Thursday, September 30 = Creating your portfolio

You spent most of class today working on your electronic portfolio (see previous post).

We also talked through the assignment for the reflective writing on your response essay. The assignment sheet is posted to the right.

If you have questions or get stuck with either of these assignments - I will be in my office most of the day Monday, and if you send me an email and set up a time we can meet.

For Tuesday:

Read: Guide: The writers you tutor

Write: Finish putting your work on your portfolio, and write your Reflective essay. Send a copy of the reflective essay as an attachment AND post it on your portfolio.

In class Tuesday we will start to talk about persuasive writing - and you will begin thinking about a topic you want to write about.

Have a good weekend!

Electronic Portfolios

The College Composition program requires all students to create an electronic portfolio to document their work for the course. In class on Thursday you will be setting up the electronic portfolio I will use to give you feedback on your work. This is a "practice" portfolio. You will set up the portfolio for evaluation by the Kean University Composition program at the end of the term. In all cases, we will go through the step-by-step process for creating your portfolio in class. You will use google.sites - one of the applications available through your Kean email.

To participate in this class you need to be able to use your Kean email. Make sure you have your password and that you can easily access your account.

A sample portfolio is available at https://sites.google.com/site/chandlerportfolio10319/

September 28

Today's class was devoted to workshopping your best response essay. This gave you a chance to practice what you have been reading in Ryan and Zimmerelli, and to get some support for where ever you were in your writing process.

In our discussion to set up for the coaching sessions, we mapped out a general approach for sessions based on what R&Z wrote.

• Introduce yourself - get comfortable
  
  
• Find out where the writer is in the writing process + what the writer wants to work on
  
  
• Develop some discussion about what the writer wants to work. This talk can allow the writer to re-think his/her issues, if necessary. This discussion might include - talking about the assignment sheet, (checking out whether the writing meets the audience, purpose, & form expectations set up by the instructor, or getting the writer to explain the focus to you, to describe the organization, or to talk about how s/he developed the essay's main ideas.
  
  
• Keep what you have heard from the writer in mind as you move into your session . Draw from the strategies and techniques outlined in your text.

From what I overheard in class - it sounds like you are making good use of these sessions.

For Thursday:

1. Finish revising your best response essay and send it to the ENG1620 email as an attachment.

2. Make sure you can get into your kean email account. You will be using google.sites associated with your kean email account to create your electronic portfolio for this course.

If you have questions - be in touch.

Thursday, September 23

Today we talked through revisions - with a special focus on revising response essays.

Common issues were:

1. Clarifying the focus (making sure you made a point in response to one point by R&Z)
2. Writing a stronger introduction + conclusion
3. Strengthening your focus (making sure each paragraph developed your focus in a different way)
4. Development - making sure you included new material -examples/illustration/discussion to support/open up YOUR points => the response to R&Z
5. Organization - checking that you state the authors' point (what you are responding to) before developing your response; checking that you set up the overall point before developing the supporting points

After talking about strategies for working on each of these issues, you worked in pairs to conduct coaching sessions on your draft essays. I will look through the emails you wrote about your experiences as coach + writer - and if you don't hear back from me - that means you are on track.

For Tuesday:

1. Write an analysis that compares the strengths & weaknesses of your two drafts, and states how you chose which essay to revise. We listed points for analysis on the board. These included:

• strength + clarity of the focus
• lots of material for development
• stronger overall organization
• better intro + conclusion
• will learn more from revising (be sure to state what you will learn)
• like the topic better (still need to include analysis of the strengths + weaknesses)

2. Write a plan for revising your draft. This plan should identify what you need to work on - and include some of the prewriting/revising activities you will use to work on your revision.

This writing does not need to be a polished essay. I am looking for logical in-depth reasoning that will set you up to write a strong essay. This writing should be turned in as an attachment to the course email before class Tuesday.

In class on Tuesday you will conduct coaching sessions where you work on revising your essays. If you know you will not have much time to work on your writing between Tuesday and Thursday - you should probably come to class with a draft - but you are not required to turn in a revised draft until Thursday.

Have a good weekend!

Tuesday, September 21

Today's class was both about mastering the material described in Chapter 3: "Inside the Tutoring Session" - and about working on your next draft response essay - which is a response to this chapter.

Kate generously agreed to participate in a model session. I asked you to pay attention to the "moves" we made in the session - and to see which ones from our list on the board we actually talked through. We then talked about what you saw = and set you up to conduct your own sessions.

You started by doing some pre-writing - and then worked with a coach (or you were the coach). At the end of class you (briefly) reported back on how your sessions went. It sounded to me like you are making progress toward a focus (which part of the chapter you will write about= the summary part) - but that many of you are still struggling with what you have to say in response.

You might make moves similar to the moves you made in your response to the writing process - that is - you might respond by writing about how(from your perspective):

• your focus is new to you and how it will help you be a better coach (or not)
• your focus connects to other parts of the coaching process and why it helps to see the different parts as connected (or not)
• your focus is (from your perspective) really the most important part of the coaching process and why
• your focus is important to new coaches
• etc

For Thursday:

Write: a response to Chapter 3.

Read: HTWA, Ch. 33&34. These chapters are short - and contain suggestions that can help you with revising your work (33) and with peer workshopping (34).

Good work today - and see you in class Thursday.

Thursday, September 16

You should have received your revised summary in your email box - with comments. If you turned in your essay and did not receive comments - send me an email, I may have emailed the wrong address. We discussed the kinds of comments the class as a whole received on their work - and talked about some of the general patterns in academic writing that you were practicing in this assignment. In particular, we pointed out that the general rules are that most academic essays essays begin and close with a statement of overall focus (and that in general the into & conclusion should match) and that discussion of individual points set up a general statement of the point before listing/describing particulars.

We spent the rest of the class working on your response to the chapter on writing process. We first analyzed the assignment in terms of the anticipated audience, purpose & form. We then looked carefully at the assignment sheet & the sample essay.

This essay requires a focused summary + your response to the points within that focus. We talked about subject by subject (or block by block) versus point by point patterns for organizing discussions. The rest of the class was devoted to work on your draft. You worked in small groups and on your own.

Homework for Tuesday:

Read: "Inside the tutoring session," Ch 3 in Bedford Guide

Write: Draft response to Ch 2, "The Writing Process"

To receive credit for your draft response essay you need to email it to ENG1620honorsenglish@gmail.com as an attachment before class Tuesday.

Have a good week end and see you on Tuesday.

Tuesday, September 14

You received your revised baseline essay with comments in your email account - as an attachment. To view the comments either download and open the document - or you can see them in google.docs. I provide a couple of general overview comments + specific responses to particular points in your essay. This is the general form that for feedback to your work. I will be reading the summaries - and hope to get them back to you by Thursday with comments.

Writing Process. After discussing some general comments on the essays the class wrote in response to the baseline prompt we talked about (actually, mostly I talked about) the writing process. The chapter points out that writing does not go from brainstorming through drafting to revising and proofreading in a linear process. It is jumbled up and recursive. The examples in the chapter serve to point out the various places where writers get stuck; the chart points out the practices/processes associated with prewriting, writing, and revising.

I suggested that rhetorcial analysis is an important part of the prewriting process. Rhetorical analysis is the process you use to step back and strategize about what you will write. You consider who you are writing for, the purpose for your writing, what the audience's expecations are in terms of form and content => and you think about what content (ideas) would best meet these demands from audience, purpose & form. A little bit of thinking + some notes about what you need to do before you begin writing your paper can save you a lot of re-writing - and set you up to write stronger, smarter papers.

Response essay. As you suspected - you are going to have to write a paper about the assigned reading. The assignment sheet for this assignment is at the right - and it provided directions for the writing assignment . BUT - you are NOT supposed to write this paper for Thursday. Instead, you are supposed to do some brainstorming (and maybe some rhetorical analysis?) to set yourself up to write this paper.

Homework for Thursday.

Brainstorming for your response essay. As I left class you were doing some freewriting. I am hoping you add to this - and do some serious thinking about what you might write about for this response essay. What kind of a response do you think would make a good essay for this assigment? What do you need to for this assignment? What would be a good idea for the form for the essay? Put your thinking on the page.

Read: Chapter 10: Position paper, HTWA This is a short chapter with a sample for one kind of response paper.

Thursday, September 9

Writing Summaries: We talked about your experience summarizing Ryan and Zimmerelli's chapter on professionalism - and you said what most writers say: it is hard to make keep short(sum up the essay in terms of the principles/ideas/concepts) and to use specific, particular language at the same time. Yep. That is what is really hard about writing summaries. And there is no formula for when to go long and when to simmer it down to one sentence - you have to figure out which way you need to go in terms of the particular situation.

Your assignment was to write a summary in 250 words - which is short. So you needed to figure out ways to identify the underlying ideas + name them. We looked at the introduction & conclusion and saw the word "principles" used in both places => which suggests this essay is about. . . (you fill in this blank and you have the focus of your summary). We then went through the bullet points to see what they had in common - to see if we could find one sentence or one set of words that applies to all the bullets. You did a great job on this and identified a slightly different set of words for each of the sections. We also noticed that the teacher & student sections had some connections in terms of the ideas. This talk (thinking) set you up with ideas and language for "condensing" what Ryan and Zimmerelli wrote - without using their language or the particular examples they offered.

Using the assignment sheet. We used the assignment sheet to make sure the summary you wrote corresponded to the expectations of the audience. Assignment sheets almost never provide everything you need to know to write the "right" essay - but they are the best place to start.

Format for college English essays. We also talked about formatting. You made a "template" that you can use for any MLA document. That way, you don't have to worry about the default settings on the word processing program of what ever computer you are working with. You can just open your template and you are in MLA-land. For other formats - you can go back to HTWA or the Purdue OWL - and set yourself up.

We also talked briefly about the kind of style an academic audience would expect in a summary. Although there is no hard and fast rule about using personal pronouns, in a summary - it is not your perspective that matters => it is the author's. So you present all the information in terms of the authors' perspectives. Ryan and Zimmerelli. . . state that, suggest, present, indicate, point out that, show, discuss, explain, etc. You can also use other "signal" words to show that you are reporting what someone else has written: according to, in the essay by, etc.

Sample Writing Conference: After talking through the kinds of changes that my quick read through your essays indicated you would want to work on - Kristi (thank you) volunteered to participate in a sample writing center conference with me - to work on her essay. She did a great job - and it looked like she got some ideas for what to work on. In a real writing center conference she would have had more time to write - and she probably would have read some of her work back to me, and we would have worked on it some more - but what we did was fairly representative of the kinds of interactions that take place.

You pointed out the most important features of conferences: the coach makes the student feel comfortable, asks questions, points out and validates what the student does well, provides information about the writing task and strategies for working on writing, and listens to the writer's ideas. The writer owns her work, takes responsibility for making changes, tells the coach what s/he wants to work on, and WRITES!

Good class today. Thank you for your good work.

For Tuesday - I will return your baseline essays and we will spend some time talking about them. You will receive a grade - but it is a "feedback" grade (information about where your writing stands in terms of college expectations) => it won't count toward your grade for the course.

Write: revise your summary of Ryan and Zimmerelli's chapter. Turn in the revised summary as an attachment to an email sent to ENG1620HonorsEnglish@gmail.com. (NOTE: you do NOT have to write the summary of your writing process).

Read: In the Guide for Writing Tutors: Chapter 2, "The Writing Process," pp. 7-18. Also, check out the chapter titles/headings in HTWA. See if there is anything in the table of contents that you think will be particularly important for you. We can talk about this on Tuesday, and if you -as a class- have particular writing issues you want to cover - I will make sure we spend some class time on them.

See you on Tuesday!

Tuesday, September 7

We started today's class by reviewing unfinished business from the last class. There was confusion over the assignment to revise your diagnostic essay and turn it in as an attachment to the ENG1620HonorsEnglish@gmail.com address. So here is the second try at that assignment.

On the first day of class - you wrote an in-class essay and sent it to me as an email. That was your draft. To receive feedback and comments, you need to revise the in-class writing and send the revised essay to me as an attachment. You should name the revised essay: LastnameDiagnosticRevised. You also should put LastnameDiagnosticRevised as the subject for the email.

You should turn in your revised essay before class Thursday, September 9. The instructions on the Diagnostic prompt state that instructors should not grade or respond to the in-class writing. I will grade and provide comments only for the revised essay. As of today, I have revised essays for about half the students in the class. If I receive your essays soon enough for me to read them and provide comments - I will return the graded essays by Thursday. Otherwise, I will return the Revised Diagnostic essays with grades and comments on Tuesday, Sept 14.

I think everything else was OK - if you have further questions - drop me an email. So - ok for that!

Discussion of Chapter 1 in Lee Ryan and Lisa Zimmerelli's The Bedford Guide for Writing Tutors.

We used two important learning strategies for exploring the content of Ryan and Zimmerelli's chapter: writing and talking. After you wrote what you remembered from the reading - and talked to your classmates about what you remembered from the reading - we reflected on how these two learning strategies are different.

Writing is private, "slow" and it puts your ideas out there where you can see them. It helps you generate language you might use - and helps you keep track of and organized what you have thought "so far."

Talking is interactive, "fast" and generates new possibilities (both because you have more people with more ideas - and because other people's words draw out "associations" we might not have connected to on our own). It is good for generating ideas, for getting "unstuck", for seeing readings in new ways. Also - putting what you learned into words help you discover what you learned.

This is not the whole list; the purpose of the exercise was both to give you a chance to get to know one another - and to start you thinking about working with writers and when it might be time to write - and when it might be time to talk.

Summaries.

The first assignment in the College Composition Curriculum is a Summary/Response. In a summary/response essay students summarize a text - and then write their thoughts/feelings/ideas about that text. The problem is - instructors can mean one of several things when they request a summary:

1. state all the points and ideas developed in an essay

2. present all the main ideas

3. state the main concepts or ideas relevant to a particular focus

4. encapsulate or synthesize the main ideas

We then got a start on writing an assignment sheet for the summary you will write for homework.

We first had to decide what kind of summary you were writing. I think we decided it was a combination of 3 & 4.

****For any writer - deciding exactly what it is the audience wants of you (and for students the audience is usually the teacher) is perhaps the most important part of the writing task. Before you begin writing - start with some up-front, analytic thinking about:

• who you are writing for,
• what you should write
• the form you should write it in.

The assignment sheet for the homework summary should help you answer those questions.

For Thursday:

1. Read Tips for Summaries (under readings); and Chapter 40 in HTWA: Summarizing Sources.

2. Write a summary of Chapter 1 of Ryan and Zimmerelli; the assignment sheet is posted to the right under Writing Assignments. Email your summary to ENG1620HonorsEnglish@gmail.com, as an attachment. The subject and the name of the file should be LastNameSummaryProf.

3. Email your revised diagnostic essay to ENG1620HonorsEnglish@gmail.com. See above for how to name the file & what to write in the subject line.

Thanks for your good work in class today! I especially appreciate the corrections to the Calendar and the questions about course policies. And keep working on names - maybe ask a classmate out for coffee? See you on Thursday.

First Day

What we did in class today: I presented a lightning-fast introduction to the course and the course materials and you wrote the diagnostic essay that provides the College Composition program with information about your knowledge and practices for writing BEFORE you took any college courses.

Some of you were unable to complete the Attitude Survey because of issues with your Kean Email. If you had trouble logging on - you should call the Office of Computers and Information Services (OCIS) at 908 737 6000, or visit them in person. For the location of the office go to: http://www.kean.edu/~ocisweb/index.htm . Please complete the attitude survey as soon as you can log in.

You also sent me an email about your process for writing in-class essay exams. These emails indicated a wide range of approaches - which is great. We are clearly going to do some learning from each other!

I apologize for not giving you a chance to introduce yourselves - to each other and to me. We will catch up with that on Tuesday.

Homework for Tuesday:

1. Read the course syllabus & calendar + send me an email stating that you have read it. If you have questions or concerns, include them in this email and we can talk them over in class. The Subject for this email should be: LastNameSyllabus.

2. Revise your in-class essay. I will be evaluating this version of the essay and will give you feedback on how well it matches up with the standards for college writing. You will turn in the revised essay as an attachment to an email sent to ENG1620HonorsEnglish@gmail.com. The subject should be: LastNameDignosticRevised.

3. Read Chapter 1 in The Bedford Guide for Writing Tutors: "The Writing Center as a Workplace." Come to class prepared to state, in your own words, the main ideas in this chapter.

What we will do in class Tuesday:

We will introduce ourselves properly, address questions & problems about the syllabus, calendar & using this web site + talk about the assigned reading. We will also talk about academic summaries - and talk about strategies for writing different kinds of summaries.

Have a great weekend and see you on Tuesday!