I sent each of you an email with some comments on the work you did on your google.site for the week. These comments included the following.
1. Validation of what you are doing well. And you are doing very well! Your writing is interesting and organized in ways that makes it into a compelling story! Also, it is clear that many of you are well able to revise your work to almost perfect written English when you take the time, So you already have strong editing skills. What we are working on is separating the getting writing on the page step, from the revising to perfection step. This should make both steps easier!
2. Readerly responses to your writing. These are the kinds of comments that would come up in your readers head as they read your writing. Your readers do not have as much information about the people, places, and experiences you are describing, and sometimes we, as writers, forget that our readers can't "see" the experience like we do. These readerly comments are to help you step outside your recollections, and think about what your reader needs to know in order to hear your story in its most compelling form.
Readerly comments tell you the parts of your story that are working well, and they might ask you to describe more about the particular place, people or experiences. They might point out that the reader is missing some crucial background information that will help them see your story as you want them to see it.
3. Sentence patterns. These comments point out what I notice in terms of general patterns in your writing that are cause trouble in your writing. So far, in various writing, the main issues I have noticed are as follows.
issues with count & noncount nouns
problems with verb forms associated with tense - distinctions between present and past
sentence fragments
run-on sentences
rules for choices about using artilces (a, an, the)
These writing patterns each have separate chapters in writing handbooks for native speakers. This suggests that we all have trouble with them. Also, this last week I asked you to write quickly, so I expected to see more nonstandard sentence patterns. That does not mean you are a bad writer; it means you wrote quickly, and that is exactly what I asked you to do.
Strategies for revising your writing.
As I mentioned in class, if you try to correct "everythying" in your writing, it can be overwhelming. Researchers have found that writers do the most effective job of mastering their errors:
if they focus on their most common errors, and
if they work on correcting ONE error at a time.
Correcting the most frequent error means that you read through your writing, on your own or at the writing center, for the purpose of identifying the KINDS of errors you make, and how often you make them. For this class, my feedback helps with this step.
Correcting one error at a time means that you go through your whole piece specifically looking of one particular kind of mistake, and that you work on that mistake and that mistake only. This allows you to really focus on the situations where you make this mistake. It also allows you to learn a variety of ways to write through difficult patterns using standard English.
Vocabulary.
We continued some in-class work on vocabulary. This time we looked for new words in the handouts on fused sentences and fragments. If you were not in class and need a copy of the handout, I left some extras in my mailbox (in the hallway beside the English Department, CAS 301).
Directions for posting your work on your google.site
Your google.site should be an accumulating record of your work for this class. Do not remove any of the writing you have posted. All writing should be dated, and should be attached or pasted in to the correct page.
Vocabulary
Each week, write a date for the day's work, and list the words you have gathered and defined either in class, or in your reading and talk throughout the week. List the word, a definition (in your own words). If you want to work on mastering the word, use it in a sentence. Posting these words is part of the learning process; it gives you experience with these new words. It also lets me see how you are using them and so I can see if you are getting the right idea.
Writing
You should do some work on your memoir/biography each week. It can be a new section of writing, or it can be brainstorming where you list the stories you will tell and work out what order you want to tell them in. writing for each week should be dated, and given a name (for example 9.30 draft 2, or 9.30 brainstorming 1) and attached to the site as a document I can open.
Sentence patterns
You now have enough writing so you can begin to look through what you have written to identify your most frequent nonstandard patterns. I will help you do this. Once you have identified a nonstandard pattern (such as comma splices, sentence fragements added on to the end of a complete sentence), give the pattern a number and copy it onto your page labeled sentence fragments. Next, work on correcting this pattern. Copy as many version of this nonstandard pattern as you can find onto your page, Once you feel confident about how to correct/work with this form, move on to a different pattern.
For next week:
Please post your work by Sunday so I will have time to write feedback for you by class Monday night.
1. Do some more writing for your project. This writing may:
develop or add to writing you have already done,
develop a new section of your memoir
list or brainstorm ideas for the organization and focus for your memoir.
2. Work on revising some of the sentence patterns identified in your writing so far. Post these corrections on your site as listed above.
3. Post your vocabulary + definitions to your site
Thank you for the wonderful class. I am enjoying reading your writing, and meeting with you is such a pleasure. Even though we were a little off topic, I felt our conversations about "The Crucible" and "To Kill a Mockingbird" and metaphors were very thought provoking, and I feel luck to have you as a class.
See you next week!
