Bartholomae Reaction

"Inventing the University" reminded me of the exercise we did in class today where we were suppose to write with authority about something we know nothing about. I am certainly not a lumberjack and no one in our class is an Olympic water polo champion or a master chef. Yet, we all knew how to sound like we knew what we were talking about. We spoke with confidence, added some jargon, recounted personal experiences that would qualify us as knowledgeable.
When students are given a writing assignment, they try to write with authority; they try and sound like a teacher because their audience is their teacher.
If normal discourse is established knowledge (according to Bruffee) then academic discourse is an entirely separate and specialized discourse. Students are trying to assume knowledge of this specialized discourse, but the problem is that they are not authorities. However, they try to act as such towards their audience (their teachers) by trying to mimic the voice of a teacher. Bartholomae says that it is the university's faults for not including enough projects where students have the opportunity to act as colleges. However, their are some students, according to Bartholomae, who know how to manipulate their audience. These students can write from a privileged perspective because they fully understand their audience. Students alter their writing style in order to match what they perceive academia is expected from them. Students write the way they do because they are trying to assume authority on a style they they do not own. So, they "invent the university" by writing to fit what they think the university expects from them.

Reaction to Audio Critique

I found the audio comment helpful, if you sit down and listen to it with the paper in front of you. I liked that I could pause it and then make notes on my own paper because the way I mark up my paper makes sense to me. I can mark it in a way where I can also write down more ideas. The comments I got on the physical paper where very similar, but you need both because the hard copy comments included grammar and spelling errors that needed to be brought to my attention.

Im a Lumberjack, and I'm OK

Being a lumberjack is a lot of hard work. Many people think we all look like the Brawny paper towel man and wear flannel all day, when nothing can be farther from the truth, except flannel is pretty comfortable. Lumberjacks must be very knowledgeable of different types of trees, for each one has a specific structure, composition, and age. These factors determine which wood is best for a certain purpose. Modern technology has certainly helped lower the amount of manual labor and increase efficiency. Power saws and large vehicles help cut trees down faster and make transporting lumber easier. It especially helps when the wood is wet from heavy rain.

Reaction to Myers

Learning a second language takes a lot of time, especially if you are older. English in particular is a very difficult language to learn. ESL students are very capable of forming intelligent thoughts, they just have trouble verbalizing them or writing them down in English. It is difficult for someone who is foreign to English to learn our colloquialisms, all of our rules of grammar, our culture, and especially learn to write in an academic style. With ESL students, you can’t just focus on the writing and ignore the grammar; the two go hand in hand. Myers is saying that the grammatical mistakes that ESL students make are common and that tutors should be both writing instructors and second language teachers in order to help the writer and the writing. We need to take a step back from “minimalist tutoring” because ESL students need a little more. Meyer’s is saying that ESL students are aware of errors, but they just don’t know how to fix them. You can’t just tell someone they have a problem with verb tenses; they already know that. Most of the problems are with vocabulary. In order to understand what an ESL student is trying to say, the tutor should use conversation and bring in new words to add to the student’s lexicon and try to understand what the student is saying. Tutors should suggest new ways of wording a sentence. Improving the writing in this case, is improving the writer because you are helping them express their thoughts.

Boquet Reading

It's nice reading something besides people's theories or their notions of ideal writing centers. I liked that this article took us through the history of writing centers/labs. With that said, a lot was discussed in this article (including the works of our familiar friends, Cooper, Bruffee, and North) so I'll just mention a couple of points I found interesting.
Boquet frequently notes that there is an "at-odds-ness" in writing centers because of what they are in practice and what they should be ideally. This is also because historically, there has been shifts in the practices of education. Is education learning the rules or is it student's eagerness and empowerment? There seems to be a lot of disagreement between education, writing, and writing centers. Should education/ writing centers work towards standardization or individualism? Writing centers are at odds with themselves because they know what they should be doing, but they also have other aspects to consider (the writing standards).
As a psychology major I took a shine to Boquet's passage on Rogerian nondirective counseling and how writing relates to psychology. This is also why I enjoyed Murphy's article comparing tutors as psychoanalysts. The role of a tutor is to ask the student the kinds of questions that will allow him to find the answers himself. Boquet described it as tutors drawing out knowledge that students already posses. In relation to a therapy session, the therapist never tells his patient what to do, he simply listens and provokes the patient with questions that will challenge that patient to think. I feel like the other authors we have discussed in class brought up this issue,just phrased differently.

Tutoring According to the Student Manifesto

The student manifesto proposes an ideal situation where teachers have all the time in the world to focus all of their attention on one paper. In reality, professors could have nearly a hundred papers to grade and don't have time to help students with basic writing techniques. That's what the writing center is for. When I read the paper, "The Cause of Crime," I have to admit, there were places where I just circled sentences and wrote "what" or "huh," which is exactly what the students in the video said not to do. So I went back and put more effort into describing my "what" and "huh." I found that this student did a really good job of setting up quotes and theories and then continuing to explain what the quotes meant, instead of just giving the quote and moving on. This student also provided examples to further explain quotes and theories. She relates one theory to peer pressure and she also mentions Bernard Madoff when discussing how the wealthy still commit criminal acts. I could tell that she had a distinct style of writing within her paragraphs. She would have a general statement, describe what she was going to talk about, give quotes and theories, and then further expand. It was like her paragraphs were a triangle, going from general to specific. However, this student has some areas that need improvement. Her abstract and the beginning of her paragraphs are too general and too obvious, like she is just doesn't know how to start her thoughts. There are ways of presenting what you are going to talk about in an informative manner without being so general. I think this student needs to dive into more content about what her paper will be about instead of just obviously stating that the human mind is complex. In her first paragraph she mentions three reasons why criminals commit crime, so the reader does know what to expect. However, none of that is in her abstract; the reader begins her paper with no knowledge of what is to come. The first paragraph also does not have a clear thesis. It is simply comprised of vague sentences and three factors attributing to why people commit crime. This student also needs to work on word choice and word efficiency. I noticed on the first page, most of her sentences have little beginners that were really unnecessary and only added to her vagueness. "First of all," "For most," "To be more specific," "In the most concise manner," are a few examples. Run-on sentences were also a problem. To name one specifically, on the first paragraph of the third page there is literally a sentence that is four and a half lines. Instead of just fixing it, in my comments I said, "This sentence is multiple complete sentences incorrectly joined. " I then demonstrated where the student could add a comma or period or move certain phrases around to break the sentence up. This kind of editing takes a lot of time, but it does treat the student as an individual and recognizes their strengths and weaknesses in a beneficial manner. However, in the real world, students need to be able to improve their writing without teachers spending all their time on one paper.

Fulwiler Reaction

I can understand where Fulwiler is coming from. He teaches students to revise their papers by limiting, adding, switching, and transforming. I can see how this would benefit students in how to express their ideas and improve their writing. Limiting the paper to certain specific points gives the paper more focus compared to a general statement. Adding more certainly provides extra information that would help better explain a point or argument. Switiching and transforming papers from one point of view to the other forces the student to really understand the argument, see their argument from a different perspective, and practice changing tenses. This is all well and good if you are focusing on creative writing. I think Fulwiler makes the writing process to fluffy and cheesey. He is making students better story tellers. Don't get me wrong, I think his suggestions do produce interesting writing. The reader feels connected when the author gives a specific story. Maybe I am just playing devils advocate, but there is nothing wrong with an academic, fact based paper. Those papers can be interesting, too. At the end of his article, Fulwiler mentions how his students would frame their papers with a fictional narrative. I just think these narratives are fluff pieces, only added because the student needed filler. Fulwiler's main point was that the more you revise a paper and use his techniques, the more interesting the paper will become. I agree with him, but I think facts can be just as interesting depending on how you present them.