A semester (and three years) of lessons

I’m lounging in the Daily Grind Sunday evening, sipping apple juice and thinking about the past semester with Barbara. Of being called a Honkie and finally figuring out what a honkie is. And comprehending that after 15 years of formal education, I still have no idea how to use a semicolon.

What I’ve learned this semester - besides that almonds are members of the peach family - is that grammar, like people, is constantly changing. And you can never claim to know it all. The list of words that used to be hyphenated (but no longer need to be) can get longer than the list of films that either Bill Paxton or Bill Pullman has appeared in. Which is to say, long. Very long.

And just because you didn't see The Favor or The Lord’s of Discipline doesn’t mean you're not familiar with either of these distinguished actors (though you may often get them mixed up). The same concept applies to grammar where there are lots of rules you may have never seen (like the two Bill's movies). And not knowing the difference between a parallelism and a gerund (or Paxton and Pullman) isn't necessarily a deal breaker for knowing grammar (or the two Bills).

While your subject and verb might not always agree (though they should), I hope that we can come to a consensus that grammar has many more rules than any of us will learn (or need to learn). And that as long as you can communicate clearly, your grammar is suitable. What’s important is that you understand the big concepts. Like that periods come at the end of a sentence (which is a complete thought). Or that Bill Pullman’s best role came as Lonestar in Spaceballs. The key is to communicate your message.

Getting serious (ie: stop reading now if you view my blog for enjoyment), I still need to improve upon my understanding and confidence with semicolons (and girls); I’m not always sure when to use them. There is a dearth of these winking, half-smiling connectors in my writing, and after a semester of writing blogs (and three-and-a-half years at university), this will be my first blog (and semester) where I attempt to use semicolons.

Other things I’ve learned about myself this semester:

*Apparently I tend write aggressively, which is better than writing passively without a subject followed by a verb.

*I use enough commas to give anyone pause... But have cut back. My first blog, 300 words long, had 32 commas. Compared to this blog, 500 words in length, which has only 13 commas.

*My beard grows with the occasional red hair, which is weird… (Still unsure about "which")

*My use of ellipses makes me grammatically complex in the eyes of Barbara...

Rowlandson hates natives (is that S-V-O enough for you?)

To further portray Christians as victims, Rowlandson embellished her encounters. “The Indians were as thick as trees,” she said. Rowlandson described the natives as wild and untamed. Natives frightened her.Rowlandson also used connotation to portray Christians as victims. Rowlandson loaded the piece with descriptions of natives as “ravenous beasts” and “barbarous creatures.” This denoted a lack of civility in natives, yet Rowlandson inadvertently noted that Natives possessed some qualities of civilization.

The Indians were skilled at healing, she observed. Rather than attribute this success to Indian intelligence and identification of particular plants, Rowlandson praised the Lord for his compassion, not the Indians, whose knowledge of indigenous plants saved her life. “I took oaken leaves and laid to my side, and with the blessing of God, it cured me also.” (Rowlandson, act II) Rowlandson attributes this success to the Lord, rather than Indians.

She wrote her narrative as a tale of good against evil, with the Indians characterized as “heathen” antagonists. She condemned many of their activities as “pagan activities.” (Rowlandson, act II) Rowlandson even condemned the convening of large masses of Indians as a terrifying experience, much how JRR Tolkien would have described an amassing of Orks near Mount Doom: “If one looked before one there was nothing but Indians, and behind one, nothing but Indians, and so on either hand, I myself in the midst, and no Christian soul near me, and yet how hath the Lord preserved me in safety?” (Rowlandson, part III)

Brush Strokes

Assignment:

1. copy/paste a chunk of prose from an old blog or old academic paper or even a new paper you’re working on into your blog.
2. copy/paste it again. Revise this second pasting (so we can see the comparison).
3. As you add in a brush stroke, please boldface the brush stroke, with the name of the brush stroke in [brackets] right after it.

In 1998, Rolling Stone assigned David Lipsky to write about West Point. He originally planned to stay for a couple weeks, but ended up spending the next four years writing his book, Absolutely American. Students who pick up his book will have a similar experience. They may expect a quick read-through, but will become engrossed with the characters in much the same way the author became attached to the military academy. Absolutely American should be added to the English 110 course syllabus, not merely because it resonates with college students, but because of the text’s compelling nature and relevance to contemporary society.

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In 1998, Rolling Stone, a magazine named for the 1948 Muddy Waters song of the same name [appositive], assigned David Lipsky, a writer of both fiction and nonfiction [appositive], to write about West Point. Lipsky originally planned to stay for a couple weeks, but ended up spending the next four years writing his book, Absolutely American. Students, black and white [adjectives out of order], who pick up his book will have a similar experience. Reading while simultaneously checking their Facebook and blogging [Participle], students may expect a quick read-through, but will become engrossed with the characters in much the same way the author, a graduate of Brown University [appositive], became attached to the military academy. Absolutely American, chocked full of imagery and characterization of our military which few civilians ever see [Absolute], should be added to the English 110 course syllabus, not merely because it resonates with college students, but because of the text’s compelling nature and relevance to contemporary society.

The Ramblings of a Backlogged Blogger

One of the things we talked about today in class was varying sentence lengths, and I think this is another form of creating voice in our writing. We vary the length of our sentences naturally while speaking. It’s just one of those things we do without thinking when we talk, but writing, it takes a bit more of a conscious effort to remember to vary the length of your sentences.

I took a creative writing class last semester, and one of the strategies the teacher spoke of was of varying sentence lengths to create a particular mood in your reader. For example, if you want the reader to feel overwhelmed, create a sensory overload the same way you do it in real life: with way more information than the reader can digest. Make your sentences long, run-on, and full of visual information. Bombard your reader with sentences that bleed into each other to create a frenetic pace.

If you want your reader to pace themselves, create sentence breaks more often, and this will make them at ease. That’s the way our professor explained it, at least.

Concerning the session on commas with Shannon and Stephanie, I thought they did a great job! Only use commas for compound sentences. And put in the comma before one of the FANBOYS. The key, though, is to only do it for compound sentences. I appreciated Barbara’s e-mail afterward alerting us of this, too.

I also appreciated Barbara’s postponement of our first checkpoint for the grammar scrapbooks. It’s just tedious looking for these errors. But perhaps it will give me an excuse to spend tonight just reading sports illustrated. I wonder how many errors the swimsuit edition has?

I first thought the scrapbook was a waste of time, because guys don’t do scrapbooks. And the jury is still out. However, with the use of swimsuit models as a background to my scrapbook, I’ve become a huge fan of scrap booking.

I felt like our time in class this week was particularly productive. Using the time to work together in groups and look for errors in the Evergreen gave me a few examples from in class that I can use in my scrapbook, and made our next checkpoint less intimidating.

I guess my question this week will pertain to the scrapbook. Does anyone know whether or next checkpoint will just be ten examples, or will it be 20 examples (since it’s technically our second checkpoint)? Perhaps a compromise of 15 would be more fair?

Peer (or Chump) Editing

This week, our text covered peer editing. To me, this is the biggest waste of time since Facebook. The comments are often just as meaningful, and I often find myself wondering what's for dinner, rather than focusing on making my paper better.

I think the biggest reason I don't like peer editing is because of the risk involved, both for the person who is critiquing the paper, and for the person who is being critiqued. Since the idea is typically for the two people to trade their papers, if one of them do not take the assignment seriously, he could either be seen as a slacker by the other person, or the other person could be seen as an overachiever for completing the assignment. I know it sounds silly, but sometimes, completing the assigned task, especially in a 100 level class can be seen as overly studious, and if you're working with a really cute girl and she thinks the assignment's dumb, odds are, you might agree with her.

The biggest problem with peer editing is that both parties have to be fully committed. And often, this is not the case. I've been on both sides, sometimes forgetting to do the assignment and other times being the overachiever. According to our textbook, there are three aspects to peer conferencing. First, there is praise. This makes sense, because nobody will listen to you if you start by telling them their paper was as tantalizing to read as a Jane Austen novel.

Second, you need to ask the writer whatever questions you might have about their piece. This will help them (the writer) understand what points they could have explained better, since you don't know what they're trying to say, and can only judge by the words on the page.

Step three is more of the same (critique), but only this time, the reader is permitted to make pointed comments. These are called suggestions and if done correctly, will not permanently scar the writer's psyche (or will cause them to become a math major).

I understand why conferencing can be powerful, because if both parties are invested in the work, they will do a good job reading each others' work, and spend more time on it than the teacher would (since the teacher has so many students' papers to read).

I guess my question this week is how can teachers use conferencing effectively? By this I mean to ask, how can a teacher make sure their students are as committed to conferencing as they are? How can they make sure their students are on task and reaping the full benefits of what peer conferencing has to offer? How can peer conferencing be a can't miss success?

This is my post, Period.

This week. in our session. We talked about. Awkward punctuation. Namely periods. In the example we read for class, the author allows her students to continue punctuating badly, just to get their ideas onto the page. I think this is an important concept, because so much of what we do in writing has to do with editing, and I think sometimes, editing gets overemphasized and makes people become too self-conscious about their work to put down anything meaningful. However, I take exception to allowing someone to blatantly abuse periods, because I feel these are a fundamental part of writing, structuring your work so that it makes sense, both to the reader and writer. I heard a statistic that for every mistake you make, or habit you build, it takes 50 times doing it correctly to retrain yourself to do it the right way. So I don't think allowing someone to blatantly bumble periods is the right way to teach writing. It would be like in basketball, during Kiddie Camp, allowing the youngsters to kick basketballs. Wait, that actually happens. I take that back. Maybe she does have a point. I mean, during kiddie camp, basketball fundamentals are certainly emphasized, and we certainly encourage them not to double dribble or kick basketballs, but sometimes, it just happens. And we don't stop them every time a double trouble or travel happens, because if we did, they would never play basketball again and would learn to hate the game. So I think the author is trying to allow the writer to make mistakes, so that they will foster a love of writing, rather than emphasizing the fundamentals right away, and turning them off from writing.

Switching topics, like my classmates, I also was bothered by the fact that the case study was not on a specific child, but a combination of all the children the author had worked with. Having a combination of first to sixth graders made it confusing, because first-graders are obviously less developed than sixth-graders. So, how do we know which mistakes are realistic for a secondary child, which is what many of us in the class hope to work with? However, I will again use the basketball analogy in that you need to understand the fundamentals before you can teach the more advanced concepts. And I believe if we, the teachers, can understand the basic foundations of writing, we can better teach the more advanced material to secondary students, and help those students who aren't up to speed as well.

The past couple weeks, I have forgotten to add a question at the end of my blog, so here is my question which you can respond to if you like: In your opinion, what is more important? Helping young writers/students foster their love of writing, or teaching them the proper fundamentals of writing?

This week, our the way in which we conducted our group discussion on Monday befuddled me a bit. I was curious how the people on the outside fit into the big scheme of things, because they couldn't talk. I know their job was to listen and delve deeper into whatever topic we were covering when they entered the conversation, but I felt like cutting out half of the class was not the best way to accomplish this.
Because the people on the circle’s outside couldn’t talk, they couldn’t contribute to the discussion, even if they had something very meaningful to say. I know their job was to listen, but I felt like cutting out half of the class was not the best way to accomplish a lively discussion.
I know our discussion group worked, but I felt a better way to operate the discussion would have been to have just a single large circle, without any outsiders, and have a three turn limit, as far as talking. This would accomplish two things. First, it would allow everyone a chance to comment, since the most anyone could comment would be three times, so nobody would dominate the discussion. Secondly, I would have instituted a two comment minimum, to make that everyone was contributing. The reason I would use the two comment minimum/three comment maximum (Also known in college basketball as the 2-3 zone), is because it allows the students who are part of the circle to dictate their interaction during the group' discussion. I feel like if students comment when they have a good idea, or something to say, rather than just when it’s their team’s turn, the discussion will flow better.
Switching topics, I'm still very confused about transitive vs. intransitive verbs. Here's how I understand it. Transitive verbs are the verbs that have a direct object. Intransitive verbs don't have a direct object. They are without a Direct Object. So if you cut off the sentence after the verb, it could still work. Then, there are linking verbs. And I think I'm alright there.
I thought the activity of using the magnets went really well, because one of the sentences we came up with involved "Republicans" and "The Axis of Evil," so what more could you ask for in a sentence?