Transcript Document

CM107 Overview Cecelia Munzenmaier Kaplan University

Course Housekeeping

Instructor

– – –

Cecelia Mun - zen - MAI -er German for money maker

Contact

– – –

Email: several times a day Voicemail: once a day Program cell: 515-727-2100 x6921

Course Goals

Construct logical arguments

Develop strategies for effective problem solving

Conduct research to support assertions made in personal, academic, and professional situations

Articulate what constitutes effective communication in personal, professional and diverse contexts

Demonstrate effective listening strategies

Course Housekeeping

One 8 - 10 page paper

With at least 5 sources (including 2 academic sources)

– –

Credited in a list of references See KU Handbook, p. 136

Course Housekeeping

Assignments build 225 points 25 points

U1 Writing U3 Con troversies 100 pts.

U4 Plan 100 pts.

U6 Rough Draft U7 Peer Edit 85 pts.

150 pts.

U8 Final Draft 225 pts.

U9 Share 50 pts.

Pace yourself

Report progress to a writing buddy or supervisor

Produce 9 times as many pages

Write when they feel like it

Produce 17 pages vs. 157 for steady tortoises

Research says…

Boice compared three groups of writers in a 1989 experiment. One group wrote as little as possible. Another wrote whenever they felt like it. The third group was to write every day. If their writing goals were not, they had to write a check to a cause they detested. Those who wrote every day produced 4 times as many polished pages as “spontaneous” writers. If they reported progress to Boice, their output was 9 times greater.

Pacing tips

• • • Keep a regular schedule Write often for a short time • • • • 15 minutes can be effective 30 minutes (Boice) 1 hour is maximum for many 2 hours (Silvia) Don’t let writing become so fatiguing that you don’t feel like coming back.

(Boice, 1960)

Course Housekeeping

Assignments build 225 points 25 points

U1 Writing U3 Con troversies 100 pts.

U4 Plan 100 pts.

U6 Rough Draft U7 Peer Edit 85 pts.

150 pts.

U8 Final Draft 225 pts.

U9 Share 50 pts.

Is this good writing?

Is this good writing?

Raskin donated her drafts to show her writing process.

The

Westing Game

manuscript.

(n.d.) Retrieved July 28, 2010, from University of Wisconsin, Cooperative Children’s Book Center website: http://www.education.wisc.edu/ ccbc/authors/raskin/intro.htm

Reality

You have to get the bulk of it down, and then you start to refine it. You have to put down less-than-marvelous material just to keep going, whatever you think the end is going to be, which may be something else altogether by the time you get there.

—Larry Gelbart,

M.A.S.H

writer

Writing takes effort

In studies of writers, which variable made the biggest difference in quality?

Whether they knew what they wanted to say

Whether they believed they were good writers

How much they liked to write

Course Housekeeping

  

Directions and models are on KU-ACE Rubrics, or grading criteria, are in your syllabus Supplemental resources are available at http://word-crafter.net/CompII

Read Comments

Revision makes a difference

Grades follow an inverted Bell Curve.

mostly Cs Ds and Fs Bs and As

Ds and Fs As and Bs Normal Bell Curve Cs Comp I Curve

Back Up Your Work

Thumb drive

Email to yourself as attachment

Download from dropbox

Double-click attachment icon

Corollaries to Murphy’s Law

A device is most likely to fail when

it stores the only copy of your paper

recreating the paper will take maximum effort and time you don’t have

the paper is worth hundreds of points

Attendance matters

I support:

Source: Mintzes, J. J., & Leonard, W. H. (2006).

Handbook of College Teaching.

Arlington, VA: NSTA Press.

Weight of evidence

I support:

Given two people of approximately the same ability and one person who works

ten percent

more than the other, the latter will

more than twice outproduce

the former. The more you know, the more you learn; the more you learn, the more you can do; the more you can do, the more the opportunity…. ability, the one person who manages day in and day out to get in one more hour of thinking will be tremendously more productive over a lifetime.

Source: Hamming, R. (2006).

You and your research.

Available at http://paulgraham.com/hamming.html

Is this Comp I all over again?

Comp I

Informative paper

Step-by-step

3-5 pages

4 sources; 1 scholarly Comp II

Persuasive paper

Step-by-step

8-10 pages

5 sources; 2 scholarly

Counterargument?

(yes, but)

What can you add?

You have greater choice of topics.

You can

– – – – –

agree disagree apply compare/contrast evaluate strengths/ weaknesses

Critical/ original thinking Bloom’s Taxonomy

You’ll develop persuasive skills

Is personal

Expresses feelings and ideas

Can bring healing and/or clarity

Allows people to experiment with making beautiful language

    

Is objective (not just true for one person) Expresses an opinion backed by evidence Explores ideas critically Aims to be clear and formal Anticipates readers’ questions and objections

Personal

Informed

Are multi-taskers more efficient?

Poldrack

Personal experience + Conversation =

Rubenstein Meyer Informed Opinion:

Experience + Evidence

Research on multitasking

Informed opinion

In academic writing, your opinion is only as good as your evidence.

Personal Experience Community of Experts Parents: Home movies show no autism symptoms before vaccination

Doctors detected signs of autism in the movies.

Schwetter: These dinosaur bones smell.

Huh? DNA was recovered.

Rhetorical triangle

rhetoric: the art of composing effective discourse (exchange of ideas, conversation) PURPOSE WRITER AUDIENCE

Argument

argument: in speech and writing, an assertion made about a topic that is supported by at least one reason (claim + evidence) PURPOSE: ARGUMENT WRITER AUDIENCE

Developing an argument

Choose an arguable topic.

Read about pros/cons.

Take a position.

Anticipate objections.

Make your case.

– – –

State your claims (pros).

Counterargue (show why cons are wrong) Provide evidence.

Work the writing process

Get ideas

Get them down

Revise them

Polish/publish

Kuhlthau’s Model of Research

Stage

Initiation Selection Exploration Formulation Collection Presentation

Task

contemplating the task and possible topics selecting a topic encountering inconsistency and incompatibility forming a focused perspective gathering/documenting

Feelings

uncertainty optimism confusion clarity confidence

connecting and extending satisfaction or

disappointment

Anxiety does not mean failure

5 Stages of Accomplishment:

Denial Uncertainty Resistance Panic Acceptance

I can’t do it!

Maybe I can do it!

There’s no way I can do it!

AAAAARGH! What if I can’t do it!

I did it. Let’s party!

How to Succeed

Be here

Find a topic you like

Follow the rubrics for each assignment

Read feedback

Keep up with assignments

Ask questions early

Revise

 

Back up your work Avoid the “Comp is hard” trap

It is the hardest thing in the world to frighten a mongoose, because he is eaten up from nose to tail with curiosity. The motto of all the mongoose family is “Run and find out,” and Rikki-tikki was a true mongoose.

—Rudyard Kipling “Rikki-tikki-tavi”

The Jungle Book

What’s a good topic?

    

Something you care about

Enough to be interested

Not so much you can’t be objective Something that’s researchable

Time limits

– –

Available information Objective information Something you’re comfortable sharing Something that’s arguable Something that can contribute new insights

How do I know?

In a study by Carol Dweck, 4th-graders “were given unsolvable problems followed by solvable ones. harder. The with

ability

or

effort

Once the ‘helpless students’ failed, their strategies deteriorated down to _____ grade level; whereas, the "mastery-oriented students" stayed at 4th grade level despite failures. They rolled up their sleeves and worked

crucial element

.” was whether the student saw the failure as having to do

Directions:

1.

2.

3.

Rate these errors as Status-marking

(outrageous)

Mechanical mistakes

(serious)

Noticeable

(annoying)

1. The teacher said I

done

a good job on the editing test.

2. We can get extra help in the ASC, but I

don’t need none

of that.

3. Although some people do.

4. Me and my friends

(fragment) write our papers the night before they’re due.

5. As far as

i

’m concerned, losing a little sleep is no big deal.

Corrections

Hairston’s respondents considered

all

of these errors to be status-marking, or outrageous.

1. The teacher said I

done

a good job on the editing test. but I

(wrong verb tense)

2. We can get extra help in the ASC,

don’t need none

of that.

(double negative)

3. Although some people do

what?

(fragment)

4.

Me

and my friends write our papers the night before they’re due.

(object used as subject)

5. As far as

i’m

concerned, losing a little sleep is no big deal.

(capitalization)

Directions:

1.

2.

3.

Rate these errors as Status-marking

(outrageous)

Mechanical mistakes

(serious)

Noticeable

(annoying)

6. My friend Shan

,

always does at least a rough draft and a revised draft. 7. I’m trying to decide whether to go into criminal justice, study business management,

or paralegal

. 8. Any

one

of these programs when I get to class.

are

a good choice.

9. If I do

good

in my classes, my chances of getting a good job will increase. 10. Our textbook is heavy, so I am glad to

sit

it down

Corrections

Hairston’s respondents considered these errors to be serious.

6. My friend Shan

(parallelism)

, always does at least a rough draft and a revised draft.

(appositive)

7. I’m trying to decide whether to go into criminal justice, study business management, or paralegal. 8. Any one of these programs are a good choice for me.

(subject-verb agreement)

9. If I do good in my classes, my chances of getting a good job will increase. 10. Our textbook is heavy, so I am glad to sit it down when I get to class.

(adverb, not adj.) (sit vs. set)

Do you believe Hairston?

Hairston, M. (1981). Not all errors are created equal: Nonacademic readers in the professions respond to lapses in usage.

College English, 43,

794-806.

Kantz, M., & Yates, R. (1994).

Whose judgments? A survey of faculty responses to common and highly irritating writing errors.

Retrieved July 19, 2006, from http://www.ateg.org/ conferences/c5/kantz.htm

Usage matters: A comparative study of judgments of English usage errors.

(1999, June 7). Retrieved July 19, 2006, from English department Web site, California Polytechnic State University: http://cla.calpoly.edu/ ~jrubba/390/survey/390.RESULTS.html

Yonkers, V. (2009, February 13).

Teaching business writing.

Message posted to http://connecting2theworld.blogspot.com/ 2009/02/teaching-business-writing.html

Women tend to be more irritated than men.

Linguistics students replicated the study; results confirmed.

Beason (2001) found that business professionals perceived writers as hasty, careless, uncaring, or uninformed if the reader identified multiple errors

Myth:

There is one right way to write.

Myth

If I think I’m a bad writer, I can’t pass this course.

The Wizard of Oz

The diploma doesn’t make you smarter.

It’s the work you do to get the diploma.

Course Goals

Compose original materials in standard American English

Use appropriate documentation as required

Illustrate the steps in the writing process

Apply knowledge of communication to chosen profession