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).
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