Comments for English 1010

Comment on English 1010 Retention Study by Karen M

Karen M — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 03:11:56 +0000

I need help with my english Comp 1, I took it and failed, can you help me?

Comment on by Ann David

Ann David — Tue, 27 Feb 2007 23:31:59 +0000

This has been the most helpful forum here for evaluating what I am doing in my classes.

Like Lynn, I want students to be able to write a college level paper and learn the skills to accomplish that in their other disciplines as well as in ours, and that includes grammatical knowledge of their language and the ability to organize their thoughts. Most academic work is longer that five paragraphs, but that writing still needs an opening, purpose, thesis, and conclusion, with organized paragraphs joined by transitions in the middle.
Their introductions may be very inventive, their thesis may be at the end or beginning, and their paragraphs may be creatively presented, but they need to have some structure for clarity and cohesiveness of thought.

Kate, I agree with your comments that format does not exclude creativity. How they choose to express their ideas is up to them, but they will be better understood if those ideas have some organization. With e-mail, text messaging, and journals, our students seem to be very skilled at free-writing. I tell them our purpose is not to ‘wander through the field plucking daisies and pondering butterflies.’ It is to delve deeply into a topic, read and share the ideas of others, and then combine them with their own.

As I have been reading the S/SR papers, I find many opinions and points organized in a variety of ways, and those whose ideas are well expressed have followed open or closed formats of their choosing.

Lynn, as I have used the Grading Sheet that you shared here, I think my grading is more even from paper to paper, and it is easy to apply to any chosen format. I have also found it is easier to go over a paper and sort out the points when they are hidden in the ‘daisies and butterflies.’

Have others found that it takes much less time to read a paper that has organization than one that kind of wanders through the topic? My serious students want direction and ask for it. Some want to jot down a draft and then just reprint it for their final work, saying, “that’s what I’ve always done and my teachers said it was really good.” Is this not a disservice to them to accept it? To avoid this and help them accept the importance of the revision process, I have them turn in our conference draft with its written editings along with their final papers.

I think this is one of the most important discussions we can have, but I find it a bit difficult to find unless I go through Ron’s e-mail first. It would be great if the other full-time and adjunct members of our group would add their ideas here. I appreciate and use the information that matches my teaching style, and and enjoy hearing differing views/ideas from others. Thanks.

Comment on by Sheri Rysdam

Sheri Rysdam — Tue, 20 Feb 2007 03:08:36 +0000

I’m glad we’re having this discussion. It has helped me think more about how I’m presenting this essay to my students. I don’t use a point system. I started out teaching with a rubric—one that works for all of the essays I teach in this class. Now, the rubric is more in my head than a check sheet that I fill out. I don’t always share the rubric with the students. Oftentimes I worry that the rubric, while valuable, can also turn into a personal justification for myself rather than something that is really helpful for the students. I’m still undecided on that. I think it might also depend on the class/student. Right now, I’m relying heavily on teaching ethos, pathos, logos from the book. I explain that I use this as I grade their essays. I want them to use it as they’re writing. I also use sample student essays as well as actual, published academic essays. We talk about what’s working and why and what isn’t working, and I try to refer those comments back to the rhetorical triangle. Right now that’s my strategy for teaching how I grade, and I think (I hope) it serves many other functions in the comp classroom.
I want the students to learn to write more formally, to “gain fluency in the academic conversation,” but I also want to move them away from the rigid, 5 paragraph way of writing/thinking. Thanks for the discussion. My teaching schedule hasn’t allowed me to attend the meetings lately, so I enjoy this forum.

Comment on by Kate Taylor

Kate Taylor — Fri, 16 Feb 2007 18:27:31 +0000

Even within academic writing, students will find some teachers who make their expectations explicit, and some who expect the students to figure it out on their own (as this discussion makes obvious). I agree with Lynn that our students should learn to adhere to strict academic conventions. For some, it is a real struggle simply to read a writing assignment and apply it as guidelines, or expectations in their own writing. So they need some help making that translation, and I believe in giving them that help. I also believe, however, that simply meeting these guidelines isn’t enough; many college teachers do expect some amount of “creativity” and free-thinking from their students. I, personally have always disagreed with the idea that there is less “creativity” in academic writing. It’s the equivalent of arguing that a sonnet is less creative than free verse, simply because it has more formal rules. To write a good sonnet, do you need to know the rules? Yes. Do you need to forego creativity? No. Our students need the opportunity to see academic writing as “creative” just as much as they need to learn the rules.

Comment on by Lynn Kilpatrick

Lynn Kilpatrick — Fri, 16 Feb 2007 18:13:42 +0000

Obviously all writing is creative, but I don’t think we serve students well by letting them have more freedom than is realistic in the average academic setting.
I think this conversation is important for us to be having, and the issues are important for us to be discussing, but I’m not sure it helps the students to talk about it with them. I think it confuses them. And for them, it’s not a real tension. They perceive the tension as confusion (except for maybe the one or two more saavy students in the bunch).
For me, this gets back to what is the real goal of the course? Ideally, of course, it would be to get the students to consider issues of writing and rhetoric.
Realistically, I think, it’s to get them to be able to write a college level paper. I think our “tensions” are their ambiguities, meaning, they perceive them as our inability to clearly articulate the features of a successful college essay.
I think we’re the only ones talking and listening here, Ron, but I’m glad to have this conversation with you.

Comment on by christiansen

christiansen — Fri, 16 Feb 2007 15:59:08 +0000

I probably tend to be more “cruel” in your words, but I think we are both getting at the same tension when you emphasize with students that there are “many ways to organize” and “multiple ways to…analyze.”

Still, I’m not sure (and I mean really not sure) about your clear cut distinction between creative and closed form. I think about this issue in terms of a continuum as found in the textbook. It seems to me closed form essays can have elements of a creative non-fiction text. Also, I would suggest real/peer reviewed academic texts are becoming more and more blurred. But, as I said, I’m not at all sure about this. I do recognize a slippery slope here where students, at some tipping point, begin to dangerously see academic writing as “anything goes” and I don’t want that either. Still, I want students to experience the tension, the give and take of following just enough of the genre conventions and yet pushing the boundaries a bit.

Comment on by Lynn Kilpatrick

Lynn Kilpatrick — Fri, 16 Feb 2007 15:48:57 +0000

I’m pretty clear from the beginning what I want from the S/SR. I find that when I am grading them the problem is usually that there is no analysis. They want to respond to the content of the essay or, more likely, the larger issues, without reference to the text. I assign points because I want them to know exactly how things will be weighted. Also it makes it easier for me to grade.
I tell them that there are multiple ways to, for example, analyze the emotional appeals in an essay. But it’s not, in my opinion, a “creative” assignment. It’s a closed form. I feel like it’s my responsibility to help them become college writers. And often (usually) that means adhering to very specific conventions of academic writing.
I feel I’m doing my students a disservice if I give them too much freedom. We do have specific expectations for our assignments, and I think it’s cruel to pretend we don’t. So more and more I try to be explicit from the beginning on how their papers will be evaluated.
I do tell them there are many ways to organize their paper, many ways to write an introduction, etc. But they do have to have an introduction, and their paper needs to be organized.
As a teacher, I feel it is my job to help them become better writers, and part of that is teaching them that academic writing has very specific conventions and expectations.

Comment on A New Blog for English 1010 at SLCC by cyoung53

cyoung53 — Wed, 14 Feb 2007 21:25:38 +0000

Hi all, I am not quite sure how this website works, but I took English 1010 through concurrent enrollment at Brighton High School a few years back, and I’m having trouble getting transfer credit for my class. I want it to cover my lower division writing class, but the English department at my current school wants a syllabus/course description, with lots of details, and a word count for how much writing we actually did in class. They say that a student in our University Writing Program generally writes about 25 pages in a quarter. Shouldn’t English 1010 be considered a lower-division introductory writing course? If any of you could help me with this issue, it would be much appreciated! My e-mail is mrcyoung@ucdavis.edu

Comment on by Kate Taylor

Kate Taylor — Mon, 12 Feb 2007 23:57:55 +0000

Yes, exactly. In a way, the students are right to ask “why didn’t you tell me what you wanted before.” It is a question any writer who is rhetorically engaged wants answered. (Writing my dissertation, I felt this way myself, constantly.) I supposed the key is to help them realize that this cannot always be fully answered, no more than Mark Eubanks can always accurately predict the weather. If we act like this question can be answered completely and definitively (which is tempting in the classroom), then we curtail the students learning.

I also like the idea of emphasizing that there are multiple ways to meet the criteria, depending on the conversation they are joining, the topic they are pursuing, their rhetorical strengths, etc.

Comment on by christiansen

christiansen — Mon, 12 Feb 2007 22:46:59 +0000

I personally like the idea of introducing it in between drafts though when I make these kinds of moves–holding off on exact criteria–I find students sometimes are critical of my approach (e.g. why didn’t you tell me that’s what you wanted before I did the first draft?)

I’m working on developing a clearer explanation of this tension–exact expectations vs. writing as a rhetorically (and inherently creative) act. That is to admit there will always be this tension, that there’s no way to avoid it if one sees writing as rhetorical. Part of the act of engaging writing as rhetorical is to admit there are multiple exigencies on the text. The “exact requirements” only makes up one of these.