Glossary Again

[rlunday]

Any thoughts on my glossary idea ( a couple of posts down)?

What words do you use when talking to students?

Try to jot some down...

[Shannon Stoney]

Meaning
Clarity
Standard English
Syntax

Are you also looking for grammatical terms like "complete sentence,"
"independent clause," etc? Most of the time I think that students
don't understand these terms, except for some of the Asian students who
use more grammatical terms than I do. Today, for example, an Asian guy
asked me if he could switch from the "simple present" to the past tense
in one paragraph. It took me a while to remember what the simple
present means!

--shannon

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[rlunday]

Anything! Whatever you find yourself saying, especially repeatedly, or
to certain students, in certain situations. I want to build a true
glossary of phrases for tutoring and talking about writing. It seemed
good to start with what we actually say; and (along with cognitive
theory) to study what we say as we say it, and reconsider that
vocabulary. So, these are a good start.

What about categories? "Grammar," for example -- what are synonyms,
and how do they differ in terms of context, audience, purpose?: style,
grammar, language use, usage, register; proper, correct, standard (as
below), conventional, accepted, fluent, clear, etc.?

What can go wrong with sentences: fused, run-on, comma splices,
fragments, mixed constructions, improper emphasis, balance, lack of
subordination, coordination, parallelism...?

..more later...

On Nov 17, 8:58 pm, Shannon Stoney <shannonsto...@frontiernet.net>
wrote:

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[Shannon Stoney]

I kept a little list of things that I said repeatedly today.

All of my students today were people for whom English was not their
first language.

I said:

"you don't need this..." a lot.

"Let's just say..." a lot.

"what does this mean?" a lot.

"I think what you mean is this..." a lot.

"plagiarism" a lot with one student, for whom it's a recurring issue
(along with "serious academic offense.")

"In English we say..." a lot.

Less often:

Adjective form
Article
adverb form
subject-verb agreement
confusing
noun form

Also, I found myself saying, "This sounds anti-feminist." A Chinese
woman had written that it's a woman's duty, because she has the right
body parts, to have children. I said that a statement like that would
offend a lot of people in America. It took her a while to figure out
what I meant. She re-stated several times that what she meant to say
was that because women have the requisite body parts, it's their duty
to have children.

"Right, I understand, but most people in America don't believe that any
more, so it comes off sounding very old-fashioned at the least, and to
some offensive," said I.

She still didn't seem to quite believe me. Finally I asked her if
people in China thought that it was a woman's duty to have children. I
thought they had some serious population control measures there, and
that Mao had instituted a kind of feminism, despite all the really bad
things he did. But she said, "Most people in China are old-fashioned,
and they think that a woman who doesn't have children by choice is
selfish." Oh.

It feels odd to be telling students NOT to write certain things because
they sound bad, or offensive, but I fear that if we don't tell them,
somebody might come down very hard on them later. What do others do
about this? I think Debbie had a similar experience with a Chinese guy
yesterday or today.

--shannon

[rlunday]

Some would be offended, but I think there are many Americans with a
similar point of view. In any case, I tend to stay with the issue of
audience: here's what some Americans might feel about that opinion/
value system...but that doesn't mean the student can't propose it. In
fact, purely as an exercise in writing, even if they are supporting a
position that you feel is beyond the norm, help them consider all
sides, and consider how to relate to varying audiences, rather than to
simply renounce the position.

We don't have to agree with their opinions; we mainly want to help
them see how to consider the rhetorical implications, although it can
be good to at least present a student with a view into American
attitudes.


On Nov 18, 6:50 pm, Shannon Stoney <shannonsto...@frontiernet.net>

[Shannon Stoney]

The thing that worried me was that the student seemed completely
unaware that anybody in the world might not agree with the idea that
women have a duty to produce babies. I said, "Here most people think
that women should have a choice about that."

"A choice?" she said, and got very quiet for a long time. What a
novel concept!

In a way it's a wonderful privilege to be able to introduce people to
freedom, American-style. They don't have to embrace all of it, but one
of the points of immigrating is to have, well, a choice.

This woman had written other essays about how women should always be
smiling in order to be attractive to men. I didn't think that was
egregious enough to argue withn at the time. But the whole situation
reminded me a bit of that scene in the Borat movie, where Borat is
talking to the feminists and says, "Why don't you smile, pussy cat?"

--shannon

[Analicia Sotelo]

I feel like the point of immigrating is to get to a country where you can make more money to feed your children with.  It's a very practical decision, and I don't think Americans often think about how the American dream may not be a dream of having a better ideological life.  Some immigrants come because their husbands bring them here.  Some come because their parents do.  Some come because they are forced to.  And even if we think back to America's founding years, many Americans came because they were accused of breaking the law.  

"Choice" is such an Enlightenment-influenced idea anyway, one that is probably striking to anyone coming from an entirely different part of the world.  Who is to say "choice" is a better idea than say, "community"?  Civilizations have been warring for years about this very same issue.  While personally I value choice very much (being American, of course), I would suggest introducing the idea of choice in America, but doing so as softly as possible.  If the student wants to write about how all women should have children, then perhaps we could help her tailor the essay to say something like, "In my country, all women are expected to have children because..." and then offer several points to support that.  Or an essay about how it would be a great idea to have a child, or how having a child can give you a new perspective.  

I'm attaching a pdf. of an article I read for class about this very same issue.  I think it could give a new perspective to all of us--it certainly did to me.  I have definitely cringed reading essays before, and found myself wanting to bring my beliefs into the situation, but I feel it's risky to do so because a student writes better when they are passionate about the subject.  I would tell the student that what they have written can certainly be perceived in America as offensive.  But I might try also telling them that if they strongly believe in the subject, they will have to be as convincing as possible and perhaps change their overall argument to suit the wider audience.

-Analicia Sotelo

[Analicia Sotelo]

Oh!  And I just recognized something funny.  Maybe the student should have the "choice" to believe in "choice"?  

Even my suggestion is rooted in American ideals.  What a conundrum.  :)

-Analicia

[rlunday]

This is a very good formulation of where we should be, I think -- that
is, how we should attempt to balance seemingly competing concerns.

[And this is exactly what I want to see in this Google Group: real
dialectic! So, thanks, Shannon and Analicia.]

I read the Fan Shen piece; it offers a good view into some particulars
of contrastive rhetoric, which could be of use to us (too bad we don't
have Debra with us in the WC this term). I just finished a book called
"Toward a Grammar of Passages" that mentions the "eight-legged
essay." This article offers a clearer, more contextually relevant,
description.

Look up "Robert Kaplan" for more on contrastive rhetoric...basically,
in ESL and other fields, it's the study of cultural differences in the
structuring of essays/arguments. Early descriptions can seem
ethnocentric themselves: Anglo-American rhetoric is described as
"straight," whereas everyone else zig-zags (Russians), spirals
(Chinese), or something else that is "crooked" to our "straight." But
the idea that there are plural rhetorics is a good starting point. I
often see essays by international students that struggle in the space
between what they learned back home and what they've been pushed
towards here.

...and of course, the elephant in the room is that most of the essays
we teach don't actually fit the templates of "good" writing generally
offered in the Comp texts and classrooms.



On Nov 19, 10:49 am, Analicia Sotelo <analicia.sot...@gmail.com>
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>  Fan Shen_wider culture.pdf
> 1670KViewDownload

[Shannon Stoney]

>  I would tell the student that what they have written can certainly
> be perceived in America as offensive.  But I might try also telling
> them that if they strongly believe in the subject, they will have to
> be as convincing as possible and perhaps change their overall argument
> to suit the wider audience.

One of the reasons I wanted to tell this woman that many people would
find the idea that having a baby is a woman's "bounden duty," as she
put it, old-fashioned or even offensive was that she didn't seem to
feel the need to anticipate or "answer" any objections to it. She just
stated it as if it were self-evident.

Also I wasn't sure she really believed it herself--that it was a
woman's duty to have children. She didn't defend the idea very
passionately at all when we talked about it. I think she was saying it
because she thought it sounded good and "right" and pious. A lot of
students try to write what they think teachers want to read,
ideologically speaking. But her teacher was assigning a lot of essays
about women's issues, so I doubt that she was pressuring the students
to say things like, "women should have a lot of babies." I think
that's just what the student assumed teachers want!

Another weird disconnect in the world of ESL.

To respond to your other points about why people immigrate: yes,
probably most immigrate for economic opportunity, but at least one
woman has told me that she also loves the greater freedom that American
women have.

--shannon

> <Fan Shen_wider culture.pdf>

[Shannon Stoney]

Right. In America we even have the right to be intolerant of tolerance.

--shannon

[Shannon Stoney]

Just thought of something else about this: isn't part of the purpose
of education to lead people into questioning their unexamined beliefs?
I think I would argue that part of what we teach in the writing center
is thinking. So, when a student comes in with poorly articulated,
undefended, unexamined beliefs--regardless of whether the tutor
personally agrees with them or not--shouldn't the tutor prod the
student to examine what's behind those beliefs and whether they're true
or at least in line with one's current values, experience, and ethics?

My son once said that sometime in his life he wanted to get out all his
memes, as if each one was a card in a deck, and sort of spread them out
and look at them and decide what to keep and what to discard. ("You
got to know when to hold 'em/ Know when to fold 'em...")

Maybe it would be too arduous to examine ALL one's memes at once: it
might drive you crazy, particularly the ones about space, time,
gravity, etc. But the time when a student is in college--in late
adolescence and early adulthood--would seem to be an ideal time to
examine one's inherited or culturally transmitted beliefs and see if
they're a good fit. (I know this is an Enlightenment idea, but I'm not
an Enlightenment basher, like so many of my teachers in grad school
were. The Enlightenment has been generally emancipatory, something
those postmodern types seem to overlook in their zeal to be
post-colonial and all that.)

This Chinese student was probably older than 20 years old and was going
back to school, but even for older students, college is a time for
THINKING. It might be the ONLY dedicated time for a lot of thinking
that most people get, in their busy lives. So, I say, no harm in
making people think, for example: "Do you really believe that a woman
has a bounden duty to have a child, whether she wants to or not, and
regardless of what else she may be good at or want to do, simply
because she has a uterus?"

--shannon

[rlunday]

There's nothing wrong with encouraging them to reconsider assumptions
or beliefs. Just keep in mind that a tutor is an authority figure --
not in the same way as a professor, because you aren't grading them,
but it is still a power position. So, I think it's good to attempt a
balanced approach. And keep it within the framework of rhetorical
issues: how to conceive of audience, ethos, background, refutation and
concession, etc.

On Nov 19, 1:51 pm, Shannon Stoney <shannonsto...@frontiernet.net>
wrote:

[Shannon Stoney]

On Nov 19, 2009, at 2:01 PM, rlunday wrote:

> There's nothing wrong with encouraging them to reconsider assumptions
> or beliefs. Just keep in mind that a tutor is an authority figure --
> not in the same way as a professor, because you aren't grading them,
> but it is still a power position. So, I think it's good to attempt a
> balanced approach. And keep it within the framework of rhetorical
> issues: how to conceive of audience, ethos, background, refutation and
> concession, etc.

OK, I think I understand this.

This brings up a related issue: what if the assigned essay that the
student is writing about is really incoherent? And you think it is
badly written? Is it ok to say that? Is it ok to say all the ways in
which you think the essay is wrong, illogical, and bad? Sometimes
students seem to think that when doing a critical analysis, they can't
actually say they think the essay they're criticizing is wrong or
illogical. They almost always say, "X does a persuasive job of showing
that..." whatever, no matter how incoherent the essay actually is.

I would like to empower students to say, "This essay makes no sense,
for the following reasons..." I think they can; they just think they
shouldn't. Many come from pretty authoritarian high schools where
disagreeing with a teacher or a text got you in a lot of trouble.
(Sadly, the kind of education where critical thinking is actually
encouraged is restricted to the upper classes, it seems sometimes.)
But I know they can see the holes in a bad argument, because sometimes
if I start talking about that, they immediately jump in and start
exposing more of the holes. It's as if when the tutor does it, that
gives them permission to do it.

I read the Fan Shen article. There were a few things in it I didn't
quite understand. Do writing teacher really say, "Just be yourself"?
That seems so vague as to be useless. Which self? My academic self?
My redneck self? My pissed off feminist self?

Also, I was thinking about a segment of a news show I saw about China
recently, where human rights abuses in China were being discussed,
particularly the absence of intellectual freedom. China has a big
firewall around its internet access, so that Chinese people can't have
access to a lot of Western websites. Apparently the Chinese people
really WANT more individual freedom, especially of speech and press.
This was apparent also during the Tiananmen Square events. And it is
very evident in the memoirs by 20th century Chinese women that I have
read: most of those memoirs suggest that Chinese women, at least, were
very conscious of their oppression before the Maoist revolution, and
then again after it, when they became disillusioned with the
revolution. This suggests that even in a society where speech is
rigidly controlled and there is no free market place of ideas,
nevertheless a sizable number of people manage to think for themselves.
I think that one's thought habits are not merely conditioned by the
society one grows up in, but are also the product of experience and,
well, thinking. Otherwise changes and "revolutions," violent or
peaceable, would never happen. And the constant struggle against
oppression would not exist.

It's ironic that the Enlightenment gave birth to both Marxism and
advanced capitalism. But that doesn't mean that we should reject the
Enlightenment ideal of free speech and freedom of thought and equality.
Neither Marxism nor bourgeois industrial capitalism (as Fan Shen
terms it) have been perfectly emancipatory, because both have been
hijacked to serve the needs of elite males. The way we know this is
not because anybody tells us this, or shouts it from the rooftops, or
indoctrinates it into us. We know it by THINKING. Fan Shen thinks that
"I think, therefore I am, " is strange, and it is: I would amend it
to: I think, therefore I am free.

--shannon

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[Analicia Sotelo]

I understand those points about challenging another person's beliefs completely.  I think, however, that sometimes it's a difficult issue to maneuver.  Even framing a question with the focal point of the uterus feels like it leans towards the Feminist.  And while I am personally all for feminism, I think that sometimes a student may be thinking of other things.  I question if the intellect more important than the body.  In many cultures, giving life is a spiritual gift.  While I value the intellect, I think it would be perfectly legitimate for someone to say that pregnancy is a great honor. 

 

And, of course, it always depends on that individual person's beliefs.  It's quite possible that in introducing other ideas we are expanding someone's mind.  I think we should neither be too relativist nor too insistent of our own beliefs.  Perhaps it is all about balance. 

 

-Analicia

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[Shannon Stoney]

On Nov 19, 2009, at 2:51 PM, Analicia Sotelo wrote:

> I understand those points about challenging another person's beliefs
> completely.  I think, however, that sometimes it's a difficult issue
> to maneuver.  Even framing a question with the focal point of the
> uterus feels like it leans towards the Feminist.  And while I am
> personally all for feminism, I think that sometimes a student may be
> thinking of other things.  I question if the intellect more important
> than the body.  In many cultures, giving life is a spiritual gift. 
> While I value the intellect, I think it would be perfectly legitimate
> for someone to say that pregnancy is a great honor. 

It certainly is empowering to make a person, and so anybody that wrote
that would have no argument from me. They would, though, if they said
every woman had to do it, or be considered "selfish."

In a way, saying that you don't have to get pregnant and give birth to
be a good woman IS a way of honoring the body. Giving birth is hard on
the body. I've never been quite the same since that day almost exactly
29 years ago...Ask other mothers; they'll tell you. And I'm not
talking about how it changes the way your body looks, either.

Also, as feminists have correctly pointed out, honoring the body means
letting each individual control her own body, rather than insisting
that her reproductivity belongs to her husband or her collective or
whatever. That may sound like an abstract point, but it gets very real
and involves hand to hand combat sometimes.

So, I don't see these issues as being about favoring the intellect over
the body. I see them as using thinking and words (or whatever means
necessary) to defend the contested turf of a woman's body.

Also, being a good mother requires a lot of thought. Choosing to become
a mother is not turning one's back on one's intellect at all.

>  
> And, of course, it always depends on that individual person's
> beliefs.  It's quite possible that in introducing other ideas we are
> expanding someone's mind.  I think we should neither be too relativist
> nor too insistent of our own beliefs.  Perhaps it is all about
> balance. 

That's hard for me, when it comes to certain issues. For me, the
debate is over when it comes to women's rights and dignity. They seem
non-negotiable. Other issues are closed, historically, and I can't
understand why this one is not.

It's kind of analogous to the "debate" over evolution and intelligent
design. Some science teachers won't teach both "sides" of this
argument, because they say the intelligent design side is not really
science. I have a lot of sympathy for that. I don't really want to
pretend I think there are two sides to the issue of women's freedom. I
really can't pretend that. So maybe I should just say, "Look, I think
that women have an absolute right to reproductive freedom and that
there's no such thing as a duty to bear children. And a majority of
Americans agree with me." And leave it at that.


--shannon

[rlunday]

First, on helping a student whose writing lacks clarity or cohesion:

This is actually why I asked for "glossary" input the other day: I was
reading something that used words like "clarity" and cohesion," and
wondered if students, or tutors and teachers as well, know what we
mean by them.

Regarding terminology: it doesn't come down from on high. People re-
define terms all the time -- it's often the main energy of a critical
debate. But I teach students to find out the history of what people
have said a word means; and to assess those meanings, and focus their
own use of a term by considering context, audience, and purpose.

So, back to the question: You read the student's draft, and it makes
no sense. And it's not Gertrude Stein, it's a comparison-contrast
paper. Our protocols: What does the student say she wants? Does it fit
with what you think she needs to focus on in revising? What do you
think can be successfully done in thirty minutes? Will there be a
chance for the student to return for a follow-up session before the
assignment is due (or at all)?

I think usually the students accept the tutor's recommendation as to
which aspect of the essay should be discussed first. Is that your
experience?

If so, then attempt to define the problem. What makes the draft not
make sense? Does it lack a focus? Are the paragraphs disordered? Is
the prose style marred by varied types of error?

So, define a concept: paragraph unity, the flow of sentences,etc; or
help the student go back to an earlier step: invention or structuring
of possible sub-topics; or, identify the language error that most
obscures meaning in recurrence. Or, is the level of diction too
abstract? Try to put a name on one thing, and see if you can point to
where it occurs; see then if the student understands what you mean,
and if they can identify another occurrence, and then, if they can
suggest a revision.

In other words, if you simply say: "this makes absolutely no sense to
me," then the student, aside from being "dissed," has no strategy of
revision to go away with.

Now, about rhetorical analysis: we talked about this problem earlier,
and I asked faculty for some input, but we got very little (Laura,
Rob, I think; my copious lectures and handouts are here on this Google
Group site). So, general rules: is there (as always) a handout to
refer to? I WANT samples from faculty, but I guess I'll never get
them. There is one in the Current Issues text; go by that, if it's the
text being used. Overall, I think the students are supposed to comment
on the rhetorical strategies, sometimes (not always) within the frame
of "is it effective?" As I said earlier, a few people don't care about
effectiveness; they want to see if the student can analytically
describe what's going on in the rhetorical dimension.

But of course, simply saying "this makes absolutely no sense to me"
again will not get far. HOW does it fail? Does it not communicate its
argument, marshal its evidence, provide adequate illustration,
sufficient development? Is the diction wrong? Is the author's persona
improperly constructed? etc.

Finally, about "Just be yourself" -- well, I would never give that
advice; because it isn't rhetorical, for one thing: in writing, the
self has to be constructed (in life, too, I believe). On the other
hand, similar advice, such as Polonius' "To thine own self be true"
seems harmless enough...



On Nov 19, 2:42 pm, Shannon Stoney <shannonsto...@frontiernet.net>

[Shannon Stoney]

Thanks for these good "learnings" about lack of clarity in a student's
essay.

But what I really meant was: what if the essay the student is writing
ABOUT--the assigned essay that she had to read and then critique for
her "critical analysis"--makes no sense? This happens a lot. The
essay that they are supposed to be writing about is too incoherent for
the student to make sense of it, or for me to make sense of it. We
can't figure out what the writer's main point is. She is all over the
place. She starts down one track, and then backtrracks and goes down
another track, and finally comes up with a thesis that is completely
unrelated to her other "theses." The poor student is trying to make
sense of the essay and write something positive about how it is so
persuasive and all, but really, it's not.

That's the problem I was talking about.

--shannon

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