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Todd Finley

What is a Learning Strategy - 7 views

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    "Learning Strategies Learning strategies refer to methods that students use to learn. This ranges from techniques for improved memory to better studying or test-taking strategies. For example, the method of loci is a classic memory improvement technique; it involves making associations between facts to be remembered and particular locations. In order to remember something, you simply visualize places and the associated facts. Some learning strategies involve changes to the design of instruction. For example, the use of questions before, during or after instruction has been shown to increase the degree of learning (see Ausubel). Methods that attempt to increase the degree of learning that occurs have been called "mathemagenic" (Ropthkopf, 1970). A typical study skill program is SQ3R which suggests 5 steps: (1) survey the material to be learned, (2) develop questions about the material, (3) read the material, (4) recall the key ideas, and (5) review the material. Research on metacognition may be relevant to the study of learning strategies in so far as they are both concerned with control processes. A number of learning theories emphasize the importance of learning strategies including: double loop learning ( Argyris ), conversation theory (Pask), and lateral thinking ( DeBono ). Weinstein (1991) discusses learning strategies in the context of social interaction, an important aspect of Situated Learning Theory. References: H.F. O'Neil (1978). Learning strategies. New York: Academic Press. H.F. O'Neil & C. Spielberger (1979). Cognitive and Affective Learning Strategies. New York: Academic Press. Rothkopf, E. (1970). The concept of mathemagenic behavior. Review of Educational Research, 40, 325-336. Schmeck, R.R. (1986). Learning Styles and Learning Strategies. NY: Plenum. Weinstein, C.E., Goetz, E.T., & Alexander, P.A. (1986). Learning and Study Strategies. NY: Academic Press. Weinstein, C.S. (1991). The classroom as a social context for learning. Annual Revi
Kristin Bergsagel

How To Do Things With Words : Learning Diversity - 4 views

  • the RRSG theory of reading comprehension is predominantly cognitive rather than cultural. It depicts the text as an encoded representation of a specific situation.
  • Making and having meaning, then, transcend cognition and involve a commitment to values and the pursuit of ideals.
  • These moral qualities are essential to human life, yet they seem to be completely redundant in the case of the aforementioned reader of “the cat is on the mat.”
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  • Could it be that teachers who are allegedly so obstinately unfaithful to the received theory of reading comprehension do in fact apply it in their classrooms, but fail to achieve adequate outcomes because the theory fails to explain reading as a meaningful human activity?
  • the most authoritative theory of reading comprehension misleads her into performing a futile cognitive exercise.
  • namely, instruct students to read the text creatively by transforming it into a model for exploring ideas such as self-deception, hubris, or the unintended negative consequences of well-intended parenting.
  • it doesn’t address texts adequately as media of communication between purposeful, goal-oriented actors.
  • The meaning of a message, then, is its use by the interacting parties and is therefore always much more than a mental representation. When we treat words or statements as mere representations, we fail to communicate.
  • A theory that fails to enhance communication undermines education, because education is a special form of communication dedicated to the transmission of learning.
  • The words remain his rather than theirs, conveying facts about his dream rather than becoming resources useful to them. These readers have missed yet another opportunity to make sense of the history of their nation and of their own lives in relation to it.
  • hopeful vision coupled to a darker prophecy and a threatening message.
  • This reading, then, intertwines American political history with the history of literature in a way that renders the reader herself an active participant in their making.
  • creativity, diversity, and agency
  • Readers, we propose, ought to associate the meaning of the text with its use. The texts students typically read in school, more specifically, ought to be used for the purpose of exploring ideas. Reading for this purpose is necessarily a creative endeavor because it entails transforming the text into a model of inquiry into certain aspects of the reader’s life experiences.
  • In other words, because they use the text in diverse ways, its meaning varies accordingly.
  • What is at stake is nothing less than how students relate themselves to cultural achievements that have shaped the world in which they live and the society in which they gradually mature.
  • Conversely, education researchers in universities and other research institutes are often insufficiently familiar with how children learn at school, and therefore simply do not have an adequate understanding of the problems their research should solve
Dana Huff

Jane Austen Fiction Manuscripts: Home - 6 views

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    Jane Austen's fiction manuscripts are the first significant body of holograph evidence surviving for any British novelist. They represent every stage of her writing career and a variety of physical states: working drafts, fair copies, and handwritten publications for private circulation. Digitization enables their virtual reunification and will provides scholars with the first opportunity to make simultaneous ocular comparison of their different physical and conceptual states; it will facilitate intimate and systematic study of Austen's working practices across her career, a remarkably neglected area of scholarship within the huge, world-wide Austen critical industry. Many of the Austen manuscripts are frail; open and sustained access has long been impossible for conservation and location reasons. Digitization at this stage in their lives not only offers the opportunity for the virtual reunification of a key manuscript resource, it will also be accompanied by a record in as complete a form as possible of the conservation history and current material state of these manuscripts to assist their future conservation.
Patrick Higgins

Materials for Faculty: Methods: Diagnosing and Responding to Student Writing - 11 views

  • For these reasons, instructors are continuously looking for ways to respond efficiently to student work. Seasoned instructors have developed systems that work well for them. We offer a few here: Don't comment on everything. Tell students that in your responses to a particular paper you intend to focus on their thesis sentences and introductions, or their overall structure, or their use of sources, etc. This method works particularly well in courses that require students to do several papers. Instructors can, as the term progresses, focus on different aspects of student writing. Space or stagger deadlines so that you are not overwhelmed by drafts. If the thought of grading eighteen essays in two or three days is daunting, divide the class in half or into thirds and require different due dates for different groups. Use peer groups. Ask students to meet outside of class (or virtually, on the Blackboard discussion board) to talk with one another about their papers. Peer groups work best when you've modeled the critiquing process in class, and when you provide students with models or guidelines for critiquing. See our page on Collaborative Learning for a fuller discussion. Ask for a Writing Assistant. The Writing Assistant reviews drafts of papers and makes extensive comments. Students benefit by having an additional reader; instructors benefit because they get better papers. If you'd like more information about using a Writing Assistant in your course, contact Stephanie Boone, Director of Student Writing Support.
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    Don't comment on everything. Tell students that in your responses to a particular paper you intend to focus on their thesis sentences and introductions, or their overall structure, or their use of sources, etc. This method works particularly well in courses that require students to do several papers. Instructors can, as the term progresses, focus on different aspects of student writing. Space or stagger deadlines so that you are not overwhelmed by drafts. If the thought of grading eighteen essays in two or three days is daunting, divide the class in half or into thirds and require different due dates for different groups. Use peer groups. Ask students to meet outside of class (or virtually, on the Blackboard discussion board) to talk with one another about their papers. Peer groups work best when you've modeled the critiquing process in class, and when you provide students with models or guidelines for critiquing. See our page on Collaborative Learning for a fuller discussion. Ask for a Writing Assistant. The Writing Assistant reviews drafts of papers and makes extensive comments. Students benefit by having an additional reader; instructors benefit because they get better papers. If you'd like more information about using a Writing Assistant in your course, contact Stephanie Boone, Director of Student Writing Support.
Berylaube 00

MoMA | Ecstatic Alphabets/Heaps of Language - 0 views

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    "Ecstatic Alphabets/Heaps of Language brings together historical and contemporary works of art that treat language not merely as a system of communication governed by grammatical rules and assigned meanings, but as a material that can be manipulated with creative freedom, like paint, clay, or any other artistic medium. The exhibition is divided into two sections. The first is a historical overview of 20th-century art that experiments with the graphic, sonic, and kinetic possibilities of letters and words. With a few notable exceptions, these works are confined to the two-dimensional parameters of a page. The second section presents an installation of contemporary works, most of which do away with the page; some do away with writing altogether. The artist and poet Emmett Williams observed that "the poem as picture is as old as the hills," citing its beginnings in hieroglyphics,"
Todd Finley

Discourse community - 0 views

  • Discourse community Swales (1990) found that a discourse community has a broadly agreed set of common public goals has mechanisms of intercommunication among its members uses its participatory mechanisms primarily to provide information and feedback utilizes and hence possesses one or more genres in the communicative utterance of its aims has acquired some specific lexis (specialized terminology, acronyms) has a threshold level of members with a suitable degree of relevant content and discoursal expertise.  
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    Discourse communitySwales (1990) found that a discourse communityhas a broadly agreed set of common public goalshas mechanisms of intercommunication among its membersuses its participatory mechanisms primarily to provide information and feedbackutilizes and hence possesses one or more genres in the communicative utterance of its aimshas acquired some specific lexis (specialized terminology, acronyms)has a threshold level of members with a suitable degree of relevant content and discoursal expertise.  
ten grrl

Jane Austen's The History of England: Introduction - 0 views

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    The History of England is an early work of Jane Austen. She completed the composition in November 1791 when she was just 15 years old. Jane Austen's History is a lively parody which makes fun of the standard schoolroom books of the time. Declaring herself to be a 'partial, prejudiced and ignorant Historian' she cites works of fiction, such as Shakespeare's plays, as historial authority and includes references to her own family and friends. Jane's older sister Cassandra illustrated the text with imaginative portraits of the English monarchs
Adam Babcock

Does Your Language Shape How You Think? - NYTimes.com - 5 views

  • Native American languages impose on their speakers a picture of reality that is totally different from ours, so their speakers would simply not be able to understand some of our most basic concepts, like the flow of time or the distinction between objects
  • rash-landed on hard facts and solid common sense, when it transpired that there had never actually been any evidence to support his fantastic claims
  • new research has revealed that when we learn our mother tongue, we do after all acquire certain habits of thought that shape our experience in significant and often surprising ways.
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  • if different languages influence our minds in different ways, this is not because of what our language allows us to think but rather because of what it habitually obliges us to think about
  • You may well wonder whether my companion was male or female, but I have the right to tell you politely that it’s none of your business. But if we were speaking French or German, I wouldn’t have the privilege to equivocate in this way
  • but I do have to tell you something about the timing of the event: I have to decide whether we dined, have been dining, are dining, will be dining and so on. Chinese, on the other hand, does not oblige its speakers to specify the exact time of the action in this way, because the same verb form can be used for past, present or future actions.
  • When speakers were asked to grade various objects on a range of characteristics, Spanish speakers deemed bridges, clocks and violins to have more “manly properties” like strength, but Germans tended to think of them as more slender or elegant.
  • gendered languages” imprint gender traits for objects so strongly in the mind that these associations obstruct speakers’ ability to commit information to memory
  • When French speakers saw a picture of a fork (la fourchette), most of them wanted it to speak in a woman’s voice, but Spanish speakers, for whom el tenedor is masculine, preferred a gravelly male voice for it.
  • Nonetheless, once gender connotations have been imposed on impressionable young minds, they lead those with a gendered mother tongue to see the inanimate world through lenses tinted with associations and emotional responses that English speakers — stuck in their monochrome desert of “its” — are entirely oblivious to.
Mark Smith

Philip Larkin, the Impossible Man - Magazine - The Atlantic - 3 views

  • In somewhat different ways, Orwell and Larkin were phlegmatically pessimistic and at times almost misanthropic, not to say misogynistic. Both also originated from dire family backgrounds that inculcated prejudice against Jews, the colored subjects of the British Empire, and the working class.
  • In somewhat different ways, Orwell and Larkin were phlegmatically pessimistic and at times almost misanthropic, not to say misogynistic. Both also originated from dire family backgrounds that inculcated prejudice against Jews, the colored subjects of the British Empire, and the working class.
  • In somewhat different ways, Orwell and Larkin were phlegmatically pessimistic and at times almost misanthropic, not to say misogynistic. Both also originated from dire family backgrounds that inculcated prejudice against Jews, the colored subjects of the British Empire, and the working class.
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  • In somewhat different ways, Orwell and Larkin were phlegmatically pessimistic and at times almost misanthropic, not to say misogynistic. Both also originated from dire family backgrounds that inculcated prejudice against Jews, the colored subjects of the British Empire, and the working class.
  • In somewhat different ways, Orwell and Larkin were phlegmatically pessimistic and at times almost misanthropic, not to say misogynistic. Both also originated from dire family backgrounds that inculcated prejudice against Jews, the colored subjects of the British Empire, and the working class.
  • In somewhat different ways, Orwell and Larkin were phlegmatically pessimistic and at times almost misanthropic, not to say misogynistic. Both also originated from dire family backgrounds that inculcated prejudice against Jews, the colored subjects of the British Empire, and the working class.
  • In somewhat different ways, Orwell and Larkin were phlegmatically pessimistic and at times almost misanthropic, not to say misogynistic. Both also originated from dire family backgrounds that inculcated prejudice against Jews, the colored subjects of the British Empire, and the working class.
  • In somewhat different ways, Orwell and Larkin were phlegmatically pessimistic and at times almost misanthropic, not to say misogynistic. Both also originated from dire family backgrounds that inculcated prejudice against Jews, the colored subjects of the British Empire, and the working class.
  • In somewhat different ways, Orwell and Larkin were phlegmatically pessimistic and at times almost misanthropic, not to say misogynistic. Both also originated from dire family backgrounds that inculcated prejudice against Jews, the colored subjects of the British Empire, and the working class.
  • In somewhat different ways, Orwell and Larkin were phlegmatically pessimistic and at times almost misanthropic, not to say misogynistic. Both also originated from dire family backgrounds that inculcated prejudice against Jews, the colored subjects of the British Empire, and the working class.
  • This is the world of wretched, tasteless food and watery drinks, dreary and crowded lodgings, outrageous plumbing, surly cynicism, long queues, shocking hygiene, and dismal, rain-lashed holidays, continually punctuated by rudeness and philistinism. In Orwell’s early fiction, all this is most graphically distilled in Keep the Aspidistra Flying, but it is an essential element of the texture of Nineteen Eighty-Four, and was quarried from the “down and out” journalism of which he produced so much
Dennis OConnor

About The Internet Poetry Archive - 5 views

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    Poems from more contemporary poets. Includes readings of some poems
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    "The University of North Carolina Press joins the UNC Office of Information Technology in publishing the Internet Poetry Archive. The archive makes available over a worldwide computer network selected poems from a number of contemporary poets. The goal of the project is to make poetry accessible to new audiences (at little or no cost) and to give teachers and students of poetry new ways of presenting and studying these poets and their texts. "
Meredith Stewart

Reflections on a Program for "The Formation of Teachers" - 0 views

  • Of course, one of the givens of professional life is that one never reveals one's fears! But everyone who teaches knows that fear abounds in the profession—from the fear of not knowing the answer, to the fear of losing control, to the fear of never knowing whether one's work has made a difference. All these fears are worth exploring, and some of them reach deeply into our souls. But there is one fear that most teachers feel, though few ever name, a fear that reaches more deeply into our adult lives than any of the others. It is our fear of the judgment of the young. The daily experiences of many teachers is to stand before a sea of faces younger than one's own, faces that too often seem bored, sullen, even hostile. Even when one knows that these visages merely mask the fear in many students' hearts, it is still disheartening to stare into so much apparent disconfirmation day after day after day. The message from the younger generation that many teachers take home each night runs something like this: "We do not care about you and your values…You have been left in the dust by a culture whose words and music you don't even understand…You and your generation are on the way out, so why not just step aside and give us room to grow?" It is a difficult message to bear—especially in a profession where one grows old at a geometric rate, while one's charges remain young, year in and year out!
Leslie Healey

The Neuroscience of Your Brain On Fiction - NYTimes.com - 13 views

  • Stories,
  • stimulate the brain and even change how we act in life.
  • nterprets written words. What scientists have come to realize in the last few years is that narratives activate many other parts of our brains as well, suggesting why the experience of reading can feel so alive.
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  • The brain, it seems, does not make much of a distinction between reading about an experience and encountering it in real life; in each case, the same neurological regions are stimulated.
  • The novel, of course, is an unequaled medium for the exploration of human social and emotional life.
  • substantial overlap in the brain networks used to understand stories and the networks used to navigate interactions with other individuals
  • “theory of mind
  • other people’s intenti
  • comparing a plucky young woman to Elizabeth Bennet or a tiresome pedant to Edward Casaubon. Reading great literature, it has long been averred, enlarges and improves us as human beings. Brain science shows this claim is truer than we imagined.
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    analysis of impact of reading, novel especially. validates focus on class SSR, even in 11-12th grade (my groups)
Adam Babcock

If Romeo and Juliet had mobile phones | Networked - 13 views

    • Adam Babcock
       
      Yeah... but "wherefore" translates to "why" in our contemporary language...
  • would have allowed Romeo and Juliet to move around, liberated from locale and parental surveillance. They would have been less worried about their families when they were figuring out where to meet. At the same time, their parents would have felt reassured because they could call their children and ask where they were and what they were doing. But, would Romeo and Juliet have told the truth? A location-aware app would also have been useful for parents in tracking them. Or they might have prowled friends’ Facebook updates or photo albums for clues.
  • Romeo and Juliet could find each other now because mobility means accessibility and availability. They’d be on each other’s top-five speed dial. And they would probably have had a location-aware app that that showed exactly where each other were: no wandering the streets of Verona looking for each other.
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  • Public spaces have become more silent, as people concentrate on their text messages, while downwardly-peering texters have limited eye contact.
  • Imagine Romeo making plans to meet Juliet in the park, but his father calls to say that he has to come home immediately. At least, the mobile connection would have allowed Romeo to alert Juliet to his role conflict and possible absence.
  • As long as they talked or texted in private, neither the Montagues nor the Capulets would know – unless, of course, they snuck peeks at the list of previous calls and texts on the phones. Instead of a phone ringing in a home—where all would hear it and possibly become part of the conversation—internet communication and mobile communication are usually exchanges between two individuals.
  • Mobile contact has become multigenerational, as teens—and even children—are increasingly getting their own mobile phones. This affords people of all ages opportunities to become more autonomous agents.
  • As they grew up, Romeo and Juliet had gotten past their childhoods of being household and neighborhood bound.  They made contact by encounters in public places. Teens still do that—the shopping mall is the new agora—but their mobile phones also afford continuous contact with their homes and distant friends.
  • If they are right, Romeo and Juliet might never look up from their mobile phones to see each other. Or, would the course of true love have led them away from their screens and into each other’s arms?
  • The story of Romeo and Juliet is the story of two individuals escaping the bounds of their densely knit groups. It is a story of the social network revolution that began well before Facebook: the move from group-bound societies to networked individuals. This turn to networked individualism transforms communication from being place-based to person-based.
Berylaube 00

Dyslexia has a language barrier | Education | The Guardian - 1 views

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    " dyslexic in one language but not another. It shows that readers of Chinese use a different part of their brains to readers of English. eported prevalence of dyslexia is much higher in English (about 5-6%) than Chinese. I surveyed 8,000 schoolchildren in the Beijing region, with Yin Wengang of the Chinese Academy of Science, and found that about 1.5% were dyslexic. English, French and Italian dyslexics all showed the same abnormal activity involving the brain system underlying phonemic analysis. In Alan, this theory predicts accurately that the affected language will be English, since Japanese does not require analysis into phonemes.a key peak in brain activity in Chinese readers fell outside the network typically used by European readers. The second surprise was that dyslexics showed lower activation in several key reading areas compared with normal Chinese readers, but this was in a very different brain area from Frith's European dyslexics. Chinese dyslexia may be caused by a different genetic anomaly than English dyslexia."
ten grrl

The Morgan Library & Museum - Online Exhibitions - John Milton's Paradise Lost - 0 views

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    The Morgan Library & Museum is pleased to present the only surviving manuscript of Paradise Lost, Book 1. This epic poem is considered Milton's greatest artistic achievement and one of the finest works of the human imagination. Acquired by Pierpont Morgan in 1904, it is the most important British literary manuscript in the collection. The 33-page manuscript has been temporarily disbound, providing an opportunity to see more of its pages than ever before. Also in this presentation are first editions of Paradise Lost printed in England and the United States during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and a rarely seen miniature portrait of the poet.
Dennis OConnor

10 Digital Writing Opportunities You Probably Know and 10 You Probably Don't | edte.ch - 13 views

  • It was a meeting all about ideas (my favourite) and we discussed the best ways that technology could support the process of writing and drive the eventual outcomes. In this post I have included a list of 10 literacy/writing tools or outcomes that, in my opinion, teachers should currently be aware of. Many of them are basic yet still powerful tools in the classroom that support children’s writing. They are in no particular order.
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    "It was a meeting all about ideas (my favourite) and we discussed the best ways that technology could support the process of writing and drive the eventual outcomes. In this post I have included a list of 10 literacy/writing tools or outcomes that, in my opinion, teachers should currently be aware of. Many of them are basic yet still powerful tools in the classroom that support children's writing. They are in no particular order."
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    "...10 alternative tools that either offer a different perspective on digital writing or are a little known tool, that may have huge potential in the classroom. Not everything is free nor is it online - but the list will hopefully provide food for thought when you are looking at your next non-fiction or narrative unit with your class."
Dennis OConnor

Script Writing and Screenwriting Help - 4 views

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    "Scriptwriting is an artform, and creating art is never easy. Everytime you watch a TV show, watch a film or even play a computer game you are taking in the work of a scriptwriter. With today being driven by the various mediums of entertainment scriptwriting has becomes one of the best page and attractive jobs going. Film scripts have been sold for in excess of $1 million. With that sort of money floating around it's no wonder people are becoming more interested in the idea of scriptwriting. "
Todd Finley

Share More! Wiki | Anthology / Diigo the Web for Education - From TeleGatherer to TeleP... - 5 views

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    "# Supporting Diigo-based fine-grained discussions connected to a specific part of a webpage - which opens up the possibility for more meaningful exchanges where teachers can embed all kinds of scaffolding into web-based materials with Diigo: * sharing questions for discussion (either online, or to prepare students for an in-class discussion); * highlighting critical features; asking students to define words, terms, or concepts in their own words/language; providing definitions of difficult/new terms (in various media, such as embedding an image in the sticky note); * providing models of interpreting materials. * using the highlighting/sticky note feature to "mark up" our "textbook" (blog) with comments, observations and corrections to specific words, phrases or paragraphs of each post. * Aggregating bookmarks the students make of websites valuable to their learning, and use the highlighting feature and sticky notes as if they were like the Track Changes feature in MS Word which lends itself more towards collaboration and the iterative process. "
Dana Huff

Silva Rhetoricae: The Forest of Rhetoric - 0 views

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    This online rhetoric, provided by Dr. Gideon Burton of Brigham Young University, is a guide to the terms of classical and renaissance rhetoric. This site is intended to help beginners, as well as experts, make sense of rhetoric, both on the small scale (definitions and examples of specific terms) and on the large scale (the purposes of rhetoric, the patterns into which it has fallen historically as it has been taught and practiced for 2000+ years).
ten grrl

Revising Himself: Walt Whitman and Leaves of Grass (American Treasures Exhibition, Libr... - 0 views

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    This exhibition traces the different occupations and preparations that led Whitman to become the author of Leaves of Grass, as well as his subsequent evolution as a poet. Over almost forty years Whitman produced multiple editions of Leaves of Grass.
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