Get It in Writing

In our academic writing class, we have reached the beginning point for the first essay. The first step, selecting a topic, is the current assignment. Fortunately, the book we are using, New Directions, provides five essay topic for the unit on education, Students selected the two topics they wanted to read and write about in this semester-long class. Their choices were education and gender roles.

When I first looked at the five essay topics for this assignment I leaned toward the first one: "Discuss the extent to which you agree with one of the following quotations." The first quote was from William Zinsser, in which he wishes for all students some release from the clammy grip of the future. The second, from James Baldwin, states his view of the purpose of education, namely, to create in a person the ability to look at the world for himself, to make his own decisions. Both of these quotations appeal to me.

My runner-up choice for the essay topic was the third one, which asks you to analyze the qualities of a good teacher. Researching and writing on this topic would help me to improve the way I teach. I would like to learn how to become a better teacher. The assignment suggests that the following items be considered: goals, values, teaching and learning styles, behaviors, and character traits. Using one or more of these items suggests a way to begin structuring the essay, in effect, a way into the assignment. There is much to be said for having an idea for starting. In the process of fleshing out the structure, other ideas may come to mind and suggest a course change.

In addition to liking the topic and having a beginning structure, I am reading What the Best College Teachers Do, a book by Ken Bain that explores, in seven chapters, the style and technique of the best college teachers. This book and the books in its bibliography will provide good sources on the topic. In addition, the students in this class have written a paper on the qualities of a good teacher, which provides another source of information.

Now the next step, making an essay proposal and deciding what my thesis will be.

374 Words

Posted by Ron Corio at 7:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

So What's Your EQ?

In Multiple Intelligences and Emotional Intelligence, David Sadker and Myra Sadker point out that Daniel Goleman, in his book Emotional Intelligence, argues that EQ or the emotional intelligence quotient, may be a better predictor of success in life than IQ, the intelligence quotient. The Sadkers quote Goleman's description of the "marshmallow story" which shows how EQ works.

In the "marshmallow story," a four-year old is told to do an errand. In exchange for doing the errand, the child may eat one marshmallow first then do the errand or do the errand and receive two marshmallows. This test measures the child's ability or willingness to defer gratification. Ten years later, when the child is now fourteen years old, her SAT score was compared against other children who participated in the marshmallow test at age four. Goleman found that the children who were able to delay gratification scored 210 points higher than those who did not delay gratification. The latter group, referred to as gobblers, were also more likely to be described as stubborn, easily frustrated, and lonely teenagers.

The Sadkers quote Kelly and Moon's definition of EQ as ". . . a type of social intelligence that involves the ability to monitor one's own and others; emotions, to discriminate among them, and to use the information to guide one's thinking and actions."

Hmmm . . . social intelligence . . . I like that phrase. EQ adds another dimension, another measure to what it takes to be successful, a new way of measuring intelligence. Peter Salovey, a Yale psychologist, has designed an assessment tool for measuring EQ that has five parts: Knowing Emotions, Managing Emotions, Motivating Oneself, Recognizing the Emotions of Others, and Handling Relationships. For each section there is a four-point scale upon which to assess oneself for that trait.

Looking at Salovey's EQ assessment categories one can easily see the importance of each category of emotional intelligence for success. Knowing your own emotions is an aspect of self-awareness that is critical for one to be able to self-monitor and find ways to better behave and relate to others. Managing one's emotions is a tough one for me. This category to control and manage emotions through good and bad times, to shake off depression and bounce back from life's setbacks is a tall order.

388 Words

Posted by Ron Corio at 8:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

In How the Web Destroys the Quality of Students' Research Papers, David Rothenberg laments the use of the Web as a tool for doing research and asserts that it has lowered the quality of their research papers.

Here are Rothenberg's Criticisms of Students' Use of the WWW

1. -the bibliography cites no books, just articles or pointers to places on the Web
2. -a lot of the information on the Web is at least a few years old
3. -pictures and graphs that are inserted into the text look impressive but often bear little relation to the precise subject of the paper
4. -unattributed quotes in which one cannot tell who made the statement or in what context
5. -few references to careful, in-depth commentaries on the subject of the paper
6. -the Web makes research look too easy
7. -students' attention spans wane and their ability to reason for themselves declines

Richard Cummins, in a letter to the editor, writes in opposition to Rothenberg's essay on how the World Wide Web is destroying the quality of students' research papers. Cummins claims that Rothenberg gives the Web far too much power over our lives and consciousness. Using the Web as a metaphor, Cummins says that it us up to the student to become either the spider or the fly.

The amount of information or misinformation on the Web is so large, and Rothenberg says that is one of the problems when using it for research. It is easy to get hundreds of thousands of hits, but not so easy to find the gems in that haystack. Cummins seems to suggest that it is up to the student to figure out what is good information and how to create searches that will find it.

Cummins makes the point that there are as many rotten books and worthless journal articles in libraries as there are rotten sources on the Internet. Thus, the job of finding good information in the library is as daunting as finding it on the WWW.

Rothenberg wishes for his students to sit under a tree with a book and read it from cover to cover. To read a whole book while sitting under a tree suggests that the reader should have a tent, a cook stove and a supply of food. Rothenberg loses credibility in his argument with this suggestion. Cummins' letter to the editor opposing Rothenberg's arguments is more persuasive in my view.

368 words

I include the number of words in this blog entry because I asked students to write a similar journal entry in their newly-created blogs using 500 words. As soon as I began this assignment I realized that 500 words was too many. 250 to 300 words would have been better. Sorry class, for this mistake. Now I will look to see if any of them have written the assignment and how long their entry is.

One of my goals in this class is to help students improve their writing fluency, thus the emphasis on number of words written. We are dong ten-minute free-writing at the start of each class and counting the number of words. We will count the number of words in all our writing in this class. In this way, we will see what would be a reasonable goal for total words to be written in this semester-long course. 5,000? 10,000?

523 words. Whew! I made it with that piece on the end.

Posted by Ron Corio at 11:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Today in Academic Writing 3 students created t a VCU blog. This writing space will be used for journal assignments during the course of the semester. The blog plus the Discussion Board on our class Blackboard will provide spaces for regular writing. These writing assignments are for developing fluency. The assignments will mainly be responses to readings.

This the first time I have asked students to create a blog and using it for the practice of writing. By the end of the semester I should be able to evaluate the students' interest in writing a blog and the effect it has on their writing.

Posted by Ron Corio at 12:58 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)