Week 11, Post 4: Grammar Lesson Plan, Parts 1 and 2

Blog 4: Do either an idea draft, a brainstorm, or an outline for part 1 and 2 of the lesson plan portfolio (It can be very sketchy at this point; the goal here is start figuring out your ideas.) Bring 4 hand copies on Thursday to share with your group:
What's your philosophy about grammar editing and proofreading? How can teachers help students become better grammar editors? 
What's your philosophy about development of academic language?  How can teachers help students produce more complex sentences, more complex writing and more appropriate academic language?

• How students develop academic discourse, including factors that facilitate/hinder the development.
• The role of students’ oral language, home dialect, and home language in the process.

For your teaching approach, be sure to discuss:

• How you will foster academic language development in your classroom through assignments and activities.
• How academic language will build over the course of the semester.

ONE 

* To develop academic discourse, students need to develop as readers and writers and imitators of "the conversation."  Factors that facilitate this growth are intensive readings of academic discourse, writing in it, journaling about the process, peer discussions about it and teacher-student discussions about the student's process.

* It has been shown that home dialect that differs greatly from MAE and SE can present a greater challenge to the student attempting to assume the role of academic writer with SE.  Non-standard dialect students have no less potential for learning SE than students of standard dialect.  However, learning to code-switch or style-switch is vital.  Many linguists hold that allowing students to write freely in the home dialect is the best way to "warm up" such students to the notion of academic writing.

* Students will be given numerous opportunities to practice writing in various styles and genres, from home dialect (if they choose) to formal, from personal narrative to descriptive essay, to argumentative essay, to a formal research paper complete with appropriate citations.

 

• How students develop grammar and editing competence, including factors that facilitate/hinder the development.
• The role of students’ oral language, home dialect, and home language in the process.
• Your attitudes toward error (both based on both descriptive and prescriptive rules).

For your teaching approach, be sure to discuss:

• How you will foster grammar and editing competence in your classroom through assignments and activities.
• How these activities will build over the semester.
• Your process for “error treatment” in student papers (including assessment and grading)
• How you will deal with errors that come from home dialect and home language.

TWO 

* It's been shown that content is always of greater importance than form, and that a writer's ideas are more critical than his grammar and punctuation.  It's also been illustrated that students, while they may show interest in error analysis, almost never improve from this method, nor from explicit grammar instruction -- unless it's conveyed in meaningful context, for instance, a mini-lesson in the context of trying to understand their errors.  These mini-lessons are useful as are student grammar logs, where students keep notes of their errors.  Also peer counseling is a great low-stakes way both to practice spotting errors and to accept criticism.  Explicit full-class grammar lessons should be rare, limited to recurring issues across the majority of student papers.  In addition, sentence building and sentence template exercises show great promise for assisting students in assuming the academic voice.

* As written language shadows oral language, non-standard dialect students may struggle to adapt their writing to SE.  It's critical for teachers to be aware of this, to be patient, and, where feasible, spend extra time with non-standard students one-on-one.

* Errors can create great errors for students personally, contributing to an inferiority complex, which can give way to self-fulfilling prophesies of incapacity in writing classes.  For this reason, error analysis, is often best left for later drafts of essays, especially in developmental classes.  For mainstream FYE courses or sophomore courses, however, where student self-esteem may be more robust, it can be useful for students to learn means of incorporating grammar and punctuation as additional tools to strengthen their rhetoric, as Laura Micicche and John Dawkins have shown.

* I believe it's important to discuss prescriptive and descriptive grammar approaches with students.  This angle places grammar in context in terms of history and function and de-mystifies an otherwise intimidating theme.  Personally, unless we're discussing an SE context, I generally prefer my grammar on the descriptive side.

 

Week 11, Post 4: Case Study Whatsitt

Student Background and Issues:

* Filipino student living in the US since middle school with his family
* Excellent socializing: champion wrestler for HS
* Issues: Though he understands the basics of a 5-par. essay, he often seems lost
* Issues: Often arrives to tutorial ill-prepared; seems somewhat apathetic

How I worked with him:

* Essay construction -- thesis and topic sentences.
* I repeatedly showed him the benefits of an outline and reverse outline to check organization.
* Surmising the student lacked motivation (as much as cognitive skills), I encouraged him to believe in himself as much as I believe in him.
* Regarding his tendency to arrive with no clear plan for our tutorial or a vague notion of his teacher's instructions, I encouraged him to pursue her until he understood exactly what was expected.

Results of tutoring:

* Slow and steady progress
* Some increasing ability to spot stronger connections and weaker connections bet. thesis statements and topic sentences.
* Some improved ability to spot needless repetition and wordiness.
* I still feel his progress is limited by his lack of confidence and inexperience in both reading and writing.

Week 11, Post 2: Quizzical

Take-home quiz:

Educators have long puzzled about why some group of minority students tend to be more successful in school while others tend to be less successful.  How does Ogbu explain the difference between success and failure?  Do you personally find this explanation very useful or convincing?  How might Ogbu's theories help you as a teacher?
What are the criticisms or shortcomings of Ogbu's theory? What other explanations might there be for success and failure of minority students? Do you find these other explanations to be useful or convincing?  How might these other theories of success and failure help you as a teacher?
Imagine you teach at an urban community college and most of your students come from a place like Capital High School. What experiences, attitudes, beliefs and strategies might such students bring into your community college English classroom? How might this affect their success?  And how might you respond as a teacher to help these students succeed?

Ogbu groups students into three groups: Autonomous, Voluntary, Involuntary.

Autonomous students aren't REAL minorities, according to Ogbu, since, if you're Greek, for example, you just might "pass" for White.  They're only minorities by virtue of their low numbers.  This includes Mormons, Irish and Jews, for example.

Voluntary are REAL minorities, that is, they LOOK very minority, according to Ogbu.  These people came to the US by choice, so, he says, they have a very sunny outlook re: prospects in a new nation.  This includes Koreans, Persians and Arabs.

Involuntary are REAL minorities, too, but they basically hate every minute of living here, since they came against their own volition.  This includes Blacks, Native Americans, Inuits and Hawaiians.

His theory, that the above groupings alone indicate their tendency for success, feels weak.  I understand that he updated his theory, saying that the group you're in dictates your success, insofar as certain groups have stronger credos for success.  Shucks.  That's more than an updating of the previous.  That would seem to throw the baby out with the bathwater, meanwhile eroding the man's credibility entirely, I would say.

OK, so he's saying "Erase, erase: here's what I mean..." And then he proceeds to say that if the group you're in is full of optimism and encouragement to succeed, then you will succeed.  And if you feel a high level of trust in someone in the group, this will build your confidence and your chances for success.  OK, true dat, but do we credit Ogbu for stating what seems obvious?

Regarding his original views, they don't hold loads of water.  Most White folks are descendants of Brits and Germans who came here, ostensibly "by choice."  But what does that mean?  If your entire village was wiped out in the Potato Famine, does this mean you left Ireland by choice?  Sure, if it means you chose not to die alone in your devastated village.

What does Involuntary mean?  You can find thousands of students who hate school today who are not from Involuntary groups, yet they're depressed by many other influences, from child abuse to parental negligence to poverty, crime, alcohol and drugs.  Or simply because the American family has disintegrated, leaving little or no sense of belonging, let alone hope and determination to succeed in schoool.

On the other hand, many students in Black communities may have had all of these issues or none of them.  However, they often have what many other groups lack -- religion.  Many Black communities organize around the neighborhood church, the local pastor a major positive role model lacking in the lives of many students from other cultures.  On a deeper level, perhaps, a person's connection to a "higher power" could be argued as providing, again, what so many Whitebread homes lack  -- a sense of purpose, a sense of direction.

By contrast, many Latinos have the church connection, but their culture may not value education so much, simply because few people in their family have much experience with school beyond the sixth grade.  Again, what is Voluntary?  If Manuel, from Tijuana, takes his wife and two infants across the border simply because Burger King's hiring in Palm Desert, does this indicate that his kids will feel a buy-in to the system and want to excel in school?

Of course, Ogbu's got a point.  Especially for any Involuntary students who are plagued by memories of lost culture, or for those who are encouraged to hate Whites for past atrocities.  That's right: atrocities.  Some groups commit atrocities and others are on the receiving end.  But, just as the abused child has every right to hate his abuser, that hatred rarely impacts the abuser.  Rather, it only poisons the child and robs him of his own power to determine his chosen happiness.  Given, this is easier to say if you're White and your history is not stained with injustice, abuse and bloodshed.

From the standpoint of a teacher, it's vital to understand the potential for pain, anger and resistance from Involuntary students in our classrooms.  As a college teacher with minorities in my class, it only makes sense to teach a lesson or a unit on the beauty of diversity and the validity of every culture and every dialect, while keeping one eye on the prize: helping every student advance equally toward "joining the conversation" academically.

Note re: SRTOL: Peter Elbow's article "Inviting the Mother Tongue."  Excellent paper for showing helping White teachers step into the shoes of Black the students they teach.

Week 11, Post 1: AAVE Students 1-on-1

Imagine that you're going to work with students who wrote the AAVE draft below. What sort of grammatical/rhetorical issues do you see with the draft?  What How might you work with the student one-on-one on these issues.  How would this work be different from one-on-on work with an ESL student? How would you respect students' right to their own linguistic identity while working with the students?

Grammatical/Rhetorical Issues
#1 Lacks apostrophe to indicate possession.  Drops the s for third-person simple present verbs.  Uses personal pronoun they; needs possessive adjective their.  The -ed suffix is dropped from the past tense of stress out.

#2 Uses simple past went; should use past participle with present perfect: gone.  Uses double negative don't never; needs don't ever.  Otherwise, very few issues.

#3 Lacks s for some plurals (not all).  Lacks apostrophe for possession.  Instead of there are, the student uses It's.  Sometimes drops s for sim. pres. third-person.  Last line is wordy.

#4 This was the most confusing by far.  Drops apost. for possession.  Drops s for plural.  Drops -ed suffix for past part. (a chance to be acknowledge; had been force upon them).  These are easily negotiated by the reader.  But certain sentences are simply convoluted, as if the student, trying to express complex thoughts, hasn't quite got them under control yet.  For example: Then they took action to translating the literature of AAVE.   Forgetting the infinitive issue, I'm confused: is this writer saying that 18th Century Black English literature was translated to AAVE?  Vice versa?  Another example: To be a member of the African American Vernacular English culture our descended from Africa had their native speaking.  It seems the student incorrectly melded two different sentences, one about being a member of the culture, the other about the history of AAVE.  The meaning, though, evades me.  A last example:

Our language is different in many ways, all because of the past history which we have accepted.  I'm confused why this writer adds "which we have accepted."  Is it a problem of word choice?  Does he mean "endured"?  Otherwise, why would he suggest Blacks have essentially "agreed to" mistreatment?

How I'd Work With These Students

Depsite the ample studies we've done on SRTOL, plus my own ongoing research (Engl. 700) on the same subject, I have to say I'm torn on this subject.  On one hand, I feel for these students as they struggle with code switching from AAVE to SE.  I feel for them as I feel rotten for all Blacks, as I feel rotten about being a privileged Whiteboy with loads of encouragement to excel and plenty of exposure to SE, and with few experiences with poverty -- certainly nothing compared with the feeling of doom of many Blacks to the "caste" system of modern America.  

That said, from what I've studied about AAVE, I accept it as a distinct dialect, but not one so drastically different from SE as to preclude the jump from using no apostrophe to actually using one, for example.  Considering merely the obscene amount of TV consumption of American children, Black kids included, it's next to impossible to argue that these kids are unfamiliar with mainstream English: even 99% of the programs on BET use mainstream English, not Ebonics.  If the dialect itself is not the problem, the key issues would appear to lie in ambivalent attitudes of Blacks regarding "acting White" and the sheer lack of funds and good teachers in inner city schools.

All of this is to say that I, too, am ambivalent about Black students' struggles.  On one hand, I'm sad for their background issues.  On the other hand, I have little compassion for people who are self-sabotaging their futures.

To answer the prompt (finally), I would speak to these students with all the compassion I have, careful not to denigrate them, their culture or AAVE; careful to acknowledge them as individuals, careful to laud their work and their ideas, careful, especially, to speak about error correction in terms of "Here's how this would be better in formal writing." and careful NOT to say things like: "You're MISSING x" or "You lack y and z..."

Having taught ESL students for years, I would not feel the need to "walk on eggshells," so to speak, as most ESL students, while self-conscious about their lack of education at times (low-income Latinos), if they've risen to the level of essay writing and error analysis, most likely they have the concomitant confidence to handle positive criticism, at least to a greater degree than the AAVE students we've studied about.

 

Week 10, Post 2: Sentence-Level Lesson Plan Brain Tempest

I spoke with another colleague from this class.  It appears that neither of us has a crystal clear idea what is expected from this assignment.  I thought this was basically 20 min of me explaining grammar a la lecture.  She seemed to think this was a lesson with activities for students.  I didn't remember hearing that; perhaps I missed that.

I told her I've been teaching grammar for so long, I'd much prefer to teach something new to me, where I'm learning something.  I mentioned sentence building, since that's at least sentence level.  I said I wasn't sure that would wash, since it's not about addressing student grammar errors.  She said she thought mine was a great idea, and that she planned to steal it!  I said I'd send my thugs to break her knees.

The biggest question is audience.  We learned the folly of teaching grammar to FYE students because there are so many types of students in one class, each with his/her specific grammar needs; what's fascinating for one is baffling to another or just overkill and boring the yet another.

If sentence building is not an option, I would like to teach something to AUGMENT their writing, not merely explain why it's broken and repair it.  Working with idiomatic expressions would be fun, but I'm not sure where to begin. 

I think I might be able to humor myself by focusing on a list of confusing count/noncount words that deserve special attention.  For example, sometimes "crime" is noncount, sometimes it's count.  Why?

Similarly, the use of any/some often needs some explanation. 
Do you want some coffee?  No I don't care for any.

Week 10, Post 1: Case Study Brainstorm

On one hand, I'm happy to be able to pinpoint who my case study is about; on the other, I'm unhappy to report that I don't have a simple, strong story to tell, in part because it's still unfolding.

My tutee Lulu has missed two out of six tutorials, so she's looking more and more unlikely as my study subject. 

My tutee Luigi is showing promising signs of increased motivation and improvement.  He's showing up a bit more organized, less apathetic and his writing is looking up, even if his teacher has little praise for him (I disagree with her lack of praise and her focus on minutiae).

However, the story unfolding is less clear than I thought it was a couple of weeks ago.  At that time, I thought this might be a story about helping Luigi with organizational skills and in focusing on the prompt, which he was often vague about.  At this time, I'm thinking the story (if there is one simple story buried in all of this) is how to motivate Luigi to believe in himself as a successful writer, and/or to equip him with a clear model of what a good essay looks like. 

As I wrote in my tutoring report, it's still not clear, though, if he's the clever writer I think he is (just too unmotivated to really edit his paper), or whether he's a decent writer with really mediocre editing skills, especially since he's failed to implement the ideas we discussed for his revisions two weeks ago, and now the teacher is complaining, generally, about exactly the organizational points I brought up back then.  It may be that we're just asking too much too soon from him.

My hunch is that he needs a Bartholomae & Petrosky bootcamp of deep reading immersion and deeply personal writing to wake him up to the deeper possibilities of the reading/writing connection.  The truth is doesn't read much, never has.  So realizing his full potential may take some time.

Week 9, Post 6: HELP! (Drawing a Blank!)

 Find examples of the sentence level issue that you're going to focus on in your 704 lesson plan.  You can work from your tutees writing or you can work from any of the essays that we've looked at this semester.  What kind of lesson activities might you do with a class of students to help them with this grammar issue?

I know we discussed this (briefly) in class last week.  I know I'm to plan out and give a 20 minute (??) grammar lesson.  But I'm blocked because a) I'm finding no inspiring grammar issues in our sample essays, nor in my tutees' essays -- at least, nothing that would sustain my interest to rant for 20 minutes of my hot air.  Is this a lecture?

That's a hell of a long time to harangue about minutiae, no?  Especially after we've spent nine weeks discussing (and agreeing?) that grammar, if it's dealt with at all, should never -- or very, very, very RARELY -- be taught at the group level.  Nearly EVERYTHING we've read and discussed has concluded that error analysis is of ZERO benefit and that students IGNORE it -- UNLESS it's IN CONTEXT and MEANINGFUL.

I have taught mini-lessons in ESL for many years, but even at that level, I would avoid something as unruly as a 20 minute lecture.  Inevitably, some students will find it fascinating (and forget it), while others will be baffled (but not admit it), while others will already understand it (and resent it).

Then, if we're to address the most common errors our tutees make, I don't see the point.  Most of these grammar points are mundane, like subject/verb agreement, which they've known for years, but, for whatever reason, they fail to apply.  Perhaps they need to be shown the usefulness of the APPLICATION or the importance.  Other, more "exotic" points, like subordinate clauses, will tend to befuddle and bore more students than they aid, I'll wager, especially if the topic's presented out of context.

From my experience, what would be much more creative and beneficial, would be an APPLICATION of a grammar point to a particular activity or game.  But a 20-min. lecture just for the heck of it?  Hmmmm?

So, I'm really confused about the point of this project, and about how to proceed!

I welcome anybody's input!!  Thank you!

Week 9, Post 5: Tutee Fruity?

Really, I could have sworn we did this exact blog last week and discussed it in class.  See Week 8, Post 3.

N'est pas?

Week 9, Post 4: In the Blender

In your second blog synthesize the readings into a single set of issues:
What do the readings, taken together, tell us about teaching and learning with students who are speakers of dialects? 
What teaching recommendations can you make based on the readings?
What ongoing questions do the articles raise?
What kinds of discussion questions should we tackle in class?
How does this group of articles tie to the articles in the previous round of presentations?

So Your Point Is?
Taken together, the readings tell us that some students, especially Black students, enter the classroom with a very low self-confidence in general and regarding home dialect in particular.  This may be because previous teachers or other authority figures or family members have ridiculed their speech.  This may be because there is a general barrier between Black people and White people, especially when the latter assume authority roles.  These issues have a great potential to add fuel to these students' affective filter, nullifying any efforts to help them.

What To Do?
From the literature, it's clear that, to reach out to Black students who are struggling to perform, a teacher must make much greater efforts to acknowledge them and how they identify with language.  To a limited degree, ethnographic interviews can level the playing field for all classroom cultures.  The next step is to recognize students who need extra help and to conference with them ASAP, being careful to strike a balance between showing compassion, but not "singling them out," which could be construed as denigrating them.  If all this fails, it may be necessary to make special time for such students, to speak to them about personal matters, to learn what sorts of family orientation, or other social issues may be impacting their effort to progress.

Where Is This Going?
It's wise to keep abreast of the ongoing controversy surrounding these students because it's such a delicate issue, with many key Black figures taking sides on both sides of the scrimmage.  In addition, there appears to be much ongoing research to draw from for teachers interested in breaking through the affective filters.

In Class?
The decision whether to discuss these topics with the whole class would probably depend on the number of Black students in class.  For example, if most of my students are Black, we would discuss these issues, perform ethnographic exercises and journal about the topic.  On the other hand, if the class is 99% White, as may be the case at Iowa State, whole-class discussion would probably alienate the minority 1%, so one-on-one conferencing with that student would be warranted.

Looking Back?
This batch of articles continues to spread the word that Black students, sincere as they may be in their goal to succeed at college, are educationally handicapped in many cases, as compared to the White majority: they struggle more with language, with self-esteem, with connecting to the "conversation."  They're often deeply conflicted in their desire to both succeed in school and to maintain their identity withing the Black community.  Indeed, some (consciously or unconsciously) willing sabotage their own academic futures in order to nurture this ambivalence. 

This group of articles is rather mixed in its remedies.  Articles like Fordham's further the notion that nothing short of total social revolution, along with a complete overhaul of the White psyche, will ever narrow the "achievement gap" between the races.  Coker's paper sees the problems as largely caused by the White machinery, but praises Black students for their creative maneuvers in coping with college.   The Gonzalves and Wallace/Bell articles make a very fair assessment of the situation, noting that, while many White educators are trying to serve these students fairly, the situation is like a mine field, and sometimes even the best intentions garner bloody results.  Far from making ineffectual blanket statements, as Fordham's do, these last two articles provide creative methods and case studies illustrating White educators' effectiveness with struggling Black students.

Week 9, Post 3: The Breakdown

In your blog, first summarize each individual reading in a few bullet points:
What is the genre of the article: Is it a study? A theory piece? A pedagogy piece?  A historical piece?
Who’s the audience for the article?
What points is the author making?  What’s the authors purpose in making these points? 
How might you summarize the article in a few sentences?  
How does this article tie to articles in the previous round of presentations?

Gonsalvez
This is a study.

The audience is post secondary educators who deal with inter-racial faculty/student issues, specifically those with African-American males.

The author seems determined to help bridge the relationship gap between White comp teachers and African-American males, particularly.  The point is to avoid the potential pitfalls -- 1. failing to address writing problems early on, 2. the ensuing frustration, 3. assuming too much about the student -- and, to the importance of going beyond the usual teacher-student conference, to cultivate a real relationship with him.

Compared to the first group of articles on Students' Rights, this was extremely fair and balanced in its presentation, much more productive in its positive suggestions, and not the least focused on home dialect as the being the magic bullet.  Similar to the other papers, though, the Gonzalvez study highlights the sensitive issues race brings up for both teacher and student; like the other papers, the onus is on the White educator, not the student, to go above and beyond the norm to give Black males extra help.

Coker
This is a study.

The audience could be any college educators interested in insights into the psyches of Black women in college and their struggles to adapt.

The goal seems to help educators understand their Black female students.  The paper covers key reasons these women went on to university, the challenges they face and their means of coping.

Like the articles last week, the focus here is largely on Black perceptions and Black assumptions about prejudice.  Most of the findings focused on the assumptions these Womanist students made about being marginalized by White instructors, though they never spoke to the teachers to ascertain any information; assumptions were made and inferences followed.  For example, if a student felt her opinion in class discussion wasn't given adequate credence, her conclusion was that this was because the teacher was a racist or because he lacked the compassion to give her special attention, since she was an older, re-entry student.  Unlike the article above, or those last week, Coker's attention is on the Black females' on-campus survival skills, rather than placing the responsibility on White educators.

Wallace/Bell
This is a study.

The audience would appear to be post secondary educators who are open to affecting change on behalf of Black students.

The article draws attention to the peculiar issues faced by Black students at a predominantly White college campus.  Specifically, the article underscores problems of (unintentional) racism encountered by Black students, their coping mechanisms, and what faculty can do to assist these students.

Like last weeks' papers, this one addresses challenges in dealing with home dialect and the dubious goal of teaching SE to the unwilling.  Unlike those papers, the Wallace/Bell article takes neither side: "..simply respecting students' home cultures and requiring them to learn new discourse practices is...not a sufficient answer" (323).  The authors maintain that teachers need to be as interested in community literary practices as we expect our students to be about acquiring SE (while some ethnographer/linguists tout this technique for promoting "co-researching," Wallace & Bell fail to mention this, and argue for it merely for its fairness).

Ultimately, English faculty prodded to become "advocates for educational equity in higher education."

Fordham
This is a historical piece (?).

The audience is anyone interested in Fordham's earlier piece on Capital High students.  Her thrust seems more sociological/anthropological than the previous article, which centered on classroom language, home dialect and Ebonics.

Chiefly, Fordham defends her previous paper, laments it's misappropriation and explores related interpretations of the term "acting White."

Essentially, Fordham seems to set herself up as a one-woman army fending off affluent Blacks, well-meaning Black students in her college class, powerful figures in the Black community (Bill Cosby), as well as myriad misunderstanding and opposing researchers and journalists (Time, NY Times, etc).  Ultimately, in her pursuit of "the elimination of the Black-White achievement gap" (235), she echoes her earlier article: "one major reason black students do poorly in school...(is their) inordinate ambivalence and affective dissonance in regard to academic effort and success" (236).

Like her earlier article on Capital High, the gist of this article is, despite an avalanche of opinion within and without the Black community (and logic?), the great obstacle to Black advancement is the White machinery that keeps all Blacks enslaved.

My issue with Fordham's logic is this: She attacks the White machinery that prevent Blacks from success; she attacks the Black machinery that judges other Blacks if they (try to) succeed; yet, she also denies that, as Bill Cosby says, the problem in the Black community is within, not without.  How can this be?  At the very least, by her own admission (above), "ambivalence" about success is at the core of the problem, both on a cultural and individual level.  Once this attitude is clarified, most of your obstacles will have been eliminated. 

Week 9, Post 1: quiz

Take-home quiz:

What is the STROL resolution? Why was it introduced? And how has it played out over the past 40 years?
What main criticisms of SRTOL?
What are the main criticism of the  the notion of "Standard English"?
In the English classroom, what tensions might dialect speakers experience when they have to write in "standard English" and what can English teachers do to reduce those tensions?
What are some of the strategies that AAVE speakers use to navigate/negotiate their identity in an environment where standard English is "forced" upon them?

The Students' Rights to Their Own Language resolution (CCCC) says that each cultural group has a right to know, study about and feel proud about its culture and accompanying dialect, and to be aware that SE is by no means superior to other dialects.

It was introduced along with the spirit of the 60s civil rights to try to ensure that the rights provided by civil rights legislation would not be Jim Crowed into meaninglessness, since it's a widely held notion that a culture's honor and dignity begins with upholding its language.

The impact over the years has been to isolate one group against the other, essentially, breeding some degree of pride for the Black community and, at the same time, much unrest within and without.

Criticisms of SRTOL say that it gives students a false sense of security, since it tends to leave uncorrected some communication behaviors that can invite future obstacles.  As far as the overall school curriculum, teaching Ebonics or any other language in the classroom, other than the standard discourse spoken by the teacher is totally unprecedented.  For example, if a student wanted to learn a computer language, he would not be permitted to communicate in a computer language of his own choosing.  Also, historically, the classroom is the place where we are corrected; this is practically a definition of the classroom; Ebonics, though says that the student is always right and is above correction.  Other criticisms hold that Ebonics shames teachers, it "dummy-down"s the curriculum, creates more stereotypes and, finally, increases segregation.

The criticisms of SE are: a) that SSE and SWE are roughly equivalent, b) standardization is possible, c) that SSE is the language of the workplace, d) that SSE is or should be the language of the classroom.

Many minority students grow up feeling conflicted about their own dialects, whether it's Jamaican patois or AAVE.  Many such students feel inferior because their family or perhaps previous teachers spoke ill to them about their speech or writing.  At the same time, many people in these peoples' communities denigrate each other for language and many other such "low class" trappings.  These neighborhoods also boost the notion that NOT speaking home dialect equals "gettin' above your raisin'," e.g. "selling out" to "the man."

By following some of the techniques in Shafer's article and by carrying out ethnographic studies, students can learn to embrace their own language and culture with pride.

Some students, sadly, subvert their own personalities or cultures, "losing" themselves in a false identity in an attempt to please teachers and other gatekeepers.  Other students, like Korie, flat out rebel against school in general, saying things like, "I don't do no book reports," even if rebel-without-a clear-cut-cause attitude has no specific agenda, even if it ends up damaging the student and his future.  Others, like Maggie, live in a kind of denial, telling themselves that they never need to speak non-AAVE, although, in fact, they do so unconsciously with teachers and other officials.  Still, other students, like Norris, adopt a kind of "camouflage," putting on a "crazy" act to deflect the heckles of his Black neighbors, befriending dangerous toughs at school, whom he uses for protection, all the while remaing true to his long-term goal of college-bound success, and speaking SE as best he can.

Week 9, Post 2: Shafer & Grandma

My Take
I very much enjoyed Shafer's pre-writing presentation/exercises.  He has his students look at the various uses of language -- to control women, to control Black people, for example.  Studying the way language is used, especially to manipulate people, is fascinating and can be empowering, particularly for young people who have never considered such media manipulations.  Shafer's end goal, apparently, is to drive home the Ebonics agenda, and it's at this point that Shafer loses me.  I'm all for honoring our students individually and culturally.  But, unless I'm teaching an all-African American class, I have no reason to believe I would spend a great amount of time studying Ebonics, any more than I would focus on the patois of Filipinos and Brooklynese and Redneckese.

The hardest part of Shafer's paper to take seriously presents one of his students' ranting about the latest oppression: White kids co-opting Ebonics, the result of which is degrade it (!) into a "more crass, less disciplined language," because, above all, Ebonics is known for its discipline.  Really? 

Bottom line, if I had a very mixed class, I would definitely work some ethnographic studies into the course to ensure that all my students feel proud of their own culture and history before launching into the "wonders" of Standard English.  Of course I would.  Not to do so would be to avoid the elephant in the room, complicating or barring any real language instruction and acquisition.

My Arkansas Grandma
My real misgivings about AAVE being legit stem from the fact that most people I've met who have trouble switching to Broadcast English (or whatever you wanna call this here stuff we talk, us White folks) are typically hamstrung by poor education in general.  That goes for my Arkansas grandma (God rest her soul) and all my Arkansas kin, for that matter.  These people are the salt of the earth; they would give their life for a stranger.  Get 'em a-jawin', though, and they're liable to say, along with Jed Clampit: "Ya gotta get nekked to warsh yasef."  Fine.  But is that a legitimate dialect or a lack of education?  I would lean to the latter.  I think most folks would.  I know Blacks, Latinos, East Indians, Russians and Japanese, etc., who tend to speak a certain speech (language or dialect) at home and a different speech with the general public.  The difference is that they are consciously able to make the switch.  Others, like my grandma, never knew the difference, which is why I would chalk that up to a lack of education.

Then again, I could be wrong.  Aside from the AAVE tendency to drop the verb to be, my Arkansas grandma's dialect was about 90% the same as AAVE, so maybe my grandma was perfectly justified.  She simply spoke a version of Ebonics, so who am I to judge?

Week 8, Post 2B: My 2 Cents on "Balancing" Classroom Dialects

The Immersion Question
As sensitive an issue as this is, and as personally confused/divided as I am about it, my first reaction is to seek employment where this is not such a hot political topic.  My misgivings arise because, having taught ESL for a number of years, I've taught in classes that had both many languages and many dialects as well, and, while I made a conscious effort to validate the language and culture of each individual in my class, the focus of the course was on English immersion.  In fact, on a number of occasions, my more impatient pupils simply protested any discussion or acknowledgement of any language in the classroom beside (SE) English.  All this furor about Students' Rights to their home dialect appears to run counter to all the substantial research and pedagogy supporting language immersion in the L2.

The Justice Question
Beyond this, the issue of classroom justice comes up.  If I have five students who use AAVE at home, another five who speak Hmong, another five who speak Spanish, another five whose family are Cajun, etc., all of this takes the spotlight off of the subject at hand, and seems to turn it onto home dialects.  How are we to find the time to address all of these dialects?  I understand how ethnographic activities, or even private journals, could be a step toward satisfying the Students' Rights issue, but, to spend a lot of time on this seems foolhardy, since our schools are falling behind the task of education already.  To read prominent linguists suggesting anything like a "balance" smacks of the "equal time clause" of the FCC.  Anyone who's familiar with the many pressures already facing classroom teachers would likely find such "balance" of dialects impractical, if not ludicrous.

The Efficacy Question
Which brings up a most critical point.  While Signithia Fordham and friends decry the over-valuing of SE as anything beyond just another dialect, and while there's research to support the notion that badgering students about every grammar/pronunciation offense is counter-productive, still, I've yet to see the research that proves that, minority students who've been freed from the yoke of persnickity classroom SE transform into stellar students.  If this were the case, I feel the majority of educators would jump on that bandwagon today.  Bottom line: are we doing all of this to improve public relations or is this a proven way to improve SE acquisition?

Week 8, Post 4: Sentence-Level Lesson Plan

Find examples of the sentence level issue that you're going to focus on in your 704 lesson plan.  You can work from your tutees writing or you can work from any of the essays that we've looked at this semester.  What kind of lesson activities might you do with a class of students to help them with this grammar issue?

As I review our syllabus, I note that 33.3% of my grade hangs on this lesson plan.  It's disturbing, but, though I recall lots of in-class discussion about the case study, I'm afraid I need to ramp up my game as far as a sentence-level lesson plan.  Since I don't recall discussing it, I'll have to speak to Mark about it specifically to ascertain exactly what's expected.

LATER...

So, since I went to Tuesday's class and Mark explained this assignment in general terms.  Apparently, we're to present a 20-30 lesson of sentence-level grammar (our imaginary audience is our tutees?).  After my years in ESL, this should not be a major struggle.  The challenge comes, first, in choosing a subject that maintains my, and others', interest (even for 5 minutes), then, too, in somehow keeping everyone's eyelids open for such a long period.  Is it cheating to distribute toothpicks beforehand?

Actually, this is a very curious assignment, following as it does from Mark's very informative workshop last Thursday on teaching grammar without even speaking about grammar, that is, a more inductive method.  Now, though, we'll be lecturing for 20-30 minutes on grammar?  Hmm.

Still, in order to really address this prompt, I'll need more information.  When we spoke about the details of this project, Mark said it would all be unfolding gradually, with "very rigid guidelines," though he offered to email me the info.  I told him not to bother, but now I think I'd like to have as complete an overview as possible as soon as possible.  Ya feel me?

Week 8, Post 3: Projecting My Case Study

Look back at your tutoring reports thus far and flesh out a few possible outlines or brainstorms for your case study.  By now you should be at the stage where you can say something like:
"If I decide to write my case study on this student, it'll probably focus on self-management issues -getting organized, coming prepared, looking at the syllabus - and the strategies that I'm using to help the student."
"If I decide to write my case study on the other student, I'll probably focus on grammar editing strategies - I'll outline the strategies that we try over the course of the semester and chart our successes,  her progress in becoming an independent self-editor."


Luigi
If I decide to write my case study on Luigi, most likely, I'll be covering self-management -- getting organized, coming prepared, understanding the writing prompt, knowing precisely what the teacher's looking for -- along with the outlining and essay structuring techniques we've discussed.

Lulu
If I decide to write my case study on Lulu, I'll be addressing both the essay structure methods and the sentence level grammar review we've been covering, since, as a non-native speaker and writer of English, we're having to tackle many issues at once.

Week 8, Post 2A: Students' Rights in a Nutshell

In your second blog synthesize the readings into a single set of issues:
What do we, as writing teachers, need to know from these articles as a group?
What do the readings, taken together, tell us about teaching and learning with students who are speakers of dialects? 
What teaching recommendations can you make based on the readings?
What ongoing questions do the articles raise?
What kinds of discussion questions should we tackle in class?
 Feel free to do this in the form of "10 take-away points."


1. Students' Rights is an extremely sensitive, volatile and political issue.  As such, it should be dealt with delicately, humanely and directly.

2. While some students who feel studying and using SE and its concomitant culture is contrary to their own dialect and culture, other students actually tend to ignore their own culture in order to fit in, thereby denying their own voices.  As teachers, we need to do what we can to ensure that this tragedy does not occur.

3. While many take for granted that SE is the form of English in its ideal form, many linguists and educators see it as just another dialect.  (Many feel SE doesn't even exist; it's just some ideal).  We should be careful not to assign it too much credence.

4. On the other hand, it's the language of prestige and success.  We want to give our students every opportunity to learn and use SE.

5. Many educators, linguists and anthropologists feel a student's identity is intrinsically connected to his home dialect.  It's vital, therefore, to respect students' home dialect; we should never denigrate it or speak of it as an obstacle to learning SE.  SE should be seen as one more dialect of many acceptable dialects.

6. Many linguists agree that the ideal means to learn SE is by using the home dialect as a springboard. 

7. Where possible, students should conduct ethnographic research to study some of the contributions their dialect brings to the general American culture.

8. Students can write narratives that speak about how they became aware of race, class, gender differences.

9. Students can create skits dramatizing the inappropriate use of dialect.

10. Bottom line: it's vital to present SE along with a creative and dignified look at other dialects and how they function.

Week 8, Post 1: Students Rights vs. SE

 In your blog, first summarize each individual reading in a few bullet points:
What is the genre of the article: Is it a study? A theory piece? A pedagogy piece?  A historical piece?
Who’s the audience for the article?
What points is the author making?  What’s the authors purpose in making these points? 
How might you summarize the article in a few sentences?   

Jenny Cook-Gumperz
* This is a pedagogy and theory piece.

* The audience is college English instructors and researchers on basic composition, especially where students' L1 is not SE.

* The author's intent is to investigate why some students are especially challenged in the transference of spoken language (specifically AAVE) to written language (specifically, academic SE). Her intention is that the reader expand his view of how he defines literacy.

*Through a series of ethnographic interviews centered on a single participant, Wanda, Cooks-Gumperz highlights the complexities of melding one's own culture and dialect with the newly assumed dialect of academic SE.  She finds the potential for AAVE students, attempting to succeed in school, to ignore their own culture, their own voices and to write "what the teacher wants rather than struggle to make her own understandings part of what is expressed on the page" (344).

Signithia Fordham
* This is a pedagogy piece.  By this, I hope to distinguish it from the above pedagogy style in that it's far less scholarly.  In fact, because of the incendiary language, it seems the author has designed her paper to be a sort of political pamphlet.

* The audience is English educators and researchers, including those encompassing secondary and post-secondary; it also addresses a broader audience, including anthropologists, sociologists, linguists and teacher/theorists in ethnic studies.  Considering the political tone of the piece, I believe her audience could well be all Black Americans as well.

* After what appears to be a very limited survey at a single high school in Washington, D.C., the author draws conclusions about all Black Americans, namely that a) AAVE (Ebonics) is the dominant discourse for 80% of all Blacks, b) most Blacks adhere to this and avoid SE, c) this is because of the potential for backlash withing the Black community for those using SE, d) this even at the risk of academic and financial failure, f) even if they are unconscious of their motivations, Blacks withdraw, whenever possible, from connection with SE and White values, g) though she indicates Blacks are unaware of their impetus, nonetheless, she attempts to assign their withdrawal (above) to a mass political movement, which she terms "guerrilla warfare."

*Fordham admonishes educators and researchers that the sidelining of AAVE (Ebonics) by the dominant White culture belittles the power of this dialect as an instrument of "rhetorical resistance that nurtures the liberation of a people and reinforces their Black identity" (12).  She makes an appeal, apparently aimed at her Black audience, to "lease or rent" SE, but never to use it wholesale, especially in the presence of an exclusively Black gathering.

Huntington Lyman & Margo A. Figgins
*This is a pedagogy piece.  Like the above, it's conveyed with little or no evidence from research, but leans on opinions of colleagues who agree; like Fordham's piece (though a bit more restrained), it reads like a tract more than a scholarly paper.

* Like the above article, this one is aimed at scholars, educators all Black Americans and anyone already sympathetic to the students' rights movement.

* The authors a) deny that Standard English exists, b) deny that, if it does, it's wrong to call it better than other dialects, c) that identity is tied up in language, d) that minimizing or ignoring other dialects damages people (no real causal indication how this works), e) that, to inspire students to find their own voices, we need to acknowledge their dialects and its contributions to American culture.

* It's suggested that, in addition to teaching SE -- "how the rich and powerful talk" (41) -- teachers need to recognize dialects, too; the authors offer a handful of practical techniques to do so, largely borrowed from Heath's ethnographic approach from Ways With Words.

Barbara L Speicher & Jessica R. Bielanski

* This is a theory and pedagogy piece, far less inflammatory than the preceding two articles, though heavily political all the same.

* The audience, according to the extensive citations, is educators, theorists and highly educated political sympathizers.

* Speicher and Bielanski bring up four assumptions about SE. These assumptions are: a) Spoken SE and written SE are largely equivalent, b) spoken and written codes are amenable to standardization, c) SE is the language of the workplace and social mobility, d) SE is, or should be, the language of the classroom.  The authors refute the first two assumptions, protest the third as racist and decry the last one for its lack of efficacy.

* Their argument is that, to linguists, all dialects are equal, like Lyman an Figgins, it's impossible to call SE better than other dialects.  That most people, even those who don't use it, think SE is the superior dialect, is most frustrating.  The defeat of the Ebonics movement in Oakland, largely at the hands of powerful Blacks like Jesse Jackson, indicate a bias by the media in failing to publish dissenting opinions by important linguists.

Week 7, Post 3: Picky, Picky!

Analyze "Pot Legal," "Weird Friday," "Spelling" and "Introductions" to find examples of the following "spoken language interference."  Look for:
Phonology (e.g. difference between our sound system and writing system)
Morphology (e.g. the need to correctly encode word endings and word parts in writing)
Syntax (e.g. difference in the grammar of spoken utterances and written sentences)
Semantics (e.g. differences in the types of words and meanings that we use in speaking and writing)
Pragmatics (e.g. differences the way we construct our message and get it across to listeners/readers.)

Gaffs, flubs, boo-boos...there's no shortage of oopsy-daisies in these writing samples.  Rather than analyze each sample for all five errors or compile by error category, I decided to take a choice line or two from each sample to discuss.  I found some samples a tad more compelling to write about than others (thus, the absence of "Spelling" in my post here)...

1. "Weird Friday"
While it's possibly the most conversational in its flow, "Weird Friday" is rich with SLIPS.  One of my favorite is the following.  The writer's mother asks him where he'd like to go, and he tells her:

     So I replied, "I don't know mom were ever you want you is the one that is driving."

This line feels very honest (even if it's tough to read) in that this student is writing the way he speaks.  It's missing commas before and after the object; these are Phonology errors.  The object, mom, ought to be in caps; another Phonology error.  Writing wherever as were ever breaks two rules -- one for spelling (where) and one for breaking up a compound word; for both causes, were ever should be classified a Phonology issue.  After want, we need a  period to conclude the main idea, plus a capital Y: two more Phonology flaws.  There are two sentences here, but the writer's trying to pack them into one.   This is what we call a run-on sentence; as a sentence boundary issue, we'd label this a Syntax error.  In the second sentence, the verb are is incorrectly converted to the third person is, making it a Morphology gaff.  The use of that for a person is another Syntax error, since the appropriate choice is who.

2. "Introductions" (A)
It's not always easy to tell how to classify an error.  In fact, sometimes there's more than one way to skin a morpheme.  For example, in "Introduction," we find:

     Sandra was attending my class in Mexican Lit. at Venice High School...

Something smells fishy, but why, exactly?  My ESL background forced me to teach plenty of simple past vs. past continuous, so I have a hunch what's at issue here.  Ideally, past continuous is used when we need to distinguish one action in the past from another that had already begun.  For example,

     I arrived late, just as the pastor was delivering his closing words.

We also use past continuous in a more casual way to speak about past activities (whose terminations are less important than the action):

     So, yesterday, I was so busy: I was running around town, buying groceries, picking up my kids, smoking crack...

In the sample sentence above from "Introductions," Sandra's attendance is an action unaccompanied by a second action, so using past continuous, not simple past, goes unjustified.  Also, this is a sample writing for a class, so a breezy, casual voice seems inappropriate.  For both of these reasons, the incorrect tense form marks it a Morphology error.  At the same time, it smacks of vernacular, so we could call it a Semantic error, too.

3. "Introductions" (B)

Another "chatty" style issue in the same sample gives us this couplet:

     Everyone knew who was Gerardo.  Loves to meet people and make friends.

The noun clause "who was Gerardo" works fine in some other languages (Spanish, German), but English requires the verb to follow the noun in this case.  We should chalk it up as a Morphology error, but many people of non-SE background speak this way on a regular basis (it may count as a distinct dialect), so we could also say it's a Phonology error as well.

The second sentence, Loves to meet people and make friends., is one of the few fragments in these samples; it lacks a noun.  As such, it's a sentence boundary error or Syntax error.  Because of the inappropriately casual style, this marks it a Semantics issue as well.

4.  "Pot Legal"
Krauthammer's article says most student errors tend to be Phonological, especially spelling and punctuation (59%, according to Connors and Lundsford).  Because of this, "Pot Legal" is a bit more unusual and, to me, much more interesting.  Particularly fun are sentences lacking like this:

     Gray is a man who has already had his success in life and for that reason he wants to smoke mariguana legally.

It makes you wonder: does Gray, a politician, want to legalize pot for his constituents, now that he has enough clout to pull off such controversial shenanigans?  Or has he always been riding around with Cheech and Chong in that funky van, blowing reefer?  Is he now going to show up to work with red eyes and giggling -- only legally?  

All snickers aside, this qualifies as a Pragmatics error, due to its general lack of coherence.  Oh, and mariguana (is this a variation on iguana?) is misspelled, a blaspheme against Phonology.


And now that I, Jehova Almighty, have lain judgements and hurled lightning bolts, I stride off into the sunset...

Week 7, Post 2: NOT for the Faint of Heart

Why do you think it's difficult for some students move from informal oral language to written academic language?  (Why is academic language so difficult for some students?)  How would you explain the features of academic language to a tutee or to a class?  How might you help students practice academic language?

Karma Chameleons
In my last post I referred to people like us, who "cop a feel," that is, adopt the feeling of academic writing, as "magpies," since we're grabbing a piece of this, a piece of that.  It's about imitation, I feel, so maybe we're more like chameleons, blending into with whatever discourse we come in contact with.

Depth Charges
In my last post, I identified what, for me, is the other element in adapting to academic discourse.  After determining to become a great chameleon (above), it's necessary to buy into the academic/intellectual world of IDEAS.  Many people don't or can't.  Most people we encounter have a great aptitude for more the more concrete side of things.  Almost no one in my very intelligent family has the slightest interest in discussing topics at the dinner table beyond sports, business, the latest purchase, cooking and newborns.

However, the academic community delves deeper into self-examination and into analysis of all topics, peeling off the top layers to reveal the dark underbelly.  Some people are analytical, but not skilled chameleons, while some chameleons won't dig down deep.  This combination, plus a big appetite for learning, self-expression and taking giant risks -- all of this is necessary, just as a starter, for anyone to brave the wilds of academic discourse.

Cat-of-Nine-Tails
Then there's Krauthammer's paper, a brutal, bloody indictment of the cat-of-nine-tails that we call the written word.  Even for those hungry enough, brave enough, brainy enough -- if they lack talent or luck or the iron stomach required to confront the snares of writing -- shucks, God bless 'em.  We all know PLENTY of native Americans who have given up on writing.  With all of this, who could blame non-natives for flinching?  Of course, some would say the REAL masochists are their teachers.  But, of course, we know better, don't we?  (Gulp.)

Onward & Upward
How, then, to educate and motivate our "broken-winged starlings?"  What makes most sense to this writer/teacher is what seems to be working for Ms. Goens of the "stretch course," 104: integrating reading and writing.  How are our students supposed to "pick up" academic style, except by massive exposure and healthy emulation?  I learned how to address elite gents and ladies by tuning my ear to the patter, by noting what style fits (or doesn't), and "dressing accordingly," and I would recommend our students do the same.  They need to read academic language, they need to hear it spoken and they need to try to speak it on the spot, like a tennis player being shot balls from a tennis ball cannon.  At first, it's bound to be tough, but repetition -- within a meaningful context --will reduce the tension and increase capacity.

Week 7, Post 1: The Power of the Magpie

Tell us a little bit about how you "mastered" academic language at various stages of your academic career -- the language of high school reading/writing, the language of college reading/writing, and the language of graduate-level reading/writing?  Was it a conscious process? Or did you just "absorb" the language? Or was it trial-and-error? What struggles or challenges did you face?  What challenges do you still face in academic reading/writing?


My One Blessing
I suppose I came to SFSU to get a handle on how to teach writing because, while I feel I write fairly competently, I can't remember ever struggling with it, so how to translate something so natural into a "methodology"?  Math was always a challenge, frankly, and I felt like an idiot because I had to fight just to get Cs and Bs. 

Languages, though, have been my one blessing.  I fell in love with language through songs and movies and children's books.  I began writing "songs" in fourth grade, then, really seriously in high school.  I was on the school newspaper beginning in seventh grade, so I must have felt some enjoyment and control over language then.  Reading, actually, was tougher for me.  I was always a notoriously slow reader (still am).

My Two Activities
Two things stand out as useful activities that aided my language acquisition, and both of them come down to being a good "magpie."  I remember watching lots of TV as a kid, and I recall putting on "skits" back in fifth grade.  (One in particular involved a cop and a heroin junkie.  The junkie was injecting himself with a "needle" (a mechanical pencil that resembled a hypo, I thought?) and the cop comes and freights him off to jail.  Then the cop tells the audience the "moral" of the tale in a voice that tried to sound like Robert Stack from the TV show "The Untouchables.")  It was nothing.  But I always loved doing "schtick" like this, either drama or comedy, mostly the latter.

The other activity was songwriting.  Again, it all began with listening like a total devotee to the Beatles, Simon and Garfunkle, Creeedence Clearwater, Motown, etc. -- then making something up based on, not pure imitation, but definitely inspiration and emulation.

In both cases, whether "drama" or songwriting, looking back, I was actively IMITATING other genres.  Kids do this all the time in trying out impressions of friends, family, movie stars, etc.  And so it goes, I suppose, with writing narrative.  It starts with what I call in class The Art of Paying Attention.  People who really listen, then absorb, then try to replicate -- this type of people has a far easier time.  Because I think 80-90% of it's imitation, don't you?

Faking the Code
So we learn the "style" of writing book reports.  We learn the "style" of writing a newspaper lead.  We learn the "style" of a five-paragraph essay.  And so the language of academic discourse is just a code.  If I'm on the corner, talking to Jimmy Two-Fingers about the game, I'm gonna to hit Jimmy with his, you know, street "code."  But if I'm to converse with learned minds concerning elevated topics, if I have any intention of impressing such worthies, it behooves me to wear the appropriate "clothes" to the event, namely academic "code," and to meet such people head-on with ideas that at least pretend to hold their interest.

Academic Magpie
When I was eleven, I became a "born again Christian."  Part of the fascination with religion was the spiritual "pull," I suppose, and the other part was the intrigue of the rhetoric itself.  The philosophy was compelling, largely a giant poetic ball of beautiful ironies: this poor carpenter becomes King of Kings; he tells people to turn the other cheek just when they're dying for revenge; he comes to fulfill his mission, but he's still got his moment of doubt in the Garden of Gethsemane.  Anyway, I found it so mentally appealing, which is one reason that I jumped in, studied like crazy and began "preaching" to my friends as early as junior high (no, I wasn't popular).

Essentially, again, I was "trying on the clothes" for another act -- this time it was religious and, I suppose, intellectual or at least, academic.  I loved the way a sermon could compel you through a mixture of reason and emotion: this was the art of the persuasive argument.  I dreamed of being able to persuade people myself someday, possibly as missionary in an exotic land (!).  In a way, my connection to academic discourse was just a melding of the "magpie" in me with my fascination for philosophy and persuasion.

PS
I just re-read the above after several days' marination, and I need to add that, as far as TRUE academic discourse, the above was my "grooming" for the academic culture, but I was blessed with additional tutelage.  My sharpest "chops" for critical thinking, consciousness of my audience and concise writing came from a) my experience writing in journalism (Acalanes/ Piedmont H.S., UC Berkeley, Cashbox Magazine, various video magazines in LA) and b) my Rhetoric 1A course at Cal.  As the editor of my high school paper, I felt like a bit of a "hot shot" writer, so I opted for Rhet. 1A, since it was said to be the toughest.  It was.  Through lively debates, we learned that critical thinking was the means to a clear concept of audience for the argumentative essay and the most succinct language.  It was a merciless and absolutely successful "boot camp."  All of us had begun thinking we were "great" writers.  All of us improved markedly still -- even if, due to the stringent nature of the rubric, we were lucky to pull a B in the end.  This was by far the most useful course in my college career (and I still have the cracked ribs to remember it by).

Week 6, Post 3: Preliminary Self-Assessment

Do a preliminary self-evaluation of your blogs thus far.  Things to think about:
What makes a "good" posting for you as a writer of your own blog?
What make as "good" posting for you as a reader of other people's blogs?
In your reading, writing and commenting on blogs, what's useful for you in developing your own thinking?     
What "grade" would you give yourself? At this point let's just use CHECK or CHECK-PLUS or CHECK-MINUS as grades.  Explain your grade.

I feel a real sense of accomplishment when, after thinking about the points raised regarding the classwork, I can synthesize what I've learned, or am learning, then to reach beyond that to integrate this with my personal experience or beliefs.  Writing my blog, I've found, feels different from writing other academic papers in that I'm freer to use my own personal voice.  This is what I love about writing in general -- expressing myself.  My blog, then, allows me to re-examine or re-discover what we've been discussing, plus it gives me a much more significant personal stake in the process, since I'm encouraged to be myself and express myself.

Compared with some of my colleagues, I've found that it's much harder for me than expected to add some fresh departure after reading, writing and synthesizing, but this exactly what I, as a reader, find stimulating.  (I suspect this is because some others have many years of comp instruction experience to draw from, while I have almost none.  Oh well...)  As a reader, this is both exciting and challenging for me when I read something by a student who has an unusual perspective.  It encourages me to look at an issue from multiple angles and to speak my mind, rather than follow my age-old tendency to write for the teacher.

I find I'm learning a great deal from the postings.  Occasionally, I get a great deal more from reading an usual posting.  One case comes to mind (though from my 709 class) where a student tore off on a bit of a rant about a text we'd read.  I was impressed and a bit intimidated by how much this person knew about the topic, and how personally she was taking it.  Her post was so well-informed and so assertive, I found myself seeking her out to discover more about her and the way she teaches.  Sometimes our own colleagues are our richest resources.

Assessing myself feels awkward as hell, to be frank, especially the idea of getting naked in front of others, revealing, confessing.  However, I put a lot, sometimes enormous amounts, of thought and time into my posts, so that degree of effort should count for something.  I feel the content of my posts reflects someone who's truly engaged with the question at hand and the course overall.  Most important, I find that I'm learning a lot of useful things and growing as a student and as a teacher, so I have to say this development, together with the effort and content of my blog puts me in the "CHECK-PLUS" category.

Week 6, Post 2b: SFSU English Class Characteristics

As you might see from my previous posting, it was hard to make any generalizations about students by class.  With the benefit of in-class discussion, I learned some useful information.

Generally, 104 is for students who took the DSP (Directed Self-Placement test through Early Start) and opted for remedial level.  These students tend to be those who scored lowest on the test.

114 is the traditional freshman composition course.  These students are here because they are more highly functioning in English writing and reading or because, following the DSP, they didn't care for the idea of 104, either because it's remedial or because it's a commitment to a full-year ("stretch") program.

214 is the sophomore segment of the two-year comp requirement at SFSU, so ususally these students are sophomores and more skilled than the 114 students.  However, as I stated in my Week 6, Post 1, this does not apply to my two tutees, for whom it's the reverse.  My 114 student writes at a decent level already, while my 214 student struggles with many sentence-level issues.  (Both have a pretty firm handle on general, though the 214 lags behind by some degree.)

The key differentiating fact for these two, I believe, is that the more advanced student has the benefit of having heard and spoken English, at least as L2 if not L1, growing up in the Phillipines and in the U.S.  The student who's struggling more has spent about the same amount of time (5 years) in the states with her folks, but the L1 is Cantonese 24/7, so she's missing some of the benefits of using the language, developing vocabulary and syntax.

Week 6, Post 2a: My Tutee's Classes

I wish I were better able to make generalizations about my tutee's classes.  However, I feel rather ill-equipped, armed with only info from my 3 tutorials with two students and a reading of my tutor groups' reports.  Mostly, I find it hard to differentiate.  For example, starting with my own two tutees, I find it odd that the more advanced is in the "lower" or freshman class, while the more developmental is in the "upper" or sophomore class.

Frankly, after umpteen years of my teaching ESL, I'm somewhat relieved that they're both at a certain level where they understand me and understand their assignments, as well as understand the general approach of a five-paragraph essay.  On the other hand, my sophomore student in 214 struggles enormously at times with sentence-level issues as well as general structure.

My freshman in 114 has much higher level language ability in general.  As far as his determination toward improvement, so far, I feel he's the more challenged because he seems to have a false sense of security that perhaps he doesn't need my help very much; this might explain his tardiness and his lack of preparedness to work when he arrives.  As you can see, I'm a bit at a loss in my attempt to make any generalizations about students by level or by course, so far, whether it's my tutees or others.  If anything, I see structure issues and sentence level issues across the board.

I must say, I'm filled with admiration reading Jennifer E's report where he student has composition to revise, so she launches into practicing reading skills.  I only wish I had her reading instruction background.  In the meantime, I'll do my best to encourage my students and to bolster their writing and grammar skills.

Week 6, Post 1: Grammar Rant Analysisssssssssssssss

The website PAJIBA: Sweetened by Mock, Lightened by Droll (file:///Users/troycroom2/Desktop/Temp.%20Docs/grammar%20rant-Can%20We%20Settle%20This%20Once%20and%20For%20) offers a Grammar Rant dedicated  to "I could care less."
 
1.What does the author of the grammar rant think is important about language and communication?

Apparently the author is upset by the use of the phrase "I could care less" on the grounds that, to the author, it sounds illogical and makes the speaker sound like an idiot.

2. What does the author say about errors or mistakes in people's writing?  What do our grammar handbooks say about these uses of language?

Skirting a proper citing of Webster's, the author offers her own analysis of this faux pas, word by word.  True to her word, according to laws of logic and the definition of the words, as well as the cumulate phrase, all signs point to "I could care less" being void of meaning (except that everyone KNOWS what it's intended to mean, and, truly, millions of people use it, just as the Leader of the Free World spake "nuke-you-lur").

3. Do the author's claims about what is right or wrong with language always hold true in any communication situation, or can you think of exceptions?  What does the presence of exceptions do the author's claims? 

See #2 for exception to this rule.

4. How do the author's claims about language relate to the socioeconomic class in which speakers and writers have been raised?  Does the author acknowledge these connections?  What do these connections between the author's claims and socioeconomics do to the author's claims?

While her claims make no allusions to the speakers'/writers' socioeconomic class, such comments coming from an admitted graduate from a private, hoity-toity university like Carleton, mark the speaker as elitist by association.  The speaker fails to acknowledge her grave offense; hence, her claims and her name shall forever be besmirched.

5. How does the author's claim relate to the race of readers and writers?  Does the author acknowledge these connections?  Does the author acknowledge these connections? What do these connections do to the author's claims?

While her claims make no allusions to the speakers'/writers' race, such comments coming from a smarty pants with her own website make her look lousy.

6. How does the author's claim about language relate to the cultural or geographical region in which a speaker or writer is raised?  Does the author acknowledge these connections? What do these connections do to the author's claims?

While her claims make no allusions to the speakers'/writers' geographical region, such comments coming from a Carleton grad mark her as know-it-all Yankee..

7. What can you tell about the author's connection of language use to the intelligence of speakers or writers?  Does the author acknowledge these connections? What do these connections do to the author's claims?

She calls it "just confusing, stupid, and not at all OK and we should not stand for it anymore."  She is. verily, contemptuous of such speakers/writers.  She fully accepts responsibility for the venom she spits.  However, people who live in glass houses (ivory towers)...and at Carleton University, of all places...

8. What can you tell about the author's connection of language use to the ethical or moral character of speakers or writers?  Does the author acknowledge these connections? What do these connections do to the author's claims?

Frankly, she sounds pretty high and mighty and finger-pointy, which is just plumb rude.

On the other hand, these questions themselves are more judgmental than the grammar rant itself, in that the website is established for the sake of comedy: "Sweetened by Mock, Lightened by Droll."  So, really, to criticize this ranter is like criticizing a hundred other knucklehead loudmouths who make us laugh.  If this is true, how serious would our college students take this?  Like much comedy, right or wrong, it's pretty funny and highly irreverent.  If I know most students, they would side with the comic, not Dunn.

Your thoughts, please?

Week 5, Post 2: Serving My Sentence

This is a summary of salient point from Sharon Myers' "Remembering the Sentence":

1. Her paper was written because of a renewed interest in "sentence combining and imitation."  The uptick in interest was due to a) the interest in information processing, which paralleled studies of artificial intelligence and b) a reaction to pedagogical rejection of emphasis on syntax, principally by linguists.

2. Myers feels sentence combining (building) is a useful tool for both L1 and L2 students because many such students struggle in writing academic discourse; sentence combining, says Myers, helps them learn the conventions of this process.

3. It's not enough to learn vocabulary; this, alone, is useless, if students are ill-equipped with relating or collocation phrases that are associated with those words.

4. A key justification for the utility of this method is that English is very idiosyncratic.  Thus, it's not enough to learn the rules, since there are so many exceptions to the rules. 

5. What's needed is exposure to academic vocabulary in context of other useful phrases.  The model of proof for the need for exposure is the computer, specifically "neural networks," which developed a kind of awareness of many words and their collocations by way of high usage.  The proclivity to associate these collocations in humans is called "structural disposition."

6. Formal grammar instruction is seen as less useful than sentence combining; in fact, it's been been proven to be "useless" for both L1 and L2 students. 

7. Rather, grammar must be integrated with lexis, or vocabulary studies.

8. Myers' method is as follows: a) teacher models a sentence, b) teacher erases unimportant words, leaving only a template of key words, b) students write sentences following the template, d) student sentences are presented on the board and "worked out," their work thus becoming the "text."

9. The author tauts the use of "concordancing," that is, having students use "collocation dictionaries," which present academic-level vocabulary in context. 

10. Using these texts gives students ample examples and saves the teacher having to invent them.

Week 5, Post 1: Grammar Confessions

 What are you feelings about grammar?  Unimportant? Important? The foundation of civilization? And what are your feelings about how grammar should be taught?  Drill and kill?  Sentence diagraming?  Lots of red ink from the teacher?  (about 400 words)

I remember my parents' being consistently strict about grammar when I was a kid.  Years later, too, even nowadays, I'll hear them harp about someone using "poor grammar" that drives them crazy.  For example, my mom's mentioned a couple times this year alone that she hates hearing people use "at" at the end of a sentence, such as, "Where's it at?"  Though the "offense" is a dangling preposition, she doesn't see that we commit this "sin" in America all the time, from The New York Times down to the local union hall, with phrases like, "What channel's it on?"  Yet no one's rankled by this.

My friends have similar pet peeves about grammar.  I suppose we all do.  Personally, I find I'm almost entirely resilient to such "abuses" after years of teaching entry level ESL.  I learned through teaching grammar that the English language is damned quirky, plus it's in constant flux; so what was verboten forty years ago is de riguer today.  Does anyone beside English teachers use "fewer than" instead of "less than" for countable nouns?  Seems to me most folks are content saying, "The Express Lane is for ten items or less."  OK, I take it back.  Some phrases do rub me the wrong way. 

As an ESL teacher, my grammar Bible was the three-volume series by Mary Azar.  Any time my students had a tough grammar question, any time I was perplexed myself, Mother Mary comforted me.  It was Azar who clarified the difference between formal English, with its prescriptive grammar, and the more casual conversational English, with its descriptive grammar.  The former grammar stands in the middle of the intersection directing traffic like a cop.  The latter is the linguist/ethnographer under the bleachers, listening and grinning at the reality of American speech, jotting down notes for the next edition of The Redneck Dictionary. 

While my turning a"blind eye" to entry level ESL errors served a purpose, that approach won't cut it when tutoring college level comp students.  Now I'll have to step out on the tightrope and balance myself on tiptoe, mindful of global grammar issues worth a mini-lesson on one hand, and careful to offer advice only when the moment presents itself. 

For example, my current two tutees both need more development on the structural side of things.  For now, there's no hurry to push grammar.  After a week or two of broader strokes, after I've built some solid rapport, I will look over their papers and try to pick the most frequent, most global issues to offer my two cents via mini-lesson, which I'll follow up on with a couple of quick exercises for them to practice what they've learned.  Then I'll have them explain the grammar point.  Additionally, I think it will be good for them to keep a log of certain grammar points we cover.  This is fully in keeping with the concept of context-rich acquisition, since I'll be explaining a point when it comes up, while it's of interest, and not later, out of context.

Sentence diagramming strikes me as far too "mental" an activity.   I'd like to keep things as simple and organic as possible.  So far as red marking goes, according to the research of Ferris and Bates, error marking with red ink, though it appears we've mortally wounded the tutee's paper, is generally deemed totally acceptable by students; ink color in such studies was found to be a non-issue.  Still, for the above reasons, I prefer a bold BLUE tint.  What's more important in error marking is to limit the focus to the most global and the most frequent issues, and to explain my markings, since most students tend to be baffled by teachers' scratches.

Week 4, Post 3: Blog Heaven

After perusing people's blogs, write a couple paragraphs in your own blog about how you think we might structure the blog process in this course.  Questions to think about:
What makes a "good" posting for you as a writer in your own blog?
What's useful for you in developing your own thinking? 
What make as "good" posting for you as a reader?
What's useful for you in developing your own thinking? What kinds of comments would you like to receive on your blog? What kind of comments would you like to give others?    
And finally the thorny question: How should we evaluate and grade the blogs?

I'm not sure I'm even qualified to suggest how blogging should be structured, frankly, having only begun blogging with the start of this course.  As a writer, it varies widely.  Sometimes I have little to say about a topic; gazing at a few other blogs, though, can often stimulate my flow of ideas.  At other moments -- for example, after reading TDOC -- it wasn't easy to turn off the spigot.  At times like these, I'm thankful for a forum to "dip my oar in the water."

For me, a "good blog" has posts that tend to answer the prompts and take the conversation in a fresh direction.  For example, Julie Wilson's post on TDOC struck me as uniquely strong and well-informed.  Chloe's are often a succinct distillations of the materials read with a couple of stimulating questions, and they're quite open and inviting; that is, her use of bullets makes it all reader friendly. 

So far, I've gotten some comments on my blog that are simply comrades checking in, some saying that they like what I've posted, some trying to take the conversation in a slightly new, challenging direction.  I find each of these beneficial in its way.  It's nice to be greeted and saluted; I for the purposes of the "academic conversation," it's great to have someone like Will Loving pick a slightly novel direction after reading my post.  I try to give comments along those lines, too, when visiting my colleagues' blogs, hopefully starting some two-way feedback.

I tend to agree with the student (Chloe? Jennifer?) who suggested that we ought to be included in the grading end of it by weighing in with specifics on what we learned from the writing end of it.  This hadn't even occurred to me, but it makes total sense, and seems in keeping with student-centered approach in materials like Goens and TDOC.  Included in the grading rubric, there ought to be some reward for effort expended and unique viewpoints contributed as well. 

Week 4, Post 2: Tutoring Case Studies

Aurora
Though she had hoped to develop Aurora from a writer struggling with sentence structure to a confident communicator tackling more local issues, this tutor found she had to scrap her initial action plan.  The tutor concludes that the weak spot in the sessions was not the student's lack of motivation, as she originally felt, but her own strategy.  She found it most useful to refrain from pointing out Aurora's errors and to remain tacit at times, allowing the reticent tutee's communication to unfold naturally, at its own pace, without persistent motivation/prodding.

D.K.
This tutee, transplanted from Korea, suffered from having a very stunted English background, including no ESL courses, as his parents feared this would provide him an unnecessary "crutch."  D.K. was barraged by stressors once he arrived to SFSU as well.  Faced with a tough composition course, his first essay was returned to him ungraded and with so few marks on it, not even D.K.s tutor understood what the teacher wanted.  The tutor learned, much like the tutor above, that often the best course of action is to refrain from excessive commentary, and to encourage the tutee to persevere.

Robert
Robert, a first-generation college student steeped in African American Vernacular English (AAVE), had been sent for tutoring after failing his JEPET.  The tutor surmises Robert might have felt self-conscious about discussing his process in the earshot of strangers in the room.  In addition to this, my take is that he may have felt controlled by "the system" after being "judged" by his teacher, and was only coming to tutoring as a kind of "punishment." This seems apparent since his teacher and the tutor were offering to help him -- for free -- yet he failed to show up on time or, occasionally, at all.  When he did, he was usually incommunicado, unwilling or unable to "buy in" to the program.  Like both tutors above,  this tutor had to adjust his standards, stop being so "innovative" with devices like reverse outlines, and simply assist the tutee in inching along at his own pace.  Considering the force of resistance coming from the tutee, I was impressed that the tutor was able to simply adapt, and not take it personally.  If I had been in this situation with Robert at ETC, I would have immediately reserved one of the sound-proof rooms for tutoring; in fact, this is my preference in general, since we're dealing with sensitive information and even more sensitive people.

Justin
The tutor had been prepared to work on reading and writing strategies, but found all the tutee required was polishing up his essays.  His only significant "handicaps" were his lack of control with regard to academic tone (he haphazardly tossed in vernacular) and a quirky misuse of pronouns.  This tutor's biggest lesson, he says, is that he ought to have communicated with Justin's teacher, since, on more than one occasion, the prompts for Justin's essays were quite vague. 

My Two Cents
Speaking from a bit of experience teaching and tutoring, I sympathize with the frustrations of these tutors.  Most teachers' primary dream, I believe, is to perform mini-miracles, helping the crippled to walk again, no matter the demands on the teacher.  The melancholy reality is that our stellar students don't really need our help, the needy ones may not accept it, and our best laid plans may have to be remolded till they don't resemble the originals.  If there's a solitary thread running through these disparate tutoring cases, it's that our tutees are very likely going to surprise us.  They'll throw us off guard and force us to shift our agenda to fit theirs.  In a sense, one has to smile at this.  Having overhauled our pedagogy, discarding teaching "product" for teaching "process," having soaked up years of reading/writing research, and amassed admirable "toolboxes" to help our students, what matters most in the end is, not our clever stategies, but that we're present, we're compassionate and ready to adapt in any way that serves our students' progress.

Tutor Case Studies -- Guidline Ideas
What seems useful is what I find in the better case studies we're reading.  We should include background on the student where it's relevant, as well as the tutor's level of experience.  If one tutee is an eye learner from China and another is an ear learner from South Central L.A., this is worth noting.  Also, we ought to note any external stressors that may be challenging the student.  We need to note the tutee's attitude, motivation level and self-discipline.  Most of all, we have to discuss the student's progress in context to his course load over the term, especially in relation to the "prompt" of the tutee's teacher, that is, what issues we were asked to remedy through tutoring.