State of English Education (1)

Question: What are some educators’ assessment of English education today?

Answer/Quote: “For me, however, one idea that resonated was the importance of ‘emotional’ or affective engagement in teaching and learning. Being ‘engaged’ with one’s learning is acknowledged as crucial if students are to be successful learners. The concept of engagement has been described as including three aspects—behavioral, cognitive, and affective…. To be fully engaged students need to experience all three of these aspects simultaneously, but for most students in schools this rarely happens. Usually we can coax or cajole our students into being behaviorally engaged, and sometimes we successfully design tasks and activities that promote good, active  cognitive engagement; in my experience, however, it is rare that we are able to get students to really engage emotionally with what we are doing in English, and their most frequent feelings associated with what we do and study in English are boredom or indifference.” P. 289.

Comment: How’s that for an honest assessment of students’ “engagement” in English studies? RayS.

Title: “Teaching English in New Zealand: An Experience of ‘Ache’ ”? Shaun Hawthorne. English Education (April 2012), 288-292.

Stereotyping Adolescents

Question: What are the effects of stereotyping adolescents?

Answer/Quote: “Lesko (2001), in her genealogical examination of th cultural construction of adolescence, argues that ‘common characterizations’ of adolescence (e.g., adolescents as full of raging hormones, adolescents are coming of age into adulthood) comprise ‘a sealed system of reasoning’ that constrains educational practices and possibilities within secondary schools. She explains, for instance, how some educators make linkages between ideas about adolescence and classroom practices and roles in the following ways: ‘Since adolescents have raging hormones, they cannot be expected to do sustained and critical thinking…. Since adolescents are immature, they cannot be given responsibilities in school, at work, or at home.’” Pp. 254-255.

Comment: I cannot identify with that statement about stereotyped adolescents. I’m not holier than thou. I just always looked at my students as individuals with individual characteristics. I just don’t recognize that kind of reasoning. RayS.

Title: “Deficits, Therapists, and a Desire to Distance: Secondary English Pre-service Teachers’ Reasoning about Their Future Students.” R Petrone and MA Lewis. English Education (April 2012), 254-287.

Assessing ESL Students' Reading

Note: Normally, I do not publish my blog, English Updates, on weekends. However, I publish several other blogs during the week having to do with ideas in English education that are not current, but still useful. On weekends, I will publish samples of these ideas. RayS.

  Question: How use multiple assessments of ESL students’ progress in reading?

Answer/Quote: “Use multiple measures of reading progress that reflect comprehension and interest, not just skills. Such measures might include:
.checklists of oral reading performance.

.reading strategies the child uses

.reading comprehension skills (“comprehends oral stories,” “literal comprehension,” “inferential comprehension”)

.interests (“samples a variety of materials”)

.applications (“participates in reading groups,” “writes dialogue journal entries.”) Encourage students to maintain a dialogue journal with you in which they assess their own progress as readers.

Include all observations, checklists, and the students’ self-assessments in individual portfolios that are used to maintain information on students, to communicate with other teachers about the students’ progress, to communicate with students about their progress, and to communicate with parents.” P.100.

Comment: Once again, this advice seems to be pertinent to a self-contained class of ESL students, rather than the regular English teacher, but might be adapted to the regular teacher’s program. RayS.

Title: “Instructional Approaches and Teaching Procedures.” AU Chamot and JM O’Malley. Pp. 82-107. In Kids Come in All Languages: Reading Instruction for ESL Students. Eds. K Spangensberg-Urgschat and R Pritchard. Newark, DE: IRA. 1994.

Writing and ESL Students

Note: Normally, I do not publish my blog, English Updates, on weekends. However, I publish several other blogs during the week having to do with ideas in English education that are not current, but still useful. On weekends, I will publish samples of these ideas. RayS.

Question: How should writing be taught to ESL students?

Answer: “Teach writing at the same time as reading.” The authors suggest beginning with language experience:

“…start with a language experience approach in which the teacher or an aide transcribes a story that students dictate after they have developed it individually or collectively. These stories can be handwritten in large print on a chalkboard or paper and should be copied over by students so that they have their own record of the stories they have created and can read them later.

“Students’ stories should be written exactly as they are dictated. The teacher should use correct spelling, but preserve students’ sentence structures, even if they are incomplete or ungrammatical. Only in this way can students feel ownership of their stories.”

They should write for different purposes (“…to share experiences with a friend, tell a story, explain a concept, show a sequence of activities, persuade another person, or summarize information.”)

Comment: For older ESL students, I suggest 10-minute essays. At the beginning of each class period, students write for 10 minutes on a topic of their own choosing. The writing should be no longer than 10 minutes. They should not try to write a whole essay.

That night the teacher corrects what the students have written, completing sentence structure, correcting spelling, adding or subtracting punctuation, and altering word choice if the words are inaccurate.

The next day, the students study the corrections, ask questions about what they do not understand. That night they re-write the previous day’s 10-inute essay and keep in a folder a copy of the original and the corrected version for later reference.

Why? The teacher is modeling how to correct and edit problems in writing English.

Of course, students will also learn to write full-length essays. These essays will be corrected in the same way that the essays of native speakers of English are corrected—by labeling and explaining problems.

RayS.

Title: “Instructional Approaches and Teaching Procedures.” AU Chamot and JM O’Malley. Pp. 82-107. In Kids Come in All Languages: Reading Instruction for ESL Students. Eds. K Spangensberg-Urgschat and R Pritchard. Newark, DE: IRA. 1994.

Teaching College Writing

Question: What are some questions about the teaching of college writing?

Answer/Quote:

> “How much writing was assigned beyond the required basic and college-level writing courses? Were students prepared for the volume of writing required?”

> “To what extent were students writing in genres other than the essay? Did students expect to write in modes other than the academic essay?”

> “What role did revision have in writing instruction at the college? How did students’ understanding of this task differ from that of faculty?”

> “When faculty assessed student writing, was the emphasis on higher-or lower-order concerns? Did faculty feedback match student expectations?”

> “How extensive was faculty commentary on student writing? What purpose did that commentary serve? To explain a grade? To guide revision? Both? How did students process the commentary?” p. 556.

From Tinberg and Nadeau: The Community College Writer: Exceeding Expectations. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP. 2010.

Comment: How would my readers answer these questions? RayS.

 Title: “Review Essay: Beyond Typical Ideas of Writing: Developing a Diverse Understanding of Writers, Writing, and Writing Instruction.” SK Miller-Cochran. College Composition and Communication (February 2011), 550-559.

Writing Well

Question: What is another conceptualization of the writing process?

Answer/Quote: “To write well, writers must be willing to be remade, to not always know, to be challenged, to be a little bit out of control, to be doubted, and maybe, most importantly, to be believed. If writers can open themselves to these processes, their writing, instead of serving as a static representation of a single moment in timer or thought, becomes a kind of live documentation of growth.” P. 497.

Comment: I think this statement means that writers must take their ideas seriously, be willing to have them challenged and then their writing consists of documents that demonstrate growth. Thought-provoking. RayS.

Title: “Toward Graduate-Level Writing Instruction.” Laura R Micciche with Allison JD. Carr. College Composition and Communication (February 2011), 477-501.

Revision

Question: What does it take to revise one’s written work?

Answer/Quote: “What was significant wasn’t the recognition of patterns or habits and their rhetorical strengths or weaknesses, but rather, in order to undertake that analysis, I had to look at my writing as something worth analyzing as an object worthy of study. When I began to think of my writing as something other than a transaction between teacher and student, I began to give the craft the attention it deserved.” P. 494.

Comment: When it counts, students will revise. RayS.

Title: “Toward Graduate-Level Writing Instruction.” Laura R Micciche with Allison JD. Carr. College Composition and Communication (February 2011), 477-501.

Writing Process

Question: What is one version of the writing process?

Answer/Quote: “I have learned that badness is just part of my process, and I love the badness for helping me get to better-ness. If I want to accomplish anything, I have to allow myself to have bad ideas, to write bad sentences, to make bad claims. Badness, I think, is my first language. The fun is in the process of sorting it out, translating, recomposing in a more artful language others can understand and appreciate.” P. 491.

Title: “Toward Graduate-Level Writing Instruction.” Laura R Micciche with Allison JD. Carr. College Composition and Communication (February 2011), 477-501.

The Joy of Writing

Question: What are the rewarding moments in writing?

Answer/Quote: “My favorite thinking is when I’m playing with an idea, wrestling it down into sentences and I kind of lose myself in the rhythm of the keystrokes and the wonder of seeing my thoughts take shape on the screen. And then, a particularly clever bit of text, a question or an insight—something I didn’t even know I knew—stares right back at me expectantly. ‘Huh,’ I think to myself, now recalibrating my next move. ‘That’s good.’ ” P. 489.

Title: “Toward Graduate-Level Writing Instruction.” Laura R Micciche with Allison JD. Carr. College Composition and Communication (February 2011), 477-501.

Reading Aloud to ESL Students

Note: Normally, I do not publish my blog, English Updates, on weekends. However, I publish several other blogs during the week having to do with ideas in English education that are not current, but still useful. On weekends, I will publish samples of these ideas. RayS.

 Question: What can regular classroom teachers do in working with ESL students?

Answer: Read aloud daily to students.

Quote: “ESL students of all ages and levels of reading proficiency benefit from listening to stories, poems and information texts…. Select materials which…contain pictures or illustrations…. Ask students to predict what comes next…. Follow the reading with discussion of meaning of the text, possible alternative interpretations, and predictions of what will come next.”

Comment: All of these techniques will be useful to native speakers of English. RayS.

Title: “Instructional Approaches and Teaching Procedures.” AU Chamot and JM O’Malley. Pp. 82-107. In Kids Come in All Languages: Reading Instruction for ESL Students. Eds. K Spangensberg-Urgschat and R Pritchard. Newark, DE: IRA. 1994.

Language Experience for ESL Students

Note: Normally, I do not publish my blog, English Updates, on weekends. However, I publish several other blogs during the week having to do with ideas in English education that are not current, but still useful. On weekends, I will publish samples of these ideas. RayS.

Question: How can teachers build on ESL students’ experience and budding English language skills?

Answer: Language experience is a technique in which the students dictate information or ideas, the language of the students is recorded by the teacher on chart paper, blackboard, white board, etc., and then the ideas are re-read by the students from the chart paper, etc.

This technique is appropriate for ESL students of all ages, even adults. “However, the language experience approach is not intended to be the sole approach to reading, for students also need to learn how to read texts written by others.”

Comment: I think I could adapt the language experience approach to my regular English class. This is the first useful technique I have encountered in this article. RayS.

Title: “Instructional Approaches and Teaching Procedures.” AU Chamot and JM O’Malley. Pp. 82-107. In Kids Come in All Languages: Reading Instruction for ESL Students. Eds. K Spangensberg-Urgschat and R Pritchard. Newark, DE: IRA. 1994.

Learning to Write

Question: How did we learn to write?

Answer/Quote: “I can’t remember ever learning to write a critical essay. How do I know how to do the things I do? …. The obvious answer—the one I would give my own students if they are asking me the same question—is that I’ve learned by reading. But I am not satisfied with that answer Because the kind of writing I have written as a graduate student is not the kind of writing I’m reading. I read scholarship that is innovative and surprising, work that expands my perspective and work that I admire. And though my writing at times approaches innovation and surprise, I am not always sure how I have achieved that effect and how I can replicate it. More often, my writing feels tired, overwrought, self-conscious…. Where did I learn to be boring? How can I unlearn it?” p. 485.

Comment: Good question. RayS.

Title: “Toward Graduate-Level Writing Instruction.” Laura R Micciche with Allison JD. Carr. College Composition and Communication (February 2011), 477-501.

Writing Instruction

Question: What is writing instruction today and what should it consist of?

Answer/Quote: “Even while the disciplines are incorporating a wider variety of styles, genres, and methodological approaches, the majority of our classrooms still privilege more or less linear, thesis-driven, print-based scholarship. To become better writers, we must become more careful, deliberate, and daring writers. But to become these things we need better models. We need to read more varied texts and we need exposure to more varied pedagogies.” P. 484.

Comment: A lot of truth in that statement. RayS.

Title: “Toward Graduate-Level Writing Instruction.” Laura R Micciche with Allison JD. Carr. College Composition and Communication (February 2011), 477-501.

Learning and the Process of Writing

Question: What is the paradox between learning and writing?

Answer/Quote: “Learning is messy. But writing—a primary tool in learning—is supposed to be near, tidy, straightforward, and smart in the end. I don’t always feel smart and I can’t think in tidy sentences.” P. 484.

Comment: An analogy I can think of is the use of word processing. No matter how well written by a student, word processing makes the writing look neat and professional in appearance. RayS.

Title: “Toward Graduate-Level Writing Instruction.” Laura R Micciche with Allison JD. Carr. College Composition and Communication (February 2011), 477-501.

Purposes in Writing

Question: What is the difference in purpose for writing a paper in a seminar and writing for publication?

Answer/Quote: “The paradox of graduate writing is this: there is a fundamental difference between writing for a seminar and writing for publication. The purpose of a seminar paper is to demonstrate that one has learned whatever she was supposed to have learned. Conversely, the purpose of writing for a journal or conference is starting or joining a conversation. One is about giving answers; the other is about asking questions, and the two are not easily reconciled.” P. 483.

Title: “Toward Graduate-Level Writing Instruction.” Laura R Micciche with Allison JD. Carr. College Composition and Communication (February 2011), 477-501.

Graduate Level Writing Instruction

Question: What would a graduate-level writing course consist of?

Answer: The authors suggest that a graduate-level writing course in English would be a course in which the graduate students learn how they learned to write.

Comment: Including how they are learning to write as they write at the present moment. I think this article is significant. The authors explore their own writing and purposes throughout the article. Very interesting. In the following blogs, I give examples of this thinking about learning to write. Rays.

Title: “Toward Graduate-Level Writing Instruction.” Laura R Micciche with Allison JD. Carr. College Composition and Communication (February 2011), 477-501.

Goal of ESL Programs

Note: Normally, I do not publish my blog, English Updates, on weekends. However, I publish several other blogs during the week having to do with ideas in English education that are not current, but still useful. On weekends, I will publish samples of these ideas. RayS.

 Question: What is the goal of ESL programs?

Answer/Quote: “The major goal of ESL programs is to provide students with the language skills they need to be successful in grade-level classrooms and to accomplish this in as short a period as possible.” P. 83.

“The goal seems obvious, but both the goal and the means of attaining it are exceedingly complex and have changed considerably in recent years.” P. 83.

“Communicative skills, or the ability to interact socially in English used to be considered a sufficient criterion for assigning students to grade-level classrooms. Now, we recognize that to be successful in school, students need more than social-language skills. They need academic-language skills, which involve using both receptive and productive language for thinking and reasoning in all content areas.” Pp. 83-84.

Comment: OK. I understand “social language skills.” But what exactly are the “academic classroom skills”? I’m learning all this right along with my readers. RayS.

Title: “Instructional Approaches and Teaching Procedures.” AU Chamot and JM O’Malley. Pp. 82-107. In Kids Come in All Languages: Reading Instruction for ESL Students. Eds. K Spangensberg-Urgschat and R Pritchard. Newark, DE: IRA. 1994.

ESL (English as a Second Language)

Note: Normally, I do not publish my blog, English Updates, on weekends. However, I publish several other blogs during the week having to do with ideas in English education that are not current, but still useful. On weekends, I will publish samples of these ideas. RayS.

Question: What is the basic technique in working with Junior High students whose native language is not English?

The Problem: “You teach reading. You get a new student. A common event in the life of a teacher. But this student does not speak your language. Your anxiety level rises as you realize that you do not speak the student’s language, either. Yet you are expected to teach the student to read. What do you do? I’ve faced that problem, and this article presents some of my solutions.” P. 628.

Quote: “I did everything I could to get them to use all of the language arts. I had them write as much as possible, read as much as possible, listen as much as possible, speak as much as possible, and think as much as possible in doing all the other activities.”

In writing, the author used communication logs in which the teacher posed questions and the students, using their dictionaries, figured out the meaning of the questions from the dictionary and wrote their answers. Here are some of her initial questions: “What do you like here? What do you miss about your country? What do you like to eat in America? What do you want to know about me?” p. 629.
Comment: The goal is good. Use all the language arts as much as possible. The communication logs proved to be especially useful. Assumed that most families had at least one person familiar with the English language at home. Discovered that most techniques used with native English-speaking students worked with ESL students when adapted by increasing the amount of discussion. In the directed reading assignment (DRA), for example, background information on the topic of the chapter; title; sub-titles; first sentence of each intermediate paragraph; last paragraph; charts, diagrams, pictures; purpose for reading and/or questions the students will read to answer. RayS.

Title: “Working with New ESL Students in a Junior High School Reading Class.” BM Arthur. Journal of Reading (May 1991), 628-631.

English Today Summarized

Question: What is the state of education today?

Answer/Quote: “At the K-12 level, neoliberal reform has outsourced assessment to the testing and test prep industry, which enjoys an unregulated marketplace and government subsidization through the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) law. Curriculum is largely packaged by textbook companies, instruction is often scripted by off-the-shelf programs, and ‘supplemental instruction’ is increasingly provided by private vendors.” P. 454.

Comment: The unasked question to be inferred by this summary is “Where are the educators” in education. RayS.

Title: “Being There: (Re)Making the Assessment Scene.” Chris W. Gallagher. College Composition and Communication (February 2011), 450-476.

Community Colleges

Question: Why do community colleges matter?

Answer/Quote: “Learning more about the role of junior colleges in this state narrative of remediation would have been welcome, but that would likely have blurred the focus that is so clearly and tellingly placed…. Nonetheless, we community college professionals can take solace from this point: like remediation, community colleges will always be with us, if only one hopes, to remind universities that every student matters.” P. 319.

Comment: Eloquent statement on the meaning of community colleges. RayS.

Review of the book, The Rhetoric of Remediation: Negotiating Entitlement and Access to Higher Education by Jane Stanley, Pittsburgh: U of Pittsburgh, 2010, 180 pp. Reviewed y Howard Tilberg, Teaching English in the Two-Year College (March 2012), 317-319.

A Sin Against Teaching

Question: What are some of the more disgusting sins against teaching at the college level?

Answer/Quote: “Finally, textbook authors do not write textbooks for the fun of it! Don’t get me wrong, they are compensated; however, most of the past and present textbook authors I know initially proposed their textbook ideas because what they wanted to do in their classes was not available in any other book. Experienced instructors know that no single textbook does everything they want for a class (heck, not even my own textbooks does everything I want); that is why we usually supplement textbooks with handouts and Internet resources among other things. The tipping point comes when an instructor asks students to purchased rather expensive resources, a textbook or two, and then does not explicitly use them in the classroom.” P. 310-311.

Comment: I’ve done it, usually as a result of pressure from the English department. I do it no longer. RayS.

Title: “Why We Won’t See Textbooks in Our Disciplinary Rear View Mirror in the Near Future.” Rochelle (Shelley) Rodrigo. Teaching English in the Two-Year College (March 2012), 309-311.

Teachers' Responses to Students' Writing

Question: How can teachers improve their understanding of students’ understanding of the teachers’ responses to their writing? [Sound like gibberish? It isn’t, ]

Answer/quote: “…has led me to two research questions for the current study: 1) What are students thinking as they are reading and considering their teachers’ feedback on their writing? 2) How do students react to conversational and nonconversational comments their teachers write on their work? Perhaps if writing instructors better understand the thoughts that come to their students’ minds as they are reading their teachers’ written advice, they might develop a clearer sense of which types of comments stimulate students to think critically about their writing and which types of comments students scan dismissively. This awareness has the potential to help teachers make better decisions about how to compose commentary on their students’ work.” P. 274.

“By providing a valued space for students to pose questions and assert opinions about their writing and our feedback, we allow them to practice scrutinizing and contesting suggestions on their work. In short, we must ask students how we’re doing when we respond to their writing. Most importantly, we must continue to study writing responses using methodologies that examine the situated ways students read and use our feedback to provide greater insight into what the student interlocuters in writing response dialogue would like to add to a decades-long conversation.” P. 289.

Comment: I think the most important sentence in this article is the following: “In short, we must ask students how we’re doing when we respond to their writing.” The author suggests inviting students to comment on our comments on their writing. RayS.

Title: “Do You Care to Add Something? Articulating the Student Interlocutor’s Voice in Writing Response Dialogue.” Diana Lin Awad Scrocco. Teaching English in the Two-Year College (March 2012), 274-292.

Contingent Instructors at the College Level

Question: What are some effects of the trend to hire four cheaper contingent instructors for one full-time instructor in composition?

Answer/Quote: “Generally, composition courses are taught by whoever is willing—often unqualified teachers who know more about Shakespeare than the rhetorical triangle. When I was an adjunct, I never thought my position was permanent. I (perhaps naively) viewed my sojourn in the world of part-time employment as a kind of low-paying internship. I juggled the chaotic teaching schedule for three years with the ultimate goal of landing a full-time, tenure-track position. But adjuncting is not a temporary stopover. Many institutions permanently rely on these positions to stay afloat. Teacher are permanently impermanent.

“When a retired, tenured faculty member is replaced with four less expensive adjunct instructors, the shift indicates a fast-capitalist model that may not be easily reversible. The consequences of such an economic model are far-reaching and change both the institution and the people it employs. Fast capitalism is an increasingly familiar model that preys on ‘shock’ and fear to edge out tenure with part-time and contingent faculty. If Naomi Klein’s premise holds, as fear increases during the difficult times, teachers and administrators will notice a shift toward more exploitive economic models and a growing culture of contingency.” P, A14.

Comment: Practically speaking, the growing use of contingent instructors, in college, especially in the teaching of composition, is a disaster waiting to happen. The solidity and unity of the English department is shattered by lack of communication, a lack of sense-of-belonging. The philosophy of the department is splintered. Fair warning! RayS.

Title: “The Political Economy of Contingency.” Sheri Rysdam. Teaching English in the Two-Year College (March 2012), A10-A15.

ESL Vocabulary Development Using the Newspaper

Note: Normally, I do not publish my blog, English Updates, on weekends. However, I publish several other blogs during the week having to do with ideas in English education that are not current, but still useful. On weekends, I will publish samples of these ideas. RayS.

Answer/Quote: “Begin with newspaper ads. Point out pictures and say ‘This is a …[car, carrot, tree]…. Have students repeat the phrases after you and intersperse auditory drill at various stages by asking them to point out the various objects by name (noun label), action (verb label), or description (adjective label).” 

Yes/No Responses. “Now reverse the procedure by turning the statements into questions which require only ‘yes/no’ responses, e.g., ‘Is the car orange?’ or ‘Does the tree grow?’ or ‘Is this [point to the car] a carrot?’

Positive Statements. “Gradually guide students to make statements about newspaper objects by requiring them to elaborate on ‘yes/no’ responses.”

Pronouns. “As students develop statements, above, guide them to substitute pronouns for the subjects and objects.”

Possessive Pronouns. “Use illustrations …or headlines…to develop possessives.”

Question Forms: “Students need an opportunity of form questions since the teacher has a tendency to be the one asking questions a large percentage of the time. Work to reverse this habit by following a teacher question—student response interaction with a request for the student to ask the same question of another student.”

Noun Plurals: “Have nonreaders find pictures of objects in the paper and clip them for categorization under ‘one’ (singular) or ‘more than one’ (plural), labeling each object appropriately with its singular or plural name (e.g., carrots, chair).”

Comment: This is pretty basic stuff. But it shows the classroom teacher how the ESL teacher can begin with pretty basic stuff from the newspaper. A place to start. The real problem, of course, is teaching academic English. In the next few weekends, I will provide some ideas on teaching academic English to ESL studentw. RayS.

Title: “Use the News: Newspaper Activities for the Second Language Student.” S  Kossack and J Sullivan. Journal of Reading (May 1989), 740-742.

ESL English as a Second Language

Note: Normally, I do not publish my blog, English Updates, on weekends. However, I publish several other blogs during the week having to do with ideas in English education that are not current, but still useful. On weekends, I will publish samples of these ideas. RayS.

 Question: What do ordinary teachers face in classrooms with students who need help with English as a second language?

Answer/Quote: “Some second language learners have fled from Central America where civil war interrupted their education. Others come from underdeveloped countries  with experiences that are virtually incomprehensible to native North Americans. For many, having an individual textbook is a unique event. Some are illiterate in their native language, lacking the speaking, reading, and writing processes helpful in developing similar skills in the second language. While second language students struggle to learn English and adjust to their new environment, the school, too, is groping for ways to accommodate them.” P. 740.

Comment: What can you do? Probably nothing right away. How do you introduce students for whom English is the second language to English? The next blog will give some suggestions. But this introduction to English doesn’t help with the real problem: Helping the ESL students with the world of academic English in the classroom. RayS.

Title: “Use the News: Newspaper Activities for the Second Language Student.” S  Kossack and J Sullivan. Journal of Reading (May 1989), 740-742.

Wikipedia Research

Question: How can students learn to distinguish between the authenticated information and biased information on Wikipedia?

Answer: The author of this article suggests a research project in which the information provided by Wikipedia is either supported by other secondary sources or gives evidence of bias.

Evaluation Rubric: The following criteria are rated as “Needs Work,” “Adequate,” “Good” and “Excellent.”

Criteria

Rhetorical Awareness: Does the posting contribute to the current conversation in a significant way?

Audience Awareness: Is the tone appropriate for the general audience? Does the posting use appropriate point of view?

Content: Does the posting include only material from verifiable secondary research? Is the writing clear and concise?

Source Integration: Is a good balance of summary, paraphrase and direct quotation used to integrate source material?

Citations: Are sources cited correctly? Was full source information included in the References section?

Ethics: Did the writer show appropriate ethics when using the website?

Comment: An interesting exercise in verifying the accuracy of information provided by Wikipedia. RayS.

Title: “The Wikipedia Project: Changing Students from Consumers to Producers.” M Sweeney. Teaching English in the Two-Year College (March 2012), 256-267.

Holocaust 02

Question: Can we ever grasp [even in literature] the enormity of the Holocaust? Can we ever grasp, even in literature, the nature of an event/scene?

Answer/Quote: “On the third floor of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum…in Washington, D.C., inside a glass case, lie thousands of shoes. Old and mismatched, moldering after sixty years, they are what remains of countless Jews who were told to disrobe and who were subsequently murdered at Majdanek, Poland, during the final years of the Holocaust. Of the objects collected for display by the designers of [the museum], they are among the most powerful icons of the destruction commemorated at the museum, and they were chosen specifically to provide museum visitors the opportunity to identify with those who were destroyed, and to learn something about the events of the Holocaust, events that for most visitors, occurred before they were born. In figural terms, the shoes are meant to stand in for those events, to serve as a sign for what happened, and to evoke in museumgoers’ imaginations the enormity of the destruction. The shoes function as metonyms, parts standing in for the whole….”  P. 417.

Quote: “The behemoth, the object in the museum, is only an instance—‘take, for example, this one’—and instance, after instance, after instance, doesn’t metonymically point to a whole, but indicates, as synecdoche the impossibility of seeing the whole, which, in the case I’ve been describing in this essay, is the Holocaust. It doesn’t mean the instance is inauthentic. It simply means that any attempt to render an event authentically will always be vexed by what cannot be integrated into history and memory, and by the impossibility of ever being able to point to an object or an image, and to finally say, ‘See? That’ what happened. Understand?’” p. 434.

Comment: Point made. RayS.

Title: “Synechdochic Memory at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.” Michael Bernard-Donals. College English (May 2012), 417-436.

Holocaust

Question: How should the literature of the Holocaust be dealt with?

Answer/Quote: The author of this article discusses the issue. I have chosen to offer these quotes:

Quote: “Aleksander Kulisiewicz, a survivor, composer, and collector of Polish camp songs, tells us of a song found toward the end of 1943 sewn into the pocket of a dead child’s coat. The poem’s author was Elzunia, a little girl murdered in Majdanek…, a death camp near Lublin. She wrote. ‘Once there was Elzunia./ She is dying all alone,/ Because her daddy is in Maidanek,/ and in Auschwitz her mommy….’  The remaining song words, Kulisiewicz tells us, were covered in blood.” P. 397.

Quote: “A graduate student in my own class, The Holocaust in Literature, expressed her intense discomfort with even discussing Holocaust texts, perceiving the classroom as ‘a sacred place of remembrance and reverence.’ In her class journal responding to Elie Wiesel’s ‘A  Plea for the Dead,’ she wrote, ‘I often feel I should only list quotations in these responses, to listen to the words of the victims and survivors without interrupting. How dare I respond? How dare I interpret? How could I have anything to add?’” p. 395.

Quote: “We can’t comfort Elzunia. We can’t hold her hand or interpose our bodies between hers and the fatal shot. We can read her song and take some time with it, coming to know Elzunia a little better by analyzing her craft of songwriting, by working to imagine her within a historical context, and by remembering the blood that obscures the lower part of her text. We read all Holocaust literature through blood. Interpretation of this sort, like the act of washing the dead and staying with them in the hours after death in the Jewish tradition, may be an act of compassion.” P. 413.

Comment: All I can do is reflect. RayS.

Title: “ ‘Once There Was Elzunia’: Approaching Affect in Holocaust Literature.” Gail Ivy Berlin. College English (May 2012), 395-416.

Punctuation

Question: What is the best method for studying punctuation?

Answer: The author of this article urges students to observe the punctuation in newspapers, magazines, textbooks, etc. to understand the logic behind the punctuation and the variations that can occur with use of dashes, commas, semicolons, etc.

Comment: That’s real-world punctuation that might take the mystique out of it. RayS.

Title: “Punctuation: The Power and the Possibilities.” M Heveron-Smith. In Julie Gorlewski, Editor, “Research for the Classroom.” English Journal (March 2012), 101-103.

Literature and Professional Writing

Question: How can writing about literature be paired with professional writing?

Answer: The authors of this article suggest that while writing about literature, students deal with the theme of the literature in various examples of professional writing. The ethics involved in Frankenstein in cloning a human being might be an example. In professional writing, students must learn clearly to identify the audience and to express clearly the purpose for writing, an important reason for pairing writing about literature and dealing in a professional manner with the themes of the literature.

Comment: An interesting idea. In dealing with the themes of the literature, students might use forms of writing in science like reports, etc. RayS.

Title: “Literature-Based Professional Writing: An Oxymoron Whose Time Has Come.” KR Newhouse, ML Propper, RM Riedel, and BS. Teitelzweig in Jonathan Bush and Leah Zuidema, Editors, “Professional Writing in the English Classroom.” English Journal (March 2012), 997-100.

Public Relations

Note: Normally, I do not publish my blog, English Updates, on weekends. However, I publish several other blogs during the week having to do with ideas in English education that are not current, but still useful. On weekends, I will publish samples of these ideas. RayS.

 
Question: What is the value of public relations in discussing reading/writing programs with the public?

Answer/Quote: “Why are good public relations essential to your reading and writing programs? If parents and your public understand the programs, they will be much more likely to support them…. Also, if parents understand and support your reading and writing programs, their children will reflect their positive attitudes.” P. 738.

Quote: “Finally, be ready to answer questions. Questions will arise, and can be answered, as you provide information and services, but there are some additional things you can do. You might consider publishing pamphlets that address aspects of the reading and writing programs in your district. Titles for consideration may include: ‘What are the Reading/Writing Programs Like in Our School District?’ ‘How Can  You, As a Parent, Help at Home with Reading and Writing?’ ‘Questions and Answers about Invented Spelling,’ ‘Questions and Answers about Content Area Reading,’ etc. Make these pamphlets available to each school,, Perhaps teachers could offer them during parent-teacher conferences.” P. 739.

Comment: Another of my failures as K-12 English supervisor—public relations. The preceding suggestions are good! RayS.

Title: Reading Supervisors: Good Public relations: An Essential Ingredient.” Pat Hagerty. Journal of Reading (May 1989), 7388-739.