Monday, December 7, 2015

Blog # 11 – Yancey and Selfe

Made Not Only in Words: Composition in a New Key by Kathleen Blake Yancey and The Movement of Air, the Breath of Meaning: Aurality and Multimodal by Cynthia L. Composing Selfe

Wow, I can’t believe this semester has gone by SO quickly! I feel like I just had to say that.

For this week, we read Made Not Only in Words: Composition in a New Key by Kathleen Blake Yancey and The Movement of Air, the Breath of Meaning: Aurality and Multimodal by Cynthia L. Composing Selfe. Both articles were very insightful and presented great information.

In Yancey’s essay she brings in the idea of writing being words on paper but she also makes the connection with writing and the digital world. As I read her essay I thought about our final projects and my experience creating mine. I first drafted a few pieces of my project and as I thought about what I did, I realized that I never used pen and paper. I got on my laptop and used my word processor to draft my piece. I continued to draft my piece until it was completed; all on a word document using my laptop. What I found more interesting about my experience was that when I went to transfer my written vignette into my digital application, I actually found myself revising my piece because the way in which I was presenting it in the digital application almost required for me to change a few of the pieces of my vignette. I found this fascinating because I am still editing my vignette in the digital application and Yancey talks about writing being not only words written on paper.

As I read Selfe’s essay I thought about times where I’ve been in a classroom where the teacher/professor has gone beyond presenting written text to deliver information to the students. Often I’ve seen how there has been videos played to proof a point or simply to deliver information to us. For instance, as I wrote this blog post I thought about Sabine’s lead night. Everyone did a great job on their lead nights but her presentation was the first one that came to mind as an example for my blog post. She presented a video where we saw what was going on in a classroom. I think that the same video she presented could’ve been presented in a written case study format. But the video delivered the information necessary for the audience effectively. We were also presented with a written poem which showed me that both multimodal and a written poem were both powerful tools to be use in the classroom. I don’t think that multimodal should replace the written information students need to receive but I think that it can serve as an aid when teaching.

Sunday, November 29, 2015

Blog # 10 – Wiley and Fister

The Popularity of Formulaic Writing (and Why We Need to Resist) by Mark Wiley & Why the “Research Paper” Isn’t Working by Barbara Fister

In The Popularity of Formulaic Writing (and Why We Need to Resist) by Mark Wiley, we are presented with a method that seems very similar to the five paragraph essay. Wiley starts his essay by presenting Schaffer’s four-paragraph essay idea. This method seems easy to follow and easy to understand. By using this method, it seems like the student could follow each step and they could be able to write their essays without a problem.

I agree that Schaffer’s method to writing an essay can become a godsend for those students who don’t know how to go about putting an essay together. This method can help them develop their ideas and can make them feel better about writing. Often, students feel frustrated when they don’t know how to write their essays. I’ve seen many classmates frustrated about their ideas, the structure of their essays, or whether or not they are following the assignment’s guidelines. And when they look at the rubric, they often wonder how are they supposed to write everything the rubric will be evaluating or in which order are they supposed to write it. As I read about Schaffer’s method, it seemed like this could really help those students who are struggling to write their essays.

Wiley’s essay also says that this method should be used by students in the ninth and tenth grade and that by the eleventh grade they should be able to develop their essays on their own. This seems to be a good way of helping students not become dependable on this method and having them actually learn the steps so that they can use it in the future. This way, they could also be more prepare to do college level work for when the time comes. This method makes me think about the writing process as a whole. We could learn about it step by step but later we learn that the process changes for every piece of writing we are creating. Schaffer’s method could be a good base for students who are struggling but it is necessary for those students to learn to not depend on this method.


Why the “Research Paper” Isn’t Working by Barbara Fister talks about the topic of writing a research paper. I knew by the title of this essay, that an explanation about why the research paper isn’t working was going to be presented in the essay. I found very interesting what Fister had to say. “We should abandon the traditional research paper” she said in her essay. That sentence really got me thinking. What would happen if we break tradition? Would it be really bad to do that? or actually beneficial for the students? I don’t know if I have the answer to that but Fister says not to call the research paper that but rather to “turn it into a presentation, an informational brochure, or a Wikipedia article.” These are all different ideas and different it’s often scary. It’s not what we know or what we are used to. But perhaps it could actually teach the students more than having them feel frustrated about writing the traditional research paper. I think that it’s important to have students learn how to right the traditional research paper but I like Fister’s idea of bringing in something new to the table. 

Sunday, November 22, 2015

Blog # 9 – Yancey & Straub

Looking Back as We Look Forward: Historicizing Writing Assessment by Kathleen Blake Yancey & The Concept of Control in Teacher Response: Defining the Varieties of “Directive” and “Facilitative” Commentary by Richard Straub

As I read, Looking Back as We Look Forward: Historicizing Writing Assessment by Kathleen Blake Yancey, I felt like her essay was talking about similar aspects as the one we read by her, last week. She ones again talked about the writing assessment and how it used to be testing, then turned into a holistically scored essay, and then it took the form of portfolio assessment. Although she was presenting some of the same information, I felt that the way she presented it in this essay, it was more direct, organized, and easier to read. 

From her essay, I felt like the idea of having students being involved with writing portfolios was helpful. I still understand how, at times, tests are necessary and how scoring an essay can be a helpful way of assessing students. But I feel like it is not always the best way. It is hard to really pick and choose what’s “better” for the students when so much research has been done and it seems like we are not sure about what works best for the students just yet. 

I find extremely interesting how all these readings are full of dos and don’ts when it comes to how to interact with the teaching of writing. All these essays focus on what’s the “best” way teachers should go about teaching based on research that has been done. However, while they all sound very convincing, the fact that they are always finding out new approaches or going back to old forms makes me think that there is no “right” way yet. I have my preferences based on my experience as a student, but even then, I know that other students may think differently than me and will have other preferences. 

In The Concept of Control in Teacher Response: Defining the Varieties of “Directive” and “Facilitative” Commentary by Richard Straub, he brings in the idea that teachers should comment on students writing in a facilitative way rather that directive way to allow the student to find things out on their own. He also talks about the idea of telling teachers that they must not take over when commenting on students writing or when helping students. 
In his essay it was shared that a teacher stated the following “as a teacher, I must be careful not to take over – because the minute I do, the success (if there is one) becomes mine, not his – and the learning is diminished.” I can totally agree with this statement. It sounds like the students need just that right amount of commentary to allow them to learn on their own.

Reading the essays this week made me think about what we’ve read so far this semester. I find that these essays often make me think about what I’ve gone through as a student and they make me wonder how well could teachers interact with every single student to be able to help them in just the way they need.

Sunday, November 15, 2015

Blog # 8 - Yancey & Bean

Writing Assessment in the Early Twenty-First Century by Kathleen Blake Yancey & Using Rubrics to Develop and Apply Grading Criteria by John C. Bean

In the beginning of the essay, Writing Assessment in the Early Twenty-First Century by Kathleen Blake Yancey, the author talked about assessment for students. She shared that compositionists often find themselves at the odds with writing assessment and frustrated with it. This showing that assessment is not their favorite task. Yancey presents a summary in her essay about the writing assessment. This history shared that students have been assessed through testing, on the writing process, and the attention to multiple texts, the way those texts are read.

Yancey also talked about students portfolios later in her essay. She talked about digital and printed portfolios. As she talked about this, I remembered a class I took when I first came to Kean.  There, we were asked to create a digital portfolio. Back then, it was explained to us that it was a class project but that we could use that portfolio to apply for jobs as well. The professor explained that the portfolio was a way to show potential employers part of our work. I didn’t really understood then what was the importance of it. After that class, creating portfolios was not a common task we were asked to do in other classes so I just simply didn’t go back to that portfolio I created. I think we were asked to reflect on our work for that portfolio and I also think we had several drafts of the same essay included on the portfolio. I think that overall, the portfolio was good to do in class. But I think that if we were asked to do them in several classes rather than in only a few, I would’ve been able to get more familiar with them.

I appreciated that Yancey’s essay was more up to date, this way I was able to more easily understand the points she was trying to make.

Using Rubrics to Develop and Apply Grading Criteria by John C. Bean was an essay that talked about the usage of rubrics for grading. Bean states that “as teachers, our goal is to maximize the help we give students while keeping our own workloads manageable.” I’ve often heard teachers say that they spend a lot of time grading papers. Using rubrics seems to be a helpful tool for them. But as a student, I’m not sure how I feel about rubrics. I don’t hate them, but they are not my favorite either. I feel like rubrics can be so dry at times. They have so much information that it seems like it covers everything a student could wonder about how they’ll be graded. Yet, they often make me feel like I have questions after I read them. I often have to go back and ask my professors questions about the rubric so that I’ll have a better understanding of how I’ll be graded.   

I’ve never had a deep connection with rubrics. I’ve understood what they were going to be used for, followed them and found them important. I feel like a professor could easily say “I used the same rubric for all students, I posted it online, I went over it with you” so there shouldn’t really be a problem when it comes to how the students feels about how they were graded. The professor wouldn’t be wrong in saying this. But at the same time, I wonder how those rubrics could really say how each student will be graded. Rubrics are not always specific and the teachers need to clarify what it is said in them. This makes me think that they are a helpful tool but perhaps not always the best one for students.

Monday, November 9, 2015

Rough Draft of my Vignette

This is my rough draft of my mini stories/scenarios of students struggling with their writing. I’m envisioning having each mini story/scenario in an individual box using the thinglink app.

The mini stories/scenarios are written in a way that you could sort of like see the “behind the scenes” of the students’ lives; their reality as to why they could be struggling with their writing. 

Some of the mini stories/scenarios are showing how the students are really trying to work hard on their papers with every minute they have but others also show how the lazy student just doesn’t have any interest in learning.

1.      As if is not enough with your daily family drama,
you are not doing very well in your writing class.
You feel like your professor just doesn’t understand
how hard you are trying. You get home after a full day
of work and you want to work on your papers, revise them,
read them aloud, go over printed copies rather than
just reading them off your computer, but there is noise
all over your home. Your parents are constantly arguing,
your nieces, who are 5 and 3 years old, live in the same
home with you and they run all over your house. You are really
trying to dedicate time to your papers but it seems like although
you are giving it your all, it’s just not enough.

2.      You wake up before the sun comes out to prepare
breakfast and lunches for your three little ones.
You go to work after that all day, and then sit
through your classes at night. All you want is an
education so that you can give your kids a better future.
After you put your kids to bed, you stay up until late
writing and revising your papers only to have your
professor return it saying that it needs to be revised.
But you revised; you spent all the hours you could possibly
have in your day revising it and you just don’t understand
what else could you do with your paper to make it better.
You must have a talk with you professor and ask what it is
that you are doing wrong so that you can improve that.

3.      You were just a kid when your parents decided to
come to this country. You never asked them to bring you
here. You were doing just fine with your studies back home
but now you are struggling as an ESL student. You
must learn the language. And every time you make the
same mistakes in your papers, your teacher writes “you
keep making the same mistake all throughout your paper”
without explaining to you how to fix it. When you ask your
teacher for help, she wants you to figure it out on your own.
She says that this way, you’ll be able to better learn to not
make the same mistake again. You look things up in
dictionaries and you try to ask classmates but if your
teacher could just guide you a little better you know
you’ll be able to do much better.

4.      There are just no excuses for you, you sleep
through classes and you think that just because
you have an athletic scholarship your writing
teacher will just go easy on you. The truth is that
you have to work as hard as the other students.
You must draft and revise your papers, otherwise
you won’t write quality papers that will make you
earn the grades that you need. The grades you need
to keep that scholarship. You must wake up
and work hard.   
  
5.      Your mom abandon the household 5 years ago
and since then, you somehow became a house wife.
Your father and brothers won’t clean anything after
themselves. And there you are, tired after work and school,
coming home to clean and cook. There is no time for you to
revise and rewrite and do all the things your professors are
telling you to do in your writing classes when you come
home from work. So after you cook and clean you stay up and
you read and write and read again and again. You take your
homework to work, and every free minute you get,
you spend it working on your papers. You hope that
this could help you improve the quality of your writing.
You are really giving it your all, but you are not sure

if it will be enough. 

Sunday, November 8, 2015

Blog #7 - Harris & Silva and Matsuda

Tutoring ESL Students: Issues and Options by Murial Harris and Tony Silva & Teaching Composition in the Multilingual World Second Language Writing in Composition Studies by Paul Kei Matsuda

Both essays this week talked about teaching ESL students. As I read the essays, I found myself being able to relate to a lot of the things mentioned in them. I can completely understand how teachers could be, to an extent, lost when trying to teach ESL students to write. But I think that those students feel lost in the process as well. I remember being an ESL student and trying to figure out how could I understand all the rules that were being presented to me while at the same time trying to translate what I wanted to write from one language to another. I felt, at many times, that I was more focused on trying to translate everything I wanted to say rather than focusing on the rules of grammar. I felt so confused and frustrated at times because I couldn’t figure out the reasoning behind so many of these “rules”.

Harris and Silva state in their essay that tutors of ESL students feel speechless when they try to explain why “I have many homeworks to completed” is wrong or why we say “on Monday” but “in June.” There were many times when I just didn’t understand those same examples. It was hard for me to see the reasoning behind it.

Harris and Silva also mentioned that new tutors feel like they need to fix everything the ESL writer has done wrong instead of teaching them by sections at a time. Their essay mentioned that tutors should first tell the students what they have done correctly and then approach the mistakes one at a time without approaching everything that’s wrong with their writing. This reminded me of essays we’ve read before where it was said that teachers should let the students know what’s going well with the draft first and then tell them what they should focus on to improve their drafts. 

In Matsuda’s essay, it was mentioned that in writing centers ESL writers were also important. This made think about the fact that ESL students don’t only need help in translating their writing into another language but also in understanding the rules of the language. These students also need help with their writing process just like any other native speaker writer. This makes me think about the importance of individual help where you are focused on having help for what you need specifically. While not every teacher will be able to assist students individually, writing centers play an important role for students as well.  

Monday, November 2, 2015

Final Project

So I’ve been thinking about our final project all week. Particularly after last class where I sort of got confused again regarding the fact that I don’t know if my idea for my individual project will fit into our umbrella.

I started to think that we would almost need take a few minutes and talk about our individual final projects to be able to come up with a theme/title for it. So like Laura mentioned, I think that maybe when we all share out more our vignettes a theme will come out of that.

I liked our Finding Your Voice theme but I feel like it could be interpret more with your style of writing, like Martha mentioned. So I don’t know if we’ll be able to keep that theme/title.

From what people shared, I like Writing Matter the most as I feel like it could serve us well for all the ideas to fit into one theme. 

Blog #6 - Murray & Sommers

Teach the Motivating Force of Revision by Donald M. Murray and Revision Strategies of Student Writers and Experienced Adult Writers by Nancy Sommers

I got to read two very interesting essays this week. Not that the others we’ve read weren’t, they were, but revision is a topic that I have not read much about before so I found them very interesting. I also found it very interesting because I had to take an online quiz for a different class that was supposed to tell me what part of my writing process I was. And it turned out that I am revision in my writing process – how weird is that?

In his essay, Teach the Motivating Force of Revision, Murray brought out ideas that I had not thought about in the way that he presented them. He talked about revision as a way to discover what one wants to say. I don’t know how many times I’ve revised a paper, but after reading that in this stage you are discovering what you want to say, I felt like I could totally agree with that. Because when I revise, I feel like that’s what I’m trying to do. I am trying to discover what I am trying to say. When I revise, I find myself moving things around and changing the content in the piece of writing that I am working on. Like he says, I am discovering what it is really that I want to say.

In his essay he also said “writers often know more clearly what they don’t want to say than what they do.” I found this so true; I often know what I don’t want to sound like. When I’m creating characters, I also often know what I don’t want my characters to sound like. Then, I spend a lot of time trying to figure out what it is that I do want to say or what I do want my characters to say.

Murray also said that a lot of writing teachers have not composed pieces of writing themselves. I was very surprised about this. He mentioned that it is hard to imagine a music teacher who has never made music, or an art teacher who has never drawn a picture but unfortunately it is normal to find that writing teachers have only written a few academic papers. I was surprised about this because I just always heard my professors make comments about how they were writing this and they were writing that. They shared their writing process or just spoke about writing as if it was something they normally did. Recently, I even had a professor say that she had written a CNF piece herself because she felt it would be unfair for her to ask us to write CNF without her having done a piece of CNF writing herself.

Towards the end of his essay, Murray mentioned that the writing teacher who writes may be able to enter into the process of individual exploration with each student. I could agree with what Murray says here because it makes me wonder how can a teacher help a student discover or explore if they have not discover and explore themselves? It makes me wonder if they don’t have experience on what they are trying to teach, how can they teach it?

I just really enjoyed the way Murray wrote his essay and what he said. It was easy to read and it was able to relate to it. The ideas he brought forward were interesting and the whole topic about revision was exciting for me to read about.

Revision Strategies of Student Writers and Experienced Adult Writers by Nancy Sommers is an essay that also talked about revision. She started her essay by saying how there has been a lack of attention in research regarding the revision process. I am not surprised about that since I have not really read much about this topic.

Sommers talked about models for the writing process. I found these models interesting because she mentioned that they were linear processes. I felt that this was new information for me. I have always been taught that the writing process was not linear so when Sommers’ essay mentioned the writing process as a linear model, I was surprised. I understand that when you are writing you have sort of like a linear process where you may start by writing/drafting then you’ll move into revision, then you’ll edit and so on. But while one is in any of these stages one tends to move within these stages in a nonlinear way.

As I continued to read her essay, she mentioned she was dissatisfied with both the linear model of writing and the lack of attention to the process of revision. She mentioned that she conducted a series of studies over the past three years which examined the revision process of student writers and experienced writers to see what role revision played in their writing process. She mentioned that the student writers understood revision as a “scratch out and do over again, reviewing, redoing, marking out, and slashing and throwing out.” The student writers understood the process as a rewording activity. Whereas the experienced writers understood revision as a “rewriting and revising process.” The experienced writers described their primary objective when revising as finding the form or shape of their argument. By the information Sommers provided here, it seems like the experienced writers have a greater understanding about the revision process. I can understand these results being that the students writers are still learning about writing as a whole and the experienced writers have already dealt with all the process and are more familiar with everything involving writing.


Sommers also talked about the revision process being a place for discovery like Murray mentioned. She also said that while writers may focus on a particular stage of the writing process at a time, they may also focus on other areas at the same time. Making this a nonlinear writing process which is what I believe we all experience when we write. I find it nearly impossible to focus on solely one area at a time. 

Sunday, October 25, 2015

Blog #5 - Reaction Paper

Here is the link to my Reaction Paper on Response to Writing by Richard Beach and Tom Friedrich, One Approach to Guiding Peer Response by Kim Jaxon, and Writing Comments on Students’ Papers by John C. Bean.

For the Final Project, I went over the digital tools list and found some interesting possible ones I could maybe use for my vignette. I have some notes for my vignette and I think that this list is really going to help me develop my vignette further.

Sunday, October 18, 2015

Final project

I liked how we discussed our ideas further in class last week and we were able to come up with a theme. What I liked the most about our idea is that we’ll all be able to share something that is unique to each of us.

I am still developing my idea for my vignette. Essentially, I would like to compose a reflective piece where I’ll be sharing part of my experience as a writer. Part of the purpose of me writing this is to inspire other writers. Perhaps to help them believe more in themselves or just inspire them to write.

I'm excited about how we’ll be working on this project together and I wonder how that actual final product will look like.


Regarding the DigiWriMo, I think it would be a great way to gain attention towards our final project. It’s an exciting idea as well. 

Blog # 4

“Bi, Butch, and Bar Dyke: Pedagogical Performances of Class, Gender, and Sexuality” by Michelle Gibson, Martha Marinara, and Deborah Meem & “Voice in Writing Again: Embracing Contraries” by Peter Elbow 

Both essays this week talked about voice.

“Bi, Butch, and Bar Dyke: Pedagogical Performances of Class, Gender, and Sexuality” by Michelle Gibson, Martha Marinara, and Deborah Meem was an essay where the authors got really personal and talked about where they stand in terms of their class, gender, and sexuality. These are all areas that form part of our voice. I liked how the authors came through with a voice that was perceived by me as clear and authentic. They mentioned how their voice in the academia world was different due to what made them who they are. I found this interesting because I’ve always thought about the uniqueness of voice and how it can say so much based on who we are.
The authors didn’t have any problem sharing personal facts about who they were. Their “labels” shaped their voice and they weren’t afraid to say that. They admitted to know that their voice was different than the one in the academia world and I found that inspiring. We are all different and I find that that’s the beauty in diversity. This essay by Gibson, Marinara, and Meem makes me think that we should all bring our voice forward while respecting those that sound different than ours.

The authors mentioned that their backgrounds and the way they lived had played a role into the voice they developed for their academic writing. I liked how they truly showed that who they were was reflected in their writing. This makes their writing authentic. They are not mocking someone else’s voice to fit the standard in the academic world. They are coming as who they are and that is reflected in their writing.

In the essay “Voice in Writing Again: Embracing Contraries” by Peter Elbow it seem to me like he didn’t write towards or against voice but rather for both. I can see what he means when he says that both could be important but I find it really hard to separate the two. Even when I am reading something from an author I don’t know I can sense their voice. Even when that voice is dry and boring, I am able to get that from the reading and in return, it makes me feel a certain way towards the author and what they are saying in the reading. It is not like I can hear their real voice, like when I read something from someone I know, but I can hear their tone and what’s coming through the words they are choosing or the way they are saying what they’re saying.


I think that voice is so connected with writing because for instance, when we read something by a male or a female we tend to, at times, read it differently. We also tend to read things differently when we know something or a lot about the particular author we are reading about. 

Monday, October 12, 2015

Ideas for Final Project

For our final project, I think that the anti-theory idea has some potential. It we elaborate more on ways to expand that idea we could create something really different. What I was not in love with about that idea was the brainstorming we came up with in class. After thinking about it, I thought that we came up with a useful list of genres (narrative, persuasive, expository, poetry etc…) yet it is the same old we’ve been taught for years. These genres are important --- don’t get me wrong, but if we go with that we won’t be creating something different.

Idea #2 is good too but I am not sure that creating lesson plans will satisfy all members of our class. As a writer, I’ll be interested in being part of this project but I won’t feel like I’m truly doing something that connects with me.

Being that idea #3 still needs to be discussed further --- I’ll leave it at that and maybe we can talk more about it in class tonight.

Thinking about something different for this project that I could connect with I thought about creating a book for writers. It could be a section of the original handbook for writers that we talked about or a new one. A book where I would write reflective pieces or prompts, or both… one where I would write about my own experiences as a writer, what I’ve learn… something that can help and inspire younger writers to continue going. Perhaps some of the topics we’ve talked about in class like the comments teachers make on students papers or the importance of grammar could be incorporated in this books. Perhaps this idea can blend with Laura’s idea about the “collaborative narrative story/book”… not sure but it sounds exciting and DIFFERENT.


Looking forward to discussing more of this tonight in class J

Blog # 3 - Peter Elbow and Patrick Hartwell

Responding to: Ranking, Evaluating, and Liking: Sorting Out Three Forms of Writing by Peter Elbow and Grammar, Grammars, and The Teaching of Grammar by Patrick Hartwell

From this week’s readings I truly enjoyed Elbow’s essay. In his essay, Elbow talks about three different acts we call assessment. He focuses on talking about Raking, Evaluating, and Liking. By ranking he means “the act of summing up one’s judgment of a performance or person into a single, holistic number or score.” By evaluating he means “the act of expressing one’s judgment of a performance or person by posting out strengths and weaknesses of different features or dimensions.” He then says that “evaluation requires going beyond a first response that may be nothing but a kind of ranking (“I like it” or “This is better than that”), and instead looking carefully enough at a performance or person to make distinctions between parts or features or criteria.”

Elbow says that if you take the time to get to know your students as the people they are, liking their writing will be easier. As he says this, I think about the importance between having a connection with your students. I cannot imagine having to grade papers from someone I literally don’t know. It is important to have a relationship with your students so that understanding their writing becomes easier. What Elbow talks about, makes me think back about professors I’ve had when I was attending Essex and Union County College whom had no idea who I was. They wrote “awkward” on my papers and didn’t really give me direction as to where to go from there. They didn’t know what I was trying to say and worst yet, I didn’t know what they meant by “awkward”. It wasn’t until I experienced professors starting to build relationships with me that I felt like they were understanding or liking my writing. Elbow also says that the process of evaluation permits us to make open statements about a piece of writing. Whereas to rank, is to be forced to translate those discriminations into a single number. I agree with what Elbow says because while grades are important it is more important to be able to communicate about pieces of writing rather than to just receive a rank without further conversation or connection.

Hartwell’s essay was a little less enjoyable for me to read. I felt it was dense and not straightforward like Elbow’s essay was. Hartwell talks about grammar and while I think is important, I feel like when a student is composing a piece of writing other aspects are more important than commenting on their grammar. Students should be taught grammar early in their academics. This can help them in their writing but I feel like as they become more experienced writers, grammar should be secondary in their writing. Their focus should be more in expanding their ideas and what they are trying to express in their writing. Rather than fixing their grammar when they are not done yet saying what they want to say in their piece of writing.


I think that perhaps the best way to address this grammar issues is maybe by working on it by sections. Normally, when we are drafting we are focused on the content, the ideas we are trying to express rather than if our grammar is correct. Therefore, I think that grammar should be part of the editing stage rather than the revision stage. 

Sunday, October 4, 2015

Ideas for Final Project


Although I am still not sure about the possibilities for our final project I feel like I’m gearing towards the Handbook for Writers as our final project. We do need to keep in mind that with have both teachers and writers in our classroom so this handbook needs to serve both parties if we decide to go with it. 

I don’t think that this is complicated – I almost envision it as having it be sort of like a textbook that’s broken down into chapters and each chapter is approaching different topics/audience. Our handbook could have sections for writers and sections for teachers. 

I also liked the idea Laura had about the YouTube videos. I am not a camera person but perhaps videos with only a voice or graphics could be doable a helpful for our audience. 

This handbook for writers/teachers could be an online source that is also printed. This way, perhaps, we could find a way for everyone to put their own stamp on the handbook and tie it all together in each section.

Saturday, October 3, 2015

Blog #2 - Responding to Student Writing by Sommers and On Reflection by Yancey

Responding to Student Writing by Sommers and On Reflection by Yancey

Sommers’ essay talked about comments teachers write in students papers. One of the first things that caught my attention about this essay was when it was stated: “we comment on student writing because we believe that it is necessary for us to offer assistance to student writers when they are in the process of composing a text, rather than after the text has been completed.” When I read this, I thought about classes I’ve taken and where the professor has actually shared how it is hard for them to comment on unfinished drafts because they don’t know how could they comment on something that is not yet finished. The professor shared this with the purpose of letting us know that the comments we were going to be reading from the professor were more to help us develop our drafts rather than to make us change what we were trying to say. The professor knew that what we were trying to say was still being developed. Therefore, the professor encouraged us to develop our thoughts and ideas through the comments. I feel like comments on student’s drafts, without a conversation or explanation, could be confusing for a student because they won’t see the reasoning behind the comments and could feel lost when reading them.

In this essay it was also stated that: “sometimes the students do not understand the purpose behind their teachers’ comments and take these comments very literally. At other times students understand the comments but the teacher has misread the text and the comments, unfortunately, are not applicable.” This made me think about the importance of having a relationship with the students. I feel like when comments are dry on a paper without further conversation about them, they leave a lot of room for interpretation. It could never be clear what is the teacher trying to say with the comments or what is the student trying to say in their draft.

Sommers later stated that students admitted having great difficulty with the vague directives the teachers were giving them in their comments. The students stated that when a teacher writes in the margins or an end comment, “choose precise language,” or “think more about your audience,” revising becomes a guessing game.” I find it ironic how the teachers ask constantly for students to be specific about what they are saying yet their comments are vague. I feel like this does not help the student develop their writing or learn anything about it. Instead, it creates confusion and a desire to write what the teacher wants if the student is able to figure it out rather than to write something the student is content with.

Yancey’s essay is about many theories that focused their study on reflection when composing. I started reading this essay and started to just take in the information in very smoothly but when I read “reflection has played but a small role in this history of composing.” I found this statement very disappointing. As a writer, I value reflection. If I don’t reflect on anything that has to do with what I am writing, then what’s the purpose of me writing anything at all? In my experience as a writer, I’ve found that when I reflect about what I am writing I am able to not only develop my pieces further but I am able to learn more in the process. Whether I am learning about me as a writer or about what I am writing, I am still learning and that is valuable. I valued when it was stated: “When we reflect, we call upon the cognitive, the affective, the intuitive, putting these into play with each other: to help us understand how something completed looks later, how it compares with what has come before, how it seems stated or implicit criteria, our own, those of other.”


Overall, both article stated important topics when it came to writing. The comments that teachers write on students papers form great part of the composing process as well as the importance in reflection when composing.  

Sunday, September 27, 2015

Blog #1 - Teach Writing as a Process Not Product by Donald M. Murray


Teach Writing as a Process Not Product

by Donald M. Murray

Murray talks about the importance of teaching writing as process and not as product. I feel like this is extremely important to teach. Looking back at my experience as a student I am able to see how often students are pushed to deliver product and submit it by deadlines created by the instructors. Along the way, I’ve also experienced the exception to this where I can say that I’ve had professors that have taught me writing as process and not product. Those professors are not the majority of them though but I am glad they were along the way. 

As Murray talked about what teachers do as they teach their students writing, he said “The product doesn’t improve, and so, blaming the students – who else? – we pass him along to the next teacher, who is trained, too often, the same way we were.” --- This statement makes me go back and reflect on the teachers I’ve had along the way. And I realized that the ones I have most respect for are the ones that taught me writing as process and not product. The ones that allowed me to draft as much as I needed to. The ones that allowed me to create my own deadlines while giving me enough direction in one on one conferences to complete my writing on time. The ones that talked to me about the writing process and helped me discover what my writing process was – one that changes.

As I read through Murray’s essay I found that I could relate to some of the implications that he listed as a writer; more to some than to others. 

Implication No. 4 – “The student should have the opportunity to write all the drafts necessary for him to discover what he has to say on this particular subject.” This implication made me think about my own writing. I have no clear idea of how many drafts I go through when I am writing. The amount of drafts I go through also depends on what I’m writing about and what kind of writing I’m doing. For me, it is all about the connection I have with the piece I am creating. 

Implication No. 9 – “The students are individuals who must explore the writing process in their own way, some fast, some slow...” While as students we aren’t always able to experience this, I feel like we tend to learn to adapt to our professors. Some may allow us to explore our writing process at our own pace while others will just hit us with deadlines and therefore we must just produce. This implication makes me think about the times when I’ve felt like I’ve had the luxury to explore in my own way. When this happens, I feel pleased that I am able to work within my personal writing process. But when I can’t do that, I feel like I have to quickly tell myself to push through that situation and just tell myself that I have to get that done no matter what. While I’m able to push myself and get my product done, I don’t always feel good about it. I end up handing in my paper on time and I even get a good grade on it. But, I often have that feeling in me telling me “you know you could’ve done something differently, you could’ve made your characters go somewhere different” - if it’s a creative piece I’m working on or - “you could’ve done more research” if is a research driven piece. In the end, I give my professor what I’m required, but as I writer I am not always pleased. Having experience this myself, I think that allowing students to explore their writing process can be strongly beneficial for them. 

Overall, I feel like this was an essay I could relate to at a personal level because I appreciate those professors that have taken the time to teach me while respecting me as a writer. I’m sure it has probably helped them, as teachers, as well. After all, Murray says that “we are as frustrated as our students” so teachers knowing that they’ve helped their students become better writers will feel they’ve done their job well.