Anne and George both have different ways of how the first draft should be. George tries his best to make the first draft as good as possible. He likes to make adjustments as he writes his first draft. Anne will literally write all that comes to her head because it is just the first draft and it’s supposed to be your start and not something to really go in-depth about.  In my process of creating a draft, it is a combination of me just writing down my ideas but also tweaking it throughout my process. I also tend to wait until I’m finishing the whole entire draft and then read it over and do all the tweaks that I see. Most of it would have to do with grammar or if I wanted to add more sentences to truly go in-depth on what I’m talking about. My current writing process makes the draft go through and finish smoothly because I end up doing the majority of the tweaks before I finish. Then when I am done I just how to worry about minor things because I always try to answer the prompt of getting my agenda across. The most difficulty I would have is not fully looking at in-depth after I finish because I felt like I did everything.

Hi Everyone,

Believe it or not, we are just about at the half-way mark of the semester.  We will be doing some formal evaluation next week, but in the meantime, this a good time to pause and reflect on how you’re doing so far and to think about what you would like to accomplish in the next eight weeks.  This long weekend may also be a good opportunity to catch up on any missing assignments.

• Baruch is closed on Monday, October 11th, so I will not be holding my regular office hours, and you do not have any assignments to complete!
• In advance of Wednesday’s class, please read Vershawn Young, “Should Writers Use They Own English.”  (You can find the link to the text under the “Texts” tab.). We will be discussing it in class on Wednesday, so have it available when you come to class.  Young wrote this essay in response to an opinion piece published in The New York Times by Stanley Fish.  Young includes some of Fish’s argument in his essay, but if you’d like to go back and see Fish’s full piece, I’ve provided a link to that too.
• For Wednesday, also watch Jamila Lyiscott, “Three Ways to Speak English”.
• Please write a response to these two texts and post it to the blog as a new post.  Your post should be 350-500 words and must be posted by 11:00 am on Wednesday, October 13th in order to receive full credit.  In your post,  you might want to consider the following:  What were your initial reactions to these two texts?  What do Young and Lyiscott have in common? What messages did you take away from each of these texts? Both Young and Lyiscott use unconventional strategies for conveying their messages.  How might you connect the form of their texts with their content?  Did anything either of them said particularly grab your attention? If so, what was it?  Did you find that you agreed with these authors’ perspectives? Why or why not?  What ideas stuck with you after reading Young and watching Lyiscott? What questions are you left with?

Enjoy the long weekend, and I will see you on Wednesday!

Please take the time to read through this post carefully, taking note of due dates and being sure you understand all the details.  Reach out to me if you have any questions!  Have a great weekend!

1. Literacy Narratives Due by Sunday, October 3rd.. Share your essay with me by creating a Google Doc folder, giving the folder a name with the format “Your Name – ENG2100” and then sharing the folder with me at [email protected].  Once you have completed your essay, place it in the folder.  This folder will be the repository for all your finished major assignments this semester.

As you work on your essay, over the next few days, please keep in mind the following:

–Your finished version should be significantly different from the draft we discussed this week.  The revision process is not a matter of light editing and adding more detail.  Each of you should be engaging in the difficult work of real revision – which often means letting go of our early writing, deep rethinking of our general plan, and moving in entirely new directions.  I expect to see that you have made substantial changes to your drafts.

–As we have discussed, successful Literacy Narratives will tell a story about YOU. They will offer both narrative (storytelling) and reflection.  When we finish reading, we should feel we know you a little better.  The voice in the essay should be YOUR authentic voice.  Resist the pressure to tie everything up in a neat happy ending at the end of your essay.  It’s ok for a personal narrative to be complex and unresolved, just like life!

–Feel free to reach out to me if you have specific questions about your Literacy Narrative!

2. Dear Reader Letter :  Once you have submitted your Literacy Narrative (hooray!), please take 30 minutes to compose a “Dear Reader/Dear Writer” letter to reflect on the experience of crafting your Literacy Narrative.  You can think about it as a letter to me, or to some anonymous reader, or as a letter to yourself, the author.  When you have completed your letter, please name the file (in a way that will make sense to you and to me), and place it in the Google Drive folder that holds your finished essay.  Please share your letter with me by Tuesday, October 4th.

In your letter, you may want to address the following questions.  They are meant as suggestions, so don’t feel like you need to respond to all of them.  Be sure to compose your letter in paragraphs.

–What were you trying to accomplish with this essay?

–What went particularly well in this process?

–What aspects of the process were a struggle?

–How did the peer review process go?  What did I learn from reviewing my partners’ essays? What was it like to get and give feedback?

–Identify one line or one detail from your essay that you feel particularly proud of.  What do you love about it?

–What do you wish you had done differently during this essay writing process?

–What did you learn about yourself through this process?

–What else do you want your reader to know?

3. For Wednesday’s class, please read Gloria Anzaldua, “How to Tame a Wild Tongue” in  Join the Conversation.  Before class, identify a passage from her essay that seems to you to be particularly interesting, important, or confusing and share it here, as a comment on this post, together with a brief explanation of why you chose it.

You will need to have the text of “How to Tame a Wild Tongue” with you in class on Wednesday, October 5th, so be sure that you either print the essay out or have the ability to look at it on a laptop or tablet in class (not on your phone).

This week we will be continuing to focus on our Literacy Narratives.  Your work for this week is as follows:

1. Submit your Literacy Narrative Draft by Sunday, September 26th.  Your draft should be placed in our shared Google Doc Folder, inside the sub-folder Literacy Narrative Drafts.  Your essay should have a title that you have selected that tells the reader something about your literacy narrative, but the file should be named “Your Name Literacy Narrative Draft”.  Some of you were a little confused and called your pre-writing a draft, so be sure to retitle your pre-writing so that it’s clear which is your Pre-Write and which is your draft.
2. Peer Review – An important part of your work this week will be reading and commenting on your Writing Group members’ drafts.  In our shared folder “Literacy Narrative Drafts”, you will find a file titled “Literacy Narrative Peer Review”.  You can also find the link to that file HERE.  Follow the instructions in that document in order to provide feedback to the members of your group.  Please complete your Peer Review by Tuesday, September 28th.
3. Reading – Please read Richard Straub, “Responding — Really Responding — to Other Students’ Writing” (JTC pp.43-54).  In a comment on this post, please share one idea from Straub’s essay that you will try to carry with you into your work as a peer reviewer this week.  Please share your comment by Wednesday, Sept. 29th.
4. Conferences:  Each Writing Group will be meeting with me this week to discuss your Literacy Narratives.  These meetings will happen on Monday and Wednesday and will take the place of our regular class session on Wednesday.  Groups 1, 2, and 3 will be meeting with me on Monday, and Groups 4, 5, 6 will be meeting during our regular class time on Wednesday. All conferences will take place in our regular classroom, NVC 12-130.  These sessions are mandatory.  

Monday, September 27th

12:30 – 1:00 Group One – Chelsei, Andrew, Karanjot, Fatima C.

1:00 – 1:30 Group Two –  Ashley, Mia, Yerica, Reynaldo

1:30 – 2:00 Group Three – Fatima B., Julian, Yousra, Kushpreet

Wednesday, September 29th

12:30 – 1:00  Group Four –  Yair, Stefany, Rachelle, Kevin M.P., Ilaisher

1:00 – 1:30  Group Five  – Janice, Michelle, Raul, Steve

1:30 – 2:00  Group Six –  Kevin M., Helen, Michael, Destiny

After reading Anne Lamott’s, “Shitty First Drafts” and George Dilia’s, “Rethinking the Shitty First Draft” we are able to view the different aspects of writing a first draft. In Anne Lamott’s, “Shitty First Drafts”, she openly describes how she puts all her thoughts into a piece of paper first. She states that the order, dialogue, nor idea matter; what’s important is jotting everything that comes to mind down. The reason is to later come back to it and it may spark something new and better or just something new in general. In contrast, George Dilia’s, “Rethinking the Shitty First Draft”, states that her method is all about writing carefully and revising as much as possible during a first draft in order to continue building a stronger writing piece. She also adds on that the method Lamott uses doesn’t work for everyone. It’s best to use a writing method that one feels comfortable due to the simple fact that it’s easier for the individual to construct finer essay. Personally, I use the same writing process as Dilla because I find it much more helpful to revise my thoughts while I’m still writing rather than writing anythig down and then revising. Currently, I write my sentences/phrases online and then come back to it ti to make edits. I do this in order to build up my writing piece at a quicker pace. As a writer I will take into consideration, writing down all my thoughts and ideas first; that way I can  get a bit of inspiration afterwards. However, I do sometimes struggle to make certain revised edits  while typing my draft.

Language is a tool that enables people to identify with their cultural identity. It is also a means of uniting a community that share the same identity. In Amy Tan’s, Mother Tongue, we are able to perceive how important Language is to the author and in general. In her own words, “Power of language – the way it can evoke an emotion, visual image, a complex idea, or a simple truth.” The term Mother Tongue can be defines as your native language or the first language you learned to speak. I believe that Amy Tan uses this as her title to indicate the significance of how everyone learns how to speak differently. In this case, Amy Tan’s mother didn’t speak “proper” English and that’s the mother tongue she learned to speak. Something that really caught my attention was that despite coming across roadblocks due to her mother’s English she still appreciates and enjoys the way her mother speaks. This caught my attention because she knows how to speak English, she just speaks it differently because her mother did not receive the same education she did. It’s significant how much she sympathizes with her mother and language because that too was what she grew up with. To add on, when the author stated how indifferent people are treated due to their lack of English really made me think back to the times I saw this happen to my mother. It’s upsetting how ignorant people can be, associating language with knowledge/intelligence. I’ve witnessed people pretend as if they have no clue of what my mother is trying to say when it’s understandable just not in full sentences. 

This week we will be continuing to move forward with our LIteracy Narratives, moving from the “Pre-Writing”  assigned in Week #4 to an actual draft of your first formal essay of the semester, the Literacy Narrative.

• Read the full assignment carefully, taking note of the due dates for the draft and final completed essay.  You can find this under the “Essays” tab at the top of our blog.  Reach out to me with any urgent questions, or plan to visit my office hours on Monday to check in about the assignment.
• You will be working in Writing Groups for this and all subsequent formal essays.  Please take note of your group in the post titled Writing Groups, and be sure that you know how to connect with the other members of your group.  We will also have time in class on Wednesday to check-in with our groups.
• Once you have identified your group members, please go to our shared Google Doc Folder and read and respond to the Pre-Writing Assignments that your group members should have placed in the folder.  (The pre-writing assignment is due by Sunday, September 19th). By midnight on Monday, September 20th, please read and respond to your partners’ pre-writing.  Make your comments directly on their pre-writing drafts.  Use a different color type, and write your response at the bottom of the Pre-Writing.   Be sure to include your name! In your response (approx. 200-250 words), please do the following:

–Keeping in mind the Literacy Narrative assignment, how do you recommend that the author develop this “pre-writing” into the formal essay?

–What aspects of the pre-writing interested you the most? Why?

–What questions do you have about the author’s experience?

–Think about whether or not the author has told a story, expressed himself/herself using his/her own distinctive voice, and used descriptive detail to bring the narrative to life.  Where do you see room to do more of those things?

–Do you see any connections between the pre-writing and any of the readings we’ve done so far? Which one(s)?  Describe the connections.

–What’s one thing that you learned from this pre-writing?  What is one piece of inspiration that you can borrow to use in writing your own essay?

–What other words of advice and encouragement do you have for this author?

• Read Kim Liao, “Defining My Identity Through Language: What I learned about Literacy Narratives” in Join the Conversation, pp. 61- 68.  We will be discussing this essay in class on Wednesday, Sept. 22nd, so please come to class prepared with a “takeaway” from Liao’s piece that you are going to use to help you think about your own literacy narrative.  As preparation for class, please leave a comment on this post, sharing your “takeaway.”  It doesn’t need to be longer than a couple of sentences.
• Read Anne Lamott, “Shitty First Drafts” (in  JTC) and George Dila,“Rethinking the Shitty First Draft” (You can find the link to this under the “Texts” tab).  In a separate blog post (approx. 200 words), respond to these two different approaches to writing a draft.  How would you describe your own writing process?  How might you be interested in “tweaking” or adjusting your own process as you develop as a writer? What works for you about your current writing process? What causes you the most difficulty?  Please share these blog posts by Friday, Sept. 24th.
• Drafts Due by Sunday, September 26th.  Once you have completed a draft of your Literacy Narrative, please upload it to our shared Google Doc Folder.  Inside our course folder, I have created a sub-folder called LIteracy Narrative Drafts.  Please place your draft inside, and give your file a title using the format:  Your Name – Literacy Narrative Draft.

Sherman Alexie’s short essay is both a very personal story about the author’s development as a reader and writer and a broader exploration of how race, class, and ethnic identity shape our experiences of education and our assumptions about ourselves and others.  In a short (200-300 word) response to Alexie’s essay, shared as a comment to this post, please address the following:

— How do you see race/class/ethnicity as forces in Alexie’s story? Include at least one quote from the story in formulating your response.

–Choose one moment or detail in Alexie’s story that you personally could relate to, describe the element from “Superman and Me” and its significance, and share its relevance to your own story.

Choose one of the questions below and respond to it as a comment on this post.  Your response should be 150 – 200 words.

1. What is the meaning of the essay’s title?
2. What is Lee referring to in his opening sentence when he mentions “the trouble in Palisades Park”?  What can you infer about the situation in that NJ community?
3. What do you think about laws like the ones in NJ he describes? What are the pros and cons of regulations like this?
4. This is primarily a story about Lee’s mother.  What do we learn about her from this text?  Choose a detail that made a particularly strong impression on you.
5. What happens on the visit to the butcher shop?  What is the significance of this story?  Why do you think Lee retells it after his mother’s death? How do you think his perspective on this story has changed over time?
6. What is the significance of the English workbook he finds after his mother’s death?
7. Look closely at the last two short paragraphs of the story. What do they mean? How do they serve as a conclusion to this essay?

Hello Friends,

Once again, we have an irregular schedule.  Baruch will be closed on Wednesday, September 15th, so we will not be having our in-person class.  Here are your assignments for this week.  Please reach out to me with any questions.

• Read Chang-Rae Lee’s “Mute in an English-Only World”.   You can find the link to the essay on the blog under the “Texts” tab.  In a separate post, I have shared some questions about the text.  Please choose a question to respond to, and share your response (in the form of a comment on my post) by Monday, September 13th.
• Read Sherman Alexie, “Superman and Me”, also available as a link on our blog.  Respond to my post about this reading by Wednesday, September 15th.
• Reflecting on the work we’ve read thus far (Rodriguez, Jones, Tan, Lee, and Alexie), begin to explore your own language and literacy story.  This will take the form of a 2-3 page typewritten “pre-write”.  See my guidelines below.  Your pre-write should be placed in our shared Google Doc Folder by Sunday, September 19th.
• Office Hours:  I will be holding Zoom office hours on Monday, September 13th from 12:30 – 1:30.  Please stop in to say hello, check in, and ask any questions you might have about your assignments for this class.  Attendance at office hours is not mandatory, but is encouraged!  Here is the link for our office hours: https://baruch.zoom.us/j/83345839831

Literacy Pre-Write Assignment

Length: 2-3 pages

Due: Sunday, Sept. 19th

Use this assignment as an opportunity to start gathering your thoughts and ideas for your upcoming Literacy Narrative.  This is not expected to be a tightly organized, focussed piece of work.  Instead, it is a chance to write freely, without fixed expectations, in an effort to excavate (dig up) some of your own literacy-related memories, family language stories, and thoughts and feelings about language, school, reading, and writing.  Here are some questions you might want to use as springboards for this writing.  I would suggest choosing one as your starting point and then seeing where it takes you.  Of course, if none of these ideas speaks to you, you are free to move in your own direction, provided you stick to our theme of literacy, which we understand broadly as our relationship to language and learning.

–Choose the reading that spoke to you most deeply.  Start crafting your own version of (or response to) that essay.  For example, maybe you were moved by Edward Jones’ story, so you choose to meditate on your own “first day” experience.

–What is your family’s “language story”?  How might you tell it?

–Describe a pivotal school experience.  How did it shape your sense of yourself as a student, a learner, a reader, a writer, a wielder of language, etc.  This could be a positive experience or it could be a painful or difficult experience.

–Tell a story about a parent or other person close to you that addresses our themes of language and literacy.  What does their story mean to you?

–What is a text (this could be written, or it could be something visual like a movie or television show) that is important to you and your personal history?  Describe its role in your development.

–How has your life required you to move between different languages? This could be literal bilingualism, or it could be simply shifting between various forms of English, as we move between family, friends, work, school, and our on-line communities.  What is at stake in these different linguistic spaces?  What does this shifting between languages mean to you?

–Who have the “gatekeepers” been in your literacy story?  Is there a person who looms large for you – either because he/she brought you closer to fulfilling your own identity as a wielder of language, or because he/she blocked your path and impeded your progress?