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. 

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.

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. 

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. 

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.