In the midst of all the Republican presidential candidate candidates (yup, they are candidates to be the presidential candidate), SOPA, PIPA, Anonymous hackers group taking down the DOJ and a few other sites in response to the crackdown on MegaUpload, the Virgin Islands suffered a major economic blow on Wednesday. HOVENSA, a major oil refinery located on St. Croix, employs about 2,000 employees and offers a number of scholarships to students both for private high schools and college, announced that after a loss of over $1.3 billion over the last three years, it will be closing. It will retain 100 employees to run the former refinery as a glorified oil tank.
Why am I telling you this? Because this means not only loss of students to the University, but also of our basic fuel source here on island. Frightening.
In other news, all three sections of ENG 120 made it through their second week of me. They will spend the weekend revising their Diagnostic essays and turn them in to me either Monday or Tuesday, depending on when each section meets.
The Homophone activity was a definite success. Students came up with more homophones in small groups than they would have simply shouting them en masse as they came to each student's mind. We also had a chance to talk about the effect of the regional dialects on homophones in each section. I very, very nerdily announced that this is one of the aspects on which I'd like to focus my doctoral research (they were oh-so unimpressed...sighs).
Two weeks down, thirteen to go! Over the weekend I'll write more about what I'm planning via Blackboard Learn (bblearn) for the ENG 120 classes this semester.
Vote for Stephen Colbert!
Friday, January 20, 2012
Wednesday, January 18, 2012
Where did the time go?
Today felt like a constant rush and I'm not sure why; however, classes went well. After the reading quiz in the 10:00am ENG 120 class, I handed out my "Proofreading Notation" sheet and we quickly breezed through the notation and its corresponding errors. I answered any questions students had about specific points (ex: a student asked if I could give an example of a problem with parallelism).
I then handed back the students' corrected, 'graded,' Diagnostic essays. I reminded them that this was a first draft that they wrote in class, in 50 minutes, and after a break of at least a month from school, so their grades were not going to be stellar. (Truthfully, I think only one student eeked out a first draft over 70%.)
After the initial shock, head-shaking and nervous laughter, I opened the floor up to questions. As I expected, only a couple students were brave enough to ask specific questions about errors in their essays, so I changed the the "Scavenger Hunt" tactic: I chose an error off the Proofreading sheet and everyone had to find an instance of it in his essay. I had the class look for fused sentences, comma splices, run-ons, verb tense shifts, and other errors, then asked for volunteers to share an instance from their papers. After initial shyness, students started to volunteer their errors so they could ask more specific questions. Success!
In my 1:00pm class, we finished the last two types of Prewriting and covered START. I then had the students get into groups of 5--I wanted less groups for this exercise. I wrote "Homophones" on the board and asked someone to define the word for me. The agreed-on definition was "words that sound the same but are spelled differently and have different meanings." I gave the groups 10 minutes and asked them to come with as many homophones as they could.
Each group came up with bundles of examples:
where, wear, ware, weir and were (as in werewolf)
two, too, to
dear, deer
flower, flour
four, for, fore
And then we came to the examples I was hoping I'd hear: the homophones that only work in an Anglo-Caribbean dialect.
team, teem and theme -- many English-speaking Caribbean natives do not pronounce th sounds, so "three" sounds like "tree" and "thought" like "taught."
See the issue here? Suddenly pair, pear and peer are homophones, even if they are not for a more Midwestern U.S. accent. We talked and laughed about it--I believe that if students can recognize and laugh at their own idiosyncrasies, errors and differences, they will better recognize and be able to correct them. We will spend more time, in all the ENG 120 sections, on homophones and on 'regionally-specific' homophones.
More tomorrow!
On an unrelated note, I am personally against both PIPA and SOPA. You may have already noticed that Wikipedia blacked its site out today, and even Google blacked out its logo in solidarity. If you are also against PIPA and SOPA, be sure to reach out to your local and state political representatives and make yourself heard!
I then handed back the students' corrected, 'graded,' Diagnostic essays. I reminded them that this was a first draft that they wrote in class, in 50 minutes, and after a break of at least a month from school, so their grades were not going to be stellar. (Truthfully, I think only one student eeked out a first draft over 70%.)
After the initial shock, head-shaking and nervous laughter, I opened the floor up to questions. As I expected, only a couple students were brave enough to ask specific questions about errors in their essays, so I changed the the "Scavenger Hunt" tactic: I chose an error off the Proofreading sheet and everyone had to find an instance of it in his essay. I had the class look for fused sentences, comma splices, run-ons, verb tense shifts, and other errors, then asked for volunteers to share an instance from their papers. After initial shyness, students started to volunteer their errors so they could ask more specific questions. Success!
In my 1:00pm class, we finished the last two types of Prewriting and covered START. I then had the students get into groups of 5--I wanted less groups for this exercise. I wrote "Homophones" on the board and asked someone to define the word for me. The agreed-on definition was "words that sound the same but are spelled differently and have different meanings." I gave the groups 10 minutes and asked them to come with as many homophones as they could.
Each group came up with bundles of examples:
where, wear, ware, weir and were (as in werewolf)
two, too, to
dear, deer
flower, flour
four, for, fore
And then we came to the examples I was hoping I'd hear: the homophones that only work in an Anglo-Caribbean dialect.
team, teem and theme -- many English-speaking Caribbean natives do not pronounce th sounds, so "three" sounds like "tree" and "thought" like "taught."
See the issue here? Suddenly pair, pear and peer are homophones, even if they are not for a more Midwestern U.S. accent. We talked and laughed about it--I believe that if students can recognize and laugh at their own idiosyncrasies, errors and differences, they will better recognize and be able to correct them. We will spend more time, in all the ENG 120 sections, on homophones and on 'regionally-specific' homophones.
More tomorrow!
On an unrelated note, I am personally against both PIPA and SOPA. You may have already noticed that Wikipedia blacked its site out today, and even Google blacked out its logo in solidarity. If you are also against PIPA and SOPA, be sure to reach out to your local and state political representatives and make yourself heard!
Tuesday, January 17, 2012
Traffic!
Thanks to the three-day weekend, my only ENG 120 class meeting thus far this week was at 9:30am today. Or, should have been, I ought to say. I spent thirty minutes sitting in my car, staring at the building where my ENG 120 class meets while police ineffectively directed traffic around an accident .5 miles from the University. Frustrating, to say the least.
I had plenty of time to compose the questions my ENG 120 cherubs would have to answer on their beginning-of-class quiz; however, I did not have time to double-check the syllabus, or I would have realized that three of my uber-clever questions were from a chapter they hadn't read yet. As they say, "Well-laid plans of mice..."
While my dedicated students doggedly attempted to answer questions on a reading that hadn't done (and didn't bother to question me on it until I asked them to turn to a page number in the chapter in question...How many students do you think read any of the reading at all?), I gathered my wits about me, turned on the projector and computer, and threw together my gameplan for the morning.
(Did I mention that I also did not get through grading all 65 Diagnostic Essays this weekend, like I had planned?) We began by going over START, a technique The Confident Writer suggests for organizing and writing an essay:
S = self (what is my role?)
T = topic
A = audience (who are they?)
R = reason (purpose)
T = tone
We did call and response after I introduced the five words; example:
Me: "Why is 'self important when planning and writing an essay?"
Student: "Because I'm the one writing the essay?"
Me: "Brilliant."
To help along the glaringly obvious, I chose a simple, fake, essay topic to use as an example: "Why do people go to college?"
After making it through START (simple though it is, some students absolutely love it and rarely use any other technique to get from their essay topic to the final product. More power to them.), we reminded ourselves that we had two types of Prewriting yet to address.
Still using the "Why do people go to college" prompt, I asked the class to get out a piece of paper and just start writing anything and everything that came to mind about why each student is going to college. I timed them for 5 minutes, told them to disregard neatness, spelling, grammar, etc. When I noticed people slagging off after 3 or 4 minutes, I told the class as a whole that if a student found himself distracted, thinking about breakfast, he should write about breakfast until he made his way back to the college topic (Ex: I am so hungry right now I want breakfast I can't wait until class is over I hope I have enough money for breakfast I can't wait to finish school and be making real money [hey look--you're back at college!]).
When they finished the 5 minutes, I explained that they had just practiced 'Freewriting,' and for it to be most effective, they should go back through and cross out any irrelevant parts, underline anything clearly important, and circle anything possibly helpful from the wordspew.
We discussed using "Questions" as a Prewriting technique, but as it is not my favorite and I do not find that students think it helpful, I summarized it like this: "Use the question words-Who? What? How? When? Where? And when you get to the almighty WHY, ask, 'Why does anyone care?'" The idea being that at no stage in writing should the writer or reader be able to say, "Who gives a d---?"
We then used our brilliant ideas for why we go to college to introduce what I call "Professor G's Formula for Awesomeness" (and yes, I do accept this as a correct answer on tests and quizzes).
Formula for Thesis Statement (guaranteed never to fail):
Big Idea + 3 Main Points
Ex: I go to college (BI) because a high school education just isn't enough anymore (MP 1), my family needs a strong example (MP 2), and I want to be in a better place in life at my parents' age than they are now (MP 3).
See? Awesome. No student passes my class without being able to write the world's most effective thesis statement. Ever. (If you are out there, Karl Yergey, I want you to know that I learned this from you in AP U.S. History in 10th grade!).
Tomorrow and Thursday will bring a day of chaos (otherwise known as editing Diagnostic Essays); each student will receive her essay back, along with my proofreading notation, and we will do a class workshop on editing (including a fun "proofreading" scavenger hunt in each person's essay!--oh fine, so it will be fun for me, heh!).
Cheers for now!
I had plenty of time to compose the questions my ENG 120 cherubs would have to answer on their beginning-of-class quiz; however, I did not have time to double-check the syllabus, or I would have realized that three of my uber-clever questions were from a chapter they hadn't read yet. As they say, "Well-laid plans of mice..."
While my dedicated students doggedly attempted to answer questions on a reading that hadn't done (and didn't bother to question me on it until I asked them to turn to a page number in the chapter in question...How many students do you think read any of the reading at all?), I gathered my wits about me, turned on the projector and computer, and threw together my gameplan for the morning.
(Did I mention that I also did not get through grading all 65 Diagnostic Essays this weekend, like I had planned?) We began by going over START, a technique The Confident Writer suggests for organizing and writing an essay:
S = self (what is my role?)
T = topic
A = audience (who are they?)
R = reason (purpose)
T = tone
We did call and response after I introduced the five words; example:
Me: "Why is 'self important when planning and writing an essay?"
Student: "Because I'm the one writing the essay?"
Me: "Brilliant."
To help along the glaringly obvious, I chose a simple, fake, essay topic to use as an example: "Why do people go to college?"
After making it through START (simple though it is, some students absolutely love it and rarely use any other technique to get from their essay topic to the final product. More power to them.), we reminded ourselves that we had two types of Prewriting yet to address.
Still using the "Why do people go to college" prompt, I asked the class to get out a piece of paper and just start writing anything and everything that came to mind about why each student is going to college. I timed them for 5 minutes, told them to disregard neatness, spelling, grammar, etc. When I noticed people slagging off after 3 or 4 minutes, I told the class as a whole that if a student found himself distracted, thinking about breakfast, he should write about breakfast until he made his way back to the college topic (Ex: I am so hungry right now I want breakfast I can't wait until class is over I hope I have enough money for breakfast I can't wait to finish school and be making real money [hey look--you're back at college!]).
When they finished the 5 minutes, I explained that they had just practiced 'Freewriting,' and for it to be most effective, they should go back through and cross out any irrelevant parts, underline anything clearly important, and circle anything possibly helpful from the wordspew.
We discussed using "Questions" as a Prewriting technique, but as it is not my favorite and I do not find that students think it helpful, I summarized it like this: "Use the question words-Who? What? How? When? Where? And when you get to the almighty WHY, ask, 'Why does anyone care?'" The idea being that at no stage in writing should the writer or reader be able to say, "Who gives a d---?"
We then used our brilliant ideas for why we go to college to introduce what I call "Professor G's Formula for Awesomeness" (and yes, I do accept this as a correct answer on tests and quizzes).
Formula for Thesis Statement (guaranteed never to fail):
Big Idea + 3 Main Points
Ex: I go to college (BI) because a high school education just isn't enough anymore (MP 1), my family needs a strong example (MP 2), and I want to be in a better place in life at my parents' age than they are now (MP 3).
See? Awesome. No student passes my class without being able to write the world's most effective thesis statement. Ever. (If you are out there, Karl Yergey, I want you to know that I learned this from you in AP U.S. History in 10th grade!).
Tomorrow and Thursday will bring a day of chaos (otherwise known as editing Diagnostic Essays); each student will receive her essay back, along with my proofreading notation, and we will do a class workshop on editing (including a fun "proofreading" scavenger hunt in each person's essay!--oh fine, so it will be fun for me, heh!).
Cheers for now!
Friday, January 13, 2012
Pennies and Thoughts
This NPR piece was part of my motivation for this project.
This recent blog by Bethany Nowviskie (originally posted on her blog) details the issue of our archaic teaching methods even at the doctoral level.
Now let's see if we can start making some changes!
This recent blog by Bethany Nowviskie (originally posted on her blog) details the issue of our archaic teaching methods even at the doctoral level.
Now let's see if we can start making some changes!
First Experiment = Success!
All three sections of my ENG 120 classes are using the same two textbooks:
Kanar, Carol C. The Confident Writer. 5th ed. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2009. Print.
Lunsford, Andrea A. The St. Martin's Handbook. 6th ed. Bedford/St. Martin's, 2009. Print.
(Students are using both the 6th and 7th editions of SMH.)
The assigned reading for today was The Confident Writer, Chapter 1: Becoming a Confident Writer. This chapter deals, in part, with the stages of writing.
To begin class, I gave my students a 2 minute warning until their quiz (they have a quiz at the beginning of every class, unless they are writing an in-class essay--or I forgot!) so they could put their "stuff" away and/or quickly scan the material again. After the students took the quiz and we reviewed the answers, we reviewed the steps in the writing process:
I. Prewriting
II. Outlining
III. Drafting
IV. Proofreading/Revising
I then split the class into groups of 4 students. The students were asked to discuss the 'First Thoughts' questions on pg. 2 of the text. These questions are intended to build background for the subsequent reading; in this case, students then read "Free Expression Gets Smoked" by Stephen Chapman. The two key questions the students discussed were:
1. How much influence do you think celebrities have on people's choices and behavior?
2. What effect do you think watching people smoke in movies has on young people? (Kanar 2)
I gave the groups 5 minutes to discuss these two questions and to review Chapman's essay. When the time was up, each group took turns explaining how they felt about question 1, gave specific examples, and commented and built on their peers thoughts and comments. (The example of Jennifer Hudson's amazing weight loss on Jenny Craig (R) came up and we discussed how important what we don't see is almost more powerful than what we do. Ie: she probably has a personal trainer, cook, etc.) We then did the same for the second question. A student then volunteered to give a 30 second summary of the essay. I asked the class as a whole what the "main idea" or "topic" of the essay was and they responded correctly.
We then moved to pg. 10 of the text. An exercise on this page asks students to write about "A movie or TV program that has had a positive (or negative) effect on viewers" (Kanar 10). I gave the groups 3 minutes to brainstorm the topic and come up with one film or TV title, using brainstorming questions suggested in the exercise.
The groups' results were: Law and Order: SVU, American Pie, Shrek, The Godfather, and Family Guy, just to give you some insight into this particular class' dynamic.
I then wrote "Brainstorming" under 'Prewriting' on the board and acknowledged that this is one form of Prewriting.
I tasked those same groups to take 5 minutes to "Cluster" (or, as I so very often wind up calling it, "Bubble" with their film or TV title in the center bubble. I asked them to consider their Brainstorming questions, as well as the film's/show's genre, etc. You can watch an example here.
As we were nearing the end of our class time, I had all groups hold up their clusters so the rest of the groups could see. I then wrote "Clustering" on the board under "Brainstorming" and pointed out that Clustering is another method of Prewriting. I mentioned that on Wednesday (Monday is MLK Jr. day, so no class), we will review at least one other type of Prewriting called "Freewriting."
I reminded students of their two Journals (Blog entries) due next week, and we adjourned. I never spoke for more than 3 or 4 minutes at a time--if that! Success!
Kanar, Carol C. The Confident Writer. 5th ed. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2009. Print.
Lunsford, Andrea A. The St. Martin's Handbook. 6th ed. Bedford/St. Martin's, 2009. Print.
(Students are using both the 6th and 7th editions of SMH.)
The assigned reading for today was The Confident Writer, Chapter 1: Becoming a Confident Writer. This chapter deals, in part, with the stages of writing.
To begin class, I gave my students a 2 minute warning until their quiz (they have a quiz at the beginning of every class, unless they are writing an in-class essay--or I forgot!) so they could put their "stuff" away and/or quickly scan the material again. After the students took the quiz and we reviewed the answers, we reviewed the steps in the writing process:
I. Prewriting
II. Outlining
III. Drafting
IV. Proofreading/Revising
I then split the class into groups of 4 students. The students were asked to discuss the 'First Thoughts' questions on pg. 2 of the text. These questions are intended to build background for the subsequent reading; in this case, students then read "Free Expression Gets Smoked" by Stephen Chapman. The two key questions the students discussed were:
1. How much influence do you think celebrities have on people's choices and behavior?
2. What effect do you think watching people smoke in movies has on young people? (Kanar 2)
I gave the groups 5 minutes to discuss these two questions and to review Chapman's essay. When the time was up, each group took turns explaining how they felt about question 1, gave specific examples, and commented and built on their peers thoughts and comments. (The example of Jennifer Hudson's amazing weight loss on Jenny Craig (R) came up and we discussed how important what we don't see is almost more powerful than what we do. Ie: she probably has a personal trainer, cook, etc.) We then did the same for the second question. A student then volunteered to give a 30 second summary of the essay. I asked the class as a whole what the "main idea" or "topic" of the essay was and they responded correctly.
We then moved to pg. 10 of the text. An exercise on this page asks students to write about "A movie or TV program that has had a positive (or negative) effect on viewers" (Kanar 10). I gave the groups 3 minutes to brainstorm the topic and come up with one film or TV title, using brainstorming questions suggested in the exercise.
The groups' results were: Law and Order: SVU, American Pie, Shrek, The Godfather, and Family Guy, just to give you some insight into this particular class' dynamic.
I then wrote "Brainstorming" under 'Prewriting' on the board and acknowledged that this is one form of Prewriting.
I tasked those same groups to take 5 minutes to "Cluster" (or, as I so very often wind up calling it, "Bubble" with their film or TV title in the center bubble. I asked them to consider their Brainstorming questions, as well as the film's/show's genre, etc. You can watch an example here.
As we were nearing the end of our class time, I had all groups hold up their clusters so the rest of the groups could see. I then wrote "Clustering" on the board under "Brainstorming" and pointed out that Clustering is another method of Prewriting. I mentioned that on Wednesday (Monday is MLK Jr. day, so no class), we will review at least one other type of Prewriting called "Freewriting."
I reminded students of their two Journals (Blog entries) due next week, and we adjourned. I never spoke for more than 3 or 4 minutes at a time--if that! Success!
Thursday, January 12, 2012
Proofreading for the Obvious
My last section of ENG 120 wrote their Diagnostic Essays this morning. While they wrote, I started grading the first section's essays...suffice to say, there is a reason why they are in my Composition course!
In the midst of scraping my poor eyeballs over the essays, it occurred to me that instead of merely handing out my "Professor G's Proofreading Notation" sheet and blabbering through the whole thing in class this semester, I should make the kids work for it. Okay, so that sounded quite a bit harsher than I meant it to sound, but, it's fairly clear to most people that the more effort a student puts into a particular project, concept or lesson, the better she learns it.
So. I am going to split up my fresh-faced little butchers of the English language into groups of 3-5. Each group will have a set of ten questions about the most common knives wielded against proper English grammar:
1. What is a 'fused sentence?'
2. What is a 'run-on sentence?'
3. What is a 'comma splice?'
4. What are the eight (8) parts of speech? (side note: I do not allow students to use questions or exclamations in academic writing unless it is part of a quote).
5. What is 'verb tense?'
6. What is 'subject-verb agreement?'
7. What are 'transitions?' Why do we need them?
8. What is a 'sentence fragment?'
9. How many sentences are in a paragraph? (I constantly battle that horrid habit middle and high school teachers ingrain in my students' heads that a paragraph is five sentences--this is flat-out not the case at the college level).
10. What is a 'thesis statement?'
I realize that all these questions are dry as overcooked chicken, but there is a method to my madness here: because these are my students' most common mistakes, it behooves me to find out now, at the beginning of the semester, if they even know what they are. If they do, great, we immediately dive into how to recognize, avoid and fix them in the future. If, as I suspect, they haven't a blessed clue what they are, we will start with creating an attainable explanation for each and do some more basic grammar work.
Obviously the last two questions are a bit of a different animal, but as students in each of the three ENG 120 sections asked me, "Is it okay that I included the thesis statement in the Introduction instead of writing it by itself?" over the last two days, I'm pretty sure this will be fruitful.
(And not to leave you out, dear readers, I will be sure to post the most witty, clever and asinine responses to all of the above. There is a problem in our English language teaching methods and it will help all of us to understand what the heck is going on inside those eighteen-year-olds' heads!)
After we've done the group questionnaire, we will check each group against the others and come up with common definitions for the terms for which that is appropriate. Then, I will give the students their essays back, along with my Proofreading Notation sheet. Commence the scavenger hunt! Each student will have to find an example in his or her own paper of the notation as we go through the sheet. (For example: // for parallelism, so the students will be looking for a place where they had a parallelism issue in sentence structure).
More to come tomorrow...
In the midst of scraping my poor eyeballs over the essays, it occurred to me that instead of merely handing out my "Professor G's Proofreading Notation" sheet and blabbering through the whole thing in class this semester, I should make the kids work for it. Okay, so that sounded quite a bit harsher than I meant it to sound, but, it's fairly clear to most people that the more effort a student puts into a particular project, concept or lesson, the better she learns it.
So. I am going to split up my fresh-faced little butchers of the English language into groups of 3-5. Each group will have a set of ten questions about the most common knives wielded against proper English grammar:
1. What is a 'fused sentence?'
2. What is a 'run-on sentence?'
3. What is a 'comma splice?'
4. What are the eight (8) parts of speech? (side note: I do not allow students to use questions or exclamations in academic writing unless it is part of a quote).
5. What is 'verb tense?'
6. What is 'subject-verb agreement?'
7. What are 'transitions?' Why do we need them?
8. What is a 'sentence fragment?'
9. How many sentences are in a paragraph? (I constantly battle that horrid habit middle and high school teachers ingrain in my students' heads that a paragraph is five sentences--this is flat-out not the case at the college level).
10. What is a 'thesis statement?'
I realize that all these questions are dry as overcooked chicken, but there is a method to my madness here: because these are my students' most common mistakes, it behooves me to find out now, at the beginning of the semester, if they even know what they are. If they do, great, we immediately dive into how to recognize, avoid and fix them in the future. If, as I suspect, they haven't a blessed clue what they are, we will start with creating an attainable explanation for each and do some more basic grammar work.
Obviously the last two questions are a bit of a different animal, but as students in each of the three ENG 120 sections asked me, "Is it okay that I included the thesis statement in the Introduction instead of writing it by itself?" over the last two days, I'm pretty sure this will be fruitful.
(And not to leave you out, dear readers, I will be sure to post the most witty, clever and asinine responses to all of the above. There is a problem in our English language teaching methods and it will help all of us to understand what the heck is going on inside those eighteen-year-olds' heads!)
After we've done the group questionnaire, we will check each group against the others and come up with common definitions for the terms for which that is appropriate. Then, I will give the students their essays back, along with my Proofreading Notation sheet. Commence the scavenger hunt! Each student will have to find an example in his or her own paper of the notation as we go through the sheet. (For example: // for parallelism, so the students will be looking for a place where they had a parallelism issue in sentence structure).
More to come tomorrow...
Wednesday, January 11, 2012
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