Blog #6 Letter to Falyn with Reflection

Fayln,

Here's what I think about the readings for this week--McCarthy says that "as a student goes from one classroom to another they play a wide range of games" (pg. 126). Then he proceed to explain that David thinks that every classroom has a different set of rules to make the grade. I'm thinking shouldn't any classroom have the same credentials for writing? I know that writing for science and writing for literature is a totally different topic, but shouldn't the writing style at least be consistent as far as structure and grammar? After all a research paper is the same all across the disciplines, only the subject matter would be different. As she says writing in college is something you have to adapt to, I don't think I agree with that. It is something new from high school writing as far as the language and level of intellect, you should be able to tell the difference between college students paper and a high school students paper, do you agree? I think McCarthy had an accurate method of establishing David's writing process across the curriculum, the observing and interview, as well as analyzing the text (pgs. 128-132). I think the Table on page 131 was really great for his evidence as well. Is there anything you think McCarthy should have done that he didn't?

As far as Berlin, I had a hard time following his whole writer, reality, audience, and language idea. Then he breaks thinks down more in to the four groups: Neo-Aristotelian or Classicists, the Positivists or Current-Traditionalists, the Neo-Platonists or Expressionists, and the New Rhetoricians. I do agree with his idea about the New Rhetoricians and how it is the best for the students, I think anything the teacher does in the classroom should be at the students best interest. The whole idea about the Reality Aristotelian scheme and Aristotle being communicated with with language serving as the unproblematic medium of discourse (pg 767), I'm not sure I fully agree with that. Is it because Aristotle's rationalistic idea of language that Berlin talks about on page 768? I'm a little confused about this article, do you have some insight? I didn't really like the philosophy twist in it.

To tie in Bean, who I think has really great points, he thinks that the amount of errors in college work should be eliminated, and that begins in grades 1-12. If a college student is making these mistakes, who should get the blame? The teacher, or the careless students? Maybe we should take the McCarthy approach and analyze a student to see where the errors are originating from, is it the grammar, is it the structure, or is it everything, in which case how did the student get this far? Bean says improvement of a students' grammatical competence in writing is a difficult task to achieve (pg 54). Why is it so difficult, and what can teachers, and future teachers take from that? What can they do to increase the chance of improvement? What grades do you think this should start?

Reflection:

I actually really like this assignment because not only can you ask questions and respond to the readings, but you can also get inside for your peer, to see where they are at with the readings, if they agree/disagree, or maybe they understand something that you don't. I would most definitely use this assignment in a classroom for the reasons I listed above, but the most significant reason would be to see a peer response of the reading before class discussion, it give you and idea where others students are with the readings and compare.

Blog #5 Response to Falyn

Falyn,

Also, like you, I agree with Young in saying that WAC is students using written language to develop and communicate knowledge in every discipline. I don't know if you need a separate program, like Young says, to coordinate amongst all teachers. I think if each teacher focused a little bit of writing into their lesson, the message would come across. I think it would make it harder for teachers if this separate WAC program was created. The whole point of WAC is to incorporate writing into your classroom, is it really the same in you make it a separate program? I think implicating WAC in their individual classroom would be more effective. WAC is writing across the curriculum, therefore, no curriculum would be almost canceling itself out. I believe a curriculum is necessary, but if a science teacher gives a research paper, and a student doesn't site references and has more than a few grammatical and spelling errors, the teacher should consider those mistakes and not grade entirely on the content of the paper. Then the next time around the student would be more cautious of their mistakes. Just that alone would bring WAC into the classroom.

When you ask what does "writing to learn privileges the learner's language and values, and writing to communicate privileges the reader's language and values?" I think Young is saying that when you are writing to learn something you gain knowledge of language and the value of writing, when he says writing to communicate privileges the same thing, either way you are gaining a better idea of language and values. Writing to learn or writing to communicate both together give you a higher learning.

As far a remedial students, I would definitely set up after school help, or maybe a little extra time on a topic in class that they would be having trouble with. I do think diagnosing a writing problem right away is crucial, if it goes unattended, like any problem, it's only going to get worse. Device drills, like Rose says, and maybe some handouts would be a great way to give the student more practice.

When Rose says that to be literate, you need to be acquainted with letters or writings (pg 352), I agree, but disagree. I agree with you when you say it's much more than just knowing letters and reading and writing on their level, but in a way you do need to be at least acquainted with letters to be considered literate. However, being literate is an extremely broad term.