THIS WEEKEND ONLY: FUN EXTRA CREDIT.

The Depression brought some of America's worst times, but it also brought with it a forward looking architecture and artistic movement called Art Deco--an art movement based in the belief that things were going to get better and a living monument to American optimism. One of the best examples of Art Deco architecture in the area is the Henrico Theater (pictured to the right). Notice the clean, rounded, aerodynamic lines. Like all Art Deco, it asserts that a better, more modern world is just around the corner, one that is clean and is everything that the American 1930s wasn't. It's also a rebellion against the art movement it replaces, one which looked to the Middle Ages for inspiration, one called the Arts and Crafts Movement. This hyper-modern, clean, convenient world is that my folks and your grandparents returned from WWII to build.

In any event, the Henrico Theater was recently renovated as an attraction, and it's a great chance to see high Deco architecture up close and personal. One of the movie palaces, they're also showing some great movies from the Mid-twentieth Century.

If you've never seen the ones showing this weekend, Singing in the Rain and Easter Parade, you are in for a treat. Both are musicals, one starring Gene Kelly and one Fred Astaire. Both are hopelessly romantic and fun, and both will show you some great dancing--one modern and one ballroom at its best. Both will give a glimpse into what will end up being the 20th C's major contribution to culture, the movie. Each will set you back a dollar a person. Each will earn you ethos, brownie points, and some extra credit in my class.

Here's a schedule of up coming movies at the Henrico:

Cinema Classics

Beginning in February, unforgettable treasures of the silver screen will be shown the first weekend of each month at Henrico Theatre. The cost is just $1 per person, so be sure to grab your friends and family for a blast from the past!

SINGIN’ IN THE RAIN
Friday, February 29, 8 p.m.
Saturday, March 1, 2 p.m.

EASTER PARADE
Saturday, March 1, 8 p.m.
Sunday, March 2, 2 p.m.

MARY POPPINS
Friday, April 4, 7:30 p.m.
Saturday, April 5, 2 p.m.

BAMBI
Saturday, April 5, 8 p.m.
Sunday, April 6, 2 p.m.

THE PINK PANTHER
Friday, May 2, 8 p.m.
Saturday, May 3, 2 p.m.

THE RETURN OF THE PINK PANTHER
Saturday, May 3, 8 p.m
Sunday, May 4, 2 p.m.


Address:

305 East Nine Mile Road
Highland Springs, VA 23075
804-328-4491

Writing Assignment Due Monday, 3 March.

In our workshop, we began looking at ways you can analyze, critique, and refine your five year plan so it is realistic and sill ambitious. As part of your writing this week, I want you to revise the draft of the five year plan you completed this week. Revise it so it reflects a set of realistic achievable goals; in doing so, narrow and focus your goals in each area you discuss--personal, professional, civic, and academic. One way to accomplish this last is to try to figure out what two or three five year goals are the most important to you in terms of developing the kind of life you ultimately want to live. This revision should be completed by Friday.

In addition to revising the draft of your five year goals, I want you to develop and draft two other sections of the same "paper." Drafts of these sections should be finished by Monday, and you should bring them to class.

In the second section of your "paper," I want you develop and describe a set of one year goals which will move you toward your five year goals. Here, focus on specific, doable goals you can realize this year. Go on to explain how they move you toward your five year goals.

Finally, in the third section of your "paper,"I want you to identify and describe specific actions you can take over the next three weeks to move you closer to your one year and five year goals. Perhaps it is doing some research. Perhaps it's as easy as finding some extra time to write, read, or do homework. Maybe it's working on acquiring a new habit or getting rid of one which has prevented you from accomplishing your goals. What you are looking for hear is a specific set of small tasks you can take to move you toward your one year and five year goals.

In the drafts you end up bringing to class, I want you to pay particular attention to weeding out vague thought and wording and replacing each with specific verbs, names, and adjectives.

As always, develop and share your work with the class using google docs.

Steve

How to be creative.

Many students feel that they aren't good at English, mostly because they have trouble coming up with ideas, that is, being creative. Having to create along with procrastination are the two major choke points in both prewriting and drafting. But disciplining yourself to write when you need to and being creative can be taught and learned. Anyone who makes it into college can pick up both skill sets.

Creativity, like most of writing, is not about talent; it is about picking up a set of attitudes and techniques which, once practiced, will help you grow the ability to be creative. An article passed my desk this morning which uses a martial arts metaphor to capture these ideas. It includes a set of techniques, attitudes, and habits you can use to make yourself more creative.

Follow the link:

http://eventurebiz.com/blog/8-ways-to-train-yourself-to-be-creative/

No class 22 Feb; Assignment for Monday: 25 Feb.

Due Monday, 25 Feb.

Do the pre-writing--not the drafting--for the draft which is due Wednesday. Remember, for Wednesday, you're drafting body paragraphs for an essay exploring where you want your life to be in four years. You are dividing this description into four parts: personal, professional, academic, and civic. I know for most of you, your normal writing process is to get right into drafting. Resist the urge, as I want you to experiment with different techniques useful for pre-writing.

For each of the sections of your draft--personal, professional, civic, and academic, use a different pre-writing technique. These have been discussed in the text or in class. These techniques include free-writing, brainstorming, clustering, listing, questioning, and research. Post the results of your experiment in a google doc and add the rest of the class as collaborators. What you are doing is exploring ways to gather knowledge you can use when you draft, and you're looking for one or two which work well for you.

This exercise will also allow you to add a block to the process part of your writing inventory.



Steve

Assignments Due Wednesday, 27 February.

Assignment: Due Wednesday, 27 February.

English 112

Reading: From Writing for College, Writing for Life read chapter five, 128-86. Don’t try to do all this reading at once; instead, break it down into chucks of around ten pages per day. In chapter five, you’ll be reading about how to use writing to explore. In the writing assignment for this week, you’ll be developing a draft of an essay which will help you explore where you want to take your life over the next few years.

Writing: Where do you want to be in five years?

Write a *draft* of the body of an essay in which you describe where you want your personal, professional, academic, and civic life to be in five years. Part of achieving one's goals is learning to fully visualize what it is you want to achieve. The next step is coming up with a plan which will allow you to move toward the goals you visualize, but I don't want you to write about your plan just yet; instead, I want you to concentrate on writing a complete, nuanced description of where you want to be.

In your descriptions, be realistic and concrete. Provide examples and illustrations. If you say you want a spouse or significant other, what qualities do you want this person to possess? How will this person compliment you? What kind of person will they be, and how do you visualize your relationship with them? If you say you want to be finishing up your bachelors degree, tell your reader what degree you want to be working on, if you see yourself as a senior, junior, or heading toward graduate school, and what school or kind of school you'd like to be at. If you say you want to be living in a nice apartment, and then describe the apartment. What town is it in? Is it near your job or school? What kind of neighborhood is it in? Do you see yourself having roommates? If you say you want a job, what kind of job is it? What kind of work do you see yourself doing? How do you see your work fitting into your other plans? How many hours per week do you see yourself working? Is it an inside, office job or are you doing landscaping outside? In short, be specific and detailed, not vague or general.

In visualizing your goals, be realistic. Five years isn’t as long as it may seem. You may see yourself as rich, but can you get there in five years, or will you just be starting to lay a foundation for later financial security? Do some of your homework. It takes most students six years to finish college, and students who work will take even longer; so, if you plan on working while getting a college degree, then you need to plan to still be in school, finishing up, and working toward a career. You also may mention what limitations you may face or what you'll need to overcome to achieve your goals.

For right now, don't worry about drafting an introduction or conclusion, just draft the main sections of your essay's body.

Note: Remember to update your writing inventory responses with what you learned from the reading and writing exercises this week.

Assignment: HP Lovecraft's Racial Fears

Our sources today got me thinking about the early 20th century horrorauthor HP Lovecraft. (He of Cthulhu fame.) Horror fiction tends todredge the visceral fears of an era, and the 1920s were perhaps thedecade when "scientific" racism was at its height. So I thought I'd assign a short story as a change of pace.

I'd like you to read "The Rats in the Walls" for next Wednesday. It's located here:

http://www.dagonbytes.com/thelibrary/lovecraft/theratsinthewalls.htm

Write a short paragraph on how the Lovecraft encorporates elements of"scientific" racism. What was he afraid of? Why? (Here's a hint -it's not just about the name of the cat, however offensive that may betoday.)

One Writing Style to Rule Them All

By this point in the semester, you know that there are few pat rules when it comes to writing. Most of what I teach boils down to, "It depends on the rhetorical situation." The truth, "It depends...," is why the most important skills you'll learn this semester are those of figuring out your own reasons for writing, your audience, and the noise keeping your audience from understanding your message. Learn these skills and how they guide what you can and should say, and your writing will almost always allow you to accomplish your goals.

There is, however, a style of writing that works for almost all American audiences. I call it the KISS Style. Use the KISS Style whenever you are not sure of the style your audiences expects. Heck, use it when you are sure, and your writing will still succeed more often than it fails. When I need my own writing to be clear, I revise toward a KISS style.

Find my notes on the KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid!) style below. These notes are lifted from a style sheet given by a newspaper editor to new writers. The advice is practical and to the point.

The KISS style works in almost all writing situations. It even works on an academic audience, an audience who likes convoluted, precise, qualified prose. Why does the KISS Style work so often? Bet on most of your audience being lazy, and--most of the time--you'll win. Write in a style which requires them to do the least work possible, that is, in short, subject-verb-object sentences, and most audiences will describe your writing as clear and precise.

Pay particular attention to the advice on writing short, right branching sentences. If you learn no other thing in this class, learn to follow the SVO<24 rule, and you will be happy you took the class.

Steve


SVO<24

What's that mean? Subject-verb-object sentences of generally less than 24 words.

Good writing starts with good sentence structure, and that means simple construction: subject-verb-object. Not blah, blah, blah, S-V-O. All that does is delay meaning.

This also is called the right-branching sentence: Think of S-V-O as the engine of a train. A short train.

Problem writers use a lot of commas and other punctuation. A good remedial exercise is to try writing a story with no commas. That, of course, means sentences should be short. Research shows that 20-word sentences are fairly clear to most readers. Thirty-word sentences are not.

Here's an even easier test: If you can't read a sentence aloud without taking a breath, it's too long.

Ten guidelines to clearer writing

1. One idea per sentence.

No: Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo., experienced the largest of recent high school murder rampages last week, and DeKalb schools, along with police, are reacting to a rumor of violence at DeKalb High School.
Yes: School officials and police are reacting quickly to a rumored threat of violence at DeKalb High School.
The response follows last week's high school massacre in Littleton, Colo.

2. Limit sentence length to 23-25 words. If you can't read a sentence aloud without a breath, it's too long.

No: After the announcement was made by President John La Tourette that he will be retiring early next year, Boey, under his board authority, created an ad hoc committee that will find representatives to sit on the actual search committee. (38 words)
Yes: President John La Tourette announced last month he will retire early next year. (12 words) Boey has since created a temporary committee to choose a search committee. (12 words)

3. S-V-O: Subject-Verb-Object. Right-branching sentences (think of a train engine). Don't delay meaning. Don't use a lot of commas.

No: Mauger, who worked as a bursar at DePaul University in Chicago prior to working at Beloit, said she missed the university environment.
Yes: Mauger was a bursar at Chicago's DePaul University before her Beloit job. She missed the university environment.

4. Use strong verbs and an active voice.

No: The poem will be read by La Tourette.
Yes: La Tourette will read the poem.

5. Reduce difficult words to their simplest terms. Don't let bureaucrats dictate your word choices.

No: The search committee will be constructed in accordance with Article 8 of the NIU constitution.
Yes: NIU's constitution dictates the search committee's makeup.

6. Don't back into a sentence.

No: The end of the academic year and the end of the legislative session were two reasons La Tourette cited.
Yes: La Tourette cited two reasons: the end of the academic year and the end of the legislative session.

7. Don't use more than three numbers in any one sentence.

No: Wednesday, the NIU baseball team's winless streak hit 22 as NIU (4-37-1) dropped a twin bill to Miami (21-18-1), 8-2 and 10-5, at Oxford, Ohio.
Yes: Oxford, Ohio Ñ NIU's baseball losing streak reached 22 as the Huskies dropped a doubleheader Wednesday to Miami, 8-2 and 10-5.

8. Use no more than three prepositional phrases per sentence.

No: Students who will be graduating from NIU will be honored at a senior luncheon from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Friday in the Regency Room of the Holmes Student Center.
Yes: Friday's senior luncheon will honor students about to graduate. The event runs from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. in the Holmes Student Center's Regency Room.

9. Choose the precise word.

No: This will increase the number of participants from 55 students a week to 200 students a week, and in that extra 145 students the age for attendance also will change. The present center is only equipped to handle children ages 2-6, but the new center will have the capacity to serve infants, too. (2 sentences, 53 words total)
Yes: This will increase the center's weekly capacity, from 55 children to 200. And, while the current center takes children ages 2-6, the new center will take infants, too. (2 sentences, 28 words total)

10. KISS (keep it simple, stupid).

No: Biological sciences professor Karl Johnson passed away Tuesday at the age of 55, following a long, courageous battle with cancer.
Yes: Biology professor Karl Johnson died of cancer Tuesday. He was 55.

--

Often the accurate answer to a usage question begins, "It depends." And what
it depends on most often is where you are, who you are, who your listeners
or readers are, and what your purpose in speaking or writing is.
-Kenneth G. Wilson, usage writer (b. 1923)

Shedule Your Writing Like the Pros

Over the weekend, StudentHack posted a good article how professional writers schedule writing time and what students can learn from the habits of the pros. Find the link below:

http://calnewport.com/blog/?p=145

Assignments: 18 Feb-25 Feb

There will be no class or office hours today, Monday, 18 Feb.

Your assignments for the week? Finish getting caught up with the various reading and writing assignments. If you are caught up, review your written work and revise it to make it better. As you reread the class blog, crate a post to your personal blog on what you believe the major goals of the class are. Make sure to check the class blog to stay on top of new reading.

Steve

Reminder: No ENG 112, Friday, 15 February.

Everyone have a good Valentine's Day.

Oh, any suggestions of where to take your significant other or what to do with your significant other (not THAT, ye with dirty minds) in Richmond?

Please post answers to the class email list by emailing:

LCSpringSpring2008Reynolds@googlegroups.com

My Comments on "Critical Thinking, Critical Reading, and Writing."

Below find my comments on the "Critical Thinking, Critical Reading, and Writing" section of a student's writing inventory. I decided to share them to show you some of the nuances involved with this set of learning outcomes. My comments are in red. As you read the writing inventories of other students, you may want to leave comments like mine which point the students toward other ways of thinking about an outcome.

As always, write with questions.

Steve

Critical Thinking, Reading, and Writing Critical thinking is actively examining, evaluating, and synthesizing information. Critical reading is understanding and analyzing what you have read. Critical writing is taking the information and writing about it.

By the end of first year composition, students should

• Use writing and reading for inquiry, learning, thinking, and communicating-

-It is important in writing and for someone reading to understand immediately what the subject is about.

-Use writing and reading for inquiry, learning, thinking, and communicating is understanding the mode of inquiry to a given question and being able to use that mode to communicate the results.

--Also remember that one can learn more about a subject or a reading the process of writing about it. I've lost count of the number of times I've started to write something and, in the process, ended up writing something else, because having to think about the topic enough to write about it allowed new insights.--Steve

• Understand a writing assignment as a series of tasks, including finding, evaluating, analyzing, and synthesizing appropriate primary and secondary sources-

-Finding, evaluating, and analyzing is part of learning. Synthesizing is putting together all of your information into a clear outline.

--This outcomes is speaking about the place research, that is, going to others to find out what they have to say about your topic, has in all writing. As you've learned, writing is a process, and an essential aspect of this process is thinking about (analyzing and synthesizing) the insights others can offer. The knee jerk reaction to take the time to learn from others and to research is one of the primary differences between those who get a good college education and those who don't. Not only have those in college been exposed to more training and knowledge, they develop the habit of using the expertise of others (just as they come to expect others to use and rely on their expertise).

• Integrate their own ideas with those of others-

-Integrate their own ideas with those of others means using the words and ideas of others in your writing.

• Understand the relationships among language, knowledge, and power-

-The relationship among language, knowledge and power to me means that language is critical in order to capture how knowledge is used and is more powerful and effective when used by people of higher positions.

--This outcome is always a tough one for students to fully get.

You've heard that "knowledge is power," and the statement makes sense. Doing the work to gain new knowledge gives you access to knowledge and skills others don't have, so your chance of making a good, informed decision, even on matters as small as keeping to a budget or in buying a house, improve. Sometimes knowing a key piece of information or a key technique or skill allows you to make a good decision rather than screw up. The effects of such good decisions accumulate, and one soon learns it's worth the time to find out what others can tell you--to research.

The ability to use rhetoric, that is, to learn to accomplish your goals through effective communication, the ability to adapt your message to different audiences, and the ability to pick (and use) the right language for the situation is also one key to power. Heck, Socrotese argued that rhetoric and power were so intertwined that only leaders should be trained in how to manipulate people through communication.

There is also this: certain languages, like "standard" English come to be associated with power and those who have power. Standard English is what is used in colleges. It's what is used in most business communication. It's what is used by our business leaders. It's often used as the base language through which international affairs are conducted. At one time, Latin served this function in Europe, then it was French, now it is English.

Finally, you also know that there are situations where one form of English is more effective that others. Think how your friends would react if you suddenly started refering to yourself as "one" or "we" and started using "whom." Since knowing how to shift and adapt your language to your audiences is a key to effective rhetoric, then knowing different ways to use language is also a key to power.

Faculty in all programs and departments can build on this preparation by helping students learn

• The uses of writing as a critical thinking method-

-The uses of writing as a critical thinking method would be knowing how to organize thoughts and ideas, knowing how to ask appropriate questions, and knowing how to gather relevant information.

--Remember, writing is a process and you don't have to publish or turn in every aspect of your process. Some of the techniques used in pre-writing, like brainstorming, clustering, mind-mapping, listing, and questioning, are powerful means to gather and organize your thougths, those of a group, and to find relationships between these thoughts. You don't have to limit the use of such techniques to writing papers. You can use them in meetings. You can use them to organize your thoughts on a difficult task, like gathering all the information you need to gather to pick out and buy a home or car. In short, you can use many of the techniques you learn to write well in daily decision making.

As you learned in chapters two and three, you can also use various genres of writing, like the minute paper, vocabulary journal, summarizing, and paraphrasing, to help you get more from any kind of reading.

• The interactions among critical thinking, critical reading, and writing-

-Critical thinking is examining an idea in many different ways. Critical reading is taking what you already know and applying it to whatever you are reading. Critical writing is taking the gathered information and writing about it.

--Look at chapter two to get a handle on critical reading. Reading critically means reading actively. It means spending the time needed to understand the nuances of a text. It means applying techniques--like rhetorical analysis of situations--until you can use them in daily life and such analysis is second nature.

Critical thinking, critical reading and writing also means learning yourself well enough to know what your goals are and where you need to spend time and effort in close, critical readings.

• The relationships among language, knowledge, and power in their fields-

-The relationship among language, knowledge and power to me means that language is critical in order to capture how knowledge is used and is more powerful and effective when used by people of higher positions.

--Remember my discussion of discourse communities on the class blog? Just as each discourse community has ways of reading and genres of writing they use in different ways, they also have conventions of how language should be used, what kind of language is appropriate, and how to use language to modulate relationships involving power. Since all relationships involve power, it's important to learn the rules governing language/knowledge/power in whatever communities you enter.

No History Class, 13 Feb./No English Class, 15 Feb.

Tom's ill, so he's canceled class today, 13 Feb. To give him the fullest possible chance to recover, to make sure you have time to study for Jen's test, and to make sure I'm not adding new material as you're reviewing and getting caught up in my class, I'm going to cancel lecture on Friday, 15 Feb.

Steve

How to Write A Good Introduction

The following post is taken verbatum from

http://matcmadison.edu/is/writingcenter/introduction_strategies.htm

Introductions

The first idea I would want to suggest about introductions is that you don’t necessarily need to write one before you write the essay. Many students will get stuck right off the bat on their papers because they are waiting for an idea for an introduction. The reason they might be stuck is because they are trying to introduce an essay they haven’t written yet. At times, it might be more efficient for you to write the body of the essay first before you write the introduction for it. Then you will know what it is that you are trying to introduce, so the idea for the introduction may come more easily.

Having said that, let me answer two questions about introductions: what is the purpose of an introduction, and how do you write a good one? Introductions are used as a way to capture the interest of your reader and to let them know what they will be reading in the body of the essay. Imagine how jarred you might feel if you began to read the bulk of a body of material right away without knowing what you might be facing within that material. You might not want to proceed. So instead of just rushing into the body of the material, most writers introduce their topic to guide their reader into the body of work that is to come. So the purpose of the introduction is to motivate your reader to read further and to alert them about what they will be reading.

To write a good introduction, you need to reflect on this purpose. So since your first purpose is to capture the attention of your reader, you would begin your introduction with a motivator. There are six techniques that many writers use to capture the attention of their readers:

	Ask a provocative question
	State an unusual fact
	Give an illustration, example, or anecdote
	Present a provocative quote
	Refer to an historic event
	Point to common relationships, beliefs, interests, or opinions

Whichever technique you decide to use in your introduction, you would want to make sure that it is relevant to your topic.

The next part of the introduction would then alert your reader about what they will be reading. So you will need to present them with some background information on your topic to give them with the big picture of your topic, so to speak. You would want this information to be more general; you do not necessarily need to suggest all the points you are going to cover in your essay. Just provide your reader with the information they might need to appreciate your points within the essay.

The last part of the introduction is the thesis statement. This statement will also satisfy the purpose of letting your reader know what they will be reading. The thesis statement is a forecasting statement that suggests the main idea that you will cover in your essay. (See The Writing Process for more information on thesis statements.) You might also want to add a blueprint to your introduction. A blueprint will alert you reader to the structure of your essay. It states the main point that you will cover in the body of your essay. The wording of the blueprint will be the wording that you will use in the topic sentences of each body paragraph. Here is an example of a thesis with a blueprint.

President Bush has already outlined three separate policies that address his campaign pledge of compassionate conservatism: an educational plan that includes accountability and vouchers, federal funds for faith-based organizations to help the poor, and an overhaul of Medicare that would help the elderly to buy prescription drugs.

What this statement does is to alert the reader that you will discuss policies that address Bush’s compassionate conservatism ideal. That part is the thesis. The next portion of the sentence names the three policies. These are the policies that you will discuss in the body of your essay. The reader will expect you to cover them in the order that you named them, which is why it is called a blueprint. It alerts the reader to the structure of your essay. You can also use the wording of the blueprint as the wording of your topic sentences to bring your reader back to the blueprint.

In conclusion, an effective introduction has three parts that should blend together smoothly: a motivator, background information, and the thesis statement.

www.stop-procrastination.org

A student shared this link to a blog on how to stop procrastination. Know that the blog is selling a system to stop procrastination, but still there's a log of useful information on the site with is free for the reading. Here's the link:

www.stop-procrastination.org

Notes on How to Write a Good Writing Inventory Response

A couple of students wrote asking about what the responses to the inventory should look like. Here's my response:

My first concern is you come to understand what each bulleted item means. These items represent what you should learn by the time you get out of the 111/112 sequence. My second concern is you prove to me you understand each item. Ultimately, you'll end up making a claim about your knowledge/skill level. You'll support this claim by: 1) *fully* explaining the nuances of each outcome; 2) discussing how you use/will use/have used the outcome in your own writing; and, 3) pointing to examples of this use in the portfolio of writing you turn in.

If you remember, every kind of writing starts with trying to figure out what you can say. This is where you are right now in the process of developing your individual responses in the writing inventory. As always when starting a writing project and you are figuring out what to say, you take an inventory of what you already know, and you add to this knowledge set by gathering outside information through reading, writing about your reading, and through research. (In this class read, reading the text and the class blog, reading the writing inventories and blogs of other students, writing in your blog and writing inventory, and analyzing and synthesizing all this information into a coherent whole). At this point in developing your writing inventory you're thinking about what you know about each item (writing this down), and you're adding to this existing knowledge by incorporating what the reading adds (writing this down), what your own experience writing adds (writing this down), and through what is said in class discussion and on the class blog (and, writing this down). In short, you're developing a full response and taking notes. You can also incorporate information from the inventories of others in the class, as they may have insights of which you wouldn't have thought. As you take notes and develop your response, make sure to keep track of where you're getting your information. (Here, you're developing the habit of knowing who you owe for your knowledge.)

The point behind all this is to build up your knowledge of how to talk about and construct good writing throughout the semester, adding to it a bit at a time, writing down what you know, what you learn, and how you use the skills and knowledge pointed to by each learning outcome.

As you may suspect, all this building up and adding to is part of a process, one through which you become a better writer. 1) You articulate what you know. 2) You learn to talk about writing knowledgeably and with a nuance. 3) You identify gaps in your knowledge/skill set/process, and you fill in these gaps one at a time. 4) You learn to apply the steps above continuously and add to your skills and knowledge set in small increments. As these improvements accumulate over time--not this semester or this year, you become whatever kind and degree of writer you wish to become.

This year's work in 111 and 112 is meant to lay a foundation of knowledge and skills on which you will build. All that's required of you is you figure out the processes involved in producing good writing, learn to articulate them, and apply them.

You then what you've figured out through your portfolio. One third of your portfolio will consist of your writing inventory; and, your portfolio will count for 60% of your final grade. The other 40% will be determined by how you do the work of the class, how regularly do this work, and how well you follow the process involved. What's mainly involved is doing the reading, listening to the discussion, and writing regularly about each in your blog and in your writing inventory. Soon, we'll add producing papers to this mix, and you'll be reflecting on what each experience writing adds to your skill and knowledge set.

Remember, when all is said and done, good writing isn't about product; it's about have a process in place which produces successful writing.

Assignments: 11-17 February

Week of Reflection, Review, and Catch Up.

Now that you understand the basics of two of the fundamental concepts in the class--rhetoric and process, it's time to review, reread, reflect on, and integrate this knowledge into a firm foundation for later work. Rather than adding to your reading and writing, this week, I want you to take the time to go back and review, reread, and--if needed--catch up.

Start at the beginning of the class blog and text. Review each assignment, and make sure you've used your blog and writing inventory to show you've "gotten" the ideas to which you've been exposed. If you skipped an assignment or reading, now is the time to complete them. This is also a good time to write me with questions, to stop by my office with questions, to bring your blog and writing inventory up to date, and in so doing, integrate all the knowledge to which you've been exposed.

As you do this, I'll be writing on the blog a few posts which should help you gain a better "big" picture of how your writing inventory, blog work, and reading both create your grade and, more importantly, give you a set of skills which, once practiced and integrated, allow you to write better texts and provide a foundation for becoming a better writer.

Don't think this week as a time where you're allowed to rest on your laurels. When you have been quickly exposed to new skills and knowledge, for them to "set," there has to be a time where you review and reflect. This is why I have you write on what you've read in your blogs and in your writing inventories, and it's why tests are a basic part of teaching and learning. Repeated exposure to the same knowledge and repeated practice of new skills not only helps you improve the speed and accuracy of their application and use, it helps you make connections which otherwise would never get made. The upshot? Use your time and work this week to review and integrate the knowledge and skills to which you've been exposed.

Make the most of this opportunity. Depending on the kind of work I see happening on your blogs and writing inventories, and how productively you use this opportunity, I may extend this brief time for reflection and review into next week. After this, I will be introducing new material and work which will build on the foundation of knowledge and skills which I will assume will be more firmly in place.

As always write or stop by with questions. I'm here to help.

Wednesday's Lecture is Already Obsolete

Romney has dropped out the race. The following article discusses some of the implications:

http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/02/07/with-romney-gone-what-will-mccain-do/index.html?hp

A critique of a student's comments.

I've been reading the comments students have made so far, and in general checking to make sure the drafts are being put out and commented on. To help you get a handle on what I'm looking for in comments, I wanted to share a short critique of a student's comments:

I'm impressed with the quality and value of your comments. You tell X what she is doing well. You catch a couple of places where surface level issues could be clearer, like citation. Now, do you agree or disagree with her arguments. What would you do in the next revision or two to improve the paper. This last question is key, because it's the one you *have* to learn to answer on your own, that is, if you want to become your own best critic. Overall, great job; but, pay more attention to content and meaning than you give to surface level fixes. You want your author to know how to improve her argument, so you have to tell her if you buy it or not and where it is weak and strong. You identify strengths, now help her by identifying weaknesses.

Overall, this student's comments were superb, but he falls into two traps beginning editors often fall into: 1) he gives more attention to surface issues rather than talking about the content; and, 2) he's too nice. You want to be CRITICAL of your author as well as supportive. Both styles of commenting help your author, and your goal is to help the author as much as possible.

Writing strong thesis statements.

In looking over your drafts, I've noticed many of you need to spend some more time on your thesis statement. Here's a compilation of the advice of several web sources on how to develop and judge a thesis statement.

What is a good thesis statement?

The most important sentence in any academic paper is the thesis sentence. Thesis statements do three things: 1) they identify the topic of your essay; 2) they make a specific claim about your topic, which you will then develop in the paper; 3) they indicate how you will organize your paper; and, 4) they let your reader decide if reading your paper is worthwhile. Thesis statements do a lot of work. They are the most difficult sentence to write in your paper. Since they are so essential to the success of your paper, thesis statements deserve whatever time it takes to develop them. In fact, don't start drafting your paper until you have developed a working thesis statement. As you write, you may well discover a new take on your topic, so don't be afraid to go back and change it.

A strong thesis statement:

• Should never be longer than a sentence or two.
• Should identify a topic about which people could disagree.
• Should address a topic which can be fully developed in the length of your paper.
• Should take a clear stand on your topic.
• Should express one main idea.
• Should assert your claims or conclusions about your topic.
• Should be specific and avoid--at all costs--vague language.
• Should avoid language like "it seems," "some people," "many believe," "different people," and "various."
• Should avoid saying things like "I believe" or "In my opinion" or "I propose."
• Should indicate why your subject and position warrant discussion.
• Should provide a map to guide your reader through your paper.

How to develop a good thesis statement:

1) Begin with your topic. Write it down.
2) Narrow your topic by focusing on one aspect of your topic. This aspect should be debatable, warrant discussion, and not be too broad to treat in the length of your paper.

Thinking about these questions may help you narrow your topic:

What are the major aspects of your topic on which reasonable people disagree?
What position do you take in these disagreements?
What has your experience, reading and thinking about the topic led you to conclude or believe? Why?

Write the answers to these questions down.

3) Now take your work above and develop one or two sentences which include:

A specific topic + your attitude/angle/argument. OR What you plan to argue + how you plan to argue it.


Here are some strong thesis statements:

• Although both chefs and cooks can prepare fine meals, chefs differ from cooks in education, profession commitment, and artistry.
• Steroids are addictive and should be banned from sports.
• Though many people dismiss hip hop as offensive, hip hop music offers urban youth an important opportunity for artistic expression, and it allows them to articulate the poetry of the street.
• Hemingway's stories helped create a new prose style by employing extensive dialogue, shorter sentences, and strong Anglo-Saxon words.
• While both Northerners and Southerners believed they fought against tyranny and oppression, Northerners focused on oppression of slaves while Southerners defended their own right to self-government.
• Through its contrasting river and shore scenes, Twain's Huckleberry Finn suggests that to find the true expression of American democratic ideals, one must leave "civilized" society and go back to nature.
• Young people in the Middle Ages, who were considered young but responsible adults by the age of sixteen, had fewer social choices when compared to modern American teenagers. Unless they followed a religious calling, medieval teenagers had to contend with an arranged marriage and bearing children while living without what we would consider personal privacy or freedom.

Ten Tricks to Get Your Writing Started

I love it when someone has already written an article I need to write. Low and behold, Lifehack--one of my favorite blogs for writing tips to share with students--has just completed a post on tricks to help you get started writing. They're talking mostly about drafting. Find the article here:

Lifehack's Post on Tricks to Get Your Writing Started

What to say in your comments.

As promised in class today, here are the questions you should try to answer in the comments you leave for your peers. Try not to leave the same advice as those who left comments before you. (Hint: This is one of those places where it pays to do your work early rather than late. The early bird and all that...) Remember, you're trying to help the author improve their paper as much as possible, and I'll be looking at your comments and judging them on quality of help you provide to the author.

Your comments should follow this format:

1. What is the author doing well and should continue doing in other writing in this genre?

2. What are the next two steps you would take in revising the text. Pick the two steps with the highest impact in terms of improving the text. In your comments, refer to specific places in or aspects of the text. eg. "In the second and third paragraphs, you need to add examples from the primary sources. You might try X." OR "Your thesis is vague. You might try, X, Y, or Z." Think of the kind of help you want, and try to provide it. In short, be specific and detailed.

3. Point out the one or two surface level errors do you fine most annoying. eg. "You need to learn how to combine sentences." or "Man, your sentences are complex and long." Here, you're trying to help the author develop a working error log. (What you don't know what an error log is? Well, when you are finished with this post, scroll down to the one on proofreading. In it, among other advice, I suggest your keeping an ongoing list of your most common errors. I also tell you how to use this list to focus your proofreading.)

4. Suggest something your peer could do to improve their writing technique/process. Here, research online about improving process or adapt ideas from the text, the class discussion, or the class blog. eg. "You need to include a step in your revision stage where you look at nothing but staying on a single topic in each paragraph." [For right now, this last is the section where I expect the least from you. After all, you're still getting a handle on your own writing process and how to use it and improve it.]

As always, write or stop by my office with questions, concerns, etc.

No class & no office hours, Friday 8 February.

This is just a reminder that I won't be holding office hours on Friday, nor will our 112 class meet. The history and soc sections of the LCM, as far as I know, will meet.

Take the time to work with one another on your paper drafts, which will be due Monday.

Remember, you're to have drafts of your paper ready and shared by tomorrow, and you are to begin leaving comments on your peers' drafts by Friday. Leave comments in a timely enough manner that your group peers can profit from them as they revise their drafts for Monday.

Just in case you are wondering, yes, I expect you to read your group's comments, think about them, and revise the draft you have ready tomorrow at least once or twice before having it in final form Monday.

I will be in my office tomorrow, that is, Thursday from 8:00-9:00 and 11:00-1:00. If you can't make these hours, then write for an appointment.

Steve

Procrastination

When I talk to the class about the drafting process, I usually include a lecture on procrastination. Why? When I talk to my students and ask them to identify their worst writing problems, procrastination and getting started are usually at the top of their list. This semester, I thought I'd include three links with good articles on procrastination along with my current top ten ways of dealing with procrastination. You'll find these links at the bottom of the post.

Now, my current set of notes on procrastination:

Procrastination is a problem with which I've struggled for years, mostly out of fear. The task seems too large. I worry I'm not good enough. I worry I'll be judged lacking. The task isn't well enough defined. You get the idea. You've been there. Chances are, if you don't learn to deal with the habit of procrastination, you'll be there again.

Over the years, I've found a host of advice and a few tricks which have helped me. As you read through the ten rules which help me, read one, stop, think about it, read it again, and move on to the next.

1) Take control. One of the worst aspects of procrastination is that one feels out of control. You know you have a task to do. You know your life would be better for doing the task. It seems irrational you'd avoid doing it. You must recognize that not doing something is a choice. You choose to not. That's OK. It's your choice, but go into the decision with your eyes wide open. Allow yourself time to articulate all the consequences of your choice not to do. Examine your choice rationally. Don't avoid this examination. Then, if you still decide not to do, OK. You've made that choice. Live with it as your choice. Chances are, however, the articulation will add that extra bit of umph you'll need to find the motivation to do.

2) Find motivation. One productivity coach argues the only problem with procrastinators is they're under motivated. There are all kinds of ways to find motivation. Try visualizing in as much detail as possible a scene where you've done the dreaded task and succeeded with it. Envision the results. Envision success. Try to stay away from dwelling on the negative consequences of not doing. Concentrating on them will trap you into feeling more anxious and frustrated, two feelings which we avoid by procrastination; so, you'll might find yourself procrastinating on finding the motivation to succeed.

3) Deal with stress. There's more advice out there with dealing with stress than most any other subject. Truth is, up to a point, stress and anxiety are your friends. They're one aspect of your motivation. Learning to embrace the increased feeling of stress which comes from starting or anticipating starting a project is a major step in overcoming procrastination. Past a certain point, however, stress and anxiety become part of the pattern of procrastination. You avoid the stress and anxiety associated with a task by distracting yourself with more enjoyable behaviors. Indeed, one way of thinking about procrastination is as delaying a stress inducing task by substituting more pleasurable tasks which temporarily reduce stress. Note the word temporarily. To deal with stress, you've got to establish good habits. You must exercise. You must get enough sleep. The best method I've found, however, is to meditate. I meditate on the task at hand. I meditate on what it would feel like to succeed. I remember in detail past successes and project them into my visualization of my success doing the task at hand. I also have learned the habit of every day meditation. Now just looking inward, shifting my posture, and breathing correctly eases stress. To get to this point, however, you've got to meditate daily, so you can learn to associate on a deep level certain ways of breathing, thinking, and posture with calm. Another trick is to meditate walking, step-by-step to a place where you feel comfortable and mentally settling down there. My mental, stress reducing walk is one in the mountains where I grew up. It ends at at a waterfall. Each step takes me deeper into the woods. With every mental step, I can feel a little of life's weight dropping off. When I settle down at the waterfall, I am at peace.

4) Learn your triggers. There's something(S) causing your procrastination. It might be you learned to rebel by not doing; and, paradoxically, you're not doing gave you a sense of control. You might have certain fears which trigger avoidance. Learn to recognize the behaviors you use to avoid and procrastinate, and use these as an index to the things which cause you to procrastinate. Once you learn what triggers avoidance, you can think about your triggers from a more objective distance and plan how you'll react to them rather than reacting with knee-jerk avoidance.

5) Do a little bit. Identify one physical action which will bring your task closer to completion. Sit down at the computer. Open the word processor. You get the idea. The trick is to make sure you identify a single, physical act. You can't "write a paper." You can spend 15 minutes brainstorming or free-writing.
You must then give yourself permission to do your one task. Then identify the next task. Rinse. Repeat. Often just getting a little momentum will make the dreaded task less stressful, give you a small success on which to build, and help you motivate yourself.
Another trick is to use a timer program. You can download them from the web. Set your timer for 5, 10, or 15 minutes. Give yourself permission to just work till your timer runs out. Often, just getting started with those few minutes is enough to overcome the worst of the initial, anticipatory fear--the stress inducing fear which you procrastinate to advoid. If the first few minutes weren't all that bad, set the timer again. Rinse. Repeat. If the first few minutes prove too much, then all you've lost is doing so many minutes of the work you know you need to do anyway.
Don't do too much. Most productivity coaches recommend moving your timer up to a routine of 48 minutes working with a 12 minute break following. There's good psychology behind the 48 minute mark. It's why many classes are divided into 50 minute sections.

6) Do the dreaded task first thing in the morning. I have an established morning routine. I get up with Nance. We get a bath. We go for a walk. We fix breakfast and eat it. We give each other seven lucky kisses, and she goes to work. I start my morning with the mediation I discussed above. I then do the dreaded task. Productivity coaches call this doing the worst chore first, eating one frog each day. Once you've eaten your personal, daily frog, everything else is easier. Seriously, before I do anything else, before I allow myself to get distracted, I set my timer for 48 minutes, and I work on the task I want to put off the most. I identify this task the evening before, and I've meditated on the task and it's success. Usually, I can then make progress.

7) Sprint. Not the telephone company, sprint though your dreaded task. Once you learn the 48 minute rule, you give yourself permission (just like your 5, 10, or 15 minute sessions) to do as much as you can in that 48 minutes, then quit. Often, however, you'll find that first 48 minute sprint gives you enough momentum you'll want to keep going.

8) Reward yourself, but be careful. If you've worked for the 48 minutes, give yourself a little reward. You'll have to figure out your system of rewards. Maybe it's a cup of tea or a brownie. I don't know. I do know you don't want to reward yourself with one of your avoidance behaviors. It's then too easy to quit and fall back on bad habits.
Don't forget to give yourself the big rewards. If you manage to complete the dreaded task on which you've tended to procrastinate, reward yourself. Take a day off. You then deserve the reward. Those rewards, both big and little, are part of the ammunition you can use when you visualize success, and they're part of the motivation you can use to get started and to keep going.

9) Don't try to be perfect. You aren't. Remember Kaizen? It's about picking the lowest fruit and then learning to pick the higher. It's about getting some reward with each effort. If you don't do because you want what's done to be perfect, you'll never do. Learn this lesson. Do a good enough job, and if you have time, polish it into a better one. You want the success of getting a job done which does well enough. You can then spend time working out a better production process so the next job will be better. If you keep up with the plan, sooner rather than later, you'll find yourself producing a pretty damn good product. It still won't be perfect. The Second Law of Thermodynamics applies to the world we share, but your products will do the work you want them to do. Usually.

10) Make mistakes joyfully. Remember my earlier post. Learning to embrace the opportunity a failure offers is a major step toward dealing with the stress and anxiety which causes you to procrastinate. OK, so the product you produced didn't meet standards. It didn't reach your goals for it. What didn't you do that you should? The only way to test a product is by giving it a chance to be used and judged in the field. If it fails, learn why. Alter your process for the next time. The only sure way to fail is to give up and rest on your failures.

Here's a freebie: overcoming the habit of procrastination is a long term process. You picked up the habit of procrastination over a lifetime. Learning to overcome the habit won't happen in a day. It's a process. Work on one aspect of your problem at a time. Focus on the successes as they build up. Embrace your failures as another opportunity for success. Give yourself the time you need, and take the time. When you slip up, get back on the horse and give yourself credit for the ground you've covered.

Enough lecture. Here are three articles on procrastination and tricks for making yourself write. They can give you a other perspectives. Read them. If I can help, make an appointment and we'll talk.

http://www.psychologytoday.com/rss/pto-20060324-000001.html

http://webhome.idirect.com/~readon/procrast.html

http://www.sfwa.org/writing/strategies.html

Ebert on GWTW

I thought you might find Roger Ebert's dissection of GWTW interesting, especially for the context into which he places it:

http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/19980621/REVIEWS08/401010323/1023

Notes on Proofreading.

As I promised yesterday in class, here are my note on various tips and tricks to help you proofread better. Over the semester, try out the various techniques. Not all work well for every writer, but I'm confident there's a few here which will help you catch the surface level issues you are now missing. To practice these skills, you'll be proofreading the final, revised drafts of your group's papers. Remember, proofreading differs from revision. When you proofread, you're looking at the surface level and polishing grammar, spelling and usage. When you revise, you're concerned with clarifying what you say, perfecting the organization, adding to your text, and cutting. In short, in revision, you want to deal with meaning and deep level issues. You proofread *after* you revise; otherwise, the effort you put into proofreading may well be wasted. One last note: one difference between editing and proofreading is that one edits another's text while one proofreads one's own.

On texts of some length, proofreading/editing is often the final step in the writing process prior to publishing your text. Proofreading usually takes place nearer the end of the revision process than at the beginning. Why? Because it doesn't make sense put in the effort to proofread looking at every sentence and word level issue until your draft is fairly solid. In other words, why proofread and edit sentences and words which might still be cut? Why proofread haphazardly when you can proofread systematically after you've finished most revisions and save effort and time?

Here are my own notes on proofreading. Those just below are the main ones to remember:

It's nearly impossible to effectively proofread your own work. You know what you mean to say. When you read your own work, you often read over mistakes. My best piece of advice is to get others to proofread your work. Try to get at least three people to look at your work prior to turning it in. If necessary, hire someone or create a writer's group to help you with proofreading.
EVERYONE makes mistakes. Don't kick yourself for your mistakes, learn to recognize them and how to fix them. Even then, you'll still make mistakes.

I once worked for an academic journal. Four sets of eyes proofed each article--the professor who wrote it, myself, the departmental secretary, and the editor. Still, EVERY time we got the journal back from the printers, I opened it to a random page and found at least one mistake. EVERYONE, even professionals, make mistakes.

When you proofread, you're trying to do something called breaking set. This means you want to change the way you usually read, so you don't read over mistakes. Most of the proofreading tricks I list below have to do with changing how you read, so you can see what you've written.

1. Give yourself time to proofread. It's easy to find yourself adding the last sentence to a text at the last possible minute. As we finish drafting, the last thing we want to do is acknowledge there's yet more work to do. We want to be done. Resist the temptation. Give yourself time to proofread. Your final product will be better for the time. To give yourself time, set your deadline for finishing your draft in time to revise the draft for content and structure and to still have time to proofread.

2) Read backwards from the last sentence to the first. When proofreading for spelling, read backwards one word at a time. Learn to isolate each word, even those which have been passed by the spellcheck. It doesn't catch every misspelling. When proofreading for sentence issues, read backwards one sentence at a time.

3) Read slowly and out loud. You'll be surprised how reading something out loud, as opposed to silently, will let you hear errors you'd otherwise overlook.

4) Read to someone else. Reading your paper to someone else forces you to take an audience into account. Not only can the person you're reading to ask questions about content, they can mark places in a copy of your paper where they're confused or they hear an error as you read. When you hear a mistake or a piece of awkward phrasing, you can mark it and come back later to fix it.

5) Print out your text. If you usually read your papers on the screen, make a hard copy. As you find errors, mark them, and later revise your electronic copy. When we're drafting and hit the creative zone, we often work quickly and have a hard mental focus on meaning. These habits of reading quickly and thinking in terms of meaning and adding or cutting content can track over into efforts to proofread on the screen. Remember, when you're proofreading, you're not so much worried about content or organization (hopefully, each of these elements was polished earlier in the writing process), when proofreading you're looking at mechanics, usage, spelling, and grammar and only at mechanics, usage, spelling, and grammar.

6) Get someone else to read your work to you. Print out two hard copies. Get a friend to read your work to you. Both of you mark places which don't make sense or appear to be problematic. Use both copies as an index when fixing your text. Go back and look at each place which was marked and try to figure out what caused the area to get marked.

7) Have the computer read the text two you. Make a hard copy and set up the computer to read the text out loud. It will read what's there. Every time you hear an error, mark your hard copy. Use your marked copy as an index to what needs to be fixed. You can find many free text to speech readers by just googling.

8) Give yourself time. Breaking set isn't just about reading backwards or reading out loud. You get close to a text when you draft it and work on content and structural revision. If you try to proofread after working this closely with the text, you'll find yourself seeing what you meant to say rather than what you're actually saying. Horace, a Roman rhetorician, recommended putting what you write away for nine years, that is, until it reads as if someone else wrote it. We don't have such luxury, but giving yourself a day or two to let the text set, even just doing something else between finishing your content revisions and proofreading, gives distance enough so you're can bring fresh eyes back to your text. So, finish your draft and reward yourself with a night's sleep, a night out, or a workout prior to proofreading.

9) Give yourself time to proofread. Slow down. You're not in a race to get through, you're trying to look closely at multiple things, and the process takes time. Slow down. Read slowly. Take the time it takes to truly see and truly edit every sentence and word.

10) Physically touch every word. Talk about breaking set! Read backwards. Read out loud, and touch every word to make sure you're seeing and proofreading each and every word and sentence.

11) Use the grammar and spell checker. The state of the art in grammar and spell checkers isn't quite there yet, but they can help you see some errors. Just don't their word as law. Use them for the things at which they're effective. They can isolate "to be" verb constructions and give you an index to possible passive voice constructions. They can show you long sentences. They can usually recognize subject verb disagreements. They can sometimes help with punctuation. The real trick with using grammar and spell checkers is to learn their weaknesses and to learn how to customize them to the style of writing you want to reproduce.

12) Boo-boo or demon words. You know these words. They're the ones which sneak through the spell checker. Usually they're jargon or proper names you misspell or forget to capitalize. You can customize autocorrect to make corrections for your most typical boo-boo words.

13) Use a ruler or a piece of paper to isolate the sentences you're proofreading. This practice forces you to look at the sentence you're proofing, not the next sentence, not the previous sentence, the sentence you're supposed to be looking at.

14) Learn your problem areas. Everyone is prone to making different mistakes. If you or someone else sees a pattern in your mistakes, put it on a personal "list of things I have to look at when proofreading." (This is why it's a good idea to read the papers you get back from teachers and proofreaders. Often your professor will mark errors. Use their work to help develop your list of "things at which I have to look.") By learning to recognize the problems you're prone to introducing into the text and how these errors can be fixed, you'll soon find yourself making fewer errors. Every once in a while, take your copy of "things at which I have to look" and find your worse error. Spend some time researching how to recognize and fix your worse error. Eventually, you'll find your list of common errors getting shorter and your sentence level writing improving in proportion.

Craft and Process: How to Enjoy Writing

I return to the idea of process so many times in my writing classes, because shifting one's focus from product to process is at the heart of enjoying writing. Over the years, I've gotten used to students saying, "I hate writing," or "I hate English." Given the kind of instruction many have received and the scanty rewards students too often receive for very good, hard work, it's an attitude which is easy to understand. The attitude is only reinforced by the you're-either-good-at-math-and-science-OR-English rhetoric which exists in our society.

The truth is both math and English are the same craft. Once you've moved through the basics and laid a good foundation, both become ways of describing the world and making sense of it. The problem is, it's usually late in high school or in college where math or writing and communication get to be fun, and by this point, most are just ready to be done with both. For me, math didn't make much sense until I hit physics and learned that math can be used to describe and figure out the world. English didn't make much sense until I began to move beyond thinking that the only kind of writing which mattered was the rhetorical situation in which teacher=audience and purpose=grade.

It helped that I grew up among potters and other craftsmen. The model of work I learned wasn't that of getting the right grades to make it up to the next test. I learned early on that one gains a sense of purpose through one's work--one's craft, and the real challenge and satisfaction in the world is in getting better, not in being the best.

A response I wrote this morning to a near perfect student paper explains better what I mean by this connection between paying attention to process, craft, and enjoying one's work. Think of yourself as a craftperson writer, and writing and English become much more fun. Find my response below:

"We share a love of Tolkien. Over the years, as I ran out of his fiction to read, I’ve read his scholarship. If possible, he was an even better scholar of the Anglo-Saxon and Medieval Europe than he was a fiction writer. He’s among a handful of scholars, including CS Lewis and B. Russell, who I can read for fun. The kind of precision he showed in coming up with the languages for his fiction is present in all of his writing, and it's always a joy to read the writing of one who loved the craft as did Tolkien. (And, yes, I am an English geek.)"

In any event, I’m sorry your Rivendell didn’t survive, I would have enjoyed taking a walk-through, and I know how much it hurts to loose a creation which was so right and into which you put so much work. If it’s any help, you share the experience with a number of very good writers. Tennyson once left an entire book of poetry—the only copy he had—in a cab, and Hemingway once left a novel and his best typewriter on a train. In fact, I’ve thought about writing some science fiction in which the main character is a part of a team of time travelers who go back to recover such lost manuscripts. Among the list of lost manuscripts includes those by the likes of Aristotle and Socrates. "

"Now on to more important matters, namely, your writing. You’re a very good writer, much better than all but the top five percent or so of folks entering college. You have a good sense of both sentence and clause boundaries. You understand paragraphing and how to organize your documents in a way which makes sense to the reader. You also have the sense, which very few seasoned writers have, to provide enough information without providing too much. The upshot? I have very little I can tell you to improve this piece, and I will gladly give it an 'A.'"

"As you review this piece, try to figure out all the things you’ve done to make the text so successful, and I’d like to encourage you to think again about the process you used to create Rivendell. How did you learn to do the various tasks involved? What specific steps did you repeat over-and-over again? How did you organize your research? "

"The notion of Kaizen, making the processes you use more effective through continuous small improvements, as it applies to writing involves knowing how *you* create in the same detail as you know how you created Rivendell. To be an efficient writer as well as a good one, you’ve got to get to the point where you know the processes involved in writing. "

"I’d encourage you to look at the processes you used in creating your Rivendell and to find one aspect of a process to change. Let this one change be the start of a lifetime of learning and refining your knowledge of how to work more effectively. Try to identify the change you could make which would have the most impact either on the final product or on saving you work. Implement this change, and after you’ve used the new process, review again. This kind of continuous attention to the tools and processes you use in your craft pays off in having a flexible set of strategies you can use to create and which you can draw on to as you run into loggerheads as you work. With a nuanced understanding of how you work and the repertoire on which you have to draw, you can move around the problems which arise with alacrity. This ability to encounter problems and move around them with the same ease with which you normally create is the measure of a master craftsperson. Spend some time watching an old time craftsperson at work to get a handle on what I mean by an ease and alacrity with how one can work. Folks who have been at their trade for years are a joy to watch as they work. They move with the same practiced ease as an Olympic athlete, and you can find them around you every day. More importantly, you can become such a worker."

"The other main advantage to such an approach to one’s work is that one soon finds that there is always a way to make one’s process better. In fact, you begin to take a lot of pride in your knowledge of how best to work. As your work flows, you know you’re producing a good, solid, beautiful, and useful product. At this point you become a master of your craft."

"What does all this have to do with writing? Writing is a craft. As with most crafts, it's not talent which allows one to create, it's knowledge of the processes, techniques, and tricks involved in the work of creation. Armed with such knowledge and a willingness and opportunity to practice, and anyone can find joy in the creation of the beautiful and useful. Finally, one of the true joys of seeing work as craft is the fact that one is rarely bored with the work. Why? Because you know you always have something you can refine, a new technique to learn and tryout, and new knowledge of the materials, tools, and tricks of your trade. You can get lost in the rhythms of the work itself instead of having to do the work to make the grade."

"As always, write me at prof.brandon@gmail.com with questions,"

Steve

No Office Hours, 5 Feb.

Good morning,

I'm out of commission today. I woke up before my usual 4:45 alarm not feeling well, and it's getting worst rather than better; so, I'm going to take it easy today and try to get into the doctor's office. In any event, I won't be in the office.

Steve

FYI: "How to Write a Good Thesis Statment"

Here's the link to the article I mentioned last week on how to write a good thesis statement:

http://studenthacks.org/2007/11/06/thesis-statement/

While you're at Student Hack, you might poke around and see what other good advice they have on writing. I remember one article where they speak about using process to write a "good" term paper in a single day. While I would never advise my students to get in the habit of trying to write a good paper at the last moment, students will, sooner or later, find themselves in this bind; and, the article I mention gives some good advice.

Assignments for Week of 4-10 February

This week I want you to continue to think about process and how you can use Kaizen, process theory, and process writing in your own lives. You are also going to begin learning the value of incorporating others into your writing process AND of helping others in their writing process.

Here are your reading and writing tasks for the week:

1) Each chapter of the text has spoken of the writing process. Review the reading to date. As you do, take time to update your writing inventory with the information on process writing you find in the chapters we've read. When updating, feel free to use summary (see text), paraphrase (see the text), and direct quotations, but remember to take the time to note from which page or pages you are taking the material. Noting where you get your material is an essential aspect of good research (and academic writing).

2) Review my posts on Kaizen and the writing process, and write a response for your personal blog to these posts. Only write one or two responses for all these posts on process. Please don't try to write one response for each post. Since there's so much material, I suspect these blog responses will be longish.

Get in the habit of reading the class blog on a regular basis. Just as you write a response to the reading from the text for your blog, you should write a weekly response to the material covered in the class blog. You should also incorporate content from the class blog into your writing inventory. Again, feel free to quote, paraphrase, and summarize what I say; again, note from which posts you're taking your material.

In my posts for this blog, I try to provide a summary of essentil terms. I post assignments and class announcements. I supliment the text. For instance, the review stage is essential to becoming a good writer, but the text doesn't discuss it much; and, the text doesn't talk much at all about how to become a better writer. Also, I use the posts to provide some insight into the big picture, talk about writing, community and society, and about how writers work. Finally, I provide links to online tools and articles which you can use in your writing.

As part of your learning for the class, I assume you're reading the blog and using this reading much as you would lecture notes in a regular class. When I look at your writing inventories and your blog, I expect your responses to reflect the reading and reflection on content from the blog.

3) This week, read at least two of your classmate's blogs, and post comments on their entries. These comments might supplement what is being said, or they might ask questions. Here, you are helping your classmates write the best blogs they can; and, you are beginning to practice revision and editing skills.

4) If you haven't already, begin visiting and reading your classmate's writing inventory documents. By this point, you should have used the list of the class mate's email addresses--it's the list at the top of the Class List--to add everyone in the class as a collaborator to your writing inventory. If you haven't' taken this step, do so. If you're having difficulty with this step, stop by my office or write.

Each week for the remainder of the semester, pick three or four inventories to read. You can get to them via the file management page of google documents. Try not to read the same ones, that is, unless you find one particularly insightful. Again, feel free to quote, summarized and paraphrase any material you find useful, and again, make sure to note the person and the blog from whom you're taking your material.

As you read the blogs, take the time to make useful suggestions as to ways the author you're reading might improve their response to an outcome. Make your responses in a different text color, and make sure to sign your comments. Again, you're practicing helping one another edit and revise. You might note that the outcomes speak of finding out "appropriate ways to incorporate others" into your writing process. Discussing a text with others who are knowledgeable about your topic is one useful skill you should pick up from this course. Too often, folks think talking with someone else about their writing, getting help with revision, and getting help with editing is akin to cheating.

You do cheat if you let someone else do your work for you. There is something essentially wrong about Ghost Writers and representing the work of others as your own. However, your main work--in this class and in life--is to learn and communicate. It's almost impossible to do either well without repetition, practice, and, most important, discussion. It's especially easy in online discussion to let yourself get isolated from everyone but yourself; and, you miss out on the inter-social aspects of learning and successful communication.

Getting others to read, comment on, suggest revisions, and help edit are some of the ways every professional writer works. It creates a win-win relationship, both the editer and the person whose work is being edited learn more and produce better writing than they would otherwise. For instance, my wife, Nancy, is an integral aspect of my own writing process. She reads and we discuss much of what I write, and my writing (and our relationship) are better for it. The upshot? Get over the notion that writers work in sublime solitude. There are aspects of the writing process which take place in isolation, but without the help of others, you writing will be less successful than it could be.


5) Finally, begin drafting a process paper. The process genre is a sub-genre of "how to" writing. In a process paper you describe a process and its outcomes, and you describe the steps involved in the process. Recipes are a form of the process genre, so are directions on how to change the oil in your car.

In the blog post you are *drafting* this week, I want you to describe a process you use in a hobby or in your work. Assume your audience isn't familiar with your topic, and provide enough detail so they gain a fairly through knowledge of the process you describe, its intended outcomes, and the steps involved. Try to pick a process to describe which others may find interesting or useful.

My own goal for this assignment is to get you to write in a public genre (unlike the work you've been doing on responding to reading and taking notes, whose primary audiences is your self). I also want you to learn the value of learning to think in terms of process, not product, and one way to do this is to apply such thought to your own life.

As part of your description, I want you to identify one small but high impact change you can make in the process you describe. What you're working toward is applying one round of the Kaizen process your process.

As always, write with comments and questions.