Saturday, March 26, 2016

blog 5

“Theory, Practice, and the Bridge Between The Methods Course and Reflective Rhetoric”

“That prospective teachers often bring with them a model of a teacher they want to be, their favorite teacher or the one they wished they’d had.” This is very interesting and very true, in my opinion.

“Question: Do “better” students tend to favor a particular kind of model? Do all models require revision?” I think “successful” students have learning / self-teaching models of their own that help them adapt to the models of their teachers. Knowing yourself as a learner is an invaluable skill that many students do not possess; more importantly, I do not believe students are encouraged to learn about themselves in this way. I think schools are more interested in dictating what needs to be done to take time out and explain that not every model works for every students, no matter how good it may be. Instead it’s more of a “if you don’t get it, then you are dumb and that’s nobody’s problem but your own” kind of mentality.

“That better students tend to focus on the curriculum and the students; weaker ones tend to focus on themselves.” This makes sense; it is difficult to consider a / the bigger picture when you are still struggling with the smaller one.

“Question: what activities, what questions can help weaker students move outside the self? Or is there, in fact, a way to accelerate such readiness?” I think this readiness comes from a better understanding of the material. I don’t think it is a matter of introspectiveness, but rather a matter of basic skill acquisition. Sure there are things teachers can do to help a student, but there are no epiphany inducing questions that can speed up the process. It’s all about the bigger picture. But in the case of weaker learners, it is more like a puzzle. Each lesson/ objective is a puzzle piece. The bigger picture won’t matter to you until you figure out where this piece is supposed to go.

“That in many ways this course is an exercise in identity and identification.” Probably also some internalization and motivation examination as well.

“this takes the form of wanting to replicate another teacher, or seeing a student so much as a version of an earlier self of ours that we can’t see the student in any other way” I think the assumption that a lot of teachers are replicating a past personal experience is at least moderately sound, however, I don't like the implication here that this desire to "redo the past, but in a better way" blinds teachers from seeing their students as individuals. 

“Question: What other kinds of reflection should we include? Toward what end?” I think that refection is so vague that any kind suffices.

“When reflection “works,” it raises as many questions as it answers, perhaps more” isn’t that the whole point to reflection in the first place?


I feel the talk of her students was drawn out and didn’t really help prove her points. I think she could have reduced the length of this chapter and still gotten her message across (especially that bit of “fluff” about the weather and her students typing). However, I felt she raised some good questions. I think I would have liked to see her own answers to these questions, but they were good enough on their own that they got me thinking as well. 

Saturday, March 19, 2016

blog 4

"Theory, Research, Practice, Work" (ch 1):

Braddock's belief that composition should inherently be research-based and knowledge-making is how I was taught to write, so despite our many discussions on stylistic variations, I tend to agree to a certain degree. I also think that the view of composition being a “classroom activity” still persists.

While reading, I kept thinking that the distinction between theorists and practitioners was an outdated point of view. Every teacher in our department at Kean, I think, is at least moderately active in the field, which means they are all doers, right? However, the more I thought about it, the more I began to think there is a bit of a divide within English departments: literary people and composition people. Is this the modern reincarnation of the theorist/practitioner divide?

“departments become nations” an interesting, and very true, lens.

“reifies social detachment and introversion” a good point. We discussed this a bit in our other class: specifically the idea of crowd sourcing, and how universities tend to frown upon collaboration.

“The rest between composition and literature” it seems I was thinking in the right direction earlier. And that last sentence about Shakespeare/ the minds of 18 year olds was really powerful, I think. And it kind of gets me worked up: the idea that a lit professor, who recycles a worn-out analysis of the same book every semester, is more prestigious than a comp teacher, who constantly has to change and adapt their methodology to cater to their students, is really insulting. Also, I am seeing that I too subscribe to that subconscious rift between comp and lit. As a comp person, I noticed that I have taken a slight offense to being referred to as a mere “working class” member in my own field. Not to say there is anything wrong with a “working class” in the grander scale of society; however, here I am offended because a comp person will do just as much work as a lit person (maybe even more) but according to the chapter, will receive less credit.

Composing Composition Studies Scholarly Publication and the Practice of Discipline” (ch 2)

“in order to demonstrate their apparently equal importance and self-evident interrelationships” enjoyable little bit of sarcasm here.

“faculty can rather efficiently be sorted into categories of “productive” and “unproductive,” with comparatively little or no attention given to teaching” why do I feel this is still true?

“productive work” it is weird to think that some work is unproductive. It’s even weirder to think that in this context “productive” probably means “well-liked” among more prestigious colleagues.

“Given the related assumption that the very purpose of teaching is to disseminate the “findings” of a field’s research to students…professional-client relationship between researcher and teacher” I guess this makes sense. Although the role of researcher and teacher is, I think, more blurred than ever before. It is expected for one person to fulfill these two roles now. But for some reason a teacher cannot disseminate their own findings to their students (who better to do it too?), but rather, teachers are still forced to discuss the findings of others. Which somehow maintains that professional/client relationship, and probably even maintains the “working class” as well. It’s actually really interesting how complex this issue has become even though it hasn’t changed that much.

“English departments were formed, primarily based on a desire to study fiction and poetry in the vernacular” that’s an interesting little fact. And also explains why “English” is stereotypically seen as a literary field despite the emergence of the composition field.

I like that research was a considered a “privilege” when now we see it as a burden.  I wonder how the pioneers of this field, who fought so hard to make the “right” to research so accessible to everyone would feel, knowing people actually dread research projects? (Maybe they too would be annoyed by all the hoops we are required to jump through in order to research.)

political exercise by the institutionally motivated” isn’t everything?

“publishing academics depend on the degraded status of composition “practitioners” to justify their claims to superiority” this is so ironic and dramatic. Now I see why English used to belong to the Theatre department. (It also seems to mirror the way politics work even today.)


“producing text authorized by the university’s class-making system” I’m not sure I agree with this. I think that professors now have more right to conduct their own research and write their own findings than ever before. There are some teachers who even write their own textbooks. Perhaps the restriction mentioned here is the inability to teach their own findings (as I mentioned before)?

Monday, March 14, 2016

blog 3


Thoughts on "The Process Approach to Writing Instruction":


On Emig's study of 12th graders' composition habits, I found the "reflexive"/"extensive" result interesting. I would not have guessed that the distinction in process would lie between logic and emotions (logos and pathos, if you will). What's more is I can't imagine a paper in which a student would be writing to convey/explore an emotion as opposed to a message. I guess this comes from my own (extensive) writing habits where I believe what I bring to the paper is not as important as how I present what I am saying (very message-centric). 

Although I don't agree that writing is as black and white as Elbow's view, I do agree that there is a good amount of problem solving involved in the writing process. Honestly, it is a really good (neater) way to look at revision. And I think this view can make revision more manageable for some. 

Luckily the definition of "professional writers" has extended greatly. Although in my own mind, I still  privately assess a writer's success by how many books they have or have not written; I still see "literary author" as the ultimate professional writer.

It is not surprising that the studies conducted show that focusing on the process improves the product. We talked about this many times last semester.

I am surprised to see that creativity did not increase. I know a technically good paper doesn’t always have to be colorful, but I would think that learning new ways to write and (if we use Elbow’s POV) problem solve, I would think creativity would increase simultaneously. Or at the very least subconsciously?

Good distinction between “editing” and “revising”

The research regarding the NWP wasn’t very surprising to me at all. Although the idea that the absence of one learning component can improve writing better than its presence is interesting to me. Here I am (for some reason) thinking specifically about the absence of vocabulary lessons. Naturally, it makes sense that the less things students need to learn about, the easier it will be to focus on other what they do need to learn. However, it strikes me as interesting to think that vocabulary lessons could be one of the things intruding on the developing writing process.


Overall impression of this article/chapter: it was alright; it was interesting enough, however, I do not feel that I learned very much. This, to me, seemed to discuss many things we have already covered together in other classes/discussions. Furthermore, the information seemed kind of obvious/ not excessively groundbreaking. However, it was a nice read and it was reassuring to know that there are tests being done to support what we as teachers (and aspiring teachers) already believe: namely, that the process matters.