Real Writing

As a teacher of writing, I strive to give all of my students -- in writing courses AND in other courses -- opportunities to improve their writing. I provide extensive feedback on drafts in literature courses and in my WGST courses. But how do I deal with writing like this (the first paragraph of an essay, copied exactly as it was submitted, about how the de Beauvoir phrase "One is not born a woman, one becomes one" plays out in our WGST readings this semester):

• According to the famous book: The Second Sex that was written by Simone de Beauvoir. This famous line was used "One is not born a woman, one becomes one." This quote from my view might be interpret as someone who might be born as a female, but later on in their life. They might change their sexuality to being a male because of the things that they learn and experience in life that maybe being a female does not fit their life style, and they like to fix cars, build houses and carry heavy loads like a man. In other cases in which it is classified as norms in society, a female should stay as a female throughout their whole life from the beginning of their birth throughout their learning in life. They should being happy to represent their sexuality as a female and being the sex as they were born with is the way how it should be. In addition to the quote by Beauvoir, there is many discussion about the process of becoming a woman as reflecting back to the quote once again that "One is not born a woman, one becomes one."

Okay, friends, what do I do with five double-spaced pages that read like this?

This student may or may not have had a composition course. This student may or may not understand the material. This student may or may not have achieved a level of literacy (either in English or his home language) to be able to understand or convey complex ideas in writing.

How can I respond in a way that will teach something about the material (that de Beauvoir is talking about the social processes of culture on the individual) and about how to express one's thoughts in writing?

It seems to me that many, many people think "teaching writing" is easy because it just means "checking grammar." But this student's sentences convey many more issues/problems/challenges than just "bad grammar" (of course that's a problem, too). But that "bad grammar" (or more accurately, "bad syntax") is more like "unclear thinking," perhaps.

If we understand the sentence to be the unit of thought, then this writer's thoughts are scrambled, incomplete, preliminary, immature -- or most precisely "inchoate": "from the Latin inchoatus, the past participle of inchoare to start work on, perhaps from in- + cohum part of a yoke to which the beam of a plow is fitted." I love that idea of the yoke: can I help a student yoke his thoughts to words?

More of the definition: "being only partly in existence or operation: . . . especially : imperfectly formed or formulated." This imprefection certainly comes through, although since writing is "endlessly prefectable," we can't expect perfection.

My point, I guess, is to convey the profound challenges in front of me -- and many of my colleagues -- who "teach writing." We are really heroic and underappreciated: our work is misunderstood. I'd call it "sisyphean" if I were in a bad mood, although I'm not sure what crime we've committed that angered the gods (or even who those gods might be in this all-too-mortally-flawed education system).

(Image from WriteThinking)

A Writing/Reading/Texting Revolution

I'm reposting a message I received from a great listserv (techrhet, which means technology and rhetoric, the list where I find out all the cool stuff about technology).

One of the major list participants, Nick Carbone, noted SEED magazine's article called "A Writing Revolution," which he found via Andrew Sullivan's The Atlantic blog "The Daily Dish," a post he called "We're All Authors Now" (starting to feel like nested Russian dolls, huh? That's the power of the interwebs and the power of "reach" and "speed" as Laura Gurak once said).

Here's what Carbone sent to the list (emphasis added):

The key claim: Nearly universal literacy is a defining characteristic of today’s modern civilization; nearly universal authorship will shape tomorrow's.

The article measures the rate of authorship from 1400 to the present age, with a graph to show rates of change in authorship. It defines authorship as having a 100 readers. So one who tweets to a 100 follows, or writes an email like this to lists with over a 100 members, is counted as an author.

The analysis unfortunately includes some cyber-enthusiasm that makes some claims that stretch the argument too far, like this example of what seems to be a logical fallacy: "When United Airlines refused to reimburse a musician for damaging his guitar, the offended customer posted a song online—“United Breaks Guitars”—and United’s stock dropped 10 percent." -- is that Post Hoc Ergo Prompter Hoc?

There's no doubt more to pick at, but the chart and the measures of writing growth, and the fact digital technologies provide at least the potential for every writer to find at least a 100 readers (there's no guarantee that will happen) is very cool to see.

Good writers

This semester, I'm teaching English 90 again, a course that's to help students get ready to write college-level writing (whatever that is). The students have so many different kinds of issues when it comes to getting their thoughts down in writing.

Issues range all over the place: from not having thoughts they can clearly articulate . . . to not quite understanding what a sentence is; from not knowing how to read . . . to never having used a computer before; from getting by writing the most banal things to "please the teacher". . . to sharing so much of their lives that I feel pity and awe toward them.

But this semester, I have a couple of the strongest writers I've ever had in that class. These young people are investigating their lives and experiences in a profound, real way. They're connecting what they read to their own lives. They're grappling with complex topics related to literacy, education, identity, and meaning -- topics I think some of my colleagues don't yet grasp!

It's a pleasure to read their work -- sure, it's a bit raggedy when it comes to things like comma use and consistent verb tense. Sure, they randomly veer from first person plural to second person singular back to third person plural. But so what: they're thinking and writing, writing and thinking. I'm lucky to have them in class.

What does this sentence mean?

Here's the opening sentence from a student's "field trip report," where s/he is supposed to analyze the experience of going to an independent bookstore, Amazon Bookstore Cooperative, and connect it to the course we've been in: Engl 2061 - Women's Literature: British and Colonial:

"There has been a long, withstanding tradition of preserving women through literature."

I have to say that I get images of orange marmalade in my head . . . :-) And what word should the "withstanding" in that sentence be? I can't figure that one out at all.

More new finds

I'm not sure what to call the paths I've been taking lately to find new and interesting information on the web: following hyperlinks? trails? serendipity? ADHD?

At any rate, I've found a blog called CyberEnglish today, which is written by an English teacher who's also interested in technology.

I've also watched "Text & Technologies," a talking-head lecture on YouTube. Very odd experience, but I've learned something, I think.

And finally, a person can find TONS of educational stuff online. Try this site "Free Video Lectures" for short courses in everything from Anatomy to Electronics to Philosophy to Web Design.

Rethinking/Reteaching

Okay, maybe I should just write "thinking" because that's what Michael Wesch reminds me to do. See his videos here: "A Vision of Students Today" and "Information R/Evolution"

Great stuff. But he's challenging educators to give up a bit of their status/cache as "knowers" when he asks them (us? me?) to give students tasks that are meaningful instead of teching them in a 19th-century way.

He also reminds me to tag my entries here - which I keep forgetting!

And St. Thomas University, where I'm typing this and which hosted him, has ended his talk with a spread of food that's embarrassing in its luxury: white linen table-clothed tables with bbq'ed meatballs, chicken satay, cheese and crackers, shrimp cocktail, bacon-wrapped water chestnuts, egg rolls, artichoke dip, red and white wine, pop and bottled water. All to serve 100, but only 60, max, attended his talk. I guess that private school tuition pays off.

Clearing/Cleaning

Out and/or up - I never know which verb phrase to use when I'm sorting through my email inbox that is crammed full of messages. I've found a bunch of interesting things, though, from the techrhet list I'm on (a really good listserv with smart people sharing/conversing about the use of technology in rhetoric/composition courses).

Interesting courses:
at RPI called Teaching Communication in Technologically Mediated Contexts
at Miami University called Writing and Writing Studies in a Digital Age
at the U of Minnesota Teaching Digital Writing

This article about "literacies" from a K-12 journal (but still applicable to community college professors/students) called "The New Literacies" provides some good "spoof websites" (including one for a tree octopus!).