Tuesday, October 15

What bothers you when reading something? (5-10 min)

Privately, freewrite (don’t pick up your pen) to write things that bother you when you read someone’s writing. We are so SO about positivity in this class. But we are all a bunch of weirdos who get hung up on weird things sometimes. What is that for you? What is it that other students, friends, professional writers, etc. do sometimes that annoys you?

Commas! (15 min)

I’m going to talk about what annoys me in a bit. But. Before I do that, I want to talk about commas.

A common comma thing is using a comma to do more than it can. It’s just a practical thing. There are many punctuation marks and they do different things to try to make reading easier. Though, it also can make writing harder!

So, the one thing I want to key in on here is listing a few of your sentences where commas are doing too much and offering alternatives. This is not an attempt to shame! These are good sentences! But I want to show you how to write them differently so you can use better punctuation for the kinds of things you want to do.

A comma can’t separate two independent clauses. A period, a semi-colon, an em-dash, maybe parentheses, and maybe a colon can do that (different reason for why you might pick any one of them). See here for more information (will talk more about this later in the term): https://www.thepunctuationguide.com/.

Another thing to consider is lists. Commas often separate list items. For example: I went to the grocery store to pick up some milk, eggs, and bread.

A more complex example: She is the right person for the job because she is very detail-oriented, has a creative orientation toward problem-solving, and is a really good listener to other members of the team.

If something looks like a list, but isn’t, it could trip up readers.

So, let’s look at some examples from your writing:

  • I would check constantly, first thing in the morning, last thing before I got to sleep.
  • Similarly, the internet is a vast interlinked environment curated by the functionality of software and hardware, its nonlinear structure creates a void in which identity, language, and the new form of production and consumption emerges from.
  • In my search, I turned to YouTube, before this, YouTube was a form of entertainment, a way for me to avoid doing school work or to just be lazy.
  • I would check constantly: first thing in the morning, last thing before I got to sleep.
  • Similarly, the internet is a vast interlinked environment curated by the functionality of software and hardware. Its nonlinear structure creates a void in which identity, language, and the new form of production and consumption emerges from.
  • In my search, I turned to YouTube. Before this, YouTube was a form of entertainment, a way for me to avoid doing school work or to just be lazy.

Proofreading and Editing (30-45 min)

Proofreading vs. editing:

  • Editing means looking for readability, awkward phrasing, (ineffective) repetition, grammatical issues that especially impact rhetorical effect you are going for, etc. at the sentence level
  • Proofreading is more about typos, small grammatical issues that might make your writing look inconsistent, formatting issues (e.g., inconsistent indentation of paragraphs).

Many of you have read some version of this comment from me on your literacy narratives:

Read your draft beginning with the last sentence. Then the sentence before that. And before that. Until you get to the very first sentence. The idea behind it is that you start to focus on the details in the sentence rather than getting sucked into a focus on the larger argument or story.

Reading out loud can also help with proofreading and editing. It forces you to look at every. single. word.

What are some other strategies for re-reading your writing before you are finished?:

  • Reading out loud to another person
  • Try to read it like you didn’t write it, imagine another person reading it
  • Coming back to it when your mind is fresh

So, what annoys me? Lack of proofreading and editing, generally speaking, in a way that signals a writer may not have reviewed their work before finishing. Don’t be scared! Have some pride! Make time to endure the words you produced to make sure they fit you nicely.

So, this is what we will do now…re-read our drafts and proofread them one more time! Submit them to Brightspace in the same place by 10:45am.

Getting Ready for the Parrots (30 min)

Before we get started, here is a short video on Large Language Models, which is the subject of the reading:

Let’s review the September 25 lesson plan and some of the tips from “Reading and Writing” in our textbook.

What kind of “genre” is this paper, do you think? How do you know? How should that inform how we read it?

What do you notice in the abstract? When you skim around section titles? When you skim through the conclusion and introductions?

Okay, let’s read the first paragraph together. If time, we can keep going. Let’s check in as we read to see how it is going using some of our strategies for reading and annotating. Where are you “getting” things? Where are you confused or frustrated? Why do you think? Is it about words you don’t understand or how words you do understand are put together?

As you finish reading for tomorrow’s class, think about how this reading can help give you a “lens” for analyzing (see pages 102-108 of “Tools for Analysis” from the textbook).

Let’s check out the assignment for your next essay on rhetorical analysis.

The lenses you’ll develop in your groups will be centered around the following topics:

  • Art. This group will complete a reading from an artist (a novelist). It focuses on how AI programs (or, Large Language Models [LLMs], to be more accurate) can produce something that resembles human-made art. As a group, you will use next week to create a “lens” of art to consider how AI company texts talk about human creativity.
  • Environment. This group will complete a reading about LLMs and their environmental cost and what they enable that can harm the environment. This group will think a lot about developing a lens that prioritizes thinking about the environment and its relationship to LLMs.
  • Eugenics (racist ideology that some groups of people are genetically inferior, and society should be shaped by this knowledge). This group will complete a reading about the historical relationship between AI software development and the pseudoscience of eugenics. This group will think a lot about developing a lens that prioritizes thinking about race and outdated notions about genetics when reading materials about LLMs.
  • Risk. This group will complete a reading about “technical debt” related to businesses investing resources and distributing access to LLMs to the general public. Essentially, the piece asks about the speed at which these processes occur and the possible consequences of that speed. This group will think a lot about developing a lens that prioritizes thinking about “risks” that users are asked to take rather than the companies that develop LLMs.
  • Truth. You will complete a reading about LLMs in respect to how and why they “hallucinate” (i.e., make up facts that sound true). This group will think a lot about developing a lens that prioritizes “truth” when reading material about LLMs.

Tomorrow, we will start the process of organizing into groups based on your interests about these topics and their connection to current research and implementation of AI.

For now, start to think about how you might like to “read” and analyze rhetorical artifacts around one of these 5 central topics.

When looking at these topics, which ones are you most drawn toward? What about your next top interest?

Think about the topics for now and tomorrow we will do a survey to rank your choices, at which point I will then assemble your groups.

Next Time (5 min)

-Read “On the Dangers of Stochastic Parrots” due tomorrow

-Complete your annotations on Perusall due tomorrow

-Complete your weekly private writing due tomorrow: This semester is getting close to half way over. What have you learned from being in college at Baruch so far? What really sticks out to you? How are you now different? What have you been confronted with that has shifted the way you see the world? Why? This could be from any class, conversation…anything that has to do with your time at Baruch so far. Finally: what do you want to learn more about still? Why?