ENGL431fosen

Thinking of invention in chapter two of our text lead me to think about the ways in which we write to express self. This article discusses how the world of texting, instant messaging, blogging and other such types of writing help to open our minds to our inner thoughts. We are free from the rules and regulations of a stereotypical classroom and are also allowed to share and respond to others writing. The internet and cell phones have opened up a huge new space for writing. Some think it's hindering and destroying language, while others believe its radically changing it for the better. I want to start my journey here and reach my own personal conclusion through further research and discussions.

This study occurs over a period of eight years and follows 55 secondary teachers as they take part in professional development in cognitive strategies approach to reading and writing and then implement those strategies in their classrooms. The cognitive strategies approach, an intervention program developed by the UCI Writing Project, focuses on how readers and writers construct meaning from and with texts. This approach suggests that teachers provide systematic and explicit guidance in the cognitive strategies that are utilized by effective readers and writers. The authors state that the "aim of the project was to help students develop the academic literacy necessary to succeed in advanced educational settings," (275). Students were placed into two groups, the "Pathway students" who received cognitive strategies interventions and the control group. According to the study "pathway students not only grew more from pre- to post-test, but also wrote better essays on the post-test and received higher scores than their counterparts in the control classes," (289). http://www.evernote.com/shard/s88/sh/ebcc6b46-f96b-4912-adfe-880d00e4c81e/2b3ed2a99dda281a4071c0fc3d20b990

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!

This article introduces several methodologies in order to tackle writer's block. It includes eight different strategies that range from talking to admirable advisors for their opinions on your current writing assignment and genre to listening to music--how even psychologists agree that the creation of writing with the presence of music playing is beneficial to breaking down stumps in the road of writing. I wanted to see if i could find Cynthia A. Arem's book, Conquering Writing Anxiety, in the Library's Research database due to the fact that her book contains "self-assessment charts and strategies to break cycles of both writer's anxiety and writer's block" but this article seems like the next best thing :) I'll find more articles and books on writer's block this week as well.

I watched this video in ENGL 030E workshop, and I am very interested in this video and the way the tutor use this video. The tutor show the video twice to students and assign them 8 minute quick write about what they have known from the video; after the quick write, the tutor let them discussion what they have gotten from the video in small group and share in the big group. In the big group discussion, some students mentioned that they "saw" words in the video. After discussion, the tutor show the video third time and asked students to write down all the words they have "seen" in this video. At the third, I figured out that the video shows different definitions of same words, like play, blow, run, etc., and the transitions between the words are done well. Through the process of thinking and discussing, the students noticed the words and the fluent transition. At the end of the discussion, the tutor collected the students' writings. The questions I raise from this video are that: 1. How to guide students to have such thinking rather than limited eyes. There will be more than two viewpoints to the same phenomenon, just like the different but interrelated definitions of the same word. At the beginning of the writing, the thought about the writing should be not limited in a specific topic or certain aspect, and writer can explore more ideas than they can. 2. How to start and use the invention strategies to avoid mechanical writing. Writing can be anything, not only the structure but also the idea. How to organize the essay, the structure, should be considered when the writing is certain; when having no idea of what to write, the free thinking and think deeper would be much more useful. It could be anything to inspire thoughts and ideas, like vocabulary, normal experience and so on. The video, the way the tutor delivers and the reading (Chapter 2 in Clark's book) make me think about how to really use the invention strategies.

Although this article deals more with the creative writing process, I thought there were some really good tips for overcoming writer's block. It goes over a few instances of when students got stuck with writing and offers suggestions on how to change it. It explains why students experience writer's block with creative writing, which I find to be reasons true of academic writing. It would be useful for our class to review the tips it gives and use them when helping students who are currently stuck in their writing processes.

This article discusses "how emotions affect the composing process" in academic writing. The author argues that writing assignments that demand "critical thinking and identity shifts" cause anxiety for students, hence why they cannot fully engage in "critical analytic writing" under these conditions. The author suggests instructors need to better understand these conditions in order to help students succeed in academic writing. ENGL 431 would find this article useful because the students we are observing are at stage in life in which identity and self-discovery is central. Therefore, tutors, mentors, and instructors may be able to use these factors to draw connections between "discourse and emotion." Also, if tutors, mentors, and instructors found a way to make themselves more relate-able the students would feel more comfortable in the classroom setting. In turn, by making academic writing, in some way about the students they would feel more comfortable about academic writing assignments.

Exploring the Role of Reformulations and a Model Text in EFL Students' Writing Performance Yang, Luxin ; Zhang, Ling The article by Yang and Zhang shares the results from a study of a three-staged writing task by ESL students in a Beijing university. The three stages are composing, comparison (of the reformulation), and revising. The students were asked to study and compose, in English, a narrative of a short picture prompt. The short narratives were then reformulated by a native English speaker, but still maintained the student's original meaning. The students then compared the two to "notice" the differences. The article clearly explains the many types of differences between the two texts; mainly language-related episodes (LRE) and content-related episodes (CRE). The students were also asked to compare their narratives with a model narrative. Though the students tended to focus more on the lexical issues, they were able to more clearly relate their current stage of English language learning with that of a native English speaker. This helped them to "notice the gap". I would recommend this to anyone focusing their attention on ESL learners.

Luberda's essay is a preliminary overview of his experiment in applying cognitive science to writing. Luberda suggests that the most applicable elements of cognitive science for teaching writing and composition come from linguistics. He also suggests that in teaching writing and literature, students may be accustomed to learning terms, dates, facts, and test-taking, while others receive a vague understanding of literature. In light of the teaching structures he used, the writing and analytical skills the students acquired were independent of the literature in their course. In using the cognitive approach, Luberda structured writing and literature courses within the context of differentiating relations between language change and writing acquisition. In reading the positive results of Luberda's experiment, I noticed a few implications for teaching writing. One advantage of applying linguisitics and the cognitive approach is that students learn why they write the way they do and raises awareness to the writing structures they use. The other advantage is the ability for students to "say what I mean" and incorporate accuracy in their writing when communicating meaning. This would mean that even when students are intentionally manipulating writing structures within various genres, they are learning to communicate "what I mean" without being submissive to directness. There was one negative result of the experiment where a student stated "I don't believe this course has helped me improve my writing skills. In high school I was taught how to write analyze books and then write papers about them using solid grammar, intense vocab, thesis statement and a well thought out conclusion. I do not believe I learned how to improve my papers. I am still on the same level of writing as I was in high school." I find this to be interesting in relation to teaching writing because it suggests that cognitively, we strive to use writing structures differently or advance our writing by chan

The article I found articulates the beneficial attributes of tutoring, mentoring, and faculty assistance in the "alleviation of writing anxiety." There is also discussion on embellishing the self-efficiency university students when writing essays.There authors also use gender as a precursor in determining the differences between the efficacy of writing among males and females. In addition to analytical gender studies, the authors also integrate other academic variables such as GPA's and literary composition as a "recreational activity." There is even breathing exercises, methods for relaxation, and interventional aid to students who completely reprehend writing all together. This is article is definitely pertinent to the academically overstressed life of university students; especially, students enrolled in an English course. At a certain point, we all experience unpalatable junctures of unwanted anxiety, that by any means, impedes our ability to academically perform. It is very similar to the dynamics of examination anxiety. A student may have acknowledgments that exceed the finite boundaries of an exam, but cannot access their superior level of comprehension because of their cognitively, suppressive test anxiety. The word "test," "examination," or "dissertation" have become connotatively dreadful; however, replacing these words with academic euphemisms such as "long quiz" or "filling paper words project" could potentially reduce oppressive, academic anxiety-in a sense. Judging by all of the diagrams of everyone's writing process, I'd say the extraneous variety of distractions can all result from, or even cause, anxiety.