WRIT 199 TAs

Maud, 9/23/13:

For this meeting, Maud wrote a thoughtletter about the articles for her first paper. The thoughtletter was much better than her last one in terms of grammar and sentence clarity. She stated that she had worked hard on grammar and sentence clarity and was pleased that it was an improvement (She had stated at our last meeting, after going through the thoughtletter, “Wow- I had a lot of mistakes!”). The thoughletter was well organized (for a thoughtletter) and contained both concrete background information and possible arguments and implications. She is writing this paper on an academic article and a more anecdotal chapter of a book, both about women in South Africa and HIV/AIDS. We discussed some of my comments on her thoughtletter, most of which were asking for more specificity or hinting at topics she can elaborate upon for her paper. The thoughtletter focused mainly upon the academic article and we discussed some ways in which she can more smoothly incorporate the book. We did not spend too much time on the thoughtletter specifically, however, because I thought that it was a good effort and I wanted to spend as much time as possible preparing her for her paper. We read the two handouts on three story theses (the one with the Paul Revere example and the one with the Roe vs. Wade example) and the Harvard University “Developing a Thesis” handout. She asked questions and explained her understanding of the concept. We then went through her possible argument, which she had not yet articulated specifically, and discussed how she might address each story. She seemed to understand the concept and, although slightly unsure of her specific thesis, was able to articulate a concrete argument. She primarily agrees with the two readings, so we discussed the fact that she can still have an argument if she agrees with them. After I asked her specifying questions about her argument, she ended up focusing on a more specific topic (sex slavery, which she defined for me) and she discovered that she does somewhat disagree with the book. We also discussed the scope of her argument and I used a target analogy to help her determine the scope as well as what she needs to address in the introduction/background information (HIV/AIDs globally- in Africa- in South Africa- South African women- South African women she considers victims of sex slavery (the subcategories of victims could each be a body paragraph)). She had a few questions about counterarguments, specifically whether she needs to be arguing against an author. I explained counterarguments and said that she can argue against a more hypothetical argument. We discussed some possible counterarguments for her paper and I think that she understood the concept. Finally, I brought my Hacker book and we went over APA style citations.

Haley, 9/23/13:

Haley wrote a preliminary first draft for this week’s meeting. She contacted me before her paper was due to say that she felt stuck and to ask for advice. I commented upon what she had (it contained detailed explanations, but the argument was lost in all of the background information and the background information didn’t seem connected to her argument), and she brought an edited version to the meeting. I had been worried that the article was not concrete or argumentative enough to inspire a thesis-driven paper, so I suggested before I read the edited version that we add another article to this paper (She had decided to continue to write this paper about one of the papers designated for paper 2. She will find another paper for paper 2 so that it will be a comparison paper.). She expressed confidence that she could continue with this paper without an additional article, and after we read and discussed the edited version I agreed that this paper is do-able. Her edited version contained a more concrete argument and more specificity in general, but included many background paragraphs which were disconnected to the introduction and more argument-driven paragraphs. When she explained her argument and how the background information relates to it, I understood everything, but she understood that her writing did not accurately reflect her ideas. I gave her the two three story thesis handouts and the Harvard University “Developing a Thesis” handout to read while I looked over her edited paper. She found the handouts helpful and we used the three story thesis template to identify her argument and organize her paper. She had all three parts, but they were somewhat scattered and disconnected. We went through each paragraph and I had her write down the paragraph’s purpose in the margins. This exercise seemed helpful; she merged and cut a few paragraphs. We then focused upon her introduction and three story thesis. We worked particularly upon establishing her first story- what does her reader need to know before she states her thesis? We mapped out her introduction in this way, going through each piece of information and deciding where it needed to go. She realized that the order of the paper should mirror the order of the introduction. We then discussed each paragraph and its placement and she wrote all of her thoughts down. Finally, we discussed the importance of topic sentences and transitions in guiding her reader through the paragraphs. She understands that she has chosen a complicated paper subject and that she will need a lot of background information as well as clear structure and organization. I hope, however, that after our meeting she will be able to integrate the background more fluidly into the argument. At the end of the meeting she had some questions about grading. I explained that she will receive a mid-semester grade and she liked my suggestion that we look over her second draft with the grading rubric in mind.

2/19/13:  Ashley Iguina

Ashley and I met later than usual on Tuesday to accommodate for the Monday schedule.  I was thrilled to see her come to class with the short story that I assigned highlighted, underlined, and with her comments and dictionary definitions in the margins.  She turned in a thought letter over the weekend, which touched on many of Baldwin’s major themes and stated the parts of the story she had noticed but not fully understood.  We looked at the last paragraph of her thought letter together and made a few sentences more concise.  As we began to discuss the story, I suggested that Ashley (and I) construct a timeline because the story largely operates through flashbacks.  This helped organize our thinking and then, asking questions mostly raised by her thought letter, we talked about possible topics for her essay.  She chose to focus on the nameless narrator and his progression toward understanding his brother’s lifestyle.  Ashley told me she usually didn’t make outlines before writing papers.  I emphasized the importance of outlines and how helpful they are to me, and we made a rough list of the events in the text that were important to her argument.  On Thursday night, (as I asked, mostly as a time management thing) she emailed me her introduction and thesis.  I asked a few guiding questions to make her thesis more contentious and to raise points of discussion for the body of her paper, but I expect her thesis to still need narrowing/clarity in the first draft.  I left the more detailed editing for the complete first draft and only pointed out common errors (i.e. using a consistent present tense to write about literature).  Her first draft is due on Sunday.

2/21/13: Qi Wu

Qi and I also moved our meeting this week from Monday to Thursday.  She emailed me a thought letter over the weekend, which I edited and sent back to her via email on Monday afternoon.  Her thought letter had some consistent grammar errors, but was clear overall.  Because our meeting was so late in the week, I asked her to come on Thursday with an introduction, thesis, and outline.  She was a little unclear on the thesis and had prepared a paragraph that was more of an abstract for her paper.  In her introduction, though, the last two sentences made a good working thesis.  We spent some time on her opening statement, which was very vague.  It was, I think, “China has officially kept its capital veiled.”  When I told her some of the questions this left me with as a reader, she told me out loud some much more interesting and specific information about the secrecy in China’s economic relationship with the rest of the world.  We worked this into a much stronger first sentence.  She also had questions about how to address counterarguments to her thesis because she doesn’t actually disagree with the experts on the other side of the capital flight issue she is addressing.  She told me that she thinks they have a point, but her argument gets more to the heart of the issue.  I said that this was perfectly fine to include and it would make her argument stronger to address it.  I was impressed by her outline and expect her paper to be very well organized.  We finished class with the last of the “captioning diagrams” assignment, and discussed the solutions from Professor Rothschild’s Sakai site.  After class, I was reading over the articles Qi plans on using in her paper.  I noticed a short phrase that I think she had borrowed in her writing, which can be tempting when using such specific Econ-related language, but I definitely want to address this next week and talk about strategies to catch herself and avoid doing so (and how important this is to avoid).  Her first draft is due by 2pm on Sunday.

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).