Friday, February 1, 2008
WHAT DID I DO?
I lost all the images on my previous entries...can I get them back? Everything I have archieved has the newest images.
Week II: Class Reflections
I found our discussions last night disturbing and challenging as well as hopeful.
As a parent of "now grown" children, I know how disturbing the education system was to me as a parent because of how the system stifled the love of reading and writing. Every year of schooling for my children brought a conflict between my expectations and the system's expectations.
Current literature, while acknowledging a tenuous acceptance of Compostition as a discipline, still addresses the many problems of the teaching of reading and composition. These problems appear unchanged over the last fifty years. Fun does not appear to be part of the equation for becoming a writer. I believe Writing across the Curriculum attempts to address the importance of reading and writing to our lives . . . but has it worked?
As a tax payer and advocate of children I have no answers for the challenges that confront our children, educators, and politicians. While I am hopeful of a future where people have learned to love the act of learning, you in this class are only a handful of those that teach. Vicki made an observation about two teachers in her school-one was a "grammar fanatic". I forget her discription of the other teacher, but I inferred that teacher was positive role-model (like many of you in this class)for instilling the potential to enjoy writing.
I loved Dr. Kearney's Process Of Composition: Fluency, Clarity, and Correctness. I was fortunate, that process was taught to me in the 1960's and became the basis for how I enncouraged my childre. I am a firm believer in "the more you write, the better you write". Not only do I believe in the value of prewriting and writing. but as I become older I believe that if you are lucky someone else will help you revise.
For those who addressed the mechanics of writing, check out my images.
As a parent of "now grown" children, I know how disturbing the education system was to me as a parent because of how the system stifled the love of reading and writing. Every year of schooling for my children brought a conflict between my expectations and the system's expectations.
Current literature, while acknowledging a tenuous acceptance of Compostition as a discipline, still addresses the many problems of the teaching of reading and composition. These problems appear unchanged over the last fifty years. Fun does not appear to be part of the equation for becoming a writer. I believe Writing across the Curriculum attempts to address the importance of reading and writing to our lives . . . but has it worked?
As a tax payer and advocate of children I have no answers for the challenges that confront our children, educators, and politicians. While I am hopeful of a future where people have learned to love the act of learning, you in this class are only a handful of those that teach. Vicki made an observation about two teachers in her school-one was a "grammar fanatic". I forget her discription of the other teacher, but I inferred that teacher was positive role-model (like many of you in this class)for instilling the potential to enjoy writing.
I loved Dr. Kearney's Process Of Composition: Fluency, Clarity, and Correctness. I was fortunate, that process was taught to me in the 1960's and became the basis for how I enncouraged my childre. I am a firm believer in "the more you write, the better you write". Not only do I believe in the value of prewriting and writing. but as I become older I believe that if you are lucky someone else will help you revise.
For those who addressed the mechanics of writing, check out my images.
Wednesday, January 30, 2008
Week II continued-more on grammar
I have been thinking about how grammar and communication are intregal to the presentation of self within groups. The groups we are a part of, the groups we wish to be a part of, and the groups we are excluded from all connect us to a living community. Without the possibility of being a part of a group there is no reason for communication. How we present ourselves through the written and spoken word are just as important as a firm handshake and eye contact. Our formal presentation of self vs. our informal presentation of self becomes a product of our education and our competency in English. That competency requires a knowledge of the rules and vocabulary in given situations. Some competencies we learn through our specific associations within a specific group. Other formal competencies we learn through education. Today we have a miriad of competencies thanks to technology that we may choose to participate. At the foundation of all communication are the abilities of the individual to compose and to decipher learned technigues.
Hartwell concludes his piece, Grammar, Grammar, and the Teaching of Grammar, promoting language and literacy. I find his emphais on ESL interesting, but limiting. We must be inclusive of all future members of our groups. I do not know how we prioritize our resources without burning out all the teachers.
I believe that Susanne Langer in Spectator Role and the Beginnings of Writing sums up Compostition (either visual, written, or spoken) by offering a definition of communication that is an "act of perception" that "reflects the "shape of every living act"(Britten 172).
Both people discussions regarding the field of Composition offer an extension of North's work The Making of Knowledge in Compostion. The "reading, writing, listening, and speaking" work well with "language, literature, and composition" which when taken out of the patriarchal white western male tradition allows the possibility of North's "multicommunal experience". This potential of possibility through communication i.e. rhetoric and composition, may level the playing field of "power and prestige" to include individuals in the ordinary world as well as the academic world.
As an interdisciplinary student I find the connections between individuals and groups as the foundation of communication of most importance. Where I may diverge from the purist in theory becomes a question of promoting what I will call the "Grammar of Living" at the expense of the "Grammar of Exclusion". My "Grammar of Living" allows an individual to communicate and function in day-to-day informal enviornment while my "Grammar of Exclusion" promotes elitism in daily activities and in academia. Just a thought I throw out for pondering.
Hartwell concludes his piece, Grammar, Grammar, and the Teaching of Grammar, promoting language and literacy. I find his emphais on ESL interesting, but limiting. We must be inclusive of all future members of our groups. I do not know how we prioritize our resources without burning out all the teachers.
I believe that Susanne Langer in Spectator Role and the Beginnings of Writing sums up Compostition (either visual, written, or spoken) by offering a definition of communication that is an "act of perception" that "reflects the "shape of every living act"(Britten 172).
Both people discussions regarding the field of Composition offer an extension of North's work The Making of Knowledge in Compostion. The "reading, writing, listening, and speaking" work well with "language, literature, and composition" which when taken out of the patriarchal white western male tradition allows the possibility of North's "multicommunal experience". This potential of possibility through communication i.e. rhetoric and composition, may level the playing field of "power and prestige" to include individuals in the ordinary world as well as the academic world.
As an interdisciplinary student I find the connections between individuals and groups as the foundation of communication of most importance. Where I may diverge from the purist in theory becomes a question of promoting what I will call the "Grammar of Living" at the expense of the "Grammar of Exclusion". My "Grammar of Living" allows an individual to communicate and function in day-to-day informal enviornment while my "Grammar of Exclusion" promotes elitism in daily activities and in academia. Just a thought I throw out for pondering.
Week II: Spectator, Grammar, and History
I find it enjoyable to read everyone's postings (even if I do not post) to see where we are all coming from. The make up of the class allows for different perspectives that fit into the discussion of Composition. Most important to the differences is how communication overlaps with our different subgroups-parent, teachers, students, etc.
Susanne Langer(who translated Ernst Cassirer's Language and Myth) addresses the ability of compostition to educate when she speaks of poetry "effect[ing]the break with the reader's actual environment" (page 153). Poetry becomes an art and a method of communicating. Reading the work allows an illusion of reality(possibly the author's) to widen our experience. The personal expression of the poet takes us beyond our individual limitations of personal expression. The words offer an expression of what can be taken from the works "efferent" amd what is felt through the words "aesthetic". Important to note here is how the technique of compostition in poetry becomes a connection between not only the writer and the reader, but a connection between the written and spoken word. I believe Compostition becomes a living language that not only connects people in their current time and place, but also in a past while allowing for the possibilities of a future.
In the Hartwell piece on Grammar, I do have some problems with some of the diagraming. I believe the acedemic theoriests are trying to hard to justify the science of compostition when it does not require the solid science. Groups change and such scientific formulas prevent the "living" aspect of communication.
On another note, I would have to agree with Vicki's comments that learning the foundations do allow students to participate in the real world. Beyond the rules of the written word, there is the neccesity to be able to evaluate the prompts on your computer with spelling + grammar check. I believe modern technology has not made basic grammar obsolete, rather the lines between formal grammar and informal grammar have blurred.
How do teachers evaluate the correct grammar without stifling the creative thought? In my educatiion we received grades for pre-write, for grammar, for content, and always a grade for the final re-write that incorporated teacher response. I know that time and testing mandates stretch the time of teachers. My bottom line as a parent requires a commitment by teachers school, districts, and government to that promote smaller class size and adequate funding.
Susanne Langer(who translated Ernst Cassirer's Language and Myth) addresses the ability of compostition to educate when she speaks of poetry "effect[ing]the break with the reader's actual environment" (page 153). Poetry becomes an art and a method of communicating. Reading the work allows an illusion of reality(possibly the author's) to widen our experience. The personal expression of the poet takes us beyond our individual limitations of personal expression. The words offer an expression of what can be taken from the works "efferent" amd what is felt through the words "aesthetic". Important to note here is how the technique of compostition in poetry becomes a connection between not only the writer and the reader, but a connection between the written and spoken word. I believe Compostition becomes a living language that not only connects people in their current time and place, but also in a past while allowing for the possibilities of a future.
In the Hartwell piece on Grammar, I do have some problems with some of the diagraming. I believe the acedemic theoriests are trying to hard to justify the science of compostition when it does not require the solid science. Groups change and such scientific formulas prevent the "living" aspect of communication.
On another note, I would have to agree with Vicki's comments that learning the foundations do allow students to participate in the real world. Beyond the rules of the written word, there is the neccesity to be able to evaluate the prompts on your computer with spelling + grammar check. I believe modern technology has not made basic grammar obsolete, rather the lines between formal grammar and informal grammar have blurred.
How do teachers evaluate the correct grammar without stifling the creative thought? In my educatiion we received grades for pre-write, for grammar, for content, and always a grade for the final re-write that incorporated teacher response. I know that time and testing mandates stretch the time of teachers. My bottom line as a parent requires a commitment by teachers school, districts, and government to that promote smaller class size and adequate funding.
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