https://docs.google.com/document/d/15jDs9CUUtyJ6WJ2pCpLkpDEjVTWVjQVAQzbh3unzgzE/edit

 

I couldn’t get this website to transfer this as I wrote it, and it kept messing up the formatting so here is the link instead

Nelson’s main point seemed to be that teachers can’t completely predict how their students will interpret information and communication in the classroom. Kate was a great example of this, and she really resonated with me. Although the information given makes it seem clear that she followed instructions on her assignment sheet, she still received a bad grade and pretty rude comments. However, we are not given any information about her classroom experience- did the teacher go over the assignment in class? Was it the first paper she had written for this teacher? How much explanation was given? Were there outside resources and examples of great papers? I think the failure of the article to answer these questions makes it hard to gauge how mean the teacher was really being (IE, if he went over detailed instructions in class and had many examples, I could understand the comments more) and how much Kate had really missed.

 

Anyways, that was my rant about the writing. Aside from that, I have been in Kate’s exact situation several times- I felt like I did a great job on an assignment, worked very hard, and still got a C.

 

One time in particular really pissed me off. It was actually my first college paper in my first college class, and I worked my ass off. It was due a month after I started working on it.

 

The guidelines were super vague, like Kate’s, and looked something like

 

In three to five pages, with at least one outside source, write about one change you

would like to see in the world. Use MLA format and your works cited page does not

count toward the page requirement.

 

There wasn’t a whole lot else- only formatting rules I can’t remember because.. Who cares?

 

Anyways, I chose to write on legalizing assisted suicide. My argument was that it should be legal to kill yourself humanely, or to have someone else assist you rather than both of you facing legal consequences. I used three sources and wrote a 7 page paper, and I followed all of the formatting instructions. I explained that I thought it should be an intensive legal process, which would deter those who are making the decision impulsively, and should require signatures from family members that they were notified.

 

When I got my grade back, I was stunned. My paper had very few comments on it, and they were all negative. The only feedback the teacher gave was writing “not true” next to my argument, and that it was too cruel to make sense. At the end, she wrote a brief note that my point disgusted her, and she could not, in good conscience, give me anything higher than a C grade. She even acknowledged that I had followed instructions perfectly.

 

I was pissed. What. The. Fuck. She gave us an open ended paper, and I wrote about something I believed in strongly. Because she disagreed, even though the prompt told us to write about whatever we wanted, I received thirty points off. It was ridiculous.

I tried to talk to her about it. She told me that her class was no place for ideas like that, and directed me towards talking about race instead. Apparently, she was looking for a paper about bringing equality into the world in some way, and even though this was not said in class or on the assignment sheet, the only people who received A’s or B’s wrote about that.

 

It turns out that was the focus of the class- with special attention to the quinceanera tradition. She had expected us to read through her syllabus and write something related- hopefully- to hispanics, but anything about race would have pleased her.

 

I changed my writing style to suit her wishes, and received an A on all of my other papers.

 

I’ve never forgotten that, and honestly I wish I had reported her for her unfair grading. I am sure something would have been done, and the C made me get a B in my first class. I come from an intense family, so this infuriated them.

 

I think Kate’s situation was similar. She worked very hard and followed what she was told, but had issues that the teacher never specified beforehand (to our knowledge). The teacher made her feel stupid, whereas mine made me feel angry, but still.

 

I never want to make a student feel like this. I want to be as clear as I can, but at the same time miscommunications will happen. I think for my first given assignment as a teacher, I will have students turn in a rough draft so I can make sure they understand the assignment. Or perhaps, they can have a rewrite instead to correct mistakes for a high grade.

 

Either way, it is unacceptable for teachers to behave like that. Teachers need to remember that they are fostering the advancement of young and impressionable people, and while that student is only one out of however many, to the student, the teacher is much more.

 

A simple, ‘good job’, or ‘nice improvement’ can change a student’s path. It can inspire them. Because, honestly, not everyone writes the same way, and so many people write in an amazing way that will never fit academic styles.

I was failing freshman English. This was pretty weird for me since I never failed at anything. Also, I constantly read instead of doing things—like, really important assignments and future type goals. So why would I struggle with a class based on reading?

Perhaps it’s because I have always hated asking for help, not matter the context. Even if there was no possible way I would know something- I hated asking. If help was offered, I would politely refuse and struggle alone. Honestly, this method worked for me quite well for a strangely large chunk of my life. I made it through school on the honor roll without ever asking a question in class.

I’m sure this sounds like some obnoxious level confidence, like I think I know everything. That’s really not it. I didn’t have confidence. I didn’t think I knew everything.

I was just scared of sounding stupid.

I was afraid of being wrong.

But freshman high school English forced me to change. I had to go to this teacher, whose class I had below 50% in, and say “I don’t know what I’m doing. I don’t know what you’re talking about. I might as well not be in this class because I don’t know what the heck is happening.”

It’s not like she wasn’t aware of this- she read my papers. I think she was more on the fence about judging me and deciding if it was that I was super lazy or struggling

She really felt for me. I had never done a five paragraph essay before, and I was pretty sure the word thesis was made up by some demon. It just didn’t click. I would pull quotes that were irrelevant, and my thesis was usually just a factual commonplace. I didn’t even know what the word analysis meant.

When I read, I was just along for the ride.

When I wrote, I knew what I was doing was wrong, but I didn’t know how to do it right.

To my credit, the book I had to write my first five paragraph essay on was A Tale of Two Cities. I barely understood the book, and didn’t even come close to analyzing it.

The teacher knew that this was not a good practice novel, and switched me to To Kill a Mocking Bird. She had me read the whole thing and meet with her every day at least once to talk about it. I told her which part I was on and what I thought about it. I ate all of my lunches with her, and stayed after school for tutoring with her three times a week.

We didn’t do anything other than to talk about the world of Atticus Finch, Jim, and the kids.

At the end of the book, Jim died. I was pissed. I read this whole damn book about an innocent man who was racially convicted and he just dies. End of story. What the hell.

That day I went in to speak with her, and she knew I had read the ending. Apparently my reaction is a common one.

Then, she asked me, “why did Jim die?”

I stared at her like she was stupid. “I don’t’ know. He shouldn’t have tried to run away from prison I guess.”

She said something like, “yeah, but think about this. The author is in control of the entire story. They picked every aspect, and drew you in to this world. They made you recognize Jim’s innocence and wish for him to be free. If they did all of this, why did the author kill him?”

I told her that it’s because the book is racist. She quickly stated that books do not discriminate or have feelings.

I then said that maybe the author was trying to say that certain kinds of people were racist. She drove me to dig further. I said that maybe Jim was so likeable so the audience would be sad when he was killed, because the author wrote in a racist time.

 

She told me to try to write a paper about that, with that sentence as my thesis. She helped me find quotes that enforced that point. We wrote a 5 paragraph paper together, a little at a time each day, until I had completed it. She gave me an ‘A’ and told me this was all I had to do—make an assertion about a work and try to defend it.

That was the first time I ever understood this.

It wasn’t an awesome paper. But it was a start.

As far as the articles go, I agree and disagree with both of them. Personally, the five paragraph essay format really helped me to learn to analyze, find supporting evidence, and dig into deeper meaning in a work.

However, it has been nearly a decade since I’ve taken this class and I never use the five paragraph format now. It feels juvenile and basic, so I stay away. Moreover, I almost failed a class because I did not understand it, even though I was an extremely competent writer in many other ways (especially fiction).

I think this format does not work for many people, and often hinders the understanding of writers. The only reason I grasped it was because a lovely teacher helped me in their free time because they genuinely wanted me to succeed. Not everyone is so lucky.

The five p essay should not be a requirement. It really should be a tool to help students understand principle aspects of academic writing- a central idea, evidence, structure, and flow. However, it is not the only was to teach this, and as the articles said- it often hinders creativity due to its’ strict structure.

It should still be taught as an alternative, because it will help some people. However, it should not be the standard.

 

Activity theory revolves around the idea of medium, subject, and objective.

It is an interesting study that does not focus on the relationship between the author and audience, as the study recognizes that audiences can be ambiguous or non-existent in the mind of a writer during composition. The study focuses on the objective of writing, which is common to all mediums. A to-do list’s objective is to remind, an essay’s objective is to persuade, etc.

This idea of objective leads into a main point of the article, which is specialization. The article states that general level English  “courses are extremely ambiguous because those involved in it are teaching and learning the use of a tool (writing) for no particular activity system” (page 8). Since English professors teach these subjects, they teach it to the specializations of their department. With this, comes the intricacies of essay formats that many students may never utilize again, especially STEM students.

The article suggests that these introductory English classes pertain to what the student’s main activity system will be throughout school and/or their career, rather than one that is utilized by a completely different department

 

It does not argue for the abolition of beginning English, but instead a more stylized course with a specific object other than ‘improving writing skills’. For example, a course may be designed to teach an engineering student how to write an engineering based essay (idk what that would look like, but I’d bet it’s different).

 

Personally, I really relate to this theory because I have tutored for several years and consistently come into contact with students who just do not click with beginning English. They are mostly motivated and otherwise good students, but are both struggling and frustrated.

 

They feel upset that they are having to learn English paper writing skills that do not pertain to their futures, and frustrated because they are unable to perform the way they are supposed to. When coupled with the variety of standards different English professors have, the subject is quite difficult.

Personally, I had a very difficult time with the five paragraph essay format because I did not understand how to analyze texts. I had been taught several times, but nothing seemed to click to me. In my high school freshman English class, we were reading “A Tale of Two Cities” and I had a “D” in the class after only a few weeks in. I was a straight “A” student, but I could not analyze to save my life.

 

The text we were working on was extremely dense and difficult, and I just could not make sense of it.

To help me understand the concept, she had me write a fictional story of my choosing and analyzed it in front of me, without me speaking or giving input. I understood what she was doing. She pulled quotes out from what I said and described them in context. She said what certain words seemed to say about my character or the event, and how events implied a deeper meaning. Not all of what she said was true, but she was able to describe the character in my fictional story as I had pictured him while I was writing. She showed me that any aspect of the piece could be analyzed, from my choice of character gender, to certain literary devices, to the title and beyond.

She created an activity system for me that was completely different from what I had been taught before. I had a goal that made sense to me, personally, as a lover of fiction, and being taught in that context made a huge difference in my grade. I received an “A” in the class, and have continued to improve.

 

To this day, I think of writing essays in this same way, but most people do not. As the text states, “Change is not one-directional. It is accomplished through joint activity” (page 6). Each person’s mind works differently, even if only slightly, and some activities just will not click.

I think of writing as asserting a piece of yourself into a form of communication. As the text says, this may be for “communicating information, making an argument, expressing a creative idea…[and involving] ethical choices (31). Each time you write, you leave a piece of yourself behind in what you’ve written, the words you’ve chosen, the way you’ve written them, your handwriting, the medium, and other details that give the reader information about you. Writing conveys so much more meaning that the text that is read. This is why English is a study in addition to a language- the way the text was written changes the story.

Writing is also an interaction that involves an audience, writer, and text, which “are all dynamically related in a particular context” (20 1.2). I think that the most difficult thing to understand about a language is this relationship. For instance, nothing out of a textbook will teach how to choose between the words pretty and beautiful. People learn to choose because of the context these words have in their personal lives, and each person may have a different idea about why these words are different. One may be valued over another, and other people may use them interchangeably with no difference. Ultimately, understanding the relationship between your text, your intended meaning, and your audience is difficult, but the connection must be made on small and large levels.

Context is also an important aspect of writing. Context is the reason you may not address your professor by their first name in an email. It is the difference between sarcasm and seriousness. It is the reason that saying “all lives matter” at a black lives matter rally may come off as insensitive. It plays a key role in audience interpretation, and is also subject to change with time.

Key terms for thinking about writing are audience, context, interaction, positivity, personality, technique, and style, among so many others. I hold these foundations very closely, and also try to teach by them. I think no pieces of writing should be identical. Sure, some writing will have the same text, but it will never have the same relationships, context, and timing. For example, consider the following message

I’m coming over tonight.

If this message is received in a text, it seems casual, like it’s between friends.

If this message is received in an email, it may seem like a confirmation.

IF this message is received hand written and anonymous, delivered to the reader’s door, it seems super creepy.

Context, audience and writer relationship, and form really change the interpretation of the same words, and are essential aspects of writing.

That said, there is a systemic technique essential to writing: syntax. I am not referencing grammar, using oxford commas and correct clause structure, but am instead referencing form. Form conveys a great amount of meaning in itself through many facets. Form can be poetic, rhythmic, or it can be simple, like a grocery list. It can be formal and typed, like a letter of recommendation, or casual and texted like a group text with friends. No matter what, form dictates what is communicated to the audience, just like in the text examples of “I’m coming over tonight”.