Week 5, Post 3: TDOC, Ch. 8: Magical Thinking in "Assessing Competence"

Briefly summarize your assigned jigsaw reading.

 It seems entirely justifiable that many of the misgivings voiced in class about the DOC program concern real-world implementation, especially when orchestrated by a single teacher, and particularly in the area of assessment.  If the planning and application of the DOC program seemed to demand super-human resources (or simply three full-time professionals, instead of one), the assessment aspect is similarly contextually-rich and, at least on initial perspective, impossibly arduous to pull off.

Assessment for most teachers means a) monitoring and motivating student progress, b) giving students appropriate feedback and c) translating student progress into grades for the student and the school.  Kutz, Groden and Zamel re-imagine the assessment process from a more student-centric point of view.  Critical to their program is that students and teachers are co-researchers.  Teachers are to help monitor and motivate student progress, however, at "no point is the teacher required to transform herself from helper into judge" (161).  Moreover, the authors disdain grading because "it interrupts rather than supports the learning process of most writers," giving a false impression of "completion" when the learning process is never really "finished" (157).  On the other hand, they recognize the importance of teaching students the process of wrapping up the writing process and the sense of closure.

The Kutz, Groden and Zamel method of assessment is really just an extension of the letter writing begun back in Chapter 6, "Discovering Competence," between Vivian Zamel and students in the writing program (this was, in fact, her sole function in the project: full-time correspondent/assessor).  For the student and the teacher, it sounds so simple, so organic and so idyllic, yet too good to be true.  Students are to write letters (or emails) to the instructor about class research and the instructor responds.  The student's sense of intellectual identity is honored and validated by the teacher's treatment of the student as a peer, since they're both in the same field: research.  In this form of assessment, the teacher must be careful to show students that she is learning from them as much as assisting their progress.  In this perfect world, students never require lessons on sentence building or mimicry of academic language because they learn it naturally, reading letters from the teacher, and automatically replying to the teacher with echoes of her own vocabulary and her grammar.  It's all organic and effortless. 

Anyway, it sure looks good on paper.

Week 5, Post 2: Nine Lives

Sketch out a 3-week unit for a Kutz, Groden, and Zamel course that meets 3 time a week for 50 minutes per meeting:
You'll want to include pre-reading activities, reading assignments, post-reading activities, brainstorming, drafting, revising, and editing/polishing.

day 1: introduce unit
day 2:?
day 3: ?
day 4: ?
day 5: ?
day 6: ?
day 7: ?
day 8: ?
day 9: turn in final draft of 4 page paper


Day 1: Introduction: Preparing for the Interviews

Students interview each other in pairs.  Prompt: "My favorite place to go.  Where?  Why?  What do you do there?"  

Pre-reading: Students write short responses to questions: What's the difference between the spoken word (they way we speak) and the written word (the way we write)?  Group disscusion.

Overview of the direction of the class is presented: the importance of research as a learning tool.

Reading: Students read transcripts of students from previous classes for models of how to make ethnographic transcriptions.

Post-reading: Students discuss the content and form.  How does the transcript look compared to most stories we read?  What are the differences?


Homework assignment: Students conduct three inteviews (1 family, 1 friend, 1 neighbor), then transcribe their favorite.  Prompt: "A Scary Experience."


Day 2: Follow-up to the Interviews

Pre-reading: Students bring in their transcripts of "A Scary Experience."  Individually, they write short responses to questions:

a. How did your interview go?  Any surprises?  Any challenges?  What the most memorable moment?

b.  How did the transcribing go?  Describe your personal method of transcribing.  Any surprises?  How did transcribing make you pay attention to the spoken word differently than when the first time you heard the interview?

c. After listening closely to the interview, did your feelings about it change?  If so, how?  

Reading: Students take turns reading their transcripts aloud in small groups.

Post-reading: In small groups, students discuss:

a. After reading your transcription aloud, did your feelings change about the transcription?  If so, how?   

b. Discuss the difference between your feelings when you first heard the interviewee's account and when you read it aloud in class.

Group disscussion summarizes small group discussion.


Homework: Students answer the questions (above) in a 1-2-page typed paper.


Day 3: Creating Narratives From the Script

Pre-reading: Students again consider and write short response to question from Day 1: How does your transcript look compared to most stories we read?

Reading: Students re-read the narrative written from the student transcript first presented on Day 1.

Post-reading: In small groups, students write short responses to questions: How does the transcript look compared to the finished narrative?  What punctuation is in the narrative that might be missing from the transcript?  How does this help the reader?  Note the paragraph structure in the narrative.  How does this help the reader?   Which is easier to read?  Why?  Do you think people think and speak more like the transcript or more like the narrative?  How might you account for these differences?

Group discussion summarizes small group discussion.

Homework: 1. Using the student model as an example, students create narratives based on their interview transcriptions (bring 2 extra copies for small upcoming group readings).  2. Students answer the questions (above) in a 1-2-page typed paper.


Day 4: Presenting the Narratives

Pre-reading: Students listen to speakers with different accents and dialects of English (SE journalist, Alabama preacher, Cockney musician, AAVE college student, Latino businessman, etc).  Class discussion: How does speech differ from place to place?  How can we account for different orientations to spoken English?  Is one dialect "better" or "worse" than another?  Is it possible that people with non-SE dialects are intelligent and have something worth saying?

Reading: In small groups, students read their transcripts, then their narratives aloud while colleagues read along.  Students are reminded that this can make readers feel vulnerable, and to look for positive aspects to praise. 

Post-reading: Students, responding to prompts, discuss the two narratives they heard/read: How is the narrative similar or different from the transcript?  Why is it different?  What limits do you note about written language that you don't find in spoken language?  How does the audience "add" to the listening experience in ways that they can't for a written piece?  In what ways does the writer address the audience in spoken language?  In written language?

Homework: Students answer these questions in 1-2-page typed paper.


Day 5. The Importance of Writing for Standard Discourse

Pre-reading: Students discuss: Why is it necessary to write well in college?

Reading: Students read a poorly written 5-paragraph essay, then they read a much clearer essay on the same subject.

Post-reading: Students discuss: How did you feel when you read the first essay?  How could you help this writer to clarify his points?  What is the tone of the first essay?  Of the second?  What vocabulary and grammar is specific to the second essay?  Would you prefer to read a textbook by the first author or the second?

Homework: Students compare the two essays by, reponding to the above in 1-2 page typed paper.


Day 6.  Professional Presentations  

Students take notes on presentations given by 2-3 professionals in the business community (real estate agent, lawyer, corporate executive, for example).  Each professional discusses the importance of using the best language possible, both spoken and written, in getting a job and in keeping a job.  After the professionals leave, classroom discussion considers: What kind of careers do these people have?  What are the benefits of such careers?  What are the responsibilities?  What kind of career would you like to have?  Why would you like that career?  Would using the best spoken and written language possible be more important or less important for the career you want?

Homework: Students write 1-2 pages responding to the above questions.  Also, students are asked to bring in a topic for their Unit 1 Essay, due Day 9.  Suggested themes: The Challenges and Importance in Academic Writing; The Varieties of English Discourse, Spoken and Written.



Day 7. Brainstorming

Students discuss the upcoming Unit 1 Essay, due Day 9.  Students discuss their tentative topics and possible support.  Students are asked to help cluster ideas for some arbitrary topic, such as,  "Women Make the Best Leaders in Politics." In small groups, students practice clustering other topics for possible essays.  Students spend the remainder of the class clustering and/or outlining an essay on their chosen topic.  With peers, students discuss direction and challenges that may come with their topic and support points.

Homework:  Write a rough draft of a 4-page, 5-paragraph essay on chosen topic.


Day 8. Rough Drafts

Students read over former students' rough drafts, then their much improved final drafts.  In small groups, students read each others' rough drafts and offer constructive criticism.  Students schedule office hour visits with teacher, when possible, for further rough draft discussions.

Homework: Students implement changes and write the final draft.


Day 9. Final Draft/Self-Assessment

Students hand in final draft of essay.

Students write in-class blue book essay (2-3 pages), discussing what they've learned during the unit.  How did you learn this?  How has the way you learned it helped you to learn?  How has it changed your attitude about language use?  How do you imagine applying what you've learned outside the class?

Week 5, Post 1: Five Units of TOPC

Following the program laid out in TDOC by Kutz, Groden and Zamel, what follows is an attempt at imagining a 15-week curriculum of theirs unfolding in a classroom with 3 hours of class per week.


Unit 1.  Weeks 1-3.  Personal Narratives

Objectives: Students will learn how to conduct ethnographic interviews and transcriptions; students will discuss and write about their findings, noting the functions and rules of written and spoken language.

Students conduct interviews in the community and transcribe them.  Classroom discussion revolves around the interviewing and transcription processes, and around comparing oral and written versions of a story. 

Student texts include a) their own transcriptions, b) peer transcriptions and c) other ethnographic transcriptions from the field.  In small groups, students discuss each others’ papers, noting differences and similarities between peer papers, and between student papers and professional ethnographers.  These comparisons include content, vocabulary, syntax, sentence structure, paragraph structure and tone. 

Students write one 4-page paper due the third week.  Students can choose from one of the following prompts or develop their own (subject to teacher approval): What have you learned about the similarities or differences in spoken and written language in your research project?  What are the different purposes of spoken and written language?  What are the different rules for spoken vs. written language? 


Unit 2. Weeks 4-6.  Advertising

Objectives: Students will learn how analyze the spoken and written word in advertisements.   
Project A: In small groups, students create their own ad campaigns.

Students watch and listen to pre-recorded videos of TV advertisements.  Class discussions revolve around content and persuasive techniques used in ads.  Students research and record TV, radio and Web ads using ethnographic methods, then transcribe the ads. 

Student texts include a) their own transcriptions, b) peer transcriptions and c) print ads and other published analysis of advertising.  In small groups, students discuss each others’ papers, noting differences and similarities between peer papers, and between student papers and professional analysts.  These comparisons include content, vocabulary, syntax, sentence structure, paragraph structure and tone.

Students write one 4-page paper due the sixth week.  Students can choose from the following one of the following prompts or develop their own (subject to teacher approval): What are the various advertising techniques?  What have you learned about the power of advertising techniques?  What are the pros and cons of advertising?

Project A: in small groups, students create their own ad campaigns, followed by a 2-page report explaining their choice of advertising techniques.


Unit 3. Weeks 7-9.  News Articles

Objectives: Students will learn to analyze the spoken and written word in news media.

Students watch and listen to news reports from TV, radio and the Web; they read news articles from newspapers, magazines and the Web.  Class discussions consider content and reporting techniques in the media.  Students research and record TV, radio and Web ads using ethnographic methods, then transcribe the ads. 

Student texts include a) their own transcriptions, b) peer transcriptions, c) print news stories and d) analysis of the news from published sources.

Students write one 4-page paper due the sixth week.  Students can choose one of the following prompts or develop their own (subject to teacher approval): “What are the various techniques journalists use to report the news?  Who decides what’s newsworthy?  What impact do news media wield today?”


Unit 4.  Weeks 10-12.  Songs, Poetry and Fiction

Objectives: Students will learn to analyze the spoken and written word in poetry, popular songs and short fiction.  Project B: students write one original short story.

Students listen to songs and read poetry and short fiction.  Class discussion centers on the message and techniques used in songs, poetry and fiction.  Students research and find songs, poetry and short story as well as published critiques of songs, poetry and short stories. 

Student texts include a) songs, poetry and short stories, both in class, and those found in their research.

Students write one 4-page paper analyzing two short stories; the paper is due the twelfth week.  Students can choose from the following prompts or develop their own (subject to teacher approval): Compare and contrast the poetic devices in the two short stories.  How do you think these devices made the stories stronger or weaker?

Project B: students write one original short story (3-7 pages), incorporating poetic techniques discussed in class, followed by a 2-page paper explaining why their use of poetic devices strengthens the short story.

Unit 5.  Weeks 13-15.  Scholarly Articles

Objectives: Students will learn to analyze the spoken and written word in college-level scholarly discourse.

Students will listen to college lectures.  Class discussion centers on the message and language incorporated into college lectures.  Students research and and record college lectures, then transcribe them following the ethnographic approach. 

Student texts include a) transcriptions of lectures, b) transcriptions of peers, c) scholarly articles.

Students will write one 4-page paper discussing two scholarly articles, analyzing the ways scholarly discourse differs from Standard English in general conversation.  The following prompts should be responded to in this paper: How do the authors present their thesis statements?  What are their main points?  For each paper, discuss the connecting devices.  What have you learned from these articles that could benefit your own writing in the future?

Week 4, Blog 4: TDOC, Ch. 6, "Discovering Competence"

I appreciate the jigsaw readings we did for TDOC, especially because this spared me reading some extremely dry material and privileged me with reading Ch. 6 -- from what I could tell, easily the most interesting chapter in the book so far.

Chapter 6, "Discovering Competence," represents the culmination of all the thought and preparation laid out in previous chapters.  This is where all the theory is put into action.  Here we see Krashen colliding with Piaget, Vygotsky and Brunner.  Here the authors turn loose their curriculum on developmental college students (the broken-wing starlings!), transforming the numb, disenfranchised into the invigorated and welcomed by way of ethnography, transforming every student into a little anthropologist/linguist, armed with a tape recorder.

Of course, it's what students do with the interviews and recordings afterward that gives the project true merit.  Rather than being spoon-fed little mouthfuls of info to memorize like most remedial students, this group discovers how language works and why it works, noting the differences between the written and spoken word, and understanding how and why the rules that govern it exist to clarify the process.

It strikes me as a tremendously freeing, energizing, fun way to teach and to learn, and I'll be excited to implement some sort of research project like this where the students get jazzed about language from such an organic level.

Of course, just how one moves students into the college mainstream after these delightful "finger painting" exercises remains to be seen.  A large portion of the program is directed to developing a curriculum that provides meaningful context for acquisition.  The classroom itself is seen, not as a catalyst for joining the intellectual conversation, but as as a killer of inspiration and acquisition, since it strips language of all context and meaning (p. 28-9).  Presumably, a program like TDOC is used as a stepping stone for students to acclimate them to the chilly, sterile environment of the classroom?  At what point is the student ready to turn from this "mother's breast" to drink a glass of cold milk with colleagues?

Week 4, Post 3: TDOC & Goens

The Discovery of Competence offers a model for language acquisition based on challenging the student to discover the meaning of language by having to use it in real situations.  The authors' most brilliant move, in my opinion, is the element of student-centered research.  Since these writers know from personal experience the benefits of digging through research, they decided to pull their students into the game; this follows form Shirley Heath's Ways with Words and her ethnographic research in the Carolina mountains.  Students are asked to interview friends and family at home, school and in the workplace, studying and writing about the way language is used. 

In this way, the TDOC approach shares much in common with Goens' model in that language is studied in real, meaningful contexts, rather than isolated and examined apart from workaday situations.  Goens' primary thrust, to integrate reading and writing apprehension together, is achieved through the TDOC model as well, since students are constantly considering the implications of the spoken word vs. the written word; they're forced to grapple with the implications of reading and writing from an almost anthropological perspective, deriving their own conclusions. 

Week 4, Post 2: What Fits?

The Discovery of Competence's "ethnographic approach" to teaching reading and writing is a paradigm shift, to be sure.  The question is: Does their approach fit college classrooms generally?

The authors refuse to accept a curriculum where language acquisition is sacrificed for mere language learning.  Like Krashen, they believe real acquisition only occurs in a meaningful context, that is, where a student must use it as a means to function socially.  On the contrary, most language learning is broken down into chunks and fed to students by the spoonful; they're memorizing it instead of figuring it out for themselves.

All of this is upside down in terms of the natural process of language acquisition.  Toddlers, for example, don't memorize grammar in order to understand their mothers.  To get an additional helping of food, the child learns to say "more."  In this natural way, language is acquired as a means to an end an not vice versa.

Where most classrooms deal with the abstract study of language sub-units (verbs, nouns, etc), TDOC's approach challenges students to become "ethnographers," studying their own writing and speaking, noting the differences in each, and arriving at generalizations about the rules and functions that underlie them.  Thus, TDOC's approach is not learning, but acquisition through research and discovery.

Most teachers of college remedial English don't have the luxury of re-inventing the wheel, which is what these three authors are doing, and what they're proposing that we all do.  Most teachers don't have the option of working side-by-side as a team of three brilliant researchers.  Most teachers, I fear, often feel less like teachers and more like ranchers, moving the herd from the fieild, into the corral, counting the livestock in the stockyards, obliged to follow in lockstep with the other ranchers.  The Discovery of Competence offers an ideal, a ring to reach for, though it's unclear how to get from point A to point B.

Week 4, Post 1: The Discovery of Competence

As a former ESL adult ed teacher with virtually no pedagogical education, The Discovery of Competence is both intimidating and liberating.  Though I'd gone to a handful of workshops and heard Krashen's name dropped, I'm afraid I wasn't hungry enough to dig down deep and find out what "meaningful context" was all about.  Besides, I felt I was overworked and underpaid as it was.  How to justify additional self-education?  On the other hand, it was no secret that the majority of our students in non-Krashen classrooms showed little sign of language acquisition (in spite of plenty of language learning), nor much desire to utilize the bits they'd learned.  Clearly, something was flawed in our methodology.

Kutz, Groden and Zamel's book points out that the gross errors in ESL courses can be traced back to the set-up of the average school classroom: teaching is focused on gleaning non-contextualized information as an end in itself, stripping education of all meaning for students.  If this is true in general, and if students struggle to find meaning in literacy and composition classes, it's reasoned, then it's time to teach these subjects in meaningful contexts, affording language acquisition, not language learning.  Reading this, I felt, on one hand, enlightened (Ah-ha!) and, on the other hand, as if the wind had been knocked out of me. 

I love the way they discuss the power of narrative writing.  While I've long enjoyed writing, it was hard to say why it seemed to take me out of myself and yet develop my sense of self.  The authors quote Gee, who explains that "human beings make sense of their experience...by casting it in narrative form" (40).  Their commentary paints a picture the narrative writer then standing back, like a painter, observing how the piece expresses his ideas, and what it needs to express them more fully.  Engaging in narrative, students have to "select details from experience and shape them into story...restructuring raw data and finding its pattern and meaning" (51-2).

Their survey of salient research on ways of thinking pertinent to successful narrative construction is illuminating.  While working with narrative can develop competence in students, there is a  requisite level of mature thinking that may preclude students engaging fully; this may explain why some students who seem capable of writing, fail to do so with depth.  What's needed is "adult thinking," or what Piaget calls developing past "childish egocentrism" to the "formal operational" level in order to reason abstractly, particularly when it comes to imagining and writing for an audience.

Chapter Six focuses on the "ethnographic approach" to learning language, which I find fascinating.  Far from alienating students for their existing (non-standard) ways of reading and writing, students are given projects for studying their own language, in particular the differences between spoken and written forms, and the discovery of the underlying rules that govern them.  Students' own writing pieces, then, are studied as "data," examined for stylistic differences, instead of being judged as right or wrong.  (In the margin beside this, I wrote: WOW.)

Again and again, we see why the book is titled The Discovery of Competence.  In this context, students who were labeled as lacking the necessary skills or talents -- "academically deficient" -- are "raising academically significant questions about the defining characteristics of a speech situation" (107).  This book, along with others like it, represents a major paradigm shift.  In an "acquisition-rich" environment, a "delinquent" student transforms into a scholastic star.  Perhaps equally important, this re-casts the role of teacher.  If recent controversy has colored the conventional teacher as the stubborn, authoritative problem in the situation, this envisions tomorrow's teacher as the adaptable "collaborator"-teacher, and the potential hero of thestory.

As to the application of such a heavily activity-based curriculum in a conventional college classroom, some head scratching is in order.  Most community college teachers, for example, are strapped with a very stringent curriculum and its concomitant regimen of assessments.  Exactly how Kutz, Groden and Zamel -- or, for that matter, Sugie Goens -- rose to the position politically to be able to move the chess pieces is a topic for another paper.  Short of that kind of clout, however, it's hard to imagine the implementation of such a program -- no matter how effective it may be -- either piecemeal or wholesale.   Still, the writers' research, passion and commitment is absolutely palatable.  Little by little, teachers eager to make a difference will be testing out out these concepts.  Given half a chance, I will, too.

Week 3, Post 6: Feedback, Please!

What kind of feedback or comments would you like from classmates on your Blog?  (Think both of your intellectual growth and your affective experience in the class.)

I welcome feedback that lets me know if I've connected with another student intellectually.  Also, I welcome constructive crtiticsm and/or questions that might alert me the possibility of my inadequately addressing the questions.  Affectively speaking, it would be nice to know if another human being connects with my rather personal take on the issues.  If what I say resonates, I'd love to know about it.  If the way I phrased my posting rubbed somebody the wrong way, I like to know that as well.  After all, we're all here to learn, share and potentially evoke some sort of reaction or feelings from our colleagues, ideally.

Week 3, Post 5: Blog Rubric

Look at the blog grading rubric that we designed in class (posted in the wiki for last week).  What tweaks or changes would you make?  Then try to flesh out a more specific rubric as follows:
To get a grade of C or above, postings must meet the following criteria....
To get a grade of B or above, postings must meet the following criteria....
To get a grade of  A, postings must meet the following criteria...

To Get a C or Above, Postings must:
      * address the question/prompt.
      * be completed by within in the month assigned.
      * engage in a way that summarizes the content of the text.
      * be grammatically clear, written within the conventions of paragraphs.
   
To Get a B or Above, postings must:
      * be completed within two weeks of the date assigned.
      * engage the text beyond mere analysis, offering personal connection.
      * invite limited degree of interest and commentary.
      * be relatively free of typos and other proofreading errors (after all, we're supposed to be reaching for AT LEAST as high standards as those we're cultivating and modeling for our students).

To Get an A, postings must:
      * be completed within the week assigned.
      * engage the text, taking the discussion in a fresh direction.
      * be reader-friendly, stimulating commentary.
      * be free of proofreading errors to a professional degree.

Week 3, Post 4: Pros and Cons to the South Plains Syllabus

After you look at the "conventional" remedial course syllabus:  In what ways does that course fit with your ideas about how a developmental reading/writing course should be taught?  In what ways does it contradict your ideas?  How would you modify the syllabus to fit with you own views of how developmental/remedial reading/writing should be taught?

The South Plains College English 0302-201 syllabus looks, sadly, like the typical syllabus one would expect at a typical JC.  It meets the bare minimum requirements in that it provides instruction in both reading (sort of) and writing.

However, after reading Goens' articles, based on the successes of the SFSU IRW program, one has to feel sorry for South Plains developmental students.  Unlike IRW, the South Plains program does not integrate reading with writing.  In fact, there is very little college level reading to challenge these students, the majority of readings a mere 2 pages in length (paltry even by high school standards).  Regarding the principle of time, Goens notes that reading and writing are gradual processes, requiring more than a single fall semester to learn; the South Plains course is designed to be squeezed into a single semester compared to the SFSU model that covers a full year.  To be fair to the teacher, Joseph Fly, even if his intention were to authentically integrate reading and writing (he notes, if in passing, "In the study of the written word, rarely is writing isolated from reading since these are mirror processes.") nonetheless, he appears hamstrung by the time factor alone.

Perhaps the greatest achievement of the IRW, and the greatest downfall of this average remedial course, is the lack of what Goens calls Academic Membership.  The IRW accomplishes this by including students in the intellectual conversation of the general university.  Where the South Plains course tends to treat students like juvenile delinquents by punitively chastising them for attendance errors (then it "rewards" them with the "incentive" of skipping the final exam?), and presumably denying them credits for remedial coursework, the IRW offers full credit and, by challenging students with a rigorous college-level curriculum, treats them like the scholars they are.

Week 3, Post 3: Second Thoughts

The Goens articles lay out the Integrated Reading/Writing Program set in action at SFSU; the second article is an update on the challenges this program has faced, the benefits it provides, and a reflection on the overall debate to eliminate remedial programs at the college level.  The program was in part a reaction to legislative plans to eliminate all remedial English at the CSUs, and in part a response to thoughtful research on integrated programs by McCormick, Nelson, Calfee and many others.  Politically, it was a manuever to incorporate composition studies with remedial studies, potentially dodging the legislative bullet aimed at remedial programs.  It was also an opportunity to experiment with new methodologies to develop a sound and ground-breaking curriculum at a time that demanded creative innovation.

After reading these articles, my opinions shifted somewhat compared to my prior two blogs.  While I still need to research and understand the baffling failings of reading and writing education at the secondary level, I'm rethinking my stance in general.  My first blog this week expresses how I felt (feel?) about the need for students entering college to be ready for college-level work.  Now I see that up to 45% of all CSU Freshman require remedial help, which suggests that the actual situation statewide is far different from the ivory tower high school where I graduated 30+ years ago.  Somehow, these today's CSU Freshmen are getting great grades and have great SAT scores and TOEFL scores, yet they need one, sometimes two years of remedial scaffolding.  I thought it might have been around 10-20%, but it's nearly half of all students, which indicates it's got to be a systemic issue and something must be done to heal the system.

Rather than focus on the causes of this "cancer," the SFSU English department (some of them anyway) decided to find a cure for the disease on their doorstep by re-imagining the basic reading/writing curriculum, achieving stunning results.  One recalls the movie "Stand and Deliver," in which a single high school instructor re-invented his approach to teaching math at an inner-city high school, revolutionizing academic thought about the potential within the secondary classroom.  In the same way, our very own English department has chosen to blaze a new trail, and, best of all, their research proves their curriculum works.

Week 3, Post 2: What's on the Menu?

After reading the Goen and Gilotte-Troppe paper "Integrating Reading and Writing," the method of integrated instruction for remedial reading and writing, the most intriguing aspect, beside the improved statistical successes, is the individual students' appreciation for the way it "turned on a lightbulb" for them.  As to the nuts and bolts of a curriculum for such a course, I would be inclined to draw heavily from this milestone approach.

Personally, I find it stimulating that they were as demanding of their students as they seem to have been, requiring that they engage in self-monitoring and even assessing themselves as part of the grading process.  Were I to design a curriculum, I would endeavor to integrate reading and writing, including as wide and challenging range of materials as Goen and Gilotte-Troppe did -- expository, fiction, poetry and hypertext.

By far the most meaningful English courses I've had required me to express myself in a personal manner and to address language as a means to tackle critical thinking.  Beyond instilling a sense of purpose in my students, my curriculum would need to challenge them to engage in the intellectual conversation, developing an awareness of purpose, point and audience.  If I can do this and leave them with a sense of satisfaction in reading and writing, my curriculum will be meaningful.

Week 3, Post 1: Who Gets In?

These are tough questions for experienced educators and legislators to grapple with, to say nothing of the lowly neophyte grad student.  The questions might be summed up in a question apropos to the filling of the Titanic's lifeboats: "Who gets in?"

Key to the filling of the college "lifeboat" is whether the student brings the requisite skills to row his own boat.  Of course, in a perfect world, there would be an infinite supply of lifeboats and endless space in each one.  That is, if we place the highest premium on inclusivity.  But certainly there is a point of diminishing returns on most things, and college education inclusivity might be one of them.  Just as I-Pads are esteemed in part because of their price and partly for their utilitarian value, graduation from an academic institution carries weight because of a) the difficulty to get in and b) the usefulness of the education it offers.  If I-Pads suddenly dropped in price to $1 each, no doubt their esteem would drop with the price.  Similarly, if unqualified students are permitted to enter college, or, more problematic, continue through normal coursework after failing Subject A, the general standards  of that school's education stands to diminish, devaluing the school's reputation.  In a short time, while more students might be entering that school, their diplomas would become a devalued currency.

This said, when it comes to English skills, what's fair for a college to expect of students who enter? Indeed, why, one might ask, should students be held responsible for any mastery of the language at all, whether it be listening, speaking, reading, writing or grammar?  Certainly a good number of students enter with a great proficiency in their first languages.  Why bother with English if they plan to return, as some do, to their first language neighborhoods, to their native countries to build their careers?

Fair enough, but how shall we instruct them?  SFSU, for example, has dozens of foreign languages spoken on campus.  Would it be feasible to teach each student in his own first language?  Actually, as it stands, no, but eventually, if all classes went online for example, yes.  But then, that SFSU would be a very different institution.  If students want online programs, they can be found.  Rather, it seems probable that a college like SFSU is popular today in part because it's a solid education in, among other things, English skills.  Indeed, students come to American universities to develop those English skills because such skills, in themselves, are highly marketable in today's job search.

But first students need a minimum level of English proficiency in order to function in courses across the curriculum.  This is why students are tested on SAT English abilities, and why foreign students are tested in the TOEFL.  (As to whether these tests are sufficient for measuring a student's capacity to succeed at the college level, those are questions for another forum.)  Bottom line, I believe we must agree that each student ought to arrive with skills that equip him to study (if not excel) at the college level.  These skills include ample vocabulary, grammar, listening, speaking, reading and writing skills.  They need to understand their professors and they need to be able to converse in discussion sections.  If there are borderline students whose skills need fine tuning, then they ought to be given the chance to catch up to speed, so to speak.  As it is, such students are now given a full year to do so with the assistance of tutors provided free by the school itself.  Some might argue that this is too much time, others might say it's not nearly enough.

Certainly it might be said that there is an undue amount of consideration placed on reading and writing at the college level, and that this gives foreign students an edge over many students raised in this country who grew up in homes where English was not the first language.  This group, sometimes called Generation 1.5, tends to come from lower income neighborhoods with poorer schools where language skills like writing (indeed, some would say, education as a whole) is not emphasized.  Generation1.5, some say, represents the new America and, as such, deserves every chance to succeed, both for their sake and for the benefit of the country as a whole.

As far as English skills, Generation 1.5 brings a knowledge of spoken English which foreign students can hardly match.  Yet these skills are scarcely rewarded; indeed, some would say they're ignored in favor of focusing, instead, on what they lack, namely writing proficiency.  Ironically, as a useful skill beyond graduation, how many students will be constructing meaningful essays?  On the other hand, according to the Liberal Arts tradition, writing and the language arts as a whole are vital because they develop the student's intellectual depth and permit him to enter into the the intellectual conversation.  More importantly, such skills, it's said, develop not mere rhetors but independent thinkers, the cornerstone of democracy both here and abroad.

Ultimately, to admit students lacking college level English proficiency does the greatest disservice, not to the institution, nor to native English speaking colleagues, but to those struggling students themselves.  A college education is an expensive gift these days, both in terms of time and finance.  How just is it to admit students who show insufficient skills to keep up with the regimen?   To offer remedial students a full year to come up to speed seems fair enough, if not generous.

Benefits of Activating the Active Reader

It seems the theory behind teaching the Active Reader is less important than the practical payoff, as far as the reader is concerned.  However, from what I learned in class today, and from Katz's essay in Writing on Writing ("Helping Students Use Textual Sources Persuasively"), we study Teaching to the Active Reader only in part to teach reading.  The other aspect, as Mark implied today, is that, by teaching structured reading, we train readers to become structured writers.  By making our students conscious of their own reading, and of the various parts of an essay, they have a greater perspective of the potential for communication in such a piece.  Thus, potentially, they're getting groomed for thinking about Point, Purpose and Audience.  The last point is especially driven home via Active Reading, as the reader is made to understand his role -- the Audience (what Kinneavy calls the Decoder) in the reading/writing process.

As to how to instruct the Active Reader about the concepts and the implementation, the answer to both is to show, rather than tell. Thus, before reading, the reader is asked to consider his habits of selecting a text, making inferences about it from the title, headers and photos, and to anticipate what's coming. Next, the reader is asked to be conscious about how his pre-existing knowledge helps frame the reading, how his reading experience orients him as he reads through the piece; he's asked to note in which passages he tends to speed up and where he tends to slow down and mull things over.  After reading, the reader is asked to reflect on the passage he's read; he's also asked to what degree he's impelled to read additionally on this subject, or to discuss it with friends or colleagues.  By becoming conscious of these techniques, the Active Reader can become more conscious of the role he plays in interacting with the text.  This consciousness alone has the potential to empower him, motivate him to read, since he's "in the driver's seat."  Beyond this, as he becomes aware of the power of Audience, he prepares himself for addressing such and audience in his own compositions.

Strategies for Myself and for Teaching Challenged Readers

Struggling through "A Historical Perspective," I was amazed and baffled that difficult terms were only superficially clarified, and were soon supplanted by more and more difficult terms.  At length, I realized that I'd need to come back and read it a second time (which helped enormously), so I underlined phrases that seemed important and wrote questions in the margins.  For example, on pp. 34-5, when the authors speak about a reading process that tries to emulate Skinner's "analysis that explained and controlled the behavior of animals," in the margin, I wrote, FOR EXAMPLE?  Proceeding through the text, I became aware that the writers' intent was a cursory review of the competing schools of literary research, not a more typical work where the reader is treated to examples and details.  In order to try to keep track of these vaguely outlined "camps," I wrote notes in the margins, for example, on p. 37: BEHAVIORISTS VS. MENTALISTS and TOP-DOWN VS. BOTTOM-UP.  These helped me keep in mind key points when I read the piece again. Completing the graphic organizer, courtesy of Mark, made everything much clearer and much more meaningful.

The background knowledge I brought to reading "A Historical Perspective" consists of a course in Psych 101 (summer 2011), which I dimly recall as presenting an introduction to psychology, including a delineation between cognitive, neurolinguistic and psycholinguistic.  Of course, I've been a reader myself for years now, and I was somewhat able to draw from my own reading experience to consider to what extent this text made sense, or resonated with me as a reader.  (Not a lot.)

My strategies and cognitive processes, i.e, how I muddled through it all, consisted of trying hard, taking notes per the above, feeling very tired, dozing off, dozing off very deeply, waking up, feeling quite guilty that I wasn't succeeding with my cognitive processes, and resolving to wake up the next day and try again with a fresh start.  With the second read-through, I found Mark's graphic organizer was the perfect means to help me pick the most relevant bits and outline them so as to make more sense of the whole experience.

"A Historical Perspective" 2.0

If you happened to have read my other blog on this same paper, you know I was reacting pretty emotionally.  Here, I'll speak to the Blog #4 assignment more fully.

Essentially, it's an overview of five schools of literary research, from 1950 to the present.  Conditioned Learning corresponds to Skinner's theory of conditioned response.   Reading was to be broken down into its basic elements; thus, phonics were taught to help students "sound out" words.   Natural Learning said language acquisition is a natural act, and should be integrated with other language teaching, that is, listening and speech.  Additionally, learning, they said, must be taught in meaningful context, not drills, such as phonics was often taught.  Information Processing gave credence to the reader's prior knowledge, and said learning was only a question of modifying what the learner already knew.  In reading this was promoted via summarization, mapping, self-questioning and predicting.  The Sociocultural movement emphasized that learning was not an individual process, but depended heavily on context.  Reading, then, was most effective when taught in "cooperative" environments such as small groups.  The current, most predominant school, called Engaged Learning, purports to wed Information Processing with the Sociocultural camp.  Here, the locus of learning is the individual and that individual in the context of the group.

Reading this paper led to great disappointment (see my other blog "Head Scratching").  In hindsight, this was because I assumed that, since I'm in a teacher training program, the text we were given was intended as some kind of practical manual.  Upon reflection, my assumption was wrong; it now seems intended as a way to help us experience what our challenged students must sometimes feel like when reading (unduly) difficult material.

The background knowledge I brought to this effort consists of a course in Psych 101 (summer 2011), which I dimly recall as presenting an introduction to psychology, including a delineation between cognitive, neurolinguistic and psycholinguistic.  Of course, I've been a reader myself for years now, and I was somewhat able to draw from my own reading experience to consider to what extent this text made sense, or resonated with me as a reader.  (Not a lot.)

On the first pass of this article, I began eagerly, but soon found myself wading waste-deep through thick, muddy waters.  Aside from the very clear summary, "Emergent Premises," (p. 55-9), which, I believe, the common man (or woman) could understand, the body of the paper is so full of dense, barely defined vocabulary, it would appear the target audience is anyone except the common man (or woman).  On one hand, I find it flattering that the authors presume I'm privy to their body of knowledge; on the other hand, because I'm not, and because they make little effort to assist, frustration ensues.  I know that, to excel in a course, I need to be passionate about it, and to be passionate, I need to, first, understand it.  As I read, I kept hoping the vocabulary would be explained more clearly.  My confusion gave way to self-criticism, alienation, fear of failure and an accompanying anxiety.  It occurred to me that, if this was any indication of my capacity for success in this program, I might need to reconsider my career direction.

Continuing, I was amazed and baffled that difficult terms were only superficially clarified, and were soon supplanted by more and more difficult terms.  It became clear that I'd need to come back and read it a second time (which helped enormously), so I underlined phrases that seemed important and wrote questions in the margins.  For example, on pp. 34-5, when the authors speak about a reading process that tries to emulate Skinner's "analysis that explained and controlled the behavior of animals," in the margin, I wrote, FOR EXAMPLE?  Proceeding through the text, I became aware that the writers' intent was a cursory review of the competing schools of literary research, not a more typical work where the reader is treated to examples and details.  In order to try to keep track of these vaguely outlined "camps," I wrote notes in the margins, for example, on p. 37: BEHAVIORISTS VS. MENTALISTS and TOP-DOWN VS. BOTTOM-UP.  These helped me keep in mind key points when I read the piece again.  Again, completing the graphic organizer, courtesy of Mark, made everything much clearer and much more meaningful.

"Green Eggs and Ham"

My Grandma Croom was a teacher in a one-room school house in Oklahoma during the Depression.  My folks split up when I was five and Grandma looked after me in more ways than one, including very patiently reading with me every time I came to visit.  I think my father felt a bit guilty about the divorce and, as a sort of peace offering, he bought my sister and me a series of books, including "Green Eggs and Ham" and "Go, Dog, Go."  This was the glorious beginning of my life as a reader.  It taught me a love for the written word, simple poetic repetition, and Dr. Seuss' irreverent humor.  Later, I remember reading classes in First Grade, sounding out the phonics.  I remember "Weekly Reader," a monthly "newspaper" with little grammar games and interesting stories.  Extra-curricular reading was encouraged in our schools, and I recall reading the Narnia books when I was twelve; I recall falling in love with the beauty of words from the simplicity of John Steinbeck and the grandeur of Shakespeare.  My deep, dark confession is that, though we were taught speed reading in the Ninth Grade, almost immediately afterward, I seemed to have lost the knack.  As a result, a heavy reading load in college was a bit intimidating.  As an ESL teacher for 25 years, I believe I was able to capitalize on this "learning handicap," empathizing with many students who struggled in this and in other ways. 

The Shorter Winding Road

When I was recently laid off from a 12-year position teaching ESL -- along with the rest of our adult ed center -- I thought back to my original motivation to write and to teach.  My most memorable undergrad course was Rhetoric 101.  Along with Eng. 101 and Comp. Lit., also offered at Cal, our writing course shared the goal of "freshman writing course," but, where the others sought to essentially direct students through the 5-paragraph essay, Rhet. 101 schooled us in the "art of persuasion," that is, the argumentative essay.  To reach that destination, we had to engage in lively debates and learn critical thinking.  I look forward to working with students on the remedial level (not entirely new territory after ESL) as well as the "art of persuasion" level.  The SFSU Comp MA looks to be the best path to that goal.

"A Historical Perspective" (Head Scratching)

I'm embarrassed to say I'm more than a bit intimidated reading "A Historical Perspective..." by Alexander and Fox.  It's a very ambitious paper, yet it tries so hard to skim over the surface and give a concise overview, that, to me at least, it comes up short on crucial details.  As an absolute novice regarding this mountain of research, it's a struggle to maintain interest in the various schools of thought contributing to the study that is Comp Studies.  We barely get a solid definition of the behaviorists, the mentalists, etc., when they're whisked away by a new decade and a new group that utterly ignores the forgoing research, proposing their own new Gospel According to ______ (fill in the blank). As a writer and as a reader, I can only surmise that Alexander and Fox assumed their audience was adequately familiar the various groups; this would explain the brisk and superficial discussion on each school.  From my humble standpoint, I wish I knew more about each group and its ideas.  I have a hunch such a paper would be far more interesting and far more practical to a teacher training program like ours.