This book has a very different idea of language awareness. COmposition studies and linguists use the term very differently.
http://www.bedfordstmartins.com/newcatalog.aspx?isbn=0312463162&disc=English&course=Composition&detail=toc
Showing posts with label composition. Show all posts
Showing posts with label composition. Show all posts
Sunday, September 19, 2010
Saturday, November 21, 2009
Review: African American English and the Composition Classroom
review by David west brown
praises the book in general, but has two caveats: register is a far more complicated issue than the authors make it out to be, and cite Hillocks and Smith 1986 as proof of that sentence-combining is useful in teaching grammar.
The book is fair and balanced, written for the layperson, and makes complex ideas accessible to teachers.
praises the book in general, but has two caveats: register is a far more complicated issue than the authors make it out to be, and cite Hillocks and Smith 1986 as proof of that sentence-combining is useful in teaching grammar.
The book is fair and balanced, written for the layperson, and makes complex ideas accessible to teachers.
Monday, October 19, 2009
Composing Nature
Richard Johnson-Sheehan and Kristi Stewart
http://www.writinginstructor.com/johnson-sheehan
Ecocomposition is about writing about place. The writer situates herself in the place and writes about her surroundings. It is gaining momentum as environmentalism becomes more popular.
It aims to inject pathos back into FYC.
You can have students journal-write about a place, explore the metaphors we use to talk about nature and push those metaphors to their limits, and explore how the subject is in the place and the place is in the subject. Students can read John Muir and Thoreau.
http://www.writinginstructor.com/johnson-sheehan
Ecocomposition is about writing about place. The writer situates herself in the place and writes about her surroundings. It is gaining momentum as environmentalism becomes more popular.
It aims to inject pathos back into FYC.
You can have students journal-write about a place, explore the metaphors we use to talk about nature and push those metaphors to their limits, and explore how the subject is in the place and the place is in the subject. Students can read John Muir and Thoreau.
Friday, August 28, 2009
What Should Colleges Teach?
by Stanley Fish 2009 http://fish.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/24/what-should-colleges-teach/?incamp=article_popular
FYC courses should focus on writing, not on content.
American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA) grades colleges on what is taught in Core courses. SCience should be taught by scientists and not philosophers, for example. Composition courses must focus on grammar, style, and argument and not on unrelated content.
There are other ways of teaching literature and history, but only one way to teach writing.
FYC courses should focus on writing, not on content.
American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA) grades colleges on what is taught in Core courses. SCience should be taught by scientists and not philosophers, for example. Composition courses must focus on grammar, style, and argument and not on unrelated content.
There are other ways of teaching literature and history, but only one way to teach writing.
Devoid of Content
by Stanley Fish 2005 http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/31/opinion/31fish.html?_r=1
FYC teachers shouldn't teach content. They should teach form. He has his FYC students create an imaginary language not at all based on English. In order to do that they must learn the grammatical relationships of semantic categories.
FYC teachers shouldn't teach content. They should teach form. He has his FYC students create an imaginary language not at all based on English. In order to do that they must learn the grammatical relationships of semantic categories.
Monday, July 13, 2009
Retention and Writing Instruction: Implications for Access and Pedagogy
Pegeen Reichert Powell
Composition instructors should pay attention to the discourse at their institution about retention.
It has been shown (by Astin using CIRP data) that retention rates can be predicted by the characteristics of teh students the institution allows in. Unfortunately, raw retention rates are used to rank colleges without taking student characteristics into account.
"...Eleanor Agnew and
Margaret McLaughlin, who demonstrate how a writing program’s own assess-
ment practices can prevent students from graduating: their study of the results
of placement and exit exams revealed that the presence of features of African
American Vernacular English led to an alarmingly higher rate of failure (90)."
These black students have already accessed the gate, but the assessment policies and prejudices keep them from graduating.
Access and retention will become even more important as the economy worsens.
Composition instructors should pay attention to the discourse at their institution about retention.
It has been shown (by Astin using CIRP data) that retention rates can be predicted by the characteristics of teh students the institution allows in. Unfortunately, raw retention rates are used to rank colleges without taking student characteristics into account.
"...Eleanor Agnew and
Margaret McLaughlin, who demonstrate how a writing program’s own assess-
ment practices can prevent students from graduating: their study of the results
of placement and exit exams revealed that the presence of features of African
American Vernacular English led to an alarmingly higher rate of failure (90)."
These black students have already accessed the gate, but the assessment policies and prejudices keep them from graduating.
Access and retention will become even more important as the economy worsens.
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