4/10

UW-Stevens Point, where I worked in the writing center before coming here, has a very strong Natural Resources emphasis (so much so they're planning on cutting just about every humanities major they currently offer). In the writing center, I was often faced with papers for classes I knew nothing about. Waste management (solid, liquid, and landfill) was a very popular program while I was there and I could barely wrap my head around what they were talking about. But, like any other assignment, we went back to the assignment description and always made sure they checked those boxes. When reading through the paper, it was always helpful to have students explain things to me that I didn't understand. In (roughly) every other session this would lead to a writing break through; as they explained it to me, they worked out on their own how to explain it to others. 

TA-ing Foundations of the English Major right now, I can say their close reading assignments are both writing to learn and learning to write. Many students are still trying to work out what an English paper should sound like and how to write like that; at the same time, they're learning to parse through a text. I'm usually up in the air about which I should emphasize. I know this isn't exactly how learning to write was defined, but I don't think its quite writing to learn either. 

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