Double Entry Post

Ok, I think I'm a little too practical for this type of thing. I find it hard to come up with a topic, much less do the assignment. Maybe I will feel differently at the end. I'll be writing about The End of The Affair, by Graham Greene, which I bought this weekend. I'll write about the way I chose it at the store.

Part One:
The book is really nice colors, yellows and greens that go together nicely. It has those rough edges that I like, stylistically. The drawing on the front is a little creepy, but it's ok. I like the author's name. The first paragraph is interesting--I like the assessment of how a writer begins a story, it's true. It is totally arbitrary. A lot of drama is created in these first sentences that I want to see played out.

Part Two:
Well, obviously I fail at that whole "don't judge a book by it's cover" thing. But reading is such a visual process and it is important that I like the packaging. It's impossible for me to read a book if the font is displeasing. Its a good indication of how I judge things. I could have explained more about what actually happens in the first paragraph, instead of just using generalities, like "drama." What is it? What about the paragraph drew me in and made me spend $4 of my meager salary to buy it?

Voice!

Voice is very difficult to define. It is inherent in the way that each person writes, talks, and thinks. Managing to get a unique voice out onto the page seems like it should be easy, since we all can talk so easily in our own personal voices, but it is in fact insanely difficult. I think part of the difficulty is that in academic writing, we are encouraged to sound not like ourselves, but like academes. It is difficult to find the self-confidence to write an academic paper that is truly "you," and not a mere imitation of the other academic work you've read, or how you think something academic should sound.

For me, voice has always been one of the strongest facets of my writing. This poses a problem for me in how I would approach teaching voice. Since I have never struggled with this, how can I relate to those who have? I don't have any personal evidence of what helped me to break through, it has just always been there for me. When I was in middle school and high school, I never revised or spent time on my essays, but got good grades because my voice was convincingly academic and confident. I could write whole essays that said nothing.

So, I have to base my voice theories on theory. From what we have read, I think freewriting is the way I will attack this issue in my first classroom. I will encourage my students to freewrite in most, if not all, class periods that we have. I think I will try to assign various topics for the freewrites, to try to introduce them to different styles of writing and they can feel and see the difference. For example, I might have them write about a current events issue they feel strongly about to help prepare them for the 1.1 draft, or have them write me a paragraph about the best meal they've ever had, persuading me that it was a great meal, so they can practice persuasion before the same 1.1 argument draft.

Overall, I think the only way you can really experience voice is by writing it and feeling it in other people's writing. It's so complex and so simple at the same time.

Commenting

During my short time in using TOPIC to grade student papers, I haven't received much feedback. In fact, only 4 of my drafts have ever been rated by an administrator, and only 2 of those with any comments. So I don't think that I have really grown from the comments left for me at this point.

What has helped me to improve as a grader is reading the comments that the other people in my group, who have much more experience with grading and teaching, leave for the students. If I am unclear on how I should evaluate a certain assignment, I usually wait until another instructor has graded a few, and then I take a look at those comments to see what they, as CIs, have been stressing as important in the classroom. Reading these comments gives me a great insight into what the rest of my group is thinking and saying to our students, and helps me to get onto the same page.

In reviewing the comments of students, I have discovered who in my group tends to leave directive comments, and who leaves more formative ones, and who manages to include both. It has been great for me to be able to analyze all of these comments and think critically about which ones will really help the student and which will not. It gives me a fantastic place to begin as a grader, and has helped me with my confidence as a Document Instructor.

I still have many questions that plague me in this class! In fact, nothing so far seems really answered to me, as I haven't yet begun to put the theory into practice. Right now, as I've spent the morning grading first drafts of the 1.1 essay, I am wondering exactly how much feedback to give, and what type. For the students who haven't worked out their ideas fully yet, should I comment at all on their grammatical errors? For those who do have fully fleshed out ideas and papers that make me want to switch positions on ethical issues, should I point out every little mistake so that their final will be free of any error? Or should I let them find some of the mistakes on their own and let them feel good about the work they did on this first draft? It's a complicated question, and again, a problem with the online system of topic. If I had the paper in front of me, I'm certain that I would circle all of the errors I found in a paper like this. After all, it's bound to help in the end. But does it help in topic?

Also, how do you encourage voice? When a student does it have it naturally, how do you encourage it in their writing? Hand in hand with that issue, is that of tone. How do you teach them tone? Is the best way showing them writing that works and then that which doesn't? One article in academic tone, and then something in informal, non-academic tone?