ENGL431fosen

This article is looking at the differences in Non-Native speaker (NNS) and Native speaker (NS) in their writing discourse. The main focus is on the usage of tense, aspect, and active/passive voice in their writing. The subjects include NS, and NNS Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Indonesian, Vietnamese, and Arabic. They were given a class periods to answer one out of three questions. The result is very interesting for it shows the difference between the different groups of NNS and the overall differences of NNS and NS. At the conclusion of the finding, it says that NNS are less likely to use passive voice in their writing. I reflected it back to professor Wyrick's question about passive tense in Hmong. I notice that the reason we never pay attention to passive voice because we rarely use it in everyday communication that when I translated to my parents they said it's possible but it's hard to make sense out of it. I also tried to translate some transition words and found it to be very disturbing to the flow of the sentence.

In this article, there are 30 different ways in which this website tries to get students into their writing. Some of the ideas are probable and others not so much, but the main focus of the article seems to be relating the writing the students are doing back to the students themselves. We see in the article one idea that is really great. Number eight states to have student write on their own writing. How interesting would it be to read your own writing? Maybe not always as interesting as you would have thought? Well... how can you change that? How can you write something that you would not mind reading? These are the challenges students face, but by reading their own writing and reflecting on it, we could see a possible change in the writing being produced. Another example and method that the article shows is to have a writing buddy. Yes, I know this sounds kind of immature for college students, but in reality, I believe it would be nice to have someone that always read my works and I read theirs. You can make a friend, and you can also get a better idea of how important your writing really is.

This website/article lists, in detail, many, many (30) different ways one can teach writing. It lists exercises and methods and ideas. I don't have to explain that much of it, because it relates directly to a lot of the stuff we're learning and discussing in class.

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 site contains the summary of another article related to how technology and composition have shifted in the classroom. It begins with the pencil, then the typewriter and then the computer, and how these various advancements in classroom technology have affected learning.

This is a website that breaks down the various stages of development students undergo whilst learning to write. It talks about each of the stages, what constitutes them, and how they shift and change. I found this website pertinent for a number of reasons, but chiefly because it relates directly to teaching writing.

In this short little section of a book review on "Overcoming Writing Blocks" that was published in 1979, Paster highlights 2 techniques of the 75 mentioned in the book. One is called the "spoke outline," which today we call mind mapping. The other is called "letter to a friend" in which the writer sets up a sort of letter that drifts the discussion toward what the writing assignment is and what the topic should be about--detailing how far work has gotten and any ideas that have come up in relation to the assignment. This 'letter' is completely disposable and it just meant to be used as a prompt for discussion in order to get ideas flowing in such a way that a writer can use to describe the assignment and work to another person. Many people these days just simply talk to other people about their assignment and spur ideas from discussing their topic, rather than writing an imaginary discussion in a letter that is never meant to be sent. Will look for the "Overcoming Writing Blocks" book to gather more of its 75 techniques.

Day's article discusses the various beliefs and habits that contribute to writer's block. Many of these beliefs include sets of rules that are heavily rigid and grammatical rather than content. Day suggests that writers that go through their writing with little rigidity and skimming over the editing process while writing is a preventative strategy to overcome writer's block. This article brought into view the point that, most of our writer's block comes from rules that disrupt the flow of writing and content. For the most part, students hang on to rules that are grammatical or structural plans that attempt to perfect writing on the first draft. I think this can be valuable to teachers because when we identify the cognitive strategies preventing students from writing, we can instruct them how to overcome those strategies to develop ones that help students with writing.

So pretty much this article emphasizes the idea of the connection between the flow of writing (creation and invention) and excercise. The mentioned excercise that helps resolve writer's block is running, but the article also hints at aerobic excercises in general can help cure this issue. So long as the physical excercises do not require "attentional processes" but rather allow the mind to 'free' itself, high-exertion work outs can hold benefits to get those creative juices flowing.

Mitra places computers in walls all over the world to see how children with react and how they can learn from them. The results are amazing. Children are able to use the internet to learning answers to questions not even in a language they can understand. They work together with peers to browse the internet and research based on their background knowledge even if it is slim to none. This proposes a huge question....do we need teachers to teacher certain things or can students figure out the answers and test the same if not better by working with peers using the internet?

This young girl is so brilliant. We as teachers need to have more faith in our students and give over some of the classroom control. A student centered environment needs to be less restrictive and we need to stop underestimating our students abilities.

This article describes how to set up blogs in an educational format. It gives a step by step instructions and even gives a few blogging websites to try. It discusses different ways in which to integrate the blogs into existing curriculum and also states set backs and alterations that were made after students had worked with the blogs for some time. The blogs themselves are not whats necessarily engaging, its the way in which they are used and how they promote community student centered learning.

This classroom in Japan supplemented their English course with an additional grammar course. I find this interesting because it's another way of looking at what we've been studying, understanding how ESL students and teachers and bridging the grammar gap, either with additional coursework, courses or teaching methods.

For the past few weeks in this class I have generated all of my focus on the identity of the students in Enlish 30 workshops. After reading the article, "Exploring teacher-writer identities in the classroom: Conceptualising the struggle" I a new question has stemmed: how do teacher's identity as writers affect students' progress in academic progress? Authors, Teresa Cremin and Sally Baker from the Department of Education of The Open University suggest "that teachers' development as writers has the potential to enrich writing pedagogy and impact positively on young writers." The idea of teachers writing alongside their students is in my opinion highly valuable because students and teachers have the opportunity to experience the writing process together. In previous articles I have read that relatability between students and instructor are essential to the learning environment. If instructors are constantly writing alongside their students trying to establish/re-establish their identity in academic writing, students can learn easily learn how to do the same through "shared challenges" (9). While English 431 students cannot use this strategy because members of their English 30 workshops come from different sections of English 130 we can attempt to produce similar assignments alongside our students. For example, inquiry assignments are a common goal in most English 130 classes. Similarly, English 431 students must write an inquiry essay. English 431 students could incorporate their progress into the workshop by showing the English 30 students what they have done so far, why they are asking certain questions, how they did something, etc.

Andrea R. Olinger from the Department of Applied Linguistics at University of California, Los Angeles demonstrates "how interaction constructs discoursal identities" (273) in her article, "Constructing identities through: 'discourse': Stance and interaction in collaborative college writing." Olinger brings up an important point in this article, "that students often feel a mixture of desire for an resistance to the identities they must take on" (274). The examination of college students' writing demonstrated how these identities are "contested, desired, and resisted" (274). By now English 431 students should have seen some form of writing from their English 30 students. Thus, now we can ask ourselves as well as the English 30 students in what ways do the writer's discoursal identity resist or conform to the expectations of a college writing course?