Transcript Document

CM107 Overview
Cecelia Munzenmaier
Kaplan University
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

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 Housekeeping

One 3 - 5 page paper
– With sources
– Credited in a list of references
– See KU Handbook, p. 136
Course Housekeeping

Assignments build
190 points
U7
Draft
30 points
U2 Topic
Exploration
U3 Key
Points
50 pts
U4
Sources
75 pts
U5
Outline 75 pts
100 pts
U9
Final
project
Share
75 pts
Course Goals

Why do I need a comp class?
Employers think you do.
People unable to express themselves clearly
in writing limit their opportunities
for professional, salaried employment.
—Bob Kerrey
National Commission on Writing
Course Goals

Why do I need a comp class?
Writing is a way of thinking.
How do I know what I mean
until I see what I say?
—E. M. Forster
Course Goals

Why do I need a comp class?
Research skills help you keep up.
For any organism to survive, its rate of
learning must be equal to, or greater
than, the rate of change in the
environment.
—Reg Revans
Course Goals

Why do I need a comp class?
Writing skills make you credible.
Question
hey im dayshaun and im 14 years old ive been wanting to
become SWAT since i was 5. i need to know what do i have
to do in order to become a SWAT and what standers i
need to achieve lease write back and thank you for your
time. have a great day
Course Goals

Why do I need a comp class?
Writing skills make you credible.
“Subject did abducted woman without no illegal right.”
—Baltimore police officer
Response to a report of death caused by experimental drug
“Not much wee can do about dumd docs!”
Standard American English
 Correcting 20 common errors will correct 91.5%
of all grammatical errors.
Based on Lunsford and Connors’ 1992 study of 3,000 papers
 Write first, then edit.
 Target a few errors at a time.
 Target the errors that matter most.
Directions: Rate these errors as
1.
2.
3.
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. (fragment)
4. Me and my friends 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. (wrong verb tense)
2. We can get extra help in the ASC,
but I 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: Rate these errors as
1.
2.
3.
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 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
when I get to class.
Corrections
Hairston’s respondents considered these errors
to be serious.
6. My friend Shan, 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.
(parallelism)
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. (adverb, not adj.)
10. Our textbook is heavy, so I am glad to sit it down
when I get to class. (sit vs. set)
Course Goals
Compose original materials
in standard American English
 Use appropriate documentation
as required

Course Goals

In academic writing, your opinion
is only as good as your evidence.
I say:
Attendance is important.
Course Goals

I support:
Based on Comp I grades from March-October 2008.
No one who attended every class earned less than a B.
Everyone who earned an F missed at least 33% of class.
Course Goals

I support:
Source: Mintzes, J. J., & Leonard, W. H. (2006).
Handbook of College Teaching. Arlington, VA:
NSTA Press.
Course Goals

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…. Given two people with exactly the same
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
Course Goals
GIGO (garbage in, garbage out)
 Four credible sources
 Universal rather than personal

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/
Women tend to be more irritated than
men.
conferences/c5/kantz.htm
Usage matters: A comparative study
of judgments of English usage
errors. (1999, June 7). Retrieved
Linguistics students replicated the
study; results confirmed.
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
Beason (2001) found that business
professionals perceived writers as
hasty, careless, uncaring, or
uninformed if the reader identified
multiple errors
Course Goals

Do people who watch shows like CSI make
better jurors?
Researchers
Personal
experience
+
Conversation
Defense
attorneys
=
Prosecutors
Informed
Opinion
Course Goals

Evidence-based information
or expert opinion
Experts
Question
Problem
Personal
experience
Disagreement
+
Conversation
Associations
=
EBSCO
Pathfinders
Informed
Opinion
Course Goals
Compose original materials
in standard American English
 Use appropriate documentation
as required
 Illustrate the steps in the writing
process

True or False?





There is one right way to write.
Good writers don’t need to revise much.
Only people who love writing write well.
Comp I will destroy my GPA.
Beliefs about writing can make
me smarter.
Myth:

There is one right way to write.
Reality:

The writing process is anything a
writer does from the time the idea
came until the piece is completed or
abandoned. There is no particular
order.
—Donald Graves,
writing researcher
Writing Process
Get ideas
 Get them down
 Revise them
 Polish/publish

Take time to plan

“Those who focus on form before generating
ideas find it _______
more difficult to develop the
body of their papers” (Hillocks, 1986).
Hillocks, G. (1986). Research on written composition: New
directions for
teaching. Urbana, IL: National Conference
on Research in English.

“Experienced writers spend up
to _____%
of their time planning”
40
(Davis, 2005, p. 15).
Davis, K. W. (2005). The McGraw-Hill 36-Hour Course
in Business Writing and Communication.
New York: McGraw-Hill.
Polish after you draft

“Writers who try to catch every mistake as
they draft can give themselves writer’s
block” (Russell, 2005).
Russell, M. (2005). The assumptions we make: How learners and teachers
understand writing. Retrieved November 3,
2005,from National Center for Adult Learning
and Literacy Web site:
http://www.ncsall.net/?id=336
Is this good writing?
Who created that draft?
A Kaplan student who’s repeating
Comp I
 A returning student whose last comp
class was 10 years ago
 A Newbery-winning author

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
Myth

If writing makes me anxious,
I must be a bad writer.
Are you this anxious?
Anne Lamott on writing restaurant reviews:
I'd write a first draft that was. . . . so
long and incoherent and hideous that for the rest
of the day I'd obsess about getting creamed by a car
before I could write a decent second draft.
I'd worry that people would read what I'd written
and believe that the accident had really been a
suicide, that I had panicked because my talent
was waning and my mind was shot.
—Bird by Bird
Anxiety does not mean failure
5 Stages of Accomplishment:
Denial
I can’t do it!
Uncertainty
Maybe I can do it!
Resistance
There’s no way I can do it!
Panic
AAAAARGH! What if I can’t do it!
Acceptance
I did it. Let’s party!
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
 How much they revised
Myth

If I think I’m a bad writer, I can’t pass
this course.
Reality

Grades follow an inverted Bell Curve.
mostly Cs
Ds and Fs
As and Bs
Normal Bell Curve
Ds and Fs
Bs and As
Cs
Comp I Curve
Absences :: Grades
Based on Comp I grades from March-October 2008.
No one who attended every class earned less than a B.
Everyone who earned an F missed at least 33% of class.
The Wizard of Oz
The diploma
doesn’t make
you smarter.
 It’s the work
you do to get
the diploma.

Reality:

Your beliefs about writing
can make you smarter.
How do I know?

In a study by Carol Dweck, 4th-graders
“were given unsolvable problems followed
by solvable ones. 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
harder. The crucial element was whether
the student saw the failure as having to do
with ability or effort.”
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
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

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



Something you’re comfortable sharing
Something that’s informative
Something that can contribute new
insights