Guidelines for presentations on the portfolios are posted to the right.
The presentation schedule is posted below.
April 30
Luis, Dewayne, Kathryn, Juliana,
May 3
Maria Elena, Qian, Christine, Isaac, Paul
May 7
Corinne, Stephanie, Tshandi, Valerie, Swaynisha
May 10
Amanda, Sindy, Maxine, Nicole, Jazmyne, Brittney, Sara
If I don't receive your draft by tonight and you want some feedback - send me an email to set up a conference for may office hours. I am already booked for Tuesday, but have time Monday, Wednesday & Thursday from 12-2.
Thursday, April 26, 2012
Monday, April 23, 2012
4.23 Class
Assignment update:
Autoethnographies: Essays in the course email after today will lose credit for tardiness.
Discourse community projects: Drafts for the Discourse community project were due today. They will be returned with feedback by Thursday,
If you would like to revise your draft in light of today's discussion (see post 4.23 Workshop), you may do so and turn it in via email on Thursday, April 26, for feedback by Monday, April 30. I will not be providing feedback for drafts turned in after this Thursday, April, 26. If you need to - you may schedule a conference.
Final Drafts are due with your portfolio, May 10.
Presentations on your portfolios/writing projects: You signed up for presentations today. In class Thursday I will go over the criteria for the presentation - and we will work out the final presentation calendar.
Today's class: We discussed Lucille McCarthy's essay on a college writer's experience writing for different courses. See earlier posts for overview of discussion.
For next class: Th April 26
Autoethnographies: Essays in the course email after today will lose credit for tardiness.
Discourse community projects: Drafts for the Discourse community project were due today. They will be returned with feedback by Thursday,
If you would like to revise your draft in light of today's discussion (see post 4.23 Workshop), you may do so and turn it in via email on Thursday, April 26, for feedback by Monday, April 30. I will not be providing feedback for drafts turned in after this Thursday, April, 26. If you need to - you may schedule a conference.
Final Drafts are due with your portfolio, May 10.
Presentations on your portfolios/writing projects: You signed up for presentations today. In class Thursday I will go over the criteria for the presentation - and we will work out the final presentation calendar.
Today's class: We discussed Lucille McCarthy's essay on a college writer's experience writing for different courses. See earlier posts for overview of discussion.
For next class: Th April 26
workshop drafts
outline for portfolio presentation
outline for portfolio presentation
4.23 Workshop Questions
1. What new language and forms are associated with this writing assignment? (see Swales + Gee). How have you integrated these features into into your analysis? (680)
2. What is the organizational structure of your essay? (To answer this - make a brief list of the order of your points). Have you created an organization the fits the information you need to convey (or are you stuck in the bullet points of the assignment)? How can you re-arrange the order of your discussion to make a more clear presentation of your information? (682)
3. Have you provided evidence (references to your interview + the documents) to support your interpretations of the "identity toolkits," purpose, networks of communictaion, etc for your Discourse community? Are your interpretations of your Discourse community accurate (look at correlations between your evidence and your general statements)? What do you need to add? What do you need to delete?(682)
4. Do you analyze - (in addition to summarizing) - the documents/interview talk that represents your Discourse community? What do you need to add? What do you need to delete? (685)
2. What is the organizational structure of your essay? (To answer this - make a brief list of the order of your points). Have you created an organization the fits the information you need to convey (or are you stuck in the bullet points of the assignment)? How can you re-arrange the order of your discussion to make a more clear presentation of your information? (682)
3. Have you provided evidence (references to your interview + the documents) to support your interpretations of the "identity toolkits," purpose, networks of communictaion, etc for your Discourse community? Are your interpretations of your Discourse community accurate (look at correlations between your evidence and your general statements)? What do you need to add? What do you need to delete?(682)
4. Do you analyze - (in addition to summarizing) - the documents/interview talk that represents your Discourse community? What do you need to add? What do you need to delete? (685)
4.23 McCarthy + workshop Discourse community essays
McCarthy's essay follows a college writer through three of his courses. Her central finding is that her subject Dave's success was deeply connected to the writing context. In particular, she found the following (677-8).
1. Dave found writing for different courses as "totally different" even though she saw it as similar: it was all information based writing, and it moved between summary and analysis.
2. Social factors influenced Dave's success. In particular, the functions of the writing in each setting (686), and the Dave's relationships to teachers, peers, and texts were important social factors (689).
3. Dave resorted to the same kinds of practices & resources to "figure out" what he was "supposed" in all 3 courses (692) - and for the most part - knowledge of these practices and resources remained tacit.
In class - we are going to go through these findings - a little out of order - ending with the first finding. The purpose for this reorganization is so you can use what McCarthy identified as Dave's main stumbling blocks as a basis for workshopping your Analysis of a Discourse Community projects.
1. Dave found writing for different courses as "totally different" even though she saw it as similar: it was all information based writing, and it moved between summary and analysis.
2. Social factors influenced Dave's success. In particular, the functions of the writing in each setting (686), and the Dave's relationships to teachers, peers, and texts were important social factors (689).
3. Dave resorted to the same kinds of practices & resources to "figure out" what he was "supposed" in all 3 courses (692) - and for the most part - knowledge of these practices and resources remained tacit.
In class - we are going to go through these findings - a little out of order - ending with the first finding. The purpose for this reorganization is so you can use what McCarthy identified as Dave's main stumbling blocks as a basis for workshopping your Analysis of a Discourse Community projects.
Thursday, April 19, 2012
4.19 Workshop
Today was another workshop day - with final questions about the Discourse community project => drafts are due on Monday.
Also for Monday
Read: McCarthy + intro to Ch 5 (667-699)
Also for Monday
Read: McCarthy + intro to Ch 5 (667-699)
Monday, April 16, 2012
4.12 Workshop + Autoethnographies
Drafts for the autoethnographies are due in the ENG3005waw@gmail.com account on later that Monday, April 23. Essays received after that date will be marked down one grade for each subsequent day they are late.
I provided general feedback on autoethnographies turned in so far. Your overall writing is strong, you generally collected acceptable data, and most of you came up with impressive observations about how your writing process worked, and what you needed to work on.
To work on:
providing detailed examples to support your claims
revising your work - in particular, making revisions that adjust, delete, substitute and re-locate material in relation to "additions."
You turned in written suggestions for what to do with the autoethnography assignment. The assessments came in 5 to 5, with equal numbers who felt the assignment should be ditched versus worth keeping. It was a LOT of work for me as well - so I am not sure which side my vote is on..I received many excellent suggestions for how to improve the assignment if it included in the course next year. Thank you for your help, and I am going to think this over.
The rest of the class was devoted to workshop.
On Thursday you will continue to work on the Discourse community project. You should be posting your notes + your drafty writing to the portfolio site. If you have questions - let me know.
See you on Thursday.
I provided general feedback on autoethnographies turned in so far. Your overall writing is strong, you generally collected acceptable data, and most of you came up with impressive observations about how your writing process worked, and what you needed to work on.
To work on:
providing detailed examples to support your claims
revising your work - in particular, making revisions that adjust, delete, substitute and re-locate material in relation to "additions."
You turned in written suggestions for what to do with the autoethnography assignment. The assessments came in 5 to 5, with equal numbers who felt the assignment should be ditched versus worth keeping. It was a LOT of work for me as well - so I am not sure which side my vote is on..I received many excellent suggestions for how to improve the assignment if it included in the course next year. Thank you for your help, and I am going to think this over.
The rest of the class was devoted to workshop.
On Thursday you will continue to work on the Discourse community project. You should be posting your notes + your drafty writing to the portfolio site. If you have questions - let me know.
See you on Thursday.
Thursday, April 12, 2012
4.12
Send a copy of the final draft for the autoetnography to the course email if you haven't already.
In class we talked about the organization for you paper + what you would put in each section.
Sections = introduction, discussion to introduce/set up your data, analysis of your data, conclusion (what it will take for you to join your chosen Discourse community). We patterned these sections and what goes in them (roughly) on Mirabelli's essay (Monday, April 3). The particular organization for your essay will depend on your Discourse community.
Discussing Discourse communities: We looked at the assignment sheet = to establish what needed to go into this essay, and we referred back to the blogs on Gee (Thursday, March 29) and on Swales (Monday, April 3) to help you with your descriptions of "identity toolkits" associated with Discourse communities (Gee) + the overall features of Discourse communities (Swales)
We checked in with each of you to make sure you had someone to interview, and talked about where to get documents. I emphasized that you should choose documents that will be useful for you. Pick something that you will probably have to write - and that will give information about your Discourse community. To find documents - you might go to the professional web sites and look around for writing samples by your community. You might also check out forums to see what folks write/talk about.
For next class:continue data collection and begin analysis of data
In class we talked about the organization for you paper + what you would put in each section.
Sections = introduction, discussion to introduce/set up your data, analysis of your data, conclusion (what it will take for you to join your chosen Discourse community). We patterned these sections and what goes in them (roughly) on Mirabelli's essay (Monday, April 3). The particular organization for your essay will depend on your Discourse community.
Discussing Discourse communities: We looked at the assignment sheet = to establish what needed to go into this essay, and we referred back to the blogs on Gee (Thursday, March 29) and on Swales (Monday, April 3) to help you with your descriptions of "identity toolkits" associated with Discourse communities (Gee) + the overall features of Discourse communities (Swales)
We checked in with each of you to make sure you had someone to interview, and talked about where to get documents. I emphasized that you should choose documents that will be useful for you. Pick something that you will probably have to write - and that will give information about your Discourse community. To find documents - you might go to the professional web sites and look around for writing samples by your community. You might also check out forums to see what folks write/talk about.
For next class:continue data collection and begin analysis of data
review + "tweak" format for discourse project essay (keep planning your organization, identifying what information you will need, re-reading the articles and the assignment sheet to familiarize yourself with the language you will need for the essay and update your research plan.
In class we will have one-on-one conferences on discourse community projects= come to class with enough material so you can work.
Wednesday, April 11, 2012
what we are doing for the rest of the term
Week 13 continue data collection and begin analysis of data
M April 16
review + "tweak" format for discourse project essay
conferences on discourse community projects
Th April 19
conferences on discourse community projects
Read: McCarthy + intro to Ch 5 (578-580)
Read: McCarthy + intro to Ch 5 (578-580)
5. Authority: How do you make yourself heard as a (college) writer?
Week 14 Due: draft for discourse community project due as attachment to course email
Week 14 Due: draft for discourse community project due as attachment to course email
M April 23
Discussion McCarthy
workshop drafts
workshop drafts
Th April 26
workshop drafts
outline for portfolio presentation
outline for portfolio presentation
Week 15
M April 30
presentations on autoethnography + discourse community projects
Th May 3 Post final discourse community projects
presentations on autoethnography + discourse community projects
Week 16
M May 7
presentations on autoethnography + discourse community projects
Th May 10 Due: complete portfolio
presentations on autoethnography + discourse community projects
Monday, April 9, 2012
4.9 Mirabelli - describing your Discourse community
We talked about Mirabelli's essay both as information about a particular Discourse community (wait staff/servers) and as one way to organize an essay that presents information about a Discourse community. As we discussed his essay, you thought about how the patterns for analysis & organizations from his essays might work (or not) in your essay.
Notes from discussion of Mirabelli
Main focus: Points out benefits + literacy features/practices important to servers
Introduction
Opening example: identifies community => sets up focus on the value of servers’ literacy practices/ knowledge
Sets up that assumptions are the servers are ignorant unskilled
And that there are A LOT of them
Literacy theory
defines what he counts as literacies in his essay
Methodology/Lou's Restaurant
describes the community he is writing about = the people/cast of characters + the setting
how he collected + analyzed his data
The Menu
Analyzes listeracies associated with wait staff
menu terms
interactions surrounding menu
specialized language
Conclusions
relates discussion from analysis to central focus
For your essay:
Introduction
Identify your discourse community
Characterize how your D community looked to you from outside
State what you found about it from your research
What counts as literacy in your discourse community
Identify what you used as data + how you collected your data
Describe the context for your work + the cast of characters
Menu = analysis of the document
Social interactions that surround the document
- Your relationship to the document + what it is used for (purpose)
- What kinds of conversations surround that document
- Who consumes/reads the document = who the audience is
- Under what circumstances the document is written
Lexis (special vocabulary)
Visual analysis = how are your documents supposed to look
- Think about whether conforming with community expectations or being creative is the right move
For Thursday=> Final revisions to Autoethnography due
Bring one or two documents from your discourse community; we will work on writing the analysis for these documents in class
Professional organizations
Writers in general Writer's Market
Creative writers Poets and Writers
Teachers National Council of Teachers of English
Screenwriters Writers Guild of America
Book publishing Internships
Journalism Internships
Technical Writers Society for Technical Communication also see New York Chapter
Creative writers Poets and Writers
Teachers National Council of Teachers of English
Screenwriters Writers Guild of America
Book publishing Internships
Journalism Internships
Technical Writers Society for Technical Communication also see New York Chapter
Thursday, April 5, 2012
4.5 Creating a research plan
Today's class is a workshop on your project to analyze a discourse community. By the end of class you should have a plan posted to your portfolio. The plan should include the following (or at least as much as you can do in class):
List activities you will need to engage in to complete your project. This list should inlcude:
List activities you will need to engage in to complete your project. This list should inlcude:
- the identity of your discourse community
- who you will interview/what you will observe to collect data/how you will obtain documents
- the categories of data you will need to collect to (refer to Swales or discussion surrounding Gee)
- developing a set of observation prompts or an interview protocol
- list of documents you will analyze
- developing criteria to analyze observations/interview and documents
- name specific people, places for data collection & set deadlines for specific tasks
- the timeline should include a writing schedule that leaves you time to go back for more information
Check your plan against the assignment sheet to make sure you will have data that allows you to meet the requirements.
For next class:
For next class:
Read: Mirabelli This is a sample analysis of a discourse community. It is slightly different from your assignment - but includes a focus + analysis relevant to this project.
·
Tuesday, April 3, 2012
4.2 Swales- defining discourse communities
Everyone who turned in a draft autoethnography should have comments. You started class by writing a memo to your self in response to the comments. You were asked to identify questions (and to ask me - in class - I went from person to person), and then to make a plan for your revisions.
We concluded class with discussion Anne Herrington's research on the Engineering Lab and Design classes. Swales' observation was that while the Lab course was about demonstrating mastery of established forms, the Design class was about extending knowledge and communication practices associated with "engineering discourse" for use an future situations. In other words the Lab discourse conserved practices & forms, and the Design course pressed for growth and change. We then went back to our shared purposes/goals (to define our community) and considered that goals for this course were more like the Design goals, than the Lab goals.
We then talked over Swales essay on defining discourse communities. We noticed the how the essay was orgainzed into parts that 1) defined the problem; 2) distinguished discourse communities from speech communities 3) identified a set of criteria to define discourse communities 4) gave an example of a particualar discourse community; and 5) addressed remaining questions about how discourse communities work.
We focused primarily on the 6 features that identify discourse communities, and we developed our discussion in terms of our class. Swales pointed out that a given class may or may not be a discourse community, and that it certainly will not be one on the first day, unless people know one another. We noted that our class fit all criteria, but was probably weakest on shared purpose/goals, and that we had fewer communication structures/feedback systems between student members than we might.
We concluded class with discussion Anne Herrington's research on the Engineering Lab and Design classes. Swales' observation was that while the Lab course was about demonstrating mastery of established forms, the Design class was about extending knowledge and communication practices associated with "engineering discourse" for use an future situations. In other words the Lab discourse conserved practices & forms, and the Design course pressed for growth and change. We then went back to our shared purposes/goals (to define our community) and considered that goals for this course were more like the Design goals, than the Lab goals.
For Thursday:
Re-read Swales. Make sure you understand the 6 features he uses to define discourse communities.
In class - you will create a research plan for your discourse community project and post it to your portfolio.
Good class today and see you on Thursday.
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