability to write, but the ability to function as a successful human being. Crying for hours on end, I tried to write in a journal but no words would come. From being the student with the most potential in my school of 6,000 students, I withered into near non-existence in the academic world. I came very close to failing out of school completely, and I felt like all I could do was skip class and smoke weed. I didn’t fail; I pushed myself to the very edge of sanity and miraculously managed to maintain most of my grades and graduate #1 in my class.
I finally got diagnosed with Borderline in the very end of my senior year. Borderline is a terrible mental disorder and it tormented me in all aspects of my life, but most devastatingly, it shattered my ability to form creative thought, and therefore, to write. With a diagnosis, I was able to address the issue and more importantly, find a medication that would alleviate the symptoms enough so that I could once again be considered my teachers’ best pupil. I have had to learn, adapt, and grow an enormous amount in the last year, and I feel as if I can accomplish any task before me as long as I keep my disorder at bay. My experience was not enjoyable- it was gruesome. Through it, however, I learned how to empathize with anyone suffering a psychological disorder and as a tutor I will hopefully be able to guide them to the light at the end of their tunnel. (I apologize for the cliché) The writing process in itself can be scary and overwhelming, but when the simplest of tasks seems daunting, writing becomes a monster that is impossible to strike.
I certainly don’t expect that I will meet any students disturbed by personal concerns to this extent, but I will be ready if I do!
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
"I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping Ryan and fill him with a somewhat neutral resolve."
(Twenty points to whomever gets the reference above. I've been watching some old movies lately.)
Good afternoon. Or morning. Probably evening, though. I have a feeling that's when most of this stuff gets done, if not typed up during class. This blog thing gets me confused sometimes (I warned you all in post #1 that I hated these things). Anyway, you'll probably be seeing a few more entries from me the next few days with the papers I turned in but didn't upload. That or I can organize them in one big post a la Deanna. So yeah, lots of previous posts. That and the massive catch-up frenzy sparked by a nicely organized check-off list given to us in class on Tuesday. I think it's safe to expect that from everyone. You all know who you are (I is).
Anyway, I'm getting Comcast in the shiny new apartment today, hopefully. So I'll have constant Interwebs no matter where I go, and hence little excuse to not keep up with my schoolwork. YouTube is a great distraction, however...
Right. Enough pointing out foibles. Time to gettin' respondin'.
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When it comes to teaching good writing, revising, and editing habits, Donald Murray has the market cornered. Not literally. I doubt there's an actual literal Moroccan bazaar where literary techniques are lavishly displayed, the lowest prices haggled by toothless merchants, and Murray literally surrounds the literary bazaar with literal tanks and literally carpet-bombs the place. That probably doesn't happen. But figuratively it may.
What I am suggesting is the hold of these fancy-schmancy techniques perpetuated and promulgated by the academic machine. They want to make us better writers through the use of these techniques and, in my opinion, the pursuit of better writing and communicative skills is a goal worth the effort. These are techniques "tried and true": discovery drafts, picking the right context, editing and reediting, etc., yuh-huh, yuh-huh, we get it.
You're just waiting for the "but", right? Isn't that the impression I kinda give off? The slinking snakish rogue long-black-sleeved stranger brooding in the corner (not quite), relishing the opportunity to strike? Blood and venom! Hsss! No? Oh well, that would be cool, at any rate.
Well, this time, there really isn't a "but". Nuh-uh. Not that I totally agree with Murray's methods; I and my compadre David are currently suffering/digesting A Writer Teaches Writing for your presentation-listening pleasure next Tuesday. I'd like to say that we drew the short straw, though, as this book is aimed at the composition teacher rather than the writing consultant or the student.
Anyway, the lack of "but". Well, that's not totally true. For the purposes of Murray's supposed audience, he teaches some worthy (be they tired) techniques. The freewriting session that Deanna had us do awakened the sleeping giant (points to title), and my brain was on the rest of the class period. It's the exact same technique I use when I need to get going on any piece of writing, be it academic or creative (and at this point, I should be scoffing that I am still separating the two. *Scoff*). Sure, it may have not yielded anything "conflicting" or any new "tension" (it was a list, after all), but the very process shook up my lack-of-sleep-addled brainpan-can and the pop top popped: *fiiiiizzzz*.
So, I took off. My fingers, anyway. My notes were much more interesting than they would have been otherwise. I had war stories, tales of intrigue, fighters and bombers (Tora tora tora! - It slipped), politics, sex, drugs (but no rock and roll), and a new, disturbing slogan for everyone's favorite sports drink: Gatorade - Drive the Voices from your head.
The point? No point, really. Other than that all of these notes, while obviously the product of a diseased mind, all focused back to the topic at hand. It wasn't "for" anyone, I didn't have to "hand" it in to anyone, no one was grading "me" "on" "anything"; but the response that this little exercise generated allowed me to hold on to the information I need to take away from Murray. So really: point.
I guess what I'm really trying to say is that even if we're following the conventions of the day, we don't have to be constrained by the methods with which they are taught, nor the expected ways in which we should be enacting these certain techniques. Flow charts don't help me; they waste paper. Margin notes don't help me; half the time I can't make them out. What does help me is the link I can make back to my high-falutin' fantasy novel in my ENG 487 class notes about gender roles, and how that'll all fit into my personal concept of the Pleroma and syzygy and all those other Gnostic concepts that you should probably Wikipedia if you have time.
It wasn't the technique itself that got me to think/remember/write better, it was the emotional investment in the time the information was encountered. The writer is, of course, nearly 100% responsible for getting engaged in the work, whether it's being an active listener (taking notes), responding politely, or finishing up a first draft. We've all had experiences with "critical" papers that lack any investment in the text; these are the most boring papers to have to read. The lack here is that investment-claim that the writer is supposed to stake; otherwise, someone will jump him/her and someone will be out of a river in which to pan for gold (prospective metaphors will never go out of style).
Really, while I salute Murray for his left-brained and logically-minded ideas, they just won't work for me on the same level. I can understand how if you need an outline, of course you should make one. If it ain't broke, one should not engage in repair. It's a common concern we have with our clients: organization. This organization of thought seems to be his overriding concern with all these "left-brained" (now it's in "quoties") techniques that Murray espouses [Espoused, he's dead. -Ed.], and I suppose we should thank him for putting them all in one place for others to consume. Not like there aren't myraid other works on the same things out there already.
I'm not sour about being taught these techniques, of course, but each one won't work for a select person. It's why I'd rather read a book of koans than fables or moral tales - I'm just not Western enough, I suppose. In this academic discourse, we only have so much that we can teach, and our students are already programmed to think in a certain way: it would be mathematically foolhardy to start teaching comp classes with the desks in a circle than facing the blackboard; you can't fit all those desks in a circle, creativity and equal footing for all be damned! There will be an established front and you vilt all lizten to me! Mach schnell!
Anyway, this all goes back an overriding concern with the American academic discourse that's been bubbling up inside me since Day One. Well, more like Day Five. I can't critique (read: won't critique, I'm sure it's possible) the entire collegiate discourse in one sitting. My fingers are too sore for that right now.
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Ouch. Well, there it is. Have fun with that, guys; I'm off to my Heidegger class to go encounter some philosophical objects.
Tuesday, March 18, 2008
Lies, Damn Lies, And Statistics
Lies, Damn Lies, And Statistics
Today in class Deanna talked about the need to have a focus with an appropriate scope and emphasis when approaching writing. I was initially perturbed by this notion because, while I think it is important to make a point, the journey toward answers often produces a more enriching learning experience than the answers sought.
However, she went on to talk about how Discovery Drafts can help a student employ free association and stream of consciousness. And I think that what was described as a Discovery Draft is what I myself use and encourage others as they seek a thoughtful and original piece of writing. I think the Discovery Draft allows a writer to use the best of their own creativity and apply it to whatever structure or genre that they seek to adhere to.
Krish talked about the need for specific examples in academic writing. He appeared to be making the case that all things in academic writing (and perhaps journalism) has to be backed by empirical information. He suggested that subjectivity should be embraced while employing empirical data to support it, which is of course a way of describing how western civilization frames effective opinions.
Generally I agree with the above, but I think you have to beware of confusing empirical data and objectivity. The empirical never exists in a vacuum. It is always subject to human interpretation and misinterpretation. Also, perfectly valid scientific information can be taken out of context or misapplied for nefarious ends.
As Mark Twain said, “there are lies, damn lies, and statistics.”
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