Eva’s Response Journal Lindemann(don't let me throw you off, I wrote for Thursday's journal)
Shaping Discourse Lindemann’s chapter is a useful one for me because it gave me a tool with which to talk to a class about regarding form. I have read several of the classics when they have described ‘form’ but ustil I read her, they were somewhat fuzzy. Her comparison of speech as written language requires form is a good example of how we do not think consciously about how we do speech : She says that speech is a composition of form. And that we are unconscious of form in discourse. So when she says that we write to be read, (131) Dr. Etheridge just said this in class today, I made the connection that our written work should resemble our speech communication in being an unconscious form of discourse. So one of the important bits of knowledge or practice that I can pass along to students is whatwe have been talking about all along in practicum, ‘consider your audience’, we should be influenced in what we and how we write by who our DC is.

As teachers, we can make students conscious of form so that their papers may become organized in a way that makes an interesting read.

I got a better sense of how important the element of prewriting is. This is the place where students can come back to if they hit a brick wall in their writing. If their drafts become unmanageable because of some unclear idea, they can go back to their prewriting and take ideas from their brainstorming . This general plan can help them make decisions on how their paper should change to make it more effective.

I had previously written about how I sometimes let the paper ‘drive’ me instead of me writing the paper because I insisted ion sticking to my outline . Lindemann cleared it up for me and this will also benefit my students because I intend to let them know that to “adhering to rigidly to original intent” is to be slavish to their outline and that they will be less likely to make choices when their paper is not making sense. I can see that the more prewriting we do, the more opportunities we have to examine our work and to pull from those preliminary thoughts looking for better direction for the paper,

It may be a challenge to break students from The Five paragraph theme that Lindemann says is rarely in real world. I think that by clearly letting the students know (as is in the syllabus) that their writing in 1301 is not like high school, they will get the sense that they are in a new paradigm which really gives them the authority to express themselves as experts and in a more flexible manner.

Caroline’s essay driven by form not content (134) was a good example of how when she focused on form instead of content, her work became stiff and forced. While some writing, like resumes is conventional, those that are not, need to be oriented more toward content.

Lindemann shows how Quintilian’s 5 parts ; Exordium-intro what the argument is about, narritivo-statement of the facts, proof- evidence, Refutation- dealing with opposing arguments to squelch them,” some people might say that divorce is bad, but …”Perotorium-epilogue or conclusion, develops pros and cons, thesis /antithesis helps practice 3 appeals pathos logos ethos to move audiences. She shows how winning by demonstrating one position stronger than another is a usefull strategy even today. But it is clear that this kind of argument is not suitable for argument that requires common ground such as reaching an agreement over a dispute

I am not so sure that I like Burke’s metaphor form ”form is an arousing and fulfillment of desire (136) one part leads reader to another gratified by the sequence we begin a promise to keep, but if it helps to bring clarity to what form is, it is ok by me.

Blocking was for me a new concept that I was not familiar with. As I reread it and understood how blocking is done, it proved to be an effective model to introduce that may help students shape their writing by looking simultaneously at purpose, materials, and expectations

Teaching Rewriting Lindemann Chapter 12 (good for class read) Rewriting is a nice word, it lets you play with your thoughts As Lindemann explained why we rewrite reluctantly (189) I realized that students may need to be told that they should throw out all their ld conceptions about not wanting to re-write. It is not a punishment rater as Lindemann says, rewriting is not rewording (thesaurus), it is rethinking your ideas and looking over your prewriting for better ways to present your ideas or to make a more effective written work. As Lindemann says, most problems can’t be solved by ‘rewording” I will try to instill the idea that students need to have a paradigm shift and think of rewriting as a new opportunity to make global changes not local ones. I really liked her idea of doing “sayback” by listening to he author read their paper and saying back his or her main ideas. What better way to validate what someone has written than to reiterate his or her ideas. The Meagan bedroom idea shows how when writing a descriptive paper, the author can be totally left out of the narrative leaving an impersonal work. In contrast, “lard adds up” shows us how wordy papers can be pared down to leave only the most important words and still communicate the problem. By making every workd count ( 203), the paper can become better. I appreciated Lindemann’s tips on being an effective teacher. Among her suggestions that iI took to heart are; Writing workshops Comment on drafts, don’t grade them Groups are good, mix it up Give group specific work with defined guidelines 206 Give group a language for discussing their work, what to ask

All in all, both the readings were very practical essays that will help me shape my discourse with my students in the fall

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Garrett

Issues in Grading Writing and Using Scoring Guides-White

Some interesting points in this reading. I especially found this quote interesting: “a few student flower in such an environment, but most find themselves at sea, uncomfortable with such a subjective and unaccountable view of writing,” (73) White is referencing the “self-discovery” style of writing, one which doesn’t require any evaluation. Though I like this idea, I kinda feel students are going to be lost when we give them such assignments. If anything, that’s the one complaint I had about both of these readings: students will freak out if they don’t get a grade or set rules after having both for so long.

I do like the scoring guides on pg 75, but I thought they were pretty broad. But as White shows, they can be tailored to specific assignments. I did think the final Score of 1: Incompetent was intense, but maybe the students need that honesty if their writing is that bad! I also like how, on page 77, he discusses why the prompt is bad, and why it will yield bad writing. I think as comp instructors we should know what we’re aiming for with a prompt: do we want them to think about audience, and who is that audience? We have to know what we’re asking them, or how they’re going to interpret it. He also mentions that students “cannot merely insert quotations into their own writing, like raisins in a pudding, but rather need to introduce and discuss quotations as part of their argument.” (81) Part of the problem I had last semester was quote “plopping” and not incorporating them into the text. Apart from writing this in the margins over and over, how else do we do this? There’s also a link here with Elbow’s article in the assertion that the author, “in their heart of hearts...don’t really think there is anything wrong with” their paper. That’s why we don’t revise, even as grad students! But I think Elbow is right, if you care enough about the writing, you care enough to make it better, and that’s partly the teacher’s job: get students to write about topics meaningful to them.

Ranking, Evaluating, and Liking: Sorting Out Three Forms of Judgment

Not only did I like this article for its insight, I found myself laughing out loud at some points. I didn’t realize Elbow had a sense of humor! “Fine. There’s nothing wrong with softness and sentiment-and I love Mr. Rogers,” or “Skinner taught pigeons to play ping-pong” (which, is of course, another damn ball-handling example. Is there nothing else?) But apart from those few zingers, there’s some really cool stuff here, even if I didn’t agree with all of it. I think it’s good that he makes a distinction between “ranking” and “evaluation” and that the two really are different, even though we’ve been indoctrinated with the ranking model. As I said before though, that seems to be the safety net that students cling too: “Ranking leads students to get so hung up on these oversimple quantitative verdicts that they care more about scores than about learning-more about the grade we put on the paper than about the comment we have written on it.” (396). Isn’t that only fair though after years of being exposed to such a model? Breaking out of that mold could take most of the class time.

Apart from that, I like his methods of using the matrix or chart in Fig. 1 to quantify what students are doing, but I honestly don’t get how he can accumulate any kind of score from that. How exactly do you measure what they’ve done? And finally, his assertion that “only if we like something will we get involved enough to work and struggle with it” (406). I had a revelatory moment when I read this, along with “But I like it, Damn it, I’m going to get good enough so that others will like it to” (406). Elbow’s right, the process isn’t that the work is bad, and needs revision to get better, but if it’s something we care about, we like it as writers instantly, and have to craft it so others might like it. Just as we were discussing in Etheridge’s class the other day, the aim of good writing is always to make good reading, knowing you audience. Elbow continues that “Good teachers see what is only potentially good, they get a kick out of mere possibility-and they encourage it,” it totally connected with my grading experience last semester. No matter how crappy they writing, there would still be a nugget of an original, good idea somewhere in there, and I would focus on that, then discuss what needed work.

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Chelsie

I’m getting more and more excited to teach composition and less and less excited to learn about the history of rhetoric! I’m really enjoying this prescriptive reading that tells me what to do in my classroom.

My favorite quote from the reading is on page 84 (White). It is discussing the reason that students don’t revise their papers. “There are of course many reasons including simple laziness and more interesting competing activities.” This is funny, but so true. That has been my paper history. Graduate school has been a little different, at least in literary criticism. So how do we make students care what their papers are saying? Competition within the classroom?

This article brings up the idea of peer grading and also self-assessment. Not only does this “lighten” the load for the instructor, the students are gaining audience members (their peers and themselves). They will be difficult to plan and pull off, but I think if done correctly they will be very effective in the classroom.

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Joanna

White

In teaching seminar, we used what I guess are considered scoring guides, although we always called them rubrics. I don’t think there’s really much of a difference between the two because we showed them to the students when we introduced the assignments so that they would be clear on what was expected. So, then, I do like the idea of scoring guides. I don’t think I’m going to be moving towards the 6-point scale, though. I can see its uses, but I just don’t like it. I think it might be because it reminds me too much of the numbered scores on standardized tests (even though I think some of those, like the AP English test, are out of an 8-point scale). I do like what some of the professors do here, though—the 4-point scale on minor assignments or daily work. Dr. Talley and Dr. Etheridge both have done this in classes I’ve taken with them. As a student, I liked it and I don’t think it would be that hard to do. Of course, though, as White says, “we do not need to assess every piece of writing that the students give us” (74). But I still think this system could be used for particular assignments.

White also goes into students assessing their own work, which I definitely agree with. Many students who come into the Writing Center just don’t really see how a reader would view their work. I think a good way of practicing this is to get with a partner or in a group and read it aloud, like we do at the Writing Center. For some reason, hearing your words out loud changes them from simply reading them on the page. And an added plus is being able to see the reader’s reaction and make connections between the writing and the reader.

I agree with White that “the application of scoring guides opens new possibilities for the efficient use of student and teacher time…the teachers can now ask the class members to respond to and even grade the papers written by their peers” (82). This goes back to the topic we discussed last week, of sharing the load of grading with the students which, when done right, can be really beneficial for everyone.

Elbow

This article brought me back to the conflict that we’ve been discussing in class—about whether we should try to make our portfolios more like the ones in the readings, or if we should just keep them how they are. As some of us said in class, I don’t think the way that portfolios are done here is necessarily bad or wrong, but I can see some of the points that Elbow makes about grading holistically. Actually, one part of this article reminded me about Dr. Carmona from Del Mar said today at an interview with Garrett and me. He said that he taught composition one summer (he normally taught reading), but that the grading bothered him. A student came to him asking why he got a C on a paper, and Carmona found it difficult to explain to the student (since, you know, it can be kind of subjective). He said it was much different than his grading in reading, which basically covered vocabulary skills and topic sentences and the like. In reading, it was mostly either right or wrong and very easy to show the students. This difficulty of assigning and backing up the grades you give students seems to be one of the themes of this article and why Elbow is “troubled by ranking” (394).

I liked Elbow’s idea of the grid, which seemed in a way similar to the scoring guides (yet simpler in a way). In grading for history last semester, I used a form of a grid, but it was wayyy more complicated and specific. I kind of like the idea of being more general (like Elbow) on these. It reminds me of the grading system of giving a check-minus, check, or check-plus, which is another simple way to distribute grades.

I also thought the idea of contract grading was interesting, but I don’t know if I would use it. One thing I am not so sure I like about Elbow’s whole concept about evaluating and grading is the “bottom-line” idea. To me, it just goes along with the focusing on the grades. If you give the students a bottom-line, that’s what they’ll focus on. Giving out that criteria seems a bit contradictory to trying to get away from writing for the teacher rather than writing to learn.

Elbow talks about freewrites for a bit, and I liked most of what he had to say, especially about the separation between the private freewrites and the quickwrites that they would share with others. I think this is a good way to get the students familiar with writing, especially at the beginning of the course. I’m trying to figure out how these distinctions can be made in our classes—maybe the private ones can be handwritten and the quickwrites they post on wiki.

Elbow’s examples for models of liking are excellent: Mr. Rogers and B. F. Skinner! I also thought his point about praising the good rather than focusing on the bad—to point out what is good and say “do it some more” rather than saying to not do something (409).

So this whole idea of liking is really helpful for going into teaching with a positive outlook than worrying about all these things we have been reading about, such as the grading overload. We’ve got to have that mindset that we do like students and do like their writing, otherwise it will all plainly suck. I agree with him that it is much easier to evaluate/comment/suggest things for improvement when you’re looking from the standpoint of what great potential a piece of writing has rather than how bad it is currently.

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Liza

I can see how students might become complacent if there isn’t anything at stake. I know I’ve said this before but I’ll say it again, not all students are going to want to learn for the sake of learning. They might not realize the value just yet so grades must come with the job – the job of helping students learn and grow as writers. I don’t agree that grading potentially stops students from taking creative risks (74). It all depends on how the instructor has explained the expectations. Scoring guides are great ideas because they help show exactly what is expected and they can also help remind the grader what to look for while grading! On the other hand, I can see what White is saying about how creating these guides can be tricky and might lead students to fall into a “routine” in their writing (75). I have seen that some ex-TAs? here at TAMU-CC have had students create their own rubrics for what they believe is important to “grade” in their papers. This is a good way to have students become involved in the grading process.

I never thought about “making grades stick” in a court of law that Elbow brought up. That is an excellent point. One of our readings last week said something about inconsistencies because we might be tired, etc. and that is so true. Grading for composition is not like grading for a math test where there will be a correct number answer at the end and you can check to make sure the correct process for solving for x was followed. It is very possible that I might be in a very bad mood when I am grading paper number 46 out of 50. Is that fair to the student? Of course it is not fair but I’m sure it happens. Elbow brings up a lot of good points about everything he says. I just feel so vulnerable right now because I’m worried about grading so I’ll buy anything!!! I am glad that he advocated group collaborations because I am doing this like crazy in the fall. It is definitely important to leave some writing evaluation-free!

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Sean

After reading White, I was a little bit disconcerted about how my grading techniques would come across to my students. I am not a fan of using overt grading criteria, other than what pertains to the individual piece of writing. White's conclusion that scoring guides are "a way for students to internalize standards for their peers and themselves"(84) sounded much too authoritarian for my tastes. I don't think I agree with the idea that we have to enforce certain "rules" for writing in order for students to think about rhetorical choices and stylistic competence; I much preferred the stance that Elbow takes about writing in a non-evaluative forum to produce these kind of writing habits. To me, many of the things we would like our students to gain from a composition course are not the kind of elements that can be expressed in a scoring guide, rather, they are the kinds of things that, once explained, are only developed through practice and internalization.

Another problem I had with White is his negativity within the language of his grading rubric. I don't think that by suggesting that a student might possibly receive a score of "Incompetent", or a 1 on White's scale, we are truly promoting the active participation that he seeks in his article. I am more interested in taking the time to judge student writing on a process scale. I agree, as White suggests, that we may "have a difficult time deciding how to respond"(77) if we don't plan out a scoring guide in advance, but I think that difficulty is part of our responsibility as good teachers to think carefully about each individual piece of graded work we return to our students. If we know what we are expecting from each student before we begin, how can we ever be surprised and, in turn, learn from our own students?

I think Elbow hits the nail on the head in his article. To find something valuable in each and every piece of writing and find ways to improve it from there is the essence of what I feel is good grading technique. And his assertion that any helpful criticism will necessarily take time and patience seems much more truthful than the idea that we can somehow be more effective teachers by categorically quantifying the elements of writing beforehand. In terms of ranking, I also think that Elbow speaks honestly about the inconsistency of grading. I would hate to think that I was either a "tough" grader or, conversely, a "softie". But how can we ever really know which we are being when there can be no true standard by which we can be compared? I think that the idea of recognizing the "best" and "worst" writing in a group of papers is much more accurate than trying to create an ordered list. I was reminded of Letterman's "Top Ten" lists in this regard. There always seem to be one or two outstanding jokes along with some real duds on those lists, but to successfully rank the ones that don't quite fall into either of those categories would be a true exercise in futility. So, in my own grading, I hope to achieve some amount of what Elbow calls "looking hard and thoughtfully at a piece of writing in order to make distinctions as to the quality of different features or dimensions", the exact categories of which I think will be determined by the writing itself. I know that this will be something I will have to practice throughout my career as a teacher, but I hope that in the long run, my students will benefit from it. It may be difficult for them to get weened off ranking, but maybe, if only in hindsight, they will understand that they have to write for a bigger purpose than a number can describe.

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JENNIFER

White

I have a hard time believing that a student is going to do the work properly if there is no promise of a grade. Even as grad students, it is difficult to actually get to the “extra reading” if I don’t have to physically do something with it. We are conditioned to work for a quantity of good grades so that we can have a good overall grade so we can have a high GPA so we can be magna cum laude so we can put that on our CV so we can get a good job. New undergrads have a hard enough time juggling 12-15 hours and a new social life that work for no credit is not something they would be liable to spend a lot of time on. I want to expand on something Garrett mentioned in his journal about “plopping” in quotes: “ [students] cannot merely insert quotations into their own writing, like raisins in a pudding, but rather need to introduce and discuss quotations as part of their argument.” (81) Wow, did I ever have this happen at the Writing Center in the spring. I want to say about 80 percent of the time students would just insert quotes with no introduction or relevance to what they were talking about in the paper. I had this one discussion with a student who was writing a paper on communism and patriarchal discourse in regard to oppression and he was quoting people like Freud and other strange sources that really were not credible to his argument. I explained to him about why we use quotes and that introducing the quote or the author of the quote makes his argument more credible. He had such a hard time understanding that, and said, “None of my teachers ever told me that before,” about using quotes to back up your ideas. I think his paper was classic example of him believing in his “heart of hearts” there was nothing wrong with his paper, but in reality it made absolutely no sense. Again, audience is an issue that needs to be explained more, as well as research methods, since they will be utilizing both of these for the most part of their college career.

Elbow

Grading is such a gray area. I really liked the way Dr. Talley graded last Fall with the checkmarks on our journals and ranking on our papers. It kept the overall grade kind of in limbo (at least for me because I cannot do simple math and try and figure it out), so I worked not for a specific ranking, but made sure I had all the necessary elements in the paper in order to get the highest possible. I think we all do this, try and do the best we can to get the best grade. Again, isn’t that why a majority of English students are here? To learn how to write, learn how to apply what read to how we write, and get good grades? I am still not on the bandwagon here about writing for no grades. Etheridge was talking last week about he gives out a class letter once a week and the students answer him back, and that is not for a grade. I really want him to elaborate more on this because it seems like it works. I wonder that I am obsessed with this because we have slammed forever on all work being for a grade and it is really hard to accept writing for pleasure, even as a grad student.