3/27


Hi All!  Sorry about missing class Tuesday.  

First a basic question: in Writing Center usage, what is the difference between syntax and grammar?


The biggest disadvantage I see to the more academic case study is that the sample size is so small, and the samples themselves are so varied, it’s difficult to make broader claims.  For example, as noted in Severino and Prim (2016), if fluency is defined by length of a written piece, it’s difficult to judge the writer’s skill when length depends on the assignment.  However, the more academic piece is taking steps towards understanding what works and doesn’t work with the intent of advancing the field.  We need to know what works and doesn’t work if we hope to improve our strategies and help students write better.  In order to know what works and doesn’t, we need to codify and classify our variables-types of mistakes, types of feedback, improvement.  An academic case study offers direct insight into the learning process, though such a methodology still doesn’t provide all the answers.  If a student is more responsive to direct corrections, does that mean that more learning (at least short-term learning) results?  I’m going to admit that I’m with Lorraine from Goedde’s work and suggest that, “academia is way better!” The non-fiction non-fiction case study was fun to read and one might be able to draw conclusions about how to improve one’s own tutoring, but it doesn’t set out to provide answers.  It is thought-provoking, and it provides something to think about, but any such insight would vary between readers and depend on one’s own personal experiences.  There are things to be learned from both, but the academic approach seems more useful for advancing the field as a whole. 

Comments

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