For this blog, I am posting a short writing assignment that I have just finished and will be turning in tomorrow. This assignment, created by another student in my class as an exercise for understanding perspective, required choosing a letter to the editor and identifying four of the author’s main points along with an alternative perspective for each of the points. I have proofread this paper, though there are a few sentences that do not sound quite right to me and I will italicize them to point them out. I’ve tried rewording them and I can’t get them to sound any better.
So, here it is:
Trying On Others’ Shoes
A letter to the editor, published in the Spokesman Review last Sunday, argues that issues of prostitution are not being handled well by law enforcement in Spokane. The author of the letter, John Kallas, is a retired detective who feels that this problem is being ignored by law officials in the city.
One of the points made by Kallas is that “proactive 24-hour enforcement, along with extensive criminal trespass ordinances” is a necessary solution (B6). Though he is right in assuming this would help the issue, others may argue that it is neither possible nor practical. Public officials and local law officers would make it clear that they do not have the staff or the funding to increase patrols in these areas.
Kallas also makes the statement that “prostitution is not a victimless crime” (B6). This is true when it comes to minors who are forced into prostitution and adults who knowingly prey on them. However, some countries and even one state in the U.S. have legalized prostitution under the assumption that it, when preformed between two consenting adults, hurts no one but the participants. This argument assumes that when two parties enter into an agreement such as exchange of sexual favors for money, they are fully aware of the risks they are taking and are the only ones in danger.
Citing the “Yates homicides” in his letter, Kallas makes the case that these murders could have been prevented had the laws regarding prostitution been strictly enforced (B6). Kallas’ opposition may feel that these murders could not have been stopped. The argument would be that a person with the compulsion to kill, as Robert Lee Yates had, would have found his victims elsewhere if prostitutes were not an easy target. Stopping prostitution in Spokane may have made his hunt for women harder, but he would have inevitably committed his crimes.
Lastly, Kallas makes the claim that “political candidates should take notice of this problem” (B6). In response to this, I’m sure those running for office would admit that they are concerned about prostitution in their city. I’m also sure that they would probably present much larger issues that they have built their platforms on.
While I agree with Kallas that any form of prostitution is a serious issue that should be taken care of, others may have different opinions. Though I’m sure that there are few people who would argue that prostitution is a good business, there are probably reasons why these issues are not being swiftly dealt with in Spokane and Kallas’ opponents would be sure to make them known.
Works Cited
Kallas, John. Letter. Spokesman Review 7 Oct. 2007: B6.
Sunday, October 14, 2007
Sunday, October 7, 2007
Progress Blog
So, I am supposed to reflect on my goals and decide whether or not I have made any progress toward them. Just as a reminder, my three goals were to 1) learn how to spell “success” and “necessary” correctly, 2) learn the difference between passive and active voice, and 3) cut out all of the unimportant words, mainly from my creative writing.
For my first goal, I have paid attention to the way I am spelling these words. I no longer let my spell check automatically fix it. Instead, it goes a little like this—I type it out (usually wrong), see the red squiggly line underneath and fiddle around with the letters until it comes out right. It’s getting pretty tedious, but at least I can start to see what the words look like when they are spelled right. I recently made up a rule—I know, I really am a dork—to help me remember how to spell them. Here it is: “To succeed you need two c’s and two s’s, but if success isn’t your main goal, then only one c is necessary.” Yeah, ridiculous, but I think it’s helping.
As far as writing in passive voice, I really haven’t had the opportunity to see whether I’m getting any better or not. The blogs for this class are the most writing I’ve done all semester. I’m used to writing papers all the time for the English classes I take, but all I have classes I have now, besides my poetry class, are teacher prep and they are focused more on projects and lesson plans. Any other semester I’d be able to tell you right away how I was feeling about this goal. This time, though, I just haven’t been writing enough to see it.
My last goal, to stop using words that are meaningless, is one I am sure I haven’t made any progress with yet. The example I gave in my “goals” blog was a comment from my poetry professor saying that I include too many words that “mean nothing.” I’ve turned in a new poem every week and I’ve only gotten one back without similar comments. For example, I recently wrote a poem about a woman looking into her closet, describing her things and the meaning each item held for her. I began each stanza with a short line like “hanging there” or “right there?” because I wanted it to sound like she was talking. However, the poem came back with this comment: “Ruchell, good. I’d suggest, except for the first line, that the first lines of each stanza are just mannerisms—ways you got into writing it. The language in each is flat, you don’t need ‘em.” My other poems were given pretty much the same remarks, one pointing me toward Sylvia Plath who makes every line “worth our attention” and another one to Elizabeth Bishop who uses little words but makes them count. To be honest, I thought my poem was pretty okay and I’m not sure if I want to change it. I guess it just comes down to whose opinion is more important, the writer’s or the reader’s?
The funny thing is that I’m learning stuff in the class that I hadn’t realized I didn’t know. For example, after seeing the student writing we’ve been looking at I finally understand what a comma splice is! I’m not sure if I’ve ever had any trouble with them in my own writing, but now that I’ve seen it, it has become a real thing and not just some grammar mumbo-jumbo like before. And more importantly, I am starting to get the difference between “effect” and “affect” now that we’ve talked about it in class. It has always been something I’ve never understood, and I don’t know why I didn’t think about it when I was trying to decide my goals, but it spaced my mind. Either way, I’m glad we cleared it up last Wednesday.
Have I made any progress on my goals? Not really, but that’s okay. I guess that since I know they are my trouble areas I can keep my eyes open for them. It’s more important that I am making progress on other things, like comma splices, that I didn’t understand and didn’t even know it!
For my first goal, I have paid attention to the way I am spelling these words. I no longer let my spell check automatically fix it. Instead, it goes a little like this—I type it out (usually wrong), see the red squiggly line underneath and fiddle around with the letters until it comes out right. It’s getting pretty tedious, but at least I can start to see what the words look like when they are spelled right. I recently made up a rule—I know, I really am a dork—to help me remember how to spell them. Here it is: “To succeed you need two c’s and two s’s, but if success isn’t your main goal, then only one c is necessary.” Yeah, ridiculous, but I think it’s helping.
As far as writing in passive voice, I really haven’t had the opportunity to see whether I’m getting any better or not. The blogs for this class are the most writing I’ve done all semester. I’m used to writing papers all the time for the English classes I take, but all I have classes I have now, besides my poetry class, are teacher prep and they are focused more on projects and lesson plans. Any other semester I’d be able to tell you right away how I was feeling about this goal. This time, though, I just haven’t been writing enough to see it.
My last goal, to stop using words that are meaningless, is one I am sure I haven’t made any progress with yet. The example I gave in my “goals” blog was a comment from my poetry professor saying that I include too many words that “mean nothing.” I’ve turned in a new poem every week and I’ve only gotten one back without similar comments. For example, I recently wrote a poem about a woman looking into her closet, describing her things and the meaning each item held for her. I began each stanza with a short line like “hanging there” or “right there?” because I wanted it to sound like she was talking. However, the poem came back with this comment: “Ruchell, good. I’d suggest, except for the first line, that the first lines of each stanza are just mannerisms—ways you got into writing it. The language in each is flat, you don’t need ‘em.” My other poems were given pretty much the same remarks, one pointing me toward Sylvia Plath who makes every line “worth our attention” and another one to Elizabeth Bishop who uses little words but makes them count. To be honest, I thought my poem was pretty okay and I’m not sure if I want to change it. I guess it just comes down to whose opinion is more important, the writer’s or the reader’s?
The funny thing is that I’m learning stuff in the class that I hadn’t realized I didn’t know. For example, after seeing the student writing we’ve been looking at I finally understand what a comma splice is! I’m not sure if I’ve ever had any trouble with them in my own writing, but now that I’ve seen it, it has become a real thing and not just some grammar mumbo-jumbo like before. And more importantly, I am starting to get the difference between “effect” and “affect” now that we’ve talked about it in class. It has always been something I’ve never understood, and I don’t know why I didn’t think about it when I was trying to decide my goals, but it spaced my mind. Either way, I’m glad we cleared it up last Wednesday.
Have I made any progress on my goals? Not really, but that’s okay. I guess that since I know they are my trouble areas I can keep my eyes open for them. It’s more important that I am making progress on other things, like comma splices, that I didn’t understand and didn’t even know it!
Sunday, September 30, 2007
Ch. 8 and 9 Response
Ruchell Todd
English 326
30 September 2007
In chapter eight, Ellen Brinkley discusses the usefulness of teacher-student writing conferences to teach grammar. Brinkley feels that teaching each student microlessons is one of the best ways to help students with their use of conventions. While talking with the student about his or her writing, the teacher is able to see what the student needs particular help with. Rather than trying to teach every student everything about grammar, the focus can be on the certain things each student is struggling with. Brinkley compares theses conferences to self-editing and peer-editing and feels that they are also beneficial and should be used in conjunction with conferences but not instead of them.
Brinkley mentions a meeting she had with a student named Beth, who needed writing guidance. She was worried that, by focusing the conference on three issues, she may have tried to cover too much information and not gone into as much depth and she would have preferred. This raised questions for me. If a teacher is meeting with a student to discuss a paper and the student has five errors that he or she is continuously making, should the teacher point them all out? If not, how does the teacher decide which ones are more important and how does the teacher then justify noting those other errors on the final draft when they were not discussed during the conference? I understand Brinkley’s view that trying to teach too much will make it hard for the student to internalize what has been said. However, I think that doing this would require the teacher to meet with the student over and over again until each issue is covered and all before the final draft is due. I’m not sure what teacher has this kind of time. I think that the kind of conference Brinkley is talking about is a type of situation, unlike sitting at your desk with a red pen correcting every mistake, where all of the errors can be brought to light and talked about. As a student, if I met with my teacher I would be expecting help with everything and would not be happy to find that there were mistakes my teacher was “letting slide” until our next conference.
Chapter nine, by Lois Matz Rosen, focuses on the alternatives to isolated grammar lessons and “error hunting.” These alternatives include helping students with the writing process, increasing reading and writing in the classroom, and showing students how to develop their own proofreading skills.
Another alternative mentioned by Rosen was to give the students a reason for wanting grammatically correct work by publishing it. I thought that this was an interesting and unique way of encouraging students to pay attention to conventions. Showing students how their work looks published (in a school newspaper, for instance) and comparing it to the professionalism of other papers and journals would help them feel the success of writing something to such high standards. I was told a few weeks ago about an English class where the teacher gathered old hard-cover books from yard sales and second-hand stores, pasted over the real pages with blank paper and let the students use them to “publish” their own pieces in a book. They were then used as writing portfolios. I was impressed by this idea and even more impressed after seeing how well it would fit into helping the students develop their grammar skills. Putting their writing into a book makes the editing process seem a little more important than if they simply type a paper, print it out and turn it in to the teacher for a grade.
English 326
30 September 2007
In chapter eight, Ellen Brinkley discusses the usefulness of teacher-student writing conferences to teach grammar. Brinkley feels that teaching each student microlessons is one of the best ways to help students with their use of conventions. While talking with the student about his or her writing, the teacher is able to see what the student needs particular help with. Rather than trying to teach every student everything about grammar, the focus can be on the certain things each student is struggling with. Brinkley compares theses conferences to self-editing and peer-editing and feels that they are also beneficial and should be used in conjunction with conferences but not instead of them.
Brinkley mentions a meeting she had with a student named Beth, who needed writing guidance. She was worried that, by focusing the conference on three issues, she may have tried to cover too much information and not gone into as much depth and she would have preferred. This raised questions for me. If a teacher is meeting with a student to discuss a paper and the student has five errors that he or she is continuously making, should the teacher point them all out? If not, how does the teacher decide which ones are more important and how does the teacher then justify noting those other errors on the final draft when they were not discussed during the conference? I understand Brinkley’s view that trying to teach too much will make it hard for the student to internalize what has been said. However, I think that doing this would require the teacher to meet with the student over and over again until each issue is covered and all before the final draft is due. I’m not sure what teacher has this kind of time. I think that the kind of conference Brinkley is talking about is a type of situation, unlike sitting at your desk with a red pen correcting every mistake, where all of the errors can be brought to light and talked about. As a student, if I met with my teacher I would be expecting help with everything and would not be happy to find that there were mistakes my teacher was “letting slide” until our next conference.
Chapter nine, by Lois Matz Rosen, focuses on the alternatives to isolated grammar lessons and “error hunting.” These alternatives include helping students with the writing process, increasing reading and writing in the classroom, and showing students how to develop their own proofreading skills.
Another alternative mentioned by Rosen was to give the students a reason for wanting grammatically correct work by publishing it. I thought that this was an interesting and unique way of encouraging students to pay attention to conventions. Showing students how their work looks published (in a school newspaper, for instance) and comparing it to the professionalism of other papers and journals would help them feel the success of writing something to such high standards. I was told a few weeks ago about an English class where the teacher gathered old hard-cover books from yard sales and second-hand stores, pasted over the real pages with blank paper and let the students use them to “publish” their own pieces in a book. They were then used as writing portfolios. I was impressed by this idea and even more impressed after seeing how well it would fit into helping the students develop their grammar skills. Putting their writing into a book makes the editing process seem a little more important than if they simply type a paper, print it out and turn it in to the teacher for a grade.
Sunday, September 23, 2007
Blog for Sunday, September 22
Ruchell Todd
Eng 326
22 September 2007
Texting Lingo Fails with Educators
Spokesman Review
Published September 17, 2007
While emailing, I tend to not capitalize words or to punctuate correctly (my favorite phrase is “…” which I do not routinely use any other time than on the net. I also went through a phase in high school when I did not capitalize the word “I” because I thought it was cuter when I could dot the top with a heart or a star. I had a teacher approach me about my self-esteem issues because—obviously—if I constantly left “I” in lower case it meant that I thought poorly of myself. The confrontation quickly took care of my capitalization issues in my school writing (which, I should say, I never used in any of my formal English papers), but my email habits persist. Just as if I am using my cell phone to text message a friend, I use shortcuts like “2morrow” to say tomorrow.
Keeping this in mind, I once had an English instructor who said that emailing and chatting would be the downfall of the language in its written form. He claimed that it was ruining people’s ability to use proper grammar. He was wrong. As it turns out, texting has become the language’s biggest threat. You may think that no students would be silly enough to let instant messaging sneak into their scholarly writing. This is not so, according to a recent article I read in the Spokesman Review. Students are beginning to use common “texting lingo” in their classes.
When I first read the headline, I expected to read about high school students who were writing papers the way they text, and high school Language Arts teachers wondering what to do about it. And it does talk about high-schoolers, who may not fully understand why a style of writing is deemed appropriate for one form of written communication, but not others. However, this article also focuses on college students who make these common mistakes in the papers they turn in for their college classes.
It may just be me, but I feel that these mistakes are a little more tolerable for younger kids. You use “4” for “for” and “btw” for “by the way” to save time and space. They are shortcuts. To me, seeing this in a formal writing paper would signal carelessness and laziness. One student replied that she was so used to using “texting lingo” that she “didn’t even think about it.” Granted, this was a high school student and not a college one, but college students are making similar mistakes. I would not accept a paper from one of my high school students that they “didn’t even think about” and I sure as hell wouldn’t accept a college paper. In my opinion, one of the main purposes of school is to learn critical thinking and if using these kinds of shortcuts enables you to not think, the purpose is being defeated. In high school, you do not choose to be there. In college, if you are not here to think about what you are doing and only want to take shortcuts, you shouldn’t be wasting your time or money on something you do not care about.
Whew…if I don’t stop myself I’ll get into an angry rant about kids who drink on Tuesdays and come to class hungover (I used the ellipses on purpose, BTW). We won’t go there. Am I being too harsh? This is just something that feels like it should be common sense.
On a final note, the article listed an index of terms commonly used in texting, most of which I have never heard of. This is decidedly an uncool adult trying to be cool and relate to kids—and failing pretty miserably. I would also like to point out that the author of the article does not include “LMAO” in the article, which of course means “laughing my ass off” and is one of my favorites. I’ve also commonly seen this as “LMFAO.” I’ll let you figure out what the F stands for if you don’t already know.
Eng 326
22 September 2007
Texting Lingo Fails with Educators
Spokesman Review
Published September 17, 2007
While emailing, I tend to not capitalize words or to punctuate correctly (my favorite phrase is “…” which I do not routinely use any other time than on the net. I also went through a phase in high school when I did not capitalize the word “I” because I thought it was cuter when I could dot the top with a heart or a star. I had a teacher approach me about my self-esteem issues because—obviously—if I constantly left “I” in lower case it meant that I thought poorly of myself. The confrontation quickly took care of my capitalization issues in my school writing (which, I should say, I never used in any of my formal English papers), but my email habits persist. Just as if I am using my cell phone to text message a friend, I use shortcuts like “2morrow” to say tomorrow.
Keeping this in mind, I once had an English instructor who said that emailing and chatting would be the downfall of the language in its written form. He claimed that it was ruining people’s ability to use proper grammar. He was wrong. As it turns out, texting has become the language’s biggest threat. You may think that no students would be silly enough to let instant messaging sneak into their scholarly writing. This is not so, according to a recent article I read in the Spokesman Review. Students are beginning to use common “texting lingo” in their classes.
When I first read the headline, I expected to read about high school students who were writing papers the way they text, and high school Language Arts teachers wondering what to do about it. And it does talk about high-schoolers, who may not fully understand why a style of writing is deemed appropriate for one form of written communication, but not others. However, this article also focuses on college students who make these common mistakes in the papers they turn in for their college classes.
It may just be me, but I feel that these mistakes are a little more tolerable for younger kids. You use “4” for “for” and “btw” for “by the way” to save time and space. They are shortcuts. To me, seeing this in a formal writing paper would signal carelessness and laziness. One student replied that she was so used to using “texting lingo” that she “didn’t even think about it.” Granted, this was a high school student and not a college one, but college students are making similar mistakes. I would not accept a paper from one of my high school students that they “didn’t even think about” and I sure as hell wouldn’t accept a college paper. In my opinion, one of the main purposes of school is to learn critical thinking and if using these kinds of shortcuts enables you to not think, the purpose is being defeated. In high school, you do not choose to be there. In college, if you are not here to think about what you are doing and only want to take shortcuts, you shouldn’t be wasting your time or money on something you do not care about.
Whew…if I don’t stop myself I’ll get into an angry rant about kids who drink on Tuesdays and come to class hungover (I used the ellipses on purpose, BTW). We won’t go there. Am I being too harsh? This is just something that feels like it should be common sense.
On a final note, the article listed an index of terms commonly used in texting, most of which I have never heard of. This is decidedly an uncool adult trying to be cool and relate to kids—and failing pretty miserably. I would also like to point out that the author of the article does not include “LMAO” in the article, which of course means “laughing my ass off” and is one of my favorites. I’ve also commonly seen this as “LMFAO.” I’ll let you figure out what the F stands for if you don’t already know.
Sunday, September 16, 2007
Ch. 3 and 4 Response Blogs
Chapter three, “Dora Learns to Write and in the Process Encounters Punctuation,” is an article that explores the process of children learning punctuation. The author, Pat Cordeiro, begins the article with a fictional (but typical) story of a child named Dora, who is learning to write and to use periods in her writing. This story shows the process children usually go through while learning to use periods, and then commas, as they become more advanced writers. The article continues to explain how difficult it is to learn “correct” punctuation, if there even is such a thing.
While reading this article, I had to remind myself that Dora was not a real first-grader and that her teacher did not exist. Mostly, it was because I was so impressed with the teacher portrayed in this story that I hoped this astounding educator was out there somewhere helping young children read and write! I thought it was wonderful how the teacher managed to make learning such a problem solving experience for Dora. The teacher could have told her how to punctuate sentences to make them correct, but instead gave her enough information to begin working out the problem on her own. This is such a better way for her to learn than to have to teacher simply mark up the errors in her story and return it to her. It seems that by learning to punctuate as a process rather than a cut-and-dry school subject, Dora will internalize the information and make better use of it.
One thing Cordeiro mentioned that I found interesting was the idea of how punctuation and grammar vary depending on the style of writing and the maturity/experience of the writer. This is something I hit head on during high school. I was a Running Start student, so instead of taking junior and senior English classes I took English 101 and 201. I had the same professor for both of these courses and he introduced me to an idea I had never been told in high school: some writing rules are meant to be broken. This meant that it was no longer off limits to begin sentences with “because” or “and.” This also meant that any time I used wrote papers in the high school classes I was still taking, the teachers were not as happy as I was at my new found grammatical rebelliousness. Whether it was right or wrong, I had it in my head that everything I learned in college was twice as meaningful as I learned in high school and so I continued to write how I wanted, convinced that I was developing my personal style.
In chapter four, “Teaching Writing and Grammar in Context,” Scott Peterson argues against the traditional ways of teaching grammar and replacing textbook lessons with writing assignments that give the students the opportunity to compose. Writing, Peterson believes, is the best way for students to utilize and begin to understand grammar and writing skills. He offers many examples of useful lessons for the classroom that explain his concept.
At first I was confused by Peterson’s claim that the best way to teach grammar is through writing and then his statement that teachers do still need to teach grammar, just not by using textbooks. However, after reading further, I think I understand. Peterson is not arguing against grammar lessons, it just seems that he is arguing against boring, workbook assignments. Although he went into a great deal of discussion about the writing assignments he gives his students, his articles lacked examples of the types of grammar lessons he would find acceptable. I felt his activities were very creative and gave students the opportunity to fine-tune the grammar skills that are already developing, but did not show us how to teach the fundamentals, such as punctuation as is chapter three. The only activity Peterson gives that comes close are the ones that help students use the different parts of speech and help them expand their sentences. To me, these seem somewhat easier to teach in the context of writing than the “mechanics” that he lists but does not give examples of.
Concerning Peterson’s sample activities, I was also concerned that he does not give any suggestions as to what grades these would be appropriate for. Reading them, I had to estimate that they were sixth or seventh graders at the oldest. I remember writing a color poem like the one he described in the eighth grade, but I cannot believe that these would be a good fit for children older than middle schoolers. Peterson was probably writing for the grades in which he taught and had the most experience, but this article would have been more useful to me had it given examples of activities for every age range.
While reading this article, I had to remind myself that Dora was not a real first-grader and that her teacher did not exist. Mostly, it was because I was so impressed with the teacher portrayed in this story that I hoped this astounding educator was out there somewhere helping young children read and write! I thought it was wonderful how the teacher managed to make learning such a problem solving experience for Dora. The teacher could have told her how to punctuate sentences to make them correct, but instead gave her enough information to begin working out the problem on her own. This is such a better way for her to learn than to have to teacher simply mark up the errors in her story and return it to her. It seems that by learning to punctuate as a process rather than a cut-and-dry school subject, Dora will internalize the information and make better use of it.
One thing Cordeiro mentioned that I found interesting was the idea of how punctuation and grammar vary depending on the style of writing and the maturity/experience of the writer. This is something I hit head on during high school. I was a Running Start student, so instead of taking junior and senior English classes I took English 101 and 201. I had the same professor for both of these courses and he introduced me to an idea I had never been told in high school: some writing rules are meant to be broken. This meant that it was no longer off limits to begin sentences with “because” or “and.” This also meant that any time I used wrote papers in the high school classes I was still taking, the teachers were not as happy as I was at my new found grammatical rebelliousness. Whether it was right or wrong, I had it in my head that everything I learned in college was twice as meaningful as I learned in high school and so I continued to write how I wanted, convinced that I was developing my personal style.
In chapter four, “Teaching Writing and Grammar in Context,” Scott Peterson argues against the traditional ways of teaching grammar and replacing textbook lessons with writing assignments that give the students the opportunity to compose. Writing, Peterson believes, is the best way for students to utilize and begin to understand grammar and writing skills. He offers many examples of useful lessons for the classroom that explain his concept.
At first I was confused by Peterson’s claim that the best way to teach grammar is through writing and then his statement that teachers do still need to teach grammar, just not by using textbooks. However, after reading further, I think I understand. Peterson is not arguing against grammar lessons, it just seems that he is arguing against boring, workbook assignments. Although he went into a great deal of discussion about the writing assignments he gives his students, his articles lacked examples of the types of grammar lessons he would find acceptable. I felt his activities were very creative and gave students the opportunity to fine-tune the grammar skills that are already developing, but did not show us how to teach the fundamentals, such as punctuation as is chapter three. The only activity Peterson gives that comes close are the ones that help students use the different parts of speech and help them expand their sentences. To me, these seem somewhat easier to teach in the context of writing than the “mechanics” that he lists but does not give examples of.
Concerning Peterson’s sample activities, I was also concerned that he does not give any suggestions as to what grades these would be appropriate for. Reading them, I had to estimate that they were sixth or seventh graders at the oldest. I remember writing a color poem like the one he described in the eighth grade, but I cannot believe that these would be a good fit for children older than middle schoolers. Peterson was probably writing for the grades in which he taught and had the most experience, but this article would have been more useful to me had it given examples of activities for every age range.
Sunday, September 9, 2007
Ch. 1 and Ch. 2 Response Blogs
In chapter one, “How Language is Learned: From Birth Through the Elementary Years and Beyond,” Jane Kiel focused on the ways children learned to speak and subsequently learn the basic aspects of grammar. Kiel explains the process of learning language, beginning at infancy and a baby’s first sounds. She then moves to young children who learn what they hear when being spoken to and around. Lastly, she argues that children learn the most about language and grammar through reading. Kiel feels that four things influence the ability to learn language: one’s cognitive capacity to learn, the physical development required to produce speech, a desire or need to communicate with others and the stimulation from one’s environment.
Kiel, when describing a child’s vocabulary and what she calls “overgeneralization,” she gives an example of her daughter referring to “all four legged animals” as “woof” (5). This made me laugh and reminded me of a funny story about a friend’s child, Conner. Conner was in the middle of being potty trained and said words like “pee” and “poop” after he used the potty chair to tell everyone of his accomplishment. Mind you, this was done after looking into the toilet bowl at his “accomplishment.” Not too long after her started doing this, we took him out for ice cream and made the mistake of getting him chocolate. We held the cone out to him, he pulled his hands away quickly and said “Eww, poop!” Unlike the advice Kiel gives on not correcting a child when verbal mistakes are made, we did try to convince that this was indeed not poop, but it was no use.
On a more serious note, Kiel advocates reading as one of the best ways to teach students grammar and vocabulary and I completely agree. It makes sense that students who enjoy reading and comprehend what they read will do better to internalize the information they are getting than students who memorize words for a spelling test. It should come as no secret to any teacher that the majority of students feel that, after the grade is earned, they can relax and forget about those words.
Chapter two, “Teaching Grammar in the Context of Writing,” by Constance Weaver, explores the successfulness of the traditional ways of teaching grammar and introduces aspects of grammar that should be taught and how. Weaver presents numerous studies showing that teaching grammar lessons while addressing grammar as a school subject on its own is not conducive to students learning the material. As a side note, those of us who are not familiar with grammar terms, cannot be completely sure about what she is suggesting should be taught in schools. This article is not written in layman’s terms. I have no idea what an “adverbial free modifier” is (22).
Using three different examples of teachers honing their grammar teaching skills, Weaver presents the idea of grammar “minilessons,” which I thought was effective in this article. I understood the teachers who were teaching grammar the way they had been taught (and they way I probably would have taught, too) even though it didn’t do any of us very much good. I think it is smart that people are realizing the traditional way of looking at grammar hasn’t been effective and we need to be looking for better solutions.
I found one of the ideas in Weaver’s article very interesting. Weaver suggests that “the power of dialect and the dialects of power” be taught as part of grammar (22). I feel this would be a wonderful thing to incorporate into the classroom. First of all, by teaching dialects and then exploring which “dialects are appropriate in what kinds of situations,” as Weaver states, we can avoid telling a student that his or her dialect is incorrect. We could instead teach that all dialects are correct, but that some are acceptable in certain situations and others are not. Also, there are often prejudices held towards people who speak in dialect. Your students may think that people who speak in African American Vernacular English, or who speak with Southern accents, etc., are not as smart as those who speak Standard American English and teaching many dialects in your classroom could be a way of undermining those biases before they become problems.
Kiel, when describing a child’s vocabulary and what she calls “overgeneralization,” she gives an example of her daughter referring to “all four legged animals” as “woof” (5). This made me laugh and reminded me of a funny story about a friend’s child, Conner. Conner was in the middle of being potty trained and said words like “pee” and “poop” after he used the potty chair to tell everyone of his accomplishment. Mind you, this was done after looking into the toilet bowl at his “accomplishment.” Not too long after her started doing this, we took him out for ice cream and made the mistake of getting him chocolate. We held the cone out to him, he pulled his hands away quickly and said “Eww, poop!” Unlike the advice Kiel gives on not correcting a child when verbal mistakes are made, we did try to convince that this was indeed not poop, but it was no use.
On a more serious note, Kiel advocates reading as one of the best ways to teach students grammar and vocabulary and I completely agree. It makes sense that students who enjoy reading and comprehend what they read will do better to internalize the information they are getting than students who memorize words for a spelling test. It should come as no secret to any teacher that the majority of students feel that, after the grade is earned, they can relax and forget about those words.
Chapter two, “Teaching Grammar in the Context of Writing,” by Constance Weaver, explores the successfulness of the traditional ways of teaching grammar and introduces aspects of grammar that should be taught and how. Weaver presents numerous studies showing that teaching grammar lessons while addressing grammar as a school subject on its own is not conducive to students learning the material. As a side note, those of us who are not familiar with grammar terms, cannot be completely sure about what she is suggesting should be taught in schools. This article is not written in layman’s terms. I have no idea what an “adverbial free modifier” is (22).
Using three different examples of teachers honing their grammar teaching skills, Weaver presents the idea of grammar “minilessons,” which I thought was effective in this article. I understood the teachers who were teaching grammar the way they had been taught (and they way I probably would have taught, too) even though it didn’t do any of us very much good. I think it is smart that people are realizing the traditional way of looking at grammar hasn’t been effective and we need to be looking for better solutions.
I found one of the ideas in Weaver’s article very interesting. Weaver suggests that “the power of dialect and the dialects of power” be taught as part of grammar (22). I feel this would be a wonderful thing to incorporate into the classroom. First of all, by teaching dialects and then exploring which “dialects are appropriate in what kinds of situations,” as Weaver states, we can avoid telling a student that his or her dialect is incorrect. We could instead teach that all dialects are correct, but that some are acceptable in certain situations and others are not. Also, there are often prejudices held towards people who speak in dialect. Your students may think that people who speak in African American Vernacular English, or who speak with Southern accents, etc., are not as smart as those who speak Standard American English and teaching many dialects in your classroom could be a way of undermining those biases before they become problems.
Wednesday, September 5, 2007
My Goals
For this assignment, I studied the paper that we peer-reviewed in class and various papers that had been handed back to me from other writing courses. I read through them all to find common mistakes and to identify what my goals should be for this assignment. In the end, I did not choose any of issues presented to me by my 326 classmates. I set one goal on a personal spelling misunderstanding that I’ve had my entire career as a student. I set another goal on comments that one specific teacher made on every paper I wrote in her class. My third goal was brought to my attention only a few days ago, and rather than dealing with formal writing, it is an issue that reflects mostly in my creative writing.
My first grammar problem, which feels silly, is that I have never been able to spell the words “necessary” and “succeed” correctly. Of course, the spell checker on my computer fixes these superficial mistakes for me and no one ever knows that I have difficulties with these words. In fact, I believe that this may be why I have not learned how to spell them. As long as I know that it will be underlined in red and I can right-click to fix it, I never need to spell it right in the first place. For this goal, I would just like to be able to spell these words by myself without the help of a spell-checker. These words are not mentioned in my copy of A Writer’s Reference, however I did find them both listed in the Student’s Book of College English, an old classroom textbook, in a list of some of the most commonly misspelled words.
My second grammar issue is that I do not understand the difference between active and passive voice. In a literature class I took last semester, we turned in three papers and on every one, my professor noted my use of passive voice and it resulted in the loss of points on the essays. Before this class, I had never even heard of passive voice and at first was dumbfounded that I had no grasp on such an apparently important part of writing. Then, I chose to ignore her, because, after all, if it had been true wouldn’t other instructors have brought it to my attention? If I have never learned some of the conventions that are necessities for “good” writers, I would have to say it’s because I’ve had many English classes in which the teachers have put greater emphasis on ideas and content and less on grammar. In classes such as these, it was easy for me to put together a well thought-out paper and use that to hide my sketchy knowledge of conventions. For this goal, I would actually just like to understand what passive voice means and how I can avoid using it in my writing. Here’s what A Writers’ Reference says about active and passive voice:
“Active verbs express meaning more emphatically and vigorously
than their weaker counterparts—forms of the verb be or verbs in
passive voice. Verbs in the passive voice lack strength because
their subjects receive the action instead of doing it” (142).
My third grammar concern has to do with a poetry class I am taking. While I had no intentions of delving into my creative writing for this assignment, I was recently handed back a poem about which the teacher commented “get rid of all the words and phrases that don’t have to be here…these words mean nothing.” Of course, to me the words did mean something, but the instructor insisted I be “rough on my language” and cut out all of the meaningless and colorless words. So, I had to look back through the piece and be honest about some of the words I had chosen—so, some, to, the. I have to ask myself why I have chosen to write like this and the truth is that I’ve always considered that to be “just the way I write.” It has to do with being stubborn and not wanting to accept that my personal writing style might need a tweak here and there. For this goal, I am not strictly saying that I will change this, but I would like to explore the issue. Here’s what A Writer’s Reference says about unimportant words:
“An empty phrase can be cut with little or no loss of meaning” (140).
“Inflated phrases can be reduced to a word or two without loss of meaning” (140).
“The colorless verbs is, are, was, and were frequently generate excess words” (141).
My first grammar problem, which feels silly, is that I have never been able to spell the words “necessary” and “succeed” correctly. Of course, the spell checker on my computer fixes these superficial mistakes for me and no one ever knows that I have difficulties with these words. In fact, I believe that this may be why I have not learned how to spell them. As long as I know that it will be underlined in red and I can right-click to fix it, I never need to spell it right in the first place. For this goal, I would just like to be able to spell these words by myself without the help of a spell-checker. These words are not mentioned in my copy of A Writer’s Reference, however I did find them both listed in the Student’s Book of College English, an old classroom textbook, in a list of some of the most commonly misspelled words.
My second grammar issue is that I do not understand the difference between active and passive voice. In a literature class I took last semester, we turned in three papers and on every one, my professor noted my use of passive voice and it resulted in the loss of points on the essays. Before this class, I had never even heard of passive voice and at first was dumbfounded that I had no grasp on such an apparently important part of writing. Then, I chose to ignore her, because, after all, if it had been true wouldn’t other instructors have brought it to my attention? If I have never learned some of the conventions that are necessities for “good” writers, I would have to say it’s because I’ve had many English classes in which the teachers have put greater emphasis on ideas and content and less on grammar. In classes such as these, it was easy for me to put together a well thought-out paper and use that to hide my sketchy knowledge of conventions. For this goal, I would actually just like to understand what passive voice means and how I can avoid using it in my writing. Here’s what A Writers’ Reference says about active and passive voice:
“Active verbs express meaning more emphatically and vigorously
than their weaker counterparts—forms of the verb be or verbs in
passive voice. Verbs in the passive voice lack strength because
their subjects receive the action instead of doing it” (142).
My third grammar concern has to do with a poetry class I am taking. While I had no intentions of delving into my creative writing for this assignment, I was recently handed back a poem about which the teacher commented “get rid of all the words and phrases that don’t have to be here…these words mean nothing.” Of course, to me the words did mean something, but the instructor insisted I be “rough on my language” and cut out all of the meaningless and colorless words. So, I had to look back through the piece and be honest about some of the words I had chosen—so, some, to, the. I have to ask myself why I have chosen to write like this and the truth is that I’ve always considered that to be “just the way I write.” It has to do with being stubborn and not wanting to accept that my personal writing style might need a tweak here and there. For this goal, I am not strictly saying that I will change this, but I would like to explore the issue. Here’s what A Writer’s Reference says about unimportant words:
“An empty phrase can be cut with little or no loss of meaning” (140).
“Inflated phrases can be reduced to a word or two without loss of meaning” (140).
“The colorless verbs is, are, was, and were frequently generate excess words” (141).
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