10 Page Paper Topic

I have finally decided to write my paper on proofreading and revision in the classroom. I have been interested in proofreading ever since I took my first technical communication course—English 3211 Intro to Tech Comm. I was not yet an English major at that point, but I had always done well in my high school English classes. I kept getting grades in 3211 that I felt did not reflect the quality of writing. I finally asked my instructor what I could improve on, and he told me that my grade would be a lot better if I would just proofread. Now, I thought proofreading was only for people who actually made mistakes in their writing, but I could write a paper ten minutes before class and get a perfect grade. So in my mind, I did not make mistakes in my writing. I thought my instructor was just being nitpicky, but I reluctantly took his advice. My grade really did improve. I was amazed, not to mention, humbled.

As an undergrad, I also had the opportunity to co-author a research study to find the best method of proofreading for 1301 and 1302 students. I really enjoyed doing that study and we just found out that it will be published in a book pretty soon (not to toot my own horn).

In my paper, I will briefly explain the different methods of proofreading, such as the partner method, the line method, and the backwards method. Then, using research, I will discuss what methods have been shown to work the best for college-level students in order to improve their compositions. All of this information will mostly be background information. The main part of my paper will concentrate on teaching a particular method or methods in the classroom, along with teaching the importance of proofreading and revision. I’m not entirely sure if I want to write my paper over proofreading and revision, or just proofreading. I would like to explore both if I have enough time and room.

My Mutt of a Teaching Philosophy

While reading Bedford/St. Martin’s History of Rhetoric and Composition, I tried to formulate my own philosophy of teaching rhetoric and composition. To make a long story short, I would not take just one point of view but would culminate my own point of view from bits and pieces of other points of views. On its own, the Medieval and Renaissance version of rhetoric seems too staunch. The texts that were so prescriptive and “consist entirely of lists of rules and examples illustrating them” seems too much to adhere to. The students need rules, but not so many rules that they are bogged down and cannot find their own voice for fear of violating a rule. There must be a happy medium here. The students should have rules as guidelines, such as grammar, punctuation, and spelling that show exactly (or almost exactly) what the text should contain. But as far as content, the students should have a number of guidelines based on how experienced they are as writers but should have enough free reign to be able to say what they want to say and not be stifled.

I can also see Alexander Bain’s importance of psychology benefiting my teaching philosophy. His persuasive discourse associates “ideas in a way that produces the desired emotion in the audience.” As a writer, I feel not only more connected, but more passionate, about my writing when I have some emotion toward my paper, whether it is positive or negative. I have more to write, and the paper runs smoother when I have feelings toward my topic. I always enjoy this feeling toward my work, and I hope that students get a chance to feel this passion towards their writing at least once so that they won’t miss out on what I think to be the joys of writing.

I can see what Francis J. Child was attempting to do at Harvard, but I don’t think he realized that not every student is as nuts about composition as he is. He probably just ended up scaring the students with his zeal for proper compositions instead of inspiring them. If I were to adopt any of his methods, I would tone them down quite a bit. I wouldn’t be so rigid on the rules and on the list of books.

The progressives also had a valid idea in teaching students how to write compositions that contains “usefulness in the world beyond school.” What is the point of learning how to write for just one medium (ie, a particular instructor), without being able to apply this knowledge to other forms of writing found later on down the road?

I would also incorporate New Criticism’s theory of “thought and language as fundamental rather than superficial.” Thought and language are inherently linked and should be noted as such.

My teaching philosophy thus far is like a stray puppy. It is a mix of different ideas, like a mutt, and is young and could grow up to be anything.

Cap'n Wes's Teaching Philosophy...Arrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!!!!

Cap’n Wes’s Teaching Philosophy…Arrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!!!!!!!
http://www.isd.uga.edu/teaching_assistant/philosophy/2005phil/venus/venus.htm
Wesley Venus’s teaching philosophy is definitely different. That is apparent from the layout and decoration of the page, before you even read the teaching philosophy itself. Everyone else had boring black and white pages with maybe a headshot of themselves and nothing else that is all that interesting. But no, Cap’n Wes decided to let his pirate-ness just hang out. When I first got to this website, I thought, “This is going to be interesting.” Yep, it is. I also thought his teaching philosophy was appropriate for our discussion because the website is very pirate-themed. And since we were all excited about the National Talk Like a Pirate Day, Captain Wesley’s teaching philosophy fit into our class quite nicely. And, what do all official pirates need? A ship!!! And of course, he has so graciously included a picture of “Cap’n Wes’s Ship.” I’m wondering if he drew that picture himself. Anyways, back to teaching philosophies. One thing I like about Cap’n Wes’s philosophy is the pirate-ness of it, which has absolutely nothing to do with the teaching philosophy itself. Is this professional? I sure got a kick out of it, but will his professors and potential employers feel the same way? Something I would not have thought about in regards to my teaching philosophy is the actual presentation of my philosophy. I, myself, would not have pirates running amok all over my teaching philosophy. I would present it in a more professional manner, but I would try to come up with something different to make my philosophy stand out. It should be good in and of itself, but visual presentation is extremely important, whether the reader consciously or subconsciously pays attention to it. Another thing I noticed about Cap’n Wes’s teaching philosophy is that it is extremely difficult to understand. I’m reading it, thinking, “What?” Then I reread it and understood it better. He needs to change his wording to increase the reader’s comprehension. Not too many potential employers have the time and patience to wade through not only a crazy pirate page, but also a muddled teaching philosophy. I guess he’s trying to sound smart. I do agree with him when he says, “Full conceptualization is preferable to memorization.” Students aren’t tape recorders that just record facts and spit them out. They must be taught to apply these facts and be able to think outside the box while doing so. I also agree with Cap’n Wes that the student-teacher relationship should be less intimidating and more personal, not in the friend aspect, but in the “I’m not scared of you” aspect. He would rather focus on empathy and facilitation instead of defending his authority and “keeping the weaker students from spoiling the strong.” I’m not entirely sure what he means by that last part, though.

So, thanks to Cap'n Wes, we can see the truly creative side of teaching philosophies, as well as the ups and downs of having such a unique perspective on your teaching philosophy.

Paradidm

Many of us attended last Friday's workshop on using iMovie, and we've all spend some time reviewing video examples. Your 3-minute core composition keyword video is due on 10/5. What is your topic, and how are you going to approach it? What are you thinking of including?

My presentation topic is paradigm. I chose paradigm because I thought it sounded like a cool word. It is fun to mispronounce. But anyways, I was not sure of what kind of paradigm the book was going to talk about. After I read Robin Varnum’s take on the paradigm in composition, I was glad that I chose it. Not only will I have plenty to talk about, I have taken Dr. Ken Baak’s English 5384 Rhetoric of Scientific Literature class. In that class, we extensively discussed Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolution. (I still have the book, by the way. And I found it to be interesting after we discussed it in class and waded through the thick theories and stuff.) Varnum states that Kuhn is the person responsible for bring the theory of paradigm into the composition community.

Since I still have Kuhn’s book, I am considering including a little bit of extra knowledge from the book in my presentation. I think I will approach the topic by first giving the definition and then giving some insight from the book on paradigms. I will also provide examples of paradigms that pertain to today’s world and not just to Thomas Kuhn’s scientific world of the 1980’s. By providing these examples, the audience can understand better what a paradigm is. I did not entirely understand what a paradigm is until we discussed it in Dr. Baak’s class and he gave us examples. I think that if I would have just read Varnum’s chapter on paradigm, I would not know what the heck a paradigm is. I would be trying to change my keyword right about now. So I am glad that I took that class and I have a little more insight into the world of paradigms than just what the Keywords book offers.

Fostering Learning

Who are you as a teacher? You might consider thinking about the philosophies of composition we read about a week ago, but go further than a broad category: How do you respond to students? How do you feel about students? How do you learn? How do you feel about learning? How do you feel about teaching? What models do you think of as you prepare to be a teacher? Is being a teacher something you've always wanted to do? What kind of teacher do you want to be? How do you want students to remember you? What philosophy/ies undergird who you are as a teacher?

As a teacher…wait I’m not a teacher. Ok, as a potential teacher, I want to be all that I can be. I know that sounds cheesy and cliché, but it is true. I want my students to enjoy my class while getting the most out of it education-wise. I want to include humor as part of the daily routine in order to put the students at ease and make them think of learning as being fun. I will not let the humor get in the way of the students’ education, though. Learning always comes first. I just need a way to get this learning to happen, and that is where the humorous aspect of teaching will come into play. I always enjoyed teachers who could make the class laugh. The class time would go by a great deal faster, and I would pay more attention to what the teacher was saying because I wanted to catch his or her jokes. In boring, joke-less classes, I would just daydream all class period. And although that was fun for me, I did not get anything out of the class in terms of learning.

I believe that responding to students in a positive way. As teachers, we should not only build the students’ knowledge base, but also build their self-confidence so that they can use this knowledge effectively and to its best extent. If the students do not have the self assurance to venture on using this knowledge, then they will either be too scared to use this knowledge, or they’ll use the knowledge incorrectly because they do not have the gusto to take the risk all the way.

Basically, our job as teachers is to foster learning and then give our students the tools to take this knowledge to the next level.

The Seven Deadly Sins

I find it a little humorous that most of the seven deadly sins of writing that Ben Yagoda discusses are mistakes that I was not even aware of as a Freshman in college. I took advanced placement English my last two years of high school, where we spent our time on literature. Our only discussion of grammar and punctuation was when the teacher would return our papers where a mistake had been marked. Even then, it was not a verbal discussion, it was scratchings done in red ink. I had absolutely no clue that I was making any such mistakes. When I entered college was able to skip English 1301 and 1302 and proceed on to my major, which just happened to be English.

It was then that I came to terms with the sin of heavy reliance on the spell checker function. Or rather, I committed the sin of not even proofreading my paper, including not using the spell checker. I drove my 2311 Intro to Tech Comm instructor crazy with my lack of concern for proofreading. I would fix whatever was underlined in red on MS Word, but other than that, I did not even read my paper for a second time. I would write my paper and turn it in. It worked in high school, why not in college? It was when I asked my 3211 instructor what I could do to improve that he told me to proofread. What? I was too good to proofread! I thought only bad writers proofread. But I took his advice, and I realized that he was right. (And I was in my fourth semester of college by this time, well past the typical 1301 students.) I had to come to the realization that proofreading was not just for those who wrote badly, but also for those who want to write better.

It was in my sophomore-level Technical Style and junior-level Technical Editing classes that I first heard of a dangling modifiers and correct comma placement. I vividly remember my introduction to dangling modifiers. We were peer critiquing each other’s papers in class, and my partner wrote on my paper that I had a dangling modifier and then proceeded to explain to me what that was. I was glad that she had pointed my mistake out to me because I never would have caught it, but I was a bit embarrassed. I wondered if we had covered dangling modifiers in class and I had completely missed out on that conversation. Surely not. I told myself that she was just an overachiever and I did not need to worry about never having heard of a dangling modifier. Now whenever I hear of dangling modifiers, I recall that fateful day when I was introduced to this mistake. Even today, armed with several undergraduate and graduate technical communication classes and hordes of handbooks, I still second-guess myself in these areas of potential mistakes, but at least I know that the potential to make a mistake exists, and I can then devote attention to avoiding these mistakes.

You can’t have close-knit community in a distance situation

Belief:

With the onset of the distance education revolution, communication among people has become increasingly impersonal. Distance serves to, well, distance us from each other. Some classes are structured now so that the entirety of the class can be taken via the internet. The students meet in an online chat session, such as Texas Tech’s MOO, and have their class online. The students and professor can all be in completely different cities or even states. The members of this group will never meet face-to-face. They will not even hear the sound of each other’s voice. Facial expressions and voice inflections are completely lost in such as circumstance. There is no happy chatter before the class starts, and the students and professor never completely learn each other’s personalities. Students end up getting lost in their own isolation. Although there are people on the other end of the textual conversation, the student can end up feeling as though he or she is interacting with just an electronic device and is simply talking to the computer, and just the computer is talking back to him or her. Students do not feel accountable to join in the conversation because there is not a professor in the same room as them staring at them, waiting for them to give an answer. Some students do not even have access to an internet computer for a long enough period to take this class.


Doubt:

The computer revolution is bringing people closer at a faster rate today than ever before. People in completely different cities, and even states, can interact with each other in a classroom setting, whereas, those same people would never have met otherwise. Classes meet in online chat groups, saving on gas for the students and professor and on space allotted for the class to take place (i.e. a physical classroom). In order to help the students and professor get to know each other better, the professor will usually have the students set up an autobiography, either on their own web site or the class web site, and include certain background information and experiences and a picture of themselves. Students are at a greater advantage taking online classes because the playing field is leveled. Students are not prohibited by their apprehensions regarding issues such as race, personality (introverted or extroverted), or physical appearance. Students who would normally not speak up in class for any of these personal reasons would be more inclined to contribute to an online discussion. The classes even allow for a comfier environment because students can attend wearing their pajamas and bunny slippers. Students who have young children can also keep an eye on the children while in class. If any type of emergency occurs with their young children, such as crying over spilt milk, then the students can take care of that and return to class without having anyone be the wiser.