Blog 12/03

I believe the this class has been useful for me even though I am not going to become an English teacher. I my be in history but I history is heavy into writing and reading. Now reading should be already understood by the students(high school) and not be an issue for an English class such has this. Now there are differences in the way students should write for history compared to English, but there are aspects that are the same. Things such has grammar may be understood by people in my situation but for how to actually correct it and be able to present something to a student that they find useful is a large step. Also another aspect, how to actually prepare for giving assignments and actually presenting an assignment that is clear to the students, is a useful aspect of this class. Now being in history classes for so long it was difficult for me to remember how to even think like an English class student. A class for history would what to focus more on the aspects mentioned before and the history of writing, but not have to much on the terms and ideas behind writing. This is due to the differences in history and English. The class should show how to properly provide writing assignments and essays for the students, and also how to provide feedback that is useful for the student to at least appear to be better more educated people.

Summary 11/28

Lindemann starts her chapter with a discussion on "basics." She and many other people in the writing field believe written exams do not measure a person's writing performance. This failure to measure makes it hard to tell if a person has basic writing skills or not.Cooper and Odel believe that a teacher should diagnose students' writing problems and provide good feedback to the students in order to help them become better writers. Lindemann believes that in order to diagnose students' problems, the student should write two different short papers about two different subjects. This should provide much information about the students' writing skills. But, some problems the student may be able to avoid so the teacher would not know the student is having a problem in that area. After reading a student's paper it is important that the notes that teachers left are useful to the students. This is complicated by the fact that many students see comments on essays has marks of failure and do not look at them to help improve their writing. Also corrections can be made by viewing the paper on a piece by piece basis (atomistic) or has a whole (holistic.) The last part of the chapter deals with the teacher's workload.

According to the "professionals" standardized testing does not work. Especially when it is writing standardized testing. What I do not under stand is, if standardized testing does not work then why would writing for the teacher be any different? Is it the cold nature of having someone you have never seen grade your paper? Or is it due to the weight that people sometimes give to these standardized tests. The idea that Lindemann mentions with the two short writing assignments has failures that even Lindemann agrees exist. But, I guess that it would provide a general idea on where the student is in their writing development. Then the rest of the year should be used to find all the little problems that student has. The cryptic notes that a teacher leaves on a paper also does not help the student has much has a teacher would think. But, the shorthand nature of comments is due to the work load that the teacher would have from their students.

Blog 11/26

After a written assignment, the teacher would usually bloody up a paper with comments and corrections. Some of the comments did help me in my pursuit for a better paper. These useful comments usually helped to correct my mistakes due to misunderstanding of the rules of writing. Especially the comments about a writing style that is new to me. Comments on mistakes with citing work with the different styles stands out. Granted how you cite your work does not affect the message that you are writing. But, what makes comments on this effective is due to the amount of weight teachers and schools give to proper citing. Improper citing can actually cause plagiarism. This type of plagiarism is by accident, but it is still considered plagiarism. And every college student knows what happens when they plagiaries a work. These comments on how we cite our work then are on of the best ways to not have problems down the road when the student would have a teacher that sees plagiarism has a black/white issue with no gray area. Ineffective comments are the comments that only apply to the given situation. These comments are useless in the scope of things. An example of a comment for a given situation is "you used Times instead of Times New Roman." The type of font used does nothing to affect the writing. The comment does nothing to help me become a better writer. All this comment did was to show that there is a difference in Times and Times New Roman. For comments to be effective they must be able to apply to writing in general. In effective comments are those comments that only apply to that one writing assignment.

Blog 11/19

A foreign speaking student poses special challenges that are different then the standard student. Even these students poses different challenges, depending on their understanding of the English language. A child that has no understanding of English, will be hard to communicate with. Also, they would not know the words needed for written communication. A student that understands the English words may still have problems with slang, or literary devices like puns, and hyperboles. The students that have spent most of their lives learning English would probably not be too different from other students, with the exception of universal problems for the foreign students. All the foreign students will have to face certain problems. The other students in the class maybe racist towards what ever creed the foreign student is. This will cause problems for the student that may or may not affect the student's work. The reverse of this is also true. Considering that much of the world is considered "Third World," and much of third world's people are of the peasant class, and are overall in worse shape then the poor of the United States. With this bad background and enough of them in on area, a gang can form. This occurs repeatedly examples being- Irish, Italians, Mexicans, and many other large groups of foreign born have produce gangs. Although gangs of any race can pose problems for students.

Summary 11/14

Teaching about rewriting is the name of this game. Lindeman says about how rewriting is a percived form punishment for writing a bad paper. The students are ether lazy, unsure, or beleive it tis the teacher's job to rewrite. The lazy part is self explanatory, but the unsure means that the student is not confident enough to make the paper better. The students see rewriting has a separate process than has a step IN the process. Also considering the abundance of work for the student rewriting is normally not stressed. Lindeman also went deep into the their own process of rewriting the one paragraph in the opening of the chapter. Lindeman also said about the styles of peer review. Another problem with writing Lindeman points out is inferior assignments. "Lard" is also talked about and how it loses the meaning of the sentence. Lindeman also proposes workshops has way to help the students to learn to rewrite properly. To help reinforce rewriting the idea of the students developing their own guidelines is proposed. The teacher is expected to nudge the student in the direction of general guidelines, but the teachers do not tell the students the guidelines.

Teachers never really taught rewriting. They just did rewriting. This means they would bloody up your paper; and tell you go away and fix. So, yes I believe students see rewriting has a form of punishment. I also experienced rewriting has a separate process. In that: you edit, turn in the paper, get a grade, and then rewrite it does seem like two different events. Also during school we would only rewrite major papers and not the smaller less important papers. The less important papers that deal with a stupid subject. For the peer review what Lindeman propose would work in a perfect little world where more that one student knows whats going on. For the whole "lard" section, Lindeman failed to mention the whole word count/ page length requirements. Workshops are fine but they lack the regularity of a class. Has for the student generated guideline, if they have no good solid experience with writing then coming up with their own guidelines maybe tough.

Blog 11/12

I did my heaviest revision on the final for a class that we wrote five other papers for. I did the most at the end for two reasons. One it was the last paper I did in the class and I prefer to have my papers get progressively better. So, to make a better paper I did revisions. Also the final carried a good amount of weight in the class. So, makes sense to be careful on something with so much weight. This along with my first paper being not the best I can do due to it being an in class essay.Thoughts of this made me want to show that I can do better when I can use a computer. I wrote the paper in my usual fashion, editing has I go. When finished I looked over and corrected on the screen without printing the paper out. I read it over to make sure I wrote what I meant to, and it all made sense. My usual corrections being grammatical. There were few sentences that required real work. Meaning that I only change a few words without rewriting the entire sentence. I would also use synonyms on words that were repeated. I also rechecked the style used for citing my sources. Do not need accidental plagiarism because I miss citied a source. The revision was not the most harsh but the essay was for a non-English class. These means that the professor was more interested in what was said and not how it was said.

Summary 11/07

Most students when they begin writing, write like their first draft is their final draft. The students get caught up correcting what they write, disrupting the flow of ideas. In this mind frame to Erika Lindemann believes the first lesson that should be taught to students is that words can change. This means that after a word is written down, it can be erased and changed in to another word during revising. This is to have students get away from their current writing style. The second lesson from Lindemann is that words cannot stand alone. Words rely on the other words around them to make sense. Last Lindenmann believes that writers need to capitalize on what they already know. Normally in schools students learn parts of speech by memorizing certain information. This takes away from the importance that each word plays in a sentence. Lindenmann also has a quick lesson in passive/active voice. Important information being that if the verb following the "be" verbs(is/am/was/were/being/been) has -ing the statement is active. A -ed, -en ending on the following verb means passive. Style was also covered by Lindenmann. Style to Lindenmann means words that give ideas clarity, emphasis, specificity, and variety. Meaning that style is apart of the work.

Style to most college students means MLA, APA, or the like. Style to us is the format that we use to enter information in a essay format. To Lindenmann style is actually something we choose. Style to Lindenmann is actually important to the way we give information. As for the parts of the speech, yes I remember some of the words but do not know what they mean. I do not even know what they do in some cases like Past Participial Phrase. But, I know that I use these different parts of speech, but I do not know exactly what they do or are called. But, the section on passive/active voice was good. I did not even know how to find if a voice is active or passive. I think that some of this problem comes from me learning this information in elementary or middle school and only remembering it for the test that had nothing to do with life. The idea for teaching kids that words can change is nice, but the second part of words being dependent on one another sort of makes the first claim about words changing weaker. If words rely on other words then changing one will affect the other words, causing problems.

Summary 10/31

Teaching about sentences. Sentences are the basic method of speech just a little more complex the just a few words put together. But, it seems that people naturally talk and think in sentences. Like people talking to themselves in sentences. But, normally our sentences are short and easy. And the use of complex sentences is rare. But, a problem with our current way of teaching about sentences is we study the terminology for the types of words. Examples of this are past participial phrase, verb, and noun. We do not study how we are suppose to put the words together. Yes, we were taught that nouns go with verbs of action, but we were not taught that methods to make pretty ornate sentences. This lack of guidance and the risk attached to what happens when we fail to properly use complex sentences. This means that all too often people write has they speak. This chapter also covers sentences combining. The ability to write one complex sentence with the same information has multiple simple sentences. Or the ability to make a paragraph out of smaller bits of information. Christensen gave for principles for sentences. First, composition is addition. Second, "principles of modification." (Modification of words) Third, what ever we add can make the sentence weaker or stronger. Last, "principle of texture." (Is the final work good or crap)

These principles are nice in the book. I can't remember the terms for the parts of a sentence. And this chapter complains about the teaching of terms. For example I was lost on page 172. I have never even heard the word appositives. Also this chapter/book is mainly for people who are going to teach English. I am not going to be an English teacher. Although some of this can help me it a history class when I have them writes essays or reports. This will help me to at least attempt to reinforce what they learn in English class.

Research Topic

The Nazi party used propaganda during World War II to help there cause. To have effective propaganda you ingrain your ideas into the very fabric of a persons development. Considering how a child's mind is like putty that you can form into what ever you want, it makes sense that the Nazis used propaganda on children. The propaganda was not just entertaining books like "The Poisonous Mushroom" that is setup like the "Little Golden Books" of my childhood (The fairy tales and old stories like Jack and the Beanstalk). But, the Nazis used textbooks has propaganda. These "educational" books did not always tell the truth, but what the Nazis leaders wanted the people to believe. Also, subjects like biology were used to reinforce the Aryan superiority and the inferiority of Jews. Hitler himself understood that real education was the bane of propaganda. Hitler wanted gears for his machine, not the free thinkers that would threaten his iron grip on the people. The success of this propaganda is shown in multiple events such as the Holocaust, and the death rate of Hitler Youth soldiers. I chose propaganda due to propaganda being one of the ways that writing can become something more then entertainment or education.

My presentation will begin with three twin questions, six total questions. The questions will be related but different. Like opposite sides of the same coin. The odd questions I expect people to know the answers, and the even question people won't know the answers. Then I will show examples of the propaganda's effectiveness. After this I will introduce the topic of Hitler Youth propaganda. Then give examples of Youth propaganda like "The Poisonous Mushroom", textbooks of the time, and perhaps a speech. I will show how the propaganda was able to ingrain itself in the young population. Close by trying to portray an alternate reality based off of a different view of the world.

Blog 10/22

Each discipline has there own way of viewing the world. So, they also write the world differently. Even the obvious differences in the writing styles like APA and MLA. The APA style cares more for the year of the work when MLA cares more for who wrote the work. Then people in the history field normally prefer read the words on the page for facts, while English majors seem to like to analyze the words themselves. So when it comes to writing a history major is more likely to spit out fact after fact. The English major would give some eloquently flowing paper with literary devices everywhere. When it comes to listening to people I want to learn something new or be entertained. While other people would like more to listen to some fufoo poetry that tells me nothing. When I am in a conversation with someone I want a goal in my talking, not talking to talk. I will only ask the weather if I want to know what the weather is, not to chit chat. Then others like to talk to her themselves talk. In this different view on how to see life it only makes sense that I will write differently than someone else. Different fields attract different people. This collection of like minded people will produce a writing style unique to them. As for the English research papers, they do often fail to help prepare for other classes. Granted the actions of research are universal, the English class do not teach writing styles other then MLA. When it comes to other classes that require another writing style you feel like a fish out of water.

blog 10/15

After reading Lunsford's article about writing centers I found out that the writing center at University of South Carolina at Aiken has a writing center that Lunsford would consider a "Garret"style writing center. The writing center at USCA does have people there to help but most of the work relies on the individual student's actions. The writing center has computers for individual people to work on their own writing assignments. Although there are people to help you if you need it for collaborative work. Yes you can access outside material from the computers, like the "storehouse" centers described by Lunsford, but the focus of the center is still the individual or group doing the work. It seemed that the students for the most part already had their research done and where using the computer more has a typewriter and not a digital access media. Also considering that their were people there collaborating on work further weakens the idea that the USCA center is a "storehouse" center. Lunsford stated that "storehouse" centers do not usually use collaboration to accomplish work. The center at USCA is a "Garret" style center due to its reliance on individual work and collaborative work to accomplish it's goal. The center is not a "storehouse" because there is collaborative work, and not too much reliance on outside information to help the students, yes there are computers but students use them has typewriters and not to access outside information.

Blog 10/8

Plagiarism is the outright coping of another's work with out stating the true author, for the sole purpose of not doing the work yourself. By this definition accidental plagiarism should be considered different then intentional plagiarism. Although the problem here would be how you can tell the difference between accidental and intentional plagiarism. For this if material under question has a good percent of the material is plagiarism, and occurs in good size chunks then I would assume intentional plagiarism. If work as small parts of their sentences then I would assume accidental plagiarism. Now if there are a lot of small parts of sentences I would take off, but not give the full hurting that plagiarism can do. For common knowledge if the same material is covered in multiple books or writings I would consider it common knowledge. This is unless the material being taken is a unique account of common knowledge. Example being the Axis losing World War Two is common knowledge, but the journal of Private Jimmy would need to be citied. Now telling plagiarism from common knowledge is important if you have a book about World War Two that has mostly a review of known fact, but also has personal accounts. The final paper that war book would then have common knowledge being not cited, but also has information very close to that book being citied for the personal accounts. May look like plagiarism but it is not due to the generality of the World War Two subject.

Reading response 10/3

The reading was in regards to the role audience plays in the writing of a document. The starting question was should teachers stress audience in their writing assignments? There are multiple ways to view the audience one being audience address. This emphasis the audience has a concrete entity. Mitchell and Taylor's writing model has writer, written product, audience, and response in a nice little circle each interacting with the item next to it. To these two people writing is an "interactive and dynamic relationship" Their model sees the role of the audience has being important and the role of the writer is less important. To Susan Wall the writer relies mostly on their own view of what the reader is. A second way to view the audience is audience invoked. In this the writer does not deny the existence of the reader, but the writer cannot know the reality of the reader. They see the reader has a fictional character. To Moffett there is a big difference in regards to whether the work is spoken or written, and who the audience is. To Corbett their is much more interaction between the writer, message, audience, and the universe then what Mitchell and Taylor believe. To Corbett the relationship is much more integrated and free flowing.

The audience is important to the writer. If you are writing a kids book you will not use the same words, or literary devices has you would writing an adult book. On the same token you will not write the same way id you are writing to the science community as you would for the general population. Failure to know who you are writing to would product a work that seems poorly written, when in fact it is written great for a different group of people. But, in that it is near impossible to write something knowing every thing about your audience. So the audience invoked is probably the best idea. This is due to we can imagine the audience in how we hope they are, instead of wasting time trying to figure out the real audience. This may cause some problems but not has many problems as doing nothing would cause. But, to answer the original question about should teachers stress audience in their writing assignment. Yes for the long run of the students writing careers, but for P.O.S. students that will not amount to anything it would be a waste of time and air.

Blog

A writing assignment about the student's understanding of another work. Like a poem, journal document or a research paper. A simple critique would not work but an in depth analises would. Reading and understanding of another persons work would propoly be better at teaching then a person writing their own work. But, of course the work being looked at must be by someone who knows what they are doing. A elemntary students "who am I" essay would be useless, but a profesinal writer's work would help. In reading over another person's work will let the student understand the content better then writing their own work especally if the student is not a good writer. Reading is easier then writing to understand "what does it say?" Analysis "how does it work?" will also be accomplished in reading another's work. Interpretation "what does it mean?" can be accomplished if the student truly works on the assignment. The only aspect that may be had to accomplish is integration or "how can I use it?" This aspect can be worked on easiest for like a journal article that applies to the student, or a research paper that applies to the modern world. If you start simple, or more literal and work from their to more complex mental work then the student will more likely grasp the concept and truly understand the literary work.

Research Topic

Germany, Soviet Union, and Japan during World War II all commented some of the most heinous crimes against the civilian population in their own country or opposing countries. These crimes against humanity may have been thought up by the high command of their countries but the crimes were committed by the lowest members of the military. To say they were "following orders" just can not explain the millions dead. The lowest soldiers and even their own civilians held great hate for those they see has their enemy. But, in years before they were not killing each other with this much gusto. Propaganda is one of the ways to explain how the leaders ensured that their malice will was carried out. Propaganda may have and bad connotation, but it can also achieve wonderful things...depending on your view point. Example being US propaganda against Germany, Italy, and Japan helped to motivate the population to win the war. Good for us, bad for them.

Summary

Poorly worded questions for writing assignments cause problems for both the writer and the teacher/ audience. A writing question such has "Describe the top of your desk" is a poor question to ask. The question lacks important information needed to properly begin writing. Information like who is the audience, what information is needed about the desk. This question along with many others like "pretend your an animal" then become nothing more then a meaningless writing exercises for a grade. Some questions like "my hometown" are so vague that it causes problems for writing. On the opposite end a question like "comment on the following statement and do you agree or disagree with the statement," are so exact that that they restrict the writing process. Other questions like "assume you have wrecked the family car" does not tell you were to go with the work. A good question would include; the students interest in the subject, purpose of writing to the audience, the role the student takes in regards to the subject and audience, the form of discourse, and criteria for success. Without these points the question will become hard to answer due to the lack of guidance for the writer, and for the case of writing criteria, lack of guidance for the grader.

Blog 1

My writing process normally is sitting down at a computer and writing. I normally correct mistakes (spelling, grammar,thesaurus-izing) has I go, and when I complete my work I read over and correct any leftover mistakes or reword some parts without printing out a copy. Although, the prewriting process will be different depending on the subject of the work. I writing a summary or insight on a book or story I read the book or story. Then continue in my normal fashion, but my work will most likely contain statements cited from the story. If I am writing about a subject that I already know about, but still require source information, I will find a few statements and put them in with out really reading the works I cited. For papers that I require research but do not have to provide note cards I will use the internet and library to find sources. I will read those sources, but only take random notes on things that are hard to remember like dates, names, quotes, cities, chemical names, and the like. Also, I will get the information needed for the works cited page. If the teacher requires the note cards then I write information that I do not need has fluff to make the teacher happy. And, of course, the information for the works cited page. There has only been a one writing assignment that I chose not to do, and that was about Great Expectations for that teacher I made reference to in the second blog entry. But, normally I do choose to writing the assignments given to me. Also I normally do not have others revise my work due to me wanting to show what I can do and not what a small army can do.

Summary2

The chapter starts by giving the book's author Lindemann's way of starting writing. She also states that this process of beginning to write is different for each person. But, she still says that the three steps to people's writings are prewriting, writing, and rewriting. The first part of prewriting is the person needs to accept that they are going to write. Another part of prewriting is that the person needs to answer the questions about purpose, audience, point of view on the subject, and the code. These steps can be and usually are done mentally. The planning of the writing also helps to develop the writer's message, and asses the writer's own feeling to the message. The process of writing simply changes the mental message in the writer's head to a physical message that can be read. Rewriting is the actions of editing and revising ,proofreading. Editing is fixing the mistakes like grammar, spelling, comma splices,... Revising is the systematic improvement to the text, example being moving sentences around to improve the flow of the message. The problem with the rewriting process is that writing teachers make rewriting more has a punishment to correct the mistakes. This causes many students to stay away from the messy first drafts that are needed for proper writing.

From the start Lindemann states that the writing process is different for all people. This difference does not seem to include the tree basic steps of prewriting, writing, and rewriting. The difference seems to be more about the actions a person takes for these steps. At the start Lindemann says that she(?) clears off the kitchen table and spreads her work and notes on the table. This is how she writes but the differences do not seem to include the three steps of writing. The differences are more like where, and how they write instead of there being different process like Lindemann implies, like there are four steps or five steps to the writing process. The again the generic nature of the words cover all aspects. Prewriting, writing, and rewriting covers all writing periods just like past, present, and future covers all time periods. A better subject for this chapter would be the different styles of prewriting, like web graphs, brainstorming, and the like. But the end of the chapter with regards to the writing teachers putting emphasis on rewriting has punishment and causing messy first drafts to become rare seems out of place. Before we turn anything in to a teacher the first draft would have been rewriting already and the copy giving to the teacher would be post rewriting. Lindemann seems to think that teachers want a first draft, but almost all writing assignments that I have had, the teacher would rip off my head for turning in a rough (1st) draft instead of the rewritten final draft. So the messy first drafts still exist for me, but they get revised and edited in to the final draft. The use of the teacher reference by Lindenmann is more of a warning to teachers that continuation of correction of grammar and spelling is not has important has the message of the work. The concentration on grammar and spelling will produce writing robots instead of surfers that ride the ebb and flow of the written messages.

Summary 1 Response 1

This chapter gives a brief history of rhetoric. Rhetoric began 2500 years ago (about 492 B.C.) with Corax of Syracuse. The word rhetoric in modern times, to common people, as a negative connotation. But, modern scholars and people of the past saw the word rhetoric with a positive connotation. During the classicial age rhetoric was normally a spoken action. Also in the classical age there were five departments of rhetoric. One of those departments was style. Style itself consisted of three parts. During the middle ages rhetoric turned from being spoken into a written art. From the Renaissance to the twentyith centary three points of view were added to rhetoric works. These three were scientific, elocutionary, and literal. These view points did not change the writing methods but showed the complexity of rhetoric works. In modern times linguistics, anthropology, psychology, philosophy, semantics, politics were added to the list of view points.

The chapter title of "What do Teachers need to know about Rhetoric" implies that some were in the work that there will be a definition of rhetoric. Teachers need to know what words mean. Yet, in the chapter there was not good concrete answer to the definition of rhetoric, "...both practice and a body of knowledge describing the practice." What practice ? Baseball, soccer, polo? Although the historical development of rhetoric is interesting to me it still would be nice to give a modern definition to and old word. All the points of view, in the world do not help answer what the word means, and you need to know where to stand before you need to know where to look. The chapter seems to be more "sing-songy" novel than a fact based text book to be used has a teaching instrument. I hope the actual writing of rhetoric is less complex then the attempts of defining rhetoric.

Writing Style

Before writing I research the appropriate material (for papers requiring research) or read the story that I am writing about (for book summaries/reviews/...) . Then before I turn on the computer I think about my course of action, how I want to approach the subject. Like where I want certain ideas or points. Thinking of the paper more has spoken words and not pixels on a screen. Background noise (T.V. /radio) does affect my in that I may work slower, but on the other hand the background noise can help me in giving me extra ideas(fluff) or even giving me new words to use in the paper(rarely occurs). Has I work, I try to have complete thoughts and sentences, the idea of throwing down words and hashing them out later bothers me. I will sometimes get caught up revising a work that may only be a few sentences long, red lines in Microsoft word also bother me. But, when I work on a paper I prefer to work it to the end in one sitting/day, I can't sleep if I am thinking about the paper.
The paper I am most proud of was a persuasive paper about death penalty. I provided, what I and everybody else with a brain, saw has strong evidence that helped to strengthen my argument. I did not receive a good grade on it due to the teacher having the belief that she is god and her way is the only right way (she's against, I am for). The work that I am least proud of is a interprtation of a poem for some poem for the same teacher. I got an A on the paper, but that is because I wrote what she wanted to hear and not what I believed.

Intro to me

Michael Dorfler-Secondary Education Social Studies

Goal after graduation is to get a job has a high school history teacher due to me preferring history. I am a certified SCUBA diver since 2003. English is not my strong point, I forget items like what a past participial phrase is. My spelling skills are also pretty bad. Hence me going for secondary education social studies instead of an author. I myself am the youngest of three sons, and the only member of my family born in the south.