Methods of Tutoring Assessment
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
Methods of Tutoring Assessment
Monday, February 22, 2010
Basic Writing Programs- The Formats and the UC version
Prerequisite Model
- no credit toward graduation
-minimum passing grade
-placement scores, writing sample
-eng 097 at UC's CAT is/was similar to this.
Stretch Model
-English 101 in double the time
-Graduation credit (but 2 times as much)
-no stigma
Studio Model
-Eng 101 with required small group sessions
-small groups are workshops n discussion groups
-placement by recommendation in week 2
-studio sessions might be less cost effective for the university
Directed Self Placement
-Voluntary Eng 097
-credit toward graduation
-mandatory literacy survey. Results and recommendations are given.
Intensive
-Eng 101b
-5 credits instead of 3
-placement time and cost is an issue
-maybe this format makes it easier to collaborate
-the expense of the class is also an issue
Mainstreaming
-No developmental classes
-students address problems in the writing center
-championed for social reasons
The UC Center For Access and Transition method
-Intensive plus classroom tutoring -ENG101B
-Prerequisite Model -ENG 097, 095
-Placement testing Expensive
-drop out/drop off rate is high
-term adjunct professors
-part time tutors
- no credit toward graduation
-minimum passing grade
-placement scores, writing sample
-eng 097 at UC's CAT is/was similar to this.
Stretch Model
-English 101 in double the time
-Graduation credit (but 2 times as much)
-no stigma
Studio Model
-Eng 101 with required small group sessions
-small groups are workshops n discussion groups
-placement by recommendation in week 2
-studio sessions might be less cost effective for the university
Directed Self Placement
-Voluntary Eng 097
-credit toward graduation
-mandatory literacy survey. Results and recommendations are given.
Intensive
-Eng 101b
-5 credits instead of 3
-placement time and cost is an issue
-maybe this format makes it easier to collaborate
-the expense of the class is also an issue
Mainstreaming
-No developmental classes
-students address problems in the writing center
-championed for social reasons
The UC Center For Access and Transition method
-Intensive plus classroom tutoring -ENG101B
-Prerequisite Model -ENG 097, 095
-Placement testing Expensive
-drop out/drop off rate is high
-term adjunct professors
-part time tutors
Saturday, February 20, 2010
The Sage Handbook of NVC- weak
The Sage Handbook of NVC- weak
Thursday, February 18, 2010
Short Survey for Writing Center Administrators
Short Survey for Writing Center Administrators
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
maxims and metaphors megalist
"We learn nothing from diversity, not even the simple fact that we are all the same."
"I am the king of invisible things, but don't ask me for help moving, unless you are Aaron Kerley."
"A sentence has to say something in order to be complete. You do not have to understand each word." -Example "I did it"
"Do you want to understand ethos? Have a beautiful woman tell a joke to a group of single men. Then have a balding forty year old guy tell the same joke."
"Ask, don't tell."
"One session, one skill. Any more is overkill."- heard at a writing conference ECWCCA in Purdue
"We are here to help students become better writers, not to help them produce better writing." - Stephen North
(BULLSHIT! We are here to give students what they need, the skills that will help them succeed, not what they want, not what we want.)
"If language had existed for only 24 hours, writing would have been invented at 11:08 pm."- John McWhorter, From Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue."
According to our best estimates, spoken language started 100-200 thousand years ago. The best current evidence places writing at around 6000 years ago. That means speech existed for at least 94000 years and we accomplished almost nothing. In 6000 years of writing we went from spear fights to space flight."
"I can tell you what you need to do, but if I do, I cannot tell you how to do it. If you tell me what you want to do, I can tell you how others have done that."
"Linguistic diversity is as natural as biological and cultural diversity."
"Writing has always been the primary means of righting wrongs."
"You don't need me to teach you how to read. You need my help to teach you how to read between the lines."
Our job is to teach students the intelligence in their mistakes, and the shortcomings of their successes. The beginning of this is accepting the students current level of ability without judgment.
Postmodernism is to classroom teaching what quantum physics is to Newtonian physics.
(Classroom study of texts and their "meanings" are all that most people ever need. But, if you want to know the REAL deal, it is much much weirder than all of that. The copenhagen interpretation)
Heisenbergs Uncertainty principle of meaning.- You can never know the meaning of a text. The more you care about finding the MEANING. The more effort you put into finding the MEANING, the less trustworthy your interpretations become.
Vision- When we read, we are like horses with blinders on. Working with texts in dialogue with others is what takes the blinders off.
When we read, we are like a man with rose colored glasses on, who doesn't realize what color his glasses are. (since there is no gap in his rosy vision)
We don't learn much from diversity, not even the fact that we are all the same.
Think of professional baseball that has been around for a hundred years. Every year, the teams know that there will be only one winner of the world series. The game is fair. Everyone knows it. It has always been that way. But imagine instead that not everyone knew it. Imagine that almost every team thought that four separate teams could win the world series, and no one told them otherwise. Imagine instead that the idea of "four winners" was talked about in political speeches, that it was a common topic on news broadcasts. Would that be fair?
And what if there once was a competition where more than one person could succeed? Would it be fair to change that competition to a winner take all without some kind of announcement? How long would it take before we figured it out? Would it be right to keep claiming we could all be winners? Would it be right to keep on rose colored glasses in a gray world?
It takes a truly special person to realize that he/she is average.
The world is too strange to judge by experience. Noone has met an average man. Noone has had an average day. Nothing that happens to us is typical. It is specific and there is a serious difference.
Value equals price plus utility. However, the human mind can't measure utility worth a damn. On some days I feel bad about that.
A person can explain everything and understand nothing.
To a fool, a wise man doesn't make any sense. If someone doesn't make any sense, CONSIDER THAT POSSIBILITY.
I think it is a safe assumption that many of us became good with words because we are bad with people. Writing well humbles our pen and teaches us manners. What humbles us in conversation? Who among us seeks to learn from those who struggle at what we love best?
If you can find those learners, you have found your teachers.
Innocence isn't the absence of experience. Innocence is the absence of second thought.
This world is a kindness contest, and we all are in third place.
The only time we immediately like something new is when it is not new. (We can't tell the difference between "bad" and "not at all what we expect.")
Real answers not easy Answers
"Subjects are understood; objects are manipulated." - (I think it is a K Wilber quote).
Every new development is good news, bad news.
If you try very hard, you can understand. No matter what you do, you can't control whether you are understood.
The only time I can be myself is when I'm by myself. I suspect that is true for you too.
A Facebook update can be an inspiration, not a citation. (There are simple reasons for this...)
Worry and Alarm Clocks
Worry is meant to wake you up, and a nice metaphor for worry is an alarm clock. It is unpleasant but helpful. It is wise to choose when it goes off but it should probably go off at least a few times every week.
Abstract and Concrete language- A variety is important. It is like a roller coaster. You have to have the hills for it to be a thrill. (Sometimes fast changes are a powerful tool. Slow climbs are nice, but not riveting)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Don't use your judgment, use your brain. Your instincts, your judgment, are inherited and local. Your brain is earned. Enough said.
-------------------------------------------------------------
Every rule created to solve an injustice, also creates one. (However, not all rules are created to solve an injustice, and not all injustices are of the same size, the same duration, and the same intensity.)
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Any good class needs to have deleted scenes and a directors commentary.
-----------------------------------
(Hunter Motts) Stupid is a feeling, a feeling of shame that causes people to avoid their mistakes. Stupid is not a fact. Stupid is a feeling.
---------------------------------------------------------------
Uncertainty is to smart thinking what sore arms are to huge biceps.
Confusion and frustration are to thinking what muscle fatigue is to bodybuilding.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
An argument is like a boxing match decided by points. No one feels like he/she lost.
Consider the presidential debates.
----------------------------------------------------
If you cannot standardize the students or standardize the teachers, why can you/could you.should you standardize the curriculum?
------------------------------------
What does the word "bizarre" mean? What does "expensive" mean? What does tasty mean?
One answer might be to say "look in the dictionary."
A better answer might be to say "look at who used the word and ask that person about their life."
The best answer is long and boring, so I won't print it here.
------------------------------------------------------------
Easy to read is easy to believe. Easy to read might be easy to remember, but easy to read might be easy to forget. (Are you telling the reader what he/she already knows? Then it will be easy to forget.)
----------------------------------------------------
Attention is a flashlight. You can move it fast, but it can never point too places at once. If you wish to push me, I'll admit that different people have flashlights with different power bulbs.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A book is a mirror. When a monkey looks in, a philosopher never looks back. - a paraphrase of something I saw in Robert Anton Wilson
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A good piece of writing is something clear, true, and new.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
The best way to teach is in a simple set of three: demonstration, explanation, application
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
The most difficult reading task of all is reading directions.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Talent is practice in disguise
---------------------------------------------
Reading without a purpose is like driving without a destination
--------------------------------------------------------------------
I think, I feel, I believe, I no longer take what you have to say seriously.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ideas are like children. Almost everyone loves their own, whether they deserve it or not.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sometimes being nice is being mean. Sometimes the most helpful thing is not to help.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The only thing that immediately tastes great to everyone is junk food. Tastes have to develop.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
We can see our work or ourselves clearly with our own eyes. To check out my bald spot, I need a mirror. To check out the quality of my writing, I need an audience.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
About plagiarism
No idea is an orphan, but none of them can produce a birth certificate
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
It is harder to believe in probability than it is to believe in a political party
-----------------------------------
.
In a world of 6 billion people, 6000 people have an a million to one coincidence happen every single day.
That makes it hard to believe in randomness.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
I've got a bag full of surprises that would make Santa jealous.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I'm an English teacher and an American person. I have a leather belt that I made with a Leatherman. The first time I talked to a therapist, he said "this is going to be fun."
--------------------------------------------------------
a typical human is not average
not in height
not in weight
not in hair
not in charm
not in anything
average is not typical
average is a black swan
average is a unicorn
average is a hooker with a heart of gold
average is an imaginary friend.
---------------------------
You can either choose to find the beauty in life
or you can expect life
to convince you that it is beautiful
(And before I say what's next,
I need to admit something.
I am dumb.
I am gold medal dumb.
I am Guinness Book of World Records Dumb)
However...
Noone is dumb enough
to argue
that one of those choices
isn't a whole hell of a lot
better than the other.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Mankind isn't created
and mankind isn't designed
and mankind hasn't randomly lucked into an evolutionary world
to have things that work forever
Mankind is not made up of those who have never suffered a disaster
or those who gave up
Mankind is made up of survivors.
Mankind is made up of rebuilders
But
Mankind would never have survived without the experimenters.
the kind of men who create disasters,
the lovable fuckups
who aren't afraid of anything
except giving up on their own ideas
even
if those ideas kill them
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
There is no such thing as a reliable narrator. [This is the reason I like to title things, the sales pitch. It is good to remind students of this.]
The best argument is a good story.
Critical Reading, Careful Reading, Casual Reading- 3 types that we all should master
Critical and Casual Reading-- It's like decaf or regular.
TMI is a phrase that normally means "details about a gross topic." It should also mean "less details please."
Subjective Maps vs Objective Maps
Arthurs-- My best friend John Weiman's first manager job
Cock N Bull-- Where My Double Works
Most people don't know how to persuade with words, so they persuade with a fist (either shaking it or using it).
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
The sad news is that it is smart to edit and proofread everything, but it is no way to live.
There is nothing morally wrong with roulette and something aesthetically beautiful about it. The problem is that it ain't smart. Everyone can tell that you will lose more often than you win if you live your life like a roulette game, throwing rough drafts out into the atmosphere, thinking not a thing for the audience.
in the typing... the word "lose" was replaced by "love". Is it a freudian slip?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
To fight temptation, control the situation.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
What we measure is what gets better.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Conversation is like ping pong. Unless you are Tom Hanks, a second person should be participating.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"I am the king of invisible things, but don't ask me for help moving, unless you are Aaron Kerley."
"A sentence has to say something in order to be complete. You do not have to understand each word." -Example "I did it"
"Do you want to understand ethos? Have a beautiful woman tell a joke to a group of single men. Then have a balding forty year old guy tell the same joke."
"Ask, don't tell."
"One session, one skill. Any more is overkill."- heard at a writing conference ECWCCA in Purdue
"We are here to help students become better writers, not to help them produce better writing." - Stephen North
(BULLSHIT! We are here to give students what they need, the skills that will help them succeed, not what they want, not what we want.)
"If language had existed for only 24 hours, writing would have been invented at 11:08 pm."- John McWhorter, From Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue."
According to our best estimates, spoken language started 100-200 thousand years ago. The best current evidence places writing at around 6000 years ago. That means speech existed for at least 94000 years and we accomplished almost nothing. In 6000 years of writing we went from spear fights to space flight."
"I can tell you what you need to do, but if I do, I cannot tell you how to do it. If you tell me what you want to do, I can tell you how others have done that."
"Linguistic diversity is as natural as biological and cultural diversity."
"Writing has always been the primary means of righting wrongs."
"You don't need me to teach you how to read. You need my help to teach you how to read between the lines."
Our job is to teach students the intelligence in their mistakes, and the shortcomings of their successes. The beginning of this is accepting the students current level of ability without judgment.
Postmodernism is to classroom teaching what quantum physics is to Newtonian physics.
(Classroom study of texts and their "meanings" are all that most people ever need. But, if you want to know the REAL deal, it is much much weirder than all of that. The copenhagen interpretation)
Heisenbergs Uncertainty principle of meaning.- You can never know the meaning of a text. The more you care about finding the MEANING. The more effort you put into finding the MEANING, the less trustworthy your interpretations become.
Vision- When we read, we are like horses with blinders on. Working with texts in dialogue with others is what takes the blinders off.
When we read, we are like a man with rose colored glasses on, who doesn't realize what color his glasses are. (since there is no gap in his rosy vision)
We don't learn much from diversity, not even the fact that we are all the same.
Think of professional baseball that has been around for a hundred years. Every year, the teams know that there will be only one winner of the world series. The game is fair. Everyone knows it. It has always been that way. But imagine instead that not everyone knew it. Imagine that almost every team thought that four separate teams could win the world series, and no one told them otherwise. Imagine instead that the idea of "four winners" was talked about in political speeches, that it was a common topic on news broadcasts. Would that be fair?
And what if there once was a competition where more than one person could succeed? Would it be fair to change that competition to a winner take all without some kind of announcement? How long would it take before we figured it out? Would it be right to keep claiming we could all be winners? Would it be right to keep on rose colored glasses in a gray world?
It takes a truly special person to realize that he/she is average.
The world is too strange to judge by experience. Noone has met an average man. Noone has had an average day. Nothing that happens to us is typical. It is specific and there is a serious difference.
Value equals price plus utility. However, the human mind can't measure utility worth a damn. On some days I feel bad about that.
A person can explain everything and understand nothing.
To a fool, a wise man doesn't make any sense. If someone doesn't make any sense, CONSIDER THAT POSSIBILITY.
I think it is a safe assumption that many of us became good with words because we are bad with people. Writing well humbles our pen and teaches us manners. What humbles us in conversation? Who among us seeks to learn from those who struggle at what we love best?
If you can find those learners, you have found your teachers.
Innocence isn't the absence of experience. Innocence is the absence of second thought.
This world is a kindness contest, and we all are in third place.
The only time we immediately like something new is when it is not new. (We can't tell the difference between "bad" and "not at all what we expect.")
Real answers not easy Answers
"Subjects are understood; objects are manipulated." - (I think it is a K Wilber quote).
Every new development is good news, bad news.
If you try very hard, you can understand. No matter what you do, you can't control whether you are understood.
The only time I can be myself is when I'm by myself. I suspect that is true for you too.
A Facebook update can be an inspiration, not a citation. (There are simple reasons for this...)
Worry and Alarm Clocks
Worry is meant to wake you up, and a nice metaphor for worry is an alarm clock. It is unpleasant but helpful. It is wise to choose when it goes off but it should probably go off at least a few times every week.
Abstract and Concrete language- A variety is important. It is like a roller coaster. You have to have the hills for it to be a thrill. (Sometimes fast changes are a powerful tool. Slow climbs are nice, but not riveting)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Don't use your judgment, use your brain. Your instincts, your judgment, are inherited and local. Your brain is earned. Enough said.
-------------------------------------------------------------
Every rule created to solve an injustice, also creates one. (However, not all rules are created to solve an injustice, and not all injustices are of the same size, the same duration, and the same intensity.)
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Any good class needs to have deleted scenes and a directors commentary.
-----------------------------------
(Hunter Motts) Stupid is a feeling, a feeling of shame that causes people to avoid their mistakes. Stupid is not a fact. Stupid is a feeling.
---------------------------------------------------------------
Uncertainty is to smart thinking what sore arms are to huge biceps.
Confusion and frustration are to thinking what muscle fatigue is to bodybuilding.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
An argument is like a boxing match decided by points. No one feels like he/she lost.
Consider the presidential debates.
----------------------------------------------------
If you cannot standardize the students or standardize the teachers, why can you/could you.should you standardize the curriculum?
------------------------------------
What does the word "bizarre" mean? What does "expensive" mean? What does tasty mean?
One answer might be to say "look in the dictionary."
A better answer might be to say "look at who used the word and ask that person about their life."
The best answer is long and boring, so I won't print it here.
------------------------------------------------------------
Easy to read is easy to believe. Easy to read might be easy to remember, but easy to read might be easy to forget. (Are you telling the reader what he/she already knows? Then it will be easy to forget.)
----------------------------------------------------
Attention is a flashlight. You can move it fast, but it can never point too places at once. If you wish to push me, I'll admit that different people have flashlights with different power bulbs.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A book is a mirror. When a monkey looks in, a philosopher never looks back. - a paraphrase of something I saw in Robert Anton Wilson
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A good piece of writing is something clear, true, and new.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
The best way to teach is in a simple set of three: demonstration, explanation, application
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
The most difficult reading task of all is reading directions.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Talent is practice in disguise
---------------------------------------------
Reading without a purpose is like driving without a destination
--------------------------------------------------------------------
I think, I feel, I believe, I no longer take what you have to say seriously.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ideas are like children. Almost everyone loves their own, whether they deserve it or not.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sometimes being nice is being mean. Sometimes the most helpful thing is not to help.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The only thing that immediately tastes great to everyone is junk food. Tastes have to develop.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
We can see our work or ourselves clearly with our own eyes. To check out my bald spot, I need a mirror. To check out the quality of my writing, I need an audience.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
About plagiarism
No idea is an orphan, but none of them can produce a birth certificate
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
It is harder to believe in probability than it is to believe in a political party
-----------------------------------
.
In a world of 6 billion people, 6000 people have an a million to one coincidence happen every single day.
That makes it hard to believe in randomness.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
I've got a bag full of surprises that would make Santa jealous.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I'm an English teacher and an American person. I have a leather belt that I made with a Leatherman. The first time I talked to a therapist, he said "this is going to be fun."
--------------------------------------------------------
a typical human is not average
not in height
not in weight
not in hair
not in charm
not in anything
average is not typical
average is a black swan
average is a unicorn
average is a hooker with a heart of gold
average is an imaginary friend.
---------------------------
You can either choose to find the beauty in life
or you can expect life
to convince you that it is beautiful
(And before I say what's next,
I need to admit something.
I am dumb.
I am gold medal dumb.
I am Guinness Book of World Records Dumb)
However...
Noone is dumb enough
to argue
that one of those choices
isn't a whole hell of a lot
better than the other.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Mankind isn't created
and mankind isn't designed
and mankind hasn't randomly lucked into an evolutionary world
to have things that work forever
Mankind is not made up of those who have never suffered a disaster
or those who gave up
Mankind is made up of survivors.
Mankind is made up of rebuilders
But
Mankind would never have survived without the experimenters.
the kind of men who create disasters,
the lovable fuckups
who aren't afraid of anything
except giving up on their own ideas
even
if those ideas kill them
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
There is no such thing as a reliable narrator. [This is the reason I like to title things, the sales pitch. It is good to remind students of this.]
The best argument is a good story.
Critical Reading, Careful Reading, Casual Reading- 3 types that we all should master
Critical and Casual Reading-- It's like decaf or regular.
TMI is a phrase that normally means "details about a gross topic." It should also mean "less details please."
Subjective Maps vs Objective Maps
Arthurs-- My best friend John Weiman's first manager job
Cock N Bull-- Where My Double Works
Most people don't know how to persuade with words, so they persuade with a fist (either shaking it or using it).
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
The sad news is that it is smart to edit and proofread everything, but it is no way to live.
There is nothing morally wrong with roulette and something aesthetically beautiful about it. The problem is that it ain't smart. Everyone can tell that you will lose more often than you win if you live your life like a roulette game, throwing rough drafts out into the atmosphere, thinking not a thing for the audience.
in the typing... the word "lose" was replaced by "love". Is it a freudian slip?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
To fight temptation, control the situation.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
What we measure is what gets better.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Conversation is like ping pong. Unless you are Tom Hanks, a second person should be participating.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
Lie to Me and Writing Tutoring
LIE TO ME AND WRITING TUTORING
Friday, February 12, 2010
What Professors Want from A Paper- Podcast
What Professors Want from a Paper
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
Why Key Words Will Open Doors for You-Podcast
Why Key Words Will Open Doors for You-Podcast
The Elements of Teaching Writing
The Elements of Teaching Writing Quotes
Asking a student who has read only one text in a field to critique its strengths and weaknesses may be asking for the impossible. -41
According to the study [A Harvard University one on student writers], some of the most useful types of [teacher] comments were
=Questions that stimulated further thought.
=Brief summaries of what the reader got out of the paper
=Descriptions of difficulties the reader encountered.
-Even highly critical feedback that was constructive and respectful.
-53
Give reading essays priority over grading them. -58
According to Connors and Lunsford's extensive 1988 study, the twenty errors occurring most commonly in student essays are as follows, in descending order of frequency.
We have supplied short examples for some errors and discuss others in the paragraphs that follow.
1. No comma after introductory element. [Well it wasn't really true.]
2. Vague pronoun reference [See discussion below.]
3. No comma in compound sentence [I like to eat but I hate to gain weight.]
4. Wrong word [His F in math enhanced his alarm about his D in chem.]
5. No comma with nonrestrictive element. [See discussion below.]
6. Wrong or missing inflected verb endings [I use to go often to town.]
7. Wrong or missing preposition (Moosewood Restaurant is located at Ithaca.]
8. Comma splice [See discussion below.]
9. Possessive apostrophe [Student's backpacks weigh far too much.]
10. Tense shift [I was happily watching TV when suddenly my sister attacks me.]
11. Unnecessary shift in person (pronoun) [When one is tired, you should sleep.]
12. Sentence fragment [See discussion below.]
13. Wrong tense or verb form [I would not have said that if I thought it would shocked her.]
14. Subject-verb agreement [Having many close friends, especially if you've known them for a long time, are a great help in times of trouble.]
15. Lack of a comma in a series [Students eat, sleep, and do homework.]
16. Pronoun agreement [See discussion below.]
17. Unnecessary comma(s) with restrictive element [The novel, that my teacher assigned, was very boring.]
18. Run-on or fused sentence [He loved the seminar he even loved the readings.]
19. Dangling or misplaced modifier [After being put to sleep, a small incision is made below the navel.]
20. Its/it's error [Its a splendid day for everyone.]
-98
Monday, February 8, 2010
Why is MLA format the way it is?-Podcast
WHY IS MLA FORMAT THE WAY IT IS?
The MLA is the way it is because we wanted a system that would be credible to a wide audience, that would treat other people's work with respect, and that would make the job of professors a little bit easier.
I. Audience related issues-
Because we wanted to insure maximum readability.
a. English professors and scholars in similar fields.
b. From multiple cultures.
c. Perhaps far in the future.
d. who are busy, skeptical people
The Modern Language Association format came about for a number of different reasons. The first reason relates to issues about audience. We wanted a system that would help us to be credible with large audience. The first reason also relates to jealousy. Scholars in my field are a little bit jealous of science. One reason that science is so successful is that it is cumulative. Scientists build on the work of other scientists in order to make discoveries, and the reason they can do this is the scientific method. There is a standard for running experiments and reporting information which allows other scientists to build on earlier work.
Everyone trusts the credibility of the science of the past. No matter who you are, you get in a car and expect that it will work. Even the critics of science get in an airplane that is designed according to very strict scientific laws.
But what about new science? When a new scientific study comes out, why do most people believe it?
The answer to that is simple. Scientific writing has a standard format. Scientists describe what they did in great detail before they tell you what the results were. They have a standard format which makes it possible for absolutely anyone to check the results. If you don't believe them, run a copy of that experiment. If you don't believe them, scientists make it easy for a person to see the truth for himself (or herself).
The MLA format is our attempt to create a similar standard. Academics in the MLA wanted to create a standard, so that scholars and thinkers from multiple cultures could read each other's work and build on the ideas of the past, so we created a format that makes it easy for anyone who doesn't believe us to go and check our conclusions.
So the first reason MLA is the way it is, is because we wanted to make it easy to check on our ideas.
The second reason involves the song Happy Birthday. I hope you all know the song. I've been singing it at parties for years. However, I bet you didn't know this. If I sang "Happy Birthday" in front of my class as a teaching demonstration, I could be sued.
Happy Birthday is a piece on property. A company owns it, and they will only let it be used under certain circumstances. You can sing it for free all day if you follow those rules. If you break those rules, you are stealing and they can sue. Their rule is that you can't sing the song in an environment where money is being made.
If money is being made and "Happy Birthday" is involved, the company that owns it wants to get paid.
The second reason MLA format is the way it is, is about property rights. Some people make cabinets and some make ideas. Professional writers make ideas, but here's the trick, ideas are always built on the back of previous ideas. With the exception of creative writing, all writing requires sources. The MLA is a system for making sure those sources get recognized and, sometimes, paid.
So we made the rule that anytime a writer uses the words, the ideas, or the information of another, that use must be acknowledged. If the use is exact, we quote the words and cite the source. If the use is inexact, we still cite the source.
If a student doesn't do that, he or she is stealing ideas. Changing the words doesn't change where the source came from. Teachers get paid to help us learn and sources get cited for helping us learn.
As my friend Aaron Kerley once put it, "if I steal a car and then put another coat of paint on it, it doesn't magically become my car. It is a stolen car."
So the first reason MLA is the way it is, is in order to be credible to a wide audience. The second reason why the MLA is the way it is, is to protect the property of thinkers.
III. Convenience Issues
-To save time and avoid confusion
a. Headers were developed to help professors deal with large stacks of papers.
b. Works Cited pages are arranged so a reader can quickly scan a large list in order to find a desired entry.
The final reason that the MLA is the way it is, deals with the job of being a professor. Profesors deal with large stacks of papers all the time. Sometimes professors are well organized and sometimes they are not.
The header information that is required in MLA format is to help professors keep papers organized. If a paper is placed in the wrong filing cabinet or the wrong mailbox, including the name, date, teacher, and class on the top left side of the first page means that anyone who finds it can quickly place it where it is needed.
The name and page number that goes on the top right of the other pages has a simple one, staples. Over time or because of a bad stapling job. Papers sometimes come loose. The name and page number make it easy to get every page into the right order.
Many of the other peculiarities of MLA style have this explanation. We use hanging indents on the works cited page so that it is easy to search through a long list to find exactly what you want. We don't include the year in with our in text citations because the humanities, unlike science, doesn't change much over time. Hamlet today, contains the same exact words that it did 50 years ago.
So there you have it. We didn't create this system to torture you. We created it to gain credibility with a wide audience, to handle other people's ideas with respect, and to make it easy for professors to handle large numbers of papers.
Now you know why the MLA format is the way it is. The hard part is what comes next, using MLA format to create a works cited page.
Teacher-Student Nonverbal Relationships
Teacher-Student Nonverbal Relationships
Richmond, Virginia Peck, James C. McCroskey, and Mark L. Hickson. "Teacher-Student Nonverbal Relationships." Nonverbal Behavior in Interpersonal Relations (6th Edition). Boston: Allyn & Bacon, 2007. 251-77. Print.
Research has indicated that students taught by lecture do as well as or better on tests of factual recall than those taught by discussion methods. -252
On the downside, lectures are not as effective as other methods in fostering higher levels of learning (application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation) or in developing psychomotor skills. Students tend to be passive; according to various studies, their attention frequently wanes in fifteen to twenty-five minutes and their retention decreases by as much as 80 percent within about eight weeks. -252
Using student names, incorporating personal anecdotes and other means of self-disclosure, asking questions and encouraging students to talk, referring to the class as "our" class and to what "we" are doing, and using humor all contribute to immediacy, as do maintaining eye contact with the students, smiling, having a relaxed body position and using animated gestures, moving about the classroom during the lecture, and this point is very important to remember using a dynamic, vocally expressive style of delivery. These strategies have been shown to have both cognitive and affective learning payoffs. -253
For teachers to effectively coach students until they master a skill, it is essential that they be able to break the performance of the skill into separate components so that they can offer corrective instruction. -256
Some students got better and better at baseball just by getting more playing experience, but others simply repeated ineffective moves until they were pulled out of the game and allowed to concentrate only on one aspect of play until they got the hang of it. -256
Research provides evidence that students retain information longer when they have an opportunity to verbalize it, especially to their peers. -257
If students are given all the resources needed at the outset and a very specific model of what they are to come up with, much of the incidental learning from the group's process will be lost. The groups are then the educator's staff, working on the teacher's project rather than on their own. -258
In this section, we have suggested that a teacher might wear many hats: speaker, moderator, trainer, manager, and coordinator. Most teacher look good in all of them, and most students get tired of looking at the same hat every day. The hat most students prefer on their teacher, whether the teacher is in speaker, moderator, trainer, manager, or coordinator mode is the nonverbally receptive, expressive, supportive teacher. -258
We have stated for years that the primary function of teachers' verbal behavior in the classroom is to give content to improve students' cognitive learning. The primary function of teachers' nonverbal behavior in the classroom is to improve students' affect or liking for the subject matter, teacher, or class, and to instill in them the desire to learn more about the subject matter. -260
Therefore our advice is to dress formally for a week or two or until credibility is established. Then dress more casually to project the image that one is open to student interaction. -261
Unattractive children are commonly ignored by teachers, given less time to answer questions than their attractive counterparts, encouraged less to talk, given less eye contact, given more distance, and touched less by their teacher. This type of nonverbal behavior communicates to the unattractive child that he or she is not as good as the other students. -263
In the classroom, adaptors are probably the most common gestures used by students. The classroom is an anxiety-producing situation for many children. Observe a typical classroom and you will find students chewing pencils, biting their nails, picking at their desks or notebooks, pulling at their hair, smoothing their clothing, and clicking their pens. -264
Students use more adaptors in classes where they feel anxious or bored. -264
Increased teacher immediacy results in
Increased liking, affiliation, and positive affect on the part of the student. Immediate teachers are liked far more than nonimmediate teachers.
Increased student affect for the subject matter. Students who become motivated to learn the subject matter because of the teacher's immediate behaviors will do well in the content and continue to learn long after the teacher who motivated them is out of the picture.
Increased student cognitive learning. Students with immediate teahcers attend more to the subject matter, concentrate more on the subject, retain more of the content, and when challenged can correctly recall more of the subject matter than students with nonimmediate teachers.
Increased student motivation. It seems that the primary way that immediacy produces learning effects may be by increasing student motivation.
Reduced student resisitance to instructors' attempts to influence or modify behavior. Immediate teachers seem to have more referent, respect, or liking power; hence students tend to comply with or conform to the wishes of the more immediate teachers. Nonimmediate teachers have more difficulty getting students to comply with or conform to their wishes.
The teacher being perceived as a more competant communicator, one who listens and cares. Increased student-teacher communication and interaction.
A reduced status differential between student and teacher.
Higher evaluations from one's immediate supervisor. -276
[Starting with "The teacher being" I've only included the topic sentences for each of immediacy's effects.]
Friday, February 5, 2010
Reassessing The "Proofreading Trap": ESL Tutoring and Writing Instruction
Reassessing The "Proofreading Trap": ESL Tutoring and Writing Instruction
This article, which first appeared in The Writing Center Journal in 2003, serves as a thought-provoking challenge to tutors who attempt to apply nondirective approaches to ESL students. It may also provide theoretical support for tutor who tend to take a more directive approach in working with second-language writers. -from the abstract, 219
The Foreign Service Institute has estimated that a minimum level of professional speaking proficiency (entailing the ability to fluently support opinions, hypothesize, and explain complex phenomena) in a foreign language relatively remote from English may require a native English speaker 2,400 hours of intensive training under the ideal conditions provided by the Foreign Service. A superior level may entail hundreds of hours more. According to Liskin-Gasparro, attaining a superior level in a more closely related langauge, such as Spanish or French, is four semesters of foreign langauge classes in a U.S. university provide 200-300 hours of instruction. Assuming that these estimations of the tiem it takes English learners to learn to speak foreign langauges at professional levels would at least approximate the tiem it takes for speakers of otehr langauges to speak with the same proficiency in English, it is not realistic to expect that many ESL students will speak fluently at advanced levels. -221
Writing is denser than speech and in academic settings requires very high levels of reading comprehension, a formal register, sophisticated paraphrasing ability and a specialized vocabulary. Very few ESL students who walk into a writing center are likely to have such high levels of proficiency. -221
[She discusses Jane Cogie's idea of the "cultural informant," an idea that gives the tutor more licence to be directive than the traditional nondirective one. However, this conception still does not permit sentence-level action.]
[Cogie suggests 4 strategies for tutors: Learner's dictionaries, minimal marking, error logs, and self-editing checklists. These are mechanical ways for the student to self-correct and reduce errors. In contrast to this, Myers advocates the help of a native-speaker-reader, working as a tutor. She would approve of "They Say/ I Say".]
Wednesday, February 3, 2010
Pedagogy of the Oppressed
Pedagogy of the Oppressed
In order to have the continued opportunity to express their "generosity," the oppressors must perpetuate injustice as well. An unjust social order is the permanent fount of this "generosity," which is nourished by death, despair, and poverty. -45
True generosity consists precisely in fighting to destroy the causes which nourish false charity. -45
Conditioned by the experience of oppressing others, any situation other than their former seems to them like oppression. Formerly, they could eat dress, wear shoes, be educated, travel, and hear Beethoven: while millions did not eat, had no clothes or shoes, neither studied nor traveled, much less listened to Beethoven. Any restriction on this way of life, in the name of the rights of the community, appears to the former oppressors as a profound violation of their individual rights--although they had no respect for the millions who suffered and died of hunger, pain, sorrow, and despair. -57
[attitudes of the banking concept of education]
(a) the teacher techers and the students are taught;
(b) the teacher knows everything and the students know nothing;
(c) the teacher thinks and the students are thought about;
(d) the teacher talks and the students listen--meekly;
(e) the disciplines and the students are disciplined;
(f) the teacher chooses and enforces his choice, and the students comply;
(g) the teacher acts and the students have the illusion of acting through the action of the teacher;
(h) the teacher chooses the program content, and the students (who were not consulted) adapt to it;
(i) the teacher confuses the authority of knowledge with his or her own professional authority, which she and he sets in opposition to the freedom of the students;
(j) the teacher is the Subject of the learning process, while the pupils are mere objects.
-73
Animals are not challenged by the configuration which confronts them; they are merely stimulated. Their life is not one of risk-taking, for they are not aware of taking risks. Risks are not challenges perceived upon reflection, but merely "noted" by the signs which indicate them; they accordingly do not require decision-making responses. -98
As each person, in his decoding essay, relates how he perceived or felt a certain occurrence or situation, his exposition challenges all the other decoders by re-presenting to them the same reality upon which they have themselves been intent. -112
The first requirement is that these codifications must necessarily represent situations familiar to the individuals whose thematics are being examined, so that they can easily recognize the situations (and this their own relation to them). -114
The theme of development, for example, is especially appropriate to the field of economics, but not exclusively so. This theme would also be focalized by sociology, anthropology, and social psychology (fields concerned with cultural change and with the modification of attitudes and values--questions which are equally relevant to a philosophy of development). It would be focalized by political science (a field concerned with the decisions which involve development), by education, and so forth. In this way, the themes which characterize a totality will never be approached rigidly. -120
It is accomplished by the oppressors' depositing myths indispensible to the preservation of the status quo: for example, the myth that the oppressive order is a "free society": the myth that all persons are free to work where they wish, that if they don't like their boss they can leave him and look for another job; the myth that this order respects human rights and is therefore worthy of esteem; the myth that anyone who is industrious can become an entrepreneur--worse yet, the myth that the street vendor is as much an entrepreneur as the owner of a large factory; the myth of the universal right of education, when of all the Brazilian children who enter primary schools only a tiny fraction ever reach the university; the myth of the equality of all individuals, when the question: "Do you know who you're talking to?" is still current among us; the myth of the heroism of the oppressor classes as defenders of "Western Christian civilization" against "materialist barbarism"; the myth of the charity and generosity of the elites, when what they really do as a class is to foster selective "good deeds" (subsequently elaborated into the myth of "disinterested aid," which on the international level was severely criticized by Pope John XXII);
-140
In the theory of antidialogical action, conquest (as its primary characteristic) invovles a Subject who conquers another person and transforms her or him into a "thing." In the dialogical theory of action. Subjects meet in cooperation in order to transform the world. -167
In cultural invasion, the actors draw the thematic content of their action from their own values and ideology: their starting point is their own world, from which they enter the world of those they invade. In cultural synthesis, the actors who come from "another world" to the world of the people do so not as invaders. They do not come to teach or to transmit or to give anythign, but rather to learn with the people, about the people's world. -180
Monday, February 1, 2010
A Critique of Pure Tutoring
A Critique of Pure Tutoring
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