2/16/13 Chloe’s blog: Qi Wu and Ashley Iguina

Qi Wu: Meeting on Monday, February 11

I started my meeting with Qi by reiterating what Professor Lederman told me about her ESL-related questions, mainly that her concerns about articles and word choice rarely interfered with the meaning of her writing, and they would improve with time and practice.  We edited the formal paragraph she had written for homework.  She had some grammatical issues, including many unnecessary clauses in her sentences that can obscure her intention.  We went through these, and then edited her topic sentence completely.  I think my advice that her topic sentence should be like a paragraph-sized thesis statement was a bit confusing, because it was very wordy and unclear.  She was able to edit it down well, leaving only the crux of her argument, in very understandable language.  Next, we did an exercise borrowed from Professor Rothschild, and she wrote paragraphs for two econ-related graphs.  The directions were to a) explain and interpret the graphs and b) provide a narrative behind the information.  She did the first part very well, keeping one thought per sentence as we discussed.  Although her sentences made sense grammatically and structurally, they were a bit hard to follow because they still included many numbers and lists with little context.  We rewrote, keeping a reader in mind who would want to understand the graph after a quick first reading of her paragraph.  I’m glad we did this exercise because I think it may be a problem moving forward.  I imagine it’s very tempting to list facts and statistics that once understood, really support an argument in Econ, but must be presented clearly (This was also something Professor Rothschild said).  For homework, she is gathering the articles she will use for her first paper on the Chinese economy in the last five years, and writing a thoughtletter to organize her reactions.

Ashley Iguina:  Meeting on Tuesday, February 12

We started our meeting by reviewing Ashley’s formal paragraph about an essay by W.E.B. Du Bois.  Her writing was very clear overall.  We talked about introducing textual evidence and being very explicit about the connection she was making with her chosen quote.  I pointed out that her topic sentence didn’t fully capture the complex argument of her paragraph, and she successfully rewrote a great statement.  I also said that it made for powerful writing to end paragraphs with her own words, rather than ending with a quote as she had.  She laughed and said, “but I thought he said it so much better than I could!”  She went on to add her own concluding sentence that tied up her own ideas instead of only the authors.  To work on close reading, we read “The Weary Blues” by Langston Hughes.  She hadn’t been introduced to close reading in the past, and I thought it was important to write well about literature moving forward.  We wrote out possible theses about the poem, after she had noticed a lot of the minute meaning of Hughes’s language.  The poem had very similar themes to James Baldwin’s “Sonny’s Blues,” which she is reading and responding to in a thoughtletter for homework.  I also asked her to bring a piece of literary criticism about the short story to class, so we can talk about incorporating it (although I plan on giving her the option to wait until her third paper to use outside criticisms).