Found this recipe site via serendipity and include it here just in case you've been wondering what to assemble for supper--like the clear narrative style of the author.
http://www.101cookbooks.com/archives/a-twist-on-guacamole-recipe.html
The Visual Thesaurus included an article on comma splices, and I think it could be used for a quick lesson. I spotted at least one comma splice in my previous blogs (oh, the horror!)and while I wouldn't use a whole class period, this article could be used as a springboard for a mini-lesson on comma splices. As a follow-up activity, I'd challenge students to identify and capture comma splices in their world (much more practical & entertaining than a lame-o worksheet)and give prizes for their finds--perhaps even Smartees candy because they are brilliant language detectives. I'd also have them enter this information in a notebook where I'll ask them to log words of interest, words they needed to look up, difficulties they encountered, questions they have, and a place for links they found useful. They could store this information electronically as a singular and group project, or via the time-honored, analog method. If they put this information up electronically, then collaborative learning will likely be set into motion.
Red Pen Diaries: Zero Tolerance for Comma Splices
April 20, 2009
By Simon Glickman and Julia Rubiner
Are comma splices running rampant, or is it just me?
I keep seeing them in newspapers and magazines and on billboards and can't help but wonder if they, too, are now becoming acceptable, as have so many once-verboten grammar, ahem, alternatives before them. I sure hope not — as you might guess, I'm agin 'em.
So you can imagine my ire when I saw this in the New York Daily News recently: "She had a headache, she had no signs of impact, no bleeding."
Now I know the New York Daily News is not the New York Times (as if they've managed to remain above the fray), but the appearance of the comma splice in that context chagrined me mightily. As some of you have likely surmised, it sullied an (otherwise acceptable) article about Natasha Richardson's fatal skiing accident, posted online in the hours after the incident but before the actress was removed from life support. I was gripped by the story. I wanted details. I wanted an explanation. What I did not want was to be forced to re-read the line "She had a headache, she had no signs of impact, no bleeding." What I did not want was to stumble over this critical information. What I did not want was to be stopped — nonplussed — on my way to finding out how this could have happened.
When I see a comma splice, I usually dismiss it with an internal "effin' moron" aimed at the perpetrator. But the stakes felt higher in this instance. I felt the paper was insulting not only me but also Richardson and her family. You'd think among the three of them, the Daily News staff writers responsible for this piece could have avoided the damn comma splice. I don't care if the copy desk has been decimated and they're doing the work of six journalists — they've got staff jobs in this economy; they should act like they deserve them. In the spirit of not just bitching about the problem but becoming part of the solution, the following goes out to them.
Per Wikipedia (which borrows liberally from Strunk and White's classic The Elements of Style): "A comma splice is a sentence in which two independent clauses [i.e. each of which can stand on its own as a complete sentence] are joined by a comma without a coordinating conjunction. For example: It is nearly half past five, we cannot reach town before dark ... A coordinating conjunction is one of the following seven words: for, and, nor, but, or, yet, so ... Only semicolons and periods are strong enough to separate two independent clauses without a conjunction ... Simply removing the comma does not correct the error, but results in a run-on sentence. There are several ways to correct this:
Change the comma to a semicolon: It is nearly half past five; we cannot reach town before dark.
Write the two clauses as two separate sentences: It is nearly half past five. We cannot reach town before dark.
Insert a coordinating conjunction following the comma: It is nearly half past five, and we cannot reach town before dark. It is nearly half past five, so we cannot reach town before dark.
Make one clause dependent on the other: As it is nearly half past five, we cannot reach town before dark."
So there you have the formal explanation. On a more personal level, what I ask myself in identifying a comma splice is: "Are there two complete sentences mashed together with a comma between them?" Of course, to determine that one must know what constitutes a complete sentence. For this I call upon Grammar Girl, who said in her podcast of Dec. 15, 2006 (episode 30), entitled "Sentence Fragments":
"In the most basic form, a complete sentence must have a subject and a verb. A verb is an action word that tells the reader what's happening, and a subject does the action of the verb. You can make a complete sentence with just two words: Squiggly hurried. Squiggly, our beloved snail, is the subject, and hurried is the verb." This reminds me of a boy I knew in high school named Tim Shook. Very handsome. Maltese heritage. Loved Aerosmith. Those were sentence fragments, by the way.
In my book, sentence fragments can be kosher, and I'll take this opportunity to point out that there are exceptions to the laws governing comma splices (shocking, I know). Wikipedia again quotes The Elements of Style: "Splices are sometimes acceptable when the clauses are short and alike in form, such as: The gate swung apart, the bridge fell, the portcullis was drawn up."
I don't like that construction much either. Nor can I get behind the various canonical authors who employ the comma splice as art. I don't care who you are — if you're gluing together independent clauses/complete sentences with a comma, you're doing your reader a disservice and, in the case of outdoor advertisers, inviting vandalism. I've said to myself more than once, "If I could just get up there with a can of spray paint, I could turn that comma into a semicolon and all would be right with the world." Don't push me, people.
Seen any juicy comma splices lately? Let us know in the comments below!
Simon Glickman and Julia Rubiner are the principals of Editorial Emergency, a Los Angeles-based copywriting agency. Since opening its doors in 2005, EE has wrangled verbiage for the Honda Civic Tour, Disney Interactive Studios, Borders, Target, Mattel, Sony, Universal, EMI/Capitol and assorted other content-hungry customers.
Click here to read more articles by Simon Glickman and Julia Rubiner.
Monday, April 20, 2009
Saturday, April 18, 2009
Word use
The essay below is from Visual Thesaurus, and thought it might be of general interest. In English 1000, I might use it to spark a debate about "real" words, and have students argue for or against non-standard word use in an essay. Might also recommend that they visit the Urban Dictionary online to see if it has anything of interest on the topic, then show them how to access the Oxford English Dictionary online in the event that they are interested in the historical origins of words in our language. Finally, I'd let them know that a vast difference in dictionaries exists, and that the "Webster's" copyright lapsed (so anyone may use Webster's in their dictionary title)but that the standard publisher's recent offering is the Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, 11th edition.
Mailbag Friday: "Texted"
April 17, 2009
By Ben Zimmer
Today's Mailbag Friday question comes all the way from Dakar, Senegal. Jodi W. asks: "What's up with texted? As in, 'I texted her yesterday.' Is it a real word?"
Jodi's not alone in wondering about texted as the past-tense form of the verb text (meaning "to send a text message to"). Stanford linguist Arnold Zwicky recently noted a similar query on his blog, and the topic has come up on the American Dialect Society mailing list and various English usage forums online. Challenges to the legitimacy of texted are often accompanied by personal impressions that the word "just sounds wrong."
First, let's gently dispense with the "real word" part of the question. As we saw in the case of funner and funnest, a common disparagement of odd-sounding additions to our shared vocabulary is to suggest that they're not (really) words. And as I wrote about the funner/funnest brouhaha, "You can call them nonstandard, colloquial, informal, casual, slangy, or even signs of the apocalypse, but there's no reason to deny them wordhood."
Texted elicits similar reactions as funner and funnest, for broadly similar reasons. In both cases, a monosyllabic noun (fun, text) has also come to be used as another part of speech (fun has turned into an adjective and text into a verb). And in both cases the grumbling begins in some quarters when the part-of-speech shift becomes unavoidably obvious, with an inflectional affix grafted directly on the base word (the comparative/superlative suffixes -er and -est added to fun, the past-tense marker -ed added to text).
But it's not just any inflectional ending that makes text "sound wrong" to certain listeners. There are far fewer complaints about texting, whether used as a present participle or a gerund. So it seems that the "verbing" of text isn't so much the issue here as what happens when the verb ending -ed comes into play. The resulting form is pronounced /tɛkstəd/ (in phonetic notation), since a regular verb that ends in /t/ requires /əd/ as the past-tense marker. This isn't difficult for native speakers of English to pronounce, so why does it sound a little strange?
The problem is that the base form text (pronounced /tɛkst/) already has a phonetic ending that sounds like a past-tense verb marker. If there were a verb tex, then we'd spell the past tense as texed and pronounce it /tɛkst/, rhyming with hexed, vexed, perplexed, and so forth. (The rules for how to pronounce -ed — as /t/, /d/, or /əd/ — are acquired by native speakers in early childhood. For an explanation, see the Wikipedia article on allomorphs.) Thus, when the past tense form texted is called for, it might actually sound like a double past tense, and double past-tense marking is not accepted in standard English.
This has emerged as a usage issue because the verb text — and the social phenomenon behind it — are still new, so we're still working out the conventionally accepted linguistic forms. Interestingly, text already appeared as a verb much earlier in the history of English, about four hundred years ago, when it meant "to inscribe, write, or print in a text-hand or in capital or large letters." Shakespeare used it in Much Ado About Nothing (1599):
Don Pedro: But when shall we set the savage bull's horns on the sensible Benedick's head?
Claudio: Yea, and text underneath, 'Here dwells Benedick the married man'?
The past-tense and past-participial form texted appeared back then too, but it faded from memory. It was only with the advent of cell-phone text messaging in the late '90s that text(ed) came back on the scene, and with it came questions about its usage and pronunciation.
If texted sounds wrong thanks to the whiff of double past-tense marking, then what are the alternatives? One could avoid the verb form of text entirely and say "I sent him a text (message)" rather than "I texted him." But if the verbing of text is considered firmly entrenched (as the major English dictionaries all recognize), then we need to have some way of expressing the past tense. Those who are uncomfortable with texted sometimes suggest that the past tense should simply be... text. In other words, they would propose treating it as an irregular verb like put or burst where the past-tense form is identical to the present-tense form.
Though this type of "irregularization" is pretty unusual, it's not unprecedented. On his Literal-Minded blog, Neal Whitman has noted that the verbs pet, grit (one's teeth), and retrofit are sometimes treated as irregular by those who would prefer not to use the past-tense forms petted, gritted, or retrofitted. Dictionaries might not recognize these "bare" past-tense forms, but the usage is out there.
Let's assume that texting is here to stay, at least until some new technology arrives with its own vocabulary. That means we will continue to need to talk about this activity without resorting to roundabout (or "periphrastic") turns of speech like "send a text message." Which past-tense form will win out in conventional usage? If I had to guess, I would wager that it's unlikely for the "bare" form of text to become widely accepted, as in "She text (/tɛkst/) me last night." Rather, I'd expect that the complaints about texted will fade, as listeners get more accustomed to hearing it. Consider it merely the growing pains of a newcomer to our common lexicon.
Do you have your own question about the history of a word or phrase that you'd like to have discussed in a future Mailbag Friday? Click here and let us know!
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Rate this article:4.5 (3 votes)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Words, Usage
Post a comment Email to a Friend Sign up for email Suggest a topic / contribute
Click here to read more articles from Word Routes.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ben Zimmer is executive producer of the Visual Thesaurus and editor of the online magazine. Before coming to the Visual Thesaurus, he was editor for American dictionaries at Oxford University Press and a consultant to the Oxford English Dictionary. In addition to his regular "Word Routes" column here, he also contributes to the group weblog Language Log. His writing about language has been published in two recent blog anthologies: Ultimate Blogs and Far from the Madding Gerund.
Click here to read more articles by Ben Zimmer.
Mailbag Friday: "Texted"
April 17, 2009
By Ben Zimmer
Today's Mailbag Friday question comes all the way from Dakar, Senegal. Jodi W. asks: "What's up with texted? As in, 'I texted her yesterday.' Is it a real word?"
Jodi's not alone in wondering about texted as the past-tense form of the verb text (meaning "to send a text message to"). Stanford linguist Arnold Zwicky recently noted a similar query on his blog, and the topic has come up on the American Dialect Society mailing list and various English usage forums online. Challenges to the legitimacy of texted are often accompanied by personal impressions that the word "just sounds wrong."
First, let's gently dispense with the "real word" part of the question. As we saw in the case of funner and funnest, a common disparagement of odd-sounding additions to our shared vocabulary is to suggest that they're not (really) words. And as I wrote about the funner/funnest brouhaha, "You can call them nonstandard, colloquial, informal, casual, slangy, or even signs of the apocalypse, but there's no reason to deny them wordhood."
Texted elicits similar reactions as funner and funnest, for broadly similar reasons. In both cases, a monosyllabic noun (fun, text) has also come to be used as another part of speech (fun has turned into an adjective and text into a verb). And in both cases the grumbling begins in some quarters when the part-of-speech shift becomes unavoidably obvious, with an inflectional affix grafted directly on the base word (the comparative/superlative suffixes -er and -est added to fun, the past-tense marker -ed added to text).
But it's not just any inflectional ending that makes text "sound wrong" to certain listeners. There are far fewer complaints about texting, whether used as a present participle or a gerund. So it seems that the "verbing" of text isn't so much the issue here as what happens when the verb ending -ed comes into play. The resulting form is pronounced /tɛkstəd/ (in phonetic notation), since a regular verb that ends in /t/ requires /əd/ as the past-tense marker. This isn't difficult for native speakers of English to pronounce, so why does it sound a little strange?
The problem is that the base form text (pronounced /tɛkst/) already has a phonetic ending that sounds like a past-tense verb marker. If there were a verb tex, then we'd spell the past tense as texed and pronounce it /tɛkst/, rhyming with hexed, vexed, perplexed, and so forth. (The rules for how to pronounce -ed — as /t/, /d/, or /əd/ — are acquired by native speakers in early childhood. For an explanation, see the Wikipedia article on allomorphs.) Thus, when the past tense form texted is called for, it might actually sound like a double past tense, and double past-tense marking is not accepted in standard English.
This has emerged as a usage issue because the verb text — and the social phenomenon behind it — are still new, so we're still working out the conventionally accepted linguistic forms. Interestingly, text already appeared as a verb much earlier in the history of English, about four hundred years ago, when it meant "to inscribe, write, or print in a text-hand or in capital or large letters." Shakespeare used it in Much Ado About Nothing (1599):
Don Pedro: But when shall we set the savage bull's horns on the sensible Benedick's head?
Claudio: Yea, and text underneath, 'Here dwells Benedick the married man'?
The past-tense and past-participial form texted appeared back then too, but it faded from memory. It was only with the advent of cell-phone text messaging in the late '90s that text(ed) came back on the scene, and with it came questions about its usage and pronunciation.
If texted sounds wrong thanks to the whiff of double past-tense marking, then what are the alternatives? One could avoid the verb form of text entirely and say "I sent him a text (message)" rather than "I texted him." But if the verbing of text is considered firmly entrenched (as the major English dictionaries all recognize), then we need to have some way of expressing the past tense. Those who are uncomfortable with texted sometimes suggest that the past tense should simply be... text. In other words, they would propose treating it as an irregular verb like put or burst where the past-tense form is identical to the present-tense form.
Though this type of "irregularization" is pretty unusual, it's not unprecedented. On his Literal-Minded blog, Neal Whitman has noted that the verbs pet, grit (one's teeth), and retrofit are sometimes treated as irregular by those who would prefer not to use the past-tense forms petted, gritted, or retrofitted. Dictionaries might not recognize these "bare" past-tense forms, but the usage is out there.
Let's assume that texting is here to stay, at least until some new technology arrives with its own vocabulary. That means we will continue to need to talk about this activity without resorting to roundabout (or "periphrastic") turns of speech like "send a text message." Which past-tense form will win out in conventional usage? If I had to guess, I would wager that it's unlikely for the "bare" form of text to become widely accepted, as in "She text (/tɛkst/) me last night." Rather, I'd expect that the complaints about texted will fade, as listeners get more accustomed to hearing it. Consider it merely the growing pains of a newcomer to our common lexicon.
Do you have your own question about the history of a word or phrase that you'd like to have discussed in a future Mailbag Friday? Click here and let us know!
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Rate this article:4.5 (3 votes)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Words, Usage
Post a comment Email to a Friend Sign up for email Suggest a topic / contribute
Click here to read more articles from Word Routes.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ben Zimmer is executive producer of the Visual Thesaurus and editor of the online magazine. Before coming to the Visual Thesaurus, he was editor for American dictionaries at Oxford University Press and a consultant to the Oxford English Dictionary. In addition to his regular "Word Routes" column here, he also contributes to the group weblog Language Log. His writing about language has been published in two recent blog anthologies: Ultimate Blogs and Far from the Madding Gerund.
Click here to read more articles by Ben Zimmer.
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
compose design advocate: a rhetoric for integrating written, visual, and oral communication
compose design advocate: a rhetoric for integrating written, visual, and oral communication by Anne Frances Wysocki and Dennis A. Lynch. New York: Pearson Education, Inc., 2007.
This book is an amazing, engaging resource, so in-sync with what I believe to be an enlightened approach to composition that it is a pleasure to review. What features of this text did I find so compelling? The arrangement of the text and illustrations is visually pleasing--it breaks information into useable chunks in an aesthetically pleasing and logical manner. The chapters build on prior knowledge in an engaging way--a wide variety of illustrations have been chosen to demonstrate concepts and to keep the reader interested--I found this text to be a real page-turner since it reinforced concepts I would want to cover, supplemented by items I may not have thought of in time. Flipping through the text and stopping on the essay about Periodic Tables caused me to think about composing in a new way--and I immediately began planning the Elements of Composition in my head, and later on paper. If I structured my syllabus on the concepts included in this work, and if I could get students to buy into the process, they would emerge from this class better able to change the world through their skillful use of media within the myriad forms of communication available in our current cultural/digital/technological revolution.
It may surprise you to know that I didn't love everything about this book--the repeticious element: Assignments: thinking through production in every chapter but the fourth may be useful, but annoyed the artistic, less linear part of me that appreciates variety and longs for change. The text is aesthetically pleasing, but if I had control of the colorways, I would have made other color choices. I did, however, appreciate the wide variety of meaningful illustrations and believe that students will find them helpful. In some chapters, I was drawn into the text through the illustrations; after reading the comic strip produced by Lynda Barry (Sniff--Today's Demon: Common Scents)I backtracked and read what I was supposed to read about how to analyze the content of comic strips. This backtrack was a choice, and heigtened my interest in the text. What should I know before I look at the comic strip again? My random approach to this text transformed this review assignment into an entertaining, as well as enligtening experience. I would likely encourage students to first approach the text in a random manner--have a look and stop to read interesting bits--before adopting a more traditional, sequential reading. Setting different purposes in reading is a useful skill--wish I'd known about it while wading through Bleak House earlier in my reading career.
This book is an amazing, engaging resource, so in-sync with what I believe to be an enlightened approach to composition that it is a pleasure to review. What features of this text did I find so compelling? The arrangement of the text and illustrations is visually pleasing--it breaks information into useable chunks in an aesthetically pleasing and logical manner. The chapters build on prior knowledge in an engaging way--a wide variety of illustrations have been chosen to demonstrate concepts and to keep the reader interested--I found this text to be a real page-turner since it reinforced concepts I would want to cover, supplemented by items I may not have thought of in time. Flipping through the text and stopping on the essay about Periodic Tables caused me to think about composing in a new way--and I immediately began planning the Elements of Composition in my head, and later on paper. If I structured my syllabus on the concepts included in this work, and if I could get students to buy into the process, they would emerge from this class better able to change the world through their skillful use of media within the myriad forms of communication available in our current cultural/digital/technological revolution.
It may surprise you to know that I didn't love everything about this book--the repeticious element: Assignments: thinking through production in every chapter but the fourth may be useful, but annoyed the artistic, less linear part of me that appreciates variety and longs for change. The text is aesthetically pleasing, but if I had control of the colorways, I would have made other color choices. I did, however, appreciate the wide variety of meaningful illustrations and believe that students will find them helpful. In some chapters, I was drawn into the text through the illustrations; after reading the comic strip produced by Lynda Barry (Sniff--Today's Demon: Common Scents)I backtracked and read what I was supposed to read about how to analyze the content of comic strips. This backtrack was a choice, and heigtened my interest in the text. What should I know before I look at the comic strip again? My random approach to this text transformed this review assignment into an entertaining, as well as enligtening experience. I would likely encourage students to first approach the text in a random manner--have a look and stop to read interesting bits--before adopting a more traditional, sequential reading. Setting different purposes in reading is a useful skill--wish I'd known about it while wading through Bleak House earlier in my reading career.
English 1000: Beginning of Class
The Elements of Writing
I’ve been thinking about how to structure my English 1000 syllabus, and have the idea of designing a table much like the Periodic Table to assemble the elements of writing, suggesting that writing is like chemistry in that both writers and chemists combine elements with an expected reaction in mind, and that the subtraction or addition of elements will impact the outcome of their work. I don’t know if students will embrace the idea of the writer as a scientist, but it might appeal to them on a subliminal mad-scientist level, and spark their interest and enthusiasm for writing, reframed as an experiment with changing elements. I do know that many students may not enjoy writing, and that 13 years of public education and repeated pressure to produce a five paragraph essay have crushed most creative impulses and ground them into dust. My mission, as I see it, is to convince them that communication has multiple forms and purposes--and that the ability to use “written, visual, and oral communication that works in specific contexts for specific audiences through the process of composing and designing” will give them the power to advocate, to make their communication meaningful and effective in our diverse, increasingly digital world.
I like the idea of centering the first paper on an exploration of the student’s life prior to English 1000. The course guide states that the typical 19 year old Freshman is egocentric, and so they should find writing about themselves quite pleasurable, even as it challenges their media assemblage, information gathering, and expository writing skills. I’d start with the “Where I’m From” poem to lure them into beginning the larger assignment--and at the end of introductions, would confide that they’ve already finished one element of this assignment! Students like to believe that their work has a purpose, so this should get the writing ball rolling. The text: compose, design, advocate would be a valuable resource in this process and throughout the rest of the course.
Since I also know about Ohio State’s Digital Archive for Literacy Narrative, and have offered to help Dr. Patton with this worthwhile project on our own campus, I’d ask students to structure their work so that it could be shared, if they wish, with others on this network. (Information pasted below this text.)
Info below is from Ohio State's Digital Archive for Literacy Narratives
(DALN) site: http://daln.osu.edu/
What is a Literacy Narrative?
A literacy narrative is simply a collection of items that describe how you
learned to read, write, and compose. This collection might include a story
about learning to read cereal boxes and a story about learning to write
plays. Some people will want to record their memories about the bedtime
stories their parents read to them, the comics they looked at in the
newspaper, or their first library card. Others will want to tell a story
about writing a memorable letter, leaning how to write on a computer or
taking a photograph; reading the Bible, publishing a 'zine', or sending an
e-mail message.
Your literacy narrative can have many smaller parts, but they will all be
identified with your name. For instance, you might want to provide a story
about learning to read a as a child, a digitized image of one of your old
report cards, a story about writing a letter as a teenager, a photograph of
you as a young child; a song you learned when you were in school).
Step 1: Compose/Tell your story
Decide what stories you want to tell and what items you want to include in
your literacy narrative. You can tell these stories in many forms: words,
images, videos, audio clips, photographs.
You can include as many of these items as you’d like in your literacy
narrative. They will all appear under your name.
Some of the following prompts may remind you of stories you want to tell:
Early experiences at home
* Tell a story about how you first learned to read when you were a
child.
* Tell a story about how you first learned to write when you were a
child.
* Tell about the kinds of reading and writing that were done around your
hose when you were little or when you were growing up. Were there books in
your house? Comics? Music?
* Tell a story about what your parents/grandparents read (example:
newspapers, books, religious materials, computer games, etc.).
* Tell a story about what your parents/grandparents wrote (example:
newspapers, books, religious materials, computer games, etc.).
* What kinds of stories did your parents/grandparents tell you about how
they learned to read and write?
* Tell a story about how you first learned to use a computer. Who
helped? Where was it? What did you use it for? (examples: chatrooms, email,
gaming)
Experiences during your school years
* Tell a story about reading in elementary/secondary school.
* Tell a story about writing in elementary/secondary school.
* Tell a story about using a computer for reading or writing of any kind
(examples: chatrooms, email, gaming, writing papers, creating music)
* Tell a story about using other kinds of technology for reading and
writing and communicating when you were in school (examples: cell phones,
hearing aids, computers, PDAs). Why dis you use each device? How often? In
what circumstances?
Later experiences:
* Tell a story about reading as an adult. What kinds of things do you
read for work? For fun? For education? With friends or family?
* Tell a story about writing as an adult. What kinds of things do you
read for work? For fun? For education? With friends or family?
* Tell a story about using a computer for reading or writing of any kind
(examples: chatrooms, email, gaming, writing papers, creating music).
* Tell a story about the kinds of technology you unow se for reading and
writing and communicating as an adult (examples: cell phones, hearing aids,
computers, PDAs). Why do you use each device? How often? In what
circumstances?
Additional Materials
We also encourage you to add as many other items as you’d like to your
literacy narrative. Each item you submit should help illustrate or explain
your literacy narrative:
* scanned photographs of you as a child or your family, or snapshots you
have taken;
* scanned images of old report cards, maps you made, drawings you have
created;
* recorded music you have composed or sounds you have recorded
* digitized clips from home movies that show your literacy practices;
* short stories, letters, or other materials you have written.
* essays, 'zines', newsletters, e-mail messages you have written or
contributed to;
I’d help students focus on the details of this assignment through a series of mini-lessons, then I’d group them up and turn them loose, using the once/week model to keep track of their progress. Stay tuned for further developments.
I’ve been thinking about how to structure my English 1000 syllabus, and have the idea of designing a table much like the Periodic Table to assemble the elements of writing, suggesting that writing is like chemistry in that both writers and chemists combine elements with an expected reaction in mind, and that the subtraction or addition of elements will impact the outcome of their work. I don’t know if students will embrace the idea of the writer as a scientist, but it might appeal to them on a subliminal mad-scientist level, and spark their interest and enthusiasm for writing, reframed as an experiment with changing elements. I do know that many students may not enjoy writing, and that 13 years of public education and repeated pressure to produce a five paragraph essay have crushed most creative impulses and ground them into dust. My mission, as I see it, is to convince them that communication has multiple forms and purposes--and that the ability to use “written, visual, and oral communication that works in specific contexts for specific audiences through the process of composing and designing” will give them the power to advocate, to make their communication meaningful and effective in our diverse, increasingly digital world.
I like the idea of centering the first paper on an exploration of the student’s life prior to English 1000. The course guide states that the typical 19 year old Freshman is egocentric, and so they should find writing about themselves quite pleasurable, even as it challenges their media assemblage, information gathering, and expository writing skills. I’d start with the “Where I’m From” poem to lure them into beginning the larger assignment--and at the end of introductions, would confide that they’ve already finished one element of this assignment! Students like to believe that their work has a purpose, so this should get the writing ball rolling. The text: compose, design, advocate would be a valuable resource in this process and throughout the rest of the course.
Since I also know about Ohio State’s Digital Archive for Literacy Narrative, and have offered to help Dr. Patton with this worthwhile project on our own campus, I’d ask students to structure their work so that it could be shared, if they wish, with others on this network. (Information pasted below this text.)
Info below is from Ohio State's Digital Archive for Literacy Narratives
(DALN) site: http://daln.osu.edu/
What is a Literacy Narrative?
A literacy narrative is simply a collection of items that describe how you
learned to read, write, and compose. This collection might include a story
about learning to read cereal boxes and a story about learning to write
plays. Some people will want to record their memories about the bedtime
stories their parents read to them, the comics they looked at in the
newspaper, or their first library card. Others will want to tell a story
about writing a memorable letter, leaning how to write on a computer or
taking a photograph; reading the Bible, publishing a 'zine', or sending an
e-mail message.
Your literacy narrative can have many smaller parts, but they will all be
identified with your name. For instance, you might want to provide a story
about learning to read a as a child, a digitized image of one of your old
report cards, a story about writing a letter as a teenager, a photograph of
you as a young child; a song you learned when you were in school).
Step 1: Compose/Tell your story
Decide what stories you want to tell and what items you want to include in
your literacy narrative. You can tell these stories in many forms: words,
images, videos, audio clips, photographs.
You can include as many of these items as you’d like in your literacy
narrative. They will all appear under your name.
Some of the following prompts may remind you of stories you want to tell:
Early experiences at home
* Tell a story about how you first learned to read when you were a
child.
* Tell a story about how you first learned to write when you were a
child.
* Tell about the kinds of reading and writing that were done around your
hose when you were little or when you were growing up. Were there books in
your house? Comics? Music?
* Tell a story about what your parents/grandparents read (example:
newspapers, books, religious materials, computer games, etc.).
* Tell a story about what your parents/grandparents wrote (example:
newspapers, books, religious materials, computer games, etc.).
* What kinds of stories did your parents/grandparents tell you about how
they learned to read and write?
* Tell a story about how you first learned to use a computer. Who
helped? Where was it? What did you use it for? (examples: chatrooms, email,
gaming)
Experiences during your school years
* Tell a story about reading in elementary/secondary school.
* Tell a story about writing in elementary/secondary school.
* Tell a story about using a computer for reading or writing of any kind
(examples: chatrooms, email, gaming, writing papers, creating music)
* Tell a story about using other kinds of technology for reading and
writing and communicating when you were in school (examples: cell phones,
hearing aids, computers, PDAs). Why dis you use each device? How often? In
what circumstances?
Later experiences:
* Tell a story about reading as an adult. What kinds of things do you
read for work? For fun? For education? With friends or family?
* Tell a story about writing as an adult. What kinds of things do you
read for work? For fun? For education? With friends or family?
* Tell a story about using a computer for reading or writing of any kind
(examples: chatrooms, email, gaming, writing papers, creating music).
* Tell a story about the kinds of technology you unow se for reading and
writing and communicating as an adult (examples: cell phones, hearing aids,
computers, PDAs). Why do you use each device? How often? In what
circumstances?
Additional Materials
We also encourage you to add as many other items as you’d like to your
literacy narrative. Each item you submit should help illustrate or explain
your literacy narrative:
* scanned photographs of you as a child or your family, or snapshots you
have taken;
* scanned images of old report cards, maps you made, drawings you have
created;
* recorded music you have composed or sounds you have recorded
* digitized clips from home movies that show your literacy practices;
* short stories, letters, or other materials you have written.
* essays, 'zines', newsletters, e-mail messages you have written or
contributed to;
I’d help students focus on the details of this assignment through a series of mini-lessons, then I’d group them up and turn them loose, using the once/week model to keep track of their progress. Stay tuned for further developments.
Sunday, April 5, 2009
Organization of Classroom Time
Although I've taught for many years, and have had national, state, and district curriculum guidelines to follow, I've typically presented information and skills in the order I believed was most useful to the group of learners before me--but always needed a baseline in order to proceed. I don't want to spend time on concepts they've mastered, but am also concerned that students have what they need to succeed in future writing intensive classes. I'd ask them to write about who they are as a reader and writer--might use the "Where I'm From" poem exercise to promote and establish classroom culture first--then move on to the reader/writer survey. I'd very likely have students pair up and tell each other what they've written, so each pair will introduce each other.
I think the idea of having students actively engaged in their own learning is most beneficial to them, but I've had students who were highly annoyed when asked to do anything but listen. Once they have a seat, they've established a nest/beachhead and they don't want to move unless it is to get up for refreshments, or flee the building. Given a preference, I think I'd rather have students for 2 or 3 short class periods than all at once. I had a 3 credit hour Statistics class last semester that would have been much more beneficial in smaller chunks. Quite frankly, 15 minute chunks of problem solving, followed by 5 minutes to review what we had just done and why--and a 10 minute break to meditate and/or obtain additional caffeine would have been the ideal learning environment for me--but that was not what happened.
What I find out from students the first day will help me decide how to proceed. If I have a group of confident writers, there will be less need for remediation and so I'll plan for them to employ and discuss a wide variety of writing exercises. I'm with our guest speaker in that I'll strive to make the exercises enticing so that they will be inspired/tricked into producing rafts of writing and beg for more...or at least not howl in agony when they receive a new assignment.
The syllabus will be subject to adjustment/change and while I will most likely have a schedule of activities for the first month, I'll see where the students are individually and as a group and tweak the syllabus to reflect the direction class should go, based on the input received and graded. If I have a group of writers who have not been successful writers in the past, and do not expect to be successful in the future, we'll proceed at a different rate. Pairing the students according to their ability levels works, but they should have the opportunity to work in different groups and be exposed to peer coaching. I think a rubric is important for big projects, but always want the option to adjust grades to truly reflect effort and meaning--conventions are important, but positive feedback and gentle suggestions encourage writing growth without anxiety.
I've always been a patient, low-key teacher; I'm the oldest of three and was used to being in charge of the health and well-being of my brother and sister from a fairly early age. I think I've been a teacher for most of my life, now that I reflect on it. I read Stephanie's blog about teaching others and thought about all the times I was assigned someone in school to help because they just didn't "get it." Both of my parents taught school, my brother, sister, and I followed their career path. This intensive reflection about teaching writing caused me to reflect how much teaching writing is like teaching swimming. As an undergraduate, I worked as a cashier/lifeguard in the summer, and during swimming lessons, I was "given" the sinkers-- students who were extremely afraid of the water or non-compliant. It was my job to ease their fears and charm them into tolerating the feeling of water all around them. As their peers learned to swim, my sinkers learned to let the water touch their face, and that blowing bubbles in the water was a surviveable event. They practiced kicking, and eventually trusted me enough to let me help them float; they knew by then that I would never let them drown. Years later, in my classroom, students must work very hard to drown/fail; I'm patiently insistent that they succeed. If there are sinkers in class, my goal is (still)to help them learn how to survive, and evntually thrive.
I think the idea of having students actively engaged in their own learning is most beneficial to them, but I've had students who were highly annoyed when asked to do anything but listen. Once they have a seat, they've established a nest/beachhead and they don't want to move unless it is to get up for refreshments, or flee the building. Given a preference, I think I'd rather have students for 2 or 3 short class periods than all at once. I had a 3 credit hour Statistics class last semester that would have been much more beneficial in smaller chunks. Quite frankly, 15 minute chunks of problem solving, followed by 5 minutes to review what we had just done and why--and a 10 minute break to meditate and/or obtain additional caffeine would have been the ideal learning environment for me--but that was not what happened.
What I find out from students the first day will help me decide how to proceed. If I have a group of confident writers, there will be less need for remediation and so I'll plan for them to employ and discuss a wide variety of writing exercises. I'm with our guest speaker in that I'll strive to make the exercises enticing so that they will be inspired/tricked into producing rafts of writing and beg for more...or at least not howl in agony when they receive a new assignment.
The syllabus will be subject to adjustment/change and while I will most likely have a schedule of activities for the first month, I'll see where the students are individually and as a group and tweak the syllabus to reflect the direction class should go, based on the input received and graded. If I have a group of writers who have not been successful writers in the past, and do not expect to be successful in the future, we'll proceed at a different rate. Pairing the students according to their ability levels works, but they should have the opportunity to work in different groups and be exposed to peer coaching. I think a rubric is important for big projects, but always want the option to adjust grades to truly reflect effort and meaning--conventions are important, but positive feedback and gentle suggestions encourage writing growth without anxiety.
I've always been a patient, low-key teacher; I'm the oldest of three and was used to being in charge of the health and well-being of my brother and sister from a fairly early age. I think I've been a teacher for most of my life, now that I reflect on it. I read Stephanie's blog about teaching others and thought about all the times I was assigned someone in school to help because they just didn't "get it." Both of my parents taught school, my brother, sister, and I followed their career path. This intensive reflection about teaching writing caused me to reflect how much teaching writing is like teaching swimming. As an undergraduate, I worked as a cashier/lifeguard in the summer, and during swimming lessons, I was "given" the sinkers-- students who were extremely afraid of the water or non-compliant. It was my job to ease their fears and charm them into tolerating the feeling of water all around them. As their peers learned to swim, my sinkers learned to let the water touch their face, and that blowing bubbles in the water was a surviveable event. They practiced kicking, and eventually trusted me enough to let me help them float; they knew by then that I would never let them drown. Years later, in my classroom, students must work very hard to drown/fail; I'm patiently insistent that they succeed. If there are sinkers in class, my goal is (still)to help them learn how to survive, and evntually thrive.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)