post 2/27

I found strategies like Show that All Texts Reflect the Author's Frame of Reference and Thus are Subject to Interrogation and Analysis and Writing 'Translations' particularly helpful for my students who struggle to delineate form from content in their assigned readings. They carry this confusion into their writing by either making clear arguments without providing adequate context, or mimicking the convoluted syntax of academic writing instead of articulating in terms clearest to them what they mean. One question I have is, what are some resources we can point students to help them parse through academic jargon (especially when their instructors have not provided them this resource/ training in class)? Are there existing "Reading guides" online like those described on p.141?

Comments

  1. Lindsey QuinnFebruary 26, 2018 at 10:56 AM

    I had a graduate student this morning with one of those convoluted academic sentences in the summary of an article for an annotated bibliography. I asked him what he mean, and he said he wasn't sure. I broke it down further and asked what "these beliefs" was referring to. He wasn't sure; he just flipped to the abstract of the paper and pointed to it. I asked what it meant in the context of the paper, and he said he hadn't read it.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Writing to Learn, Learning to Write

I'm familiar with different approaches in different contexts. As an instructor, I'm most familiar with learning to write, because even my content-based assignments receive extensive writing attention. As a student, though, I was and am more familiar with writing to learn. But I'm still displeased that as a student in English at the undergraduate, MA, and PhD levels, there was/is not more attention placed on learning to write. At this stage, this seems to be something professors take for granted. (I was recently told: "That's not how you title a dissertation chapter." And I responded: "Can you please tell me how you title a book chapter? I have never done this.") I think also in liberal arts required courses, writing to learn is prioritized in many (most?) disciplines. I'm not particularly persuaded by one form over another, though I have never succeeded in writing to learn language models. But I am partial to the idea that learning to write sho...
Read more

Emi 03/27

These two case studies consider two different research methods that will inevitably lead to very different discussions and presentation of the ideas.  T he non-fiction case study (Lorraine) is purely qualitative, while the academic case study (Fei) is a mixed methods study in which qualitative data is quantitized and the rest of the collected qualitative data (e.g. interview) mainly serves to enhance legitimation. These two different focus, qualitative (Lorraine) and Mixed methods with a focus on quantitative (Fei) are well accepted in research. However, the way that readers approach them may be very different. The qualitative (non-fiction) case study is more engaging, more relatable, and easier to read. As promoted in Qualitative research, the authors present the data as if it were a story and include very detailed anecdotes (called vignettes) that represent the main point to be conveyed. The study is not replicable, but the authors do provide additional information to ensure...
Read more

4/17

In my tutoring sessions, I've been most familiar with the 'learning to write' paradigm. I felt Ortega's statement that "...LW places at the center of attention the cognitive activity of the writer and her or his authorial voice" encapsulates the work my students have called on me to do. Whether they're working on a Peace Corps application, a psychology paper, a global health paper or a speech for Rhetoric, I've found my work can be described in Ortega's twofold statement: helping students put in writing first, their cognitive activity (their opinions, arguments, and questions) and second, their authorial voice (by airing confusions, doubts, and identifying needs for further research). In class, I'm wondering if we can have a discussion about the overlap between LW and WLL when it comes to students picking up specific language necessary for academic assignments. As Ortega writes, there is a difference between students "learning to write abo...
Read more