The Politics of implementing Online Directed Self-Placement
Crusan nailed it. Let students figure it out (after we explain what the courses offer) and the department saves a bundle of money and time, plus, according to Crusan, it's equally if not more effective. As soon as I'm teaching again, this will be on top of the list of things to discuss at departmental meetings.
Investing in Assessment
For any of us who have taken the GRE or other timed essay exam, we know how ridiculous the setup is - we teach process writing and revision and feedback and then we're given 30 minutes to discuss whether war is more ethical now than it was in the past. "A single essay does not allow the assessment of the total range of a writer's ability because it does not provide opportunities for students to express themselves in more than a single genre for a single purpose," (225) so how about this, no more timed essays. They're artificial and even when students do well on them, it doesn't tell us enough about what they've learned or how they write.
Ferris (2003)
Here's where you're allowed to hate me. L2 seems to lag behind in terms of theory with L1. L1 gets (a good portion) of its ideas from literature scholarship; we appropriate it when appropriate. When we do come up with something for L1, L2 grabs it a decade later and finds problems, mostly because you can't substitute one context for another and expect everyting will stay the same. L1 research says how we should respond to writing (and sorry Ferris (1999), it ain't with grammar), but that's for L1 contexts. L2 is its own thing, it's so much more complex than L1 settings that we should be borrowing from you.
Wednesday, November 25, 2009
Tuesday, November 17, 2009
Speech and Writing
Since I'm a big fan of Elbow, I'll use two of his arguments here to start:
1. "It's important to realize that standard edited written English is no one's mother tongue." Enlisting Speaking and Spoken Languages for Writing.
In this sense, we're all learning another language when we write. White English may be closer to SEWE, but it's still a new language. Academic genre writing (research, scholarship, book reviews, rejoinders, stubs, articles, chapters, editorials, narratives) is another sub-language of the written language that we learn. No one speaks in written English.
2. "Indelible writing, ephemeral speech ... Speech is indelible, Writing [is] ephemeral" The Shifting Relationships between Speech and Writing.
When you write something down, it's permanently there, it's "in writing," like contracts and financial receipts, but it's also revisable, reviewable, and can be changed. Speech is permanent, once you say something, you can't take it back, but you can modify and fine-tune your point, so it can be changed.
We should be looking at the reading-writing-speaking connection, at the ear-eye-mouth connection, otherwise we're neglecting a major tool of communication. Seloni's participants read authors, wrote papers, and spoke with each other about it. The connections we make in formal and informal verbal communication are just as necessary to our understanding as reading or writing.
As for the discussions of Seloni's participants, they're right. Writing professionally means conforming to certain conventions when you start out until you're a "big name" at which point you can do whatever you want. But that's not any different from any other field. We all start as interns, as freshmen that get pushed around by the seniors. If you want to make an album, you do what the record executive says, then, later, when you've made them enough money, you do what you want.
The question is, do we become the "big name" because we followed the conventions of academic writing, or because we did something different?
1. "It's important to realize that standard edited written English is no one's mother tongue." Enlisting Speaking and Spoken Languages for Writing.
In this sense, we're all learning another language when we write. White English may be closer to SEWE, but it's still a new language. Academic genre writing (research, scholarship, book reviews, rejoinders, stubs, articles, chapters, editorials, narratives) is another sub-language of the written language that we learn. No one speaks in written English.
2. "Indelible writing, ephemeral speech ... Speech is indelible, Writing [is] ephemeral" The Shifting Relationships between Speech and Writing.
When you write something down, it's permanently there, it's "in writing," like contracts and financial receipts, but it's also revisable, reviewable, and can be changed. Speech is permanent, once you say something, you can't take it back, but you can modify and fine-tune your point, so it can be changed.
We should be looking at the reading-writing-speaking connection, at the ear-eye-mouth connection, otherwise we're neglecting a major tool of communication. Seloni's participants read authors, wrote papers, and spoke with each other about it. The connections we make in formal and informal verbal communication are just as necessary to our understanding as reading or writing.
As for the discussions of Seloni's participants, they're right. Writing professionally means conforming to certain conventions when you start out until you're a "big name" at which point you can do whatever you want. But that's not any different from any other field. We all start as interns, as freshmen that get pushed around by the seniors. If you want to make an album, you do what the record executive says, then, later, when you've made them enough money, you do what you want.
The question is, do we become the "big name" because we followed the conventions of academic writing, or because we did something different?
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
The Ear-Eye Connection
Reid says error isn't "the overriding consideration for the teacher or the student," but there's little else that distinguishes the writing of ear and eye learners. She also says it's "essential to approach each student as an individual, and to identify students' needs," but doesn't all research, by its nature, essentialize, generalize, and stereotype?
The writing errors of ear learners aren't really errors. Mishearing why for while, or making subject-verb agreement errors in writing "This student needs to get their act together," are based on communicative usage, on the evolving nature of the language. A codified system of rules for language use demarcates those with education and those without, but language use is more important in determining meaning and correctness. If everyone makes the same mistake, it's no longer a mistake. When Dante wrote the Divine Comedy, he wrote it in a vulgar (read: vernacular) form of Latin that was spoken as a dialect by the working class - we now call that dialect Italian. The same is true for English as far as I know, it's largely German vocabulary spoken with a French accent.
At some point, the changes of usage in English, from the British, American, or otherwise, will constitute a new language based on how we use it and not on the rule systems we attribute. We're not at that point, yet, though, so we still mark errors.
The writing errors of ear learners aren't really errors. Mishearing why for while, or making subject-verb agreement errors in writing "This student needs to get their act together," are based on communicative usage, on the evolving nature of the language. A codified system of rules for language use demarcates those with education and those without, but language use is more important in determining meaning and correctness. If everyone makes the same mistake, it's no longer a mistake. When Dante wrote the Divine Comedy, he wrote it in a vulgar (read: vernacular) form of Latin that was spoken as a dialect by the working class - we now call that dialect Italian. The same is true for English as far as I know, it's largely German vocabulary spoken with a French accent.
At some point, the changes of usage in English, from the British, American, or otherwise, will constitute a new language based on how we use it and not on the rule systems we attribute. We're not at that point, yet, though, so we still mark errors.
Tuesday, November 3, 2009
Reading, Readings, and the Teaching of Reading
A sticker if you know where that title comes from. A dollar if you guess why I chose it.
Bloome – Reading as a Social Process
1. Bloome says that reading contexts help regulate group interactions. Is there anything unique to reading that makes it influence group interactions/identity differently from interpersonal communication, speech, or writing? What special properties does reading have to influence our relationships?
2. Is reading always a social process? When students read independently and in isolation with no intention of reporting their findings to other students, where is the social dimension?
3. “What kinds of social, linguistic, and cognitive demands are recurrently made of students during reading events?” (Bloome)
Hirvela – Chapter 1
“An Overview of Reading-Writing Connections”
1. What is it about reading that makes it such a powerful resource for writing? What is fundamentally going on during reading that links the development of its skills with writing? We can draw a parallel that listening is a resource for speaking, but doesn’t the technology of texts create a vastly more complex interaction?
2. Given your teaching context, what is the best kind of reading for you to assign to your students? You can think of this in terms of genre or modes or anything else. Why do you assign those specific texts (or why does your administration)? What do they hope students will gain? The recurring debate over whether we should assign literature or non-fiction, essays, cultural products pops up occasionally. Make your case.
3. “[Reading] needs to be incorporated into the writing classroom, but what has not been made clear is what proportion of a writing course the reading component should occupy. What recommendation would you make for the proportioning of reading and writing?...On what basis should such a decision be made?” (40).
“We must be careful not to answer the questions too quickly. Our initial impressions and answers may reflect our own biases and ethnocentric ways of thinking about reading and the world” (Bloome).
Bloome – Reading as a Social Process
1. Bloome says that reading contexts help regulate group interactions. Is there anything unique to reading that makes it influence group interactions/identity differently from interpersonal communication, speech, or writing? What special properties does reading have to influence our relationships?
2. Is reading always a social process? When students read independently and in isolation with no intention of reporting their findings to other students, where is the social dimension?
3. “What kinds of social, linguistic, and cognitive demands are recurrently made of students during reading events?” (Bloome)
Hirvela – Chapter 1
“An Overview of Reading-Writing Connections”
1. What is it about reading that makes it such a powerful resource for writing? What is fundamentally going on during reading that links the development of its skills with writing? We can draw a parallel that listening is a resource for speaking, but doesn’t the technology of texts create a vastly more complex interaction?
2. Given your teaching context, what is the best kind of reading for you to assign to your students? You can think of this in terms of genre or modes or anything else. Why do you assign those specific texts (or why does your administration)? What do they hope students will gain? The recurring debate over whether we should assign literature or non-fiction, essays, cultural products pops up occasionally. Make your case.
3. “[Reading] needs to be incorporated into the writing classroom, but what has not been made clear is what proportion of a writing course the reading component should occupy. What recommendation would you make for the proportioning of reading and writing?...On what basis should such a decision be made?” (40).
“We must be careful not to answer the questions too quickly. Our initial impressions and answers may reflect our own biases and ethnocentric ways of thinking about reading and the world” (Bloome).
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
I don't want to kill my parents
Freud says something like that - that if you want to become a self-actualized adult, you have to psychologically kill your parents, cut off ties with them, do what you want, forge your own way.
Scholarship does the same thing, though I wonder how effective it is. The process movement comes along and changes the game, kills the current-traditional rhetoricists. Then the socio-epistemic movement kills the cognitivists. Now we have context-ecology-social-genre theorists killing everyone. It's unnecessary.
Genre theory and the need for social contextualization in student writing is an adequate idea on its own merit. Raising awareness of the world external to the student may create rhetorically sophisticated writing, may make the student more conscious of their language use, may increase cultural knowledge, may foster a sense of community. These are important goals. I don't see why writers feel the need to dismantle previous theory to make room for the new. There's plenty of room for everyone.
The criticisms against process are based on what Maxine Hairston calls a "facile, non-logical leap," (Diversity, Ideology, and Teaching Writing 25). How does asking students to write about themselves recreate dominant power structures, particularly when that writing isn't graded? When you write about yourself, your culture, how does that disadvantage you from the dominant culture? Hyland says the process model is "based on individual motivation, personal freedom, self-expression and learner responsibility, all of which might be stifled by too much teacher intervention" (19). So we get rid of it? Ignore it? Replace it? Nonsense.
I see no conflict between process models and genre-social-context-ecology models. Both systems do what we want for students, they are not mutually exclusive, and indeed, they work better in conjunction with each other.
Scholarship does the same thing, though I wonder how effective it is. The process movement comes along and changes the game, kills the current-traditional rhetoricists. Then the socio-epistemic movement kills the cognitivists. Now we have context-ecology-social-genre theorists killing everyone. It's unnecessary.
Genre theory and the need for social contextualization in student writing is an adequate idea on its own merit. Raising awareness of the world external to the student may create rhetorically sophisticated writing, may make the student more conscious of their language use, may increase cultural knowledge, may foster a sense of community. These are important goals. I don't see why writers feel the need to dismantle previous theory to make room for the new. There's plenty of room for everyone.
The criticisms against process are based on what Maxine Hairston calls a "facile, non-logical leap," (Diversity, Ideology, and Teaching Writing 25). How does asking students to write about themselves recreate dominant power structures, particularly when that writing isn't graded? When you write about yourself, your culture, how does that disadvantage you from the dominant culture? Hyland says the process model is "based on individual motivation, personal freedom, self-expression and learner responsibility, all of which might be stifled by too much teacher intervention" (19). So we get rid of it? Ignore it? Replace it? Nonsense.
I see no conflict between process models and genre-social-context-ecology models. Both systems do what we want for students, they are not mutually exclusive, and indeed, they work better in conjunction with each other.
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
10.21.09 Reflection
Chapter 1
Fu and Matoush make a decent case for students growing into the language on their terms, like we do when we're not in the classroom, like we do naturally. The English we learn in class (writing) is never the English we speak in conversation. Standard English is a second language for everyone, though being a native speaker helps.
How should teachers assess the kind of writing presented in Chapter 1? If you don't know Chinese (China again?) large chunks of the text are incomprehensible. I want students to switch between the transition phases as they need to, but I get a paycheck and they need me to put letters into the registrar. Someone else needs to figure this out.
Chapter 2
Villalva describes the high-school project, but nothing crystalized for me. Sentences like this didn't help: "In sum, macrosystemic influences, internal mesosystemic influences, external mesosystemic influences, and cohort-based microsystems all shaped writing instruction at Cerro Vista High School in a variety of ways" (47). What does that mean? Stuff influences writing. Argh.
Socioliterate Approaches
I feel like I have to defend the personal expressive writing that Johns criticizes. The personal essay is meant as a step to develop voice before the student gets into the rhetorical-awareness models of ecocomposition and context-focused writing. Understanding the effects of external media, locations and geographies is cognitively more complex than asking a student to write a simplified and interesting personal essay. Johns acknowledges this, "they may not have the metalanguage necessary to discuss texts" (289). Expressive writing is one part of a scaffolded composition cycle. I don't see a conflict between the two modes and I disagree that the individualism placed on personal essays is only available to middle-class native students.
One last contention - "On the other hand, if we become fixated on making our students discover their personal identities, or feel good, then other goals, much more important to their future lives, will be neglected" (294). Peter Elbow has a response to this: "[I]t is possible to make peace between opposites by alternating between them so that you are never trying to do contrary things at any one moment" (Embracing Contraries in the Teaching Process 71).
Fu and Matoush make a decent case for students growing into the language on their terms, like we do when we're not in the classroom, like we do naturally. The English we learn in class (writing) is never the English we speak in conversation. Standard English is a second language for everyone, though being a native speaker helps.
How should teachers assess the kind of writing presented in Chapter 1? If you don't know Chinese (China again?) large chunks of the text are incomprehensible. I want students to switch between the transition phases as they need to, but I get a paycheck and they need me to put letters into the registrar. Someone else needs to figure this out.
Chapter 2
Villalva describes the high-school project, but nothing crystalized for me. Sentences like this didn't help: "In sum, macrosystemic influences, internal mesosystemic influences, external mesosystemic influences, and cohort-based microsystems all shaped writing instruction at Cerro Vista High School in a variety of ways" (47). What does that mean? Stuff influences writing. Argh.
Socioliterate Approaches
I feel like I have to defend the personal expressive writing that Johns criticizes. The personal essay is meant as a step to develop voice before the student gets into the rhetorical-awareness models of ecocomposition and context-focused writing. Understanding the effects of external media, locations and geographies is cognitively more complex than asking a student to write a simplified and interesting personal essay. Johns acknowledges this, "they may not have the metalanguage necessary to discuss texts" (289). Expressive writing is one part of a scaffolded composition cycle. I don't see a conflict between the two modes and I disagree that the individualism placed on personal essays is only available to middle-class native students.
One last contention - "On the other hand, if we become fixated on making our students discover their personal identities, or feel good, then other goals, much more important to their future lives, will be neglected" (294). Peter Elbow has a response to this: "[I]t is possible to make peace between opposites by alternating between them so that you are never trying to do contrary things at any one moment" (Embracing Contraries in the Teaching Process 71).
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
Leki, Kubota and Abels
I feel like I want to be on We Feel Fine.
Chapter 3
Ilona Leki. "The Legacy of First-Year Composition."
1. Why should L2 be housed in a separate department, given autonomy from Literature/Composition, and provided better support when L2 students account for such a small percentage of the total student population?
2. Discussing placement exams, Leki says most "are specifically writing exams. As such, they automatically disadvantage anyone who is still in the process of acquiring written academic English" (65). Don't all exams disadvantage anyone who is still in the process of acquiring what the exam is testing? What alternatives can you think of that would place students in appropriate courses as they enter the academy?
3. "Beyond whatever help L2 students can get in writing centers, because first-year composition ends in a year, so does academic support for L2 writing at many universities" (67). What ways can a university continue to support L2 writing instruction after the first-year? What will you do to affect those changes at your own institutions?
Chapter 4
Ryuko Kubota and Kimberly Abels. "Improving Institutional ESL/EAP Support for International Students: Seeking the Promised Land."
1. Though it may be a step in the right direction, how effective do you think adding one or two additional language classes for international students at UNC-CH will be? If the program to increase support is to succeed, shouldn't the university take a process approach to language acquisition instead of providing service courses?
2. The authors list several prevailing attitudes regarding international students/languages (84-85). What can ESL instructors do to change these attitudes considering they deal primarily with students who do not hold those attitudes?
3. The authors provide generalizations about the advantages and disadvantages of their three models. What other problems and benefits can you imagine from each of the three models? Can you think of a fourth model?
Quick point - "UNC-CH has no academic program in TESOL or applied linguistics and that the departments that could logically house this program - namely, education, English, and linguistics - all expressed disinterest in getting involved in developing a program" (86).
When asked if they wanted to include Applied Linguistics, the Linguistics department declined. You've got to be kidding me.
Chapter 3
Ilona Leki. "The Legacy of First-Year Composition."
1. Why should L2 be housed in a separate department, given autonomy from Literature/Composition, and provided better support when L2 students account for such a small percentage of the total student population?
2. Discussing placement exams, Leki says most "are specifically writing exams. As such, they automatically disadvantage anyone who is still in the process of acquiring written academic English" (65). Don't all exams disadvantage anyone who is still in the process of acquiring what the exam is testing? What alternatives can you think of that would place students in appropriate courses as they enter the academy?
3. "Beyond whatever help L2 students can get in writing centers, because first-year composition ends in a year, so does academic support for L2 writing at many universities" (67). What ways can a university continue to support L2 writing instruction after the first-year? What will you do to affect those changes at your own institutions?
Chapter 4
Ryuko Kubota and Kimberly Abels. "Improving Institutional ESL/EAP Support for International Students: Seeking the Promised Land."
1. Though it may be a step in the right direction, how effective do you think adding one or two additional language classes for international students at UNC-CH will be? If the program to increase support is to succeed, shouldn't the university take a process approach to language acquisition instead of providing service courses?
2. The authors list several prevailing attitudes regarding international students/languages (84-85). What can ESL instructors do to change these attitudes considering they deal primarily with students who do not hold those attitudes?
3. The authors provide generalizations about the advantages and disadvantages of their three models. What other problems and benefits can you imagine from each of the three models? Can you think of a fourth model?
Quick point - "UNC-CH has no academic program in TESOL or applied linguistics and that the departments that could logically house this program - namely, education, English, and linguistics - all expressed disinterest in getting involved in developing a program" (86).
When asked if they wanted to include Applied Linguistics, the Linguistics department declined. You've got to be kidding me.
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