WRIT 199 TAs

10/27/13:

Saraphin turned in a thoughtletter on the source for her second paper for this week’s meeting. She had some trouble finding her original source (a movie which is only being shown at scheduled viewings), so she chose another movie which offers plenty of material. The thoughtletter was well written and thoughtful. It contained some preposition and concision errors which we discussed. Saraphin can solve grammatical issues quite well on her own once they are pointed out to her, but she continues to have trouble choosing the correct prepositions. I will continue to work with her on a case by case basis, as this appears to be the only practical way to approach the problem. We spent the majority of the meeting discussing her plan for the paper. Her thoughtletter discussed a few different groups of people (Muslim extremists, US neoconservatives, US government, Egyptian people) in a few different time periods (Cold War, 9/11, Arab Spring, current), so we discussed the need to pare down her argument and be very clear in both organization and individual sentences. She proposed a few different methods of organization and ultimately decided to organize the paper chronologically. She will essentially be arguing against neoconservative views. I had her write down multiple drafts of her thesis and make a preliminary outline. We discussed possible counter arguments as well as the ‘controversial’ nature of her paper. I encouraged her not to go too far, but to keep her argument manageable. We also discussed possible material for her introduction and conclusion. Due to her difficulty finding her original source, Saraphin was unable to finish her annotated bibliography. She will turn it in as soon as possible. She will also be writing the first draft of her second paper for next week.

In class on Monday, Delanie and I discussed the final draft of her first paper and her thought letter for her next paper, on the documentary Dark Days.  For her final draft, I said that her role as the author/interpreter became much stronger throughout her drafts and her passive voice and scene descriptions had improved.  We talked about variety of language (she repeated certain words like “inability,” “investment,” etc. throughout the paper), clarity, and some grammar (commas, gerunds) as places to focus on improving next.  I also pulled out some phrases from her body paragraphs that I thought were stronger than the language of her thesis, so we edited the thesis together.  Moving to her next paper, I thought she might need to narrow her topic from what she covered in her letter, so we worked on an outline in class.  I also had her identify two scenes where she could highlight the director’s work and the dialogue, to encourage this close analysis right from the start.  She came prepared with a great working thesis that I think she’ll be able to expand upon once she starts writing.  Her first draft is due on Saturday night.

Estefania turned in her final draft of her first paper and a thought letter for her speech assignment this week.  In the last draft of her historical paper, she made some productive changes to her thesis and conclusion, which feels much more complete now.  She neglected some issues we talked about in class though, about punctuation, integrating shorter pieces of evidence into the flow of a sentence, and heavy academic language.  In her thought letter, she wrote that she wants to take on the role of a conservative politician akin to Ted Cruz in her speech.  I still had some more questions about the context and purpose of her speech, but she wants to research these points, so I asked her to add a paragraph of introduction to the first draft of her speech due next Tuesday.  In class, I had her write a paragraph response to the rhetorical tools MLK Jr. uses in a YouTube clip of his “I Have a Dream” speech, especially focusing on integrating his words into her sentences smoothly.  I had her expand on some points she made to really draw out as much as possible from the speech, but overall she did very well.  I sent her this link as a reference for speechwriting: http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/98-170.pdf.

10/20/13:

Saraphin wrote the final draft of her first paper for this week’s meeting. The final draft was a great improvement over the first and second, particularly in terms of topic sentences and argument clarity. I wrote her a formal letter discussing the paper and she agreed with my points. She saw many areas of improvement and seems confident going into the next paper. Although I had written some comments on her final draft, we both felt that it was time to move on and that she could look at these comments later if she decides to edit the paper for a final portfolio. We discussed the plan for the next paper and she seems prepared. She will be writing about a political documentary and we discussed different ways she could approach this paper. I brought a prize-winning sociology paper for Saraphin to read. She has been working on many aspects of her own writing and I thought it would be helpful for her to see how another author approaches these same aspects of writing. She ended up disagreeing with many of the author’s choices, particularly around topic sentences and argument clarity, two of the areas in which she struggled most. We discussed ways the author could improve and I could tell that she had absorbed quite a bit from our discussions about her own writing. For next week, Saraphin will be watching the documentary, writing a thoughtletter on it, and working on an annotated bibliography for paper 3. As our meeting was pushed up due to Fall Break and she has a shorter amount of time to complete these assignments (and because she seemed so prepared and I didn’t feel there was anything we absolutely had to work on), I let her go a bit early so that she could watch the documentary.

Today Kailin and I finished up Essay 1. While Kailin had addressed all of the specific edits and revisions I’d pointed out, I wanted her to look at the essay with a critical eye. Kailin told me that she struggles to improve her writing on her own because when she reads through her essays she doesn’t see her grammatical mistakes or see places where her argument could be improved. Instead of reading through the essay in her head, I recommended she read it out loud. Kailin told me she’d never done this before and was hesitant at first. But doing so proved fruitful, for as she read through it she found the places (without me saying anything) where the phrases were redundant or the wording could be improved.

Then, I had Kailin look over the very first draft of the essay with a critical eye. I had her mark it up as if she were to give herself feedback. This gave me a good sense of what she had learned and retained in completing the first essay. Based on the exercise, Kailin appears to be catching on quickly on how she can improve her writing.

Next we began our second unit, which is focusing on how Asian-American stereotypes are reinforced or broken by The Joy Luck Club in the book by Amy Tan and film by Wayne Wang. We reviewed over the readings and discussed the assignment (Thought Letter 2). Both Kailin and I are looking forward to launching into new material!

Today Kailin and I worked on improving Essay 1. We worked mainly on sentence-level details:

• making phrases more clear and specific
• avoiding unclear syntactical constructions (eg. gerunds)
• getting citations to feel more smooth in the context of her argument
• adding in transitions so the sentences and the ideas carried within them flow nicely from one to another

She will continue polishing up the essay this week, and then we’ll move on to Essay 2.

Delanie and I didn’t meet this week because of Fall Break, but she sent me the final draft of her paper and I returned it with feedback.  Most of my comments this time around urged her to use more specific language, and I pointed out some grammar concerns, like comma and preposition usage, that I plan to spend some time going over in class.  She also tends to use the same words throughout a paper, so I made a list of the words I felt were repetitive.  She responded really well to my comments on her conclusion and made it more powerful in her final draft.  She also turned in a thought letter for her next paper, so we’ll turn to that outline as well in class on Monday.

Estefania’s second draft of her paper included a piece I felt was missing the first time around (one side of a historical debate) and I was glad to see she filled this gap.  She tends to use block citation as her default, so we talked about ways to incorporate evidence into her sentences for variety.  She also overuses parentheses and dashes, so I brought the Hacker Guide to class on Thursday, and she realizes that dashes can make for choppy writing and that parentheses should be reserved for supplemental information and afterthoughts.  We went through her introduction line-by-line to talk about writing concisely.  Most of these issues can be resolved with proofreading, but I also thought her thesis and conclusion could use some work, so she’s turning in a true final draft on Tuesday, as well as a thought letter for her speechwriting assignment, where she will outline preliminary research on a current political topic in San Antonio and set the parameters for her hypothetical speech (i.e. audience make-up, level of government, venue).

10/13/13:

Saraphin turned in the second draft of her first paper for this week’s meeting. She had originally planned to make it the final draft , but, after reading my comments, decided to keep it as the second draft. She will turn in the final draft for next week’s meeting. The paper was much improved since the first draft. She had updated the thesis and introduction to more truly reflect her argument and she had worked on transitions and explanations throughout the paper. Her sentences were clearer and less vague. I had written her a short letter outlining what I thought were the three main areas needing the most improvement and she agreed that these were her weakest areas. We first discussed matching the order of the introduction to the order of the paragraphs and fitting her now five sentence thesis into one sentence. We then discussed cutting out a section of the paper which seemed tangential and unnecessary. Finally, we discussed her topic sentences. We tried the reverse outline exercise and went topic sentence by topic sentence. She was quite receptive and her resulting topic sentences were much clearer and more argument driven. Saraphin had requested more preposition exercises because she continues to struggle with them (particularly when to use “of” vs. “from,” “to,” “on,” “about,” etc.). I gave her two links which she will look at on her own: a silly preposition game (http://www.eslgamesplus.com/verbs-followed-by-prepositions-esl-grammar-activity-online/) and a list of words and prepositions which almost always go together (http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/prepositions.htm). I thought that she struggled most with preposition use in academic papers (she has no trouble understanding the simple prepositions which most of the online activities cover), so I took all the prepositions out of one of my college paper introductions and had her fill them in. She found the activity helpful and we discussed which prepositions are interchangeable and which ones change meaning. It is hard to find an exercise which targets her specific difficulties, so we decided to continue to look at her use of prepositions in her own papers. She may highlight prepositions she is unsure about so that we can discuss them together.

On Tuesday, Delanie and I went over her second draft of her first paper.  She filled many gaps in the first draft by making many more explicit connections for the reader and improving her topic and concluding sentences.  We went through it together, paying special attention to transitions, and looking for repetitive phrases that should be “flags” that she can make her language more concise.  I talked about the importance of careful proofreading to catch simple grammar mistakes, omitted words, etc.  I had her do an online exercise in editing the passive voice, because she had 10+ passive issues in this draft.  Finally, we discussed conclusions and directions she could take to have a broader, more powerful last paragraph.  She said she was happy with her progress between the two drafts and surprised to realize how much she could add to her first effort.  We don’t have class next Monday, but I asked that she send me her final draft by Saturday, and watch Dark Days and write a thought letter by the next Saturday.

In class last week, Estefania and I talked a lot about the structure of paragraphs, how each ideally presents and proves a certain point under the umbrella of the thesis, and how each paragraph break should feel purposeful/deliberate.  Early this week, I took a reading response assignment that I had done for Professor Rodensky last semester and highlighted topic sentences, context, supporting details, conclusion, and transition within two separate paragraphs and shared them with Estefania because she asked for something to reference and visualize what we discussed.  She turned in the first complete draft of her paper before class on Thursday, which had an impressive thesis and good voice from sentence to sentence, but felt incomplete.  Also, the historical section of the paper was lost in too many names of people and places she had found in her research.  We talked about how to clarify this into one coherent story, how to add to her analysis of some songs lyrics she included, and how to circle back to her thesis meaningfully in her conclusion.  Her grammar and phrasing was very good but we spent a few minutes going over block citation.  She definitely responded well to the three-story thesis document and the paragraph models.  I think her next draft will be close to its final form, but we may go a bit into the next week, too, for a true third draft.

Happy Fall Break everyone!

10/6/13:

Saraphin wrote the first draft of her first paper for this week’s meeting. She was a little late to our meeting due to being held up at a Help Room for another class. We discussed changing the time of our meetings so that she doesn’t have to rush/be late. She will let me know by email if she thinks a time change will help. We spent the majority of the time looking at my comments and discussing her first draft. Saraphin wondered whether it was okay that she had added a few more sources and whether she had cited them correctly. We discussed ‘common knowledge’ and when a citation is necessary. She may use footnotes in the final draft. I thought that she did a nice job of incorporating her many sources while still maintaining her own unique argument. It was clear that she had put a lot of work into this paper. She said that her biggest struggle was organization, but that she was ultimately happy with the order of her paragraphs. After reading it for the first time, I thought that her organization was unclear and confusing. Her thesis statement seemed different than her actual argument, she didn’t have true topic sentences, and the counter-argument paragraphs were not identified as such. We started the ‘writing the main point of the paragraph in the margins’ exercise and spent some time revising her topic sentences and transitions. We discussed changing the order of her paragraphs, but I stopped the exercise when I realized that her out-dated thesis was the root of the problem. I helped her see the shortcomings in her thesis and she rewrote it to include the counter-argument (using an ‘although xyz, …’ construction). I used a three story thesis handout to help her revise. After seeing her revised thesis, we decided that her paragraph order could remain the same. We also discussed some places which would benefit from elaboration and specificity. Saraphin seemed confident about writing the second draft and said that she may turn it into the final draft. I thought that she could write the final draft for next week and told her that she could start the second paper a week early or do another short writing assignment. Finally, Saraphin requested a preposition activity for next week. I may make one up based on her particular struggles with prepositions. Depending on the quality of her final draft, I may also discuss her “voice” in the paper.