Using U-Tubes and Google Chrome

If anyone else is as backwards as I am in these matters, I just want to point out that if you use U-Tubes in class, and you have gotten the message that U-Tube is going to phase out your engine, you can upgrade from Google to Google Chrome without having to get an administrator to approve this upgrade. U-Tube will be supported by Google Chrome, among other engines.

Twiducate.com - a social network for educators

I wanted to share with all of you a new site being beta tested called twiducate.com. The site allows teachers to create their own social network for each class that they teach. As many of us have expressed concern about using Facebook due to privacy issues, this site overcomes that by making each particular twiducate page private. I am testing it in my winterim class (as well as testing using Twitter to deliver daily journal assignments). My class page number is 9230. Love to get your thoughts!

Ellen Feig

Conversation about Writing in ALP

Several ALP faculty members have been meeting with Andrew Tomko in order to begin forging a closer tie between writing assignments in ALP and in WRT 101. What follows is a conversation between Maria Kasparova, who has led the ALP faculty in this initiative, and Bonnie MacDougall about issues that came up at last week's meeting. Both Maria and I invite you to join our conversation with your own insights. Thanks.

From: Maria KasparovaSent: Thu 10/29/2009 12:30 AMTo: Andrew Tomko; Bonnie MacDougall; Gail Fernandez; Milena Christov; Bruce Gospin; Lori Talarico; Caroline Kelley; Gemma Figaro; Margarita Bernstein; Roya Kowsary; AMER LANG PROGCc: William Jiang; Carol MieleSubject: RE: WRT-101 and ALP Meeting Minutes

Dear all, attached are minutes of today's meeting. If you have any questions or suggestions, let me or Andrew know.ThanksMaria

To: Maria Kasparova; Andrew Tomko; Gail Fernandez; Milena Christov; Bruce Gospin; Lori Talarico; Caroline Kelley; Gemma Figaro; Margarita Bernstein; Roya Kowsary; AMER LANG PROGCc: William Jiang; Carol MieleSubject: RE: WRT-101 and ALP Meeting Minutes

I'd like to add to and clarify some of my thoughts about the discussion yesterday.
* the rhetorical patterns we teach are certainly artificial in that most good writing blends them; however, each pattern has associated language [comparison/contrast: ~er than/ as....as/ more.....than/ the most.../the same/similar,etc] and we can't expect second language learners to intuit this language; it must be taught, used by students in a thoughtful context and then used again more accurately in thoughtful contexts.
* it is all too easy to teach the rhetorical patterns and associated language simplistically;therefore, let's choose three, any three, patterns for each level so that we can teach them at some depth, i.e. with texts that we ask students to interpret and use as a major or minor point in their essays.
* although I think narration is difficult, the point I was making is that the language used to manage time is difficult--it could be taught through analysis of a historical event just as well as through ficitonal story--but that it should be taught at a level that incorporates text and allows time for revision.
* it makes sense to me to teach reasons/comparison and contrast/cause and effect together either in Level 2 or Level 3 because some of the same language can be used in all [because/ in order to/ so...that,etc.] and would give students several chances to use and therefore truly comprehend that language.
* it makes sense to me to teach some form of managing time and process together because both deal with forms of chronology. Perhaps along with those patterns, we could present the importance of minor support [summary/paraphrase/description, etc.] and give more time to the development of minor support.



Bonnie,

Thank you for taking time to clarify some points in our Wednesday’s discussion.You made some interesting suggestions which I understand come from your personal experience in the classroom, and I’d like to respond to some of your thoughts.
First, I like your idea of introducing text and analysis of a historical event or a fiction story when teaching a narrative. It would expose students to other forms/genres of narrative in addition to the personal narrative which most ESL books already teach.I agree with you that narrative is difficult for students to master but in my opinion not only and not as much because of “the difficulties of introducing the language used to manage time” as you stated as because a narrative especially a personal narrative is closest to creative writing in a way.When you tell a story to your audience, you go through some unique creative process and the way you tell your story seems to be more important than what happens in the story. The challenges associated with using rich expressive idiomatic vocabulary such as action verbs and image nouns are obvious for ESL students.That’s why we should try to introduce those points in the earlier levels of the program, so that students can build up language tools such as vocabulary and learn to handle verb forms and verb tenses (as well as less standard means of expressing time) starting from beginning levels.
Next, I understand your concern and I agree that there isn’t enough time to teach several rhetorical patterns in depth at each level of the program. The question is then what patterns should we choose to cover and what should we base our choices on? What do we prepare our students for after the ALP? How do we measure their success in mastering all those patterns, etc? I think all those questions should be addressed in the program review and during our ALP meetings.
At our Wednesday meeting it came up that argument and comparison-contrast are given most attention in composition 1 courses for the reason that students will inevitably need to do argumentation and comparison-contrast at some point in their college courses.I make an effort of introducing cause-effect and then move on to argument in level 2.My students love it (even the weak ones) because it allows them access to many interesting and controversial topics of the day and social issues where they can express their opinion and analyze the opponent’s point of view when building their argument.Of course, they don’t do it at the same level of complexity as composition students or native speakers do. For that we don’t have enough time or language skills in the ALP, but I still think that it’s worth exposing students to it even if just for making them think critically and for heightening their interest. Our students are intelligent and educated people and we should try to expose them to more challenging topics and assignments.I hope that our conversation will continue and more people will participate.Maria



Maria,

I enjoyed thinking about all of your thoughtful comments and will continue to mull them; on first reading what struck me more than anything was your comment about using argument in Level 2:

"My students love it (even the weak ones) because it allows them access to many interesting and controversial topics of the day and social issues where they can express their opinion and analyze the opponent’s point of view when building their argument."
I, too, find that students relish times to express and debate opinions at Level 2, I think because Level 2 marks the beginning of fluency for most students and therefore marks one of the first times they are thinking in English. It was your parenthetical comment (even the weak ones) that really got to me. I think you're right, and that convinces me that we should teach argument at Level 2 because if we can strengthen the weaker ones at Level 2, then we'll be strengthening the whole Program. Also I can so easily see areas where Grammar 2 and Writing 2 enforce one another if we teach argument in Level 2.
If we teach argument at Level 2, it is a natural progression to build in a unit on minor support at Level 2 where we focus on summary/paraphrase/description/tiny narratives as the fodder for minor support in arguments. I think they need such training and at present we have no designated place for it; treatment of minor support is more or less willy-nilly mixed in with overall points about writing essays. If we teach argument and minor support, then the next logical progession for me would be comparison/contrast, which is a layered way of making an argument, and we need more time to work with the layers. By layers I mean that students must hold two subjects, an A to be compared with a B, rather than just one subject/topic as in arguemnt. Beyond that, they must make sure the two subjects are in the same category (critical thinking); then, too, they have to weigh the way(s) in which they will compare (or contrast) A and B, and they have to decide (critical thiking) if it makes more sense to emphasize comparison or contrast of A and B. I can easily see a Level 2 Writing syllabus that offers these three units. By units, I mean study of these rhetorical models and parts using texts and requiring that reference to those texts be part of minor support. As you say, such ideas can be further discussed and teased out at both our regular Department meetings and during our Program Review.
I, too, hope others will join our conversation here. I find this forum extremely helpful in sharpening my ideas about changes we will be making in the Program.
Bonnie

What Goes on in ALP?

Contrastive analysis and forging a fusion of syntactical mastery and semantic precision are two of the things that go on in ALP.

Members of the ALP faculty had requested, been granted, scheduled, and twice rehearsed for our eventually cancelled half- hour ‘slot’ on the agenda for the Fall Faculty Conference. We had wanted to tell all of you what we do because we have a very definite impression that you might not know.

When we meet non-ALP colleagues, the conversation almost always moves to “ERRORS,” so let me say a few words about them.

Here is the scenario: you are in Poland, and you do not speak a word of Polish. In four semesters you will be expected to take 20th Century Polish History, Business Law, Human Anatomy, and 19th Century Polish Literature at the college level, and all of these courses will be taught only in Polish. By then you will have long since put away your childish toy, the bi-lingual dictionary. Let’s say Polish has about the same number of words as English, which is not true, but for the sake of argument, let’s say Polish has 600,000 words. You are on your own, and that means in four skill areas: listening, speaking, reading, and writing at the college level. This is not survival Polish; this is academic Polish. Of course you will make errors as you continually use, abuse, and slowly master the Polish language.

Contrastive analysis is “the systematic study of a pair of languages with a view to identifying their structural differences and similarities” (Wikipedia). We could mark a paper with “run-on,” by which we mean ‘major syntactical ERROR,’ or we could explain to our student that Spanish and English overlay one another awkwardly as regards the use of commas and periods. In Spanish, commas are used to separate units of language--we call these sentences-- that are about the same thought. Once the thought is fully expressed, a period is placed to end that thought whereas in English a thought may well travel among a grouping of sentences, but each sentence is nevertheless ended with a period. (I think Spanish is far more logical in distributing commas and periods in this case.) Knowing something about how English overlays another language makes a conversation about the correct use of periods in English more effective than marking up “R/O” sentences.

Forging a fusion of correct syntax and semantics is very difficult. Syntax is “the study of the principles and rules for constructing sentences in natural languages” (Wikepedia). Semantics is “is the study of meaning” (Wikepedia). My training is in English Renaissance Literature, not in TESOL or Applied Linguistics, and that is why I am not attempting to define these terms (though I figure Wikepedia paid a linguist to define these terms for them); however, to a grand-mothered but rather experienced lay person like myself, forging a fusion of correct syntax and semantics means helping students begin to think in this language and therefore in its many structures, all of which have a rather specific purpose. We eschew developing a thought in one language and then translating it because we end up with English sentences like: “To my house went after his working my friend and his hungrys dogs.” Instead, we present common sentence patterns “[subject-verb-object-prepositional place explaining where, prepositional phrase explaining when],” as in “My friend and his hungry dogs went to my house before dinner.” We ask students to write grammar journals about their lives and times (authentic thoughts instead of Dick and Jane, and this is in the Grammar not the Writing class) using English structures that they have learned to write correctly. In time, we extend these structures to contain more thoughts. For example, what was the purpose of your friend’s visit to your house? In order to answer these sorts of questions, my students learn that their sentences have “legs,” as in, “My friend and his hungry dogs went to my house before dinner in order to share my dinner with me.” There are more questions to ask, such as, how often do they come, what are his dogs like, do you like this friend who sponges off you, etc.? Often it is in ‘answering’ those questions by writing related sentences that we start to get tonal and semantic authenticity, as in: “I have been living alone in an apartment in Hackensack since I arrived in the United States a year ago. I have to keep two jobs in order to pay for my rent and food. That means I don’t have enough time to study, but I am taking English at Bergen Community College anyway. I have a lazy and selfish friend, and he and his hungry dogs come to my house before dinner twice a week in order to share my dinner with me. I do not like this. Sometimes I don’t have enough dinner to serve them. I can’t even serve myself. I don’t know how to tell this man to stay home and keep his dogs home, too. I want to eat alone in order to get enough food and enough time to do my English homework.”

The above statement is written entirely in grammatical structures that are demonstrated at Level 2. In Level 2, students make the transition from writing paragraphs to writing essays, and if the Grammar teacher as well as the Writing teacher requires journals, students write about forty journals in a semester. They also write more structured essays in class. In Level 2, students focus a great deal on controlling the structure and meaning at the phrase, clause and sentence level. In Level 2, they use subordination primarily through time clauses, and they write about what is real; in Level 3 students focus a great deal on subordination through clauses that give, among other things, reason, result, purpose, and condition. They engage in writing about the real, but also about the unreal such as what could have, but did not happen, or what they would do if only, and like patterns.

My purpose in writing this is to start a conversation about what we do in ALP among all of us who teach English, with the hope that we will enter these discussions at levels other than ERRORS.

The Narrow Parameters of the HSPA Exam

“What kind of English/writing instruction have our students received in the state’s public high schools prior to coming here?”

I imagine we’ve all wondered this on occasion while grading a stack of Comp I papers at half past midnight on a Tuesday.

Kelly recently presented on the High School Proficiency Assessment (HSPA) at The Teaching of Writing Circle (PowerPoint below) and I must admit that it was the first time I’ve really been informed by any actual research into the above question.

For one, as should come as no surprise, it seems that a lot of class time is spent preparing for this test. Furthermore, the test is concentrated on one narrative essay and a first-person letter-to-the editor style persuasion piece (with probably lots of room for uninformed opinion).

Obviously, the value of those two types of writing as preparation for the demands of college is debatable in itself. Yet, more interestingly to me is how presumably wide-spread the preparation of this test must have been for the students in our writing classes. Considering that the vast majority of our student populace has attended a state public school (and has done so since 2002 when the test was first administered), it is staggering how the preparation for these two types of writing functions - squeezed into the exact parameters of this assessment - must have dominated the last three years of writing instruction they’ve received prior to coming to Bergen.

Perhaps my ignorance of this is an anomaly amongst most of us (especially amongst those who have children in the schools) - hence my reaction seems a bit naïve. However, if this uniform experience is truly this wide-spread, I really think we all would benefit from engaging in more discussion on how to address the narrowness of this instruction and find ways to push our students in new directions that they will most certainly need to have experienced for the 300-level courses many of them wish to take in the future.

Adam

Second Life and the Classroom

In the online world of Second Life, virtual residents known as avatars can move through life-like situations including creating and maintaining businesses, friendships and social situations. Companies like Coca-Cola sponsor concerts and Reuters has actual correspondents who report on Second Life news. Recognizing that this virtual world lends itself perfectly to education, more and more college professors are using Second Life in online and classroom teaching. According to CNN, over sixty universities and colleges have set up classrooms in this online world where professors deliver lectures, oversee classroom discussions and hold office hours.

So how does this work? Any one can go on to the site at www.secondlife.com and download the software. Once downloaded, you create your own avatar and then decide which area of the site you would like to enter. Linden Labs, creator of the program, has worked with educators to set up classroom portals where students can enter (as their avatars) and interact with other students and the instructor. Currently, these portals cost $1000. for initial set-up and approximately $150. a month to maintain. However, one does not necessarily need their own portal or world in order to use all that Second Life has to offer. The tools available through the program allow one to move their avatar through the virtual world and to chat with others through a text based program. In addition, educators can develop unique content for the site which can be read by the entire community.

For many online instructors, Second Life adds an element of "real-time interaction." While online learning is the wave of the future, many students and professors miss the face to face interaction that comes with classroom learning. Avatars in Second Life act as "virtual" stand-ins and can replicate the characteristics of the person allowing for a more personal experience.

If you are interested in learning more about this virtual world, check out www.classroom20.com/group/secondlife.

Ellen Feig

PTSD Teaching: Trauma in the Classroom

Shakespeare 3, This is Shakespeare 6 —over

Shakespeare 6, This is Shakespeare 3 —over

Shakespeare 3, Give me a sitrep when you have the enemy in sight—OVER

THE ENEMY IS IN SIGHT—over

Wilco—OUT

This is a passage from the pedagogical memoir, Soldier’s Heart by Elizabeth Samet, about a Yale PhD teaching literature to West Point cadets. It brings up some important issues regarding everyday trauma and the classroom. First of all, there’s the challenge of teaching people exposed to trauma, accident, and death. The term PTSD was first diagnosed after soldier’s returned from Vietnam to describe a malady of the heart (hence the book title) : Happy are these who lose imagination: They have enough to carry with ammunition. Their hearts remain small drawn. Their senses in some scorching cautery of battle Wilfred Owen “Insensibility” . Here’s a link to the book: http://www.readinggroupguides.com/guides_S/soldiers_heart1.asp

Now while BCC is not West Point, the community college is still a place of much accident and trauma. There is not a semester gone by that I do not hear horrible stories about someone’s father shooting their brother, soldiers back from Iraq, death, and foreclosure. Moreover, as the President said in our last Spring conference there are more vets at the school than ever. How much of this trauma is just made up by students is debatable. This doesn’t diminish the fact that trauma presents a real pedagogical challenge to the community college professor in just as profound a sense, as that experienced by a professor at West Point. And these phenomena have increased after 9/11. That is what the memoir “Soldier’s Heart” is about. But they increase or decrease during any time of war or recession. As we can see from the cars on the lawn at BCC, a lot of people are enrolled, many due to traumatic life circumstances.

PTSD is an imaginative and mental “insensibility.” This raises the question how might literature and the humanities be involved in the expansion or recovery of a sense and imagination that gets shut down due to traumatic circumstances? Battles that rage in Afghanistan and Iraq end up being battles that rage within us. Thus, I’ve been considering a renewed pedagogical perspective on PTSD in the classroom (not just war and the recession but the traumatic things that students bring into the classroom). This doesn’t have anything to do with “psychology” or “counseling” but it does mean using literature to address the deepest forms of mental and psychological blocks that our society meets out. This means listening or expanding their imagination with, for example, hard-boiled heroic models of men and women who manage to act honorably even when society seems senseless and dishonorable. While we may begin with discussions of “imprisonment” as a material condition, the traumatic fact is that there are greater threats in terms of imaginative incarceration through routine and duty.

This thinking about the classroom as a site for regaining our “sensibilities”, ultimately leads to another conversation about the tense relation between liberty and obedience that society demands. The “market” into which we are sending our students begs us to prepare them for societal conformity— the demands of business, employment, and the government— but also requires that we teach them how to innovate. How do we use the classroom to alternately serve or undermine the fact of societal conformity, obedience, and its often incongruity with innovative thinking? The humanities classroom may provide the imagination and fortitude required to face such everyday traumas depending on its own tendencies toward conformity. Now our only challenge is how to replace wounds with words.