Final trip to the Boys & Girls Club

This afternoon concluded our last trip the Boys & Girls club to help the kids on their digital story projects. The original student that my partner and I were assigned to the first visit to the club was absent last week as well as today. Instead, we were assigned to the student that Gyra and Allie had been previously working on. She already had a lot done--her interview had been completed and script had been written and recorded. The student brought her camera in and wanted help to upload the pictures and compile everything on the computer to produce the actual digital story. It was hard connecting with her and I am note sure why. I don't think it had anything to do with her interest in the project because she certainly was on a roll with getting stuff done and we could tell she was immediately ready for the next step. In contrast to the original student we had been assigned to work with, today's student had interviewed her father and uncle and I think that by having a personal connection, she definitely had much more of an incentive to complete the project. In comparison to working with the student this past Saturday for the CCE's college mentoring program, I think today's work with the student felt less like a type of "consultation" and more like a computer expert tutorial.

Reflections on Saturday's College Mentoring Experience

I would like to begin this post my sharing the one of the most embarrassing thing that has ever happened to me. I was at d-hall prior to having to be at the Commons to meet with the student again that I had met with earlier in the semester to consult with her on her college admissions essay. I had just filled a mug with steaming hot coffee and was taking my tray of eggs, bacon, and some other incredibly unhealthy breakfast food to sit back at my table. Before I knew it, I was on the FLOOR in front of what seemed to be a million people during prime d-hall time because I had slipped and fell, pouring my food and coffee ALL over myself and the floor with a lovely loud crashing noise to accompany my fall. About 5 people came over to see if I was okay and see if "needed any medical attention" but I told them I was fine minus the fact that I was thoroughly humiliated. So the point of this story is that I reeked of coffee and eggs during my session with the student but nevertheless, it still went very well!

We grabbed two chairs to sit down and discuss her essay and right away I began the session by telling her about my traumatic d-hall experience and warning her about my stench. At least as a positive to what had happened to me earlier that morning, it nice being able to easily have something to use to start things off and create a comfortable environment because I could tell she found the story pretty funny.

She took out a copy of her "main" essay that she wanted me to review. I don't quite remember exactly, but the topic was something along the lines of "write about an experience in which you've overcome an obstacle". Luckily, as I had learned the first time I worked with her, this student was not stumped with what to write about; she had plenty of valuable content to share because unfortunately, she had spent half of her life living in Afghanistan under harsh Taliban control. In this essay, she began with a very intriguing opening paragraph that described her limitations in life and later on in the essay, got more specific and connected her story with her future goals and aspirations. It was beautifully written so as a writing consultant, my job was easy for the most part. I asked her what she wanted to work on and she said that it was a little too long for the word limit so we decided to go paragraph by paragraph and find sentences that were either repetitive or too wordy. Working paragraph by paragraph was a great tactic to go about reviewing her paper with her and as we did, I read every sentence aloud. This helped us indicate areas or sentences that were a little unclear as well as places where she had conflicting verb tenses. Another thing I didn't even pay attention to until mid-way through writing this blog post was that she is an ESL student. The fact that she has gone to high school here is a possible explanation, but both times I was working with her I never really realized any struggles that arose from a language or culture barrier. At the end of the session, she expressed a lot gratitude and I could tell that she got a lot out of our 45 minute meeting which was a good feeling. I really enjoyed this experience because the student had a lot of interesting in working with me and I could truly sense the positive resulting benefits to both her and I. A final observation I'd like to note is that the last time I had worked with this young girl, another student from our class was working with me but this time it was only her and me and I could tell that by just having one person working with her, she felt less intimidated and more connected and engaged. To reiterate, I think this was a great opportunity and it really felt like a real consultation to me.

Consultation shadowing & Collaboration

Tonight's consultation shadowing was a little different in terms of environment because the session took place within the actual Writing Center room, whereas we usually meet in an office down the hall since another writing consultant has appointments at the same time. In addition, I was never introduced as a shadow this time so it led me to wonder whether or not that had any particular impact on the situation of the actual session. I think I've mentioned this in another blog post earlier in the year, but I have learned in my psychology about concept called the person-situation controversy which is basically concept that a particular situation has substantial influence in our reactions and interactions. This leads me to wonder—do various factors that are unique to each consultation session affect the outcome for the student? I think that this idea also ties into a lot of our class discussions and numerous readings on the atmosphere of the writing center being best when it is interpersonal and collaborative. I have come to see that this word, "collaborative", is a fundamental word in the rhetoric on writing centers. More specifically, our University's Writing Center is established on producing better writers, not better papers by consultant executing this technique of active conversation. Is active conversation a key component to interpersonal and collaborative environment of writing centers? I certainly think so because it requires individuals to collaborate with one another to strengthen and clarify ideas and knowledge. 

Furthermore on the note on collaboration, tonight's session definitely classifies as a collaborative effort. This evening, TWO students came in together to work on a research paper for their first-year seminar class. To be honest, I thought it was rather odd to assign a research paper to pairs of students. Through everything I have learned via the readings (specifically the Hull article if I remember correctly), class discussions, and shadowing a variety of different consultations, I am all in support of collaboration when it is done under the right circumstances. Nevertheless, the two students that sought the help of the writing center tonight had each written different sections of the paper and wanted to ensure they'd effectively merged the individual sections together. One thing that the writing consultant suggested was that their thesis was rather weak—perhaps (and most likely) due to the fact that they had written different parts separately. The writing consultant suggested they talk about it aloud in order to clarify and indicate a stronger, more concrete thesis. Another thing I have observed from this session is that with a research paper, there is more focus on making sure the information is being presented in clear and straightforward as well as carry significance. I also noticed an apparent struggle with research papers (as well as other types of papers) aiming to be informative to the reader without boring them with excessive summary. This also caused the two students to have issues with their paper being too long and which adjusting was actually more difficult than it would seem to be. On a final note, these two students were in their first semester of college and the writing consultant suggested that they try and eliminate areas where they tried to sound academic because it actually makes the sentences more vague and wordy. As soon as she said that, I could immediately relate because that was a major struggle for me when I first got to college and it continues to be. (Which is almost ironic that I include that in this blog because I'm sure some of my posts come across as unclear and confusing to a reader.)

Upon the focus of collaboration, I think there is definitely a correlation to the notion of community literacy. My blog post from November 3rd, titled "Tina article & the topic of Literacy" covers one of the readings about literacy. With these two major concepts at hand and the observations of this specific consultation session, I think another major question arises as to what degree can collaboration enhance literacy? Continuing with this idea, what is the most effective way of utilizing collaboration to improve literacy in the realm of education? The work we did at the Boys & Girls Club and the College Mentoring Program have both yielded different effects yet nonetheless at the core of both of these community projects is the use of collaboration as means of enhancing the literacy of others. Some researching on the University of Richmond's Library website lead me to the article "Helping Diverse Struggling Readers through Reflective Teaching and Coaching" which summarizes the work of improving students' poor literacy skills, highlighting coaching (in other words, a form of communication) as the main strategy used. This article is insightful but it's framework still prompts the question of how to use collaborative processes in their more effective and efficient ways. As writing consultants, it's crucial to broaden our knowledge of one of the fundamental practices of the Writing Center (collaboration)

Boys & Girls Club Round 2

Before heading over to the Boys & Girls Club, I was optimistic that the student my partner and I had worked with the last time would be prepared to share her experiences about her interview (since she loved to talk) and be ready to work on writing her script. When we arrived, we headed right to the Teen Room to meet the students and I did not see our student insight so I just assumed that perhaps she was just on the other bus on her way over. Unfortunately, she never showed up, along with another handful of students that were in the project. That said, surprisingly a few new students arrived but not enough for Julia and I, along with two other classmates, to have someone to work with. I think that perhaps since the project is drawn out over a longer time span, it's more difficult to keep the students from the Boys and Girls Club engaged and interested in completing their projects.

So instead we decided to explore the Boys & Girls club which turned out to be a lot of fun for not only us, but for the students. Julia and I first walked around the Media room were some students were working on their scripts. It nice to see that some students really did have a lot of information to work with and furthermore, it was interesting to observe how the dynamic varied in each group. Julia and I then decided to head down to the other side of the Club and see what some of the students were doing. A group of kids about 8 and 9 years old were preparing chicken with collard greens on plates for the other kids and they absolutely loved doing it and telling us all about it. As Julia was talking to them, I ventured to the side where I saw a bulletin board with a few report cards stapled up. A young boy came up to me and proudly pointed his out to me which showed how he had excellent grades and an excellent behavior report. He was so friendly and he ended up giving Julia and I a (requested) tour of the Boys and Girls Club. It was so nice to aimlessly interact with them and just see how they are both similar and different to us. It's also interesting to see how some are more outgoing and friendly than others. We met another young girl who had a little Step dance off with Julia (who just came in second place this past weekend at our school's step completion). Kids started crowding around and you could tell they were all enjoying the attention and seeing Julia step dance.

Overall, it was definitely not what I expected before arriving but I found today's experience to be enjoyable and lighthearted.

Week 13 readings--Where did the semester go?

Wow, I can't believe there is only one more "weekly folder" of readings after this week. This semester has gone by pretty quickly. I am currently in the process of doing my classmate consultation project as well as making my final revisions to my article response essay from last week. Along with the readings for this upcoming week from the St. Martin's Sourcebook, my brain is about to overflow with all the rhetoric on the writing process and its million of components. At first, I felt that Part I of the reading was a bit all over the place. Then I realized, it was more of a nice and broad overview about everything we have learned thus far about the role of being writing consultants. It emphasized the processes, practices, the technique of utilizing conversation; it talked about cultural differences and the non-traditional student; it also explained the theories and paradigms of the consulting process. To be honest, the first time I heard the word "paradigm" was my first semester of college in an article about leadership for one of my classes. Since then, I have found that many of my classes here love that word and love to apply it to their field of study. After exploring the different stages of writing tutoring, Murphy and Sherwood give specific examples of tutoring sessions. It's almost ironic that the first example, with Darren and Yaroslav, deals with the issue of working with ESL students. In doing my final draft of my article response essay, (which is about ESL students and the role of cultural differences), I have been having trouble taking a clear stance on what the author is saying. However, after reading this short little example, it really helped to clarify that it is indeed important to attribute cultural difference as a major factor of understanding how to best help ESL students with their writing.

The Shamoon and Burns article, "A Critique of Pure Tutoring" took me off guard because I was not expecting to find an article in this book that criticized the whole collaborative, interpersonal, nonauthoritative approach to writing tutoring. The example with one of the author's professors providing direct, blunt criticism to her masters thesis was used to illustrate the beneficial effects of the alternative type of approach--or as the authors would say, contrasting to "orthodox" tutoring practices. After reading this article, I am still unsure as to what to make of it so I guess I will wait until tomorrow's class discussion to weight the pros and cons. I can't tell if I agree or not about what they are saying, party because we have just spent a semester learning the ins and outs of the approach we use in our Writing Center.

ESL

After reading the 4 articles for this week on the topic of working with ESL students and writing an essay on of them for my article response paper, I'm still surprised on how overwhelming I find the subject to still be. I never realized how detailed, complex, and extensive the realm of working with ESL students to be. All four articles made it pretty clear that culture and background indeed plays a roll in the overall structure, composition, and patterns of writing. When writing my article response essay, I found myself to agree with most of what the author, Carol Severino, was saying but I was bothered on how much she attributed the existence of "contrastive rhetoric" to cultural differences. I mean aren't all writers writers? It was really the reading of the Moujtahid article that clarified how distinct differences in writing style exist by culture and I think that may perhaps change my original feelings on the Severino article. I think that because Moujtahid used three different culture to get the point across, it was easier to understand. The Moujahid article also left me to consider if our culture attributes too much of our own style as "the best"...What makes these other styles so "wrong"? Is it just because they're different? I wonder how accepting professors would be to the suggestion that international students adhere to their known style and inform the grader ahead of time about the style and that way they are simply graded by quality of their ideas? Afterall, in life, we always have proofreaders and spell-check but ideas and content is what takes skill, knowledge and practice to develop.

consultation shadowing: hard copy or no copy?

This evening I observed a Writing Center consultation in which a senior student came to the Writing Center to work on a 5-page paper for her a history class, more specifically wanting help with her sentence structure, phrasing, grammar, ect. She had e-mailed a copy of her paper to the writing consultant earlier but had since made changes. She also failed to bring a printed copy of her paper with her so they were forced to view it on a laptop computer. I can see where being a writing consultant can be rather frustrating when the student is less than prepared for the meeting because it does invest a great deal of time out of the session for the consultant to go back through and catch up with where the writer is. And from observing the given situation, I also think it can sort of make the session a bit awkward when the consultant is reading and reviewing for some amount of time while the student just sits there bored staring while they wait. A few weeks ago, I posted about how a student had come into the Writing Center to go over an outline that was on her computer and I mentioned that perhaps this is more useful than having a hard copy so that there is less of a distraction to hinder open conversation. However, after shadowing this specific instance where a student came to review a full-written paper without an actual copy of the paper, I have come to add to my opinion on the situation: I think that when it comes to brainstorming (or being in the very beginning stages of writing), it is more beneficial to not have a sheet of paper (such as an outline, ect.) to stare down at and force rigid structure which can inhibit the flow of new ideas. Thus, being able to have more open discussion to the get ideas flowing (writing or listing as you go so that they can be remembered later when it comes time to put the pieces of the puzzle together).

The writing consultant immediately handled the situation with her strategy of using the document-editing feature on Microsoft word.

Tina article & the topic of Literacy

Christie S. Johnsons article, "Tina: A Portrait of Literature Awareness" shares the authors account of working with a low-income, at-risk student though a program with the Community Literacy Center of Pittsburgh. Furthermore, the experience causes the author to question and explore the broad concept of literacy. I found it interesting how the author shares that the young student, Tina, writes within "two literate communities: that of her inner city hight school English class and that of the literacy program in which she writes with support from peers and writing mentors" (pg 2). I think that this says a lot about how influential  a given situation can toward a resulting outcome. I think I have mentioned this before in another blog post, but I think it's important that we better understand the power of context and recognize its existence because I think as individuals, we often tend to overgeneralize and form false attributions, simply because of our own unawareness.

In regard to this whole topic of literacy and what exactly it is, Johnson provides some applications of literacy such as "literacy as the ability to recite familiar texts", "literacy as performance", and "literacy as function". Of the explanations Johnson provides, I think they are more applications of or reasons for literacy, rather then definitions of literacy. That said, before the author even got into these various descriptions, I formed my opinion that literacy is indeed the bland definition of having "the ability read and write" but I also think the definition of literacy should also emphasize how literacy is the most basic form of communication beyond body language. Thinking back to young children--babies cannot talk but they scream, kick, grab, cry, ect. to communicate their needs but we spend YEARS of our lives in school in order to progress our communication skills and learn the best ways to read and write. Here at Richmond, we even have entire departments dedicated to "literacy" (or major aspects of literacy) such as Communications and Rhetoric, English, and Leadership Studies to name a new.

When Johnson expands on one her specific experiences working with Tina, she stresses how she really wanted to get Tina to make reflections and channel those reflections to find her own self-image as both a student and individual. She mentions how Tina shared a lot about her school and family, which made me think about my experience at the Boys and Girls Club on Monday. My partner and I could really tell that the student we were working with loved telling us all about her life. Johnson states in her article that "reflections are valuable because they give writers a change to explain themselves" (pg 9). I think that is a tactic Julia and I can really utilize when we actually start getting to work on helping the student produce her digital story because she loves to talk and share. Since content is also a crucial element to a digital story and she is only a 6th grade student, I think the use reflection as an approach will help to inspire her ideas and what she really wants to say about her "pearl of wisdom".

Post-Boys and Girls Club experience

When we first arrived to the Boys and Girls Club we headed into the "Teen Room" to first meet the kids we were going to be working with. When the students were asked about the project, a particular young girl seated in the front was clearly most vocal about what the project what about and what it was for. Little did I know at the time that Julia and I would be assinged to work with this particular student. It was nice being paired up to work with Julia because sometimes working with others can be a little awkward but since Julia and I know each other it was rather easy to bounce conversation off each other when we got to talking with the student. As I mentioned earlier, the student was definitely vocal and had a lot of knowledge about the assignment, but that said, she had yet to complete her interview. She informed us that she was suppose to interview a man who did not show up and she was waiting to be assigned another person. When we asked her if she knew anyone in her family she could interview, the conversation shifted pretty quickly into Julia and I learning some vivid and detailed descriptions about her school and her family (which includes a sister whom she has never met in California and a brother who is currently in New York City working to become a famous rapper with the guidance of his agent, Lady DoubleX). It was nice to get her talking (and talking openly) so she could feel comfortable with us, especially since we did not have much to really work with in regard to the project. We talked about some possible interview questions and showed her Ryan's digital story using the Netbook. It was hard to hear the narrative and music of the example we showed her and I honestly don't think she was very interested in watching it. That said, I'd also like to note that I really observed that she came across as a very assertive young women who seemed to have much more self confidence than the average 12-year old so I'm optimistic that working with her the next time will be non-problematic. 

Pre-Boys and Girls Club

This afternoon we are to head over to the Boys and Girls Club and help the students with their digital story projects. Some have done their interviews already--some have not. I am not really sure what to expect since I have never worked with a Boys and Girls club and although we have recently produced a digital stories, I know that the nature of these student's stories is much different than then natures of ours  (the writing process of a professor).

After producing a digital and some extensive class discussion on the new role of digital stories, I think what really makes a story is the presence of a "cohesive message". (If I remember correctly, Julia is the one who coined this term in class so I don't want to take credit for it.) Also, after viewing all of the digital stories in class, I think another important aspect to what makes a story is having a true connection with the audience. The most memorable stories are the ones that catch our attention. I mean think about the stories we remember from childhood books and movies--years and years have passed since we've read those books and seen those movies, yet we can vividly remember the stories they told because we connected deeply with them for some reason. That ties into the question of what makes it interesting? Again, I think a story becomes interesting when the audience is really appealed to that "cohesive message" and some emotion is evoked. (I know for some reason I reference psychology a lot in my blog haha, but there is a psychology concept called mood-congruent memory which basically is the tendency for people to better remember something that has happened when stronger emotions were present at the time it occurred). But that said, I think the digital story needs to also implement the technological features such as music, transition effects, photographs, ect. that contribute to making a strong final product.

So this afternoon, after meeting the student I am going to be working with, I think I'll start by just trying to get the student to talk about what they want to say in their story and maybe even why they chose the person they did. I bet a lot of the students chose someone close to them but haven't thought as to why that person was the one to focus on so maybe that can help generate ideas for an interview if they have yet to conduct their interview. From personal experience, I chose to take a central message and turn it into a digital story but after watching all of the other digital stories in class, I definitely think either strategy can produce a great digital story. As far as how to go about conveying the personality of the person interviewed, how to take lots of information and shape it into a story, and how to chose what central message to take across, and all that stuff--in my opinion, I really think it all just comes down to the actual process. I think as we get working, new ideas come about naturally. I am the kind of person who can make a plan and follow it but when making my digital story, I realized that doing that was actually hurting me. I think when working with the student this afternoon and allowing them an open opportunity to just brain storm will be most beneficial in the end for this type of project.

a no-show shadowing session

My writing consultant and I waited it out for 15 minutes but the consultee never arrived. The consultant told me that the policy of the writing center is to wait in order to allow the student a grace period, then the student gets a "strike" and if they have 2 strikes, they may lose privileges of the using the Writing Center. It was nice to have some free time to discuss the freak tornado that rolled though campus this afternoon (which I am able to witness from my dorm room window!) and sort of break up the somewhat awkward tension when I usually shadow.

the rest of the week 9/10 readings & FAILURE

There were 4 articles to read for weeks 9 & 10 and I blogged extensively on the Sherwood article and the Smith article but I have yet to write anything about the "Redneck" article or the "Ethics" article so I just want to write a few brief points about the two....Firstly, I think the "Redneck" article is pretty self-explanatory and just further illustrates the importance of a writing tutor or consultant role to help a student with clarifying their ideas not proving them with so-called "better" ideas. I can see this being an issue for me in the future because I like to generate ideas more than I like to actually write so if I'm working with someone who has to do the writing I need to be conscientious about not just giving someone my ideas even though I'm not doing the writing. (Not sure if that made any sense as I wrote it.) Secondly, the article about ethics and the "non-traditional" student took a surprisingly different approach to the Smith article about the "non-traditional student. To be honest, at first I was confused about the main argument of the article but after some extensive class discussion, I have a much better grasp on the various issues brought up by the article including the issue between ethics of assumptions/practice/mission, as well as the traditional vs. non-traditional student, working with younger vs. older students, power distribution, ect., ect., ect. In my opinion the bottom line, the whole idea of the personality vs. situation controversy plays a much more fundamental role than even the article emphasized. In other words, at times the situation can overpower the personality of the consultant whereas other times, the personality of the consultant can overpower the situation. (Again, not sure if this is making any sense to anyone but me.)

On to the topic of FAILURE:
I definitely agree that failure can breed better understanding and stronger learning. For example, I did terribly academically 1st semester of college but that failure had enabled me to learning better study skills, be more motivated in my school work, as raise my GPA.
That said, I capitalized the word failure because I think the word itself has a lot of negative attribution and is seen as passive, when it can indeed be an active ingredient to success.

A much needed read

"Apprenticed to Failure: Learning from the Students We Can't Help" by Steve Sherwood was an article that it was about time to read. I would say that this reading differed from other readings in the sense that it wan't about arguing a point so much as about conveying a powerful message. It was written in easy-to-read and comforting tone as it contained a reassuming message about the fear of failure. It was nice to read because this 'fear' that Sherwood elaborates upon does indeed cross my mind because I would by no means consider myself as having some sort of 'writing expert' status and I do feel the day I get handed a paper above my level of comprehension. A question I think we all ought to consider is whether or not good writers necessarily make for good writing consultants?

Sherwood starts the article by recalling a past experience working with a student who had learning disabilities and requested to tape record the session for later use. Sherwood reveals that this ended up disastrous and the tape recorder became an "unpredictable interruption". This makes me think about shadowing writing consultations. Keeping in mind that the student coming into the Writing Center is never aware ahead of time that a thrid-party will be sitting there observing, perhaps the shadow's presence serves as an "unpredictable interruption" to the student.

Sherwood goes on to discuss how we should view failure in a positive light, stating that "failure toughens us" and is "a key to our growth". (On a side note, I think another reason I liked this article is because he often references psychologists and I am currently taking a psychology class so I can easily related to the connections he's talking about.) Anyway, back on subject--Sherwood makes the classic argument that much of our fear of success comes from grades. We've had lots of discussion on grades in class and I think it can continue to be an endless conservation but nevertheless it is important to note the influence that the entire notion of grades has on us as students and furthermore, as writers.

Sherwood goes on to suggest some rather interesting approaches to "cope with the extreme fear of failure" and among them I really liked the idea of "lower[ing] the stakes for writing". As the article claims (and as I agree), this tactic can allow for students to be more expressive if there is less pressure and thus less fear to fail. That said, it's a great idea but I think traditional boundaries pre-established in the academic setting are a little hard to bend.

Lets try and be a little open-minded Mrs. Smith...

I'd like to start by saying that when I first started reading the article, "Non-traditional students in the writing center: Bridging the gap from a process-oriented world to a product-oriented one" by Angie Smith, I was determined to keep an open mind because sometimes I feel that I criticize the readings just for the sake of criticizing them.

Besides the fact that it is the start of the article's title, the mention of the "non-traditional student" is virtually everywhere in Smith's article. I can understand if the author wanted to elaborate on the idea of the "non-traditional student" and correlate it with the use of the writing center but what really bothers me is what Smith defines a "non-traditional student" to be. From her personal experience, Smith is a "non-traditional student" for retuning back to school to earn her degree after spending over a decade in the workforce. Thus, she defines the "non-traditional student" as someone who follows her situation and has been out of the academic environment for a significant amount of time. I can agree with her on that but what bothers me is when she adds a note of sympathy for members of this classification by saying that they have to deal with the big change in environment and they "must re-learn how to negotiate critical writing and thinking skills". Well wouldn't you stay first-year students have to deal with the same issues? High school is a completely different environment and for a majority of first-year students, high school did not nearly demand the same critical reasoning skills that college does.

Further on in the article, Smith makes me dislike her even more when she acclaims that the "non-traditional student" is different because they "want help" and "always come early and come prepared". So are you implying that a 'regular' student is lazy and unappreciative of receiving help? Well I guess if that was the case we should just close the University of Richmond's writing center down completely. She also states that the "non-traditional student" needs to "start from the beginning" and needs help "to go through the necessary processes to get a final product that would be acceptable". Well excuse me Mrs. Smith, but isn't that every college writer's goal?

I can understand making the argument of "bridging the gap from a process-oriented world to a product-oriented on" in terms of writing where the context and situation differs but I don't think Smith has the right, let alone the authority, to define how students and their needs differ when Smith only stands on one side of the spectrum.

Consultation shadowing #4 (but really #2)

So last night was my 4th time going to the writing center to shadow but only my 2nd time actually shadowing a real consultation.

The student that came in was seeking help for a thesis paper she was to write for an International Studies class. Unlike the last consultation I shadowed, this student didn't have a written paper--she came in with a very organized outline and a proposed thesis. She really had a lot of strong ideas but she wanted help to formulate her ideas into a cohesive argument. Pulling a Cazort, I think I'll mention in every consulting post that the consultant started the session by having fill out the pre-consultation worksheet since that seems to be heavily emphasized by the Writing Center. Following this, the consultant asked the other student a lot of questions and the two engaged in conversation about the paper in order for the student to organize her thoughts and clarify what she wanted to write about. One thing I particularly noted was that neither the student nor the consultant had a paper copy of the outline--it was pulled up on the student's laptop. Except for the occasion notes jotted down on the worksheet by the consultant or things added to the document by the student, this session was almost all conversion. I think perhaps the fact that they had the outline on the computer allowed them to have a more natural conversation without a paper, concrete distraction to look down at and pinpoint. Mid-consultation, I also took note to how the writing consultant suggested the student take the time and actually write out some of her ideas (like more detailed explanations) before finalizing a thesis. This particular student had too large of a range of ideas to work from so she really needed to decided which to implement and which to throw out. At the end of the session, the student expressed how helpful the the session was for her to just talk about her ideas before writing.

This student also repetitively referred back to what her "professor wanted". I think that of course, meeting a professors expectations influences the outcome of a paper. But this made me think further about if the presence of my "shadow" sitting there and blatantly observing their session would in some way take away from the consultation. I think there a certain intimacy between the student and the consultant and by having a 3rd party sitting there and taking notes, maybe the student might feel a bit of the spotlight effect and become less hesitant to open up in discussion about her paper. Just a thought.

Apparently, 3rd time really is a charm...

With two initial fails at shadowing an actual consultation at the Writing Center, my third attempt was finally a success.

Before the student arrived, the consultant told me that the student had e-mailed the essays to her earlier (which is usually not a consistent thing). When the student arrived, the consultant had the student fill out the pre-consultation worksheet. The student was an international student and English was not her first language. She came to the writing center to work on a response paper about an assigned article. The paper already had side-comments from the professor but the student informed the consultant that her professor still wanted her to utilize the Writing Center as a resource.

While doing my observations, I definitely saw how the consultant practiced the technique of asking many question in order to get the student to talk about what they were really trying to say. Looking the student in the eye with her hand placed in the middle of the paper, the consultant first asked the student to define what they felt the biggest struggle in writing the paper was. The student immediately replied that she needed her "writing to be more critical". I think if the consultant was looking down at the paper and asked the same question, the student would probably have taken a few moments and tried to find something from the paper. But by doing this, both the student and consultant initially established the main goal of meeting.

The entire consultation was not this broad. This was only the way it began. The session methodically progressed into the consultant asking more specific questions. For example, she asked the student to pinpoint a place in the essay where their summary of the reading stopped and their analysis began. The consultant would also make statements like "from what I understand by reading this is that...., is that correct?".  When doing an essay that integrates other sources, I never really realized how common of an issue it is to clearly decipher ideas and content of the source with the ideas and arguments of the writer. We often come across this issue doing the paper draft reviews in class and perhaps this is something I need to start paying more attention to in my own writing.

At one point, I actually noted how the student would talk about her paper and say the words "what I was trying to say". After all, this sort of characterized a role of the Writing Center and consultation session--to help a student bridge the gap between their ideas and their actual writing of those ideas--what they are trying to say.

I think next time I shadow, it may be more helpful to pay closer attention to the marks the consultant actually puts on the student's paper because I know that is also an important technique utilized by the writing consultant to help the student.

week 7 articles

I'm glad I decided to write this post today opposed to anytime prior because last night, a friend of mine asked me to review a paper for him. I can't even remember the last time I really reviewed someone else's essay for a class I'm not in or haven't taken. We spend a lot of time in this course discussing the editing and revising components of the writing process and every week we review drafts written by other classmates. I think we sometime fail to keep in mind the big role context plays in the consultation process. We have all read the same articles prior to reviewing the paper drafts on those articles and we have all read the same text prior to class discussion on those readings. Therefore, we may subconsciously fill in the blanks that would ordinarily confuse an outsider. 

Richard Straub's article, "The Concept of Control in Teacher Response: Defining the Varieties of 'Directive' and 'Facilitative' Commentary" correlates with Summer Smith's article, "The Genre of the End Comment: Conventions in Teacher Responses to Student Writing". Both of these articles criticize the role and effect that teacher's comments on a paper have in regard to the writer then making changes on their work. As I earlier mentioned, last night I was asked by a friend to review an essay for a class of his in a subject that I know nothing about. After spending way too much time on the first paragraph, I found myself pausing for a second then erasing everything I had written. I had realized that I was marking his words wrong and suggesting language that, in reality, is not how the paper should have been written, but rather, the style and tone I would have used to write the paper. I put my pencil down, reread the paper all at once, and realized his ideas were indeed very strong. I got a clear idea of his argument and main points having not even been given the prompt. But that said, his organization, sentence structure, tone, voice, and word choice definitely needed some time and effort. So along the margins of certain sections, I suggested areas he could be more concise and areas where ideas did not exactly connect understandably. Then at the end, I noted that he should pay attention to the grammar, sentence structure, verb tense, and all that other stuff. 

This experience gave me a connection to both of the articles because I found myself (after a real life application) disagreeing with the overall arguments made by both Smith and Straub. I did not write comments on my friend's paper because I "had to", I wrote them because as a reader, I found myself confused at parts and I was offering him feedback. Writing will never been definite--everything from word choice to ideas is of the author's personal choice. Thus, I think feedback can never hurt because in the end, it's once again the writer's choice on how they wish to apply that feedback to their writing. 

week 6 readings, part II

Earlier this week, I devoted an entire post to Cazort's book, Under the Grammar Hammer. The reading also included a selection from The Bedford Guide for Writing Tutors and a chapter from Hjortshoj book.

The Bedford Guide (pages 45-54):
Hmmm, have we read this before? I am definitely noticing all the overlap in the concepts of course, as well as in this week's intended learning objective of 'style vs. error'.

The reading was about two types of revisions-- global revisions and sentence-level revisions. Just to clarify and reiterate what I took from the readings, global revisions consist of two parts-- development and organization. I think development could almost be a revision type of its own because it refers to the formulation of ideas, main points, support, connections, and analysis. The organization component of global revisions is about how the parts of development listed above are all sort of glued together in a productive and successful way. I think the organization component is really the bridge between developmental revisions and sentence-level revisions. Lately I feel as though the other readings (like Cazort's book) as well as class discussions are starting to limit a degree of importance and attention towards sentence-level revisions. I mentioned in class, a lot of these readings and ideas fail to really acknowledge that some writers need to constantly fix sentence-level mistakes as subconscious means in correcting their underlying ideas. Basically what I mean is that some people aren’t capable of organizing their overall ideas when their wording and sentence structure is in state of disarray.

On a final note about this particular reading, pages 49 and 50 offer "other suggestion for global revision". The first states to "read the paper as naive reader and indicate those places where it needs more details". My opinion is that this actually much, much more difficult below the surface. Changing perspective is not an easy task and that was never really acknowledged by the authors. Secondly, they suggest periodic breaks by paragraph or section to "summarize" or "explain what you anticipate will follow". I have nothing against this point-- I think it’s something that is pretty automatic at this stage in our academic careers, yet nonetheless, it doesn't hurt to reiterate. Thirdly, among the authors "other suggestions for global revision" is "don't overwhelm the writing with too many suggestions for improvement at one time". This third suggestion really rang a bell in my mind, because it definitely correlates to my previous post about how one of the Writing Center consultants telling me how he sometimes comes across working with frustrated writers. I also thought back to working with the high school student from the College Mentoring Program. I definitely could tell that I overwhelmed her at some points. I think basic human nature is what indicates the point of ‘overwhelmedness’.

Hjortshoj (chapter 7):
I'll only mention a few brief points on this reading, as I have just realized that this post is starting to turn into a brief novel.

The chapter is called “Writing in Reference to Others” and to broadly put it, the chapter covers how perception and reference relate to one another. I never realized the significance wording has in deciphering which idea, point, or summary belongs to whom—the writer or the reference. We saw this in last Wednesday’s class when reviewing the article essay draft of the week.  

While I could go on and on about everything Hjortshoj writes about, I’d just like to make the basic point that this reading (as do many other chapters we’ve read by Hjortshoj) tie into the notion of THEORY. After all, this course is called Introduction to Composition THEORY and Pedagogy. I think that sometimes we all forget that concepts and rules of the process of writing that are actually set in stone are incredibly minimal. There is not a defined way to write something-- in fact we call replicating another word as plagiarism. The majority of the writing process is and will always continue to be evolving and changing. Thus, I think it’s important to use this reading to reinforce what we often forget—there is rarely a right or wrong way to write; style and error may conflict, but in the end, the final product belongs to the writer and is dependent on the audience (if one even is intended to exist).

Another epic fail in shadowing..

So this past Wednesday, I was unable to shadow an actual consultation for the second week in a row-- however, this time it was due to my own obliviousness. To be honest, I actually feel pretty stupid because when I opened the door to the Writing Center, I failed to notice the big, bright yellow note on the door stating in big, black, capital letters that my consultant would be doing her session a study room at the library.

Oh the flip side, I was able to get more insight about the “writing consultation process” because another consultant (along with a student from our class) was in the Writing Center and did not have a scheduled appointment. Despite having yet to shadow a real consultation, it was still helpful to get another perspective from a different consultant.

Something he mentioned that had never been brought to my attention before was the issue with patience. I never really thought it would be an issue, but this consultant mentioned how sometimes other students can get frustrated when working on certain parts of their paper. I can understand how many students come to the Writing Center in the first place because they are seeking to revolve some sort of struggle with a given writing assignment. Also, as any Richmond student deals with, time is usually of the essence. The consultant mentioned various ways he deals with a “consultee” who gets discouraged. Interestingly, he mentioned that sometimes the best thing to do is just move on and work on other issues that student needs help with.

It was good hearing how his styles both overlapped and differed from those of the consult I normally will be shadowing. I think perhaps, switching consultants partially through the semester would be really beneficial so that we are not just learning to mimic the tactics of one consultant—but rather, integrate many observed tactics to create a style of our own to help enhance and encourage fellow students as writers.  

Oh, and just to finish this post off, I’ll add that I finally noticed the yellow sign on the door—as I was leaving…clearly this has not been the best week for me!

Why can't everyone write like this?

When I first saw that we were support to read the ENTIRE book, Under the Grammar Hammer by Douglas Cazort, I was a bit speechless. But immediately, when I started reading it, I wished every author that aims at producing some sort of guidebook would consider taking Cazort's relaxed approach. In fact, the tone Cazort uses will be influential when it comes time for me to write my blog papers.

It may differ for others, but I remember very clearly that 7th grade was the year of the dreaded grammar curriculum, which of course included one of those awfully painful workbooks. It's funny because all of that intense work on grammar back in the day isn't what really taught me the insides of English sentence structure--learning Spanish is what did. Learning the Spanish language and Spanish grammar involves a lot of comparisons to English language and grammar and that is really the way I learned the components to a sentence...such as direct object pronouns and all of that other good stuff.

Ironically, on page 20 of Under the Grammar Hammer, Cozart classifies as "Grammar's Top 20 Misses". All of the given examples for these specific 20 rules emphasize how simple sentences are actually stronger then long, complex, fancy-sounding ones. After all the main point of writing is to convey a message, idea, theory, or opinion in a clear, concise matter that the reader can understand, comprehend, and interpret. This makes me wonder where in our academic careers we crossed the line formuling of strong (and often short) sentences, to these confusing (and often overly lengthy) sentences.

The remaining chapters in Under the Grammer Hammer get into more detail about common grammar mistakes, misunderstood usages, and the like. I love how Cazort repeats every single "Rule #1" as, "Write first; edit later". I'm guilty of making probably every error mentioned by Cazort but at least his book reassures me it doesn't matter, getting the content out comes first. (That said, the importance of proof reading must not be neglected either.) This concept made me consider the adverse: do some people write with a lot of grammatical mistakes because they simply don't understand what they are even trying to say? Maybe some writer struggle with their ideas in the first place, so their grammar just reflects that struggle as well. Just a thought to consider…

Finally, I want to briefly mention my person favorite section from Under the Grammar Hammer. Starting on page 101, the chapter "Spelling Is a Four-Letter Word" provides the 5 rules to improving spelling. Honestly nothing Cazort says in this chapter is new to me-- use sources for spelling and the more you read, the better your spelling skills will become. But it was definitely interesting to read a section completely dedicated to my lowest point in the realm of writing. Anyone who really knows me knows that I am a TERRIBLE speller when it comes to regular communication. And of course ‘regular communication’ is just my way of saying Facebook, texting, and email. For those familiar with the game Sporcle, my friends refuse to play with me if I'm typing because my spelling is so bad. And if it weren't for automated texting and automatic spell check, I don't think anyone would ever believe I actually made it to college.

I think Cazort's book might not be the easiest go-to for a grammar inquiry, but it definitely provides a great background to integrate the main concepts of ‘grammatics’. I want to end on a quote that Cazort mentions in the start of the book: “I hope to free you from the idea that the English language is the sole property of English teachers and other authorities on correct usage. It belongs to all of us who use it…” (page 4). That right—even though you might be a business or biology major, you need to learn proper English too.

at this point...

In regard to the blog:
At this point in the class, I felt as though I had been keeping up with my blog posts and doing the weekly readings. I really feel like my blog posts contain strong content, however, with calculating the number of point I have right now, I seem to be behind. I will do some commenting and a few more posts as a goal to get my point number higher.

In regard to the other class assignments:
I have already interviewed my Core professor for the Digital Story project so I feel on-time with that project.
Due to some recent, unexpected, and overwhelming circumstances I missed the deadline for the paper draft so I need to sign-up for another date.
I also just realized the blog paper is due a week from Wednesday.

I think I am very organized so I think I can manage the assignments.

1st Consultation Shadow

So I'm not sure if I'll have much to say about my first experience shadowing the Writing Center considering my writing consultant did not have an appointment during the hour I was there! However, the consultant I was to be shadowing kindly offered to just talk to me about the writing center and it's basic functions. First, Jessie mentioned a few procedural points, like the important of the worksheet that the student fills out when they arrive so that the report can be done as accurately as possible. She also showed me the rack of handouts readily available to both consultants and consulantees that are basically print-outs from the Richmond Writers Web website.

As far as some insight that Jessie offered about the session itself, she strongly emphasized the tactic of getting the other person to do a lot of the talking. Having a draft of the paper to review prior to the session makes a huge difference but nevertheless, asking many questions opens up the gates for the student to then work on correcting structure, argument, clarity, or whatever other issue they have sought the help of the Writing Center for. She explained how this strategy gets the person to talk about their paper the way they want to talk about it, thus helping them clarify their ideas they way they want them clarified. The main point I got out of this was that discussing the topic in a conservational tone rather then in an "academic bullshit" tone, really helps the other student get alot out of the session.

The brief conversation really gave me a strong foundation for some other things to be aware of when there is an actually consultation to observe.

Learning some new vocabulary...

When I first started reading the article, "Youth Culture and Digital Media: New Literacies for New Times" by Glynda Hull I assumed it'd be a normal article discussing all the great benefits of new multi-media projects. Well by the 2nd paragraph I was ready to grab my dictionary. "Multi-modal authorship proliferate", "semiotic systems", and "textual reasoning"??? Whoaaaa. I've somewhat done a multi-media project (in high school) but this article certainly proved to me I need to catch up with my own times. Hull suggests that this new notion is becoming a component of literacy, and educational institutions must incorporate the use of these new technologies into their curriculum. I loved the line from that article that stated how the new world of digital presentation is "reinventing and invigorating what it means to communicate" (pg 230). Hull also finds a nice label to represent the overall process of creating new digital stories-- "compositional strategy". I think the word "strategy" is what the whole thing is really about. You can't just make a digital masterpiece--it requires a plan, and careful execution of that plan. Toward the end of the article, I found myself circling the word "collaboration" since the author stresses its importance. I think collaborating is not only becoming more accepted in the educational atmosphere, but supported too. That said however, I think very distinct differences exist between group projects, unauthorized assistance, and collaboration can it can sometimes get a little fuzzy.

The following are links to two YouTube videos that I think strongly related to this topic.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cL9Wu2kWwSY
I'm sure many have seen this first video since it was very popular when it first came out. But this is a classic example of how digital effects and background music transform the final product to something that really captures a viewer's awe. An interesting thing to note also, is the use of colors... other then black, gray, and white, the video uses all red and yellow for the words.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=42E2fAWM6rA
I love this video as well. In the 1 minute and 45 second duration of the video, it has the ability to shift perspective in a matter of seconds. Music and digital effects (like the "Did You Know?" video above) are what really completes it.

A few thoughts and notes on Week 4 readings

I find it difficult to post on the weekly class readings because it's hard for me to formulate an opinion. I always read and consider what the author's of the articles are saying but with the blog, I almost feel like I need to make some sort of opinion up so that I have something more to talk about then just restating some of the articles main points. I did this a few posts back when I criticized the readings from Hjortshoj's The Transition to College Writing. The following day, Dr. Essid came to speak to our class and he mentioned that this was one of the "best" resources in the realm of writing. Since he is the director of the Writing Center and is clearly an expert in this field, I felt that my ideas were immediately wrong. Later, I realized that it wasn't that my opinions were wrong, it was just that I need to worry less about trying to formulate some sort of opinion and just write about the readings in a more relaxed manner. So my goal for this post on the Week 4 readings is to simply just write about the basic arguments of the articles, connect any ideas, and hopefully as I do so, my thoughts and opinions will naturally come out opposed to being forcefully formulated.

Stephen M. North's essay, "The Idea of a Writing Center" from The St. Martin's Sourcebook for Writing Tutors: Something I noticed and considered was that this article was originally published in 1984...that's a good 16 years ago and it's interesting that the arguments made by North are the same arguments that can be made today. North loves using the words "ignorance", "disappointment", and "frustrated" as he almost complains that people don't understand the proper role that a writing center should play. This article really reinforces the "idea of the writing center" that other articles we've read have similarly argued. A quote I really liked from this article: "Tutors are not, finally, researchers: they must measure their success not in terms of the constantly changing model they create, but in terms of changes in the writer" (pg 39). This reminded me of when Dr. Essid made the point that Richmond's Writing Center doesn't aim at producing better papers, but rather producing better writers.

Jane Cogie's article, "In Defense of Conference Summaries: Widening the Reach of Writing Center Work": This article definitely takes a different approach. It targets the summaries that the consultant writes to the faculty member after the meeting. I honestly never thought about the reports sent to faculty by the consultant as a negative. But Cogie completely changed this perspective. She suggests that the student might carry a degree of anxiety during the session that what they say and do is going to be reported back to their professor and that perhaps, the summary reports lead to a loss of intimacy between the two students working together. I completely disagree. Not only have I never thought of it this way, but when I go to the Writing Center, I can only see a summary report as beneficial. I believe it's basically giving an extra opportunity for an external party to clarify something that the writer may have been struggling with and this might even change how hard the professor grades the paper because they may be a little more sympathetic. Furthermore, the Cogie article outlines the difference between "productive and unproductive summaries" (pg 50) and she clearly indications a preference in "conference summaries" that have "emphasis on the collaborative process" (pg 55). This article also had a bit of a scientific approach because Cogie includes actual research findings about the correlation between the summary reports and the grading process.

It may sound silly, but both of these article made me realize how frequent writing centers are. Also, how similar their practices are. For some reason, I assumed that every school had a sort of "tutoring" option for student essays but I never really realized that the Writing Center really follows a concrete set-up and practice.

Reflection on Saturday's Consultation

This past Saturday, myself and 10 fellow classmates had the opportunity to meet and work with students in the University's College Mentoring Program. This program is similar to an Upward Bound Program and I know that these types of projects have proven tremendous results in there benefit. So that said, I was really glad to be apart of it in someway.

I wasn't really sure what to expect, but right when we entered the conference room where the students were, I along with another 383 student were paired up and we took our "consultee" outside in the hallway for a little more privacy. It was really difficult for find a starting place so we asked to see what she had worked on earlier in the day with Dr. Gale, doing the quick response/free writing questions exercise. (As a little side note: I am also taking Psychology this semester and when Dr. Gale first told us about this drill the students did, I immediately thought of psychoanalytic theory for those of you familiar with Freud haha.) Back on track... we asked our high school student to talk about which ever response she liked the best. Courageously, the one she choose was about her life experiences having to flee Afghanistan because of war. I think I was shocked at first because I was not expecting to hear something that depicted so much struggle and difficultly. Needless to say, it was hard to say things like "Well, thats a GREAT story!" while still offering a lot of encouragement. It was moving that such a young women was able to openly talk about what she had been through. In a way, I think it made the consultation easier then expected by having been paired with a student who was already ready to explore the implications of her story. I also would like to add that I was able to immediately sense that the student we were working with was very open to advice on her ideas and discussing them. She did have a few issues with organization and we often had to urge her to write some things down. Something my partner did which was great, was to write some points down for her so she concentrate on getting her thoughts out and open while not having to simultaneously record them. I noticed myself tending to forget that she was still a high school student and English was not her first (or even second) language. I felt so bad after I asked her about maybe proposing an argument for her paper because I could tell she had not idea what I was talking about. I hope the student we worked with is really able to correlate her incredible story into something that works with what college admissions staff want to hear. Thus, next time I work with the student, I will be keeping that in mind. Oh, and we also learned that she is applying to both UVA and Richmond so hopefully she'll get admitted to both and make the better choice :)

I remember my first (couple) college admission essay(s).....

Yesterday's class discussion had me thinking about when I wrote my own college admissions essay. Before I share, let me just say: I am a firm believer that the only reason I got admitted to Richmond was because of my essay. My test scores were decent and my grades were mediocre. This is yet another exemplification of why I find the power of language to be so important.

I came from a large public high school-- with a student body greater then the undergrad student body of UR. That being said, the college application process wasn't necessarily supported with great magnitude by the school so applications were something students tended work on via their own merit and help of intermediate family. 

At the time, I had always dreamed of going to Tulane University in New Orleans, Louisiana. My parents were far less keen on the idea of me going to school in a city like New Orleans (especially after the recent years following Hurricane Katrina). I decided to apply early action and at the time, I still embodied this terrible characteristic of procrastination which I have since fortunately rid from my ways. The application was due at midnight and I still had not had it finished by late evening and I was beyond frustrated. And because I had waited until the last minute, my parents offered almost no assistance (says a lot about my parents expectations, haha!). From this point on, I can recall scrambling together a very confusing essay that I was not proud of. Nevertheless, I was relieved to be done with the application. Long story short: I got deferred early action. My application was then considered for regular decision and I got denied.

As for my other college applications, I used the Common Application. And this time, I allowed ample time to carefully complete every section. Common App gives five prompts for applicants to choose from and of those five, one of them was simply "a topic of your choice". Knowing myself, I knew immediately that was the prompt I needed to choose because I tend to have difficulty expressing myself when strict guidelines are present. That said, another problem within itself was created-- where do I even start? What do I even write about?

As many stressful and agitating weeks flew by (and as my Tulane defference-wound was still healing), I had made virtually no progress on my essay. At some point between, my mom had randomly sent me an e-mail listing the characteristics about me that she found special to her. Putting all the mothery-like things on the list aside, something that struck me was when she listed my curly hair. For those who know me well, my big, brown curly hair has always been a source of inside jokes, laughter, and it has a deep history. It has nicknames, stories, some rather traumatic experiences, and to top it off, it contrasts my older sisters perfectly pin-straite hair. 

The moral of the story is that I ended up writing my college admissions essay about how my hair served has a metaphor to describe my progress in high school, my personality, and my uniqueness. I also added the physical changes of my hair when I got very sick during my sophomore year as a way of indirectly explaining my lower grades that year. By the time I was finished, I was actually proud of the final product this time. 

A few months later, I found out that I had been admitted to the University of Richmond (a school with similar and overlapping admissions criteria as Tulane University, shall I point out). And as I said earlier, I really feel that properly and clearly explaining a knowledge of my own identity in an essay form had a dramatic impact. I know that this school is, and will continue to become, a crucial influence in the person I grow to become. What if I had never submitted that essay and had been admitted here?

Thinking back to this experience gave me some insight on how to help current high school students as they just now embark on the long process of applying to colleges. I know that the first thing I would do is have a student list everything that they love about themselves or what others love about them; what characteristics do they embody that they're proud of. Simply thinking of a story to share didn't work for me--I really needed to dig deeper, outside the box, and that all started with the list my mom had e-mailed me.


Throwback:

Is it just me, or does everything come in 3s?

Lately I've felt as though things have been coming my way in sets of three... and the same goes for the three readings for week 3!

First off for the readings was The Bedford Guide for Writing Tutors by Leigh Ryan and Lisa Simmerelli. It was an easy guide to follow and I read about the stages of the writing process (stuff I know by now but it isn't bad to review) which include fundamentals of prewriting, writing, and revision. The text goes into more detail but there is no point in relaying that information in this post. Chapter 3 of The Bedford Guide was about the tutoring session itself. Having used the Writing Center a lot my freshman year, I found it interesting to read about the other side. When the authors list *three* effective tools for tutors to consider, I found myself correlating the first and third rules together, which were "active listening" and "wait time to allow a writer time to think". To me this is exactly why I find the writing center useful--because it's somewhere I can go to just simply talk to myself and think to myself, in the given presence of an expert

I found the first chapter of Keith Hjortshoj's The Transition to College Writing a bit on the degrading side. I mean he asks, "Are you prepared for college?". Well chances are, if you have this book in hand, you're beyond the realization that you may or may not be ready to handle the tasks of higher-level education. I had a difficult first semester here at Richmond but I quickly learned to adjust to the quick academic pace and nothing that this author points out would have helped me. I also sort of found his idea with the "mythical college" and "mythical high school" to be on the irrelevant side of the spectrum. Chapter 4 of Hjortshoj text provides similar aspects to the writing process found in The Bedford Guide. In chapter 6 of The Transition to College Writing, Hjortshoj uses "footstool essay" as an analogy for the typical 5 paragraph essay, with an introduction, 3 body paragraphs, and a conclusion. It's not just this author that is doing so, but many people criticize a 5 paragraph form. My opinion is that the number of paragraphs doesn't even matter. Shouldn't it be about the value of the writing, strength of the argument, and quality of the final product?

Finally, we were to a small section from The St. Martin's Sourcebook for Writing Tutors by Christina Murphy and Steve Sherwood. I don't have much to say about his reading except to note the fact that the authors loveeee this idea about 'collaboration'. If executed appropriately, I agree with their notion that collaboration has an overflowing amount of positive outcomes.

Happy Monday!

bUlLsH!t

I thought it would be appropriate to give the article, "A Kind Word for Bullshit: The Problem of Academic Writing" by Eubanks and Schaeffer its very own post. Immediately, before even reading the article, I thought about a PowerPoint presentation I listened to last year on the first day of my English 105 class. My professor, Mr. Carleton, displayed every profane word you could think of on a slide with animation of the words coming at the viewer. His intention was not to offend anyone, but for everyone in the class to realize how the power that language can indeed offend. After all, the point he made was that a word is simply just a word and every factor from society to context is how words (and language as a whole for that matter) carry any bit of significance and communication value.

The start of the article immediately outlines the weight of context that the word "bullshit" has and I had an "ahah!" moment with the connection I just mentioned above.

I loved how Eubanks and Schaeffer use an abundance of examples to really convey this notion. They go on to explain academic bullshit versus prototypical bullshit and the varying degrees of quality that "bullshit" may have. That said, I found it a bit confusing to follow what exactly the authors were trying to argue...Perhaps this is because they were referencing an essay about bullshit by another author, Harry Frankfurt.

Nevertheless, the main message I took away from this article was that as writers, we tend to conform to the audience, the task at hand, or the assignment. But regardless, we must also keep in mind the advantages and disadvantages of doing so and thus channel that into a better production of our work.

And here's a quote from that article to take away and further reflect upon:
"...we have to investigate not whether academic writing is consider to be bullshit but whether or not prototypical academic writing is considered to be prototypical bullshit--and in whose estimation" (Eubanks and Schaeffer, 381)

Finally!

So I have been a little behind in organizing everything for my 5 classes and 1 lab so I'm finally all caught up and now I am ready to stay on schedule with my blog posts!

The reading for the first week of class was the article, "The Rhetorical Stance" by Wayne C. Booth. It was great how this article could serve as a framework for understanding the articles for week 2 of class--especially the Eubanks and Schaeffer article, "A Kind Word for Bullshit: The Problem of Academic Writing". The group discussion in class about all of the articles really helped me make a stronger connection with and think further upon this idea of a "rhetorical triangle". Our group pin-pointed a quote in Booth's article that really outlines 3 angles: "the available arguments about the subject itself", "the interests and peculiarities of the audience" and "the voice, the implied character, of the speaker" (Booth, 141). Discussion on arguments, voice, and audience could be endless but something that really captured my opinion was the topic of the argument. After all, I believe the argument should have a little more emphasis in the triangle then the voice and audience...perhaps maybe a right triangle is needed instead of an equilateral one?

Argument is so powerful because no only is it so dimensional, but it is also so influential. I mean think about our government... our every-day behaviors and actions reflect the winning side of argument that becomes the law which we thus abide. Another thing I love about the idea of arguments is the support for them. Certain arguments can use concrete evidence as back up whereas simultaneously there are arguments which exists that have no possible means of back up and will therefore, continue on and on. Religion, morality, society, ect. are all prime examples of a never-ending arguments where as subject such as symbolic reasoning, science, and mathematical arguments gain support with research and exterior information pertaining to the argument. What is incredible is the word "argument" is used in both situations and contexts.

How much do the audience and voice correlate with the argument? They are really all co-dependent because obviously if there is no audience or voice, there is no argument.