Shadowing session 10/29/2010.

For this session I was unable to make it because I have been sick with some sort of stomach virus since Thursday. I have not yet fully recovered but I think I am almost there. Not attending shadowing was unfortunate but today I had my consultation with Long about my English paper. Apparently our teacher was disappointed in our midterm results, so he has offered us the chance to rewrite the paper in hopes of getting a better grade. I was very relieved at that because now Long's consultation will help me even more as I begin to think about a rewrite or modification of the paper. Long had some very practical advice from me and I feel more motivated to begin my revision now. He helped me revise my thesis, and although I chose not to share my teacher's comments with him, he had a very similar approach to the revision that the professor had, which is very impressive considering he does not have as much experience writing English papers as my professor does.

The power of failure.

This week Professor Dolson asked us to write about failure and what that means to us in terms of personal growth. I have been quite busy this week so I only just got around to writing about the subject, but I think its an important one because people have lots of contrasting ideas about it. Some people are under the impression that failure, or making mistakes, is a prerequisite of success. Without it, how can we learn and grow into successful people? Others advocate the notion that failure is not necessary; that is, a person who has always been successful will continue to do so without ever making serious mistakes or ever truly understanding how to fail and how to learn from it. Personally, I believe that it is impossible to go through life without committing a mistake or not failing at something. I've had my share of failures and mistakes, be it academic or personal, and I continue to learn from them and grow as a person every day. This same notion applies to writing, as getting a bad grade on a paper is not the end of the world. When we understand what we do wrong and learn to correct it, we get the most benefit from failing. That way, we won't do it again in the future.

Digital stories.

This week we watched everyone's digital story and talked briefly about each of them in class. I think our class did an excellent job on the stories considering this was the first time most people had done a digital story project. Having done this in the past, I noticed that our stories had a lot more sense and direction in terms of content and actual "story-telling" than the stories from my class back in sophomore year. I guess this is because this class is full of talented writers who have the ability to modify their forms of expression across different media and "paper," so to speak. Also, the audience grade idea was a good one, and I think most people did well in terms of how their peers graded them.

Shadowing session 10/22/2010.

Unfortunately, the writing consultant that I regularly shadow did not show up today. So instead I took it upon myself to finish helping Long edit his paper, which is actually due later today. Last night I had my consultation with him and I think it went really well. It shows from his edited draft that I gave him some direction for where he wanted to go with the paper and thesis, and I'm glad that he was able to synthesize all the advice that I gave him. I have no doubt that he will ace the paper.

Shadowing experience 10/09/2010.

This update comes a bit late in the week as I plan to discuss my shadowing experience from last week. This session was very interesting as the only person that came in for a consultation had questions about a graduate school application. She wanted some advice from the consultant regarding the essay portion of the application, and my observations of their consultation was quite interesting. The consultant used the same process theory that one would use to write an English paper or a Poli Sci paper. It seemed that the tutee was quite nervous about applying and really wanted to make sure her essay was free of errors and logical inconsitencies. It seems very interesting to think about the job description of a writing consultant and then imagine helping a student on grad school essay. One might not traditionally think of this as the role of the consultant, but I feel it is important that we are prepared to edit any kind of writing.

Happy Fall Break!

A post from one of my favorite online comic strips XKCD..

I hope everyone has a great fall break. See you all next week!

Writing across genres and subjects.

A couple of hours ago I was thinking about how vastly writing can differ when it crosses genres and subject matter, and how this relates to our task as a writing consultant. An integral part of helping tutees with their writing is to understand the assignment, and on a deeper level, to get an idea of what kind of writing is expected from the student. For example, within the English courses, one can be expected to write papers on a variety of things. I wrote a few papers on novels in my modernism class, and now I have to do an in-depth paper on poetry in the Milton seminar that I'm taking this semester. Writing about prose is very different than writing about poetry, and the strategies that a writer needs to adopt for each kind of writing are very different and require time and practice to master. As both a writer and a writing consultant, I think it will be very important to keep these ideas in mind when helping a tutee improve their writing because the strategies that I choose to share with them will differ based on the kind of writing they are asked to produce.

How to write...basic guidelines.

Browsing through the internet the other day I found this website while looking for idea's for my English 400 midterm paper..

http://www.fireandknowledge.org/archives/2007/01/08/a-guide-to-writing-well/#IntroGeneral

I think its a great website and it seems to have various different interpretations of writing depending on the context. But overall I think it helps to structure an essay quite well. Probably a tool that I will refer to my future tutees (hopefully when I become a writing consultant)..

I especially liked an excerpt about how to write good conclusions:

“The perfect ending should take your readers slightly by surprise and yet seem exactly right. They didn’t expect the article to end so soon, or so abruptly, or to say what is said. But they know it when they see it.”

Sometimes people often forget how important a conclusion paragraph can be, and I like to emphasize that by having a strong conclusion, you leave a lasting impression on the reader; they will remember the fact that they didn't waste their time reading a paper that had too obvious an argument, but rather were pleased with what they read and what they learned.

Generic teacher end comments?

In response to Summer Smith's article about the genre of the "end comment," I find that I have to agree with some of the points that she raises about the generic characteristics of some comments that teachers use to evaluate student writing. I've seen this on many of my past papers, comments where teachers don't really say anything of substance except "improve" or "good job." I find that this does not help my writing improve because it does not give me clear indicators of what is actually wrong or weak in the essay. However, there have been many cases where I have received great feedback. The best feedback I have received on a paper focused on the originality of my argumentation and how well I used the supporting evidence to prove it. It was the teacher telling me whether or not I had convinced him of my argument and my grade based on how effectively and "eloquently," as he put it, I had succeeded in doing so. I do feel that some professors need to break out of the genre of end commenting in order to truly evaluate student writing rather than simply skip around the issue to avoid problems with offending the student or problems with the institution that might arise out of offending a student for criticizing his writing. I personally welcome criticism in all forms (as long as it is justified), and it is very useful when teachers are actually honest and specific rather than vague and conformist.

Writing consultant shadow - session 2.

For this session, I remained quiet the whole time and simply observed the consultant  at work. Much like last week, a girl without a paper (but with plenty of ideas) came in to talk about her ideas for a paper. She went into a very long summary of the book she was writing about and also trying to get some feedback from the consultant regarding her ideas. This was very much a brainstorming session, and I noticed that through the whole process, the consultant and the writer were sharing and developing ideas that I think will really help the writer write a good paper. Also, she had a long list of quotes that she wanted to relate to her ideas. Obviously, a session like this is a little harder than having a physical paper to go through because it requires a lot of thought and idea-sharing between the consultant and writer, but I think it was a good exercise that will help any writer. It seems the writing consultant really does need to be very flexible and dynamic in terms of how he/she performs her job...

Reminds me of Wednesday's class..

For all of you who dislike run-on sentences..

English classes at the college level.

Just yesterday I received my first assignment for my 400-level John Milton seminar. There seems to be this preconceived notion that any class at the 400-level is bound to be much more difficult than those at any other level. It is true, that on certain levels, the demands of such a class do become more straining and taxing on the mind and body. There is more assigned reading, there is more discussion, and there is much more expected of the student in terms of his critical thinking and analytical skills. Which brings me to the next part of the class - writing. All English classes request some form of written evidence of thoughts, ideas, and arguments about the material that is discussed. Just before I received the assignment, I thought it would be a 12-page paper on some very obscure facets of the texts, but it turns out that it was a 4-5 page paper on any three given topics (which are not obscure, mind you). This made me realize that the demands for academic writing do not increase in a sense that we have to be more intellectual in the way we write (using harder, more advanced words; different styles, increasing level of grammatical complexity), but these demands are placed on the quality of thought and argument. Writing for a 400-level English classes will be harder than writing for a 200-level classes because the quality of argument and originality that is expected is very high. What makes it even more difficult is that the paper is only allowed to be a maximum of 5 pages! Writing is intrinsically devoted to the extraction of thought so that others may understand and benefit from the ideas, not whether or not you can string together a paper full of never-before-seen vocabulary and impossibly difficult syntax.

The Almighty Thesis.

Going back to a few issues that I raised in class a few a days ago, I still maintain my position that the thesis  statement of any paper is the most important part and should also have the most time dedicated to it. I can't tell you how many papers in high school and freshman year of college I had ripped apart by teachers because my thesis was basically non-existent, no matter how good the supporting sections or conclusion were. The thesis is the ultimate form of self-expression, because it encompasses the main idea or argument that you are trying to synthesize from all sorts of external information and internal thought processes.

Another main issue that arises with thesis statements is how exactly one judges them. You can't tell someone their thesis statement is weak simply because you don't agree with the idea or because the argument is easily refuted. Obviously one needs to make some effort and put some original thought into formulating an argument, but sometimes having a good idea and argument does not necessarily mean you know how to translate it to the written word that easily. I've had good ideas that just sounded stupid on paper, so I think its really important to keep in mind whether or not you can write what you say and say what you write (and still make sense and remain congruent with your thoughts).