Haley Troy, 2/2/13
Haley and I met for the first time and discussed the layout and expectations of the course. She is taking the course graded and had some questions about the grading distribution, all of which I have been able to answer. She expressed that she feels that she is an average writer, but that she is not confident with her writing. When she was in high school, different teachers had different expectations and she did poorly on papers she felt good about, or the other way around. She also stated that she procrastinates and has difficulty planning papers due to extreme writing anxiety. I proposed that we establish a writing plan for her at the end of each weekly meeting, and she thought that this was a good idea. I also plan on reading a chapter about writing anxiety from Anne Lamott’s novel Bird by Bird with her during our next meeting. We also discussed Haley’s chosen topic. She is interested in neuroscience in general, but had a difficult time narrowing the topic because she felt she needed to do more research. She is particularly interested in memory and mental illnesses. We discussed how she would start the article search and we have emailed back and forth about the article search many times since. She has been searching on her own and met with a reference librarian, but has needed some guidance regarding which articles lend themselves to paper writing. Finally, I gave her a 2-page assignment to write a self assessment of herself as a writer in the form of a letter to me. She seemed comfortable with the assignment.
Maud Muosieyiri 2/2/13
Maud and I met for the first time and discussed the layout and expectations of the course. She had many questions about the course, most of which I was able to answer during the meeting. She is taking the course graded and was at first worried that I would report back to you if she asked a stupid question. I explained my role and that, of course, there are no stupid questions. She seemed to be motivated and hard-working and expected the same of me; she wants as many comments as I can give her and clear assignments, rubrics, and expectations. She expressed that she wants to improve her writing in general: grammar, organization, clarity, sentence-level, etc. I explained to her that I would comment on all aspects of her writing and that we would have a lot of time for this sort of thing, and she seemed pleased. Maud had a difficult time narrowing her topic of neuroscience and could not identify a sub-topic she was interested in. She wanted to continue the search on her own and we looked into her seeing a reference librarian. She said that she may scrap neuroscience for public health and she has done this since. She now has a specific topic of HIV/Aids in sub-Saharan Africa, with a few subtopics, but is having trouble finding articles. I am supporting her with her search and have extended the syllabus deadline accordingly. Finally, I gave her a 2-page assignment to write a self assessment of herself as a writer in the form of a letter to me. She was at first unsure whether I wanted a “factual” letter or a more “fluffed” letter. I am not sure yet whether she will need support with style (and understanding that writing can be both factual and interesting/ “fluffed”), so I may assign a reading along these lines.
Maud Muosieyiri, 2/9/13
I had my first full meeting with Maud. We started by discussing her thoughtletter on how she sees herself as a writer and the Alex Johnson reading. She found the Johnson reading to be very helpful; we discussed her own anxieties around writing and she was comforted by the realization that even seasoned writers experience anxiety. While discussing the reading, she expressed that she worries so much about a professor’s expectations that her writing becomes stilted. She reported that she has never practiced free writing, but instead starts a paper by writing what she thinks the professor wants her to write. I had planned another activity on close reading, but I decided to have her do an exercise on free writing. I had her read a very short controversial article about a new kind of syringe reported to limit the spread of HIV/AIDs and then free write about it. She was at first very wary about this exercise and needed some encouragement that her initial reactions and ideas were not “wrong” or too vague, but the beginnings of argument. She plugged away, came up with a page’s worth of comments and arguments, and seemed pleased with the result. We verbally discussed her main argument against the paper as well as her main points. We then took one of her examples and, using the Choosing Evidence and Four Steps handouts, discussed how she could incorporate the example into a paper. She found this exercise helpful, particularly in reminding her to bring the argument back to the thesis. Finally, I gave her some readings from Sin Boldly and Allyn and Baker and the assignment for next week. She will be writing a thoughtletter on what she learned from these readings. We discussed thoughtletters in general, as she reported that she has never written one.
Haley Troy, 2/9/13
Haley was sick this week, so we had our first full meeting on Thursday instead of Monday. We started by discussing her thoughtletter on how she sees herself as a writer and what she would like to work on. She stated in the letter that she has a particularly difficult time with creative assignments. Although she is wary about writing more creative assignments, she would like to improve in this area. I adjusted her homework assignment to include a creative element. We discussed the Alex Johnson reading, which she found very interesting. I then had her read a short (and very dated) Psychology article. She had felt worried about how to begin writing about her chosen articles, so I thought that we could go through the process of finding arguments/evidence and close reading this article. It was very difficult for her to verbalize her reactions to the article beyond “they’re wrong.” I realize now that the article was somewhat difficult to understand. We went through the Choosing Evidence and Four Steps handouts, using evidence from the article as examples. Finally, she stated that she would like to begin the process for her first paper as soon as possible. I think that this is a good idea, as we will be able to work more on finding an argument and smoothing out any problems earlier rather than later. We moved next week’s assignment to this week. She will be reading the article for her first paper and writing a thoughtletter about it. She will also be reading excerpts from Sin Boldly and Allyn and Baker about finding an argument, as well as an excerpt from Bird by Bird about writing anxiety, all if she has time. If she has more time, she will also write a more creative thoughtletter about her reactions to these readings.
Your approach to working with this student in particular is creative and very multi-layered, and I look forward to seeing how her writing develops over the next 4 weeks after you focus on these activities.
In class on Monday, Qi and I discussed the writing self-assessment that she wrote for homework. She wants to work on sentence structure and word choice, and told me that her writing professor suggested she keep a journal of common sentence structures she uses to correct her mistakes, so she can use them again in the future. I pulled out some run-on sentences from her work and she was able to correct them. Next we did an exercise with two articles considering the same subject (the American “law school crisis”) and talked about the differences between the authors’ perspectives. I asked her to summarize each article in a paragraph and then in a sentence. This activity took longer than I anticipated, so I think I will mention a time frame before more in-class writing. For next week, she is choosing another article and writing a summary and formal paragraph either disagreeing with or expanding upon its argument with evidence. I really appreciate Qi’s enthusiasm and the questions she asks.
On Tuesday, I met with Professor Rothschild and Professor Lederman to talk about class with Qi. Professor Rothschild taught a class on writing for Economics last semester and added me to the Sakai site where I could see his past assignments. He emphasized a need for clarity in Economics writing, suggested some scholarly journals for readings, and told me that many contemporary economists are blogging, which I hope to incorporate. Professor Lederman read Qi’s first assignment with me and I asked him some of the questions that I hadn’t known how to answer (i.e. How do I know when to use articles?). He told me that there’s no answer besides to practice reading and writing. He told me to be encouraging and while editing, to focus on mistakes that obscure meaning instead of getting hung up on missing articles. The meeting made me feel better and more qualified to teach Qi and get her as much practice as possible during Writ 199.
In class with Ashley on Tuesday, we read two essays by prominent figures of the Harlem Renaissance. “The Negro-Art Hokum” by George Schuyler and Langston Hughes’s response “The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain” present the conflict over whether or not “black art” should be distinct from “American art.” We discussed the essays and did the summary exercise (paragraph to sentence) with editing. I was able to manage the time better than I had with Qi. Writing the single sentence summary also led to a discussion of thesis statements. For homework, I asked her to read another essay, “Criteria of Negro Art” by W.E.B. Du Bois and answer one of four questions about it in a formal paragraph. I’m enjoying Ashley’s subject so much and she asks plenty of questions that help me focus on the things she wants to learn.
This week Cheryl and Sophie turned in their first writing assignments, which were to write a short letter discussing their strengths and weaknesses as writers and their goals for the semester.
Sophie’s piece was fairly well-organized and thoughtful. Mistakes were mostly confined to a few clearly identifiable areas, which I was able to highlight both in my comments on her letter and during out meeting. A particular weakness appears to be confusing tenses, but when we went through her letter together she was able to make corrections with little prompting and seemed to grasp my explanations about when different tenses should be used depending on what she’s discussing in her letter. We then did an exercise I found online. Sophie seems motivated, eager to learn, and much less confident than her writing deserves.
Cheryl’s letter was harder to approach than Sophie’s. It was riddled with many small errors that seemed to indicate a basic lack of proofreading, and it was very disorganized. Several of her sentences or phrases were very awkwardly phrased, a weakness she herself identified in the letter. Although it was easy to spot a couple areas that Sophie could focus in on, Cheryl’s problems are much more diverse. During our meeting I had her read aloud awkward sentences, but she doesn’t seem to have a very good ear for hearing mistakes. However, when I had her explain aloud what she was trying to communicate, she was able to eloquently and concisely express her thoughts. She told me that many of her problems stem from trying to translate her thoughts directly from Korean into English while writing, so I suggested that she try to talk through her ideas whenever she finds herself starting to do this. We did a close reading exercise that revealed a significant problem with not knowing when to use articles (esp. “a” and “the”), so I had her do a quick worksheet. We discussed her problems with organization briefly, but I think we’ll wait to directly tackle this problem for another week or two.
Their second assignment is to read an article about famous writers’ strange writing processes, as well as a Sin Boldly chapter on the writing process, and then write a 2-3 page reflection. Their assignments included a personalized list of things to watch out for and work on based on their previous assignments, which I hope will prove helpful.
Read Chloe’s posting, above, about Prof Josh Lederman’s advice about ELLs and missing articles.
Also–can you share the online exercise you found, for verb tense? Thanks.
Thanks! I’ll definitely take Chloe and Lederman’s advice to heart. I’m going to try to arrange a meeting with Josh Lederman in the upcoming week.
I’ve been using Perdue OWL to find some good writing exercises that address a variety of problems. For example, the tense exercises can be found here: http://owl.english.purdue.edu/exercises/2/22
Violet and Eka both turned in their first assignments this week and wrote 2-3 page thoughtletters to discuss their strengths and weaknesses as writers and their objectives in taking Writing 199.
Violet’s letter was ridden with grammatical errors. The most apparent issue was her misuse of different very tenses, and I decided to focus our first session on learning different verb tenses and appropriate uses. There were also many examples of awkward phrasing or incorrect word choice that I highlighted and discussed with her. I had her write all of the correct versions of her sentences and tenses in her “grammar notes” so that she could review and learn from her errors, which I think was very helpful to her. I used the chart from this website (http://www.myenglishpages.com/site_php_files/grammar-lesson-tenses.php) just to go over the different tenses and we made it to the present perfect simple. I am planning to finish the tenses with her tomorrow and then go onto the online exercises section to give her additional examples and practice.
Eka’s thoughtletter was very well written and I was struck with her clearly defined, journalistic voice throughout her paper. She has good sentence variety and generally clear prose, although there were a few minor grammatical errors that I pointed out to her. I think that Eka struggles with correct, precise word choice and occasional awkward phrasing. She also said that she has trouble with “going deeper” in her analysis and wordiness and is hoping to sound more academic in future papers, so I will keep an eye out for these issues in other papers. We went over her paper together and discussed general writing techniques . I also had her “free write” about her experience at Wellesley so far just to have more examples of her writing. We went over this rough draft as well and pointed out areas where word choice was incorrect or phrasing was awkward.
This week, Violet and Eka will both submit a second thoughtletter after reading segments from the Allyn and Bacon Guide to Writing, specifically the passage about wallowing in complexity, and Lynn Hunt’s article, “How Writing Leads to Thinking and Not the Other Way Around.” I chose these articles for them to understand the importance in improving their writing skills and to introduce specific techniques for them to work on throughout the semester. For next week, they will complete the reading for their first main assignments and submit a preliminary thoughtletter to discuss the areas they would like to address in their first drafts.
This week at the beginning of class Chimuanya and I went through what she had written about, her goals for the semester. She wants to work on her ability to identify grammatical errors in her writing, and to develop a “concrete, concise, and cohesive” argument (her words). We reviewed the syllabus as it stands now. I explained the policies of the class for turning in an assignment and making up class if she gets sick. She was in agreement with the policies and excited about the readings. We talked about other sources, including Geoffrey Canada, Michelle Rhee, Deborah Meier, and the documentary, “Waiting for Superman.” I told her she will need to meet with a research librarian to help find good sources for her third essay by March 8th. She said that she has worked with a research librarian in the past and found it helpful, and would have no problem doing it once again. Next, I reviewed this week’s readings with her (the Woodson and Baldwin articles), explained what a thought letter was, and what I was looking for in her first assignment.
In meeting with Shruthi this week, we first clarified her writing goals further to the following: sophisticated and elegant language (no clunky sentence structure), clarity and organization of ideas, multiple drafts, better time management, and improved reading comprehension. Then we went through the syllabus. She loved the reading I assigned last week, and was enthusiastic about the ones listed on the syllabus. We also discussed the policies for turning in work and making up class if she gets sick. I verified with her that she had elected the course credit/non on Banner. I told her she will need to arrange to meet with a research librarian by March 8th to go over sources for her research essay, and she said this would not be a problem.
Next, we talked about the author’s main points in the assigned article, “Big Foot.” We went through the thought letter that she prepared, and discussed which ideas she will develop in her essay. Overall her ideas were strong but the mechanics were weak. Because she had only written a page, I told her one way of adding length and clarity would be to explain the terms she uses if their meaning is not explicit and they are not used in the text. Then I explained the assignment for the first essay to her, and we began brainstorming. She had a lot of ideas at the start, but they weren’t connected, so I helped her sort through them. On a plain sheet of paper, I made up a grid that she could use to figure out which ideas should go in which paragraph. By the end she was able to do it on her own. She was enthusiastic about the outline, and noted that it was very helpful to her. Her first essay is due next week.
Also, because both of my students named reading comprehension as a problem, I reviewed importance of active reading and gave them some strategies to make it easier. I will try to attach the handout, as it may be helpful for other students as well.
Wednesday February 6, 2013
Chelsi and I had a productive meeting today. We spent most of the session working on in-class exercises, which I designed to help her understand that writing is a process (to be supplemented by her readings for next week), identify the pillars of a good expository essay, and become aware of how to cut down on wordy sentences. Chelsi found the wordiness exercise especially helpful (she didn’t realize some of them could be cut down so much) and circled a few examples to remember for future reference. For the second revision exercise, she misunderstood the prompt and rewrote her paragraph in the style of a newspaper report instead of an academic essay (I’ll have to remember to emphasize that part tomorrow with Kelsey)… but that was okay, because we got to talk more about different styles of writing Her third revision exercise yielded some awkward sentences/sentence sequencing, so we also got to talk about transitions/logic/thesis, which made good preview of next week’s class. Overall, Chelsi seems to have a firm grasp of what a good academic paper looks like, but needs to practice translating that knowledge into her own writing. I look forward to receiving her next paper.
February 7, 2013
Kelsey had a much stronger reaction to the Alex Johnson article than Chelsey. She came to the meeting excited about how much she identified with the “Procrastinator” and “Internal Critic.” We discussed methods of overcoming the two issues, and she resolved to make clearer outlines (she really doesn’t like making outlines) and pace herself so that she will have enough time to revise (not her favorite part of the writing process). Kelsey was quite thoughtful in her comparison of her two writing pieces and found wordiness exercise especially challenging and eye-opening. The example on Macbeth yielded the reaction: “Oh, jeez, if I had to write this I’d definitely write something like that first example!” I think she may have taken the lesson a little too much to heart, though, because her third revision turned out to be very spartan. I suppose it would be easier to add details once you have a solid structure, though. We started talking about three-story theses toward the end of the class. I plan to continue on the topic next class, instead of working on close reading exercises as I had originally planned. Both Chelsi and Kelsey have been a joy to work with (Kelsey has been especially responsive and eager to learn).
February 13, 2013
Chelsi and I worked on introduction/thesis and organization today. We began to discuss these issues toward the end of last class so I thought it would be a nice segue into a new unit. Her thoughtletters also indicated to me that these were what she needed most work on at the moment, so the timing was perfect. Chelsi mentioned learning about the “three story thesis” in her FYWriting course but not fully understanding what it meant, so I went over the Paul Revere exercise with her (Olin material). When she still didn’t understand the concept, I had her use the three story thesis to explain her friend’s recent breakup with her boyfriend, as we just happened to have talked about it before class. That was helpful because it made her realize that the “three story thesis” isn’t a completely foreign concept after all — she already uses it in her daily conversations with friends! (This exchange reminded me of what Gerald Graff said about arguments in Clueless in Academe). Once she understood the concept, I had her map out and evaluate the first paragraph of her next assigned reading based on the three story thesis to reinforce her understanding of the concept. She demonstrated some good critical thinking skills, which would be helpful for her next writing assignment. For the rest of the class, we worked on revising the first paragraph from her thoughtletter #1. I had initially planned for her to revise her thoughtletter #2 as well, but decided she would benefit more from additional work on clarity/precision/logical transitions, so she will now do that on her own for next week. By the end of the class, Chelsi was pleased to have produced a revised version of her introduction that was more concise, “scholarly”, and clearly structured, while still maintaining her own voice and personality. She seems to be soaking in everything we discuss in class. I look forward to receiving her next thoughtletter.
February 14, 2013
Kelsey had never heard of the three-story thesis before. When I first explained it to her using the Paul Revere example, she appeared to have grasped it right away. However, when we tried to come up with a real-life example, she struggled. We brainstormed a few scenarios together until she exclaimed, “Oh! I think I understand it a little better now!” I think she enjoyed the challenge of both coming up with an idea to write about on the spot and putting a new skill into practice. I appreciated her questions along the way (“do you use ‘yet’ when you begin the second story?”). Interestingly enough, her chosen topic was again on managing time in college, which was what she wrote about in our in-class assignment last week. (Perhaps this would be a nice regular mini-essay topic to pursue for in-class writing exercises… we could compare all her drafts at the end of the semester to see how her writing evolved. Hmm, I wonder if I could do the same with Chelsi, as well?) We ended up spending more time than I had planned on this part (she is a bit of a perfectionist) but I think it was good exercise for her, and we were able to revisit issues of wordiness/logic flow while we were at it. Later, I had Kelsey evaluate the opening paragraph of her next reading assignment and together we confirmed that it was in fact written in a perfect three-story thesis format (I really liked how she talked me through her thought process, step by step). We also predicted what the rest of the paper would include, based on what we read in the introduction paragraph. We’ll come back to her prediction once she has actually read the whole article and then complete our evaluation of the introduction paragraph. Toward the end of class, we revisited her thoughtletter #2 and I was pleased to see that Kelsey was able to immediately identify areas that she needed to fix, based on what we talked about today. I think we made a lot of progress! I look forward to receiving her next thoughtletter, as well.
This week, I met with Amy and Nhung. I am very pleased with Amy’s writing and I think she is actually a very good writer–perhaps she just needs a little extra motivation or benefits especially from one-on-one work. She does not need much help with word choice or using more sophisticated syntax, so I am really looking forward to working with her on the larger level stuff, like polishing a full essay. One issue is that I think Amy’s readings so far may not be adequate for writing a 5-6 page paper. We discussed this and I think that she is definitely at a point where she could do a little research and find a few extra readings that are relevant to the topic she chooses. Depending on her progress on this on Tuesday, I will give her the go ahead; if I think it will be better for me to just choose a specific topic for her, then I will do that instead.
Nhung has also been very good to work with. I think I need to address some ESL issues, such as using consistent verb tenses throughout a sentence and practicing noun/verb agreement, but her ability to come up with interesting ideas and to understand the more complicated writing techniques is excellent. We have been discussing different types of thesis statements–analytical, expository, and argumentative–and practicing writing examples of each. I have also had her practice re-writing some of her most promising sentences (from her written homework) to make them for specific and to help come up with some potential theses. I would definitely appreciate any insight on how to work with her on the ESL related stuff, as this is something I really want to make sure I do correctly (I don’t want to just highlight all of the errors and call it a day).
Marilynn, check in with Professo Josh Lederman and ask him for a meeting to go over Nhung’s writing issues–the ones that are ELL based. He has the theoretical as well as the practical knowledge to make you a more efficient TA in this situation. And he’s happy to help us out here.
Violet submitted her thoughtletter reflecting on the reading assignments from Allyn and Bacon and Lynn Hunt and drew many interesting conclusions. She liked the concept of “idea mapping” from Allyn and Bacon, and discussed her use of idea mapping to memorize math formulas and applying this technique to organizing her thoughts before writing. She also revealed that she typically types her sentences into Google to see if other people use similar grammar structures to check if she is correct – what do you think about this habit? I asked her to refrain from doing that in this course so that I could see her writing without any online corrections. I also identified 5 sentences with grammatical errors for her to rewrite in her grammar book and we continued to work on verb tenses from the handout that I gave her during our previous session. We went to the online website to complete some of the practice problems together, and it seemed like she was really getting the hang of the basic verb tenses.
She read Hillary Clinton’s speech on US-China relations from 2011 for this week and though I can tell she greatly enjoyed the reading material, her thoughtletter is very scattered and it is very difficult to discern what she is trying to argue. She jumps from topic to topic without connecting any of the ideas are there are many grammatical errors, including tense errors. She told me that she did not use Google to check her sentences, but I will really need to discuss her ideas during our session on Tuesday to help guide her towards a first draft. I am planning to ask a lot of questions to see what her opinion/argument is and then make an “idea map” or an outline with her. I also plan to focus on thesis statements and the introduction paragraph and plan to help her write a preliminary thesis statement before she works on the draft by herself. I think I will also have her submit her introduction paragraph by Wednesday or Thursday so that I can provide feedback before she writes the rest of her draft. I will also get in touch with Professor Lederman as well for some assistance with ESL related errors.
February 14, 2013
I met with Eka on Thursday to discuss her thoughtletter. Her writing contains very few grammatical errors, but she uses very elaborate metaphors and imagery that sometimes clouds her otherwise clear and thoughtful prose. I highlighted the sections that were unclear to me and we discussed how she may keep the descriptive language but emphasize her ideas and arguments without getting lost in imagery. She rewrote these sentences easily once I identified the unclear sections. We also discussed different prepositions and their appropriate uses. I gave her the text that she will write her first draft on from the Grasso, Korin and Kort reading and she read a few pages during our session. We then discussed where she would like to go with her paper to discuss the Tiananmen Square Massacre and the development of democracy in China. I am looking forward to reading her thoughtletter to see where she has decided to focus. I plan to provide Eka with an introduction to thesis statements, introduction paragraphs and conclusions during our next meeting. I don’t think that I will work with her on an outline, as her structure and organization has been excellent in her thoughtletters and I am curious to see how she does with a more formal writing assignment without any assistance for her first draft.
Violet and Eka could not be more different in terms of writing ability. Although both are very diligent and have been conscientious about attendance or deadlines thus far, Violet really struggles with very basic writing concepts while Eka is quite advanced. I have really enjoyed working with both of them so far, but Violet will definitely be a challenge for me this semester. I think that I will really benefit from meeting with Professor Lederman.
Kim, Your instinct was quite right. I would strongly discourage–no, I would flat out forbid, the entering of one’s prose into Google. In fact, I would discourage a student in WRIT 199 from using google at all for any reason except to check,m say, what sunday the Academy Awards are on tv. This is not an efficient way to improve one’s writing–it’s essentially a time waster like Facebook, so I think your approach is right here.
I like your summary comment t the end here. Very useful.
For Violet, lots of practice is essential if she is to develop as a writer. Keep reminding her of that.
Wednesday, February 20, 2013
Chelsi turned in her thoughtletter this week on an article about Title IX, which she will also be analyzing for her first formal paper assignment. Because her last thoughtletter was ended up being just a summary of the Lyn Hunt article, I specifically asked her this time to explore her own response (thoughts, questions, etc.) but again I received just a summary of the article. Some of the ideas that I thought were hers turned out to be also the author’s arguments, paraphrased (we talked about using sources and citing sources). Her concluding paragraph, however, had the potential to be expanded as she seemed to have suggested that Title IX has created unforeseen problems for men and that there is a difference between prevention of discrimination and prohibition of discrimination. For class, I printed out the original Title IX for us to read together. At first, Chelsi thought it was just a dry list of points with nothing to comment on, but as we picked apart the language, she was surprised to see that Title IX was in fact intended not just for women but for men as well (it prohibits discrimination based on sex) and that sports is in fact not mentioned anywhere. She also noticed on her own that military services were also excluded from the activities that Title IX prohibits discriminatory practices based on sex and commented on the inherent stereotypes/biases in the document. Toward the end of the class, Chelsi had developed a much better understanding of Title IX and started to question the supposed neutrality of the article she read for today. She is thinking of writing a response to the article, from the point of view of someone who doesn’t support Title IX. Using her thoughtletter, we also revisited topics of clarity, organization, transition, and three story thesis. From what I’ve seen so far, I think Chelsi’s biggest area for improvement is in developing her own argument, rather than in technical issues.
Thursday, February 21, 2013
Kelsey also turned in her thoughtletter on the “Modern Woman” in films, which she will be analyzing for her first formal paper assignment. Her paper was a classic example of the results of “wallowing in complexity”! Kelsey contradicted herself in almost every other paragraph… and sometimes within paragraph, too, as she tried to decide if women have achieved equality in the world of the cinema. She laughed when I pointed this out. We spent about half of the class working out what she meant in each of her paragraphs and reverse outlining her paper. The other half was spent trying to isolate her argument. She also struggled with tenses and integrating her own thoughts into the paper without using “I think…” so we also talked about that. Toward the end, Kelsey wanted to know if she and Chelsi could peer edit their papers (I had asked them to send each other good/bad sentences to evaluate for fun in their own time, but nothing has happened so far and I haven’t followed up on it yet). I still need to figure out the timing for this but I think I might conduct a group meeting next week so we can all discuss the papers together. The only think I’m afraid of is not having enough time to look over the papers before we all meet because the only time we can all meet is Wednesday afternoon (Chelsi turns her paper in at 5pm on Monday and Kelsey turns in her paper at 5pm on Tuesday… which means Chelsi will only have a night to look over Kelsey’s paper). I want everyone to have had a chance to properly look through the papers because if we all meet together, I want the session to be helpful and productive. What do you think, Lynne and fellow TAs?
Sounds like you need to delay the meeting, so that all 3 of you are fully prepared– even if that entails getting together on Saturday or Sunday, just this once.
Last week I met with both Amy and Nhung. Amy is doing very well and I am impressed by how easily she took on more responsibility for finding good resources and developing her own topic to write about. I think her paper will turn out quite well and that we will be able to spend more time on the little details that make a paper excellent, rather than focusing on basic details like grammar or structure. She continues to come well prepared and has a good attitude. Last week, I sat with her while she wrote out several paragraphs of her paper, and I felt like this was very useful for her–in just 45 minutes or so, she ended up with at least a page of her paper that we could look over together, and she could ask me questions as she went. I look forward to seeing her first best effort this week.
Nhung is also very good to work with. Because she still has some ESL issues, I decided to reduce her first paper length to 3 pages, mostly because I was concerned that it would be difficult to address both ESL questions and solely paper related questions in the time allotted for the first paper. She is very quick to understand abstract concepts and ideas, but I think since it takes her longer in English to fully articulate them while writing–the thing is, when speaking, she communicates very well, and I wish she could just write down everything the way she speaks! I have also had Nhung start writing paragraphs in class, that way we can dissect them sentence by sentence and she has a strong groundwork for writing the rest of the paper outside of class. I think after getting intensive practice with the first two papers she will definitely be ready to write a longer paper at the end of the semester.
Chelsi and Kelsey turned in their first drafts of their first formal paper assignment this week.
Chelsi said she spent a lot of time outlining, reverse outlining, and cutting out unnecessary words/expressions, and I think her work paid off. Her paper was surprisingly well organized and structured, and definitely less wordy than any of her previous assignments. Where she struggles is in coming up with a strong original argument. I’ve noticed this on many occasions before, as she tends to submit summaries of articles rather than her own analysis/reflection on them. However in this particular case, her lack of argument may partially be my fault, as I realized that the reading assignment I picked out (“Title IX: A Brief History”) might have been too neutral and abstract. After speaking with Jeannine, I’ve decided to assign another article from the New York Times (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/19/sports/boys-swimming-on-girls-teams-find-success-then-draw-ire.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0) for her to use. Hopefully, she will have a easier time now with a more practical, concrete (and controversial!) example. Because of this minor hiccup, I’m going to allow her to turn in one more draft.
Kelsey on the other hand is on the verge of developing a really strong argument… she had a lot of great ideas but they were buried in random sentences and scattered throughout her draft. I guess she is still “wallowing in complexity.” We spent the majority of the class trying to clarify what she meant and tease out potential thesis statements (something *very roughly* along the lines of: (1) even though female characters in films gained more agency… (2) they were now overtly objectified and sexualized… (3) in fact the “New Woman” in films is more harmful/oppressive (than previous silent films in which female characters had no clear purpose or agency) because it deceives the audience re. women’s roles and causes women to internalize the negative values conveyed… (and maybe 4?) and this also created potential rifts among the women in real life as it highlighted class discrimination in addition to gender discrimination). She has a lot to work on but there is also a lot of potential in her paper.
We also met for an additional 30min as a group to do some peer editing this week. Prior to the meeting, Kelsey and Chelsi both read the other person’s paper, made comments via track changes, and submitted paragraphs of written comments. Chelsi was particularly great at picking apart Kelsey’s paper (she actually made many of the same comments and suggests that I made) and Kelsey was inspired by Chelsi’s paper to work harder on her organization/structure/clarity. They also both realized the importance of having an audience in mind as they write because what makes perfect sense in their head might not necessarily be clear to other people who are not as familiar with the argument/subject as they are. Because Chelsi and Kelsey really enjoyed and appreciated the opportunity to share ideas and learn from each other, I think I will have them meet like this at least once per formal paper assignment.
Can Chelsi learn to channel those “It’s not fair” thoughts into a strong argument? Keep working with her on this–it’s essential, as I am sure you know well–to her learning how to stake out a controversial position and then develop an argument with strong support.
Last week I met with both Amy and Nhung. Once again I was very pleased with Amy’s work. She did a great job guiding her own research and developing her own topic. I was able to focus most of my suggestions on improving word choice and style. I also encouraged her to explore some “deeper” big picture ideas in her paper–she had a very strong foundation for discussing her ideas in a more complex way, and I gave her many ideas and questions to work from.
Nhung also was well prepared and I think it was definitely a good idea to shorten her first assignment. I think her ESL issues are largely the result of not spending enough time editing–I suspect if she sits down and spends the time re-reading her work, she is able to identify them and fix them herself. She continues to have complex ideas that impress me! I am a little worried that she will not hone in on more simplified examples/ideas, as is necessary in a 3 page paper, but I am optimistic that she will have an insightful paper! I also looked over a much longer paper that she is working on for her history class, and I was very impressed by it–she said she had written 7 drafts! It looked great and I am very excited to see her work improve throughout the semester.
Chelsi turned in her second draft of her paper, this time incorporating the New York Times article we found last week. She mentioned in her thoughtletter that she found the article really controversial and had a lot of strong feelings toward it (to the extent that she got really angry about things being “not fair” and started to rant about it to her friends at night), but her essay was once again superficial and stuck at summary level. I asked her what was “not fair” but she couldn’t really explain and kept responding “um… I don’t know” to my prompting questions. After bouncing ideas back and forth, we eventually realized that she’s been limiting herself because she assumed that she can’t support her argument unless the argument itself is actually in the text so she can quote it, even though she has strong feelings toward what she read. I explained that the fact that she developed these strong feelings indicates that she was reacting to something she read in the text… which means that even though she can’t pinpoint it just yet, there is “evidence” she can pull from the text to support her argument. From there, our session became easier as we brainstormed all of her ideas and linked them together to create her first real working thesis. Chelsi’s eye lit up and she was excited to be able to use all her ideas from her thoughtletters and our discussion about her first paper. Her working thesis now something along the following lines: “Recent developments (e.g., boys competing in girls’ swim meets and winning against other girls) have revealed society’s hypocritical attitude toward gender equality/support of Title IX. Looking more closely at the text of Title IX, we come to understand that even though the Title prohibits gender discrimination, it was originally written to help women gain more rights and power to match the men. As such, society resists when Title IX is applied to men. Therefore, what was meant to prohibit gender discrimination has now inadvertently caused men to be discriminated against, and in fact the discrimination against men is more problematic than that against women because society is still largely under the impression that only women can be discriminated against.” I felt like we had a breakthrough… but I guess we’ll have to wait until she turns in her final draft to see if she has really made progress!
Edit: Because we ran out of time (we only got to make bullet-points of her ideas), I asked her to email me her argument in full sentences. This is what she produced: “[swim team] –> people don’t think title ix should include men because they dont think they should be in women’s sports, even though they believe men should have equal access. Based on the wording used in title ix as well as the reactions received when men are being helped, every one understood its meaning to apply more to women that men… the society resists when title ix is applied to men. –men are actually being discriminated against though we dont realize it because we are focused more on women.” Hmmm.
Kelsey claimed to have put in extra effort in restructuring her paper (she was quite inspired by Chelsi during our last peer editing session). Her introduction paragraph was indeed much clearer, hopefully because we spent quite some time discussing her argument during our last session. Yet her arguments in the rest of the paper, while thankfully much less self-contradictory, were still all over the place. We spent half of our time trying to distill her arguments into one coherent topic sentence and then reverse outlining her paper to figure out how those topic sentences (and by extension her paragraphs) might better fit together. The other half of the time was spent doing the same thing within her paragraphs, since her thoughts often jump between sentences and she is prone to writing dense, convoluted sentences that even she couldn’t explain or has to laugh at when I point them out. I had to ask, “what are you trying to say here? How is this relevant to your thesis/argument/topic sentence” to almost every sentence… and the standard answer was, “Oh… oh God, I don’t know…!” What eventually helped was for me to repeat back/transcribe her verbal explanations, because she gets stuck trying to use “academic language.” We couldn’t get through everything in the 70min but hopefully we were able to address all the larger issues and enough of the sentence level confusion that she would now be able to spot ambiguities on her own. I told her to do multiple reverse outlines as she works on her next draft, and to talk out loud and type what she says when she gets stuck trying to express herself in a scholarly tone.
Last week I met with Amy and Nhung. They both had their final drafts due. Amy’s assignment was more self-directed because I think she is a fairly good writer when it comes to syntax, diction, and structure. I thought her paper was good in the sense that everything she wrote was well done–but there was so much room for more analysis! I was a bit disappointed about this but I think part of it is my fault for not pushing her to do more sophisticated analysis from the start–next time I’m going to make it clear in the directions and emphasize it throughout because I know she can do it! I’m also going to provide more guidance on choosing more sophisticated and varied words and phrases because I think she is at the point where this could really improve her writing even more.
Nhung’s assignment was shortened because I really wanted to focus more on ESL issues than on the length and structure. I actually think Nhung is a very good writer with great ideas, and she is very willing and able to do in depth analysis. The main problem is all the little ESL problems–I suspect that in Vietnamese, she writes beautifully! I thought her final draft of her first paper was good in terms of ideas and structure, but I did not realize how much more guidance was needed on ESL to make it a good final draft. I am going to be extremely vigilant about this for the rest of the semester and I am really going to emphasize the importance of fixing each sentence as you write and not letting all of the little errors add up to one poorly written paper. Over the next few weeks I will be assigning multiple one page writing assignments on a weekly basis so that we can really practice this.
I’m catching up with my journal entries – I apologize!
I met with Violet the week of March 4th to discuss the second draft of her paper discussing US-China relations. She had made great grammar changes and had revised awkward phrasing and stylistic errors as well. The paper read much more smoothly, which allowed me to really focus on the content and analysis. There were many issues that she referred to very superficially – the One China Policy, US-Taiwanese Agreement, etc. – and we discussed how to provide additional information for readers unfamiliar with her topic and expand on her ideas. I also urged her to incorporate more of Secretary Clinton’s speech in her writing to analyze the tone and objectives of this important keynote address and include more direct quotes to support her arguments. I gave her a lot of comments regarding her introduction, and she spent the last 15 minutes of class revising the introduction.
During our meeting the week of March 11th, I handed back her final (third) draft of her paper with stylistic/grammatical comments on the actual paper and a one-paged letter to discuss the revision progress. She is very diligent to incorporate all of my suggestions and is clearly working very hard, and I commended her for her diligence. Violet had clearly elaborated on several of the “superficial” sections that we talked about and made clearer causal connections in order to strengthen her argument. I mentioned that she still could have improved her analysis and incorporation of the speech itself to make sure that she is properly following instruction assignments. Overall, it was a stunning improvement from her first draft and I think she is very pleased with her progress. We also discussed two NYTimes articles that I sent her about China – one about the “matchmaking” trend and another about the impact of the death of Hugo Chavez on China’s role in the international community. She is improving with engaging in discussions with me and sharing her own opinions, rather than simply summarizing the articles she has been assigned.
Over the break, she will be writing a thoughtletter about the reading assignment for her next paper,
“How to Integrate China Into the International Community: US-China Relations Under Power Transition in the 21st Century” by Jianyang Hu. I encouraged her to continue to explore her question about how the United States should engage with China. I also plan to send her a few articles a week, as she has really enjoyed reading them and has even made the NYTimes her homepage (in English!)
I met with Eka the week of March 4th to discuss her second draft about her paper analyzing the events leading up to the Tiananmen Square Massacre and the intern and external tensions that led to this horrific event. During this meeting, we discussed how to continue to improve her introduction, which was 1.5 pages and had too much background and historical description rather than analysis. We also discussed how to better organize her paper, as she had many different grievances of intellectuals in separate paragraphs and we decided to group them based on “economic” and “political” grievances for more organization. We continued to work on stylistic errors to make sure that all sentences were clear and discussed appropriate word choice, as Eka tends to use “big” academic words that do not convey the correct meaning for her argument. She also spent time at the end of our session revising her introduction.
During our meeting the week of March 11th, I handed back the final draft of her paper with comments as well as a 1 page evaluation. Although her introduction was much better overall, her thesis statement could still use more tension and highlight a controversy or argument for effectively. Her organization was more logical, but there were still areas that we had discussed that had not been addressed in her final revision. I highlighted these areas and also emphasized the importance of analysis and argument rather than summary. We discussed her next assignment, which is a thoughtletter assessing a chapter from China in Transition, “Political Challenges and Changing Agendas.”
For both Eka and Violet, I also gave them a “feedback evaluation” form to give comments about their progress and satisfaction with the course so far. Overall, they both seem pleased but Violet hoped that we can work with more current articles, rather than historical documents, and Eka would like to focus more on conclusions and introductions, as she still feels as though she does not know how to approach these sections successfully. It has been very interesting to work with both students concurrently; although Eka is a stronger writer technically and stylistically, Violet is actually much better about incorporating my comments and really learning from the handouts about structure and organization. Though Eka’s writing is “better,” Violet showed more improvement throughout the draft process.
Nice to see this shift in Eka’s critical thinking and ability to take a position and support it. Looks like progress for both student, though Eka needs to pay more attention to your feedback and respond to it carefully through developing different and more effective writing habits.
The week before break (3/11 to 3/15) I had productive meetings with Amy and Nhung. Since they both have turned in their first papers and we spent last week going over my comments, we jumped into new material for the next paper.
For Amy, I delved into the readings for some of my past psychology classes and I found a cohesive set of articles/scientific papers/editorials that we read about the “Pygmalion Effect” and academic tracking in schools. They provide background on the issue and present multiple expert opinions on tracking. For her paper assignment, I am going to ask Amy to pick one side and defend it: either pro-tracking or anti-tracking. She told me that she does appreciate very directed writing assignments, so I think this will be helpful for her, especially as I push her to be more reflective in her writing. As part of this, I encouraged her in our preliminary writing session last week to really think as she reads about which side she would choose, and to also consider her own experiences and observations while writing. For next week, she is writing her first thought letter, hopefully about two pages double spaced.
After Nhung turned in her first paper, we spent two weeks going over the ESL issues and she ended up turning in two more corrected drafts. I spent our meeting last week focusing on targeted areas in her paper–the issues that come up over and over again. I encouraged her to re-read each sentence as she writes and to carefully make sure she checks for the common errors she makes. She definitely understood the grammar concepts, so I am hoping her diligence will pay off. She expressed interest in reading short news articles about current events and writing about them on a weekly basis, so I started her off with two short articles about Mayor Bloomberg’s soda ban and its subsequent overturning. During our meeting, she wrote a summary of the articles, and for next week, I am asking her to write a one page opinion piece.
Marilynn,
Creative responses to your students’ very different writing issues. I especially like the Bloomberg soda ban assignment. You might want to have Nhung take a look –and deconstruct–the court’s opinion striking down the ban. Correct the “it’s” to its. Thanks!
This week both Amy and Nhung have showed progress in their writing. Amy and I worked on her Thought Letter about tracking in schools. It was well written and she did a good job of summarizing the main sides of the issue (as expected). We discussed her paper and I told her that her primary focus in the paper should be picking one side–tracking or no tracking. She seemed hesitant at first about how she found it difficult to choose a side, but I emphasized that this type of exercise is exactly what she needs to continue to improve as a writer. I think she just needs a lot of encouragement in the process of writing an argument, so I am glad that I am working one-on-one with her in the process. We also developed a concrete strategy for improving her analysis skills (analyzing examples/quotes/arguments, that is). I provided her with this framework and during our class I asked her to go through this exercise with every example in her paper:
Things to do when Analyzing Quotes/Examples:
1) Rewrite the quote/example in your own words.
2) Why did I choose this example?
3) How does it relate to my thesis?
4) Am I using this example to support my argument, refute another argument, or both?
5) What does this example say about my topic–does it add another perspective? Does it show something important? Does it reveal something that is not obvious?
It is ok (and important!) to explicitly answer these questions for the reader, because it explains the way you think and helps to make your argument more convincing!
——————-
I think she found it very helpful and I am looking forward to reading her first full draft next week.
Nhung is also showing improvement and I enjoyed reading her thought letter on Mayor Bloomberg’s soda ban. She analyzed the issue well from multiple angles and included an interesting example (cigarette smoking) to make her point and show why the soda ban is flawed. I am encouraging her to pick one side and defend it to fill up another 1.5 pages in the paper, and in class I asked her to outline her preliminary arguments and begin writing them formally. I also created a list of English usage errors that she should check for herself before turning any papers in to me, and I emphasized that I expect her to have checked for these errors in the draft due next week.
Marilynn, I would like to borrow /use your list of Things to Do When Analyzing quotes, for my own students. Thanks for these observations on Nhung and Amy’s progress.
I assigned Eka the article “Political Challenges and Changing Agendas” by Professor William Joseph for her second paper. This reading discusses recent democratic growth in China and the prospects for additional government reform to match the rapid economic development. In her first draft, Eka very clearly outlined the discrepancy between stagnant political reform and drastic economic growth in China. She effectively argues that Chinese citizens may use their rising socioeconomic status as leverage to demand additional political freedoms. Although her ideas and arguments are very good, she was still struggling to organize her paper logically and to add transitions appropriately. During our session, we discussed how she could clearly separate the economic argument from the political argument and include clear transitions to discuss the connection. I helped her identify where paragraphs could be created (she often writes for 1.5-2 pages before indenting) and gave her a list of transition words from Purdue so that she uses stronger words than “so,” “however,”and “as a result.” We talked about using greater word variety throughout her paper and I was sure to highlight the words that she repeated frequently in her draft. We additionally spent time talking about the article itself; although she had obviously read the article and gained insight from Joseph’s arguments, she only mentioned him once and did not thoroughly explain his argument. Overall, there were fewer stylistic and structural errors than usual and I challenged her to only use my first draft comments to revise for her final draft. I gave her a copy of the “Final Draft Checklist” to be sure that she proofread carefully.
Violet — Week of April 7, 2013
Violet read “How to integrate China into the international community: US-China relations under power transition in the 21st century” for her second paper and is examining the role of the US in integrating China into the global community. I was very impressed with her argument in the first draft, as she assessed Hu’s argument and stated that it “was not convincing” in some respects. I have been really working with her to create her own arguments, rather than just summarizing others, and this was the first example of an essay in which she critiqued the author’s point. Although her argument was excellent, her first draft was especially ridden with grammatical and stylistic errors and we spent much of our session identifying these errors. There were many examples of incorrect word choice throughout her paper. Violet misused the word “foment” and “hegemony” and we spent some time looking these up online so that she could understand their definitions. She also tends to switch from very academic to very colloquial language, including phrases such as “I totally agree with him,” and I made sure to highlight these sections for her. Her conclusion was very good, and she said that she really benefitted from the conclusion handout that we went over for her final draft of her first paper.
Organizationally, Violet really struggles to connect one idea to another. Her transitions are very abrupt and she has trouble connecting them to her main argument. I explained that my thesis advisor once told me that my own transitions from my data section to the analysis section “gave him whiplash” to emphasize that I understood her difficulties. The imagery of whiplash seemed to resonate with her and she found it hysterical. We then went through each conclusion and topic sentence throughout her paper to ensure that there was a better flow and that she was “holding the reader’s hand” to instruct them throughout her paper to tell them “where they had been” and “where they were going.”
Group Exchange Assignment
I instructed Eka and Violet to use my comments to revise their drafts and then to exchange their papers with one another for more feedback (Violet and I went over two drafts together before she submitted to Eka because she did not feel comfortable sharing her writing so early on in the revision process). I gave them each clear deadlines over a two week period for their personal revisions, submissions and feedback for one another, as Eka was submitting to Violet before Violet would be submitting to Eka. I gave them the following guidelines for giving feedback:
– Use the “Track Changes” setting in Word to add comments and highlight sections that may be unclear. Be sure to point out if phrasing is awkward or if you don’t quite understand what is being explained.
– Check for good transitions between paragraphs and ideas. If you think a transition should be added, make sure to indicate where.
– Pay extra attention to introductions and conclusions – you have both spent a great deal of time working on intros and conclusions with me, so you should know exactly what to look for!
– Note any potential grammar mistakes or stylistic errors.
– Make sure that you understand exactly what the author is trying to state – if you need to reread a sentence a few times to understand, that means the writing is unclear! Please mark these sentences so the author can make appropriate changes.
– Write about a half page of overall comments at the end of the paper – What were the strongest aspects of the paper and what do you think still needs work?
They each sent me a copy of the feedback and were both very diligent about editing their partner’s paper. Both highlighted sections that were unclear and noted typos or unclear phrases. Eka showed Violet where her arguments were still not well established, and Violet gave Eka constructive feedback about including a title and fixing unclear phrases. I was very pleased with both of their comments to one another.
Although they both did an excellent job providing their partner with feedback, neither of them successfully incorporated the feedback they received into their own papers (from me or from their partner). I think the week was a little bit crazy with midterms, the marathon, etc., but I ended up sending both of their papers back for further revision before meeting, as I found myself repeating the exact same comments from the week before. I tried to explain to both of them that part of the assignment was not just to give feedback, but to actually use it.
Eka Zhao – Week of April 15, 2013
Despite all of the work that Eka and I had done to work on transitions and structure her paragraphs, she still had sections that were over a page long and failed to fix several simple grammatical or stylistic errors that I clearly noted in her first draft. She also completely ignored Violet’s comments regarding a title or unclear sentences and did not revise any of these phrases. I re-highlighted the sections that we had gone over and pointed to Violet’s comments before sending her paper back. Eka returned her revisions within 24 hours with a very sincere apology for not incorporating all feedback. Her improvement was exceptional. Much of the phrasing had been improved, there were clear transitions between paragraphs, and the arguments were much better outlined. It was clear she had spent much more time on this third revision and was able to make significant improvements. During our session, I showed her the very first draft she had submitted for this paper so that she could really see her growth throughout the revision process. She admitted that the final product was much better and that she realized how much time it took to really make constructive changes. We then moved onto her next assignment for the final research paper. Eka will be researching Bo Xilai, a Chinese political dissident that was expelled from the Chinese Communist Party and submitting a political biography for her final paper that examines Bo’s life and what his experience reveals about Chinese politics as a whole. We went over how to best find sources (A-Z databases, Wellesley library catalog, Google Scholar, etc.) and she made a tentative outline and list of sources during our meeting. She will be submitting her first draft this week.
Violet – Week of April 15
Violet also did not incorporate all feedback that I noted and I ended up re-highlighting her paper as well. She still had many grammatical errors that we had discussed in her previous two drafts and she did not clarify the sections that Eka had noted. In her final draft, she fixed much of the stylistic problems and clearly paid more attention to the feedback. Some of her arguments were not as well explained as I would have liked, and I feel like she showed more progress between drafts during her first assignment. I think her overall argument and thesis statement of this paper was weaker than her first, which may have contributed to her difficulty in making strong transitions and a clear argument. We moved on to her research paper and she has decided to focus on human rights issues in China and how they present an obstacle to better US-China relations. She was clearly very uncomfortable with the idea of finding her own sources and we spent a lot of time on the database orientation to get her started. She will be submitting 5 sources with a brief summary about what they contribute to her overall paper as well as a more detailed outline later tonight. I have a feeling that we will schedule an extra meeting sometime the last week of class or during reading period, because I think she will need more time to revise this paper, given its length and the difficulty in structuring an individual research paper.
This week, I will be working with both students to start their final research papers and I will also hand out their portfolio assignment so that they are aware of the deadlines well in advance. I am really hoping to focus on structure and transitions with both of them, as this is especially important in research papers when new sources are continually introduced. I will also go over MLA formatting to make sure that they are comfortable with this citation style.
This week both Amy and Nhung turned in their thought letters.
Amy’s paper topic–on ethical issues surrounding sperm and egg donation–is proving to be challenging and when I looked over her draft I noticed that, while she summarized the ideas and issues quite well, she hadn’t gotten very far in terms of developing an argument or taking stances on the ethical issues. I emphasized that this was an important component of the assignment, and I think part of the problem was that she hadn’t come up with a formal outline/structure for the paper, so we discussed how she might organize it. Ultimately, I gave her more direction by suggesting that she choose three of the ethical issues, describe both sides for the reader, and then offer her own opinion on each one. While I hope that her final paper can be more sophisticated than this and offer more in depth analysis, I think she does benefit from a lot of structure and direction at the beginning before becoming more confident and seeing how she can turn her ideas into more interesting arguments. I think she will definitely be in good shape by the final paper as she continues to work hard and respond to my feedback.
I was very pleased with Nhung’s paper as her thought letter was more like a first draft–which means we’ll have more time to improve it over the next two weeks. Many of her ESL issues were absent or significantly improved, and I am still trying to figure out if this is because she spent more time on it or because she is getting faster and better. Beyond the ESL mistakes, she had well-developed ideas and interesting arguments in her paper–as I have come to expect. Because her topic is complex, I think she will benefit from producing two more drafts. We worked on restructuring the paper so that her arguments were more clearly organized. Another aspect of this is that she would describe issues/ideas that support her arguments very well, but she wouldn’t really strongly articulate the argument or explain why it belongs with one argument or another. This is what I told her to work on for this week, and I think next week we will see what progress she has made. I hope to also help her refine her thesis further–but I think this is a case in which working backwards by developing the full arguments first might be a better option.
I commend you for your thoughtful and creative pedagogical approach with Amy–a good way to reinforce your instruction all term in the area of argument. This student seems to feel most comfortable with straight summary and that is exactly what you have a few more weeks to coax her out of. Articulate this idea often, orally and in your comments to her.
Amy turned in a very good first draft paper. She had followed my directions in terms of structure and had done more analysis of each ethical example. Although it was well-written and she had made the changes I suggested, it still seemed like something more could be done. I had trouble figuring out exactly how to instruct her without just coming up with the sentences that I would write/want to see. I tried to advise her to experiment with each analysis by trying out several different ways to explain it and to help clarify her own thoughts. Hopefully I can look at it again next week and give her more precise directions if needed. I also hope to work with her on more aesthetic things, like not using colloquial language.
Nhung:
Nhung also brought an excellent first draft paper with very few errors. I am very pleased about this! The only suggestions I had for her was that she try combining the first two paragraphs, as they read like two redundant introductions, and that she do more in-depth analysis of the issues. I provided her with several questions that might guide further analysis, and she seemed eager to make these changes. I am really glad she is so far along on this paper because it will leave time at the end for us to focus on little details like word choice!
Please fix this typo because this is a permanent record for futureTAs to look at….
I am very please about …
I like your approach with Hung. With Amy, I think reminding and reminding her about using more formal language in her writing is important–but so is making her revise everything, even on the word level, that is slang or too colloquial…
Eka submitted her first draft of the research paper last week and it was a bit of a mess. She hopes to write a political biography of Bo Xiaobo and analyze how his political life and ultimate downfall relates to corruption in China and assess what his story reveals about the CCP. But her thesis was very unclear and her details were very disorganized. We spend all of the 70 minutes going through the facts she had included to determine the most interesting and relevant details. I also highlighted areas where she can include more analysis rather than just reciting facts about his life. We especially emphasized the relationships between Bo and his father and with his security guard, who turned him into authorities at the American embassy which led to his dismissal from his government post. This week she is working to restructure her paper and elaborate on areas discussed.
Violet and I discussed her final draft during the last session and I had her make a list of things to remember when writing her final paper. We then began to look at the sources that she has collected for her outline and I showed her additional databases to use in her research. She has decided to focus on racial minorities in China and the US and to do a comparison between the legal rights granted. She also plans to read through relevant sections of the human rights reports published by the US and China for an interesting analysis. I have strongly tried to encourage her to specify a very small minority – women, religious groups, a particular culture – but so far she has not taken my advice. I will be sure to reiterate this tomorrow because right now, her topic is too broad and unspecified.
I have given both students their final assignments for the writers manual and I have a feeling I will be meeting with both of them during reading period to go over their final drafts and to help them organize for the portfolio.
Eka made many good changes for her first draft. She expanded upon the areas that we discussed and highlighted as unclear and made great parallels between different relationships throughout Bo’s political career. Eka also added an interesting comparison between the elder Bo, Bo Xilai and Xilai’s son. In addition to the organizational changes, she improved other stylistic issues that we discussed and her sentences were much more clear. During this session, we primarily discussed the fine-tuning in her revision and more thoroughly discussed MLA citations. She used a few parenthetical citations throughout the paper, but only when directly quoting the text. I emphasized that this would be considered plagiarism in another class, as I know that the information she is presenting is not common knowledge. I showed her an example of one of my papers so that she could really see how frequently citations should appear when paraphrasing information. Although last week was technically our last session, we are meeting during reading period of this week so that I can give her final comments for her research paper and address any questions that she may have regarding the writer’s manual/portfolio assignment.
Violet only submitted about four pages for her first draft and admitted that she struggled with the assignment. We spent the majority of the session reworking her paper and ultimately decided that the topic she had chosen – minorities in China versus the US – was much too broad. She decided to start from scratch and chose to discuss climate change treaties, specifically the Kyoto Protocol and the Copenhagen Accords, and assess the American and Chinese approach to international carbon emission requirements. We worked the entire session to narrow this topic down and begin finding new sources, but I decided that this was best because she was clearly lost with her original topic.
Violet submitted an outline and introduction on Friday evening and a new first draft on Sunday evening. This draft was significantly better and was 8 full pages. We met today and primarily focused on minor organizational issues and highlighted stylistic mistakes. I encouraged her to expand in certain areas – I’m hoping she can include a more detailed discussion of why the Kyoto Protocol failed and led to the Copenhagen Accord for a more connective thread throughout her paper. I think I finally got through to her regarding passive tense – she had been doing much better, but when directly citing specific data or studies, she was using only passive voice. After we went through each example, she seemed to really understand the difference and why the active voice is more powerful.
I will also be meeting with Violet again during reading period to give final comments and to discuss any questions regarding the writer’s manual/portfolio.
Amy: Today, Amy brought a complete draft of her paper. Overall it was well done, as she had responded so thoroughly to my feedback on previous drafts. In looking over her complete draft, I sometimes felt like I was being a little more harsh than I had been before–in terms of really pushing her to improve every little thing. I really focused on the intro paragraph, which she still seemed to have a little bit of trouble with (which is always interesting to me because her conclusions have consistently been well-written and interesting, and usually it’s the other way around…). We talked about how the intro paragraph could just be restructured–without even making any major content changes. I also pushed her to eliminate any redundancy throughout the paper, either by changing content or by simply rewording transitions and analyses.
Nhung:
I was very pleased with Nhung’s complete draft! It is such a huge improvement from the first paper she turned in. There were almost no errors in grammar, word use, or syntax. The paper topic itself is also complex, and I have been impressed throughout the semester by her willingness and ability to tackle complex topics. That said, I felt that she articulated a nuanced argument/analysis throughout the paper. I did feel that more analysis in terms of her own ideas/suggestions/insight on the issue could be added–in other words, going beyond just an in-depth review of the topic. She was responsive to this feedback and I look forward to reading her final draft. I think that, similar to Amy, sometimes she just needs a little extra push to remember that her own ideas and insights are important too!
Don’t confuse “harsh” and “direct” when it comes to feedback to your students. Sounds like you did what was necessary with Amy. Reiterating the difference between summarizing information and presenting a clear, evidence-based argument about the material is necessary-up to the very last minute in any writing course. Don’t apologize for this.
For the week of March 11, we conducted a joint peer review session due to popular demand and because Kelsey was leaving early for spring break. Both Chelsi and Kelsey turned in their final revisions before our meeting and came to our joint session with detailed feedback for the other person. Both of them identified many of the same issues that I had in my comment sheet.
Kelsey really enjoyed the way Chelsi structured her paper and repeatedly mentioned how structure was one thing she needs to work on in her paper. We picked out two sections of her paper to work on clarifying her wording and transitions.
Chelsi agreed that Kelsey needs to work on organizing her ideas, as they were still scattered. We identified a few examples, some of which I had previously discussed in class with Kelsey but she had not included in her revision. Kelsey could explain the concepts verbally but said she struggled to put them down in words. She was also still a little confused herself about how the employment section fits into the overall picture. We all agreed that her conclusion paragraph should be used as an introduction, and that she should extend her argument in a new conclusion.
Both Chelsi and Kelsey still need to work on integrating quotes, but Kelsey more than Chelsi her background in journalism causes her to often quote people without context or explanation. I borrowed an example Professor Velenchik often uses and asked her to think about quotes like numbers and figures in science papers. (You can’t just dump numbers into your paper without explaining the significance of the number. What does 11% mean? 11% increase? Increase in what? Is that a significant increase? 11% increase is a lot if the average increase is usually 0.1%, but it’s not so significant if the average is 10.5%. What’s the result of an 11% increase? In the same way, you have to explain your quote…) I was pleased when Chelsi chimed in and advised Kelsey to “not focus on WHO is saying it or where the article is from… it’s the IDEA that matters… weave that idea into your own sentence and check, does your sentence still make sense if you take out the quotation marks? It should sound like your own sentence… but with words from other people that you borrowed to support your own argument.” I had told her the same thing in previous weeks, so it was nice to see that she had remembered.
March 27&28: Thought letters
Chelsi and Kelsey both turned in their second thought letters this week, Chelsi on “Women, Race, and Sports: Life Before Title IX” and Kelsey on “Television’s First Feminist: The Avengers and Female Spectatorship.” Both found this material easier to understand as it built on what they had already learned in their first reading assignment (that was my plan!).
With Chelsi, I revisited the concept of “three story thesis” and had her rewrite her introduction paragraph because she was beginning to revert to her old habits of summarizing what she read. As she also noticed on her own as we went over her paper, she stuffed the majority of her paper in the introduction paragraph and then ran out of things to say in the body paragraphs. As we were rewriting her introduction, Chelsi mentioned how the article angered her — which surprised me because her thought letter was so neutral. We explored policy changes in sports and to what extent athletic organizations can/should alter rules to make games more “fair” or “interesting.”
With Kelsey, we focused on clarifying her argument, which was that “women found a balance between pure masculinity and femininity in order to create the best of both worlds in the roles on screen,” as although some of the examples she used actually suggested otherwise. We also worked on the transitions between “serial-queen melodrama,” “spy series” (specifically the relationship between James Bond movies, The Avengers, and The Girl from U.N.C.L.E) because she had too many examples but didn’t analyze each enough to advance her argument. We talked about modern films and how women “spies” are portrayed today, since she left her paper hanging in the 60/70s. In the end, we had to draw a complicated timeline graph to conclude that women’s roles briefly reached its peak during The Avengers series but have fluctuated since without returning to that former “golden era,” which therefore shifted her main argument. I think Kelsey is a visual learner — this is not the first time we had to draw out her arguments for her to see what she is actually trying to say.
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April 3&4: First drafts of Paper 2
Chelsi worked hard to take a stance on a topic, something she found difficult to do in her first paper. To help her do so, she said she incorporated different types of argument styles in her draft (I need to find Professor Velenchik’s worksheet on this so I can go over the concepts in more detail at some point), and tried to paint a picture of a specific audience in her mind as she wrote so that she can be more specific and targeted with her claims (idea from Geoffrey Graff). Writing about a topic dear to heart was both a blessing and a curse for Chelsi — while she is more passionate and vocal about issues, many of her arguments were unsubstantiated because she had assumed they were “common knowledge” based on her own experiences as a basketball player. I liked how she explored new ways to approach an argument, including setting up a condition (“For gender equality to exist in sports, two conditions must apply:…”) but again, her definitions were based on her own experience. We highlighted sections where arguments seemed to have “jumped” and also tried to explore what she meant by “unequal,” as her definition of it seemed to be quite fluid. For next week, she is going to re-outline her paper, as well as expand on her conclusion, which was a little sparse.
Kelsey produced a much better draft for this paper compared to what she submitted as her first draft for her first paper. She seems to have given what we discussed last week some thought and so her logic/stance was much more developed. However, her introduction was quite weak with little substance, there were a few particularly awkward paragraphs (especially the one on pre oedipal phase) that was not well integrated into the paper, and she still summarized a lot when her paper should be more argument driven. We went through her paper and systematically crossed out sentences that either did not directly support her topic sentence or did not contribute to her overall argument. There wasn’t very much left in the end, which was an eye-opener for her. Kelsey also forgot to think/use/indicate the different types of arguments we talked about previously, which might have helped her organize her thoughts better. I’m sure whe will implement those for the next draft.
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April 10&11: Final drafts of Paper 2
Chelsi streamlined her argument to focus on the “standard of measurement for equality” instead of just briefly touching upon multiple issues like she did in her first draft, and framed it in the context of Title IX. She incorporated many more concrete examples and quotes to support her argument, and addressed the the problem of “double standards” so that her argument is not simply one sided. As her paper is still under the suggested page limit (6pg), we discussed how to further expand on her arguments in addition to clarifying her reasonings and working on transitions.
Week of April 17&18: Finalizing second paper, reviewing prospectus, Velenchik materials
Chelsi & Kelsey:
For both Chelsi and Kelsey this week I sent them individual feedback on their final drafts and received their annotated bibliography for their final research papers. The prospectus/annotated bibliography assignment was based on similar assignments I had worked on myself in other classes and found useful. We relied on this UMUC site (http://www.umuc.edu/library/libhow/bibliography_tutorial.cfm) for guidance. In addition, I also had them send me their working theses. Both of their annotated bibliographies were a little sparse. Chelsi had a wider range of relevant sources than Kelsey because she had seen the research librarian as I had recommended; Kelsey mentioned she could not schedule a meeting with the research librarian until later this week. Since both of them appeared to know exactly what they wanted to explore, I did not asked them to turn in another copy [Edit April 28: I really should have asked them to resubmit — especially Kelsey], but I did strongly encourage them to add to their list for their own benefit.
For most of each class, I focused on going over Professor Velenchik’s handout on “A Guide to Claims” (adapted from Ramage and Bean, Writing Arguments, 8th edition, pp. 201-212), which we received during a writing tutor meeting a few weeks ago and I’ve been looking for an opportunity to go through with them. I thought this would be the best time to reinforce their understanding of the basic structures of argument, so they have these “tools” fresh in their minds as they work on their research papers. Both of them had never thought about the different ways people can make arguments and were surprised to realize that the basic approaches to making arguments in writing are similar across disciplines, even though a philosophy paper for example can appear greatly different from a biology paper. Once we went through all examples, I had them read a sample economics paper (also courtesy of Professor Velenchik) and identify the different types of claims used in that paper, partly to help reinforce their understanding of claims and partly to expose them to “good” writing. We then picked out passages from the final drafts of their second paper to rewrite, using one or two of the claim types. As this exercise was so successful, I asked them to use as many claim types as possible in their next draft and highlight them for me to see.
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Week of April 24(Ruhlman)&25: First draft of research paper
Chelsi:
Chelsi turned in her first draft of her final research paper this week. As Wednesday was Ruhlman, we rescheduled our meeting and met on Friday instead to go over her paper. Chelsi was really excited about the topic of her paper (female basketball players in the media) and had done some extensive research over the break, although she decided not to use a lot of what she had initially found.
Going over her paper, we discussed how she was able to identify a problem in current society, turn that into a research question (what causes the unjust representation of female athletes’ talent in women’s basketball today?), and break the broad problem into two, more manageable aspects: the undermining of athletic skills and over-emphasizing/sexualizing of the female body, and unequal pay compared to male basketball players. She had also put all this into a historical context. However we both noticed right away that her ideas were scattered all over the place. Also, she spent much of the paper switching between summarizing observations about sexuality and femininity in sports. I told her that these were all good observations, but they need to be more argument driven. Her paper currently implies a lot but still forces the reader to do the bulk of the work (= thinking, drawing arguments, etc.) She needs to do this work for the readers.
We went through her paper and color-coded by topic. Eventually we identified six of the main issues she addressed: increasing popularity of women’s basketball, unjust representation in the media (downplaying skills, sexualizing players, focusing on non-basketball related lifestyle issues), homophobia in sports, pressure to conform to heterosexual norms, salary differences, and the need for media to focus on purely on athleticism. We also combed through her paper looking for “arguments” and identified two claims that had potential: The results of homophobia stigmatizing all female basketball players as lesbian, has led media choosing to ‘over-emphasized femininity of female athletes in an attempt to combat a fear of increased female masculinity’ (Lisec)” and “This misrepresentation of female athletes in media has led to inequality in professional basketball.”
We spent the rest of the time trying to string these ideas together into one well-crafted chain of cause/effect, and turn that into a strong thesis. As a potential psychology major, Chelsi found it helpful that I likened the research paper to a lab report (you want to introduce the issue in the introduction and build up a good case as to why this is a relevant topic to explore. Then present your hypothesis [=thesis] and test that idea. Conduct “case studies” with the evidence you’ve collected. Analyze your results. Interpret your results… how is it significant? How do they add to the existing literature?). This idea of a “lab report” approach to writing papers is something we discussed briefly when we went over sample papers and claims last week. Just for fun, I also forwarded her detailed guides to writing psychology papers from my PSYC307R Research Methods class for reference.
Kelsey:
Kelsey’s meeting was also rescheduled this week. She turned in her “final” draft on time, but between her crew practices and my visa issues that I had to sort out in NY, we could not find time to meet until Monday night to talk about it in person. I sent her extra-detailed comments to look over in the mean time as she prepared for her next draft. Although she mentioned that she had a lot of fun consulting Professor Viano for ideas and spent quite some time crafting her draft (“In terms of things I think I did well, I believe that my transitions were a lot better in this paper. I also think that my structuring has improved a lot since the beginning of the semester.”) when I actually read her paper, I found the content/argument to be significantly lacking. There was no progression in her thoughts throughout the paper: some of her paragraphs contained completely irrelevant background information and she merely repeated in her conclusion what she had stated in her introduction. When we finally met on Monday, I strongly encouraged her again to abandon her ideas about the evolving roles of women in film (her previous two papers explored this idea already and she didn’t have anything concrete to say about them in the context of horror films), as well as to pick an aspect of horror film and remakes of horror films that she might want to examine. At some point, we somehow found ourselves talking about Twilight and whether Twilight was considered a “horror” film. Since one of the films she focused on in her draft was Nosferatu, we toyed with the idea of treating Twilight as a “remake” of Nosferatu. The topic has potential, but she needs to think about it some more. She is going to visit the research librarian again sometime this week for addition assistance. Looking back, I think I should have forced her to send me another prospectus after last week to make sure that she had a clear idea of where she wanted to go with her research paper (I didn’t do so because I wanted to let go of her hands a little for this assignment and see how much she could manage on her own). Recalling how much extra meetings helped one of my previous WRIT199 students who needed a lot of guidance, I told Kelsey that I would be available to meet with her throughout the week — even if it means just doing my own work next to her as she worked on her paper, so that if she had questions I would be readily available to answer.
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Week of May 1&2: Final draft of research paper
Chelsi:
Chelsi turned in her final draft of her research paper today and it was much stronger than her previous draft. In her own words: “At first I had so many ideas on how to structure this essay and I panicked because I couldn’t decide which one to choose. Finally after talking with my friend just to let my ideas flow, I decided to get rid of a lot of the information on the WNBA and widen the focus of media misrepresentation to include all female athletes, using basketball as a specific example. I think that the flow of the paper is much stronger and I now have a report-like argument. I expanded on a few ideas about how women perceive themselves and more about how they are displayed in media that I hope you like. I feel as if this is one of my best essays, and I hope you agree. I know there might be some awkward tendencies, but I’m hoping I’ve eliminated most of them.”
Her ideas definitely flowed more smoothly and logically; her paper was more coherent as a whole. In class we focused on improving her transitions to strengthen her argument. For example, she had quite a few paragraphs in which she simply described “Another difference between the portrayal of female and male athletes in the media.” We discussed how the different points she makes should not be of “equal value” as arguments, but that they should build on the previously mentioned point to further her observation/argument.Also, sometimes she would insert a counter-argument in the middle of another thought and disrupt the flow within paragraphs. We talked about either turning these into separate paragraphs or rephrasing them in terms of/in relation to the actual subject of that paragraph. We were also able to clarify some poor word choices that were either misleading, confusing, or vague. Many of these things were issues we’ve discussed before so she only needed a gentle reminder to see and fix them herself.
Kelsey:
Since we only had our make-up meeting on Monday, Kelsey thought she didn’t have to turn anything in for this week (partly my fault, as I only told her verbally that that I expected her to work on an outline and as much of a new draft as possible by this meeting – I should have followed that up with a written reminder). She seemed a little stressed and was on the verge of tears when I told her frankly that she really needs a lot more work on her paper because it isn’t acceptable at this point. After making a game plan for the next two weeks (I’m going to have her check in with me on Sunday, send in a partial draft on Monday for me to look over by Tuesday, and then turn in her next draft by Wednesday) and emphasizing again that I am happy to meet throughout the week as well, we went over her new ideas for comparing Twilight to Nosferatu and created a “mind map” of all her ideas. We revisited Professor Velenchik’s handout on claims and made a list of all potential arguments/combination of arguments she could create with her list of ideas. I think she is leaning towards writing a social commentary on how our tendency to focus on social acceptance and politically correct ideas has limited our creative output, “diluted” what used to be compelling characters/plots in remakes of old movies, and lulled us into a false sense of security in which we do not have to be challenged to come to terms with ideas we are not comfortable with.
On a separate note, I’ve been sending both Chelsi and Kelsey sample prize-winning papers written by other first year students to read over and use as models, and they’ve both found them really interesting if not helpful.
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Week of May 8&9: Finalizing research papers, checking in on portfolios, wrap-up
Chelsi:
Chelsi chose to spruce up her research paper as part of her final portfolio (the other part being the writer’s manual) and so turned in another draft of that today. She had obviously worked on this paper since we last met and incorporated all of my comments into her revision. I am impressed by the amount of progress she made over the semester, and especially over the last few weeks. I still remember how she she could barely take a stance on any issue in the beginning, always just summarizing the articles she had read. Although her current paper still has a lot of room for improvement, and is not quite 8 pages long, it is a relatively well written research paper that I think Chelsi should keep as a reminder of how much she can achieve if she puts the effort in.
We spent the meeting time going through her entire paper looking for passive sentences, unclear/vague expressions, unclear logical reasoning, unexplained “it” references, and transitions that needed to be reworked (e.g., she set herself up for providing different examples of how media portrays female basketball players, but then had topic sentences that focused on the definition of femininity and other issues that did not relate). We also looked at “concluding” each body paragraph by checking if the last thought addresses the topic sentence and thesis statement. What impressed me most was that I no longer needed to explain to her why certain sentences needed work. If she didn’t catch things on her own as she read her paper out loud, she would figure them out pretty quickly as soon as I said “pause, let’s think about that sentence/transition/etc.” or just let out a ponderous “hmm.”
She also showed me some of the sentences/paragraphs she picked out for her final portfolio (writer’s manual) and cringed at some of the mistakes she had made in her first few assignments. That she can now cringe at those mistakes, I mentioned, is a sign that she has grown as a writer. I look forward to receiving her portfolio on Friday.
Kelsey:
I find that I am struggling with Kelsey quite a bit for this final formal paper assignment. I wonder if it is because she is too busy with crew (she mentioned needing to prioritize sleeping early and working out this week as she has a big race coming up). Because she is so behind, I actually had her submit an partial draft to me over the weekend so that I could look over it and give her some feedback as she worked toward submitting a full draft to me this week. While she did completely rewrite her paper and extend her sparse 4 page draft into a longer 8 page draft, it seems like she is either not paying attention to my comments (which makes me sad as I spent quite a bit of time on it and was busy, myself!) or too short on time to make significant changes to take into consideration some of my comments.
For example, even though I specifically asked her to go through her paper again, reverse outline, map out her thoughts, and then create a new outline to follow for her paper by our meeting, she came today without any form of outline. In one of my shorter comments along the margins that I had sent her earlier this week, I actually began to identify and synthesize some of her arguments to help get her started: “Is this what you are trying to say? (1) Certain types of plot/characters get revisited in remakes of films more than others (define what types of stories get revisited…why do they get revisited? Do they have compelling characters/plot? What is compelling? Do they cause us to question the world around us? What does it have to do with the idea of “modernism” you briefly mentioned toward the end of your paper?); (2) Vampires in horror films as an example of a popular story/character revisited throughout history (What’s so compelling about vampires?); (3) But when stories/film are remade, they tend to get altered according to cultural values (How are the vampires in Twilight different from the ones in Nosferatu? What cultural value do the vampires in Twilight reflect? What is this cultural value?); (4) Our current cultural values tend toward being politically correct and “being too politically correct hinders the future of a beloved past time” (what do you mean by politically correct and by “hindering” the future of a beloved past time? Does making vampires more “socially acceptable” creatures take away the depth/complexity of characters that once used to be so compelling? Why is it important to have characters that challenge us to think? How does modernism fit into all this? This is the meat of your essay; delve into this more!)” In fact, most of these point in fact came up when we were brainstorming in class last week, so I was surprised not to see them more clearly explored in the first place. When I went over the same comments today and tried to get her to extend her analysis, she reacted as if she had not heard these points before, even though they were right in front of her.
Anyway, we spent the whole class figuring out her argument and re-outlining her paper, specifically focusing on her introduction… what she was supposed to do for class this week. I kept reiterating that it’s not enough to simply find similarities and differences; she has to also “add to the literature” by offering a new understanding of the films. I also reminded her to envision a specific group of audience for whom she is writing this paper and then try to persuade those people into understanding/accepting her views (she temporarily settled on Twilight fans). Our discussion expanded on those points I listed out and I think she has a better idea of what she wants to say now but I’m not confident about how well she would be able to revise this in a day before our final portfolio submission deadline tomorrow. This is where Chelsi was at two weeks ago. I may want to give her another week to work on this paper, as I would hate to end the semester on a low note — especially considering how much potential she demonstrated in the beginning and how well she has been doing until now.
I am concerned, as you are, as to whether Kelsey will be producing good enough wok to receive Credit for thsi course. What’s your sense of this, at this late stage?
This week, Amy turned in her final draft of the third paper. It was very well done and I hardly had any suggestions (in terms of substantial changes) for improvement, beyond perhaps changing a few words here and there or changing a sentence to sound less redundant. Overall, these were only minor issues, and her paper was well-organized, with a clear argument and interest analysis throughout. I am confident that her final project will be high-quality, as I looked it over during class, and she’s put a lot of time into it, including into making up her own examples, which I think is an excellent exercise for her.
Nhung:
Nhung has also showed great improvement over the semester. She is diligently working on her final project/paper. I am going to look over it once more before she turns it in, and I reminded her that it is expected that there will be very few (if any) grammar errors in the final project. She is using her third paper as her example paper in her project, which I am also happy about, as I think she has done a good job with it. She has been writing much more complex sentences, without error, and at this point, much of my focus has been on encouraging her to delve more deeply into substance and to thinking about her examples and ideas in more nuanced and interesting ways (not that she has major problems doing this, but we hand’t focused on it much because of the ESL issues). I am looking forward to her final project/paper.
Haley Troy, 2/2/13
Haley and I met for the first time and discussed the layout and expectations of the course. She is taking the course graded and had some questions about the grading distribution, all of which I have been able to answer. She expressed that she feels that she is an average writer, but that she is not confident with her writing. When she was in high school, different teachers had different expectations and she did poorly on papers she felt good about, or the other way around. She also stated that she procrastinates and has difficulty planning papers due to extreme writing anxiety. I proposed that we establish a writing plan for her at the end of each weekly meeting, and she thought that this was a good idea. I also plan on reading a chapter about writing anxiety from Anne Lamott’s novel Bird by Bird with her during our next meeting. We also discussed Haley’s chosen topic. She is interested in neuroscience in general, but had a difficult time narrowing the topic because she felt she needed to do more research. She is particularly interested in memory and mental illnesses. We discussed how she would start the article search and we have emailed back and forth about the article search many times since. She has been searching on her own and met with a reference librarian, but has needed some guidance regarding which articles lend themselves to paper writing. Finally, I gave her a 2-page assignment to write a self assessment of herself as a writer in the form of a letter to me. She seemed comfortable with the assignment.
Maud Muosieyiri 2/2/13
Maud and I met for the first time and discussed the layout and expectations of the course. She had many questions about the course, most of which I was able to answer during the meeting. She is taking the course graded and was at first worried that I would report back to you if she asked a stupid question. I explained my role and that, of course, there are no stupid questions. She seemed to be motivated and hard-working and expected the same of me; she wants as many comments as I can give her and clear assignments, rubrics, and expectations. She expressed that she wants to improve her writing in general: grammar, organization, clarity, sentence-level, etc. I explained to her that I would comment on all aspects of her writing and that we would have a lot of time for this sort of thing, and she seemed pleased. Maud had a difficult time narrowing her topic of neuroscience and could not identify a sub-topic she was interested in. She wanted to continue the search on her own and we looked into her seeing a reference librarian. She said that she may scrap neuroscience for public health and she has done this since. She now has a specific topic of HIV/Aids in sub-Saharan Africa, with a few subtopics, but is having trouble finding articles. I am supporting her with her search and have extended the syllabus deadline accordingly. Finally, I gave her a 2-page assignment to write a self assessment of herself as a writer in the form of a letter to me. She was at first unsure whether I wanted a “factual” letter or a more “fluffed” letter. I am not sure yet whether she will need support with style (and understanding that writing can be both factual and interesting/ “fluffed”), so I may assign a reading along these lines.
Maud Muosieyiri, 2/9/13
I had my first full meeting with Maud. We started by discussing her thoughtletter on how she sees herself as a writer and the Alex Johnson reading. She found the Johnson reading to be very helpful; we discussed her own anxieties around writing and she was comforted by the realization that even seasoned writers experience anxiety. While discussing the reading, she expressed that she worries so much about a professor’s expectations that her writing becomes stilted. She reported that she has never practiced free writing, but instead starts a paper by writing what she thinks the professor wants her to write. I had planned another activity on close reading, but I decided to have her do an exercise on free writing. I had her read a very short controversial article about a new kind of syringe reported to limit the spread of HIV/AIDs and then free write about it. She was at first very wary about this exercise and needed some encouragement that her initial reactions and ideas were not “wrong” or too vague, but the beginnings of argument. She plugged away, came up with a page’s worth of comments and arguments, and seemed pleased with the result. We verbally discussed her main argument against the paper as well as her main points. We then took one of her examples and, using the Choosing Evidence and Four Steps handouts, discussed how she could incorporate the example into a paper. She found this exercise helpful, particularly in reminding her to bring the argument back to the thesis. Finally, I gave her some readings from Sin Boldly and Allyn and Baker and the assignment for next week. She will be writing a thoughtletter on what she learned from these readings. We discussed thoughtletters in general, as she reported that she has never written one.
Haley Troy, 2/9/13
Haley was sick this week, so we had our first full meeting on Thursday instead of Monday. We started by discussing her thoughtletter on how she sees herself as a writer and what she would like to work on. She stated in the letter that she has a particularly difficult time with creative assignments. Although she is wary about writing more creative assignments, she would like to improve in this area. I adjusted her homework assignment to include a creative element. We discussed the Alex Johnson reading, which she found very interesting. I then had her read a short (and very dated) Psychology article. She had felt worried about how to begin writing about her chosen articles, so I thought that we could go through the process of finding arguments/evidence and close reading this article. It was very difficult for her to verbalize her reactions to the article beyond “they’re wrong.” I realize now that the article was somewhat difficult to understand. We went through the Choosing Evidence and Four Steps handouts, using evidence from the article as examples. Finally, she stated that she would like to begin the process for her first paper as soon as possible. I think that this is a good idea, as we will be able to work more on finding an argument and smoothing out any problems earlier rather than later. We moved next week’s assignment to this week. She will be reading the article for her first paper and writing a thoughtletter about it. She will also be reading excerpts from Sin Boldly and Allyn and Baker about finding an argument, as well as an excerpt from Bird by Bird about writing anxiety, all if she has time. If she has more time, she will also write a more creative thoughtletter about her reactions to these readings.
Your approach to working with this student in particular is creative and very multi-layered, and I look forward to seeing how her writing develops over the next 4 weeks after you focus on these activities.
Qi Wu and Ashley Iguina, 2/9
In class on Monday, Qi and I discussed the writing self-assessment that she wrote for homework. She wants to work on sentence structure and word choice, and told me that her writing professor suggested she keep a journal of common sentence structures she uses to correct her mistakes, so she can use them again in the future. I pulled out some run-on sentences from her work and she was able to correct them. Next we did an exercise with two articles considering the same subject (the American “law school crisis”) and talked about the differences between the authors’ perspectives. I asked her to summarize each article in a paragraph and then in a sentence. This activity took longer than I anticipated, so I think I will mention a time frame before more in-class writing. For next week, she is choosing another article and writing a summary and formal paragraph either disagreeing with or expanding upon its argument with evidence. I really appreciate Qi’s enthusiasm and the questions she asks.
On Tuesday, I met with Professor Rothschild and Professor Lederman to talk about class with Qi. Professor Rothschild taught a class on writing for Economics last semester and added me to the Sakai site where I could see his past assignments. He emphasized a need for clarity in Economics writing, suggested some scholarly journals for readings, and told me that many contemporary economists are blogging, which I hope to incorporate. Professor Lederman read Qi’s first assignment with me and I asked him some of the questions that I hadn’t known how to answer (i.e. How do I know when to use articles?). He told me that there’s no answer besides to practice reading and writing. He told me to be encouraging and while editing, to focus on mistakes that obscure meaning instead of getting hung up on missing articles. The meeting made me feel better and more qualified to teach Qi and get her as much practice as possible during Writ 199.
In class with Ashley on Tuesday, we read two essays by prominent figures of the Harlem Renaissance. “The Negro-Art Hokum” by George Schuyler and Langston Hughes’s response “The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain” present the conflict over whether or not “black art” should be distinct from “American art.” We discussed the essays and did the summary exercise (paragraph to sentence) with editing. I was able to manage the time better than I had with Qi. Writing the single sentence summary also led to a discussion of thesis statements. For homework, I asked her to read another essay, “Criteria of Negro Art” by W.E.B. Du Bois and answer one of four questions about it in a formal paragraph. I’m enjoying Ashley’s subject so much and she asks plenty of questions that help me focus on the things she wants to learn.
– Chloe Stroman
Thanks. Good idea to check in with Profs Rothschild and Lederman, Chloe.
This week Cheryl and Sophie turned in their first writing assignments, which were to write a short letter discussing their strengths and weaknesses as writers and their goals for the semester.
Sophie’s piece was fairly well-organized and thoughtful. Mistakes were mostly confined to a few clearly identifiable areas, which I was able to highlight both in my comments on her letter and during out meeting. A particular weakness appears to be confusing tenses, but when we went through her letter together she was able to make corrections with little prompting and seemed to grasp my explanations about when different tenses should be used depending on what she’s discussing in her letter. We then did an exercise I found online. Sophie seems motivated, eager to learn, and much less confident than her writing deserves.
Cheryl’s letter was harder to approach than Sophie’s. It was riddled with many small errors that seemed to indicate a basic lack of proofreading, and it was very disorganized. Several of her sentences or phrases were very awkwardly phrased, a weakness she herself identified in the letter. Although it was easy to spot a couple areas that Sophie could focus in on, Cheryl’s problems are much more diverse. During our meeting I had her read aloud awkward sentences, but she doesn’t seem to have a very good ear for hearing mistakes. However, when I had her explain aloud what she was trying to communicate, she was able to eloquently and concisely express her thoughts. She told me that many of her problems stem from trying to translate her thoughts directly from Korean into English while writing, so I suggested that she try to talk through her ideas whenever she finds herself starting to do this. We did a close reading exercise that revealed a significant problem with not knowing when to use articles (esp. “a” and “the”), so I had her do a quick worksheet. We discussed her problems with organization briefly, but I think we’ll wait to directly tackle this problem for another week or two.
Their second assignment is to read an article about famous writers’ strange writing processes, as well as a Sin Boldly chapter on the writing process, and then write a 2-3 page reflection. Their assignments included a personalized list of things to watch out for and work on based on their previous assignments, which I hope will prove helpful.
Read Chloe’s posting, above, about Prof Josh Lederman’s advice about ELLs and missing articles.
Also–can you share the online exercise you found, for verb tense? Thanks.
Thanks! I’ll definitely take Chloe and Lederman’s advice to heart. I’m going to try to arrange a meeting with Josh Lederman in the upcoming week.
I’ve been using Perdue OWL to find some good writing exercises that address a variety of problems. For example, the tense exercises can be found here: http://owl.english.purdue.edu/exercises/2/22
Thanks for the link, Victoria!
Violet and Eka both turned in their first assignments this week and wrote 2-3 page thoughtletters to discuss their strengths and weaknesses as writers and their objectives in taking Writing 199.
Violet’s letter was ridden with grammatical errors. The most apparent issue was her misuse of different very tenses, and I decided to focus our first session on learning different verb tenses and appropriate uses. There were also many examples of awkward phrasing or incorrect word choice that I highlighted and discussed with her. I had her write all of the correct versions of her sentences and tenses in her “grammar notes” so that she could review and learn from her errors, which I think was very helpful to her. I used the chart from this website (http://www.myenglishpages.com/site_php_files/grammar-lesson-tenses.php) just to go over the different tenses and we made it to the present perfect simple. I am planning to finish the tenses with her tomorrow and then go onto the online exercises section to give her additional examples and practice.
Eka’s thoughtletter was very well written and I was struck with her clearly defined, journalistic voice throughout her paper. She has good sentence variety and generally clear prose, although there were a few minor grammatical errors that I pointed out to her. I think that Eka struggles with correct, precise word choice and occasional awkward phrasing. She also said that she has trouble with “going deeper” in her analysis and wordiness and is hoping to sound more academic in future papers, so I will keep an eye out for these issues in other papers. We went over her paper together and discussed general writing techniques . I also had her “free write” about her experience at Wellesley so far just to have more examples of her writing. We went over this rough draft as well and pointed out areas where word choice was incorrect or phrasing was awkward.
This week, Violet and Eka will both submit a second thoughtletter after reading segments from the Allyn and Bacon Guide to Writing, specifically the passage about wallowing in complexity, and Lynn Hunt’s article, “How Writing Leads to Thinking and Not the Other Way Around.” I chose these articles for them to understand the importance in improving their writing skills and to introduce specific techniques for them to work on throughout the semester. For next week, they will complete the reading for their first main assignments and submit a preliminary thoughtletter to discuss the areas they would like to address in their first drafts.
So far, so good. I hope your students will get into their discipline-specific writing this week.
This week at the beginning of class Chimuanya and I went through what she had written about, her goals for the semester. She wants to work on her ability to identify grammatical errors in her writing, and to develop a “concrete, concise, and cohesive” argument (her words). We reviewed the syllabus as it stands now. I explained the policies of the class for turning in an assignment and making up class if she gets sick. She was in agreement with the policies and excited about the readings. We talked about other sources, including Geoffrey Canada, Michelle Rhee, Deborah Meier, and the documentary, “Waiting for Superman.” I told her she will need to meet with a research librarian to help find good sources for her third essay by March 8th. She said that she has worked with a research librarian in the past and found it helpful, and would have no problem doing it once again. Next, I reviewed this week’s readings with her (the Woodson and Baldwin articles), explained what a thought letter was, and what I was looking for in her first assignment.
In meeting with Shruthi this week, we first clarified her writing goals further to the following: sophisticated and elegant language (no clunky sentence structure), clarity and organization of ideas, multiple drafts, better time management, and improved reading comprehension. Then we went through the syllabus. She loved the reading I assigned last week, and was enthusiastic about the ones listed on the syllabus. We also discussed the policies for turning in work and making up class if she gets sick. I verified with her that she had elected the course credit/non on Banner. I told her she will need to arrange to meet with a research librarian by March 8th to go over sources for her research essay, and she said this would not be a problem.
Next, we talked about the author’s main points in the assigned article, “Big Foot.” We went through the thought letter that she prepared, and discussed which ideas she will develop in her essay. Overall her ideas were strong but the mechanics were weak. Because she had only written a page, I told her one way of adding length and clarity would be to explain the terms she uses if their meaning is not explicit and they are not used in the text. Then I explained the assignment for the first essay to her, and we began brainstorming. She had a lot of ideas at the start, but they weren’t connected, so I helped her sort through them. On a plain sheet of paper, I made up a grid that she could use to figure out which ideas should go in which paragraph. By the end she was able to do it on her own. She was enthusiastic about the outline, and noted that it was very helpful to her. Her first essay is due next week.
Also, because both of my students named reading comprehension as a problem, I reviewed importance of active reading and gave them some strategies to make it easier. I will try to attach the handout, as it may be helpful for other students as well.
I’m looking forward to what you have to say about the first essays these two write.
Wednesday February 6, 2013
Chelsi and I had a productive meeting today. We spent most of the session working on in-class exercises, which I designed to help her understand that writing is a process (to be supplemented by her readings for next week), identify the pillars of a good expository essay, and become aware of how to cut down on wordy sentences. Chelsi found the wordiness exercise especially helpful (she didn’t realize some of them could be cut down so much) and circled a few examples to remember for future reference. For the second revision exercise, she misunderstood the prompt and rewrote her paragraph in the style of a newspaper report instead of an academic essay (I’ll have to remember to emphasize that part tomorrow with Kelsey)… but that was okay, because we got to talk more about different styles of writing Her third revision exercise yielded some awkward sentences/sentence sequencing, so we also got to talk about transitions/logic/thesis, which made good preview of next week’s class. Overall, Chelsi seems to have a firm grasp of what a good academic paper looks like, but needs to practice translating that knowledge into her own writing. I look forward to receiving her next paper.
February 7, 2013
Kelsey had a much stronger reaction to the Alex Johnson article than Chelsey. She came to the meeting excited about how much she identified with the “Procrastinator” and “Internal Critic.” We discussed methods of overcoming the two issues, and she resolved to make clearer outlines (she really doesn’t like making outlines) and pace herself so that she will have enough time to revise (not her favorite part of the writing process). Kelsey was quite thoughtful in her comparison of her two writing pieces and found wordiness exercise especially challenging and eye-opening. The example on Macbeth yielded the reaction: “Oh, jeez, if I had to write this I’d definitely write something like that first example!” I think she may have taken the lesson a little too much to heart, though, because her third revision turned out to be very spartan. I suppose it would be easier to add details once you have a solid structure, though. We started talking about three-story theses toward the end of the class. I plan to continue on the topic next class, instead of working on close reading exercises as I had originally planned. Both Chelsi and Kelsey have been a joy to work with (Kelsey has been especially responsive and eager to learn).
Aimee,
These are terrific. I like the level of detail, so keep it up.
~LSV
February 13, 2013
Chelsi and I worked on introduction/thesis and organization today. We began to discuss these issues toward the end of last class so I thought it would be a nice segue into a new unit. Her thoughtletters also indicated to me that these were what she needed most work on at the moment, so the timing was perfect. Chelsi mentioned learning about the “three story thesis” in her FYWriting course but not fully understanding what it meant, so I went over the Paul Revere exercise with her (Olin material). When she still didn’t understand the concept, I had her use the three story thesis to explain her friend’s recent breakup with her boyfriend, as we just happened to have talked about it before class. That was helpful because it made her realize that the “three story thesis” isn’t a completely foreign concept after all — she already uses it in her daily conversations with friends! (This exchange reminded me of what Gerald Graff said about arguments in Clueless in Academe). Once she understood the concept, I had her map out and evaluate the first paragraph of her next assigned reading based on the three story thesis to reinforce her understanding of the concept. She demonstrated some good critical thinking skills, which would be helpful for her next writing assignment. For the rest of the class, we worked on revising the first paragraph from her thoughtletter #1. I had initially planned for her to revise her thoughtletter #2 as well, but decided she would benefit more from additional work on clarity/precision/logical transitions, so she will now do that on her own for next week. By the end of the class, Chelsi was pleased to have produced a revised version of her introduction that was more concise, “scholarly”, and clearly structured, while still maintaining her own voice and personality. She seems to be soaking in everything we discuss in class. I look forward to receiving her next thoughtletter.
February 14, 2013
Kelsey had never heard of the three-story thesis before. When I first explained it to her using the Paul Revere example, she appeared to have grasped it right away. However, when we tried to come up with a real-life example, she struggled. We brainstormed a few scenarios together until she exclaimed, “Oh! I think I understand it a little better now!” I think she enjoyed the challenge of both coming up with an idea to write about on the spot and putting a new skill into practice. I appreciated her questions along the way (“do you use ‘yet’ when you begin the second story?”). Interestingly enough, her chosen topic was again on managing time in college, which was what she wrote about in our in-class assignment last week. (Perhaps this would be a nice regular mini-essay topic to pursue for in-class writing exercises… we could compare all her drafts at the end of the semester to see how her writing evolved. Hmm, I wonder if I could do the same with Chelsi, as well?) We ended up spending more time than I had planned on this part (she is a bit of a perfectionist) but I think it was good exercise for her, and we were able to revisit issues of wordiness/logic flow while we were at it. Later, I had Kelsey evaluate the opening paragraph of her next reading assignment and together we confirmed that it was in fact written in a perfect three-story thesis format (I really liked how she talked me through her thought process, step by step). We also predicted what the rest of the paper would include, based on what we read in the introduction paragraph. We’ll come back to her prediction once she has actually read the whole article and then complete our evaluation of the introduction paragraph. Toward the end of class, we revisited her thoughtletter #2 and I was pleased to see that Kelsey was able to immediately identify areas that she needed to fix, based on what we talked about today. I think we made a lot of progress! I look forward to receiving her next thoughtletter, as well.
Aimee, Are these both about Chelsi? Or is one..Kelsey ? IF so, please edit and change the name in the 2nd entry.
Can you send me, in google docs, an approximation of the 3 story thesis about the boyfriend breakup? Sounds like it would be a great example.
This week, I met with Amy and Nhung. I am very pleased with Amy’s writing and I think she is actually a very good writer–perhaps she just needs a little extra motivation or benefits especially from one-on-one work. She does not need much help with word choice or using more sophisticated syntax, so I am really looking forward to working with her on the larger level stuff, like polishing a full essay. One issue is that I think Amy’s readings so far may not be adequate for writing a 5-6 page paper. We discussed this and I think that she is definitely at a point where she could do a little research and find a few extra readings that are relevant to the topic she chooses. Depending on her progress on this on Tuesday, I will give her the go ahead; if I think it will be better for me to just choose a specific topic for her, then I will do that instead.
Nhung has also been very good to work with. I think I need to address some ESL issues, such as using consistent verb tenses throughout a sentence and practicing noun/verb agreement, but her ability to come up with interesting ideas and to understand the more complicated writing techniques is excellent. We have been discussing different types of thesis statements–analytical, expository, and argumentative–and practicing writing examples of each. I have also had her practice re-writing some of her most promising sentences (from her written homework) to make them for specific and to help come up with some potential theses. I would definitely appreciate any insight on how to work with her on the ESL related stuff, as this is something I really want to make sure I do correctly (I don’t want to just highlight all of the errors and call it a day).
Marilynn, check in with Professo Josh Lederman and ask him for a meeting to go over Nhung’s writing issues–the ones that are ELL based. He has the theoretical as well as the practical knowledge to make you a more efficient TA in this situation. And he’s happy to help us out here.
February 11, 2013
Violet submitted her thoughtletter reflecting on the reading assignments from Allyn and Bacon and Lynn Hunt and drew many interesting conclusions. She liked the concept of “idea mapping” from Allyn and Bacon, and discussed her use of idea mapping to memorize math formulas and applying this technique to organizing her thoughts before writing. She also revealed that she typically types her sentences into Google to see if other people use similar grammar structures to check if she is correct – what do you think about this habit? I asked her to refrain from doing that in this course so that I could see her writing without any online corrections. I also identified 5 sentences with grammatical errors for her to rewrite in her grammar book and we continued to work on verb tenses from the handout that I gave her during our previous session. We went to the online website to complete some of the practice problems together, and it seemed like she was really getting the hang of the basic verb tenses.
She read Hillary Clinton’s speech on US-China relations from 2011 for this week and though I can tell she greatly enjoyed the reading material, her thoughtletter is very scattered and it is very difficult to discern what she is trying to argue. She jumps from topic to topic without connecting any of the ideas are there are many grammatical errors, including tense errors. She told me that she did not use Google to check her sentences, but I will really need to discuss her ideas during our session on Tuesday to help guide her towards a first draft. I am planning to ask a lot of questions to see what her opinion/argument is and then make an “idea map” or an outline with her. I also plan to focus on thesis statements and the introduction paragraph and plan to help her write a preliminary thesis statement before she works on the draft by herself. I think I will also have her submit her introduction paragraph by Wednesday or Thursday so that I can provide feedback before she writes the rest of her draft. I will also get in touch with Professor Lederman as well for some assistance with ESL related errors.
February 14, 2013
I met with Eka on Thursday to discuss her thoughtletter. Her writing contains very few grammatical errors, but she uses very elaborate metaphors and imagery that sometimes clouds her otherwise clear and thoughtful prose. I highlighted the sections that were unclear to me and we discussed how she may keep the descriptive language but emphasize her ideas and arguments without getting lost in imagery. She rewrote these sentences easily once I identified the unclear sections. We also discussed different prepositions and their appropriate uses. I gave her the text that she will write her first draft on from the Grasso, Korin and Kort reading and she read a few pages during our session. We then discussed where she would like to go with her paper to discuss the Tiananmen Square Massacre and the development of democracy in China. I am looking forward to reading her thoughtletter to see where she has decided to focus. I plan to provide Eka with an introduction to thesis statements, introduction paragraphs and conclusions during our next meeting. I don’t think that I will work with her on an outline, as her structure and organization has been excellent in her thoughtletters and I am curious to see how she does with a more formal writing assignment without any assistance for her first draft.
Violet and Eka could not be more different in terms of writing ability. Although both are very diligent and have been conscientious about attendance or deadlines thus far, Violet really struggles with very basic writing concepts while Eka is quite advanced. I have really enjoyed working with both of them so far, but Violet will definitely be a challenge for me this semester. I think that I will really benefit from meeting with Professor Lederman.
Kim, Your instinct was quite right. I would strongly discourage–no, I would flat out forbid, the entering of one’s prose into Google. In fact, I would discourage a student in WRIT 199 from using google at all for any reason except to check,m say, what sunday the Academy Awards are on tv. This is not an efficient way to improve one’s writing–it’s essentially a time waster like Facebook, so I think your approach is right here.
I like your summary comment t the end here. Very useful.
For Violet, lots of practice is essential if she is to develop as a writer. Keep reminding her of that.
Wednesday, February 20, 2013
Chelsi turned in her thoughtletter this week on an article about Title IX, which she will also be analyzing for her first formal paper assignment. Because her last thoughtletter was ended up being just a summary of the Lyn Hunt article, I specifically asked her this time to explore her own response (thoughts, questions, etc.) but again I received just a summary of the article. Some of the ideas that I thought were hers turned out to be also the author’s arguments, paraphrased (we talked about using sources and citing sources). Her concluding paragraph, however, had the potential to be expanded as she seemed to have suggested that Title IX has created unforeseen problems for men and that there is a difference between prevention of discrimination and prohibition of discrimination. For class, I printed out the original Title IX for us to read together. At first, Chelsi thought it was just a dry list of points with nothing to comment on, but as we picked apart the language, she was surprised to see that Title IX was in fact intended not just for women but for men as well (it prohibits discrimination based on sex) and that sports is in fact not mentioned anywhere. She also noticed on her own that military services were also excluded from the activities that Title IX prohibits discriminatory practices based on sex and commented on the inherent stereotypes/biases in the document. Toward the end of the class, Chelsi had developed a much better understanding of Title IX and started to question the supposed neutrality of the article she read for today. She is thinking of writing a response to the article, from the point of view of someone who doesn’t support Title IX. Using her thoughtletter, we also revisited topics of clarity, organization, transition, and three story thesis. From what I’ve seen so far, I think Chelsi’s biggest area for improvement is in developing her own argument, rather than in technical issues.
Thursday, February 21, 2013
Kelsey also turned in her thoughtletter on the “Modern Woman” in films, which she will be analyzing for her first formal paper assignment. Her paper was a classic example of the results of “wallowing in complexity”! Kelsey contradicted herself in almost every other paragraph… and sometimes within paragraph, too, as she tried to decide if women have achieved equality in the world of the cinema. She laughed when I pointed this out. We spent about half of the class working out what she meant in each of her paragraphs and reverse outlining her paper. The other half was spent trying to isolate her argument. She also struggled with tenses and integrating her own thoughts into the paper without using “I think…” so we also talked about that. Toward the end, Kelsey wanted to know if she and Chelsi could peer edit their papers (I had asked them to send each other good/bad sentences to evaluate for fun in their own time, but nothing has happened so far and I haven’t followed up on it yet). I still need to figure out the timing for this but I think I might conduct a group meeting next week so we can all discuss the papers together. The only think I’m afraid of is not having enough time to look over the papers before we all meet because the only time we can all meet is Wednesday afternoon (Chelsi turns her paper in at 5pm on Monday and Kelsey turns in her paper at 5pm on Tuesday… which means Chelsi will only have a night to look over Kelsey’s paper). I want everyone to have had a chance to properly look through the papers because if we all meet together, I want the session to be helpful and productive. What do you think, Lynne and fellow TAs?
Sounds like you need to delay the meeting, so that all 3 of you are fully prepared– even if that entails getting together on Saturday or Sunday, just this once.
Last week I met with both Amy and Nhung. Amy is doing very well and I am impressed by how easily she took on more responsibility for finding good resources and developing her own topic to write about. I think her paper will turn out quite well and that we will be able to spend more time on the little details that make a paper excellent, rather than focusing on basic details like grammar or structure. She continues to come well prepared and has a good attitude. Last week, I sat with her while she wrote out several paragraphs of her paper, and I felt like this was very useful for her–in just 45 minutes or so, she ended up with at least a page of her paper that we could look over together, and she could ask me questions as she went. I look forward to seeing her first best effort this week.
Nhung is also very good to work with. Because she still has some ESL issues, I decided to reduce her first paper length to 3 pages, mostly because I was concerned that it would be difficult to address both ESL questions and solely paper related questions in the time allotted for the first paper. She is very quick to understand abstract concepts and ideas, but I think since it takes her longer in English to fully articulate them while writing–the thing is, when speaking, she communicates very well, and I wish she could just write down everything the way she speaks! I have also had Nhung start writing paragraphs in class, that way we can dissect them sentence by sentence and she has a strong groundwork for writing the rest of the paper outside of class. I think after getting intensive practice with the first two papers she will definitely be ready to write a longer paper at the end of the semester.
Chelsi and Kelsey turned in their first drafts of their first formal paper assignment this week.
Chelsi said she spent a lot of time outlining, reverse outlining, and cutting out unnecessary words/expressions, and I think her work paid off. Her paper was surprisingly well organized and structured, and definitely less wordy than any of her previous assignments. Where she struggles is in coming up with a strong original argument. I’ve noticed this on many occasions before, as she tends to submit summaries of articles rather than her own analysis/reflection on them. However in this particular case, her lack of argument may partially be my fault, as I realized that the reading assignment I picked out (“Title IX: A Brief History”) might have been too neutral and abstract. After speaking with Jeannine, I’ve decided to assign another article from the New York Times (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/19/sports/boys-swimming-on-girls-teams-find-success-then-draw-ire.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0) for her to use. Hopefully, she will have a easier time now with a more practical, concrete (and controversial!) example. Because of this minor hiccup, I’m going to allow her to turn in one more draft.
Kelsey on the other hand is on the verge of developing a really strong argument… she had a lot of great ideas but they were buried in random sentences and scattered throughout her draft. I guess she is still “wallowing in complexity.” We spent the majority of the class trying to clarify what she meant and tease out potential thesis statements (something *very roughly* along the lines of: (1) even though female characters in films gained more agency… (2) they were now overtly objectified and sexualized… (3) in fact the “New Woman” in films is more harmful/oppressive (than previous silent films in which female characters had no clear purpose or agency) because it deceives the audience re. women’s roles and causes women to internalize the negative values conveyed… (and maybe 4?) and this also created potential rifts among the women in real life as it highlighted class discrimination in addition to gender discrimination). She has a lot to work on but there is also a lot of potential in her paper.
We also met for an additional 30min as a group to do some peer editing this week. Prior to the meeting, Kelsey and Chelsi both read the other person’s paper, made comments via track changes, and submitted paragraphs of written comments. Chelsi was particularly great at picking apart Kelsey’s paper (she actually made many of the same comments and suggests that I made) and Kelsey was inspired by Chelsi’s paper to work harder on her organization/structure/clarity. They also both realized the importance of having an audience in mind as they write because what makes perfect sense in their head might not necessarily be clear to other people who are not as familiar with the argument/subject as they are. Because Chelsi and Kelsey really enjoyed and appreciated the opportunity to share ideas and learn from each other, I think I will have them meet like this at least once per formal paper assignment.
Can Chelsi learn to channel those “It’s not fair” thoughts into a strong argument? Keep working with her on this–it’s essential, as I am sure you know well–to her learning how to stake out a controversial position and then develop an argument with strong support.
Brava on trying and having success with the peer editing!
Last week I met with both Amy and Nhung. Once again I was very pleased with Amy’s work. She did a great job guiding her own research and developing her own topic. I was able to focus most of my suggestions on improving word choice and style. I also encouraged her to explore some “deeper” big picture ideas in her paper–she had a very strong foundation for discussing her ideas in a more complex way, and I gave her many ideas and questions to work from.
Nhung also was well prepared and I think it was definitely a good idea to shorten her first assignment. I think her ESL issues are largely the result of not spending enough time editing–I suspect if she sits down and spends the time re-reading her work, she is able to identify them and fix them herself. She continues to have complex ideas that impress me! I am a little worried that she will not hone in on more simplified examples/ideas, as is necessary in a 3 page paper, but I am optimistic that she will have an insightful paper! I also looked over a much longer paper that she is working on for her history class, and I was very impressed by it–she said she had written 7 drafts! It looked great and I am very excited to see her work improve throughout the semester.
Chelsi turned in her second draft of her paper, this time incorporating the New York Times article we found last week. She mentioned in her thoughtletter that she found the article really controversial and had a lot of strong feelings toward it (to the extent that she got really angry about things being “not fair” and started to rant about it to her friends at night), but her essay was once again superficial and stuck at summary level. I asked her what was “not fair” but she couldn’t really explain and kept responding “um… I don’t know” to my prompting questions. After bouncing ideas back and forth, we eventually realized that she’s been limiting herself because she assumed that she can’t support her argument unless the argument itself is actually in the text so she can quote it, even though she has strong feelings toward what she read. I explained that the fact that she developed these strong feelings indicates that she was reacting to something she read in the text… which means that even though she can’t pinpoint it just yet, there is “evidence” she can pull from the text to support her argument. From there, our session became easier as we brainstormed all of her ideas and linked them together to create her first real working thesis. Chelsi’s eye lit up and she was excited to be able to use all her ideas from her thoughtletters and our discussion about her first paper. Her working thesis now something along the following lines: “Recent developments (e.g., boys competing in girls’ swim meets and winning against other girls) have revealed society’s hypocritical attitude toward gender equality/support of Title IX. Looking more closely at the text of Title IX, we come to understand that even though the Title prohibits gender discrimination, it was originally written to help women gain more rights and power to match the men. As such, society resists when Title IX is applied to men. Therefore, what was meant to prohibit gender discrimination has now inadvertently caused men to be discriminated against, and in fact the discrimination against men is more problematic than that against women because society is still largely under the impression that only women can be discriminated against.” I felt like we had a breakthrough… but I guess we’ll have to wait until she turns in her final draft to see if she has really made progress!
Edit: Because we ran out of time (we only got to make bullet-points of her ideas), I asked her to email me her argument in full sentences. This is what she produced: “[swim team] –> people don’t think title ix should include men because they dont think they should be in women’s sports, even though they believe men should have equal access. Based on the wording used in title ix as well as the reactions received when men are being helped, every one understood its meaning to apply more to women that men… the society resists when title ix is applied to men. –men are actually being discriminated against though we dont realize it because we are focused more on women.” Hmmm.
Kelsey claimed to have put in extra effort in restructuring her paper (she was quite inspired by Chelsi during our last peer editing session). Her introduction paragraph was indeed much clearer, hopefully because we spent quite some time discussing her argument during our last session. Yet her arguments in the rest of the paper, while thankfully much less self-contradictory, were still all over the place. We spent half of our time trying to distill her arguments into one coherent topic sentence and then reverse outlining her paper to figure out how those topic sentences (and by extension her paragraphs) might better fit together. The other half of the time was spent doing the same thing within her paragraphs, since her thoughts often jump between sentences and she is prone to writing dense, convoluted sentences that even she couldn’t explain or has to laugh at when I point them out. I had to ask, “what are you trying to say here? How is this relevant to your thesis/argument/topic sentence” to almost every sentence… and the standard answer was, “Oh… oh God, I don’t know…!” What eventually helped was for me to repeat back/transcribe her verbal explanations, because she gets stuck trying to use “academic language.” We couldn’t get through everything in the 70min but hopefully we were able to address all the larger issues and enough of the sentence level confusion that she would now be able to spot ambiguities on her own. I told her to do multiple reverse outlines as she works on her next draft, and to talk out loud and type what she says when she gets stuck trying to express herself in a scholarly tone.
Last week I met with Amy and Nhung. They both had their final drafts due. Amy’s assignment was more self-directed because I think she is a fairly good writer when it comes to syntax, diction, and structure. I thought her paper was good in the sense that everything she wrote was well done–but there was so much room for more analysis! I was a bit disappointed about this but I think part of it is my fault for not pushing her to do more sophisticated analysis from the start–next time I’m going to make it clear in the directions and emphasize it throughout because I know she can do it! I’m also going to provide more guidance on choosing more sophisticated and varied words and phrases because I think she is at the point where this could really improve her writing even more.
Nhung’s assignment was shortened because I really wanted to focus more on ESL issues than on the length and structure. I actually think Nhung is a very good writer with great ideas, and she is very willing and able to do in depth analysis. The main problem is all the little ESL problems–I suspect that in Vietnamese, she writes beautifully! I thought her final draft of her first paper was good in terms of ideas and structure, but I did not realize how much more guidance was needed on ESL to make it a good final draft. I am going to be extremely vigilant about this for the rest of the semester and I am really going to emphasize the importance of fixing each sentence as you write and not letting all of the little errors add up to one poorly written paper. Over the next few weeks I will be assigning multiple one page writing assignments on a weekly basis so that we can really practice this.
Re Amy: do push here more. Your plan for Hung makes sense–and your vigilance is essential. Thanks.
I’m catching up with my journal entries – I apologize!
I met with Violet the week of March 4th to discuss the second draft of her paper discussing US-China relations. She had made great grammar changes and had revised awkward phrasing and stylistic errors as well. The paper read much more smoothly, which allowed me to really focus on the content and analysis. There were many issues that she referred to very superficially – the One China Policy, US-Taiwanese Agreement, etc. – and we discussed how to provide additional information for readers unfamiliar with her topic and expand on her ideas. I also urged her to incorporate more of Secretary Clinton’s speech in her writing to analyze the tone and objectives of this important keynote address and include more direct quotes to support her arguments. I gave her a lot of comments regarding her introduction, and she spent the last 15 minutes of class revising the introduction.
During our meeting the week of March 11th, I handed back her final (third) draft of her paper with stylistic/grammatical comments on the actual paper and a one-paged letter to discuss the revision progress. She is very diligent to incorporate all of my suggestions and is clearly working very hard, and I commended her for her diligence. Violet had clearly elaborated on several of the “superficial” sections that we talked about and made clearer causal connections in order to strengthen her argument. I mentioned that she still could have improved her analysis and incorporation of the speech itself to make sure that she is properly following instruction assignments. Overall, it was a stunning improvement from her first draft and I think she is very pleased with her progress. We also discussed two NYTimes articles that I sent her about China – one about the “matchmaking” trend and another about the impact of the death of Hugo Chavez on China’s role in the international community. She is improving with engaging in discussions with me and sharing her own opinions, rather than simply summarizing the articles she has been assigned.
Over the break, she will be writing a thoughtletter about the reading assignment for her next paper,
“How to Integrate China Into the International Community: US-China Relations Under Power Transition in the 21st Century” by Jianyang Hu. I encouraged her to continue to explore her question about how the United States should engage with China. I also plan to send her a few articles a week, as she has really enjoyed reading them and has even made the NYTimes her homepage (in English!)
I met with Eka the week of March 4th to discuss her second draft about her paper analyzing the events leading up to the Tiananmen Square Massacre and the intern and external tensions that led to this horrific event. During this meeting, we discussed how to continue to improve her introduction, which was 1.5 pages and had too much background and historical description rather than analysis. We also discussed how to better organize her paper, as she had many different grievances of intellectuals in separate paragraphs and we decided to group them based on “economic” and “political” grievances for more organization. We continued to work on stylistic errors to make sure that all sentences were clear and discussed appropriate word choice, as Eka tends to use “big” academic words that do not convey the correct meaning for her argument. She also spent time at the end of our session revising her introduction.
During our meeting the week of March 11th, I handed back the final draft of her paper with comments as well as a 1 page evaluation. Although her introduction was much better overall, her thesis statement could still use more tension and highlight a controversy or argument for effectively. Her organization was more logical, but there were still areas that we had discussed that had not been addressed in her final revision. I highlighted these areas and also emphasized the importance of analysis and argument rather than summary. We discussed her next assignment, which is a thoughtletter assessing a chapter from China in Transition, “Political Challenges and Changing Agendas.”
For both Eka and Violet, I also gave them a “feedback evaluation” form to give comments about their progress and satisfaction with the course so far. Overall, they both seem pleased but Violet hoped that we can work with more current articles, rather than historical documents, and Eka would like to focus more on conclusions and introductions, as she still feels as though she does not know how to approach these sections successfully. It has been very interesting to work with both students concurrently; although Eka is a stronger writer technically and stylistically, Violet is actually much better about incorporating my comments and really learning from the handouts about structure and organization. Though Eka’s writing is “better,” Violet showed more improvement throughout the draft process.
Nice to see this shift in Eka’s critical thinking and ability to take a position and support it. Looks like progress for both student, though Eka needs to pay more attention to your feedback and respond to it carefully through developing different and more effective writing habits.
The week before break (3/11 to 3/15) I had productive meetings with Amy and Nhung. Since they both have turned in their first papers and we spent last week going over my comments, we jumped into new material for the next paper.
For Amy, I delved into the readings for some of my past psychology classes and I found a cohesive set of articles/scientific papers/editorials that we read about the “Pygmalion Effect” and academic tracking in schools. They provide background on the issue and present multiple expert opinions on tracking. For her paper assignment, I am going to ask Amy to pick one side and defend it: either pro-tracking or anti-tracking. She told me that she does appreciate very directed writing assignments, so I think this will be helpful for her, especially as I push her to be more reflective in her writing. As part of this, I encouraged her in our preliminary writing session last week to really think as she reads about which side she would choose, and to also consider her own experiences and observations while writing. For next week, she is writing her first thought letter, hopefully about two pages double spaced.
After Nhung turned in her first paper, we spent two weeks going over the ESL issues and she ended up turning in two more corrected drafts. I spent our meeting last week focusing on targeted areas in her paper–the issues that come up over and over again. I encouraged her to re-read each sentence as she writes and to carefully make sure she checks for the common errors she makes. She definitely understood the grammar concepts, so I am hoping her diligence will pay off. She expressed interest in reading short news articles about current events and writing about them on a weekly basis, so I started her off with two short articles about Mayor Bloomberg’s soda ban and its subsequent overturning. During our meeting, she wrote a summary of the articles, and for next week, I am asking her to write a one page opinion piece.
Marilynn,
Creative responses to your students’ very different writing issues. I especially like the Bloomberg soda ban assignment. You might want to have Nhung take a look –and deconstruct–the court’s opinion striking down the ban. Correct the “it’s” to its. Thanks!
This week both Amy and Nhung have showed progress in their writing. Amy and I worked on her Thought Letter about tracking in schools. It was well written and she did a good job of summarizing the main sides of the issue (as expected). We discussed her paper and I told her that her primary focus in the paper should be picking one side–tracking or no tracking. She seemed hesitant at first about how she found it difficult to choose a side, but I emphasized that this type of exercise is exactly what she needs to continue to improve as a writer. I think she just needs a lot of encouragement in the process of writing an argument, so I am glad that I am working one-on-one with her in the process. We also developed a concrete strategy for improving her analysis skills (analyzing examples/quotes/arguments, that is). I provided her with this framework and during our class I asked her to go through this exercise with every example in her paper:
Things to do when Analyzing Quotes/Examples:
1) Rewrite the quote/example in your own words.
2) Why did I choose this example?
3) How does it relate to my thesis?
4) Am I using this example to support my argument, refute another argument, or both?
5) What does this example say about my topic–does it add another perspective? Does it show something important? Does it reveal something that is not obvious?
It is ok (and important!) to explicitly answer these questions for the reader, because it explains the way you think and helps to make your argument more convincing!
——————-
I think she found it very helpful and I am looking forward to reading her first full draft next week.
Nhung is also showing improvement and I enjoyed reading her thought letter on Mayor Bloomberg’s soda ban. She analyzed the issue well from multiple angles and included an interesting example (cigarette smoking) to make her point and show why the soda ban is flawed. I am encouraging her to pick one side and defend it to fill up another 1.5 pages in the paper, and in class I asked her to outline her preliminary arguments and begin writing them formally. I also created a list of English usage errors that she should check for herself before turning any papers in to me, and I emphasized that I expect her to have checked for these errors in the draft due next week.
Marilynn, I would like to borrow /use your list of Things to Do When Analyzing quotes, for my own students. Thanks for these observations on Nhung and Amy’s progress.
Eka Zhao — Week of April 7, 2013
I assigned Eka the article “Political Challenges and Changing Agendas” by Professor William Joseph for her second paper. This reading discusses recent democratic growth in China and the prospects for additional government reform to match the rapid economic development. In her first draft, Eka very clearly outlined the discrepancy between stagnant political reform and drastic economic growth in China. She effectively argues that Chinese citizens may use their rising socioeconomic status as leverage to demand additional political freedoms. Although her ideas and arguments are very good, she was still struggling to organize her paper logically and to add transitions appropriately. During our session, we discussed how she could clearly separate the economic argument from the political argument and include clear transitions to discuss the connection. I helped her identify where paragraphs could be created (she often writes for 1.5-2 pages before indenting) and gave her a list of transition words from Purdue so that she uses stronger words than “so,” “however,”and “as a result.” We talked about using greater word variety throughout her paper and I was sure to highlight the words that she repeated frequently in her draft. We additionally spent time talking about the article itself; although she had obviously read the article and gained insight from Joseph’s arguments, she only mentioned him once and did not thoroughly explain his argument. Overall, there were fewer stylistic and structural errors than usual and I challenged her to only use my first draft comments to revise for her final draft. I gave her a copy of the “Final Draft Checklist” to be sure that she proofread carefully.
Violet — Week of April 7, 2013
Violet read “How to integrate China into the international community: US-China relations under power transition in the 21st century” for her second paper and is examining the role of the US in integrating China into the global community. I was very impressed with her argument in the first draft, as she assessed Hu’s argument and stated that it “was not convincing” in some respects. I have been really working with her to create her own arguments, rather than just summarizing others, and this was the first example of an essay in which she critiqued the author’s point. Although her argument was excellent, her first draft was especially ridden with grammatical and stylistic errors and we spent much of our session identifying these errors. There were many examples of incorrect word choice throughout her paper. Violet misused the word “foment” and “hegemony” and we spent some time looking these up online so that she could understand their definitions. She also tends to switch from very academic to very colloquial language, including phrases such as “I totally agree with him,” and I made sure to highlight these sections for her. Her conclusion was very good, and she said that she really benefitted from the conclusion handout that we went over for her final draft of her first paper.
Organizationally, Violet really struggles to connect one idea to another. Her transitions are very abrupt and she has trouble connecting them to her main argument. I explained that my thesis advisor once told me that my own transitions from my data section to the analysis section “gave him whiplash” to emphasize that I understood her difficulties. The imagery of whiplash seemed to resonate with her and she found it hysterical. We then went through each conclusion and topic sentence throughout her paper to ensure that there was a better flow and that she was “holding the reader’s hand” to instruct them throughout her paper to tell them “where they had been” and “where they were going.”
Group Exchange Assignment
I instructed Eka and Violet to use my comments to revise their drafts and then to exchange their papers with one another for more feedback (Violet and I went over two drafts together before she submitted to Eka because she did not feel comfortable sharing her writing so early on in the revision process). I gave them each clear deadlines over a two week period for their personal revisions, submissions and feedback for one another, as Eka was submitting to Violet before Violet would be submitting to Eka. I gave them the following guidelines for giving feedback:
– Use the “Track Changes” setting in Word to add comments and highlight sections that may be unclear. Be sure to point out if phrasing is awkward or if you don’t quite understand what is being explained.
– Check for good transitions between paragraphs and ideas. If you think a transition should be added, make sure to indicate where.
– Pay extra attention to introductions and conclusions – you have both spent a great deal of time working on intros and conclusions with me, so you should know exactly what to look for!
– Note any potential grammar mistakes or stylistic errors.
– Make sure that you understand exactly what the author is trying to state – if you need to reread a sentence a few times to understand, that means the writing is unclear! Please mark these sentences so the author can make appropriate changes.
– Write about a half page of overall comments at the end of the paper – What were the strongest aspects of the paper and what do you think still needs work?
They each sent me a copy of the feedback and were both very diligent about editing their partner’s paper. Both highlighted sections that were unclear and noted typos or unclear phrases. Eka showed Violet where her arguments were still not well established, and Violet gave Eka constructive feedback about including a title and fixing unclear phrases. I was very pleased with both of their comments to one another.
Although they both did an excellent job providing their partner with feedback, neither of them successfully incorporated the feedback they received into their own papers (from me or from their partner). I think the week was a little bit crazy with midterms, the marathon, etc., but I ended up sending both of their papers back for further revision before meeting, as I found myself repeating the exact same comments from the week before. I tried to explain to both of them that part of the assignment was not just to give feedback, but to actually use it.
Eka Zhao – Week of April 15, 2013
Despite all of the work that Eka and I had done to work on transitions and structure her paragraphs, she still had sections that were over a page long and failed to fix several simple grammatical or stylistic errors that I clearly noted in her first draft. She also completely ignored Violet’s comments regarding a title or unclear sentences and did not revise any of these phrases. I re-highlighted the sections that we had gone over and pointed to Violet’s comments before sending her paper back. Eka returned her revisions within 24 hours with a very sincere apology for not incorporating all feedback. Her improvement was exceptional. Much of the phrasing had been improved, there were clear transitions between paragraphs, and the arguments were much better outlined. It was clear she had spent much more time on this third revision and was able to make significant improvements. During our session, I showed her the very first draft she had submitted for this paper so that she could really see her growth throughout the revision process. She admitted that the final product was much better and that she realized how much time it took to really make constructive changes. We then moved onto her next assignment for the final research paper. Eka will be researching Bo Xilai, a Chinese political dissident that was expelled from the Chinese Communist Party and submitting a political biography for her final paper that examines Bo’s life and what his experience reveals about Chinese politics as a whole. We went over how to best find sources (A-Z databases, Wellesley library catalog, Google Scholar, etc.) and she made a tentative outline and list of sources during our meeting. She will be submitting her first draft this week.
Violet – Week of April 15
Violet also did not incorporate all feedback that I noted and I ended up re-highlighting her paper as well. She still had many grammatical errors that we had discussed in her previous two drafts and she did not clarify the sections that Eka had noted. In her final draft, she fixed much of the stylistic problems and clearly paid more attention to the feedback. Some of her arguments were not as well explained as I would have liked, and I feel like she showed more progress between drafts during her first assignment. I think her overall argument and thesis statement of this paper was weaker than her first, which may have contributed to her difficulty in making strong transitions and a clear argument. We moved on to her research paper and she has decided to focus on human rights issues in China and how they present an obstacle to better US-China relations. She was clearly very uncomfortable with the idea of finding her own sources and we spent a lot of time on the database orientation to get her started. She will be submitting 5 sources with a brief summary about what they contribute to her overall paper as well as a more detailed outline later tonight. I have a feeling that we will schedule an extra meeting sometime the last week of class or during reading period, because I think she will need more time to revise this paper, given its length and the difficulty in structuring an individual research paper.
This week, I will be working with both students to start their final research papers and I will also hand out their portfolio assignment so that they are aware of the deadlines well in advance. I am really hoping to focus on structure and transitions with both of them, as this is especially important in research papers when new sources are continually introduced. I will also go over MLA formatting to make sure that they are comfortable with this citation style.
This week both Amy and Nhung turned in their thought letters.
Amy’s paper topic–on ethical issues surrounding sperm and egg donation–is proving to be challenging and when I looked over her draft I noticed that, while she summarized the ideas and issues quite well, she hadn’t gotten very far in terms of developing an argument or taking stances on the ethical issues. I emphasized that this was an important component of the assignment, and I think part of the problem was that she hadn’t come up with a formal outline/structure for the paper, so we discussed how she might organize it. Ultimately, I gave her more direction by suggesting that she choose three of the ethical issues, describe both sides for the reader, and then offer her own opinion on each one. While I hope that her final paper can be more sophisticated than this and offer more in depth analysis, I think she does benefit from a lot of structure and direction at the beginning before becoming more confident and seeing how she can turn her ideas into more interesting arguments. I think she will definitely be in good shape by the final paper as she continues to work hard and respond to my feedback.
I was very pleased with Nhung’s paper as her thought letter was more like a first draft–which means we’ll have more time to improve it over the next two weeks. Many of her ESL issues were absent or significantly improved, and I am still trying to figure out if this is because she spent more time on it or because she is getting faster and better. Beyond the ESL mistakes, she had well-developed ideas and interesting arguments in her paper–as I have come to expect. Because her topic is complex, I think she will benefit from producing two more drafts. We worked on restructuring the paper so that her arguments were more clearly organized. Another aspect of this is that she would describe issues/ideas that support her arguments very well, but she wouldn’t really strongly articulate the argument or explain why it belongs with one argument or another. This is what I told her to work on for this week, and I think next week we will see what progress she has made. I hope to also help her refine her thesis further–but I think this is a case in which working backwards by developing the full arguments first might be a better option.
I commend you for your thoughtful and creative pedagogical approach with Amy–a good way to reinforce your instruction all term in the area of argument. This student seems to feel most comfortable with straight summary and that is exactly what you have a few more weeks to coax her out of. Articulate this idea often, orally and in your comments to her.
Amy:
Amy turned in a very good first draft paper. She had followed my directions in terms of structure and had done more analysis of each ethical example. Although it was well-written and she had made the changes I suggested, it still seemed like something more could be done. I had trouble figuring out exactly how to instruct her without just coming up with the sentences that I would write/want to see. I tried to advise her to experiment with each analysis by trying out several different ways to explain it and to help clarify her own thoughts. Hopefully I can look at it again next week and give her more precise directions if needed. I also hope to work with her on more aesthetic things, like not using colloquial language.
Nhung:
Nhung also brought an excellent first draft paper with very few errors. I am very pleased about this! The only suggestions I had for her was that she try combining the first two paragraphs, as they read like two redundant introductions, and that she do more in-depth analysis of the issues. I provided her with several questions that might guide further analysis, and she seemed eager to make these changes. I am really glad she is so far along on this paper because it will leave time at the end for us to focus on little details like word choice!
Please fix this typo because this is a permanent record for futureTAs to look at….
I am very please about …
I like your approach with Hung. With Amy, I think reminding and reminding her about using more formal language in her writing is important–but so is making her revise everything, even on the word level, that is slang or too colloquial…
Week of April 29th
Eka submitted her first draft of the research paper last week and it was a bit of a mess. She hopes to write a political biography of Bo Xiaobo and analyze how his political life and ultimate downfall relates to corruption in China and assess what his story reveals about the CCP. But her thesis was very unclear and her details were very disorganized. We spend all of the 70 minutes going through the facts she had included to determine the most interesting and relevant details. I also highlighted areas where she can include more analysis rather than just reciting facts about his life. We especially emphasized the relationships between Bo and his father and with his security guard, who turned him into authorities at the American embassy which led to his dismissal from his government post. This week she is working to restructure her paper and elaborate on areas discussed.
Violet and I discussed her final draft during the last session and I had her make a list of things to remember when writing her final paper. We then began to look at the sources that she has collected for her outline and I showed her additional databases to use in her research. She has decided to focus on racial minorities in China and the US and to do a comparison between the legal rights granted. She also plans to read through relevant sections of the human rights reports published by the US and China for an interesting analysis. I have strongly tried to encourage her to specify a very small minority – women, religious groups, a particular culture – but so far she has not taken my advice. I will be sure to reiterate this tomorrow because right now, her topic is too broad and unspecified.
I have given both students their final assignments for the writers manual and I have a feeling I will be meeting with both of them during reading period to go over their final drafts and to help them organize for the portfolio.
***Week of April 22nd
Week of April 29th
Eka made many good changes for her first draft. She expanded upon the areas that we discussed and highlighted as unclear and made great parallels between different relationships throughout Bo’s political career. Eka also added an interesting comparison between the elder Bo, Bo Xilai and Xilai’s son. In addition to the organizational changes, she improved other stylistic issues that we discussed and her sentences were much more clear. During this session, we primarily discussed the fine-tuning in her revision and more thoroughly discussed MLA citations. She used a few parenthetical citations throughout the paper, but only when directly quoting the text. I emphasized that this would be considered plagiarism in another class, as I know that the information she is presenting is not common knowledge. I showed her an example of one of my papers so that she could really see how frequently citations should appear when paraphrasing information. Although last week was technically our last session, we are meeting during reading period of this week so that I can give her final comments for her research paper and address any questions that she may have regarding the writer’s manual/portfolio assignment.
Violet only submitted about four pages for her first draft and admitted that she struggled with the assignment. We spent the majority of the session reworking her paper and ultimately decided that the topic she had chosen – minorities in China versus the US – was much too broad. She decided to start from scratch and chose to discuss climate change treaties, specifically the Kyoto Protocol and the Copenhagen Accords, and assess the American and Chinese approach to international carbon emission requirements. We worked the entire session to narrow this topic down and begin finding new sources, but I decided that this was best because she was clearly lost with her original topic.
Violet submitted an outline and introduction on Friday evening and a new first draft on Sunday evening. This draft was significantly better and was 8 full pages. We met today and primarily focused on minor organizational issues and highlighted stylistic mistakes. I encouraged her to expand in certain areas – I’m hoping she can include a more detailed discussion of why the Kyoto Protocol failed and led to the Copenhagen Accord for a more connective thread throughout her paper. I think I finally got through to her regarding passive tense – she had been doing much better, but when directly citing specific data or studies, she was using only passive voice. After we went through each example, she seemed to really understand the difference and why the active voice is more powerful.
I will also be meeting with Violet again during reading period to give final comments and to discuss any questions regarding the writer’s manual/portfolio.
Week of April 29th
Amy: Today, Amy brought a complete draft of her paper. Overall it was well done, as she had responded so thoroughly to my feedback on previous drafts. In looking over her complete draft, I sometimes felt like I was being a little more harsh than I had been before–in terms of really pushing her to improve every little thing. I really focused on the intro paragraph, which she still seemed to have a little bit of trouble with (which is always interesting to me because her conclusions have consistently been well-written and interesting, and usually it’s the other way around…). We talked about how the intro paragraph could just be restructured–without even making any major content changes. I also pushed her to eliminate any redundancy throughout the paper, either by changing content or by simply rewording transitions and analyses.
Nhung:
I was very pleased with Nhung’s complete draft! It is such a huge improvement from the first paper she turned in. There were almost no errors in grammar, word use, or syntax. The paper topic itself is also complex, and I have been impressed throughout the semester by her willingness and ability to tackle complex topics. That said, I felt that she articulated a nuanced argument/analysis throughout the paper. I did feel that more analysis in terms of her own ideas/suggestions/insight on the issue could be added–in other words, going beyond just an in-depth review of the topic. She was responsive to this feedback and I look forward to reading her final draft. I think that, similar to Amy, sometimes she just needs a little extra push to remember that her own ideas and insights are important too!
Don’t confuse “harsh” and “direct” when it comes to feedback to your students. Sounds like you did what was necessary with Amy. Reiterating the difference between summarizing information and presenting a clear, evidence-based argument about the material is necessary-up to the very last minute in any writing course. Don’t apologize for this.
Catching up —
March 13: Peer Review Session
For the week of March 11, we conducted a joint peer review session due to popular demand and because Kelsey was leaving early for spring break. Both Chelsi and Kelsey turned in their final revisions before our meeting and came to our joint session with detailed feedback for the other person. Both of them identified many of the same issues that I had in my comment sheet.
Kelsey really enjoyed the way Chelsi structured her paper and repeatedly mentioned how structure was one thing she needs to work on in her paper. We picked out two sections of her paper to work on clarifying her wording and transitions.
Chelsi agreed that Kelsey needs to work on organizing her ideas, as they were still scattered. We identified a few examples, some of which I had previously discussed in class with Kelsey but she had not included in her revision. Kelsey could explain the concepts verbally but said she struggled to put them down in words. She was also still a little confused herself about how the employment section fits into the overall picture. We all agreed that her conclusion paragraph should be used as an introduction, and that she should extend her argument in a new conclusion.
Both Chelsi and Kelsey still need to work on integrating quotes, but Kelsey more than Chelsi her background in journalism causes her to often quote people without context or explanation. I borrowed an example Professor Velenchik often uses and asked her to think about quotes like numbers and figures in science papers. (You can’t just dump numbers into your paper without explaining the significance of the number. What does 11% mean? 11% increase? Increase in what? Is that a significant increase? 11% increase is a lot if the average increase is usually 0.1%, but it’s not so significant if the average is 10.5%. What’s the result of an 11% increase? In the same way, you have to explain your quote…) I was pleased when Chelsi chimed in and advised Kelsey to “not focus on WHO is saying it or where the article is from… it’s the IDEA that matters… weave that idea into your own sentence and check, does your sentence still make sense if you take out the quotation marks? It should sound like your own sentence… but with words from other people that you borrowed to support your own argument.” I had told her the same thing in previous weeks, so it was nice to see that she had remembered.
March 27&28: Thought letters
Chelsi and Kelsey both turned in their second thought letters this week, Chelsi on “Women, Race, and Sports: Life Before Title IX” and Kelsey on “Television’s First Feminist: The Avengers and Female Spectatorship.” Both found this material easier to understand as it built on what they had already learned in their first reading assignment (that was my plan!).
With Chelsi, I revisited the concept of “three story thesis” and had her rewrite her introduction paragraph because she was beginning to revert to her old habits of summarizing what she read. As she also noticed on her own as we went over her paper, she stuffed the majority of her paper in the introduction paragraph and then ran out of things to say in the body paragraphs. As we were rewriting her introduction, Chelsi mentioned how the article angered her — which surprised me because her thought letter was so neutral. We explored policy changes in sports and to what extent athletic organizations can/should alter rules to make games more “fair” or “interesting.”
With Kelsey, we focused on clarifying her argument, which was that “women found a balance between pure masculinity and femininity in order to create the best of both worlds in the roles on screen,” as although some of the examples she used actually suggested otherwise. We also worked on the transitions between “serial-queen melodrama,” “spy series” (specifically the relationship between James Bond movies, The Avengers, and The Girl from U.N.C.L.E) because she had too many examples but didn’t analyze each enough to advance her argument. We talked about modern films and how women “spies” are portrayed today, since she left her paper hanging in the 60/70s. In the end, we had to draw a complicated timeline graph to conclude that women’s roles briefly reached its peak during The Avengers series but have fluctuated since without returning to that former “golden era,” which therefore shifted her main argument. I think Kelsey is a visual learner — this is not the first time we had to draw out her arguments for her to see what she is actually trying to say.
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April 3&4: First drafts of Paper 2
Chelsi worked hard to take a stance on a topic, something she found difficult to do in her first paper. To help her do so, she said she incorporated different types of argument styles in her draft (I need to find Professor Velenchik’s worksheet on this so I can go over the concepts in more detail at some point), and tried to paint a picture of a specific audience in her mind as she wrote so that she can be more specific and targeted with her claims (idea from Geoffrey Graff). Writing about a topic dear to heart was both a blessing and a curse for Chelsi — while she is more passionate and vocal about issues, many of her arguments were unsubstantiated because she had assumed they were “common knowledge” based on her own experiences as a basketball player. I liked how she explored new ways to approach an argument, including setting up a condition (“For gender equality to exist in sports, two conditions must apply:…”) but again, her definitions were based on her own experience. We highlighted sections where arguments seemed to have “jumped” and also tried to explore what she meant by “unequal,” as her definition of it seemed to be quite fluid. For next week, she is going to re-outline her paper, as well as expand on her conclusion, which was a little sparse.
Kelsey produced a much better draft for this paper compared to what she submitted as her first draft for her first paper. She seems to have given what we discussed last week some thought and so her logic/stance was much more developed. However, her introduction was quite weak with little substance, there were a few particularly awkward paragraphs (especially the one on pre oedipal phase) that was not well integrated into the paper, and she still summarized a lot when her paper should be more argument driven. We went through her paper and systematically crossed out sentences that either did not directly support her topic sentence or did not contribute to her overall argument. There wasn’t very much left in the end, which was an eye-opener for her. Kelsey also forgot to think/use/indicate the different types of arguments we talked about previously, which might have helped her organize her thoughts better. I’m sure whe will implement those for the next draft.
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April 10&11: Final drafts of Paper 2
Chelsi streamlined her argument to focus on the “standard of measurement for equality” instead of just briefly touching upon multiple issues like she did in her first draft, and framed it in the context of Title IX. She incorporated many more concrete examples and quotes to support her argument, and addressed the the problem of “double standards” so that her argument is not simply one sided. As her paper is still under the suggested page limit (6pg), we discussed how to further expand on her arguments in addition to clarifying her reasonings and working on transitions.
Week of April 17&18: Finalizing second paper, reviewing prospectus, Velenchik materials
Chelsi & Kelsey:
For both Chelsi and Kelsey this week I sent them individual feedback on their final drafts and received their annotated bibliography for their final research papers. The prospectus/annotated bibliography assignment was based on similar assignments I had worked on myself in other classes and found useful. We relied on this UMUC site (http://www.umuc.edu/library/libhow/bibliography_tutorial.cfm) for guidance. In addition, I also had them send me their working theses. Both of their annotated bibliographies were a little sparse. Chelsi had a wider range of relevant sources than Kelsey because she had seen the research librarian as I had recommended; Kelsey mentioned she could not schedule a meeting with the research librarian until later this week. Since both of them appeared to know exactly what they wanted to explore, I did not asked them to turn in another copy [Edit April 28: I really should have asked them to resubmit — especially Kelsey], but I did strongly encourage them to add to their list for their own benefit.
For most of each class, I focused on going over Professor Velenchik’s handout on “A Guide to Claims” (adapted from Ramage and Bean, Writing Arguments, 8th edition, pp. 201-212), which we received during a writing tutor meeting a few weeks ago and I’ve been looking for an opportunity to go through with them. I thought this would be the best time to reinforce their understanding of the basic structures of argument, so they have these “tools” fresh in their minds as they work on their research papers. Both of them had never thought about the different ways people can make arguments and were surprised to realize that the basic approaches to making arguments in writing are similar across disciplines, even though a philosophy paper for example can appear greatly different from a biology paper. Once we went through all examples, I had them read a sample economics paper (also courtesy of Professor Velenchik) and identify the different types of claims used in that paper, partly to help reinforce their understanding of claims and partly to expose them to “good” writing. We then picked out passages from the final drafts of their second paper to rewrite, using one or two of the claim types. As this exercise was so successful, I asked them to use as many claim types as possible in their next draft and highlight them for me to see.
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Week of April 24(Ruhlman)&25: First draft of research paper
Chelsi:
Chelsi turned in her first draft of her final research paper this week. As Wednesday was Ruhlman, we rescheduled our meeting and met on Friday instead to go over her paper. Chelsi was really excited about the topic of her paper (female basketball players in the media) and had done some extensive research over the break, although she decided not to use a lot of what she had initially found.
Going over her paper, we discussed how she was able to identify a problem in current society, turn that into a research question (what causes the unjust representation of female athletes’ talent in women’s basketball today?), and break the broad problem into two, more manageable aspects: the undermining of athletic skills and over-emphasizing/sexualizing of the female body, and unequal pay compared to male basketball players. She had also put all this into a historical context. However we both noticed right away that her ideas were scattered all over the place. Also, she spent much of the paper switching between summarizing observations about sexuality and femininity in sports. I told her that these were all good observations, but they need to be more argument driven. Her paper currently implies a lot but still forces the reader to do the bulk of the work (= thinking, drawing arguments, etc.) She needs to do this work for the readers.
We went through her paper and color-coded by topic. Eventually we identified six of the main issues she addressed: increasing popularity of women’s basketball, unjust representation in the media (downplaying skills, sexualizing players, focusing on non-basketball related lifestyle issues), homophobia in sports, pressure to conform to heterosexual norms, salary differences, and the need for media to focus on purely on athleticism. We also combed through her paper looking for “arguments” and identified two claims that had potential: The results of homophobia stigmatizing all female basketball players as lesbian, has led media choosing to ‘over-emphasized femininity of female athletes in an attempt to combat a fear of increased female masculinity’ (Lisec)” and “This misrepresentation of female athletes in media has led to inequality in professional basketball.”
We spent the rest of the time trying to string these ideas together into one well-crafted chain of cause/effect, and turn that into a strong thesis. As a potential psychology major, Chelsi found it helpful that I likened the research paper to a lab report (you want to introduce the issue in the introduction and build up a good case as to why this is a relevant topic to explore. Then present your hypothesis [=thesis] and test that idea. Conduct “case studies” with the evidence you’ve collected. Analyze your results. Interpret your results… how is it significant? How do they add to the existing literature?). This idea of a “lab report” approach to writing papers is something we discussed briefly when we went over sample papers and claims last week. Just for fun, I also forwarded her detailed guides to writing psychology papers from my PSYC307R Research Methods class for reference.
Kelsey:
Kelsey’s meeting was also rescheduled this week. She turned in her “final” draft on time, but between her crew practices and my visa issues that I had to sort out in NY, we could not find time to meet until Monday night to talk about it in person. I sent her extra-detailed comments to look over in the mean time as she prepared for her next draft. Although she mentioned that she had a lot of fun consulting Professor Viano for ideas and spent quite some time crafting her draft (“In terms of things I think I did well, I believe that my transitions were a lot better in this paper. I also think that my structuring has improved a lot since the beginning of the semester.”) when I actually read her paper, I found the content/argument to be significantly lacking. There was no progression in her thoughts throughout the paper: some of her paragraphs contained completely irrelevant background information and she merely repeated in her conclusion what she had stated in her introduction. When we finally met on Monday, I strongly encouraged her again to abandon her ideas about the evolving roles of women in film (her previous two papers explored this idea already and she didn’t have anything concrete to say about them in the context of horror films), as well as to pick an aspect of horror film and remakes of horror films that she might want to examine. At some point, we somehow found ourselves talking about Twilight and whether Twilight was considered a “horror” film. Since one of the films she focused on in her draft was Nosferatu, we toyed with the idea of treating Twilight as a “remake” of Nosferatu. The topic has potential, but she needs to think about it some more. She is going to visit the research librarian again sometime this week for addition assistance. Looking back, I think I should have forced her to send me another prospectus after last week to make sure that she had a clear idea of where she wanted to go with her research paper (I didn’t do so because I wanted to let go of her hands a little for this assignment and see how much she could manage on her own). Recalling how much extra meetings helped one of my previous WRIT199 students who needed a lot of guidance, I told Kelsey that I would be available to meet with her throughout the week — even if it means just doing my own work next to her as she worked on her paper, so that if she had questions I would be readily available to answer.
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Week of May 1&2: Final draft of research paper
Chelsi:
Chelsi turned in her final draft of her research paper today and it was much stronger than her previous draft. In her own words: “At first I had so many ideas on how to structure this essay and I panicked because I couldn’t decide which one to choose. Finally after talking with my friend just to let my ideas flow, I decided to get rid of a lot of the information on the WNBA and widen the focus of media misrepresentation to include all female athletes, using basketball as a specific example. I think that the flow of the paper is much stronger and I now have a report-like argument. I expanded on a few ideas about how women perceive themselves and more about how they are displayed in media that I hope you like. I feel as if this is one of my best essays, and I hope you agree. I know there might be some awkward tendencies, but I’m hoping I’ve eliminated most of them.”
Her ideas definitely flowed more smoothly and logically; her paper was more coherent as a whole. In class we focused on improving her transitions to strengthen her argument. For example, she had quite a few paragraphs in which she simply described “Another difference between the portrayal of female and male athletes in the media.” We discussed how the different points she makes should not be of “equal value” as arguments, but that they should build on the previously mentioned point to further her observation/argument.Also, sometimes she would insert a counter-argument in the middle of another thought and disrupt the flow within paragraphs. We talked about either turning these into separate paragraphs or rephrasing them in terms of/in relation to the actual subject of that paragraph. We were also able to clarify some poor word choices that were either misleading, confusing, or vague. Many of these things were issues we’ve discussed before so she only needed a gentle reminder to see and fix them herself.
Kelsey:
Since we only had our make-up meeting on Monday, Kelsey thought she didn’t have to turn anything in for this week (partly my fault, as I only told her verbally that that I expected her to work on an outline and as much of a new draft as possible by this meeting – I should have followed that up with a written reminder). She seemed a little stressed and was on the verge of tears when I told her frankly that she really needs a lot more work on her paper because it isn’t acceptable at this point. After making a game plan for the next two weeks (I’m going to have her check in with me on Sunday, send in a partial draft on Monday for me to look over by Tuesday, and then turn in her next draft by Wednesday) and emphasizing again that I am happy to meet throughout the week as well, we went over her new ideas for comparing Twilight to Nosferatu and created a “mind map” of all her ideas. We revisited Professor Velenchik’s handout on claims and made a list of all potential arguments/combination of arguments she could create with her list of ideas. I think she is leaning towards writing a social commentary on how our tendency to focus on social acceptance and politically correct ideas has limited our creative output, “diluted” what used to be compelling characters/plots in remakes of old movies, and lulled us into a false sense of security in which we do not have to be challenged to come to terms with ideas we are not comfortable with.
On a separate note, I’ve been sending both Chelsi and Kelsey sample prize-winning papers written by other first year students to read over and use as models, and they’ve both found them really interesting if not helpful.
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Week of May 8&9: Finalizing research papers, checking in on portfolios, wrap-up
Chelsi:
Chelsi chose to spruce up her research paper as part of her final portfolio (the other part being the writer’s manual) and so turned in another draft of that today. She had obviously worked on this paper since we last met and incorporated all of my comments into her revision. I am impressed by the amount of progress she made over the semester, and especially over the last few weeks. I still remember how she she could barely take a stance on any issue in the beginning, always just summarizing the articles she had read. Although her current paper still has a lot of room for improvement, and is not quite 8 pages long, it is a relatively well written research paper that I think Chelsi should keep as a reminder of how much she can achieve if she puts the effort in.
We spent the meeting time going through her entire paper looking for passive sentences, unclear/vague expressions, unclear logical reasoning, unexplained “it” references, and transitions that needed to be reworked (e.g., she set herself up for providing different examples of how media portrays female basketball players, but then had topic sentences that focused on the definition of femininity and other issues that did not relate). We also looked at “concluding” each body paragraph by checking if the last thought addresses the topic sentence and thesis statement. What impressed me most was that I no longer needed to explain to her why certain sentences needed work. If she didn’t catch things on her own as she read her paper out loud, she would figure them out pretty quickly as soon as I said “pause, let’s think about that sentence/transition/etc.” or just let out a ponderous “hmm.”
She also showed me some of the sentences/paragraphs she picked out for her final portfolio (writer’s manual) and cringed at some of the mistakes she had made in her first few assignments. That she can now cringe at those mistakes, I mentioned, is a sign that she has grown as a writer. I look forward to receiving her portfolio on Friday.
Kelsey:
I find that I am struggling with Kelsey quite a bit for this final formal paper assignment. I wonder if it is because she is too busy with crew (she mentioned needing to prioritize sleeping early and working out this week as she has a big race coming up). Because she is so behind, I actually had her submit an partial draft to me over the weekend so that I could look over it and give her some feedback as she worked toward submitting a full draft to me this week. While she did completely rewrite her paper and extend her sparse 4 page draft into a longer 8 page draft, it seems like she is either not paying attention to my comments (which makes me sad as I spent quite a bit of time on it and was busy, myself!) or too short on time to make significant changes to take into consideration some of my comments.
For example, even though I specifically asked her to go through her paper again, reverse outline, map out her thoughts, and then create a new outline to follow for her paper by our meeting, she came today without any form of outline. In one of my shorter comments along the margins that I had sent her earlier this week, I actually began to identify and synthesize some of her arguments to help get her started: “Is this what you are trying to say? (1) Certain types of plot/characters get revisited in remakes of films more than others (define what types of stories get revisited…why do they get revisited? Do they have compelling characters/plot? What is compelling? Do they cause us to question the world around us? What does it have to do with the idea of “modernism” you briefly mentioned toward the end of your paper?); (2) Vampires in horror films as an example of a popular story/character revisited throughout history (What’s so compelling about vampires?); (3) But when stories/film are remade, they tend to get altered according to cultural values (How are the vampires in Twilight different from the ones in Nosferatu? What cultural value do the vampires in Twilight reflect? What is this cultural value?); (4) Our current cultural values tend toward being politically correct and “being too politically correct hinders the future of a beloved past time” (what do you mean by politically correct and by “hindering” the future of a beloved past time? Does making vampires more “socially acceptable” creatures take away the depth/complexity of characters that once used to be so compelling? Why is it important to have characters that challenge us to think? How does modernism fit into all this? This is the meat of your essay; delve into this more!)” In fact, most of these point in fact came up when we were brainstorming in class last week, so I was surprised not to see them more clearly explored in the first place. When I went over the same comments today and tried to get her to extend her analysis, she reacted as if she had not heard these points before, even though they were right in front of her.
Anyway, we spent the whole class figuring out her argument and re-outlining her paper, specifically focusing on her introduction… what she was supposed to do for class this week. I kept reiterating that it’s not enough to simply find similarities and differences; she has to also “add to the literature” by offering a new understanding of the films. I also reminded her to envision a specific group of audience for whom she is writing this paper and then try to persuade those people into understanding/accepting her views (she temporarily settled on Twilight fans). Our discussion expanded on those points I listed out and I think she has a better idea of what she wants to say now but I’m not confident about how well she would be able to revise this in a day before our final portfolio submission deadline tomorrow. This is where Chelsi was at two weeks ago. I may want to give her another week to work on this paper, as I would hate to end the semester on a low note — especially considering how much potential she demonstrated in the beginning and how well she has been doing until now.
I am concerned, as you are, as to whether Kelsey will be producing good enough wok to receive Credit for thsi course. What’s your sense of this, at this late stage?
Amy:
This week, Amy turned in her final draft of the third paper. It was very well done and I hardly had any suggestions (in terms of substantial changes) for improvement, beyond perhaps changing a few words here and there or changing a sentence to sound less redundant. Overall, these were only minor issues, and her paper was well-organized, with a clear argument and interest analysis throughout. I am confident that her final project will be high-quality, as I looked it over during class, and she’s put a lot of time into it, including into making up her own examples, which I think is an excellent exercise for her.
Nhung:
Nhung has also showed great improvement over the semester. She is diligently working on her final project/paper. I am going to look over it once more before she turns it in, and I reminded her that it is expected that there will be very few (if any) grammar errors in the final project. She is using her third paper as her example paper in her project, which I am also happy about, as I think she has done a good job with it. She has been writing much more complex sentences, without error, and at this point, much of my focus has been on encouraging her to delve more deeply into substance and to thinking about her examples and ideas in more nuanced and interesting ways (not that she has major problems doing this, but we hand’t focused on it much because of the ESL issues). I am looking forward to her final project/paper.