Friday, December 26, 2014

New Post

Basic Writing Theory and Pedagogy was an eye-opening course. I learned a lot including important theorists and theories on the subject, best pedagogical practices and CUNY’s history with basic writing. The readings that were assigned were interesting as they explained instructional strategies that have been successful for basic writing students and the reasons for their success.

Two of my favorite aspects about this course were the class discussions and the group work. Because I am not only new to this program but also new to this field, it was advantageous to listen to my classmates’ experiences. I have been a teaching assistant, working with Basic English instructors, providing one-on-one tutoring, and teaching basic writing and reading workshops, for the past two and a half years. However, many of my classmates have been teaching for a lot longer and in different settings where I have only been in one setting. I looked to them as authorities able to provide practical guidance.

Though I am typically not a fan of group work, I benefited from my group members not only the ones with which I worked on the book club but also the ones I worked with during class. Working with groups helped me to better understand the subject. For example, if we were discussing a reading, listening to their opinions and the reasons for these opinions allowed me to understand the reading in a new way

A surprising aspect of this course was the controversy regarding basic writing. Some students believed in strictness while others offered empathy for the circumstances of their students. That is one area where my opinion has not quite been formed. Coming to this class I tended to err toward strictness but the course has led me to question my stance.

After having taken this Basic Writing Theory and Pedagogy course, I am looking forward to the other courses that I will be taking, particularly the core courses. I am looking forward to the classmates, the group work and the theoretical, historical and practical knowledge.

Friday, December 19, 2014

Literacy Narrative Process Reflection

This semester as a Teaching Assistant, I worked with an instructor who taught ENGW-005, the most rudimentary course of basic writing at Medgar Evers College. She assigned a literacy narrative to her students and they responded enthusiastically. They wrote extensively and some even shared their narratives out loud to their classmates. Having been simultaneously assigned a similar paper in Basic Writing Theory and Pedagogy, I was happy to share the experience with the students I serve.

Much like my students, I responded enthusiastically to this assignment. I am very open and not too shy about sharing my story with others. However, I have not really thought about my literacy history.

Having my classmates peer review my narrative was valuable. It helped me to see other people’s points of view about my story. It helped me to recognize what was missing and what was unclear. After the peer-review, even before I heard back from Barbara, I took my two and a half page paper and turned it into six pages. This was a good experience as it led me to remember pleasant memories from my childhood such as jumping rope with neighborhood friends, staying up with my dad as he told us stories and even things with no relevance to the assignment such as drinking Haitian hot chocolate during thunderstorms, church parties and visiting relatives.

The literacy narrative forced me to view myself as a writer, a title I had been sheepish about assigning myself. It allowed me to revisit my past successes with writing, such as having been published in my high school’s literary magazine, in my college’s newspaper and having won the creative writing prize of the National Black Writers Conference that is held at Medgar Evers College. When I received feedback from Barbara, I was happy that she liked not only what I had to say but also my writing style.

Though Barbara’s comments were largely positive, I had some changes to make. I rewrote it as best as I could and asked my supervisor, a basic writing and freshman composition instructor at Medgar Evers College, to read it. He had always been a fan of my writing and gladly read it and provided me with more direction. Though his comments were similar to those of Barbara, they allowed me to make deeper introspection and further urged me to view myself as a writer.

Having gone through this process of writing a literacy narrative, I understand why they are assigned to basic writing students. It is not just to get them to write but also to raise their confidence about writing. I had a conversation with an instructor at Medgar Evers College about students and writing. He teaches basic reading and freshman composition. He surprised me by saying that he assigns literacy narratives even to his freshman composition students. His idea is that even students at this level who have never been in developmental education are not exactly college ready. They often struggle to write and tend to be resistant to certain assignments. Literacy narratives, in his view, are a way of breaking the ice between his students and writing.

I learned a lot from this assignment. I view conversations with Barbara on my narrative as a model for best practices.

Tuesday, December 16, 2014

NEW POST (reflective commentary)

Resources for Basic Writing Teachers and Scholars

1 1. Basic Writing (Reference Guides to Rhetoric and Composition) by George Otte and Rebecca Williams Mlynarczyk. Parlor Press, 2010. Print.

2. Teaching Excellence in Adult Literacy by the American Institute for Research, 2012. Online resource.

https://teal.ed.gov/documents/TEAL_JustWriteGuide.pdf

3. Mike Rose’s Blog: Teaching Remedial Writing

http://mikerosebooks.blogspot.com/search?updated-min=2014-01-01T00:00:00-08:00&updated-max=2015-01-01T00:00:00-08:00&max-results=21

4. The Way Literacy Lives: Rhetorical Dexterity and Basic Writing Instruction by Shannon Carter. State University of New York Press, 2009. Print

5. Before Shaughnessy: Basic Writing at Yale and Harvard, 1920-1960 by Kelly Ritter. Southern Illinois University Press, 2009. Print.

6. The Violence of Literacy by Elspeth Stuckey Heinemann , 1990. Print.

7. Designing Writing Assignments by Traci Gardner. National Council of Teachers of English, 2008. Print.

Literacy Narrative--Final Draft

Rhode-Elise St. Jacques
Prof. Gleason
Basic Writing Theory and Pedagogy
Literacy Narrative—Final Draft
December 2, 2014

Becoming a Writer

In the seventh grade, I had been living in the United States for only two years. During those two years, I lost my innocent childhood pep. Leaving Haiti, the country of my birth, was difficult. I left my family, and the life that I knew. I left my house, my yard, my porch; I left my cousins, my friends from the block and moved to a rented room in someone’s house in Brooklyn, NY. I became withdrawn as I struggled to handle my newfound feelings of disconcertion and isolation. I went from being surrounded by family and friends to being alone with my younger sister, Lois; such is the life of children whose parents work long hours. The television raised us. It gave us its values and morals. It taught us English, which we learned fairly quickly, putting away the French and the Haitian-Creole we were used to speaking. But we were still unhappy and felt isolated in our new surroundings.

Lois and I found solace at the public library. Additionally, the school library of my junior high school, Roy H. Mann, I.S. 78 provided me extra comfort. In Haiti I developed a love of books which was further nurtured in the United States. I looked to authors such as Paula Danziger, Jerry Spinelli and Paul Zindel to help heal my emotions and to help me understand the ways of my new country and its people. My homeroom and English teacher, Mrs. Claudia Cohen, also a fellow book lover, kept a library in her classroom and encouraged her students to cultivate a love of reading as passionate as her own.

Early on in the year, Ms. Cohen, gave us an assignment. Though I do not remember the specifics of the assignment, I wrote a story entitled “Mr. Ching Chong’s Surprise,” a racist title, I know, but I did not realize that then. When my paper was returned, it bled profusely due to the merciless attacks of Ms. Cohen’s red pen. I made countless grammatical, punctuation, and sentence structure errors. However, what was pleasantly surprising to me were Ms. Cohen’s comments. She loved my story. She found the story plot of this poor Chinese man (I do not know why I chose to make this character Chinese considering I had not yet met many Chinese people) being stalked by a secret abhorrer who writes ominous notes to him, fun, clever and creative. The fact that Ms. Cohen liked my story in spite of the many grammatical errors taught me that I was a writer, that I was funny, and that words can be used to convey and invoke emotions if cleverly assembled on paper.

That I was now a writer meant I had purpose. This sad, lonely little Haitian girl was special. Believing I was a writer meant that I would take several creative writing courses at Edward R. Murrow High School, eventually rewriting that pivotal seventh-grade assignment and renaming the title character “Mr. Williams.” It meant that every day I would effortlessly write short stories and poetry. It led me to join the creative writing club and be surrounded with brilliant aspiring peers. (We all knew one day we would be best-selling authors). I was published in the school literary magazine, The Murrow Magnet, for two consecutive years; the first year I submitted a short story, and the second year I submitted two poems. I was a writer. I had a way with words and that meant I had a way of gaining attention, which happened when teachers read my work aloud to the class. I enjoyed using my way with words as a shock factor. When in my ninth grade ESL class the teacher asked us to write sentences using newly learned vocabulary, my word was ‘yearn,’ I boldly wrote on the board, “His kiss was so passionate that she yearned for more.”

At Murrow, my love for reading flourished. Though I do not remember all of the authors I was introduced to, I remember having read a lot of short stories including “Love is a Fallacy,” “The story of Icarus and Daedalus,” and various stories by Edgar Allan Poe. This was when my aptitude for fiction writing soared. Inspired by Poe, I explored the macabre, writing a story about a little vampire girl that eats a grown man and another about talking anacondas plotting to take over the earth. I wrote romance; I wrote magical realism, and though I had not yet formally learned about the plight and actualities of people of the African diaspora, I wrote about race. Inspiration was ubiquitous, and the words seemed to flow. Though I believed that my ability to write creatively was a divine gift, I knew that it was a gift developed by ample reading. I read a lot so I wrote a lot; and the stories I wrote resembled the ones I read. Also, belonging to an artistic environment, such as the creating writing club in high school, was greatly encouraging.

After high school, I went to work; it would be ten years before I went back into the classroom. As time went on and I was no longer surrounded by talented aspiring writers, the ability to write effortlessly faded away. During that time, my indulgence in reading continued, though mostly through romance novels and Cosmopolitan magazines. Slowly, however, I grew tired of not seeing myself in the petite, blond-haired, blue eyed heroines of the books I was reading and started to read romance novels written by African-American authors. Eventually, I gravitated to more serious novels, getting acquainted with authors such as Haitian-American, Edwidge Danticat. Her memoir, Brother, I’m Dying, led me to read everything else she had written and helped me diversify my taste in books. Though I never really put down Cosmopolitan Magazine, I also picked up Essence and Ebony magazines.

Though my reading diversified, I struggled to write. I began to realize that I had been a writer. The ability to write short stories was gone. What I was left with were a few story ideas with shoddy beginnings, incomplete endings and a few cleverly-written sentences in between. When I entered Medgar Evers College (MEC) located in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn, my mind opened up as I was met with a new world of literary adventures. At MEC I discovered authors who told my history, authors such as Octavia Butler, James Baldwin, Charles Waddell Chesnutt and Bernice McFadden. They nudged me to revisit fiction writing and slowly I did. I was able to do so because I began to find my voice. Baldwin, Butler and the like helped me forged my identity as an African-American, something the romance authors of blonde heroines were unable to do. I began to view creative writing as a tool which could be used to inspire others under the guise of entertainment.

Still, I saw myself as less imaginative. Because I was not writing every day, I believed I was no longer a creative writer. What I became was a student that writes critical analyses, reading responses and research papers. Even so, a new genre, creative nonfiction, seemed to flirt with me. In Freshman Seminar 101, I was assigned a “Who am I” paper in which I was to answer seven questions. My professor was so impressed with my essay that she read it in class as a model for my classmates of what their subsequent drafts were to resemble. (I wrote no subsequent draft. My first one earned me an A). Through similar coursework and response essays assigned by other professors of other courses, I began to realize that perhaps I had not lost my creativity. It simply took a new form.

Though I miss fiction writing and even poetry writing, I am enjoying this new genre. And though I may never become that best-selling author I once dreamed of being, I’ve been published! Not only in high school, but in college I have received several writing recognitions. In 2012, I won the National Black Writers Conference fiction writing contest for a short story I had written entitled, “Churchhouse.” I was featured several times in Adafi, the school paper, having submitted a poem, a short story and two response papers, and in my last semester, five pieces of my writing, one fiction and four creative non-fiction, were featured in the first issue of the school’s literary magazine, Unlocking Our Legacy. I am indeed a writer.

Book Review

Rhode-Elise St. Jacques

Professor Barbara Gleason

ENGL B2802: Basic Writing Theory and Pedagogy

December 16, 2014

Writing and the First-Year Community College Student

In their book, The Community College Writer: Exceeding Expectations, researchers and professors Howard Tinberg and Jean-Paul Nadeau report on a research they conducted on the experiences of first year community college students enrolled in composition and how these students acclimate in their new environment and respond to the responsibilities that come with being college students. Tinberg and Nadeau sought to uncover these students’ relationship to writing. This research was done at Bristol Community College in Massachusetts where the researchers work as English professors. Published in 2010 by the Conference on College Composition and Communication of the National Council of Teachers of English, this book sheds light on an area that has not been sufficiently researched. The purpose of this book is to bring to light the particularities of this population. Divided into five chapters within which are many headings, this short, 149-page book provides an easy read.

The first chapter of the book, Introduction and Rationale, contains brief narratives about Tinberg and Nadeau, which portray the authors as credible authority figures of the subject. Tinberg is a first-generation college student whose Jewish refugee parents stressed the importance of acquiring a good education. When he was in college, Tinberg held down employment. Nadeau is the son of two educators. Like his colleague, he also worked while pursuing higher education. Having experienced juggling work and school and for Tinberg, having been the first in his family to go to college, means that they can identify with the students they serve. Their experiences as writing center tutors allowed them to be faced with and understand the frustrations many students feel when it comes to writing assignments.

After the biographies, there is a short section on the works of other scholars such as Mina Shaughnessy “whose painstaking analysis of student placement essays led so many to regard the work of teaching basic writers as a serious academic pursuit” (15). They also refer to Albert Kitzhaber and credit him as having conducted one of the first major studies on student writing at Dartmouth College in the 1960s. Tinberg and Nadeau’s study is impacted by Kitzhaber’s as the designs are alike, the research methods and the research goals are similar, and the studies both share two central questions

For Tinberg and Nadeau, the purpose of the study was to uncover how writing engages students and how prepared first-year college students are for college level writing and for writing across the disciplines. Their goal was to “give voice to students who have yet to be heard: community college writers” (19). To answer their questions, the authors identified five key questions crucial to their research. These questions found on page 3 of the book are as follows:

1. How much writing was assigned beyond the required basic and college-level writing courses? Were students prepared for the volume of writing required?

2. To what extent were the students writing in genres other than the essay? Did students expect to write in modes other than the academic essay?

3. What role did revision have in writing instruction at the college? How did students’ understanding of this task differ from that of faculty?

4. When faculty assessed student writing, was the emphasis on higher- or lower-order concerns? Did faculty feedback match student expectations?

5. How extensive was faculty commentary on student writing? What purpose did that commentary serve? To explain a grade? To guide revision? Both? How did students process the commentary?

The authors do a good job of outlining the information in their book. Chapter two of the book, Design and Method, as the title suggests reports how the researchers designed their study and the methods they used to effectuate it. This chapter is broken up into eleven sections, making it easy for the reader to find information within each segment. Sections within chapters is consistent throughout the book. Chapter 2 contains how the study was done, how the participants were selected and how the information was gathered. Seventy faculty from the various disciplines responded to thirty-one statements on a Likert scale. Questions that were asked included how the faculty thinks student writers view themselves, how important writing is to the students’ potential future careers, student motivation, the types of feedback instructors provide and how prepared they believed students are for college.

Eleven faculty members representing the college’s six academic departments took part of the cohort. They were chosen in part because writing is a required element in their courses. It is unclear what the other criteria for selection were. The instructors were interviewed one-on-one for about forty-five minutes. These interviews were casual and the questions they were asked were standardized such as how long they’ve been at BCC and how they respond to student writing.

The researchers explain the process for selecting and surveying students. A total of 1,443 first time students from BCC and four other community colleges were surveyed. One third of those students were from BCC. Like the faculty, these students responded to statements on a Likert scale. Among the twenty-seven statements the students were asked, topics included how they viewed themselves as writers, how they viewed teacher feedback, how prepared they felt they were for college writing and how important was writing to their future careers.

For Tinberg and Nadeau, choosing the BCC students that would form the cohort proved arduous. Their efforts included speaking at orientations and sending out emails. Twenty students originally responded and fifteen ultimately committed to participating in the study. These students were interviewed at the beginning and at the end of the term to assess how they grew after the completion of their first semester in college. In the first interview, among other questions, they were asked to assess their writing, their experience with writing and the type of writing they expected to be required in college.

In the third chapter, What Community College Faculty Expect, the authors start by providing a brief glimpse of the faculty that work at community colleges. The bulk of the faculty of community colleges is part-time. “As of 2004, 66 percent of the faculty at public two-year college were part time, as compared to 36 percent at four-year colleges” (36). The high percentage of part time faculty is alarming considering the amount work that is required of them including the pressure of having to successfully serve many students deemed not college ready.

The results of the faculty survey led the researchers to recommend that professors reassess their instructional strategies. Most instructors believe that writing is not only crucial for college success but for success in the workplace as well. Thirty-one percent of respondents viewed students as unprepared “at the end of the course to succeed with challenging writing assignments” (39). Another disconcerting fact is that 97% of instructors responded that they focused on lower order concerns such as mechanics when providing feedback of student work.

The fourth chapter, Student Expectations and Practices, reports on the findings of the student surveys as well as sheds light on the students in the cohort, the lives they lead outside of school and how their responsibilities affect their academic performance. The students in the cohort are hardworking and ambitious. Ranging from the ages of 18 to 40, many are balancing jobs, family responsibilities and school. This chapter also offers an in-depth look of six of the students in the cohort, providing background information such as their experiences in high school, and detailing their lives at the time of the study.

In this chapter, many discrepancies between student responses and faculty responses are made evident. Students report working a lot harder than their instructors believed that they did. For example, 57% of students reported writing multiple drafts but only 13% of faculty believed that they did. While 95% of faculty believed that writing will be an important skill to students’ future careers, only 48% of students agreed. Nine percent of students reported evading writing intensive courses yet 58% of faculty believed that students did.

The students’ responses illustrate the disillusionments they had previously held about college. Many felt discouraged with the amount and difficulty of reading that was now required of them. They were also not ready for the amount of writing and rewriting they were now being asked to do. Yet, many communicated an unwillingness to change their prior habits. Students had difficulty understanding the comments made on their essays by their professors and therefore tended to only address surface comments only and not look through their papers for similar mistakes.

In the fifth and last chapter of the book, Implications for Teaching and Research, Tinberg and Nadeau offer suggestions for better pedagogical practice. Instructions for assignments must be clear and explicitly stated. Professors must provide scaffolds such as breaking up challenging assignments in incremental steps. Exemplary work must be given to students as models for what instructors expect. An area of great concern is the misunderstanding of instructor feedback.

[Students] assiduously follow the teacher’s surface recommendations and disregard the deeper suggestions regarding content and argumentation. They prefer global, non-directive, and positive comments but make changes mainly to surface, directive and negative ones…they want lots and certain kinds of response, but have trouble doing much with what they ask for’” (124).

Scheduling one-on-one conferences with their students is a great way instructors can ensure that students understand their feedback and are on the right path. Such conferences can also help break the barriers between students and their instructors.

The research as left its mark on Tinberg and Nadeau. They hope to continue to work with the students in the cohort as they move on to college level courses. Tinberg reports that part of his role is to help students write across the disciplines. Unfortunately he sees himself as not quite capable to do that and it pains him that “the most intense conversation about writing continues to take place in the required writing course” (128) and not in courses beyond that. Nadeau now strives to make his courses even more student-centered than before. The researchers believe that more similar research should be done to uncover how non-English instructors provide feedback to their students.

The Community College Writer: Exceeding Expectations is a valuable book. Having been published only almost five years ago, the information is still valuable. However, one implication not suggested by the authors is a similar research on adult ELLs new to college. A subsequent study should focus on their particular issues such as language and culture challenges they face as they attempt to navigate American higher education. This study would be even more meaningful if the participants were Basic English students.

Howard Tinberg and Jean-Paul Nadeau accomplished their goal of bringing to light the challenges of first year college students. They explained their struggles and provided for instructors valuable instructional implications. The Community College Writer: Exceeding Expectations is appropriate for instructors and administrators who wish to better understand and serve their students.