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.