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?

What Have I Learned So Far, and What Continues to Befuddle Me

So far, English 326 has been refreshing. I’ve learned that the only thing we need to learn is word classes. Adjectives, Nouns, Adverbs and Verbs. I really like this method, because I can usually only remember four things at a time, so this makes grammar easier to learn for me. I am not so intimidated by a plethora of grammar definitions I have to memorize any longer. All I need to know is that adjectives describe nouns, verbs tell nouns what to do, adverbs describe the nature of the verbs. And Nouns are the center of the grammar universe.

I’m not sure if any of this material is new, as far as the basics, but the idea that these are the only four concepts that matter is definitely original to me. It says to students, “you don’t have to spend every waking hour memorizing grammar rules. Learn these four concepts, and you’ll get it.” And I think, that makes grammar accessible, because it doesn’t automatically repel young learners, or old grammar-phobes who are intimidated by long lists of definitions to memorize. The four class concept is very practical, because these are really the building blocks of any sentence.

I guess the only thing this week that confused me a bit was something we talked about during week one as well. The concept of plurals possessing something. When the Jones family owns a condo, it’s the Jones family’s condo. But suppose you didn’t use the word family. It would become the Jones’ condo. However, suppose there’s more than one Jones family. And they all co-own the same condo. That would make it the Joneses’ condo. Or at least, that’s how I understood it after our lesson.

I’m still not sure about plurals. I used to be confident that if a noun ends in an s, you simply add an apostrophe to make it possessive. For example: Jesus owns a car. That’s Jesus’ car.

Then, if there’s two brothers named Jesus, and they both own the same car, the car would become Jesuses’ car. You add an “es” when there is more than one noun (to make it plural) and if it ends in an s, you still add the apostrophe.

I guess if the noun didn’t end in an S, for example, George, yet there were many georges, you would add an es to make it plural, and still follow the rule about adding an apostrophe to the s. Many fellows named George who own the same car, could have a car known as the Georges’ car. I might refer to it as the car of George, are the George Clan’s Car (mostly because I’m a fan of alliteration). But you get the idea. I guess, I’m not really too confident with plural possessives.