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Rachel Peckam's "The Elephants Evaluate: Some Notes on the Problem of Grades in Graduate Creative Writing Programs" while a bit on the long side she captured me with her form. In a big way it reminded me of a much more intense version of our observation paper. She went through several examples of her students and all had issues with grading she commented on. She also throughout some back ground I was unaware of such as the origin of grading in America. If figures grades would come from Yale in 1783 but the idea she brought up that perhaps grading and morality have a certain relationship. We do place a certain importance on grades that Peckam points out. Even she obsesses over her grades while trying to help her students not worry about their grades. This idea of grading creative writing hits home for me since my goal is to teach creative writing one day. How do we judge creative writing using a grading system? How can we give a point total for the imagination? It's a tough problem and Peckam does a great job of giving real world examples and weighing the difficult question clearly. I just had to include a quote from her, "It seems my soludon for grading is like chemotherapy. It's working, but it's killing us in the process." (96) She has a lot of meat in this article and I really like the idea of looking at how we treat creative writing in our education system.

Make sure to relate this back to what we're doing--mentoring undergrads in academic (not creative) writing.

Aimee C. Mapes writes about her experience as a teacher in Freshman Connection of FC, on the social and cultural context among at-risk, first-year university students. Issues of identity are central to understanding the discourse because the context instances identity. I found parallels in the experiences of Keneika and my own experiences as a minority, although she was a girl. The study examined the role of gender as the site of pedagogic content. Academically underprepared students in the federal TRIO program include first generation, having low income, racial minority status, or learning disabled. The author/instructor also felt a commonality with the student she observed. One thing that emerged from the FC progam was that conflict emerged and it was related to identity. The most interesting thing to me was the fact that because of the focus on "at-risk" groups, much of the attention was devoted to males. This dynamic was a response to the male voice that dominated discussions and seemed to be heard whenever there were behavoiral problems--males were associated with problems and males were overrepresented as a result. The programmatic behavoir necessarily overlooked the status or identity of females in the FC. Because the females were not vocal, their nonparticipation, as a function of gender, diminished focus on them. Keneika responded to her position through the assignments. She thought of herself in very positive terms and absolutely different from the males whom she considered inferior. Everything that represented male to her, she constructed the opposite trait or quality for herself. Assignments offer students a way to polarize against social positioning.

Interesting! Aimee Mapes did her MA here at Chico State. Will have to read the article!

"The Shadow Scholar" article exposes a fascinating hidden industry, which seems to be doing very well. The man who was interviewed for the article (his identity has been kept secret) has literally written thousands of papers for students whose writing ability is not up to standards of basic college requirements. The industry is thriving and the unknown individual will make roughly 66,000 this year. In fact, the standard price for these types of assignments is $2000. What I found amazing is that there seems to be three groups who seek this type of service successfully: "The English-as-second language, the deficient student, and the lazy rick kid". The article brings the idea of: what allows the final two types of students to slip through the cracks of the college education system and become so desperate for help? How can we, as part of a college community, and others change this problem so students do not have to go to this extreme? A perfect example of this problem was the shocking and slightly sickening ending comment of the article. After the ghost writer completed a 160-page graduate thesis on business ethics (which is a bit ironic), the graduate student sent an email stating "thanx so much for uhelp ican going to graduate to now."

After much searching, I was able to find a book that was written by an educator from England about her varying experiences with excellent writers that had a difficult time adapting their writing style to the expectations the West. Helen Fox, author of "Listening to the World: Cultural Issues in Academic Writing, analyzes the effects of culture and the problems this cultural influence causes when students try to adapt their writing styles and personas to that of Western academia. Problems include; focusing on a group instead of emphasis on self, a mindset geared toward a focus on the past instead of a focus on the future and a circular approach to writing instead of a linear approach. Fox investigates these issues and other cultural effects on the writing process.

This article explains one way to help students explore materials when students need to develop an effective thesis for their profile essay. The professor asks students to do general everyday freewriting related to the topic (an unusual place). Although the author doesn't show all students' freewritings, the only example shown in the article shows a developmental track of how a student explores his/her ideas and write the thesis. It is a process that the student finds and writes the thesis, and it takes time to complete the process. The author posts an invention to help students start essay writing in academic environment. There is no formal rigid writing pattern but a way to help students get into the topic and object; students will use writing as a thinking tool to think and critique the object when they get more information about it. My question is that this invention strategy can be considered as a project for a teacher but an activity in writing process for students. It takes time for teachers to think and design and for students to really do it. There should be more unpredictable problems, so teachers should pay more attention on this strategy.

The author inquires about why students dislike writing. Bricker presents a case in her inquiry that addresses the student's problem through one on one discussion. Her case lifted the student's aversion to writing by showing him directly that he was able to write without realizing it. This article really brings to light the importance of identifying negative attitudes towards writing and paying close attention to the student's psychological reaction to writing. In doing so, teachers can adjust the dialogue to get a more eager response to write from students having difficulties with writing. One significant idea presented in this inquiry is allowing students to write what they want to say rather than what the teacher wants to hear. This gives teachers and future teachers a big clue as to what possible circumstances prevent students from writing and ones that encourage them to write.

This article addresses every aspect of writers' block as "symptoms" then gives specific cures for each reason for blocking. It goes hand in hand with our reading for this week. While some of the "cures" are rather broad, many are specific enough to really help a person overcome writers' block because they touch on the problems so specifically.

I was reading the article and the symptom see to match some of my writer's block. Especially the symptom for "don't want to spend too much time or don't understand the assignment". This symptom fit me really well. And the cures really help.

Ardashir Vakil's "Teaching Creative Writing", to me, is an essential read. And I should add that I'm rarely excited by "Academic" writing. What makes Vakil's article different? Well other than his very cool name, he tackles the very real problem of teaching creativity with an opening salvo that had me hooked instantly. Paraphrasing Vakil's words in the first paragraph, you can't teach creativity. What he explores after qualifying his position is in and of itself a story. Vakil hopes to reveal his meaning by giving a kind of case study example of how he learned an important lesson in teaching. His attempt to impart that knowledge begins first though with another example, that of writer Anthony Trollope's attempts to turn his son into a great writer. In what read more like a conversation Vakil continues with an observation he's made of a trend in education, "…there has been a surge of interest in and enthusiasm for courses that offer creative writing, not to speak of books by writers and academics who profess to teach you how to write the perfect story or novel." (157). It's a trend I find myself following and since Vakil wrote this article in 2008 I wonder whether it has grown stronger in the last four years. The first whole paragraph of the second page boils down the troubles teachers face so well I wish I could quote the whole thing but I'll just point it out as an intensely insightful piece of the whole. As the piece continues Vakil describes what he did in his workshops and I must say I was envious of his students. As you follow Vakil's student through her journey to discover her writer's voice it is almost as though you are sitting across from Vakil while he tells the story, a quality of his writer's voice that burned brightly through this very academic material. I don't know that I'll say this many more times but this is a must read for anyone interested in teaching creative writing.

"profess to teach you how to write the perfect story or novel". Do you believe that creative writing is about teaching other to write a perfect story or novel? For me, i don't know. I'm not a writer, so i would assume so.

This is quite a small article, but it presents a certain interest as it connects writing with other social practices. I guess this assumption is crucial for teaching because it presupposes writing in the classroom with real-life purposes. The article also mentions interculturality and constant interaction of two languages, which is important when teaching writing to ESL students. The author is concerned about the specifics of effective transfer of literacy skills in bilinguals and heritage speakers. According to Martinez, as a result of traditional teaching, bilingual students tend to write with "conformity to rhetorical traditions in the dominant language" ("backwards literacy"), which creates certain problems with style, thoughts expression, choice of words and sentence patterns (i.e., mechanical transfer of the dominant language features into L2 writing). Therefore, it is necessary to develop "forward literacy", which accepts a non-standard way of writing ("writers carve out their own transcultural paths of expression"). In other words, writing of a bilingual or heritage learner implies constant shifts (transfers) between languages and cultures, and using the multiple resources of both languages in order to create an original pattern. The instructor's task is: (1) to identify multiple literacies (i.e. writing practices) that students possess and / or should possess in their heritage language and their dominant language; (2) to teach the students how to shift without mixing two languages. E.g. in early works of Spanish heritage learners, English norms penetrate Spanish writing: estoy the acuerdo instead of estoy de acuerdo. The shift should concern rhetorical strategies, which reflect cultural and aesthetical values of the two languages worlds, but not grammar or writing vocabulary; (3) teaching writing in the context of multiple social practices and contents While teaching writing, it is important to distinguish between positive transfer of skills already acqu

Wow, i like your article. It state purposely on how to help ESL student to write English better.

Profess Groff, at MIT, took on the topic of classroom technology and the classroom environment. It is an older article, but she looked at the integration into the learning processes of student and the ways to judge a successful device in the learning process. One point, is that instructors need to assess the effects of a device early-on, so that an effective integration plan could be implemented before the likelihood of it hindering the learning process. I would agree that in the past this was a simple solution even though there seemed to be a lag in the educational system to integrate these devices. Now, however, the rate of development of new devices seems to be making the lag even more of an issue. The end of the article details the main obstacles to learning, the classroom and new technology in the classroom; and they mostly relate to the teacher. Students have no problem keeping up with the newest device available. This then brings me back to the idea that an effect plan in the school and teacher training needs to be employed.

This article dealt with an interesting look at the revision process and shortening sentence length. It talks about the restrictions one can place on themselves during the writing process. In this case, Hunley found many of the students writing greatly improved with this one exercise. Some students found the exercise to be helpful, while others said it disrupted the flow of their writing.I thought it was interesting and very relevant to sections of English 030. I have noticed that the kids in the section I am working in have had some problems with run-on sentences and an exercise like this would be really helpful. Any tip we can give people on how to improve the writing process is a good one, even if it doesn't help every single person.

The article written by ERIC (The Educational Resources Information Center) which I must assume is a part of George Washington Univ. Washington DC. Graduate School of Education and Human Development is a broken down "checklist" of sorts. It addresses six different concerns with grading student's writing. One such concern is one I think we all might have asked ourselves at one point in time, "Why do professors need to construct effective writing assignments?"(3). The answer given to the question was interesting in that it pushed hard for effective peer reviews. While some peer review is helpful the article did address the fact that most students are unaware of how to give effective peer review. The basics of the article concerning peer review are that professors need to help students learn by example and explanation. I thought it interesting as well that the article addressed how professors can avoid giving a grade that they will have to defend after the fact, a problem for professors who grade writing without a series of rewriting stages. The solution offered is, that's right, stages of rewrites with the professor holding off giving a grade for as long as possible. One important idea brought up in the article is that "…the writing assignment should include necessary information about audience and purpose, the two pillars of writing."(3) I often wonder how we focus on the first and not the second. As the article states one of the pillars of writing is purpose, yet we seem to habitually focus on the audience and not give student's a purpose for their writing.

Cheryl Hogue Smith explores the assumption that basic writers do not have the necessary critical thinking skills needed for college courses. She argues that they do; they just don't know how to control and organize their thinking onto paper. She examines the two different goals that students have in regard to the approach they take for learning. Ultimately, Smith concludes that basic writing students have the thinking skills needed, they just need to be taught how to harness those skills and be metacognitive. I found this article to be very interesting because Smith was able to get to the actual root of the problem and explain why basic writers are basic writers. I really appreciated the explanation of the difference between the two goals--"learning goals" and "performance goals." I believe that if a teacher can grasp this concept and utilize it in the classroom to assist the "performance goal" oriented students to become "learning goal" oriented, I think that the students will benefit a great deal and become much better at taking their thoughts and putting them on paper. Additionally, I loved the "Revision and Metacognition" and "Steven and Charlotte: Evidence of Metacognitive Revision" sections! I think this way of revising is a great way to help develop a students critical thinking skills in regard to how they present their thoughts onto paper.

Apparently the link on this isn't working. Here it is again, I hope it works: http://ehis.ebscohost.com.mantis.csuchico.edu/eds/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=2&hid=20&sid=fbc21340-0df1-41b8-934a-01f3805e708d%40sessionmgr15

I ran across this article last year while browsing through journals in the library and thought it was humorous. I thought of it again when we read Bartholomae. In this article by Philip Eubanks and John D. Schaeffer, the authors first set out to define what bullshit is, then discuss the ways in which bullshit is an aspect of academic rhetoric. The humorous (and most likely intended) irony is that all the while they are writing in a very traditional academic style which is, in and of itself, often associated with the very claims of bullshit they are examining. The main idea is that it matters not whether the content of the bullshit itself is true or false, but that bullshitters misrepresent themselves and their intentions (375). Eubanks and Schaeffer examine various types and purposes of bullshit, as well as various reasons one might engage in bullshitting, including representing a 'constructed self', gamesmanship, pleasure, reputation and superiority. "To sum up, prototypical bullshit has to do with a purposeful misrepresentation of self, has the quality of gamesmanship, and . . . is at least potentially a lie"(380). In the second half of the article, the authors examine academic writing, determining what features make it prototypical and how those features might be construed to be bullshit. One important aspect is the use of jargon, which seems to many non-academic readers to merely confuse for the purpose of elevating the author's status. "Often academic writers could be clearer but prefer to serve up something that sounds like bullshit" (382). They point out that students imitate this style in their own writing, and are rewarded for it. In addressing the issue of audience, the authors make a statement that is very reminiscent of Lave and Wenger's communities of practice in Situated Learning: "much academic publication, especially by young scholars, aims to qualify the author for membership in a group of specialists" (382). As we discu

This article was written by Lawrence Musgrove, an associate professor of English and foreign language at Saint Xavier University in Chicago, Illinois. In the article he talks about a lot of the same problems that we have been touching on in class with concerns to first year English composition classes. After a quick discussion of the issues with English composition, he goes into his proposal for a solution. He first conjured up a metaphor between writing and driving. Bad driving has very concrete consequences, and Musgrove thinks that writing should, too. His proposal is centered on professors issuing students "writing tickets" that can be cleared up by attending workshops, seminars, revising their paper, or any other writing task their professor deems sufficient. While reading the responses posted after his article, I noticed that his ideas drew attention from all sorts of different people. People from all different professions and backgrounds (high school students, business men, elementary teachers, etc) had a variety of things to say. Some people loved his idea, and others heavily disputed it. I found that the responses generated were as resourceful as the article itself.