Blog # 6 Response and reflection

Scarpa,

I kind of understand what David means regarding every classroom having separate rules to make the grade. From experience as a student and observing classrooms each teacher expects different things from their students and they also have different expectations from each individual student. If a teacher has a disruptive class and is constantly dealing with behavior management she may have little time to actually teach the class and has lower standard regarding the quality of work and is probably struggling to get the students to turn the work in. If that teacher has a senior class she may expect their writing to be on a higher level than her freshman class and grade their papers differently. I agree that writing should be judged the same but teachers of other subjects may only be concerned with content and ignore major errors in student's writing. I agree with her because I think you do have to adapt to college level writing ant that is why colleges make students who do not pass their English regents with a certain score take a placement exam. We as students and teachers assume that everyone can write and read just as we could growing up and excelled just as we did but many students despise writing and reading and do not do it on their level. I do believe you should be able to tell the difference between a college student's paper and a high school student's paper because they have been trained on what college professor excepts and colleges generally us MLA format which college students follow as a guidelines

I agree with Bean stating that students writing problem and difficulties should be addressed in grades 1 through 12. Students are taught the fundamentals of writing in elementary schools and in the upper grades they learn how to content write and how to write different types of essays. The English regents in graded on content and clarity and gramme errors are not considered in the final score. I think students have to read college essays and use MLA format in high school and modeling is the key the more they see these types of essays and their expectations they will improve drastically. I also believe students need a guide book so they can refer to when they are not sure of what to do. This is what college students do to improve their writing and is something that is lacking on the high school level. Overall, the key to improving students writing is using a reference book on writing and researching different types of essay formats.

Reflection

I really enjoyed using this form of journeying because I had to focus on what my partner wanted to address and we got feedback from each other. I felt like I didn't have to rely on what the author's in the articles and books were saying and I could add my own opinion and thoughts and bring them to my partner's attention. It helped me to get to know my classmate better and understand her thoughts about the reading and I realized we have similar and opposing ideas regarding the reading materials. This journeying was very interesting and the simplest for me and I feel I got a lot out of this activity.

Blog #5 Letter

Dear Scarpa,

Young

A simple definition of WAC is that students use written

language to develop and communicate knowledge in

every discipline and across disciplines. In practice, it often assumes an

interdisciplinary effort in which teachers from different disciplines work

together to develop a comprehensive program that might include coordi-

nation among first-year composition courses, general education courses,

writing-intensive courses in the major, and senior capstone courses (3).

I agree with Young's definition on writing across the curriculum because the goal is to get students fluent in written language by implementing writing skills in every academic subject. My question to you is does it necessarily need to be coordinated amongst all teachers just like Young states? Does this coordination make it harder for teachers or create more work? Would it be better for teachers to implement WAC in their own way or form a comprehensive program like Young states? Young also believes that WAC programs should focus on "teaching and learning not on curriculum and assessment" (Young 3). Does this make theory make WAC realistic? How WAC be successful with no curriculum or assessment?

I like the section on writing to learn and writing to communicate (Young 9). What does young mean when he says writing to learn privileges the learner's language and values, and writing to communicate privileges the reader's language and values? (Young 11)

What would you do as a teacher to help the remedial students in your class? Do you thing diagnosing writing problems and then giving device drills and exercises remedy the problem? (Rose 352) Is the solution as simple as Rose makes it seem?

I do not agree that to be literate means to be acquainted with letters or writings which Rose states on page 352. I believe that it is more complicated than that because most are acquainted with writings and letters and some people may actually read but can not read on their level and need remediation. Some people can function all their lives with literacy problems that go undetected. Some students can read but can not understand what they are reading and some people can not read well but use dictionaries and context clues to make meaning of what they are reading. I think be literate is a broad term. What are your views on literacy do you think that being literate means being acquainted with letters or writings.

Response to Letter Blog #4

Dear Scarpa,

I definitely agree with you, but I found the reading more physically difficult than mentally, specifically on my eyes which effected me mentally by giving me a headache. I will make an attempt to respond to your questions to help clarify the authors' thoughts to the best of my ability. I believe Britton was saying that in general verbal messages are dominant or I could even interpret it further by saying that any communication through words is a dominant discourse. "The verbal structure, depends primarily on the dominant function." (Britton 152) I kind of agree with his theory of poetry being a dominant discourse because I believe anything can be considered poetry if you are creating it with the use of language. I think Britton is looking at literature and the use of words as poetic and if you look at it that way words are everywhere and dominate.

Britton states that there are three types of categories which are transactional, expressive and poetic. There seems to be a fine line that defines each category individually and personally I would not separate them as so because communicating is one discourse there are just different levels of communication. Maybe that is what he is trying to say also. I personally do not understand if he is trying to separate the literacy or non literacy discourses but I think he is stating that people use the different discourses for different communicating purposes.

I do not consider writing across the curriculum as an educational reform because teachers use writing and reading in every subject. If they incorporate the fundamentals and importance of writing in the classroom then it will make it a simple transition because in actuality teachers teach more than they think they really are.

I do not agree with Bean because English is not rocket science and no one is really asking the Science teacher to become the English teacher and teach their own subject in 45 minutes. Teachers of other subjects can incorporate short paragraphs as mini in class or homework assignments and just grade them on content first and grammar last, every little bit helps. A teacher should be happy to learn better writing and grammar techniques to help their students, because if writing is the dominant discourse then it will help them in their everyday lives and studies anyway.

I do not think Britton would agree with Bean's belief that all teachers can not teach English because Britton understands the difference of each discourse and since the poetic discourse is dominant teachers will naturally use their training to teach students to "make something with language." (Britton 158)

Most teachers are well rounded because they graduate from college and universities that prepare them with multi subjects. I believe teachers are more prepared to implement writing across the curriculum then spectators give credit. It is not like they are teaching students the new alien language it is just writing across the curriculum.