Lucky

I feel lucky to have the knowlege of writing that I do, because I definitely did not walk onto Weber State University’s campus knowing how to write. (See previous blog for more information on why) It was a baptism by fire when I walked into my first English class. I was very lucky to have such a good teacher. She was very willing to help and did not put up with any crap in my papers. I remember that the thing she did that helped me the most was when she taught me to look critically at what I was reading. She let us write anything that we wanted to in response to what we where reading in class and encouraged us to be creative. The freedom to be creative was a fun challenge to me and really helped me personally to start to enjoy writing. I remember every paper that I wrote with great fondness. Because I have blocked out most of my memories from my first two semesters in college that sums up my memories of English 1010.
English 2010 is a little more fresh on my mind. I loved this class!! I felt that every time that I left that class I had learned something new and exciting. The teacher taught us the format of argumentative writing and then taught us how to critically think through our paper. I would get so excited every time I would write a paper . It turned into a game for me. I would read carefully through my paper as though it was not mine, tear it to pieces, and then go through and fix it.
I can not give all the credit to my teacher and my unnatural sense of play, I had a brilliant friend that would look over my papers with me and not only tell me what mistakes I had made but work patiently with me until I figured out why I had made them and what I needed to do to fix them. He would never do the work for me but would help me to learn and to see what I needed to do for myself. If everyone who has had a hard time writing had the teachers that I had and a friend like mine I am afraid that we would all be out of jobs. I am a lucky girl.
For me learning to write better stemmed from learning to read and to think. The more my understanding of language grew the more I was able to apply that knowledge to my growth and development as a writer. Learning to read and think critically has to come first when learning to write. I only wish that the university offered a class completely devoted to teaching critical thinking. I would take it.

I be bloggin...

October 2, 2004

Like at least one of my fellows before me, I have no desire to continue to talk What’s-‘is-name and Who’s-it even closer to death. It is actually on my gratitude list that I will never be required to read anything by either one of them ever again. I’m sure they’re both very bright…

I’m thinking about writing. I’m always a little behind everyone else, so I watched Finding Forrester last week. I loved it. I loved when William sat down at one typewriter and started typing and told Jamal to go ahead and start. Because he’s right. The way to learn to write is by writing. I wouldn’t want to learn to swim by reading about swimming—if there’s no water involved I’m wasting my time. I liked when he said the first draft comes from the heart. That’s how I’ve always felt about it. Sit down. Type. Don’t worry about spelling or organization. There’s time enough for that later. Get the thoughts captured on the paper before they slip away. I’ve had the experience of trying to keep something in mind that I wanted to write down later. I’ll never know what it was. Now if I want to write something down, I do it right now. A few words scribbled in one of my class notebooks are enough to keep the idea alive until I can spend time with it. After it’s all on the paper, then I’ll worry about what it looks like there, and see if it has anything else to say to me.

I had a student in here (the WC) the other day, and he asked me if he would ever get any better. I told him of course he would. If he’s trying to get better, he can’t possibly not get better. If a person writes for long enough, eventually something worth reading is going to come of it.

I love tutoring. It’s bringing back that word-loving part of me. Sometimes I read so much and write so much for classes that I don’t want anything to do with it if it isn’t due. I know some blogs back I said I didn’t like to write. I might have been at least a little wrong. It’s just that I can’t remember the last time I wrote because I wanted to. I’m starting to find that part again, that part that loves pens and paper and thinks books about grammar are good reading (I ordered Eats, Shoots and Leaves, by the way. I’m excited!). I like hanging out with all these other people who love words. There aren’t that many of them out wandering around—imagine having discovered a whole hive of them! I still don’t know most of your names, but I think you’re terrific. Have a bloggy day!

Is it an Act or an Art?

Sometimes I wonder what good I am doing by writing essays based entirely on what the teacher has taught us. From a literary aspect there doesn’t really seem to be a point. I can see how having to write these short essays will require us to learn, or at the very least understand, what we have been taught. I can do that in a discussion though. Why torture me with worthless, garbage bound essays? Especially when I have to pretend like I am writing something revolutionary.
In all reality I think that students have never really been required to write in a scholarly manner. In high school it was better to write from your own voice. I guess it promotes creativity, or at the very least helps students find their own voice. I am not entirely against this idea, but students cannot be expected to write in a scholarly manner without ever being taught the technique. The essays that we read by Ong and Bartholomae should be taught in a simplified version to 1010 students to help them understand that their high school essays just won’t cut it here in the university. Imagine if every student was taught how to imagine their audience and then were encouraged to write above themselves. It might even be effective to give them examples of writers who have succeeded in writing this way. Students would then have something to work from. When we expect students to reinvent this form of writing we can expect remedial work.
I agree with the baby analogy. It made me think of jazz musicians. It is encouraged in jazz to play your instruments on the very edge of your capability. Granted you will make mistakes, but you will also grow and constantly push your capability. These musicians didn’t start out playing brilliantly; they worked for years to perfect the art. Many of them started by playing other people’s work, then they found their own voice, and then they continued to push themselves until they had created a unique and powerful sound. It is the same with writing. Ever since elementary school we have been learning the art of writing. First, by copying sentences off of the black board, then by writing in our own voice, and now in the university we must be pushed into the realm of scholarly essays. Sure we will make mistakes but we will succeed if we keep at it.
While writing this whole bit about pushing yourself I realized that I have been writing for my teachers and not for me. I sit in my comfort zone and never push myself. No wonder my writing sucks! Maybe this is what Bartholomae means when he says that “writing is an act of aggression disguised as an act of charity.” We should push ourselves, writing in disdain of the views of everyone else including our audience, but present it in an accepted way.
P.S.- Hey Layne we’re still cool. You’re hilarious

Writing Anxiety

This Blog is in response to Dr. Rogers' prompt to write on a tutoring session that I felt went poorly. I would respond to his latest prompt, but writing the responses on Bartholomae and Ong that we had to hand in was hard enough for me; I do not want to go through the agony of pretending like I understood the essays again. I lack the vocabulary and scholarship to do so, and I do not think I would be very good at faking my knowledge and expertise on the topic.

Bad tutoring sessions, however, are something I am becoming quite expert in. Until the other day the majority of my bad writing sessions were with ESL students; most of them would come in and request that I correct all the grammatical errors on a paper of no less than three pages. Needless to say, but I will say it, not being able to catch all the errors and not being able to explain why the ones I caught were errors was not and still is not something I look forward to when I see an ESL student walking through the doors of the Writing Center. So I was relieved when, finally, someone who was not ESL came to me for help on a paper. However, it took approximately 5.3 seconds for that relief to turn to regret that she was not ESL.

This particular tutee was a little older, maybe in her upper thirties. The very first thing she said to me was that she always gets writing anxiety and that she was especially worried about this paper because it was the last paper for her last class that she need to be able to graduate. The paper was due 'tomorrow' and she said she felt like throwing it away and starting over. You can imagine how I felt. Until this point of my tutoring career my experience in tutoring was limited to helping about 5 ESL students and 1 1010 student. Yikes! I contemplated telling her that I was not qualified to help her and to wait until Dawson, who is an amazing tutor, was available to help her. I'm not a quitter, but I guess I do like to fail so I kept my mouth shut and asked her to read her paper aloud for me. When she finished, it was obvious that the paper needed some help; although, she actually had done a pretty good job on it. After taking about ten minutes convincing her that the paper was worth keeping and that she should not chuck it, I got stuck. Like I said, it was obvious she needed some help, but I had no idea how to help her. So I just asked her a bunch of open ended questions and let her come to her own conclusions.

The entire session took over an hour. One problem we had was that she had done tons and tons and tons of research for this paper; she literally had an entire 1' notebook full of 3X5 cards, articles, and quotes related to her paper. It was quite impressive. It was not a bad thing that she had done so much research, but it was bad that she was so worried about finding places in her paper to put all the information she had not yet used. It came to a point where I finally told her, in nicer words, to knock it off. I do not think not having enough information in her paper was the problem. After I convinced her to just worry about what she already had, we just reorganized a few things and I sent her on her way. I know there was more things wrong with her paper, I just wish I knew what they were so I could have helped her with them. I sure hope she at leasts gets a passing grade so she can finally graduate!

Talkin' Bigger then yer Britches

I've noticed the principle that Bartholomae discusses- what Dr. Rogers calls the 'nebulous space'- more in verbal communication than in writing. I used to work in a group home setting where most of the kids were 'hood rats' and didn't know how to express themselves in the way that educated adults do. After being 'institutionalized'- going from home to home, program to program, and especially going through years of therapy- the kids begin to pick up on adult 'lingo'. The result is pretty humorous- it's like a new language.

I can't imagine how frustrating it is to be a college english professor teaching a COLLEGE english class and having students that don't know the basic rules of writing. There are remedial english classes that re-teach basic english, but, sad to say, I have tutored 1010 and 2010 students that can't write a correct sentence. I know our job as tutors is to teach people to be better writers, but is that possible when the people we try to teach don't know correct grammar from a hole in the wall? I admit, when I'm in that situation I just try to help them fix a few of their major grammatical and sentence structural errors. I feel like that's all I can do. I don't have all day to go through the ins and outs of english...hell, I don't know them all myself.

I don't remember if it was Ong or Bartholomae that discussed a person telling different people what they did for their summer vacation. Bizzell called these different contexts 'discourse communities'. Whatever you call the principle, it's true- we fit our language, our delivery, and even our mannerisms to the group that we are talking to. I believe that this is the principle that catches students- that nebulous space. A person who uses 'loose' or informal language in their speech, emails, etc, will probably find it hard to leave that type of speech at the door when they sit to write anything formal. They're now in an environment that has rules for every word, every part of speech, and every kind of punctuation.

No contractions. No cliches. No slang. Subject and Verb. No run-on sentences. No fallacies. No comma splicing. You can't say 'um', 'er', 'dog', 'homie', or use 'like' as a conjunction or pause relief. Leave the 'hood at the door- you're in college now.

And just like those kids that I discussed at the beginning of this drivel, after a while, these students begin to learn the lingo. They don't, however, learn WHY you should use such language; or, they start with the language they should be using, and as Bartholomae points out, they can't keep it up. This new, hybrid language is almost worse than keeping with their normal 'discourse' language.

As far as Bartholomae's idea that writing is 'an act of aggression disguised as an act of charity'- if this is meant to say that ALL writing is 'yada yada yada' then I would have to disagree. But I do think formal, particularly argumentative writing, can be seen as he describes. In argument writing, we are taught to make a claim and support it with proof from a legitimate source. If you don't make a strong claim, your paper will fall on its face. Making that strong claim is an act of aggression...like I said, if you don't make a strong claim, no one will believe or agree with you, which, in my opinion, is the point of argument writing. I think the fact that effective, formal writing follows certain rules- that it is in the form of clean, sound language- that the aggressiveness of the message is buffered a bit. If a person swears at you in a soft, loving tone while smiling at you, it doesn't change the fact that they are swearing at you. The tone just masks the message, which is what I think formal writing does to argument writing.

By the way, did John Kerry get his tan at 'The Great Pumpkin's Tanning Salon'? His face is so orange it looks as if he stared at a nucular (get it? see, I can make fun of Bush a little too) blast.

Response to Ammon

I can't let Ammon's comment about Bush being 'horrible' go unchallenged. George W. Bush is maligned because sometimes he makes up words...but wouldn't you rather have a strong, decisive leader that sometimes makes up words than some tree-huggin', whale savin', baby owl kissin' hippy that doesn't know his arse from his elbow? Nader? Darth Nader? Okay, he saved a lot of people with his book 'unsafe at any speed', but does that qualify him to be president- the commander-in-chief of the most powerful military force that has ever been on the face of the earth? I think Nader himself is unsafe at any speed. The only good thing about Nader's candidacy is that he's taking votes away from that fake-baking, flip-floppin', be-boppin', 57 flavor hippy.

By the way, Ammon, I know you were kidding about Nader, but I needed to get out a little frustration...we're still homeboys a'ight?

(Not) Teaching Writing

You can hold a baby up and balance on it on tiny toes, but the child is ultimately responsible for the first step. During this process, the baby is going to fall down. A lot. The baby is going to cry. Eventually, the baby will master the skill of balancing on two feet, and others can begin to model improvements (running, skipping, or walking gracefully in heels, for example).

I feel the same is true with writing. When posed with the question "how did you learn to write?" most people will shrug their shoulders and say they "dunno...just did." You could read and discuss a thousand pages of compositional theory, but the fact of the matter is that good writing comes through a process of trial and error. If you haven't fallen on your ass and cried a little, you haven't learned enough about writing. Our job as tutors is not to hold students up and teach them to walk, but keep them from tipping over when they try to run. We can offer explanations or examples, but we cannot teach them to write. This ability belongs to them long before they ever compose a college essay. We can only try to help them improve it.

Often students find themselves exercising this ability in an unfamiliar discourse. This is understandably frustrating. They are expected to transform their personal writing style into something unfamiliar and seemingly more complex. This is the point at which it becomes possible to "teach" writing. We teach ways of writing, whether they are academic, creative, technical, etc. Each comes with its own set of rules and conventions that a student must master if he wants to be successful within a specific discourse. The incongruities between new conventions and a familiar style are manifested as mistakes in diction and structure. It is not that students can't write in a variety of discourses; they just don't know how. As writers conduct trials, teachers must point out meaningful errors in hopes of shaping the finished product.

Bartholomae's statement that "writing is an act of aggression disguised as an act of charity" reminded me of this, for some reason. Most of us would never admit it, but deep down in our hearts we value the idea of using our knowledge to frighten someone. We English majors are more cruel than anyone might suspect. Try to keep that a secret.

College Writing Experience

I am not a Saturday night blogger, but perhaps I should be. As it is now, my weekend activities have sent me backsliding into the Pit of Blog Slackery, two whole entries behind the rest of the group. I will claw my way out.

My college writing experience is probably typical of other tutors' in that my ACT scores were high enough to excuse me from English 1010. So that's out. I took English 2010 through the honors department at USU, which meant the professor could choose just about any curriculum he wanted. As a sort of special torture for the smart kids, he decided on technical writing. It's possible that I learned a lot from that class, but I took very little of the information with me at the semester's end. I was not yet ready to accept technical writing as my main squeeze, so I wrote the course off as a necessary evil.

Besides this brief experience with memo composition, I didn't begin taking writing-intensive classes until my second semester at Weber State. Being a bright and shiny beginner, I found it sensible to dive into Advanced College Writing with Dr. Crimmel. I picked up writing tips here and there, but learned the most from the comments written on my completed drafts. One that still stands out in my mind was scrawled on a personal narrative: "Every word earns its keep." Before reading this, I had never thought my writing as an active, working thing that needed to offer something to the reader. The same idea was brought to my attention by Dr. Shigley when she asked the class, as writers, "So what?" If a writer can't make a subject important, why should anyone read it? (I could go into a Bartholomae tangent here, but will save it for another time.) As I moved more in the direction of technical writing, this question became an even greater influence on my writing. The reader is the primary concern of a technical document. All the creative ability in the world means nothing if readers can't find exact meaning in your words.

Even though I am three credits away from graduation, I sometimes feel like I am a beginner. This is especially true when moving around between academic writing, technical documentation, and blogging. My writing style can apply to texts with different levels of formality, but it takes conscious effort.

Discourse

Today's discussion of Ong and Bartholomae was fascinating, I thought, and I'd like to see you all continue the discussion for as bit here on the blogs. Our primary concern with all of this is with the students, of course, who are all apparently trapped in a nebulous space where they are asked to write in a discourse with which they are unfamiliar as if they were familiar with it. What do you think of all this? Is Bartholomae right? Are we asking expecting students to mimic a discourse with which they have no familiarity? Is this why we sometimes see errors?

The second half of this question, of course, is whether or not something that is an error in one discourse is not an error in another?

Finally, what do you all think about Bartholomae's notion that "writing is an act of aggression disguised as an act of charity"?