Readings

10/10/08
Huot, Brian. “Toward a New Discourse of Assessment for the College Writing Classroom.” College English, Vol. 65, No. 2 (Nov., 2002), pp. 163-180
fantastic stuff here. Really good stuff on portfolios, very practical too in terms of grading issues and how we need to redefine assessment, separating it from grading and testing. I want all CI people to read this!
Huot, Brian. “Reliability, Validity, and Holistic Scoring: What We Know and What We Need to Know.” CCC. Vol. 41, No. 2 (May, 1990), pp. 201-213.
A lot of distinctions worth knowing: reliability and validity, and how they are confused and how V gets slighted. Also, “direct writing assessment.” Definitely wortth reading again. Huot discusses the uses of holistic scoring, though, and none of them refer to clasroom grading. But I think that is indeed a form of holistic grading—at least the way we're using it at Emmanuel. Maybe that's a mistake? It begs the question, what are we doing and what are we after? He's talking more about course placement and large scale assessment. But isn't that kind of what we're doing? You've also got norm-referenced and criteria-referenced testing. But this is all about testing. Is that differrent from classroom writing assessment? Should it be? I'm confused. Good.

10/4/08
McAndrew, Donald C. and C. Mark Hurlbert. “Teaching Intentional Errors in Standard English: A way to 'big smart english'.” English Leadership Quaterly. 15. 2. May 1993.
Interesting stuff about SE and errors. Cites Joe Williams. Not sure I buy the thesis, though. They do bring up the very important point about the value of error in growth. Big.
Murdick, William. “What English Teachers Need to Know about Grammar.” English Jourrnal (In Press). ??
This is great stuff. I have to read it again. He analyzes some of the vast unconscious grammar rules a child must know in order to say, “I let Mary keep it.” Also talks about diffferent types of errors, not just TSG, but generative grammar. This essay might be huge for me to use. I left TONS of notes on the backs of pages with ideas for papers, classes, etc. What I would like to do is take some of this and bring it outside of the English Dept, though.
10/2/08
Kolln, Martha. “Everyone's Right to Their Own Language.” CCC. Vol. 37. Issue 1. (Feb. 1986), pp. 100-102.
takes up the issue that everyone and everybody are indeed not singular. Interesting, though I'm not sure if it's useful to me. She distinguishes each from everyone, and I'm not sure I buy it: everyone in the room was singing their own tune—is okay, but each person was singing their own tune—is not. Interesting. I wish she had taken it to the level that, by definition, every-one means that there must be more than one one. Okay, I'm done.

9/30/08
Heath, Shirley Brice. “Standard English: Biography of a Symbol.” Standards and Dialects in English. Skopen, Timoth and Joseph M. Williams (Eds.). Cambrdige: Winthrop Publishers. 1980.
Amazing stuff here. Traces the current obsession with SE from its beginnigs, which seem to be around the turn of the 20th century. Talks about how until the mid 1800's variety in language was seen as a positive, not a negative, and how that didn't change until after the civil war, I think. A tremendous resource for exploring the truths and history of SE.

9/6-25/08
Hillocks, George Jr. & Smith, Michael, W. “Grammars and Literacy Learning.” (no more details)
History of grammar texts. !! intentions of grammar: to understan scripture, and “to express esoteric doctrine for the wise, while disguising it from the simple without falsifying it”!!
Gets deep into MAK Halliday’s systemic functional linguistics (SFL). Stuff relevant to my class on p. 728. Cites Ben and spell his name wrong!
Good stuff here about trying/not trying to simplify the linguistic system into user-friendly grammar.
Tons of stuff.
Baron, Dennis. “Teaching Grammar Doesn’t Lead to Better Writing.” Chronicle of Higher Education;
5/15/2003, Vol. 49 Issue 36, pB20, 1p,1
discusses and ACT study that found college profs care more about grammar than high school teachers. How grammar mistakes are “easy targets for critics”. Support for my idea about grammar not as performance but “the real goal of engaging readers in an interesting conversation.”
Hunt, Tiffany J. & Hunt, Bud. “The Conventions of Conventions.” English Journal. Vol. 94. No. 4.
March 2004.
More stuff about how grammar out of context is useless. Talks about the rift that “existed” between those in favor of grammar and those not. Also, a lot of stuff about grammar as a meta-language. Conscious versus unconscious understanding.
Cazort, Douglass. Under the Grammar Hammer. McGraw-Hill. 1997.
Goes over the top 25 most common serious grammar errors, and attempts to provide a user-friendly way of overcoming them.
Yarrow, Rachel. “How do Students Feel About Grammar?: The Framework and its Implications for
Teaching and Learning.” Changing English. Vol. 14, No. 2, August 2007, pp. 175-186
Argues that grammar can be disempowering when taught outside of a meaningful context. Something I agree and disagree with, especially if I want to pursue the idea of teaching grammar as knowledge, not performance. But mostly stuff I like and agree with. Also, some stuff about how pressure make people perform worse.
9/6/08
Williamson, Michael M. “Common Sense Meets Research: The Debate over Grammar Instruction in Composition Instruction.” The English Record. 1986.
Discussion of how we may think we learned grammar vs. how we really did; Hartwell and Eley, etc. Expresses a lot of what I am trying to get across to faculty who assume the position, If they aren't learning it in comp, who is teaching it?
Asseline, Marlene. “Teaching Grammar.” Teacher Librarian. June2002.
Brief review of issues and controversies in teaching grammar, and some vague suggestions at the end.
Andrews, Richard et al. “The Effect of Grammar Teaching on Writing Development.” Brittish Educational Research Journal. Feb. 1006. Seems like a good resourse.
Good overview of many studies that all lead to the usual “grammar instruction doesn't help writing.” Sentence-combinin is found somewhat helpful, but not much.
Hartwell, Patrick. “Teaching Arrangement: A Pedagogy.” College English, Vol. 40, No. 5 (Jan., 1979), pp. 548-554
Teaching technique for improving writing: filling in connetions between disparate sentences. The idea that modes are not found in pure form anywhere outside of school.
• Also, the notion of commitment in a sentence within a paragraph; level of abstraction, rather than just topic sentence and support.
9/5/08
Petrosky, Anthony. (red notebook) “Grammar Instruction: What We Know.” English Journal. Dec. 1977.
Overview of the Elley et al. Study and a study by R.J. Harris (1962). Same stuff.
Farrell, Thomas, J. (red notebook) “A Defense for Requiring Standard English.” PRE/TEXT 1986.
This is where to go if you want that racisti dumbass who doesn't think he's racist but argues that you are racist if you say that standard English is more white than it is black. He even cites the fact that some black people have learned SE as an argument that it therefore must not be white English. Genius.
9/4/08
Elsasser, N & John-Steiner, V.P. “An Interactive Approach to Advancing Literacy.” Harvard Educational Review. 1977. (GP1)
Talks about using Vygotsky's theories and Freire's pedagogy for advancing literacy. Nothing too new here, but some interesting lines about context and education.
Baugh, John. “Response and Comment.” ??? (GP1)
Talks about BEV and has some charts and facts about it. Discussion of how BEV is closer to ancient Greek gramman than is Standard English. Talks about use of standard dialects for domination. (“copula”= linking verb)
8/25/08
Graff, Gerald. “Deborah Meier's Progressive Traditionalism.” Clueless in Academe. Chapter 14.
Really interesting. Must read Meier. Graff at the end disagrees with her “localist bias,” but I think he misses the point there and loses the argument. This could be a good springboard.
---. “The University is Popular Culture.” Clueless in Academe. Chapter 1.
Mentions Julie Lindquist. Talks about demystifying the rules of the club.
“Arguespeak” -- persuasive argument as the language of academe
very in line with my thesis
perhaps missing issues of diverse students, conflicting primary discourses
Kurt Spellmeyer/Carol Severino, “Where the Cultures of Basic Writers and Academia Intersect.” Journal of Basic Writing: 1992. Check it out!
Quote on page 30 I may really disagree with.
“Vertical disconnect” b/w level of ed. Seems like my topic.
Pagnucci, Gian. “The Perils of the Narrative Life.” Living the Narrative Life.
Gian discusses ways in which narrative writing is overlooked in the academy, and what that costs us. He, rightly, argues that academic epistemology itself is a narrative, and that by nominalizing everything, academic writing loses all possibilities for excitement.

8/24/08
William, Joseph. (1981) “Phenomenology of Error.”
classic piece. Also relevant to the idea of context and that trying to educate people by taking rules and their violations as absolute and existing outside of a context is bad and silly.
8/22/08
Shor, Ira & Freire, Paulo. “Do First-World Students Need Liberating?” A Pedagogy for Liberation: Dialogues on Transforming Education
Talks about the “culture of silence” and Shor's “Culture of sabotage” in schools. How to handle classroom behavior.
The limits of education in terms of liberation
*Freire's word-world contradiction (p. 135) here strongly reflects Delpits context-text contradiction.
8/19/08
Brown, Cynthia (1974). “Literacy in 30 Hours: Paulo Freire's Process in Northeast Brazil.” Freire for the Classroom. Ed. Ira Shor.
Shor, Ira & Freire, Paulo. A Pedagogy for Liberation: Dialogues on Transforming Education. (exceprts)
Some really interesting stuff on practical applications of Freire's ideas: issues of power in the class, the authority that the teacher always must have, sexism and racism in the class, rigor, issues of teaching grammar even (very Delpit, I'd say) on p. 73. Also, using students' first-world context as a building point for education.

8/16-19
Delpit, Lisa. Other People's Children.
So much in here. Clearly very influential and highly cited. Hard to take too. She points out that a lot of what people like me do in the name of a liberatory pedagogy (especially for nonmainstream students) can serve to worsen the situation, not better it. She focuses a good deal on the importance of teaching the dominatn discourses to these students and raises issues of authority in the classroom. There are some views here that are hard to fit neatly together, thought I won't call them contradicting. Though I do think she deals too quickly with an issue or two, and that these present some weaknesses in certain areas.

8/15/08
Delpit, Lisa (1995). “The Politics of Teaching Literate Discourse.” Literacy: A Critical Sourcebook.
Reacts against Gee's assertion that nonmainstream children cannot acquire dominant discourses in the classroom.

8/14/08
Lunsford, A. A. & Lunsford, K. J. “'Mistakes are a Fact of Life': A National Camparative Study”.
CCC 59:4/June 2008
Bruffee, Kenneth. “Collaborative Learning and the 'Human Conversation'.” Crosstalk.
Thought as internalized conversation (Vygotsky)--collab learning
thought—conv—comm—values
Writing: internalized conv. Re-externalized: hence, two steps away AND a return
Rorty's “normal discourse”, also “abnormal discourse”
to know a field is to know its ND, not its facts, formulae, etc.

8/13/08
Emig, Janet. “Writing as a Mode of Learning.” Crosstalk.
Britton, James. “Spectator role and the Beginning of Writing.” Crosstalk.
Vygotsky's ideas that writing is drawing words
first-order versus second-order symbolism (objects, words)
written language becomes first-order(?)
learning through imitating identities
Lunsford, Andrea. “Cognitive Development and the Basic Writer.” Crosstalk.
Interesting stuff about working with people just short of the ability to formulate true concepts
de-centering
*Berthoff, Ann. “Is Learning Still Possible?” Crosstalk.
Vyg and Freire
Pedagogy of exhortation vs. of knowing
Chief law of growth
Triadic Model
dialectical notbeook; abstracting vs. generalizing; argument vs. persuasion.