Monday, September 28, 2009

Self Review

I feel like my introduction paragraph is precise and to the point. My thesis statement could be simplified and rewritten more clearly. I don't think it could be organized any differently but my development could use some work. I need to use better diction. I would like for my paper to be more specific and detailed. I could do a better job at pointing out the relationship between the thesis and the topic of each paragraph. My conclusion paragraph is simple and to the point.

Monday, September 21, 2009

"How do you respond to students writing" summary

In this video three teachers discuss how they respond to their student's writing. Tinberg says that he tries to be aware of the audience while reading a student's paper. Early in his career he was very strict with his grading and very particular with minute details. Since then he has learned to be more constructive with his comments on a student's paper. His comments are either summative or formative. They either rationalize the given grade or advise the student on what they can do to improve their paper in its next revision. Sanchez makes it certain to give back very general comments. He doesn't want his students to feel that being a successful writer is the same as pleasing their professor. He supports Bartholomae and is very clear with his feedback in order to help the student achieve their goal. He focuses on differing between evaluating and responding whenever he's grading a student's paper. Sommers claims that the argument is important to keep in mind when grading a paper. She struggles with whether or not she should comment on every error or just the major ones. She doesn't want to be viewed as an inadequate teacher. She tries to be sure that all her feedback has a purpose and she makes a distinction between rough draft comments and final draft comments. Sommers also highly values feedback from her students. She wants to know how they feel about her comments and how she may improve to become more clear or constructive.

Do all teachers put forth this much effort and care into grading a paper? If not, why?

Which teacher's views would the majority of students like the most when a teacher is grading their paper?

Thursday, September 17, 2009

Revision work

Overall:
My essay describes my writing process.
It does this by explaining the steps in my process and describing it in a physical way, the way elbow encourages. It expresses the way my process appears, smells, and sounds.

Paragraph 1:
This paragraph introduces the topic of the text.
It clearly explains what the rest of the paper will describe. It expresses the topic of each paragraph.

Paragraph 2:
This paragraph explains how my writing process physically appears.
It compares its appearance to that of what a writing process should appear like. It lists all the steps in my writing process.

Paragraph 3:
This paragraph describes the way my writing process smells.
It uses a story from when i was younger to explain why my writing process smells the way it does, and how this smell became a part of my writing process.

Paragraph 4:
This paragraph tells how my writing process sounds.
It uses descriptive sensory words to help the reader hear the sounds.

Paragraph 5:
This paragraph explains how not doing the steps in my writing process throws me off.
It uses an example to help support my reasoning.

Paragraph 6:
This paragraph reiterates how my writing process is physically described.
It explains the reasoning for describing the writing process this way by mentioning Elbow's liberal beliefs on the writing process.

Monday, September 14, 2009

The Persistence of Writing Summary

This article focuses on the relationship between reading/writing and multimedia. Multimedia has a major effect on not only a students reading and writing skills but also their desire to read and write. Many would claim that multimedia and reading/writing are complete opposites and only have negative effects on each other. Or that audio and visuals are going to take the place of written words. Burkdall however feels that we should interconnect both objects. He believes that we should use them together instead of against each other. For example, not everything can be done orally. Whether someone is either giving a presentation or acting in a movie there is always a written script involved. Burkdall feels that "having students create both written and multimedia texts allows them to contrast the effects of their words in a variety of situations." This helps the students to understand things such as diction, register, and transitions in a new way. They can compare the two methods and learn different things from each of them. This is why it is suggested that when one is writing they should read their words aloud to hear how they sound.

Would converting to multimedia texts and eliminating written words be considering degressing back to when things were passed through generations orally?

Do you think we'll ever get to a point where we have the advanced technology and don't have the need for written text anymore?

Elbow/Bartholomae writing

The writing process is the combination of steps a writer takes in order to create their piece of writing. The writing process is like reading a book; you have to do things in order. You can't read the end of the book before you read the beginning. It's also like shooting a free throw in basketball. Everyone has their own rhythm or ritual they perform before they shoot a free throw. Each writer also has their own process they perform to focus on their writing and do their best work. The consistency of repeating the same steps everytime is a comfort to the writer which helps them execute their tasks. The repitition of the steps is what causes a persons writing process to exist. If the steps a writer takes to begin writing is unhealthy or harmful this may have a negative effect in the future. A writer's process is helpful to the writer however if he/she were ever to be in a situation where they can't perform their process before writing, they may be thrown off and not be able to write the best they could write. Bartholomae touches on this aspect when he mentions the effects of the environment on the writer.

My writing process is very distracting and time consuming. It sounds like the music on my ipod and the voices of my friends. It doesn't look like a person writing at all. My writing process is similar to that of Elbow. I don't like planning or outlining before I write. Both him and I sort of spit out everything in our heads and then make sense out of it. My writing process is like a person with A.D.D., I get distracted very easily and waste a lot of time before I finish my assignment. The parts of my writing process include listening to music and talking to my friends online. While I do this I reread the prompt many times until I get an idea in my head of what to write about. Once I have an idea, I must turn off my music and stop all conversations and write everything that comes to my mind. If I come to a writer's block, I turn the music back on and repeat the process until I finish my paper.

Revision Plan

My revision plan:
  1. I agree with almost all the edits my peer editor made. He suggested rewording some of my phrases and smoothing out my transitions between paragraphs.
  2. I plan to make these revisions as well as organize my paper better and add more detail
  3. Tomorrow I'm going to retype my paper with the corrections my peer editor made. Wednesday I'm going to add more details to my paper. Thursday I'll finish it up by organizing the paper and printing it to turn in on Friday.
  4. I believe that this paper is going to be a good example of my writing. I've had a lot of practice with this style of writing.

Tuesday, September 8, 2009

Elbow/Bartholomae Debate Summary

This article focuses mainly on academic writing. Bartholomae describes how he defines academic writing and how he feels about the way it should be taught to our students. He mentions the classroom and the effects of the environment in which the writer is working on the writer's product. He discussions the struggle writers have of being able to create something that is their own and not a repeat of a previous story or piece or writing. He also mentions the influence of time, politics, and culture on a person's writing. Bartholomae believes that we should teach our students to write without these influences. They should be free of these outside pressures in order to write something that is uniquely theirs. He feels that this is the students right.

How does academic writing difer from other styles of writing?

Is it possible to create a story or piece of writing that has never been produced before?

Free Writes

"I want to have a more focused ritual that is more productive since my rituals are very distracting and time consuming."

My rituals for writing involve music and talking to friends online while i write. Both these activities are very distracting and take up a lot of extra time. I'm even listening to music right now as I'm writing this. As my professor pointed out, my rituals could be worse. They could be unhealthy or harmful. I think an ideal ritual would be healthy and productive. Maybe I could make it my ritual to work out before I write and eat a healthy meal. That way I would be contributing to my health and it would give me energy to sit down and focus on writing my paper.

"My teacher says I'm a good writer because I can summarize information well."

I don't feel like I am a good writer because I don't enjoy it and I always put off my writing assignments until the last minute; I've had all weekend to do this assignment and I'm just now doing it the day that it is due. However I do enjoy reading. Last summer I read four or five books. Our assignment last week was to summarize a video we watched and my teacher said I did a good job on it. Maybe I could get a job as someone who reads books and writes the summary that goes on the back of the cover. That would be pretty awesome since i would be getting paid to read which i love to do. Also, I would be summarizing the stories which I can do very well.

Thursday, September 3, 2009

My writing skills

Writing has never been high up on my list of things I like about school. I have always been an average writer but I have never enjoyed it. My strength as a writer is that I am pretty good with grammar and spelling. Whenever I write there are rarely ever any grammatical mistakes. Other than this aspect, nothing about my writing really stands out as something extraordinary. My biggest weakness is that I never go into enough detail. I struggle with describing my ideas in depth. The only time I truly enjoy writing is whenever I am writing poetry or lyrics to a song. I like how this style of writing is completely creative and personal. You’re not trying to persuade the reader or drown them with facts; you’re simply expressing yourself or telling a story. Last year in my government class, we were each assigned a Supreme Court case that we had to learn about and present to the class. My case was U.S. v. Nixon. I chose to present it by writing lyrics to the tune of “Jumper” by Third Eye Blind. I believe that I earned an A on the presentation because I had fun writing and preparing it. This kind of writing that promotes creativity and uniqueness, and disregards rules or guidelines, appeals the most to me.

summary of Peter Elbow video

In Peter Elbow’s video he talked about his experience with writing. He is currently a professor of English but previously dropped out of school due to his struggle with writing. He discusses how he improved his writing skills and what methods worked for him. He uses his personal experiences to explain that it is ok to make mistakes. This is in fact how we learn. By failing we discover what went wrong and how we can improve it in order to succeed the next time around. Peter goes against what most teachers or professors suggest and tells us not to organize our ideas before writing. Many teachers I have known always say that creating an outline or a web of your ideas is the first step to writing a paper. Peter Elbow tells us that for him, the writing process was much easier whenever he didn’t organize his thoughts. He simply wrote down everything that came to his mind until he had more than enough information for the paper. He then went through and put things in their place and took out what wasn’t necessary, as if the paper were a puzzle. The last thing he talks about is creating and criticizing his own work. We can’t be afraid to critique our own writing because this is how we improve our writing.

Would Peter's method of making a mess and then cleaning it up really save time in the writing process?

Is it more beneficial to sit down and write a paper all at once, or to write a little bit at a time with breaks in between?