WRIT 199 TAs

I had Delanie write a reverse outline for her first draft of her paper on the documentary Home.  She wrote the topic of each paragraph, and a sentence explaining its relationship to her thesis.  This revealed a disconnect between the points she meant to make and what she wrote, which was missing a lot of the analysis she explained to me out loud in earlier classes.  In her next draft, I asked her to rewrite each topic sentence with these connections in mind.  I also asked that she include a close “scene analysis,” like the ones we’ve practiced, in every paragraph.  We talked about a stronger opening as well.  I highlighted phrases in her writing that were awkward and wordy, so she can look out for these issues, and I plan to go into sentence-level stuff more in the second draft.  Our meeting next week will be on Tuesday because she has a doctor’s appointment on Monday.

Estefania was in touch with me before her paper was due, feeling overwhelmed by all that we’ve talked about in class, and trying to incorporate it at once with her own writing voice, so I shortened her assignment to three paragraphs.  Her introduction was good, but then she went into historical background and organization became a little murky.  I had her look back at her thoughtletter and write a more concrete outline, and showed her an example of one of mine.  I clarified that she shouldn’t end or begin a paragraph without a good reason.  In other words, her paragraphs should be comprehensive, making an argument under the umbrella of the thesis argument.  Hers, she said, have always tended to be shorter paragraphs part of a narrative essay, without real topic sentences.  We spent most of the class on discussion, but it felt very productive to me, and she has an outline that I’m happy with for her complete first draft due on Tuesday.

Today Kailin and I reviewed her first draft. Tiger Mother Draft 1 We began by talking about how the writing process went for her. She told me that she tried to begin with an outline and then write the essay, but that it made it feel disjointed, so she reverted to free writing to get the sense that her ideas were flowing. I let her know how pleased

I was with her thesis statement, which is of the appropriate scope for the assignment. I think last week’s discussion of thesis statements was helpful to her. I then overviewed what aspects of her essay we want to work on, before we jumped into the revising process. There are three particular areas I want her to focus on:

1. Making phrasing more fluid and language more exact

2. Topic and concluding sentences for each paragraph

3. Using more citations from the text to back up her points, especially in Paragraph 2.

Our biggest breakthrough was the addition of topic and concluding sentences for the body paragraphs. Adding them developed her thinking on the topic and deepened her argument considerably. It was amazing to her and to me how just a bit of revising could make for such a large improvement on the essay. She’ll be submitting a second draft to me next week.

9/29/13:

For this week’s meeting, Saraphin wrote a thoughtletter on the readings for her first paper. She told me that she had struggled with repetition and had left in a few of her repetitious sentences so that we could talk about them together. We talked about these areas (not as many or as grave as she had thought) as well as sentences which could be phrased more concisely or clearly. We also talked about prepositions and a few other grammar rules (commas, semi-colons, misplaced modifiers). These sentence-level issues are not a huge struggle for her, but the few mistakes she does make stand out. We went over my comments on her thoughtletter, most of which asked for clarification/specificity or identified issues she may want to bring into her full paper. She plans on using the readings to take a stance on US intervention in Syria. The thoughtletter summarized the readings and explained why she agreed with the writers, but it did not have a specific argument. While discussing her potential argument, we realized that she agrees whole-heartedly with both writers and that both writers agree with each other (they are all anti-intervention). We discussed possible arguments which would stay true to her beliefs but keep her argument from sounding like a summary of the readings. She suggested that she argue for intervention as practice. She said that her friend disagrees with her and that, after talking to him, she could write the paper against the readings. We entertained this possibility for awhile, but ultimately decided that she should argue for the side that she truly believes. I told her that I was concerned that her paper would suffer if she was arguing for something she disagreed with. I did encourage her, however, to include all of her friend’s arguments as counter-arguments. Her final plan, as we left it, was to write a ‘situation analysis’ paper in which she uses the readings, her friend’s point of view, and her own beliefs to discuss all sides of the argument and ultimately conclude that the US should not intervene. I helped her make a list of most of the arguments for and against intervention and we discussed how she can organize her paper around some of these points. She seemed confident with the plan at the end of the meeting. Finally, I gave her an article I had seen about a sarcasm punctuation mark (http://www.geek.com/news/new-punctuation-mark-created-to-aid-those-who-write-sarcastically-1055331/) just for fun. (My hidden intention was to discourage sarcasm in her paper).

In class on Monday, I pulled some sentences out of Delanie’s thought letter to work on clarity (eliminating some prepositional phrases and using specific language) and writing with an active voice.  We also began making an outline for her first paper, especially thinking about length, because she had listed many topics she wanted to cover in her thought letter.  I shared and went over the three-story thesis model to keep in mind as she’s writing her first draft, which is due on Saturday.

Estefania and I moved our class to Wednesday.  We went over her thought letter for a historical paper about the legend of the Yellow Rose of Texas.  We discussed possible thesis statements, I shared the three-story thesis document with her, and we talked about thesis statements for history papers in particular.  I had her make her thought letter into an outline and draft some topic sentences.  We edited these sentences to make them more specific and less like a narrative.  I’m hoping to bring more concrete/structured info about topic sentences to class next week.  I also had the opportunity to meet her dad over parents’ weekend and explain the Writ 199 course to him!  Estefania’s first draft is due on Wednesday.

In my meeting with Delanie on Monday, she turned in a short paragraph that she wrote about a scene from Doctor Who (The Widow and the Wardrobe, 55:00).  Her observations were great, and we edited some passive sentences and some that were too vague (dangling modifiers and “his emotional response”).  In class, I had her summarize another scene in five sentences and then in one sentence, to work on concision and pulling out the most important aspects of a scene to introduce pieces of analysis.  For next week, she is watching the documentary Home and writing a thoughtletter to plan her first paper.

With Estefania on Thursday, we went over her paragraph on Eleanor Roosevelt’s chapter “How Everyone Can Take Part in Politics.”  Her sentence clarity and flow were very good, and she has a strong personal voice in her writing.  She made two claims, however, without any textual support, so I had her go back and add this evidence during class.  She did the same summary exercise (5 sentences and then 1 sentence) for the chapter and did well.  I assigned her a thought letter as well, that in this case will work as a sort of essay proposal and research plan for her first paper, about some part of San Antonio’s history.

For this week’s meeting, Saraphin read excerpts from Sin Boldly and Bird by Bird and wrote a thoughtletter about the public reaction to the Boston Marathon bombing and acts of terrorism in general. We spent the majority of the meeting discussing the thoughtletter. Saraphin stated that she had enjoyed the assignment and had written many pages on the subject. She cut down unnecessary parts in order to make the page limit and said that this helped her with concision. She also said that she had practiced using “free-writing” bullet points and that this exercise had been extremely helpful. The paper adequately addressed a complicated topic and argument in a very small amount of space. It would be a very solid start to a full paper on the subject. However, her word choice and phrasing made the argument unclear and confusing. There were quite a few instances of incorrect prepositions. We discussed prepositions and I plan on bringing a more formal preposition handout to our next meeting. She said that when she translates sentences into Arabic, she can understand why or why not to use certain prepositions. She also used “SAT words” when simple words would have conveyed the same message without distracting or confusing the reader. We discussed the benefits of simple phrasing and words and she will work on this in the future. Many other words were confusing because Saraphin had meant for them to be read sarcastically or for them to stand in for larger explanations. For example, she wrote: “If the Tsarnaev brothers were not Muslim, perhaps they would be honored as mentally dysfunctional and given the help they needed.” By using the word “honored,” she meant to indicate that, in the United States, being Muslim is believed to be worse than having a mental illness. We discussed why the reader would be confused in these instances and she seemed to understand. She added explanations and elaborations to many sentences, including those that she had meant to be sarcastic. We discussed the difficulties with writing sarcastically. She had enjoyed Bird by Bird, particularly Ann Lamott’s occasionally sarcastic voice. I plan on bringing some ‘sarcastic’ readings for her next week so that she can see how other writers handle sarcasm. We discussed what she would do if she had to turn the thoughtletter into a paper. We discussed her assignment for next week (a thoughtletter on the readings for her first paper) and she seemed comfortable with the assignment. Finally, we looked at some handouts on active reading, choosing evidence, and “four steps” in order to prepare for her first paper.