Response to Workshop 4: Different Purposes

Jessica Sumpter

English 484

February 16, 2008

Informal Response

Workshop 4: Different Purposes

How important is it to teach students to write for different purposes? Very important, I would think. Students need to know what to do with different writing expectations. They need to know when to and when not to use an illustration, or a statistic, or an anecdote.

Not really understanding what they mean by genres. I’m a reader, so to me genre means horror, fantasy, mystery and so forth. I think they mean things like a narrative, or poetry, or an article. This is a different way of thinking about genre for me. I’m coming across that a lot in this class. I would call form or structure what they are calling genre.

I think getting the students to use many different forms of writing is a really good idea. When I was in high school I remember only two assignments that weren’t in essay form. One was a short story, one was a sonnet. In fact, I’ve been thinking about ways to utilize different forms of writing in the unit lesson project for class.

I really like the monster exercise. I think it’s a really concrete way to get students to understand that writing for themselves and writing for others are really different things, and require different skills. The student comments in the video tell me that the exercise accomplished its goals well.

So far, I’ve been surprised by the student comments in the video. They’re more willing to be constructively critical of each other’s writing than I would have expected. Too, the student’s are asking, “what could I have done differently?” And I think that’s a really good thing. It means they’re open to improving their own writing skills, again, much more than I would have expected. I think it’s good for me to realize the students aren’t going to break if you tell them they did something wrong, or needed to do it in a different way.

One of the teachers talked about one of the core beliefs I have about writing. No matter what you do, you will have to know how to write well. It’s not something that’s been emphasized in my schooling experience, but I think it should be. Further, it provides a reason for the student to learn how to write well. What is the chief complaint about school? “I’m never going to use this in my life.” If we can give students a reason to learn, I think they’re likely to learn more, to internalize more of the writing skills they need to succeed.

Poetry as a microscope of language…that’s awesome. I connect to the truth of that statement without being able to articulate why it’s true.

Purpose is interconnected to genre…okay. I think I can see it. I want to explore the way you can use one set of facts or statements in many different forms.

I also really like the model exercise, where they built a physical model of an essay, generally, or referring to a specific piece of work. I think it’s a really good way to get them to think more abstractly than concretely, and further their understanding. It reminds me of the exercise we did in class where we drew ourselves as writers.

Assignment evaluation using TSW p. 552

Jessica Sumpter

English 484

February 16, 2008

Assignment revision

Unit Design Project: From Theory to Practice

1. The purpose of the assignment is pretty clear. It’s a learning exercise where we show that we can relate the theory of teaching writing to the practicalities of teaching writing. It’s a way for us to further develop our own pedagogy.

2. I think this part of the assignment could be better. I think I know what is expected of me, but there are parts that I’m unsure about. Really unsure about.

3. I don’t think there is too much to the assignment. I think there could be more structural guidelines included.

4. I think the assignment could be more focused, a sort of here’s what you’re doing…

5. I think this assignment could be very exciting. I definitely think that the student’s minds will be engaged.

Response to TSW 144-193

Jessica Sumpter

English 484

February 16, 2008

Informal Response

To begin, I want to point out that there was one rewriting technique that I was sorry to see was missing from this chapter, and that is to read each sentence of your paper in reverse. That is, read the last sentence, then the sentence before that, and so forth. I think it’s a valuable strategy because each sentence must be able to stand on its own, and reading it in reverse will reveal grammatical, structural and unity issues. Also, because sometimes a paper makes more sense to the writer than it does to the reader, this technique will help to offset that so the writer can see it the way a reader will.

For the most part, I agree that revision should be taught, and encouraged, but not required. I myself write recursively, editing and changing as I go along, so a formal rewrite doesn’t work for me because once the paper’s done, I’ve already done most of the needed editing. I read my paper a lot as I write it, constantly changing it to accommodate whatever new idea I get as I write, and to ensure that the paper works as a whole. However, I think it’s important to know different revising techniques, just in case. Also, I find that I take something I was taught in class, and while I wouldn’t use it the way it was taught, I find that with a bit of modifying, works well. Mostly, though, that applies to particular assignments.

Unity and coherence are essential in a paper, but I don’t like either the TRI or Christensen’s methods. I think they just overcomplicate an already delicate problem. I just can’t see, especially with the TRI method, saying to my class – okay, now we’re going to revise our papers, but first you have to learn a new method that involves you memorizing what particular letters stand for so you can label your papers. Nope, just can’t see it, mainly because I would have hated it. I would have thought it was just extra, unnecessary work that I could function just fine without.

I think the idea of using repetition to ensure unity is a good one, but again I think the text over complicates things. Allen Emery explained it quite well, I think. Use key words from your thesis throughout your paper. There should be key words in every topic sentence of every paragraph, and if you go more than a couple sentences without repeating any key words, you’re probably going off track. I like it; short, sweet and to the point.

Teacher student conferences can be very useful to those who need it, but I never found it very useful. I would say, if you’ve commented on their paper, and they are still having problems, then use a conference. I was able to go by the teacher comments to revise my papers, but didn’t need the extra guidance of a conference.

Interview/Response Essay

Jessica Sumpter

English 484

February 10, 2008

Interview/Response Essay

Are There Differences Between Trained and Untrained Writing Teachers?

We are going to school to learn how to be good writing teachers. As we go through our schooling we are being exposed to numerous ways of teaching writing. Our classroom experiences combine with our personal experiences to help form our teaching philosophy. Before we ever set foot in a classroom we have a good idea about what is going to go on once we get inside because we’ve been exposed to the different ways of accomplishing our teaching goals, and we’ve formed our opinions about which we think will work best. What about a teacher who had to learn how to teach writing on-the-fly, so to speak? What types of strategies would such a teacher develop, and how much would they resemble the strategies taught in the classroom before we are sent into classrooms of our own?

I was able to interview such a person, though it was not by design. I chose Allen Emery, an associate professor whose English 201 Introduction to Literary Genres course I took my first semester here at BGSU. He’s been teaching for thirty-two years, though not all of them here in Bowling Green, and he considers himself primarily an literature teacher, not a writing teacher. I started our interview by asking him how much time he spends teaching writing versus how much time he spends teaching literature. He responded by saying that in the one writing class he teaches the ratio is about sixty percent writing to forty percent literature, but in his other classes it’s more like eighty percent literature to twenty percent writing. If I were teaching a literature-focused course, I probably wouldn’t spend very much time focusing on writing either.

I thought that his assessment was interesting for a couple of reasons. First, it really illustrates that even in a writing class, literature is a very important part of the process of learning writing. Second, his response tells me that in any given literature course, you are expected to know how to write well when you walk in the door. It makes me think about how effective or ineffective high schools are in preparing their students for college-level courses. The level of guidance through the writing process in high school far exceeds anything encountered in a college literature course.

How could high school teachers, especially those that teach senior courses, better prepare their students for the next level of independence in essay writing? I think it is important for high school seniors to have at least one writing assignment that accurately mimics a college assignment. In fact, high school teachers could get those assignments from local community college professors, many of whom would probably be more than happy to help. I think it’s important for students to know what to expect in college, and to know that they have the ability to perform.

In response to my second question, what is one thing every writing teacher should know, Professor Emery said every writing teacher should know what good writing looks like. “You got to have a sense of the ideal, so you can bring people toward it,” he remarked. I both agree and disagree with this statement. Of course, I do think it’s very important for teachers and students alike to know what good writing looks like, how it flows, how it’s organized. The part I disagree with, however, is showing a student a piece of writing and saying this is good writing, this is what you should be aiming for. Doing so could create a lot of unnecessary anxiety in students. Students may feel they are being expected to do things that exceed their abilities, whether they really are or not, even at the college level. I would give my students a lot of reading to do, pointing out certain techniques that were used well, but I would emphasize that there are many ways to put a particular technique to good use. I think that way students will be able to look at a good writing, know why it’s good, and yet not feel locked in to whatever way that particular author used a technique.

Another interesting response came when I asked whether Professor Emery had ever changed his teaching strategy. He said that eight or nine years ago he “began to use a lot of short informal papers in my literature classes and that’s been, I think, a successful technique.” Later, he adds that in his literature courses the papers get better as the semester goes on, even though he doesn’t give them any structural or grammatical guidance. “I think it’s partly just the writing practice, and also all the reading that they do” Professor Emery said as an explanation for why the papers get better. Another benefit he adds, is that “it’s kind of a sneaky way of getting them to write a lot of papers, so they have to come up with a bunch of different topics, and deal with a lot of different texts, and organize a whole bunch of different papers, and so forth.”

I think it’s particularly interesting because right now we are being taught how important it is to get our students to write, and to write a lot. Even Professor Emery’s reason for switching to a lot of short papers confirms the reasons why it’s so important to get our students writing. He said that he would go into a class, and there would be no discussion of the texts, but since switching, there’s always abundant class discussion. In other words, without those papers that accomplish many goals at once, there was no discussion, no exchange of ideas, and no writing practice, all of which, we are told, is very important to developing writers. I think discussion is immensely important to thought development. I think the best classes are those whose transcripts read more like a conversation than a lesson. Well, here is confirmation that messages about getting the students are one to which we should be paying attention. I think the most interesting thing, though, is that the papers get better in structure and grammar without any guidance. It tells me that reading has a direct effect on the quality of writing a person does, regardless of any guidance.

Having students write a lot of small papers ensures that they do the assignment associated with the paper, but that is the least of the goals of such papers. They also get the student to think about a topic, to develop ideas, and through reading and writing they develop critical thinking skills. Also, the whole time they are continuing to learn about writing itself and mastering the skills that go along with it. Really, it gets them to use an entire skill set that goes along with the ability to write well.

Another way that a lot of writing assignments work is because they don’t seem as intimidating as a longer, more formal piece of writing. Professor Emery said that they don’t take very long to write so “they’re not that daunting.” This is another topic that we have covered, particularly in the workshops in Writing in the Middle. They talked about making the writing process seem less intimidating, which was an odd concept to me at first, but I think I understand it better now, especially now that I see the concept applied to college literature courses. Four two-to-three page papers does seem a lot more doable than one seven-to-eight page paper, like there’s not so much riding on it that way. I think in my own classes I would do something similar with having many short papers due, but I think I would also have just one long paper due, to give them practice at really developing one idea as much as possible.

I also asked Professor Emery about the numerous handouts he gives to his English 201 classes, in particular, I asked him about his goals with those handouts. He said that while he covers the material in class, it gives the student something to refer to after that. Also, he said, it’s so if a student is having a problem, he can refer them to the proper handout without having to repeat everything again.

Personally, I found the handouts quite useful. There must have been about eight of them, and they covered particular structure and grammatical topics. For example, if I was having doubts about my thesis statement, then I could just pull out the handout and check my thesis statement against the checklist on the handout. I found it comforting to know that if I were having doubts about something I had the handouts to refer to, it made me less nervous about turning it in and having it graded. I do think handouts, when done right, can be a useful tool, but not one that we should rely on too much.

However, I think if a student still has questions about a topic covered on a handout it’s important to make sure the student’s problem is either covered in the handout so I can refer them to that, or, if it’s not in the handout, give the student the extra guidance the student obviously needs. This is not to say that Professor Emery just said look at the handout and left it at that. He was very willing to help students that needed extra help.

I also asked Professor Emery what he thought the biggest benefit of being able to write well is. He answered, “There’s two things. It’s very pleasurable to be able to express yourself to other people. Because otherwise we’re sort of imprisoned in ourselves. We feel good when people understand what we’re saying. I think there’s just a gratification for the writer in being able to communicate clearly. And then, writing can be very empowering, because you are often in a position in life to influence other people, to persuade them of things, to motivate them to act, to dissuade them from things, to get people to cooperate. There’s all kinds of goals that you might have.”

The first reason is the most obvious and one I hope is common to all writing teachers; enjoyment. I enjoy writing, and I gathered from Professor Emery, through his comments about his own professional writing, that he does too. I think how much we enjoy writing directly affects our ability to teach it effectively. I would be happy if I could transfer a little of my own excitement to just one student, it’s what I think of as the reward of teaching.

Second is the ability to communicate. I think, as human beings, language is the greatest gift and our most powerful weapon in life. And we do feel good when we are understood, when what we meant to convey is what we actually conveyed. Also, it ties into the other reasons he gives, all of which could be termed the ability to influence people. Interestingly, the ability to influence people comes with it an awareness of others’ ability to influence us. It kind of makes us recognize techniques being used on us, because we see it as something we would use ourselves. I think it’s important these days with the advertising and politics people are exposed to all the time to have an awareness of the purposes such writing has.

Later, I asked Professor Emery why he became a teacher, and more specifically, why an English teacher. He said that his family is full of teachers and he never really imagined doing anything else. However, he chose English for the simplest of reasons; he really liked it. As a history major working on his honors thesis he says he was running out of history courses to take and so took an English course to supplement his schedule, and his decision to change majors stemmed from how much he liked the English courses he was taking.

Professor Emery says he also thinks English literature is more diverse “because in English I can talk about history, I can talk about political science, I can talk about women’s studies, I can talk about ethnic studies, I can talk about death, religion, sex, you name it.” This diversity is something I enjoy about English literature and writing as well, and I think it’s one of the strengths of language. It’s also important for students to be aware that works of fiction are used to make relevant comments about society, people, government, life, or anything else you can think of.

I asked Professor Emery if he thought technology had affected his teaching. He lauded the invention of the word processor and basically said that technology has affected his teaching in a positive way although he does have reservations about online teaching. On the whole, I agree with him. It’s wonderful that we can do research now from home, even order library books online, and the ability of word processing to edit has saved a lot of trees. However, something must be lost in trying to teach an online course. I think it stifles the flow of ideas, how one person’s idea can enhance or complete another’s.

One of the final questions I asked Professor Emery was about useful materials that he would recommend. He mentioned one series of books in particular, called American Literary Scholarship. They review all the articles and books that came out that year on a particular author. He gave examples like Melville and Poe, and said before these books he would have to pour through a ton of journals to find the information that’s in this one series. I think this could be a valuable tool to teachers from the junior high level up. I remember doing a project on Emily Dickinson in junior high and I think it would have been extremely valuable to me to see what other scholars were writing about her then as a way of connecting her to my own time rather than just as a historical figure. Even more, it would have been valuable just to know that people were writing about her at all. It would have given greater relevance to the assignment, more meaning.

I was surprised to learn that Professor Emery doesn’t do a lot of reading for enjoyment, though he did cite lack of time as his main reason. I really enjoy reading, and I’m in the middle of at least one book at any given time, and even if the only time I have to read is while waiting in line, or in the few minutes before class starts I count it as time well spent. To be honest, I got that advice from Stephen King’s book, On Writing in which his main point is that if you’re going to write, you’d better be reading, too.

Overall, I learned a lot from my interview with Professor Emery. I think it’s valuable to know that the strategies we’re being taught in school now as standard methods match up with the strategies a teacher comes to on his own without the benefit of learning these strategies beforehand. Sometimes it’s hard to imagine these strategies at work in a classroom from reading a chapter about them.

Response to TSW 56-110

Jessica Sumpter

English 484

February 13, 2008

Response Question

In chapter two, teaching prewriting, Beth Neman discusses several different ways to do prewriting. She includes in that a short discussion on deductive and inductive reasoning. However, there’s only one short part about inductive reasoning. I’m really not clear on how the strategies are inductive at all. How do these strategies work within inductive reasoning?

Response to TSW 537-558

Jessica Sumpter

English 484

February 6, 2008

Response question

In chapter 14 of Teaching Students to Write, author Beth Neman discusses, among other things, focused versus unfocused assignments. The text leans towards always offering students focused writing assignments. I’m not sure that I agree with that. Middle school and high school assignments that are always focused do not prepare the student for the unfocused college response essay. Isn’t part of teaching writing teaching the student how to focus their work independently?

Introduction paragraph to intervew/response essay

Jessica Sumpter

English 484

February 4, 2008

Introductory Paragraph

People who went to school to be writing teachers probably have some pretty definite ideas about the way to teach writing. What about a teacher that had to learn to teach writing on-the-fly so to speak? What types of strategies would he come to use, and how much would they resemble the strategies students are taught about in the classroom before they are sent into classrooms of their own?

Response to Making Writing Meaningful

Jessica Sumpter

English 484

February 4, 2008

Informal Response

Write in the Middle, workshop two is about finding meaning in writing. One of the teachers has the students write about current events and in their summaries they relate it somehow to their personal lives. I really like this idea, I think it’s a good way to get the students to talk about their lives, current events, and how current events affect their lives, especially since that is not always clear. It could also foster lifelong community involvement. Would it be too limiting to the students to confine them to local events/issues/stories?

The teachers in the video talk about getting the student connected to the world outside the classroom. I remember junior high and how focused everybody is on their own lives, which is mainly due to the changes that kids at that age are experiencing. It’s all about who is or isn’t going out with who, what their parents aren’t letting them do, and about what is cool that week. I think it’s a really good idea to get them thinking critically about the news and media, to get them thinking about what is happening in the rest of the world because it’s really hard to get into the habit of that later in life. Frankly, it might even help them feel more normal, or better about themselves because kids can feel isolated and/or different at that age, even when they’re not.

Using technology is another focus of the video, which is almost ironic as I’m using technology to view the video in the first place. However, I do agree with them. Technology needs to be integrated, somehow, into course work. More and more the internet is the way we’re communicating with each other, the way we do research and get news, so I think it’s really important that they become comfortable with it early.

Reading and discussion are another topic that kept coming up as leading to writing. In the interview I did Professor Emery said that reading good writing is essential to producing good writing. I agree with them, reading is important to writing.

There was one teacher on the video that incorporates song lyrics into his course, which I really like. When I pictured teaching high school I always wanted to use song lyrics, only I was going to use them for a grammar exercise. I really like what he did with them though.

Several teachers talk about the importance of giving the students choices about what they write about. I think it only makes sense because student interests are so varied, that if we’re going to get their writing to be meaningful, giving them choices is necessary.

Warm-up exercises. I go back and forth about warm-up exercises. I believe a daily journal is a good idea, but I wouldn’t necessarily require them to answer the prompt right away. I think a warm-up should always pertain to the topic of the day. Kind of like a way to start them thinking, or start discussion.

Response Question to TSW 38-55

Jessica Sumpter

English 484

January 30, 2008

Response Question

In the second chapter of Teaching Students to Write the author talks a lot about the thesis of a paper. First, she goes over several different ways of teaching students how important a thesis is to a paper, like analyzing articles and other essays. Then, she goes over how to help students develop their own theses. How could technology like the internet be incorporated into assignments that are designed to teach the student that having an organizing principle is universal to all writing?

Response to the Peter Elbow Interview

Jessica Sumpter

English 484

January 23, 2008

Response Question

I found the Peter Elbow interview very interesting, and there are a lot of things he talked about that I would like to explore further. However, one concept that interested me particularly is the concept of the four levels of the audience relationship; private writing that nobody sees, writing that people see, but without responding, shared writing where there is some sort of feedback (teacher or peer), and writing that gets criticism. I’m interested especially in the last two levels – writing with feedback, but not anything negative, and writing that gets criticism. First, how can you give writing without criticism? I know he talks about non-evaluative comments, but there wasn’t enough information in the interview for me to get a clear idea of what he means. What are the main differences between the two levels that affect the comfort level of the student?