grammarians300-2

Descriptivism vs Prescriptivism(Chapter 4)

2008-11-28T12:43:00.000-08:00

There were many studies of usage in America between the 1900 and 20th century. During the 20th century, the U.S. saw an increased division between adherents to the traditional prescriptive approach and proponents of more descriptive, relativistic studies. There were studies of grammar usage in the following areas: Modern English, Current English Usage, American English Grammar, and The English Language Arts. Each Study has its own proponents.

Modern English
One of the earliest studies of usage in America was done by George Phillip Krapp in 1909. The study was entitled Modern English. Its growth and Present Use. These studies had many flaws according to another author Edward Finnegan and his book "Attitudes towards English". Finnegan identifies four different areas where Krapp broke ground.

Current English Usage
This is another important usage study during the 20th century that had begun by Sterling Leonard. This study was significant because its based on its findings on a usage survey. This survey was sent to seven respondents, linguistic experts, leading businessmen, authors, editors of influential publications,NCTE members, members of the Modern Language Association and speech teachers. The respondents were asked to classify items according to their observations about actual usage by placing them into 3 categories: Literary English, Standard English and Naive English.

American English Grammar
Another important piece of work fro grammar usage was done by Charles C.Fries, which was American English Grammar. Fries method of collecting data was quite different from Sterling Leonard in many ways.
Frie based his study on actual letters written by Americans who were corresponding with the government;he examined 3000 letters or excerpts in all. Fries' began by using independent grounds to classfify the writers into 3 social groupings: Speakers of Standard English, Speakers of Common English and Speakers of Vulgar English.

His method was important because he inferred the linguistic traits of each group only after examining the groups educational and professional traits. Fries' work had also become contradicted by Finnegan, as well as all of the other studies.

The English Language Arts
This work was published by NCTE in 1952. It represents an official endorsement of the principle established by Krapp, Leonard, Fries and other descriptive linguists. It explained constant language changes, change is normal, spoken language is the language, correctness rest upon usage and all usage is relative.

However, even though this work was also examined by Finnegan, others promoting the doctrine of usage has continued into the second half of the 20th century.

STRUCTURALISM (1900-1950)

2008-11-21T07:53:00.000-08:00

Structuralism (Chapter 4: The Descriptive Period)

Structuralism began its evolution in the 19th century due to historical-comparative studies. This view has two powerful ideas on language development. The first idea is that language can be studied irrespective of its history and genetic relationships to other languages. Idea #1 derives from Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913), a Swiss professor of linguistics at the University of Geneva. Even though he published little while he was alive, three years after his death he came to be known as the "father" of structural linguistics because of his impact on the development of linguistics as a field of study. Saussure had the idea to differentiate diachronic and synchronic linguistics. Diachronic being the study of relations that bind together successive terms not perceived by the collective mind but submitted for each other without forming a system. And synchronic concerns with the logical and psychological relations that together coexisting terms and form a system in the collective mind of speakers. To conclude idea #1, Saussure viewed two items in one language as a structure and two items in two different languages as outside the psychological system of the speakers.

The second idea that linguistics is properly viewed as a physical science was formed by an American Linguistic, Leonard Bloomfield. Bloomfield showed two influences of his linguistic view. One was that his work involved the analysis of American Indian languages, and secondly that the influence was based on behaviorist psychology, brought on by the American psychologist J.B. Watson. Bloomfield and his followers reduced the study of language as a whole down to only focus on the study of physical speech. They viewed language as a habit of an uncomplicated organism that learned sentences and words only to fill them with vague memory and association. Edward Sapir (1884-1939) was not a behaviorist; his group came out of anthropology and never adhered to behaviorism. Sapir used the study of language as a mental reality in his work, "La Realite' Psychologique des Phonemes." Sapir and his best known student, Benjamin Whorf (1897-1941), came up with the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis and published it in a series of articles written from 1936-1938. The Hypothesis stated that the structure of a person's language (especially syntax and morphology, or word structure) influences non-linguistic activity and the person's view of reality. Although, Bloomfield and Sapir had dramatically different views on idea #2, they had very similar careers.

In-Class, Nov. 19: Haiku

2008-11-19T06:19:00.000-08:00

HAIKU....

Today, after you have submitted your Research Essay Folder, we are doing the prompt that we neglected so far due to time constraints: "grammar haiku"!!! Go to the following link to find the old post on our class blog.

Preview:

This Friday, Nov. 21st, you are receiving your study guide for the FINAL EXAM, which will take place on Friday, Dec. 5th (last day of class!) from 9:00-9:50 a.m. in our ordinary classroom.

You will NOT be allowed to bring your study guide to the final exam; it is just meant for preparing at home. The exam will be like the mid-term exam, consisting of three parts:

1) a part with questions about what we have done in class, the answers for which are to be found on the blog, the Down Syndrome movie guide, and your homework assignments;

2) a grammar part about all the topics we covered in our mini lessons (for which the sentences will NOT be on the study guide);

3) a critical response part (essay question) to an article which I will give you after the Thanksgiving vacations, so you can prepare it entirely at home and email it to yourself, to attach it to your final exam in class.

If you miss class on Nov. 21st, you will not receive the study guide.
We will go over it in class that day, and I will answer any questions or concerns you might have.

What we will do on Nov. 21st:

1) an important course evaluation (survey) about your opinions of this course, and how to improve it;

2) study guide for final exam WORKSHOP (you are allowed to exchange questions with your partners)

3) those who went to the Writing Center and for whom the tutors have written a Conference Summary will submit their Final Research Essay Folder on Nov. 21st, in the first 10 min. of class.

On the remaining three days of class after the Thanksgiving vacations, we will do the following:

- Dec. 1st: presentations of our Readability topics (max. 5 min. each) + course evaluations

-Dec. 3rd: presentations of our Readability topics (max. 5 min. each)

- Dec. 5th: hand in the Readability Essay; finish Readability Presentations (5 min. each); conclusion of course

MEMO: There are no more make-ups for missed days or homework!!! The last EXTRA CREDIT opportunity was for missed days prior to Nov. 17th, for which you made up through extra peer editing.

Chapter 3- Prescriptive Rules/ Part 2: pages 48-60

2008-11-18T19:57:00.000-08:00

Chapter three in the book: Grammar for Grammarians outlines different Prescriptive Rules. These rules were developed during the 18^th century and many of them are still used to this day. This blog will contain a summary of the second half of the chapter: pages 48-60 and will contain these Prescriptive Rules: “Parallelism, Latin Grammar is an Appropriate Model for English, Different Forms Imply Different Meanings, Language Change Represents Decay, and Language is “Logical.”

Parallelism in a rule in Grammar that is thought to date back to “Murray” and it “requires that items in a series be of the same grammatical form.” A few examples the book gives to help understand this rule are: “If he prefer a virtuous life, and is sincere in his professions, he will succeed;” “if he prefers.” “The parliament addresses the king, and has been prorogued the same day;” “and was prorogues.”

Latin Grammar is an Appropriate Model for English- At this point in the chapter the authors bring up the point that a lot of English’s rules are based on the rules of other languages such as Latin. (E.g. the rule of not being able to end a sentence with a preposition) The problems that come from this are:

- Latin is an Italic language and English is a Germanic one.

-Latin is a “synthetic “language with many inflections and English is “analytic” with few inflections.

-Latin is a language where the direct object normally precedes the verb and in English the direct object normally follows the verb.

These differences make both languages not able to be considered a “direct transfer language.”

The next subject the book covers is “Different Forms Imply Different Meanings.” In this section the reader learns that English is a language that has many interchangeable words such as “shall” and “will.” In most languages words can’t be interchangeable and rules are made when and what word to use. Some would use “shall” only for “first-person and “will” would be used for “second and third-persons.” Some people argue that there is always one word or way of saying something that is “superior” to the other.

When languages are changed the authors say the reason is because it has become “decayed.” This rule comes from people thinking that past versions are better, but as time goes on everyone makes small gradual changes to languages and this apparently “normal” as the author states. The best example is to think how English has been changed over the years. 1000 years ago people spoke Old English and we see this in texts such as, Beowulf. Then we evolved to Middle English which is the language that Chaucer developed in his writings. We slowly made our way to Early Modern English which is what a lot of Shakespeare’s writings are in. At this point, English is thought to be known as Modern English, but this doesn’t mean that our language won’t gradually change again and again until the end of time.

During the last section of this chapter readers learn that Language is “logical” because “it is a self-contained, rule-governed system.” The author wants us to keep in mind though that English and all languages can never be thought of as “common sense.” There are many rules that have to be learned by all and take a big part of memorization of rules that go into that language. Interpretation is another thing that makes languages not able to be “common sense” because many see things in different ways and there are many words in English alone that can be interpretive differently.

Prescriptive grammar is a set of rules that make things “correct” or “not-correct” and “actual language use various grades of acceptability.”

Mon., Nov. 17: Peer Editing Session

2008-11-16T19:54:00.000-08:00

On Monday, Nov. 17th, is our PEER EDITING SESSION. If you're not here, you won't get the participation points. (You still have to contact a peer by email to obtain his/her evaluation, or I won't collect and grade your final research essay. Your peer editor's comments on your draft need to be submitted with your final essay in the folder, so I can see which of the suggestions you incorporated!). You all have each other's emails in your email account (I sent you our attendance list).

That means, your ESSAYS NEED TO BE COMPLETELY FINISHED on Monday, Nov. 17th, at class time. You don't need to print them out; have them ready in electronic format (as a Word document; no other attachments accepted!). EMAIL THEM TO ME BY MONDAY AT CLASS TIME. I will distribute essays to students whose partners didn't show up for the editing session, or who were sick (or otherwise excused) and could not attend.
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Instructions for Peer Editing Session:

1) Use the following Peer Edit Sheet (Rubistar rubric), copy and paste it into a Word document, and save it to your desktop, and highlight the fields with the points you want to give on it in color. Assign an overall grade to the student, judging by what you think is most important in a Research Essay from all the components of the rubric. NOTE: You can also type into my rubric, once you've pasted it into Word. That means, you can include your own personal comments (in a different color, please!).

2) Email this sheet to the author of the essay AND to me as cc., so you can get your points. You need to finish peer-editing ONE paper in class on Nov. 17th (because many people cannot open docx files from home).

3) We are doing "online editing," which means that you are going to employ the "comment function" on the top of your menu list to insert your comments. You need to click on REVIEW, and then on NEW COMMENT (a yellow box).

Highlight the word that's wrong / the place where a word or punctuation sign is missing, click on "comment," and type in your suggestions. Save your document!!! If you don't save it, you will lose all your entries. When you're done, email it back to the author and me, TOGETHER with the Peer Edit Sheet (rubric). Correct all spelling, grammar, punctuation, format, and content mistakes you can find! Assign an OVERALL GRADE you would give to your partner, based on the rubric.

If you need to make up for missed days, tell me for whom you want to do EXTRA CREDIT PEER EDITING, and I will put your name on the list below so your peer knows what to expect from whom! When you email the proofread essay and the Peer Edit Sheet back to that student, and in copy to me, indicate for which missed day you are making up, so I can put an "excused" on my attendance sheet accordingly!

IF YOU HAVE QUESTIONS ABOUT HOW MANY DAYS YOU'VE MISSED, COME TO THE FRONT AND LOOK AT MY GRADE BOOK! Some people might have forgotten to sign the attendance list, so make sure you have an explanation or an extra credit make-up for any missed days. This is the last chance for extra credit.

For people with computer problems at home: we're all trying to save our peer editing papers as Word doc, not Word docx, but if for some reason you cannot open your peer's comments, that doesn't count as excuse. Then, you need to work in the computer lab. If you didn't get anything from your partner, let me know, and I will email you a different paper.

You will exchange your finished research essays with the following partner:

group 1: Creighton Jackson + Jeffrey Ryden

group 2: Michaela Bazar + Katrina Kosma (Stephanie Jacques will do one X for Katrina Kosma)

group 3: Abby Hoover + Brittany Lingle (+ Creighton will do an extra credit editing for Brittany)

group 4: Pamela LaBelle + Ronesha Johnson (+ Creighton will do an extra credit editing for Ronesha)

group 5: Charlotte Jackanicz + Jamie Wolf (Renita Tanner does one X for Jamie)

group 6: David Tabler + Brian Pullyblank (Colin Ott does one X for David Tabler)

group 7: Colin Ott + Tiara Spencer (+ Creighton will do an extra credit editing for Tiara)

group 8: Renita Tanner + Randi McFadden (Colin Ott does one X for Renita Tanner), Abby Hoover is doing one X for Renita Tanner

group 9: Julie Pioter + Stephanie Jacques (Renita Tanner does one X for Julie)

group 10: Amber Pankau reads the essay from Randi McFadden

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HOMEWORK for Wednesday, Nov. 19th, when the PEER-EDITED FINAL PAPERS are DUE:

Submit a FOLDER with the following components:

1. Your completed and corrected RESEARCH ESSAY

2. Staple or attach to it with a paper clip the Report Sheet from www.surveymonkey.com as a pdf file

3. The printed Peer Edit Sheet, and the printed peer-edited essay with your peer's electronic comments. If you have received more than one, submit them all. I'm going to check whether you made the suggestions changes suggested by your peers. Your peers will get credit (or extra credit, where it applies) depending how detailed/well done their proofreading was.

4. Your printed-out three sources (stapled). Make sure they are RESEARCH essays from JSTOR, ERIC, or Google Scholar, not simple webpages. Make sure they printed off correctly; I need to be able to see the page numbers, to proofread your quotations.

5. A written paragraph on a separate sheet of paper in which you tell me whether the peer-editing session has helped you, whether you think I should drop the peer-editing workshop for next year's classes, or whether you would prefer a Writing Center session to an in-class peer editing session, and WHY.

6. The Cover Sheet where you check-mark that everything was submitted, and on which I will write your grade. Print it out from here, or from your email, and check-mark everything you submitted.

EXTENSION ONLY for people who have their paper corrected in the Writing Center:

You can submit your complete folder on Friday, Nov. 21st (the last day of class before the Thanksgiving vacations). You need to have had a session with a Writing Center tutor about your whole essay, and this tutor needs to have written a conference summary to me by Friday, Nov. 21st. You need to tell this to your tutor; he/she won't do it by himself/herself. I will put your conference summary in your folder. You can make up for your missed homework points in all components this way. I won't grade your folder if you don't have a conference summary, because that would be a late assignment.

NO LATE PAPERS accepted.

Apart from the FOLDER: Also email your research paper to me (without attachments). Those which are A+ or A might be used for next year as good examples. I will ask your written consent before employing any of your material. Your support will be greatly appreciated by my future ENGL300 classes!!! Remember, you also got samples for everything we did from my previous classes...

The Prescriptive Period in the United States

2008-11-15T19:25:00.000-08:00

Chapter two of Parker and Riley’s Grammar for Grammarians deals with the prescriptive period of grammar from England to the United States. For the US portion of the chapter, the authors focus on Noah Webster and Lindley Murray.

Webster is better known for his work as a lexicographer -- his dictionaries are widely used. Webster’s work on alternate spellings (changing traveling to travelling, colour to color, etc.) was crucial to establishing America’s linguistic identity separate from England and “British English.” Webster believed that “honor requires [the United States] to have a system of our own, in language as well as government” (30). He pushed for an American standard in his books.

Murray was also very influential. He is well known as a grammarian and wrote English Grammar, Adapted to the Different Classes of Learners. This book was meant for classroom use, but gained immense popularity through the years. Murray’s presentation of grammar emphasized grammatical correctness and also linked proper language to virtue and religion. It is interesting to note that Murray’s book were very similar (almost verbatim) to the works of British grammarian Lowth.

Parker and Riley briefly discuss George Perkins Marsh and William Dwight Whitney. Marsh continues Murray’s idea that grammar and morality are deeply connected. Using words and phrases in ways that were “unacceptable” suggested that a person was morally oblique. To him, speech was to be pure and clean. Whitney, on the other hand, refuted this concept. He focused more on the connection between language and sociology. For him, it was more important to observe who uses a particular word than to judge the word without regard for the user.

Prescriptive Grammar: The Classical Period

2008-11-14T08:14:00.000-08:00

The Classical Period lasted from 500BC to 500AD, during which much language study was done by the Greek and the Romans. It is from this ancient grammar that much of prescriptive grammar is descended. The Greeks made a lot of grammatical progress in this time, and that knowledge was transmitted to other lands by the Romans.
The Greeks became interested in language for a couple of different reasons. One is that they knew about other languages through trade and travel. This allowed them to observe similarities and differences across languages. Another reason that interested the Greeks is the multiple dialects that can be found in Greece due to geographic divides. The Greeks also developed an interest in comparing older, written language with the standard language they spoke at the time. They could see that the language had changed. Observing that language can come in different forms and change over time, the Greeks began to study language and grammar.
The most important innovation pioneered by the Greeks was the alphabet. They were the first people to assign a symbol to every consonant and vowel sound, and our alphabet of today is descended from theirs. These forethinkers of the Classical Period turned their interest into a common practice of consciously speculating about the use of language. The people most associated with this movement were Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, and a group called the Stoics. One of the biggest contentions between these figures was whether words/language was nature or convention. This means they fought over whether words sounded like what they were(like cock-a-doodle-doo), or were just arbitrary and unconnected sounds that randomly represent things(like rooster). They also debated about analogy versus anomoly in language, which is basically whether or not language is orderly and regular. Analogists thought is was structured, while anamolists did not.
Another major contribution by the Greeks were the first parts of speech. Plato and Aristotle pioneered the concepts of nouns, verbs, and conjunctions. Later in the Classical Period, an Alexandrian Dionysius wrote The Art of Grammar and added five categories: participle, article, pronoun, preposition, and adverb. Even later, Priscian released his 1,000 page grammar and introduces interjections. This massive work was later used as the basis for the first grammar book written for English. It wasn't until 1700 years later that Joseph Priestley, where the English parts of speech were finalized into the eight parts we now know.
The Classical Period's study of parts of speech gave rise to sentence parsing. Parsing is basically breaking a sentence down into its parts and identifying each word's part and function. This is what most grammar classes still do today. The idea of conjugating verbs and nouns also arose in this period. Yet, there were gaps in this knowledge. They didn't understand that languages were interrelated, and that Greek was the sister language of Latin. They Greeks also had a mistaken idea that any change in language was decay, rather than evolution. They also had a concept that spoken language was corrupted, and only written language could be pure. They got this mistaken idea out of the change in what they spoke, and what was written in old writings. Despite these deficits in knowledge, the Greeks (and Romans) are considered pioneers in the field of grammar.

Prescriptive Grammar: The Middle Ages and the Renaissance

2008-11-13T19:35:00.000-08:00

The period of the Middle Ages refers to 500-1500 AD. During this time, people mostly maintained and commented on pre-existing ideas about grammar. However, the Middle Ages raised Latin to an elevated, important position, as it was the primary subject of language study during this time. Aelfric's Latin Grammar and Colloquium ("Conversations" c. 1000) were children's instructional materials aimed specifically at English speakers, some of the earliest of their kind. This foreshadows the later tendency to base English grammar on Latin models.

The main contribution of the late Middle Ages (1100-1500) is "speculative grammar". This is based on the Latin word speculum ("mirror") and the idea that language "mirrors" reality. Medieval scholars, the modistae, produced speculative grammar between 1250 and 1350. The modistae tried to relate language to the natural world in their treateise De modis significandi tractatus (Treatise Concerning the Modes of Signifying). The modistae were also the first to perceive grammar as a separate field of study, as opposed to viewing it as part of literary criticism or foreign language study.

The period produced principles for constructing acceptable sentences (they must have the necessary components, be inflected correctly, and be collacable, meaning each word must be compatible with adjacent words). The study of grammar also incorporated the parts of speech, parsing, conjugation, and declension. The liberal arts were also divided into two tiers: the trivium and the quadrivium. The trivium, or lower tier, included grammar, logic, and rhetoric, while the quadrivium, or higher tier, was composed of arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music. Due to this curriculum, grammar served as the basis for teaching students to read and write Latin, bringing about our modern term grammar school.

During the Renaissance (1500-1650), European scholars began to give attention to languages other than Greek and Latin, especially Hebrew, Arabic, and Chinese. The study of vernacular languages of Europe (ordinary, everyday language, as opposed to learned language) and the vernacular languages of Africa, Asia, and the Americas began. Scholarly and scientific publications began to use vernacular, and there was an attempt to raise the stature of vernacular languages. The Renaissance also ushered in the expansion of European printing. As literacy spread and the demand for education grew, texts, grammars, and dictionaries were in high demand.

Finally, the Renaissance brought about the rationalist grammar developed by the Port Royal School. A group of hermits living in France, the Solitaires, came to be known as the Port-Royal grammarians. They tried to write a universal grammar containing all properties common to languages known at the time. They investigated concepts such as "subject", "predicate", and "preposition". They tried to explain features commonly shared by all languages. They argues that if language is used to communicate thoughts, then speech should reflect the structure of the thoughts being expressed. At this time, speech was considered to be an imperfect representation of writing.

In-class, Wed., Nov. 12: Workshop Readability

2008-11-11T19:42:00.000-08:00

Today, we'll hear the last mini lesson: Charah Gates.

After that, we will work on our topics from the Readability handout, and create our handouts and/or posters. The final version is only due the day after the Thanksgiving vacations. Those who share a topic with a partner can discuss how to split up the different pages.

Those who were not here on Monday have been assigned a topic; so please look it up on the old blog, and ask if you have any questions.

Those who missed class this Monday and are excused (if you had an "observation" or appointment with your chair, this counts as excused!), please pick up a Fry graph handout from me, so you can complete the in-class assignment you missed. Ask me or your neighbors if you have any questions. The prompt is on Monday's blog.

The others: please hand in your Fry Graphs. I'll give you 10 points for them and your table, and then you can take them back into your files - KEEP them, because you will need them for the final Readability Essay, in which you will compare this Fry Graph for your blog writing with your readability for your research writing!!!

The purpose of our Readability Unit:

There are 4 possible scenarios:

1) Ideal case: This is probably true for most people - you will find that you have a readability level of 8-13 for blogs, and 16+ for research writing. Guess why?

2) You have a readability of 16+ for both blog posts AND research writing. This means your writing style is generally very elevated. Kudos! But what does that mean when you address younger students in a class blog, etc.??? Do you know at what grade level newspapers are written??? Why could that be the case?

3) You have a readability of 9th grade or below for both blog posts AND research writing. This is a very unlikely scenario. What would it tell you?

4) The measurement to assess your readability did not work. You feel you have a higher or lower readability than the formula granted you. It is faulty in certain aspects, and did not give a true picture of your personal writing style. Explain why.

You will ponder about all these scenarios in your final Readability Essay, for which you have received the prompt in an email. You can already start writing the parts you have completed in-class. The Readability Essay is due on the final day of class, Dec. 5th, at class time, as an email ONLY. There is no length or format requirement; just follow the prompt and answer all questions.

Today is the last day your audiences can respond to your surveys. You need a minimum of TEN responses by Friday. If you have 0-3 answers by now, say so in class today, and we will take your survey (no extra credit; this is "a little help from your friends"). It is unlikely that your real audience will respond by Friday, so we will "save you." If you have 7-9, just wait the two more days. If you don't have 10 on Friday, some of us will take your survey on Friday.

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To sum up, in today's workshop you can

ask people to take your survey, to bring your answers up to 10
work on your 5 min. readability presentation for Dec. 1st and Dec. 3rd (after Thanksgiving)
start writing the parts of your Readability Essay that you have completed with the Fry Graph
do your Fry Graph, if you have missed Monday's class and were excused

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On Friday, we will finish up our Research Essays by exchanging the invented numbers for the real results, by adding the Introduction, Conclusion, missing parts of the Abstract, the Participants, and the Methods. The essays must be COMPLETE for Monday, Nov. 17th, for our peer-editing unit!!! (in online format)

Participial Phrases

2008-11-10T11:33:00.000-08:00

Participial Phrases are flexible adjectivals. They are verb phrases that are headed by the –ing or –en form of the verb, otherwise known as the participle. The subject of the participle is the noun that is modified.
Here is one of her examples: (you will notice I use a lot of these; I think they illustrate the idea better than the explanations do)
The helicopter hovering over the roof frightened the dogs.
You can see that “hovering” is the participle. Further, the noun and modifying participle have a subject-predicate relationship.
Participles add information about the noun headword. A participial phrase allows you to include verbal ideas in a more concise way.

Following are the three types of participles that she discusses: Prenoun, Movable, and Dangling.

Prenoun Participle – this is when the participle is a single word. It is usually in the adjective slot in the preheadword position.
Here is another one of her examples:
The barking dog next door drives us crazy.
Sometimes an adverb with a hyphen modifies the participle.
a fast-moving object
This still counts as a prenoun participle. If there is an –ly adverb for the prenoun modifier, there will be no hyphen, such as in
a carefully conceived plan (but you already knew that!)

Movable Participle – Kolln says “we can think of the slot following the headword in the noun phrase as the home base of the participial phrase.” It can move to the beginning of the sentence, but only if it modifies the subject and is set off by commas.
Here is one of her examples:
Looking out the window, my mother waved to me.
The participle phrase can also close the sentence.
Here is an example:
The audience stood and applauded, laughing uproariously.
The single-word participle can also open the sentence. The choice of position is based on the rhythm and focus of the sentence.
Again, an example:
Outraged, the entire committee resigned.
These are sometime called free modifiers. You would put the participle phrase at the end of the sentence when you want to emphasize the effect it has.

Dangling Participle – This is the bad kind of participle and it is a grammatical error. The participle can open or close when it modifies the subject of the sentence – this is the only time when it can open or close the sentence.
The following is a dangling participle:
Carrying all of our supplies for miles, the campground was a welcome sight.
The campground didn’t carry anything! You can fix this sentence by saying:
Having carried all of our supplies for miles, we were exhausted by the time we reached the campground.
This can also happen with a delayed subject, such as in the sentence:
Knowing how much work I had to do, it was good of you to come and help.
The “you” is not in the usual subject position. The sentence can be revised by expanding the participial phrase into a complete clause:
It was good of you to come and help when you learned how much work I had to do.
She closes by reminding us that although sentences with these mistakes may be easy to understand, they don’t convey the intended message. Sometimes these mistakes are part of common phrases.
Speaking of old movies, have you seen …..
These kinds of phrases have been accepted into the language, but they can be considered casual or informal.

Readability

2008-11-09T15:13:00.000-08:00

Today, we'll hear two mini lessons:
1) Colin
2) Charlotte

Charah will go on Wednesday.

After that, we are preparing for our final unit: Readability. At the beginning of today's lesson, you will sign up for a presentation topic (list below). If you missed this class, you will be assigned a topic. A missed presentation on the due date means a failing grade for the assignment, which is a major component of the Readability Unit. There will not be any make-up opportunities, since we follow a tight time frame. (Unless you make a contract for an incomplete (INC), anyway.)

All presentations will be due the day after the Thanksgiving vacations (Monday, Dec. 1st). We'll hold one after the other, each one lasting max. 5 min., in the final week of class (Dec. 1, 3). Homework for Dec. 5th (the last day of class) will be to assess the readability of your Research Essay which you have received back by then according to one readability formula of your choice from our handbook (and presentations).
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For homework, you have all commented on the Fry Graph. Today, we are going to apply it.

Your homework (blog post) had to contain at least 100 words. Copy and paste it into a Word document. Proceed according to the instructions:

1) Count the number of sentences in your 100 words sample. (If you had less than 100 words, add more. If you had more, just stop after having counted up to 100, and delete the rest.) Estimate the length of your last sentence, even if incomplete, to the nearest 1/10.

2) Count the number of syllables in your 100 words sample. (Tip: It's easier when you put stress marks over them, like we did on the board when dealing with limericks!!!)

3) Make a table as seen in the instructions. Draw this table on the handout I give you, because you will receive points for it, and I will collect it at the end of today's lesson!

For your second 100-words sample, and your third one, just take any blog response or summary you've written so far. Copy and paste the text in a Word document, count your words and delete all that are over 100. Then, proceed as above. Fill in the table.

4) Total your numbers, and average them. (A little bit of math ;-)). You can use the Microsoft calculator ;-)

5) Make a dot on the graph I distributed in class where your personal readability lies. Write your name on the handout with your graph and your table, and submit it to your teacher for grading (I'm not grading the height of your readability, only the fact that you participated and understood the procedure!) There are no make-ups for this assignment.

6) Every student will sign up for a topic from our readability handout (which you have in your email from Nov. 2nd. It is also on this website: click on the first link, "Principles of Readability"), and present a poster to the class (ca. 5 min. presentation) starting after the Thanksgiving vacations. You will either present an introduction, an overview, or a formula to the class. Those who present the formulas have to go into detail and give examples, so that students can choose and apply this formula later. You can also browse the Internet for additional info/pics about your topic. The first two topics and topic 11 will be done by a pair of students, since they contain more pages. Share them fairly! Preview: When I have graded and returned your final research essays after Thanksgiving, you are going to calculate our own readability. You can choose any readability formula that is explained in detail in our readability handout that you have in your email (and on the website). You don't need to use the Fry Graph, but you can.

Instructions for Presentation:

1. You need to make a handout with a short overview for the whole class, which you can email to all peers (and me) to save paper. I'll email out an attendance list to everybody, so you'll have all emails. You can also make hard copies.

2. You can either write on the board, use the Smartboard, or present a big poster (ask me for paper and Sharpies). You don't need to do a ppt.

3. Your presentation should introduce your topic (if you have a formula, people should understand how it works).

4. Don't go over 5 minutes.

Topics:

1. Intro, pp. 1-10
Name: Brittany Lingle
Name: Michaela Bazar

2. Classic Readability Formulas, pp. 13-19
Name: Stephanie Jacques
Name: David Tabler

3. Flesch, pp. 20-22
Name: Colin Ott

4. Dale & Chall, pp. 22-23
Name: Katrina Kosma

5. Gunning, pp. 24-25
Name: Pamela LaBelle

6. New Readability Studies & Community of Scholars, pp. 25-26
Name: Jamie Wolf

7. Cloze Test, pp. 27-28
Name: Randi McFadden

8. Readability, Prior Knowledge, Interest, Motivation, pp. 28-30
Name: Brian Pullyblank

9. Performance, Efficiency, Content, pp. 30-34
Name: Charlotte Jackanicz

10. Leveling, pp. 35-37
Name: Jeffrey Ryden

11. Producing & Transforming Text, pp. 37-42
Name: Tiara Spencer
Name: Ronesha Johnson

12. New Readability Formulas, pp. 43-45
Name: Renita Tanner (assigned)

13. SMOG, FORECAST, pp. 47-49
Name: Amber Pankau

14. ARI, NRI, Hull formula for technical writing, pp. 49-51

Name: Julie Pioter (assigned)

15. DRP, p. 51

Name: Abby Hoover (assigned)

16. Formula Application, and Legislation, pp. 55-56
Name: Creighton Jackson (assigned)

17. Use, pp. 56-57

Name: Charah Gates (assigned)

Choosing Stylistic Variation

2008-11-09T13:11:00.000-08:00

Style is a key part of all writing, and everyone has different styles of writing. We can categorize writings into different styles. There are 4 mains styles of writing, such as, the Plain style, the Pompous style, the Grand style, and the Official Style. Style is also used to connected variations with sentence structures. These include; using punctuation to the writers advantage. The Greeks had a word for the variation of normal word order and usage called anastrophe. Greek orators commonly practiced the inversion of usual word order.
Absolute Phrases is a sentence modifier that functions as a loner standing beyond the sentence. These types of phrases are also noun phrases that use the formula determiner + noun headword + participial phrase. Though absolute phrases sometimes use a pattern with a participial phrase as the postword modifier.
Many variations that writers use for special effects occur in connection with coordination structures, which are, pairs and series of sentences and their parts. One change in deviation is the use of conjunctions. This variation of writing is called by the Greeks polysyndeton where the use of an extra “and”. There is also a Greek style called asyndeton, which is opposite of the extra “and” that uses a series of no conjunctions. The omission of the conjunctions contributes to the strictness and frugal style that echoes the words themselves.
We also use repetition, which could be taken positively or negatively because it can also be considered redundancy. Our discussions in everyday speech are confined to repetition in coordination structures that make readers sit up and notice what we are speaking about. The Gettysburg address is a prime example of coordination structure because most cannot remember anything other than “Four score and Seven years ago.” Though through the structure of repetition we can also remember “government of the people, by the people, and for the people.” Lincoln’s uses of similar grammatical form are also known as an Isocolon. A contrasting view would be to look at the way President Kennedy stirs his words by reusing “any” in an asyndeton way. The word variation goes on to almost end his sentence during his sentence. Repetition of a clause opening is called an anaphora. This type of repetition is different then all other forms because the others are used in the middle of a sentence, where as, an anaphora is used to open a sentence with repetition.

Next Blog Summaries

2008-11-07T06:31:00.000-08:00

Today, Friday, Nov. 7th, we heard four mini lessons.

Below are all the remaining blog summary assignments for the rest of the year. If you HAVE NOT posted a summary yet, and ARE NOT on this list, contact me on Nov. 10th, because then you didn't sign up and got left out!
____________________________________________________

THERE ARE NO MAKE-UPS for missed blog summaries!!!! If they are not posted by class time on the due date, I will post the one of my other class, so the peers can write their responses.

1) Colin Ott: Chapter 10 out of Martha Kolln's Book Rhetorical Grammar: "Choosing Stylistic Variations" (pp. 210-232). DUE DATE: Monday, Nov. 10, at class time. Responses due Wed., Nov. 12, at class time.

2) Jeffrey Ryden: pp. 180-185 from Martha Kolln's Book Rhetorical Grammar: "Participial Phrases." DUE DATE: Monday, Nov. 10, at class time. Responses due Wed., Nov. 12, at class time.

3) Randi McFadden: pp. 242-245 from Martha Kolln's Book Rhetorical Grammar: "Collective Nouns." DUE DATE: Wednesday, Nov. 12, at class time. Responses due Fri., Nov. 14, at class time.

4) Katrina Kosma: "Part I: Prescriptive Grammar," from the textbook Grammar for Grammarians by Riley & Parker (pp. 8-14; about the Classical Period). DUE DATE: Friday, November 14th, at class time. Responses due Monday, Nov. 17th, at class time.

5) Julie Pioter: "Part I: Prescriptive Grammar," from the textbook Grammar for Grammarians by Riley & Parker (pp. 14-20; about the Middle Ages, and the Renaissance). DUE DATE: Friday, Nov. 14th, at class time. Responses due Monday, November 17th, at class time.

6) Renita Tanner: "Chapter 2: The Prescriptive Period. In England," from the textbook Grammar for Grammarians by Riley & Parker (pp. 21-29). DUE DATE: Monday, Nov. 17th, at class time. Responses due Wednesday, Nov. 19th, at class time.

7) Jamie Wolf: "Chapter 2: The Prescriptive Period. In the United States," from the textbook Grammar for Grammarians by Riley & Parker (pp. 29-35). DUE DATE: Monday, Nov. 17th, at class time. Responses due Wednesday, Nov. 19th, at class time.

8) Alexandra Rude and Stephanie Jacques: "Chapter 3: Prescriptive Rules," from the textbook Grammar for Grammarians by Riley & Parker (pp. 36-60, BUT: Leave out all the subjects we have covered already in mini lessons, such as lie/lay, either/or, neither/nor, etc.; choose new topics from the text for your summary!) Share the topics among one another - e.g., one does the first half of the chapter, the other the second half! DUE DATE: Wednesday, Nov. 19th, at class time. Responses due Friday, Nov. 21st, at class time.

9) Amber Pankau, Tiara Spencer, Ronesha Johnson: "Part II: Descriptive Grammar. Chapter 4: Historical-Comparative Period, Structuralism, Descriptivism vs. Prescriptivism"(pp. 61-74). There are three topics. Amber: Historical-Comparative; Tiara: Structuralism; Ronesha: Descriptivism vs. Prescriptivism. DUE DATE: Wednesday, Nov. 19th, at class time. Responses due Friday, Nov. 21st, at class time.

10) Charah Gates: "Part III: Generative Grammar. Generative Theory," pp. 174-179. DUE DATE: Wednesday, Nov. 19th, at class time. Responses due Friday, Nov. 21st, at class time.

THANKSGIVING VACATIONS are from Nov. 22nd - Nov. 30th. I will only grade blog responses that were submitted on time by class time on Nov. 21st. Later entries will not be considered! EVEN if you are hospitalized. I am flying to Germany on Dec. 18th, and I am not grading anything except for final exams during FINALS WEEK from Dec. 8th-12th. If you are hospitalized and CAN NOT complete all assignments including the research essay on time, come to my office and sign a contract for an INCOMPLETE no later than Friday, Nov. 21st (the last day before the Thanksgiving vacations). Otherwise, you will fail this course.

THERE ARE NO MAKE-UPS for missed blog summaries!!! If they are not posted at class time, I will post the summary of the other class, so that the peers can do their responses.

Readability Versus Leveling --Edward Fry

2008-11-06T19:16:00.000-08:00

The article "Readability Versus Leveling" by Edward Fry discusses the difference between readability and leveling when it comes to the relation to grade levels. Fry tells of how readability is defined as "the ease of comprehension because of style of writing." Leveling is defined as "selecting books to match the competencies of a reader or writer." Fry explains how readability is found by using formulas. In the classroom, readability is thought of as an objective numerical scored gained by applying the formula. Leveling is not objective, it takes subject factors of judgment into account.

Readability dates back to the 1920s and the "McGuffy Readers." "McGruffy Readers" gave books a numerical grading, the more complex the books are, the higher numbers they will have. As it progressed, the numbers evolved into grade levels. One system used is the Reading Recovery System. It requires teachers to find books with closely spread difficulty to that one grade level with have books with more one degree of difficulty for that one grade. Some other systems give whole-grade designations to books. Thses systems and formulas are for grades 1-4 mostly.

The formulas used to measure readability and leveling use different parts of reading, speaking and writing. Readability uses syntactic difficulty, measured by sentence length, and sematic difficulty, meased by word length. Word length is measured by syllables or numbers of letters in the words. Leveling is measured by more than just two parts. What measures leveling is content, illustrations, length, curriculum, langugage structure, judgment and format. Readability is objective and can be assessed by a computer. Unlike leveling, witch is not objective. The scores of these formulas can be translated into grade levels. However, Fry does explain that there are limitations to these formulas. He gives the examples of how motivation and appropriateness cannot be assessed.

Readabliltiy and leveling have two different ranges. Readability formulas range like grade levels, 1-12. Leveling formulas range from kindergarden to 6th grade. Readability, unlike leveling, is used outside the classroom. It is used for many different works. Some examples are military training manuals, plain language laws, and newspaper articles.

Fry dicussed how to find the right readability level. He said there is a need to find reading materials with the right reading level for instuction that makes the most sense. If the reading level is too hard, it may discourage someone from reading and understanding it. On the other hand, if it is too simple, the reader could get bored with its simplicity. Fry said one of the most important things for a teacher is to select the correct level for her student to learn reading effectively.

In-Class, Wed., Nov. 5th: Limericks

2008-11-04T20:06:00.000-08:00

If you miss this class, do the blog post at home, invent a "grammar limerick" on your own, and post it to this blog as a comment no later than Friday, Nov. 7th, at class time.
___________________________________________________

Today, we'll do a group-work CREATIVE WRITING task that deals with rhythm and rhyme of language.

I have emailed you all the works of art of my ENGL 300 courses from Fall 2007 and Spring 2008. Open this email attachment.

At first, we are going to evaluate these limericks.

TASK 1:
Go to the following website, and get informed about the correct rhythm and rhyme scheme of a limerick.

Then, highlight the limericks that were done right in green, and those that don't quite work in red. Substitute words/sentences that WOULD work for the limericks that did not get the rhythm right (in class discussion).

TASK 2:

Let's see if we can exceed them!

Get together in groups of three or four people (maximum), and create your own limerick. Observe the following rules:

1) The rhythm MUST be correct. Read it out loud to get the hang of it.
2) The long lines must rhyme.
3) The short lines must rhyme.
4) There must be a pun in it.
5) It MUST deal with either grammar/language acquisition/syntax/punctuation/teaching!!!!!!!!!!!

It can contain "language," too. After all, limericks allegedly originate from pubs in Ireland...

When you're done, publish your limerick as a comment to this blog entry, and indicate all the names of your group members!

Computational Limericks (blog summary)

2008-11-03T12:38:00.001-08:00

Since Colin didn't post his blog summary, here's the one from ENGL 300-1, done by Heather Mormino.

Responses are due on Wednesday, Nov. 5th, by class time.
_____________________________________________________

Lessard and Levison begin the article by stating that this topic may be frivolous, but it could a good case can be made for the importance and indeed the centrality of the problems that they discuss further in the article on both theoretical and practical problems. They state that people are interested in the underlying principles of what it taken as the essential component of our humanity: humor.

We may have all heard of limericks, but what exactly is a limerick? Well, in the article the authors say that a limerick is the midway between a pun and a joke. What constitutes a limerick to most people is a five-line poem with an aabba rhyme, scheme, an anapestic metre, and nine syllables on lines one, two and five, and six syllables on lines three and four. However, this is subject to change as the rhyme scheme is not limited to aabba.

Lessard and Levison then start to discuss rhyme. Two phonological sequences (words, sequences of words, lines) are said to rhyme if their final stressed syllables share the same nucleus and coda. Everyboday knows that for most poems rhyme is an essetial piece. So we take from these two section of the article that a limerick is a rhyming joke.

Now we get into metre: Once a rhyme scheme has been determined, the construction of each line requires that a sequence of lexical items be aligned, culminating in the rhyming word, which contains the correct number of syllables and whose metrical structure follows the pattern determined for the limerick under construction. So now we decide that a limerick is a rhyming joke that has a certain rhythm based from its metre. The metre is the flow of the rhyme. Think of how you read a poem and the specific pattern we use in our heads.

For discussion: Do you know any (class appropriate) limericks? Do you think you could make one up on your own? Would you teach limericks to your class, and if so would you mix it in with poetry since we know that a limerick is somewhat of a rhyming poem?

In-Class, Nov. 7rd: Grammar, Computers, Haiku

2008-11-02T15:00:00.001-08:00

After Friday's mini lessons (Stephanie, Michaela, Randi; Abby will go on Monday), we are going to continue our two-day unit about grammar and poetry.

Since those of you who become teachers will most likely teach in a technology classroom (remember that from 2012 on, your students will be assessed for their "technological literacy," which means we as teachers have to teach them), we will also deal with computer-generated grammars for poems. That means, you create a program telling the computer which choices it has for noun, verb, preposition, etc., and the computer spits out a (more or less) creative poem.

At first, review what a haiku is (most of you will know already).

Below are the basic rules for the classic version:

3-short lines
1-season word
1-cutting word
no rhyme or metaphor
(17 syllables, 5-7-5)

Then, look at the following blog entry, which offers a simple "grammar" that can be fed into a computer so it creates a haiku. Be aware that here, the haiku have less than 17 syllables (many writers think that 17 syllables in Japanese can be more effectively rendered in less syllables in English).

We have just learned that the classic version of a haiku is a bit more complicated / longer than in this blog above (which just offers one season-related word in the first line, like "summer").

TASK: Get together in groups of 3-4 and invent your own haiku according to the classic rule described above, and write a "computer grammar" for it similar to the blog entry linked above.

Post your limerick and your corresponding "grammar" as a blog response to this thread, and present it to the class.

(If you missed this class, do it alone and post it for the rest to read.) Due date: Today at the end of class, or Wednesday before class (deadline).

In-Class, Oct. 31st: WORKSHOP

2008-10-30T22:25:00.001-07:00

WORKSHOP

Read your email: it contains the newest blog article, and sample versions of our best Abstracts, Lit Reviews, and Annotated Bibs!!!

Today, we'll have a workshop, where you can do the following:

1) repair and email out survey (last chance...)
2) finish the other two graphs and 5-7 sentence statements
3) repair Abstract, Lit Review, Annotated Bib
4) Develop your mini lesson, if you haven't held it yet
5) Prepare next blog summary
6) Prepare response to next blog article

The next blog summary is due on Monday, Nov. 3rd, by Colin Ott.
The responses are due Wednesday, Nov. 5th, at class time (otherwise, you won't be able to do the in-class activity).

Next Mini Lessons

2008-10-29T06:08:00.000-07:00

Mini Lesson Order (that's all of them. If you weren't on this list and haven't held one yet, contact me as soon as possible!!!):

Friday, Oct. 31st:
Workshop on graphs, and corrections of Annotated Bibliographies and Lit Reviews

Monday, Nov. 3rd:
1) Stephanie Jacques (articles for ESL)
2) Jeffrey Ryden (topic of choice)
3) Brittany Lingle (not only, but also; neither, nor; either, or)

Friday, Nov. 7th:
1) Michaela Bazar (apostrophe)
2) Randi McFadden (tenses)
3) Abby Hoover (semi-colon and colon)

Monday, Nov. 10th:
1) Colin Ott (topic of choice)
2) Charlotte Jackanicz (topic of choice)
3) Charah Gates (if there; otherwise later) (subject-verb agreement)

Those with "topic of choice": Let me know your ideas; if you don't have any, come to my office hours and borrow one of my nice grammar books ;-)

In-Class, Wed. 29th: Workshop: Graphs

2008-10-28T08:27:00.001-07:00

Change in schedule:
Today, Wednesday, Oct. 29th, we will hear ONE mini lesson: Jamie Wolf ("style")

Then, we'll have a workshop about graphs which will continue Friday, Oct. 31st.
_______________________________________________

Workshop in-class on Wednesday, Oct. 29th:
GRAPHS

(If you miss this class, do the steps at home so you won't get left behind!)

Today, we are preparing the three graphs that go in the Research Essay under the Results section.

NOTE: Those will be the exact graphs we are going to use later - we will merely exchange the numbers. Today, we simply invent numbers, but the graphs will be the same - xls will update automatically when you modify the numbers in your xls table in two weeks, when the survey results are in.

WHICH QUESTIONS TO PICK FOR GRAPHS:

1) pick your first matrix

2) pick your second matrix

3) pick one other very important question to your topic

4) do NOT pick a demographic question!!! (gender, age, race, income, major, etc.)

You can have more than three graphs (maximum: 6), but the minimum is three.

TASKS:

1) open your survey, and minimize it

2) open xls

3) take your first matrix, and type the headline for your graph (= your survey question) into xls

4) create a table in xls with rows and colums for your matrix question

ATTENTION: Do NOT leave any blank fields, because this will mess up your graph!!!

5) Invent numbers (how many people would have said what. We'll replace those later.)

6) Highlight your whole xls table (WITHOUT your headline! Do NOT highlight any blank fields, for this will mess up your graph!), and then click on the symbol on the top of your xls screen which looks like this:

This symbol will create the graph for you automatically. You only need to choose which kind of graph you want. The first one we will create is a vertical bar diagram. Later, you can create a horizontal bar diagram, a column diagram, a pie diagram, a line diagram, etc. - anything that truly displays your findings, and makes sense.

EXAMPLE for xls table:

Teachers: How often and where do dyslexic students get diagnosed?

................................often....sometimes.....rarely.....never

first grade................10........23...................5..............2

second grade..........20.........44..................4...............7

third grade..............57.........29..................3...............9

fourth grade............78..........9...................7...............0

middle school..........60........20.................10..............2

early high school....70..........8...................0...............0

late high school ......30........40.................20..............9

college....................0.........0................70............30

And here is the graph that goes with your table (you just need to type the title above it):

7) Write a 5-7 sentences statement about the main results you can see from your graph, cumulating in a hypothesis/general statement:

Using the graph above, I would say that:

"According to the results, teachers say that students get often diagnosed with dyslexia in fourth grade (78%). With regard to third grade, 57% of the teachers say that students get often diagnosed, with regard to middle school 60%, and with regard to early high school, 70%. In college, according to teachers' experience, students get rarely (70%) or never (30%) diagnosed with dyslexia. In first and second grade, very few students get diagnosed; only 10% of the teachers think that first-graders get often diagnosed, and 20% of the teachers believe that second-graders get often diagnosed.

These findings suggest that according to teachers' experience, the best time to diagnose dyslexia in students is in fourth grade, and that first through third grade is too early to diagnose a reading disability such as dyslexia. It is further suggested that by the time they enter college, students are already diagnosed."

(This is JUST an example I invented; it's not true, of course!!!)

HOMEWORK for Friday, Oct. 31st, by class time:

Email me your one graph that you created in class today as an xls sheet attached to your email, also containing your table and your 5-7 sentences statement.

On Friday, Oct. 31st, we will have another WORKSHOP to create the remaining two graphs about your second matrix, and another important question from your survey of your choice (with invented numbers).

HOMEWORK for Monday, Nov. 3rd, by class time:

Email me your complete xls sheet with all three (different) graphs, three tables, and three 5-7 sentences statements!!! As soon as I have approved them, you can copy and paste the GRAPHS and the STATEMENTS into your RESULT section of your Word document. Do NOT insert the three TABLES in there; they are not needed any more, because they just served to create the graphs!

How to do the Lit Review

2008-10-27T11:32:00.000-07:00

2. Today, we are having a workshop about how to create the title, keywords, abstract, and Literature Review.

The Literature Review is a major component of your research essay and talks about the status quo of current research about your topic - its achievement, and its shortcomings which you are trying to fill by adding your own research.

It is a SYNTHESIS of your 3 external sources, not a SUMMARY. Merge, contrast, and compare your sources to one another, and find their shortcomings that you are going to fill with your own research.

Read the following description of what the fourfold Literature Review is intended for. On this site, you will also find a link to the APA Style Manual which helps you create the citations for your Lit Review. Remember the rules: Quotes that are under 4 lines go in your text flow and have quotation marks, and you indicate your source in parentheses: (Miller 2008, 59). Quotes that are 4 lines and over are indented, have NO quotation marks, and also have the source indication in parentheses. (See example text below.)

Then, create your own Literature Review, and type it into the Word document with the 12 headlines we created together. Due date for the finished Lit Review is Wednesday, Oct. 29th, at class time.

LENGTH REQUIREMENT:
Below is a sample of a Literature Review I wrote for an education course:
(This is also the minimum length yours should be; if you have 3 external sources, write 2-3 pages (double-spaced; we'll single-space later, after I and your peers have edited your paper.)_______________________________________________________

A C.A.L.L. for Fresh Wind in Grammar Teaching: Computer Assisted Language Learning as Best Practice for Literacy Education

Literature Review

Who wants to learn grammar? Let’s put it another way: who wants to teach it? Given that this highly analytical topic with its morphology, etymology, and diagramming is one of the most unpopular curriculum components in English language arts both in the conception of students and teachers, there must be a best practice to convey it in an agreeable, content-immersed manner proper for our computer age. We notice that students in middle and high schools have a more and more limited knowledge of technical terms such as genitive or accusative, but skills in information technology exceeding those of the teachers. Instead of bemoaning the status quo, we should readily address those skills, for in 2012, technological literacy will become part of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), or the Nation's Report Card, which means that in addition to reading, writing, math, science, history, etc., the technology literacy of students will be measured nationwide.

This important milestone in educational history justifies a more intense integration of information technology into the classrooms, exposing students and teachers alike to new software products and corresponding skills. Why not try it in grammar teaching? It can be argued that instead of drilling the technicalities of Greek and Roman grammar – a language the modern student does not understand – it might make more sense for teachers to use an alternative approach to teaching grammar, such as by imitation strategy, conveying it in the form of computer-assisted instruction in order to address the needs of the modern student.

More and more constructivist teachers change their methodologies by addressing their tech-savvy young audiences in a motivating way. According to Dexter and Anderson (1999), teachers make use of computer technology along a continuum of instructional styles ranging from instruction to construction, exposing their students to either drill and practice, with computer technology as complementation, or, respectively, to active work for knowledge-building, with computers as a tool (Dexter & Anderson 1999, 2). They purport that teachers are not only constant decision-makers, but also learners who have to go with the change in the “nowness” of instruction, and reflect upon their own effectiveness to make their teaching fit modern standards (Dexter & Anderson 1999, 2). In their study about teachers’ use of computers in their instruction, and their perception of the changes thus introduced in existent classroom practices, Dexter and Anderson quote one teacher who exemplifies the general attitude of all teachers interviewed by stating that computers are not driving, but facilitating the changes she makes: “It is not like there is a written curriculum for the computer. We kind of put it together as we go along based on the needs of the students. Like I said, we try and connect it as much as possible to what is happening in the classroom.” (Dexter & Anderson 1999, 9)

Putting it together according to the needs of the students is also the aim of the present study about teaching grammar courses by using computer-assisted language learning (C.A.L.L.) in the form of WebQuests, blogs, online survey builders, etc. There are, however, characteristics of C.A.L.L. that Dexter and colleague do not mention – the immanent dangers, such as limited on-task supervision, the proneness to use Internet lingo in academic settings, plagiarism, and the leaving-behind of students who are less fortunate than the excelling tech geeks, such as the case study of an Amish student who had just learned what a computer was, but not yet how to use its higher functions. Kuang-wu Lee (2000) analyzes in detail the barriers of C.A.L.L., namely the financial obstacles, the availability of soft- and hardware, the technical and theoretical knowledge, and the acceptance of the technology. Despite all those adversaries, Lee concludes that what matters is not the technology, but how we use it, and states that

[c]omputers can/will never substitute teachers but they offer new opportunities for better language practice. They may actually make the process of language learning significantly richer and play a key role in the reform of a country's educational system. The next generation of students will feel a lot more confident with information technology than we do. As a result, they will also be able to use the Internet to communicate more effectively, practice language skills more thoroughly and solve language learning problems more easily. (Lee 2000, n.p.)

While Lee – who tackles the subject from the point of view of foreign language learning – discusses computer technology in general, Zheng and colleagues (2004) go more into detail by describing the perceptions of WebQuests by higher-education learners. After a definition of the role of WebQuests and quotes of what they ought not to be, such as “a panacea for all manner of educational ills,” and “merely worksheets with URLs” (quoted in Zheng et al. 2004, 41), the researchers mention the key features of WebQuests: a) critical thinking, b) knowledge application,c) social skills, d) scaffolded learning. Their survey of the perceptions of males and females of their WebQuest learning led to the results that males and females both have equal opportunities to learn from scaffolding (including the components of content comprehension, learning, and goal attainment) as embedded in WebQuests without any gender preferences, and can perform equally well in cooperative learning. Although the researchers stress the difference between the old construct of WebQuests focusing on knowledge application and critical thinking versus the new one of constructivist problem solving, they underline that there cannot be uniform standards for WebQuests established, since they display a wide range of quality and design (Zheng et al. 2004, 48). The present study is going to analyze university students’ perception of their grammar learning through WebQuests and other computer-assisted functionalities, hopefully coming to some general statements where this C.A.L.L. in literacy will lead us in the future.

In-Class Mon., 27: Title, Abstract, Keywords, Lit Review

2008-10-26T18:43:00.000-07:00

today: WORKSHOP
(If you're not in class today, do these steps at home, so you're not getting left behind!)

Wednesday, 29th: 1 mini lesson (Jamie), workshop about graphs

HOMEWORK for Wed., 29th, class time: email me your Word document containing title, abstract (unfinished), keywords, Lit Review

________________________________________________________

Today, we will need our Word document with the 12 headings.

Our Research Papers are growing substantially. We've finished the Annotated Bibliography, which you can copy and paste into your Word doc as soon as you got them back from me with my remarks. Note: The 10 max. points you get for your Annotated Bibliography have nothing to do with the grade you'll get for your final Research Paper. They simply mean you've done your homework. I've marked format, academic voice, and spelling errors, and whether the homework was submitted on time; I didn't check the content. We will have a peer-editing session in the end, where your peers will evaluate the content of your paper components.

We will also do a readability exercise with our finished research essays to establish our personal readability levels - at what grade level we write. For an academic paper, it should be 16+. If your readability level is lower, you need to change your sentence structure by incorporating more commas and semicolons, and elevated vocabulary. If your Annotated Bibliography in the section of "personal statement" contains a sentence such as "This article was very helpful to me because it helped me to...," this is obviously corresponding to grade level 4 or so, and needs to be reworded to "according to the results, it can be suggested that prospective teachers employ the delineated strategies to improve...."

Now, we are continuing with our Lit Reviews which are due this Wednesday, Oct. 29th, at class time.

But we will also deal with some other headings: the title, the abstract, the keywords. The more you read in your secondary sources, the more keywords will pop up, so type them directly in the space under the abstract reserved for them. It is obvious that we can merely BEGIN with these steps, and will finish them within the next four weeks, since we do not have any results yet, and do not even know the actual number of our "participants." (NOTE: We will only count as "participants of the study" the people who actually answered the survey, NOT all the people we have asked to take the survey!!!)

Today, we will

1) invent a catchy title that foreshadows your topic (keep academic voice, but still make it attention-catching). Also add your name and institution, and the two black lines above and below the abstract. NOTE: You can have a one-sentence title (like "How much Grammar do College Freshmen Know?"), or a double-sentence title with a colon or a dash in between (like "Shakespeare Turning in His Grave - The Decline of Language in High School Students"). Don't make your title too long.

2) Begin the abstract. The word limit is 175 words - no more!!! Keep the readability very high, because your abstract will decide whether or not other researchers are going to read your whole paper.

3) list some keywords (all nouns!)

4) finish up your Lit Review that we began in last Friday's workshop. The easiest way is to print out the 3 external sources (research papers), underline the important findings, and highlight the quotes you want to use with differently-colored markers. NOTE: When you submit your final Research Papers, you will submit them in a folder that also contains your 3 sources. You can give me your high-lighted, annotated sources - in fact, I'd prefer to see that you've worked with your sources, rather than receiving clean paper that looks unread.

You can also open the online source and use two windows on your screen next to one other, so you can type the quotes from the source directly into your Word document. What doesn't work is to copy and paste the quotes, since this is not possible with pdf files (unless you have special software).

NOTE: Be careful when copying your quotes! If the original quote you are using contains a SPELLING MISTAKE, you have to misspell it, too - indicate that it was the mistake of the original author by putting square brackets with the Latin word "sic" (= "so" / "thus it was said") behind the misspelled word or punctuation sign. Example:

"This tree is gorgous [sic]" (Miller 2006, 87).

Below are the guidelines for how to write an effective ABSTRACT (taken from this source). I have made some annotations in maroon.

An abstract contains the following:

Motivation:
Why do we care about the problem and the results? If the problem isn't obviously "interesting" it might be better to put motivation first; but if your work is incremental progress on a problem that is widely recognized as important, then it is probably better to put the problem statement first to indicate which piece of the larger problem you are breaking off to work on. This section should include the importance of your work, the difficulty of the area, and the impact it might have if successful. (This is your attention-catcher; here, you introduce your topic by mentioning why it is so important in our times. You can also mention the shortcomings of existing literature (your external sources), and the importance of your own study.)

Problem statement:
What problem are you trying to solve? What is the scope of your work (a generalized approach, or for a specific situation)? Be careful not to use too much jargon. In some cases it is appropriate to put the problem statement before the motivation, but usually this only works if most readers already understand why the problem is important. (This is where your research question goes - what did you want to find out?)

Approach:
How did you go about solving or making progress on the problem? Did you use simulation, analytic models, prototype construction, or analysis of field data for an actual product? What was the extent of your work (did you look at one application program or a hundred programs in twenty different programming languages?) What important variables did you control, ignore, or measure? (This is where you briefly describe your participants and methods. Leave out the number and demographics of your participants, since we don't know yet who will actually take your surveys.)

Results:
What's the answer? Specifically, most good computer architecture papers conclude that something is so many percent faster, cheaper, smaller, or otherwise better than something else. Put the result there, in numbers. Avoid vague, hand-waving results such as "very", "small", or "significant." If you must be vague, you are only given license to do so when you can talk about orders-of-magnitude improvement. There is a tension here in that you should not provide numbers that can be easily misinterpreted, but on the other hand you don't have room for all the caveats. (This is the part you leave blank for now; we'll fill it in when we have analyzed our SurveyMonkey results.)

Conclusions:
What are the implications of your answer? Is it going to change the world (unlikely), be a significant "win", be a nice hack, or simply serve as a road sign indicating that this path is a waste of time (all of the previous results are useful). Are your results general, potentially generalizable, or specific to a particular case? (This is what you are going to write in the end, when the paper is completed. Contains your implications and limitations.)

If there are any questions, ask during the workshop in class, or take a look at last semester's sample essays again.

2008-10-24T10:41:00.000-07:00

Click here for a list of rules for pronunciation of Esperanto.

Click here for a sentence translator.

HOMEWORK: For the following sentences written in Esperanto, identify the subject and verb. You can do this by copying the sentence to a word document. Highlight the subject in red and the verb in yellow. E-mail this document to Dr. Voss with your name in the document title. (Hint: the sentence translator works both ways!)

Try to identify the subject and verb before you look up the translation, but check your work when you are done. Don’t worry, they are easy!

1. La knabo kuroj rapide.
2. Mi volas lerni Esperanton.
3. Li ŝtelis mian taco!
4. Ŝi piediris hejmon de lernejo.
5. Li hundo peco mi sur mia pugo.

Also: Describe what you thought of this lesson or of Esperanto. Provide English and Esperanto translations as well as a pronunciation guide and attach it to this blog entry as a comment. You can write a short sentence if you like.

Dankon! Havas belan semajnfinon!

In-Class, Oct. 24th: LiveText Presentation

2008-10-24T06:31:00.001-07:00

for MONDAY, Oct. 27th: topic = LITERATURE REVIEW

bring your 3 articles printed out; we're going to work with them.
Also, bring differently-colored markers!!!
_________________________________________________

Today, we will hear Jeffrey's presentation on LiveText.

For this, you will all receive a password to log in, so you can follow the presentation on your screens.

At the beginning of the lessons, I will distribute the surveys I've graded already. Please make the corresponding changes at home. If your survey says "approved after corrections," you had only minor spelling mistakes and can email it out after correction if your intro letter was approved also.

If your survey says "submit again," you had major button mistakes or missing matrices, and must email me your link by Saturday, Oct. 25th, midnight, so I can check your repaired survey and bring it to class on Monday for you to email out.

Before you email it to your audience, make sure 1) that you cleared out the fake responses of your peers, 2) that you got the right URL (email it to yourself first to check if it really works; some people just sent me URLs connecting me to SurveyMonkey). Remember to put me in the cc: line!!!

I'll bring the other graded surveys on Monday, Oct. 27th, and we'll email them out in class.

Info about Plagiarism

2008-10-23T08:29:00.001-07:00

OK, I think students at a 300-level all know about plagiarism, but it just happened in one of my classes (even if unintentionally), so we have to talk about this.

Sometimes, it's difficult to distinguish whether it is already plagiarism, or just "too close to the text."

Please all read the definition of plagiarism.

I said in class that for your Annotated Bibliographies, you can use the information other researchers have written into their Abstracts and Conclusions, so you don't need to read through the whole research essay and can summarize their findings in a short paragraph. I DID NOT SAY THAT YOU CAN COPY THEIR ENTIRE TEXT WORD FOR WORD into your own summary!!!

This would be plagiarism = academic dishonesty, and can result in 1) failing grade for this paper, 2) failing grade for the whole course, 3) expulsion from the program.

When you submit your final Research Paper, you also have to submit your three sources from your Annotated Bibliography in a hard copy, and I will check whether you have quoted the authors properly in APA style. If you cite, use quotation marks and the proper APA citation, such as (Miller 2006, 78).

This will be extremely important in your Literature Review, where you have to use actual quotes from the three sources you've read, to blend them with your topic (the pros and cons). In an Annotated Bibliography, there must not be any quotations; it is solely your own summary of what you've read, and your personal reaction to it. Even if we write the rest of the research paper in passive voice, you are allowed to use the personal "I" in your Annotated Bibliography. Of course, it would be better to use the passive voice here, too - such as "This article is a valuable resource for education majors, because...," instead of saying "This article is helpful to me as an education major."

Even if you use just ONE sentence from somebody else, or one keyword he/she coined, you have to use quotation marks and the APA citation; you cannot present it as your own.

Quotes that are four lines or longer always have to be indented one tab, and then don't carry quotation marks. After the last word of the quotation, you write the citation (Miller 2006, 78).

Quotes shorter than 4 lines do have quotation marks and go directly in your text flow without indentation.

If you have any questions, or are not sure whether it is plagiarism or not, ask me before you submit your final paper, so we can fix it and you won't face any consequences for plagiarism committed unintentionally. Also, check our Course Schedule about its paragraph on plagiarism.

In-Class, Wed., Oct. 22nd: Hints for Research Essay

2008-10-21T20:57:00.000-07:00

Today, we are hearing two mini lessons:

1. Katrina Kosma
2. Charah Gates, or Jamie Wolf

Then, we are having a WORKSHOP to google two more research essays, and create the other two entries for our Annotated Bibliography which are due this Friday, Oct. 24th, at class time.

I will email you when your entries are correct and approved, and this means you can copy and paste them in your Word document under "Annotated Bibliography" that we created this Monday (the one with the 12 headlines for the research essay components).

Remember to always have your Word document accessible (in an email to yourself), so we can continue to work on our research essays during the following two weeks!

We are not emailing out our surveys yet, since I haven't finished grading all of them yet. Only when I have returned and approved both your letter of introduction AND your graded survey, you can go ahead and email it out to the 20 emails of your audience that you should have collected by now. Put me in the cc: line, so I know your survey has been emailed out!!! I hope to have them all graded by this Friday, Oct. 24th.

_________________________________________________

Here are a few HINTS about your Research Essays:

What I don't want to see in your papers: don't use the words

1) fact
2) truth
3) proof

!!!!!

This means, never say, "It is a fact that.... (AAE should be taught in high school, all college freshmen are bad at grammar, etc.)." Nothing ever is a fact; there are always different opinions, numbers, and debates; it might be a hypothesis, a perception, an observation, an appearance, etc.

Never say, "it is true that," "in truth,..." - we are in no position to decide what the higher truth is!

Never say "proof," such as "my results proved." We are not famous researchers who create proof that can overrule existing research - we are just a class gathering data from a limited pool and writing a paper about that. Our reliability/validity is not very high due to our limitations. You can say, "the outcome of this study was," "the results show that," "according to the results," "the findings were that," "It can be suggested that." But we are not going to prove anything to the world.

Also, never use personifications, such as "the research says" - the research cannot say anything; it is the author of a research paper who purports / claims / argues / maintains / states something. (!!!) Make sure you vary your verbs accordingly.

Further, remember to use academic voice, which means you have to write in passive. ("This study was conducted at.... participants were chosen among.... a survey was emailed to..... the following methods were applied... the results were compared to...."). Don't use the personal pronoun "I."

__________________________________________________

Oct. 20: Research Essay - 12 Components

2008-10-18T23:27:00.000-07:00

What we are doing today, Monday, Oct. 20th (if you miss this class, do these steps at home. IMPORTANT! You'll get left behind if you don't.):

1) find the 12 components of a Research Essay, and create a Word document with these headlines. Email it to yourself.

2) download the 3 sample essays from last semester, and email them to yourself.

3) read 1 of the 3 sample essays together in class, and look at the corresponding survey and report sheet to see how the student from last semester has integrated his/her data. HOMEWORK for Wednesday, Oct. 22: Read the other two, so you get a good idea of what you are expected to do!

4) Find 3 research articles (or 4, for the 400 level) that deal with your topic and contain information you want to either confirm or contradict with your own survey results. NOTE: You are ONLY allowed to use published research essays from JSTOR, ERIC, or Google Scholar. No others are accepted; especially not websites and Wikipedia (those are not scientific and can contain many errors).

5) Create an Annotated Bibliography of these 3 or 4 articles.

HOMEWORK for Wednesday, Oct. 22: Email me ONE entry for your Annotated Bibliography.
HOMEWORK for Friday, Oct. 24th: Email me the TWO (or three) other entries for your Annotated Bibliography.

When I have graded and approved your entries for your Annotated Bibliography, copy and paste them into your Word document that is going to be your research essay under the corresponding heading.
___________________________________________________

A research essay has 12 main components which are easy to detect: look at the headlines!

TASK 1:
Take 5 min. to briefly look over the following three sample research essays from the Internet (all are a little different, but their main components are always the same), and let's find out in class discussion what the components are (in the right order!!!).
1. article: Genetic Determinants of Bone Mass in Adults
2. article: Exploring the Role of Distance Education....
3. article: about Decision Making Styles

Tell me the components, so I can put them on the blog. You are going to open a Word document, and type those 12 headings in there. This is the beginning of your research essay. Save it on your desktop, and email it to yourself, so you always have access to it, since we are going to work on it in class during the following four weeks.

12 components of Research Essay:

1. Title
2. Your name and institution
3. Abstract
4. Keywords
5. Introduction
6. Literature review
7. Purpose
8. Participants
9. Methods
10. Results
11. a) Discussion (or: Conclusion)
11. b) Limitations
12. Annotated Bibliography (usually: "references," but we do a bit more than that)

As 13., you are going to attach your annex (pdf file of your SurveyMonkey result sheet. If you had open-ended text box questions on your survey, you need to attach the separate Word doc. sheets for the text answers of your subjects, too, since those won't print on your pdf report sheet. You have to click on VIEW on your SurveyMonkey results page, and print them out separately for each question where you had an open-ended text box!)

TASK 2:
Go to the website linked below, and save the three sample essays on your desktop as Word documents. Email them to yourself, so you will always have access to them. They show what last semester's students have done with their survey - they've created a research essay using their own data pool, creating graphs from their results using their SurveyMonkey Report Sheet, and integrating current research about their topic in their literature review, analyzing it in their Annotated Bibliography. The latter will be done in APA format. Use this link to see what your Annotated Bibliography has to look like.

NOTE: If you take this course at a 300 level, you need 3 published and peer-reviewed research essay from scientific journals for your Annotated Bibliography.

If you take this course at a 400 level, you need 5 published and peer-reviewed research essays from scientific journals for your Annotated Bibliography.

NOTE: While all three essays were A's, the students have made some minor mistakes, for example with citing correctly in the text in APA style, or regarding the academic format, etc. Do not take over uncritically everything they did, but use their papers as examples only.

Here are three sample Research Essays that some of my ENGL300 students wrote this Spring.
The first one deals with autism (Report Sheet included). Here's the corresponding survey.
The second one deals with AAE (Report Sheet included). Here's the corresponding survey.
The third one deals with Twins. (Report Sheet included.) Here's the corresponding survey.

In-Class Task:

Browse the Internet for 3 (respectively, 4) research articles about your topic. Use the links on top of this blog to search in the ERIC and JSTOR databases, and Google Scholar. No unscientific essays, please!!!

When you've found a title that sounds like it might be usable for your paper, read over it; and if you find good quotations you want to use (either confirming or contradicting what you want to find out with your own survey), create an Annotated Bibliography entry for it, and type it into your Word document. Your homework for Wednesday is to email me one annotation. An annotation in APA consists of the citation line, a very brief and concise summary of 2-3 sentences, and a personal statement of 2-3 sentences. See example of an annotation as linked at the top of this blog. See also this example I wrote for another class:

Hudson, R. F., Lane, H. B., & Pullen, P.C. (2005). Reading fluency assessment and instruction: What, why, and how? The reading teacher, 58 (8), 702-714.

After defining fluency as accurate oral rendering of connected text at conversational rate with suitable prosody, and its importance with regard to the automaticity needed for textual comprehension, Hudson et al. explain different correlations, such as between reading accuracy and proficiency, reading rate and reading proficiency, and prosody and reading proficiency. They provide research-based information on the assessment of reading fluency and accuracy, explaining different measuring instruments for contextual oral reading, e.g. time readings, AIMSweb, DIBELS, GORT-4, NEEP, Reading Fluency Monitor, as well as observations and Zutell & Rasinski’s scale for prosody. Finally, they list evidence-based instructional fluency-development methods, such as (timed) repeated readings, and connected programs (Carbo Recorded Books, Great Leaps Reading, etc.), and answer some common instructional questions.

As a future reading specialist, I want to get to know as many fluency-development methods and forms of assessment as possible (including the “fads”), to find out which practices work best in my classrooms or tutoring sessions, always keeping in mind that a fast reading pace is NOT always a signal for textual comprehension: some children are good at sounding out words fast and show phonemic awareness without understanding what they read, because they are “glued to the print” focusing on the letters instead of prior knowledge, content, context, and inferences. Those children are also in danger of not being able to “read between the lines” and understand what is not explicit, for example humor / sarcasm / irony. To detect the problems of such students (which often go unnoticed due to said fluency) is a major challenge for reading teachers.

Some Hints: how to Edit AFTER Publishing (in class, 17th)

2008-10-17T08:24:00.000-07:00

How to go back to EDIT what you've typed into your survey AFTER it has already been opened to the public:

You cannot change the wording or order of your survey questions while people are still answering it and typing into your form - logically, that doesn't work, because what would they see??? Therefore, you must CLOSE your survey to the public BEFORE you EDIT it again according to your peer feedback received.

This is how we do it:

Go to our LABEL, find your survey, click on COLLECT RESPONSES, and click on the little parcel symbol which says OPEN

and CLOSE it.

When you've CLOSED your survey, that means nobody can type in any answers while you are changing your wording. When you've finished repairing your survey, OPEN it again for your audience to answer!

Homework for Monday, Oct. 20th:

1. Finish survey, repair it according to peer feedback (IF our gmail accounts work again; if not, you'll get more time for the final proofreading),

2. Finish your letter of introduction (with a nice attention catcher, and a link to your final survey. Don't put the whole long URL in there, that doesn't look good; instead, hyperlink the word "survey" or "link" in your sentence, "Please click on the following LINK to take my survey." Email me your letter of introduction for approval.

3. Email me the pdf file of the REPORT SHEET you created with some peer answers. In case nobody answered to your survey because it wasn't finished or for some other reason, take your survey yourself (or have some friends take it), so you can create and email me the REPORT SHEET. The answers are all fake, anyway. However, you will need some feedback and GRADING SHEETS from your peers; if you didn't get any by Monday, Oct. 20th, let me know, and I'll assign someone for extra credit to take your survey.

4. Start collecting 20 emails from your audience.

ATTENTION: This morning, all our grammar300.com emails did not work (nobody could read the inbox, or compose).

You can email me your pdf file and letter (and email your peers their feedback and grading sheets) from any private or siu email account you have, in case our gmail class accounts still don't work!!! Just send them to my grammar300.com email, because I can read it ;-) Also, send your peer feedback to the usual address; we suppose gmail will start working soon again. If not, you get a different deadline for reading and incorporating your peers' feedback.

How to find Results, and create Report Sheet

2008-10-16T19:22:00.000-07:00

1. Today, Friday 17th, we are test-taking 5 (or more, if you want extra credit) surveys in class. Email the Survey Grading Sheet to the authors of the surveys, and to me in copy, and include some comment sentences.

Distribute your responses evenly, so that everybody gets some!!! I'll take all surveys, too.

If we have time, we'll do task 2-4 in class - if not, this will be your homework for Monday, Oct. 20th!

2. Then, we're going to look at our RESULTS. Go to http://www.surveymonkey.com/

Open the LABEL of our class, find your survey, but don't open it - just click on the button "ANALYZE," and it will give you a data sheet with blue bars on which you can see the answers of your test takers.

If you want to see what EACH SURVEY TAKER has answered, click on the left menu button "BROWSE RESPONSES," and it will show you a forward and a backward button that leads you to survey taker no. 1, no. 2., no. 5 - whichever you want to see. This might be important for your evaluation. This way, you can also see that the first survey taker was male and African American, the second one female and Caucasian, etc.....

P.S. I am taking your surveys, too, and I am typing my comments into your text boxes, so if you want to see what I had to say read your RESULTS ;-) If there are no comments, I didn't find any big mistakes. I didn't comment on missing parts, like your introductions, just on some very obvious spelling mistakes and/or malfunctioning matrices/buttons. I didn't correct everything, for that's your peers' job. I will fill in your Survey Grading Sheet after you've incorporated your peer feedback, so you'll get a better grade.

3. We will practice to create the pdf file (= REPORT SHEET) that has to be attached as an annex to your research essay later, when you got the real answers from your audience.

To create the REPORT SHEET, click on the left menu button "DOWNLOAD RESPONSES," choose "SUMMARY REPORT," and put the little black dot in the circle for "PDF FORMAT." Then, it will create one for you, and you just need to open it and save it, so you can email it to yourself and print it out.

Only AFTER you've created your pdf REPORT SHEET and have emailed it to yourself for printing, you can proceed with clearing out your responses account, so it will be fresh and empty when your real audience takes your survey.

To CLEAR out your peers' responses, go to the LABEL of our class, find your survey, don't open it, but click on the symbol of the little eraser that says CLEAR, and all your answers will be gone!

4. Create LETTER OF INTRODUCTION (basically the same as the intro on your survey, just a bit more elaborate, with a nice attention catcher in the beginning, such as: Do you believe that twins have language learning development as compared to singletons??? Some current research purports this. In the following survey (LINK of your repaired survey after incorporating your peer and teacher comments) I want to find out whether this is really true. I am a student of...... bla bla bla.)

HOMEWORK for Monday, Oct. 20th, will be to print out your peers' feedback on your REPORT SHEET so I know you all know where to find it, and how to print it. If you don't want to waste paper, you can also email me your report sheet as a pdf file (you don't need to hand in a paper copy).

If you haven't finished sending out the feedback, do so by the deadline of Saturday, Oct. 18th, 8 p.m. that we agreed on in class. That gives the people time from 8 p.m. to noon on Monday, Oct. 20th, to repair and finalize their surveys. The finished final versions of the surveys are due on Monday, Oct. 20th, in class!

Homework is also to finish up the LETTER OF INTRODUCTION we will begin in class today, and to email it to me by midnight on Friday, Oct. 17th, so I can grade it for Monday and give you the permission to email it out.

Also, please read the blog entry from last Monday's class again, because all the dates have changed due to the postponement of the presentations!!!

How to Create URL

2008-10-15T11:02:00.001-07:00

To create a URL for your finished survey,

log into www.surveymonkey.com, find your survey under the label "grammarians300-2,Fall2008," and open your survey.

Then, click on the button "collect responses" on the horizontal menu list on top of your screen.

Then, put the little black bullet in the circle where it says, "create a link to send in your own email message..."

Copy the http://...... link that you get by right-clicking on it, open an email, paste this link with a right-click, and send it to me!

I will put your URL out on the blog on Thursday, Oct. 17th, 10:00 a.m. (deadline), so that everybody can access your survey on Friday morning at class time.

In case you don't manage to create the URL for whatever technological reason, just have your survey completely finished, and we'll create the link in class/after class in my office or the computer lab really quickly.

If your survey is not finished on Friday at class time, your grade for the survey will be lowered by one grade.

Survey Links

2008-10-14T20:25:00.000-07:00

ATTENTION, the DATES have changed!!!
Presentations are postponed to Friday, 24th (Jeffrey) and Monday, 27th (Creighton), mini lessons are therefore earlier (Wednesday, 22nd), and surveys can be emailed out earlier (Wednesday, 22nd, after my approval).
_____________________________________________________________

On Wednesday, Oct. 15th, we will have a workshop to finish up our surveys.

We agreed on a deadline for your audience to submit answers to your surveys: Wednesday, November 12th.

Then, we'll finish the surveys. Since it is a WORKSHOP, you will be required to figure the technology out through "learning by doing," and you are also welcome to discuss with your peers and exchange ideas. Remember that there are sample surveys out there, if you don't know how a matrix has to look like, for example.

Each person needs 20 questions, at least 2 of which must be matrices, and the rest varied (single choice answers, multiple answers possible, open-ended text line, open-ended text box, etc.). 4 questions must be demographic (data about subjects, such as age, gender, years of experience, income, years of study, place of living (important if you survey about dialects and slang), etc.). 16 questions are content-based (e.g., "How many minutes of grammar do you teach per lesson?")

When you make up a Likert scale (such as: strongly disagree - disagree - neutral - agree - strongly agree), remember that it is always of advantage to have five items, not four, because some people tend to choose the middle.

Make sure all your button choices make sense, and that there are few spelling mistakes in your survey.

Also, make certain that all your survey questions lead to your purpose (your research question; what you want to find out in your essay, e.g. whether Ebonics should be considered a foreign language or not. For example, to find this out, you probably won't need to ask in the demographics, "what is your monthly income" - unless you want to prove that lower income families would support/reject instruction in Ebonics. Thus, work towards your goal, and avoid useless questions. If, on the other hand, you want to find out whether female high school teachers teach more grammar in English classes than male high school teachers, you MUST ask for their gender, and analyze their answers accordingly.)

However, you WON'T USE all of your questions in your final research essay, in which you analyze the results -- you'll pick the most important ones, or the ones that had the best results. (In case you made a button mistake, your result for this question will be screwed up since the interviewees answered wrongly; DON'T USE screwed-up questions, just forget about them. You will have to make THREE GRAPHS in the end; they will focus on three specific questions important to your research purpose. You won't make a graph out of EVERY question. Some questions are just for your background knowledge, not for graphs, such as the demographics, which you will use in the part of your research essay that deals with PARTICIPANTS. This is what the section PARTICIPANTS might look like: "The participants of this study were 20 elementary school teachers, 12 females, and 8 males, ranging in age from 25-59 years. 15 were English teachers, 1 was a biology teacher, 3 were social studies teachers, and 1 was a history teacher. 80% had more than 5 years of teaching experience, 10% had 2-5 years of teaching experience, and 10% less than one year.... bla bla bla.")

TASK 1: Email me your survey URL
When you've finished your survey, create a hyperlink for it (I will model this), and email me your URL and your topic, so I can put it out on this blog. In case you don't finish your survey in class today, email it to me after class (deadline: Thursday, Oct. 16th, 10 a.m.), so that I can put it out for Friday, Oct. 17th. It does not need to be perfect yet, because we will test your survey and give you feedback on it.

TASK 2: Testing 5 peer surveys, using this Survey Grading Sheet.
Each student needs to take at least five surveys of his/her peers for testing. You can do more if you wish. Try to spread it evenly; don't all test the first five surveys that are published, but also the last ones that come in at the deadline (Thursday, 10 a.m.). Everybody needs feedback! I will take some randomly, too. Just go to the links that will be published here, and take the surveys. Fill in the Survey Grading Sheet for the surveys you test-take, and email this sheet together with some comments written in text to the author of the survey, and to me in copy to get your points for it.

EXTRA CREDIT opportunity: Some of you might have missed a piece of homework (blog entry) after the mid-term grade has been announced. If you want to make up for something missed, let me know and take an additional survey - when you email me the copy of your feedback for this survey, write in it "make up for: ______," so that I can give you a grade for this instead.) You cannot make up for assignments missed BEFORE the mid-term grade, because those grades are submitted and won't change any more.

If you missed a day AFTER the mid-term grade: an unexcused day is worth 5 extra surveys taken! Email me those 5 feedback comments, and type in, "make up for: ..... (date missed)."

TASK 3: Feedback email to 5 peers
As soon as you notice that something does not work, there is a spelling error, something is missing, the order of the question could be better, or you have a good question he/she could add, etc., email the person whose survey you took (you know the name; it's on the survey) and tell him/her what you noticed! In the end, you need to have sent FIVE EMAILS to the authors of the FIVE surveys you had to take. EMAIL ME A COPY of your feedback comments - even if you did not find any mistake - in this case, you tell the person what you liked about his/her survey. Deadline for emailing the feedback to your peers (with a copy to me) is Monday, Oct. 20th, at class time. If you haven't done your 5 feedback emails by then, you will miss points.

P.S. For those of you who abbreviate your first name - don't do it on the survey, or your peers won't be able to email you any feedback, since I created all grammar300.com emails with your long first name!!!

Preview of TENTATIVE SCHEDULE (might be subject to change, depending on how good/fast we are/I can grade ;-) ):

ATTENTION, date change for 2 presentations (a week later, so we'll email out the surveys earlier!!!):
On Friday, Oct. 24th, we will hear a presentation in LiveText by Jeffrey Ryden.
On Monday, Oct. 27th, we will hear a presentation by Creighton Jackson.

On Friday, Oct. 17th, we will:

1. test-take 5 surveys in class, filling in the Survey Grading Sheet, and emailing both with some comments in text format to the author of the surveys, and to me in copy (if you get done before class is over, you can take more for extra credit, or proceed with the "Letter of Introduction." This letter is mainly the same thing you wrote into the header of your survey (the part with the blood samples...), only a bit more elaborate, in a nice tone to address our audience, and if possible with an attention catcher in the first line, such as: "Do you believe that twin children have a disadvantage learning language??? At least, this is what some current research purports. I have created a survey to find out whether there is any truth in such previous observations. I'm a student of........ I would like you to take the survey you can find at this LINK, to help me find out more about this topic from experts and people who are directly concerned...... The deadline for taking this survey is..... bla bla bla." This letter will be typed into the email that contains our URL, which we will email out after I've approved of both. Don't send anything out before approval, because last year I got some complaints from the survey takers about buttons not working, mistakes, etc. We'll give our audience "simply the best" ;-)

2. repair our surveys according to our peer/teacher feedback that we got, and email me your final URL. Deadline for submitting the repaired URL to me by email is today, Friday, Oct. 17th, midnight. I'll give you the OK on Monday, Oct. 20th. Some of you might still need to make changes then, if I found a mistake. I will TAKE ALL SURVEY URL's off the blog when they are good to go, so that no strange people from the Internet are looking on our blog and taking your surveys, messing up the validity of your data!!! Or, I'll block all other Internet users from seeing our blog. You alone will keep your real URL, and email it out as soon as I give permission.).

3. Search the Internet for potential email addresses for our audience (such as from self-help groups of children with disabilities, or other SIU students, or public school teachers, etc.), and add them to our list of at least 20 (!) interviewees.

If you received 5 or more feedback emails already, you may proceed with "emptying your results" which I will model. See below. MAKE SURE your "results account" is completely empty from our fake test-taking before you email your survey out to your audience!!!

On Monday, Oct. 20th, we will

2. empty our "results" in http://www.surveymonkey.com/, because your peers' feedback is not from your intended audience; thus, we will delete it after having repaired/improved our surveys, to make the results account empty for the new answers of our real audience. (I will model it.)

If I have approved your letter and survey already, you can email them out on the 27th.

Then, we'll learn about the components of a Research Essay, and see / evaluate some examples from last year's 300 course.

On Wednesday, Oct. 22nd, we will email out all graded and approved letters of introduction and URL's!!!

Then, we will relax from the survey, and hear the next two mini lessons:

1) Katrina Kosma: That/Which
2) Charah Gates: Subject-Verb Agreement

3) and, if Charah can't come, Jamie Wolf on "Style"! Be prepared, please.)

Since on Wednesday, Oct. 22nd, we will email out all graded introductory letters with the URL to our audiences, you need to bring the 20 required emails of your study subjects!!! You can get them from focus groups or self-help groups/parents' groups on the Internet (about twins, autistic children, DS children, children with Tourette, etc.), from the autism center at SIU if you ask them politely, from high school/middle school/elementary school teachers anywhere in the U.S., from people you know, from fellow students, etc. You're not allowed to ask SIU faculty!!!

Then, we'll wait for 1-2 weeks for our results to come in (depending on the deadline we agreed upon). In the meantime, we'll do mini lessons, learn about how to do the statistics for the research essay (xls graphs), learn about the components of the research essay and its required format, and evaluate some sample research essays we created in grammar300 last year. If you're willing to let me use YOUR RESEARCH ESSAY for next year's grammar300 students, please let me know in an email!!! (You can do it after you've received your research essay back in December, and know your grade, or you can do it in general. If you want, I'll take out your name (indicate that!). Your collaboration would be greatly appreciated - you are allowed to see last year's examples throughout this course, too! ;-))

Links to our PRELIMINARY SURVEYS for testing:

Thanks to those who published their URL's; for those who couldn't do it, I've created the URL myself after the deadline for submission on Thursday, 10 a.m. It won't result in a point loss as long as your survey was finished, since it's not your fault I didn't model how to create the URL in our last meeting.

Grammar without Grammar: Just Playing Around, Writing

2008-10-14T10:03:00.000-07:00

RESPONSES to this blog entry are due on Wednesday, Oct. 22nd, 2008.
___________________________________________________________

This article was basically about teaching grammar without your students knowing you are teaching them grammar.

Dean began teaching in a district that specifically addressed the teaching of grammar and sentence structure. When she tried to break down sentences and help her class identify words defined as adverbs, direct objects, adjectives and pronouns she met with blank looks and knew she was quickly losing the interest of her students. In vain she tried to find ways to incorporate grammar into everyday lessons only to be met with a scathing letter from a parent concerning her approach.

Changing methods she zeroed in on the writing of her students. She began to find ways of presenting sentences to the class that peaked their interest and met the grammar criteria. She never specifically told her class this is an adverb, that is the subject of the sentence. When she tried she lost them. She pushed on without mentioning grammar. The students became interested more because they felt it was a fun sentence game and not basic grammar.

Dean found a way to engage and teach her students without putting what she was teacing into specific context. She never said that by writing these sentences you are learning about fragments, subidornate clauses or parallel structure; but they were. The could make up a sentence and then break it down to specific subjects. They were learning and incorporating what they were learning into writing assignments. The idea of not knowing what Dean was specifically teaching them took the fear and boredom out of the lesson and made it easier to teach and therefore to learn.

This approach to grammar might not work for all teachers but clearly worked in Deans case. I found this approach refreshing and would utilize it in a classroom should I decide to teach.

In-Class, Monday, Oct. 13th: Survey Template

2008-10-13T08:44:00.000-07:00

MEMO: Don't forget to bring your remaining questions of the 20 on Wednesday, Oct. 15th, for the workshop!!!

There are some surveys that weren't saved correctly (lastname_topic). I'm going to delete those on Wednesday, so make sure you save them in the correct way to prove who did them!!!

P.S. Make sure your first four questions deal ONLY with DEMOGRAPHICS!!! No such things as "how do you feel about Tourette"! You need 4 background questions, and 16 content-related questions.
___________________________________________________________________

Today after the two mini lessons, we are going to create our survey templates.

Log into http://www.surveymonkey.com/ with the secret login and password I give you in class. Note these down so you will be able to log in for your homework. Don't share them with anybody else.

I will model how to create the templates, and once you've created them, I will LABEL them, so you can find your survey easily. My other classes also took/take surveys, so there are lots of names out there. If you are searching for your survey, look under "My Surveys," "Current Folder," then click on the black arrow and select the LABEL "grammarians300-2,Fall2008." This folder contains the surveys from our class only.

When you've chosen the background color for your template, we will do the first four questions together. They should be roughly the same for everybody, and deal with DEMOGRAPHICS (what you want to know about your subjects' background) only:
1. gender
2. age
3. how long they've taught/studied, etc. (professional experience)
4. some detail about experience (which majors; how many children with disabilities, etc.)

Then, we are going to create an Intro for our survey which goes directly under its title (use the EDIT button). It contains the following (look at last year's sample surveys again):

INTRO

1. identify your teacher, course, and university
2. mention whom you are going to interview (your audience)
3. state your research purpose (what you want to find out)
4. mention that you don't need consent of IRB and HSC, because...
5. mention that your survey is anonymous, for in-class use only, and not for publication
6. mention deadline for data submission (how long they can answer before you need the results. ATTENTION: we didn't agree on a date yet, so you can leave the date blank for now!)
7. mention that interviewees can receive the survey results by emailing you at your @grammar300.com email
8. mention that taking this survey does not take longer than 10 min.
9. thank the interviewees for their time/cooperation.

EXAMPLE:

I, first name last name, am a student from Dr. Christina Voss' English 300-1 Language Analysis class at SIUC. For my Fall 2008 project I am exploring the opinions of foreign language instructors to ascertain whether African American English (AAE) is worthy of foreign language status. This survey does not need the consent of the Institutional Review Board (IRB) or Human Subject Committee (HSC), because I am using this information as an in-class activity only; it is anonymous, and not for publication; I am not taking any blood samples; and I am not surveying minors. The deadline for taking this survey is November 10th, 2008. If you would like to receive the results of this survey, please feel free to email me at firstname.lastname@grammar300.com. This survey will take you about 10 minutes to complete. Thank you very much for your time.

HOMEWORK for Wednesday, Oct. 15th:

On Wednesday, we are finishing up our online surveys in a workshop. You need to bring all your 20 questions on paper.

On Friday, Oct. 17th, we are watching a presentation in LiveText by Jeffrey Ryden. This will take the whole class session. You don't need to prepare anything.

PROMPT: Write the 16 other survey questions (we did the 4 for demographics together in class) on a piece of paper, or into an email to yourself, so all you have to do in class on Friday, Oct. 17th, is to type them into the online builder. MAKE SURE you have 20 questions altogether; some one-choice-only items; some multiple-choice-possible items, some matrices, some single-word textboxes, and some open-ended essay text boxes.................. If you only have yes/no questions, your survey will appear boring. Vary it!!! Check last year's sample surveys for ideas.

Rondal Down's Syndrome

2008-10-10T09:32:00.000-07:00

There is little information presented on the study of language function in Down's Syndrome sufferers in their late adolescence or adulthood. Down's syndrome, however, is an important reference for the study of language acquisition. While looking at Down's Syndrome from this point of view, it could be possible to generalize the findings to all forms of mental retardation, although it may be necessary to categorize Down's Syndrome sufferers in their own classifiable group.
The reason for this grouping comes from the shared characteristics found in all DS people. All share around the same IQ of 45, as well as ability in non-verbal cognitive functioning, and basic communicative and linguistic development. From a language standpoint, very few DS people are so handicapped by the syndrome that they fail to develop speech, or are so little handicapped that their speech function appears normal. Such cases, should they exist, should be documented and examined. With evidence in these cases, it will be possible to know for sure if language development is different between mentally retarded and non-retarded individuals with regard to linguistic development.
Life span for DS people has gone up considerably in the last thirty years, rising from 10 to over 50. DS people make up one third of the mentally retarded population. This large number makes the desire for remediation much stronger than that of simple maintenance. Some physicians have taken to screening embryos and pregnancy termination when a genetic anomaly of this kind becomes present, but this practice can be deemed unethical as well as wasteful as it removes another individual that can be learned from.
Down's Syndrome mental development is considerably slower than standard mental development, as evinced by Gibson's mental age plateau scheme. DS people reach Plateau 1 at 4 to 6 years, while a standard learner reaches it at 18 months. Plateau 2 is reached in DS at 8-11 years, as opposed to 30 months for standard. Plateau 3 is not reached until 12 to 17 in DS, while it is reached at 40 months in standard. This shows the decline mentally from adulthood on in DS people.
Language development problems in DS can be found from an early point on. DS infants vocalize with little room for their mothers to respond, leading to vocal clashes. This shows that basic turn taking ability is slow to develop in DS infants. DS infants also experience delays in maintained eye-contact with their mothers, further slowing the language development in DS people.
Consistent words are also delayed in DS patients, with strings of consistent words not coming until 3 1/2 to 4 years of age. This is indicative of the lower linguistic function of DS people, but the answer of Down's Syndrome alone as the cause is too general. There is always the possibility of several other environmental factors that inhibit language development. It is possible that normal language input to the child given by the parent is not an optimal strategy for producing language development in children with DS.
Early language development in DS people should not be viewed as slow-motion development of language in standard learners. There are key differences in the language acquisition process. DS children use far more symbolic tokens, as well as a dedication to a routine for language that standard learners do not exhibit. Communication, however, seems to be the same for both groups at the early level.
While much is known about early development language acquisition in DS people, there has been little research to show how language is developed in late adolescent and adult DS people. One study conducted with young DS adults found that DS females are able to utilize language with more accuracy than DS males, but the rule of language simplicity was found true throughout the study. Grammatical morphology and function words provided difficulty, and were therefore avoided throughout most of the study.
The thought of a life-span intervention study is prudent, as studies have shown that language development all but stops after the age of 14 in DS people. There is a theory though that familial intervention can promote language development, as a study of an individual with familial support showed the promise of language development up until the age of 30.
In order to combat the language development problems inherent in DS people, it is clear that the only way to create a continued developmental learning strategy in DS people is to intervene with the developmental retardation throughout the DS patient's entire life, rather than during the developmental years of childhood.

Friday, Oct. 10th: Intro to Research Project

2008-10-09T21:49:00.001-07:00

HOMEWORK for Monday, Oct. 13^th:

Read this introduction to our research project, and also look at the links I provided!

Make up your mind about your topic, and sign up for it on my list on Monday, Oct. 13^th. Multiple entries for the same topic are possible.

_______________________________________________________________________

Today after the movie, we're going to start our big semester project: the research essay. This will take about a month altogether to complete.

At first, we will discuss the difference between

REVIEW ESSAY (a collage of different research articles that are compared, contrasted, and evaluated. No self-collected data.)

and

RESEARCH ESSAY (self-collected data that verifies or contradicts existing research which is previously discussed in the literature review of this paper).

The project of your RESEARCH essay consists of three parts:

an online survey you will create with SurveyMonkey.com using an account for which I will provide you a with password (don’t sign up for the free trial; its functions are limited. I’ll give you the paid for version with more features).

a report sheet this online survey builder will build for you. It will contain all the data you need taken out of the answers from your survey.

a research article of about 8-10 pages you will write about your results in a given format. You will attach your report sheet to it as an annex, and you will create three xls graphs for your data statistics. You will cite 3 published and peer-reviewed research articles from a scientific journal in your Literature Review, and add an Annotated Bibliography in APA for these three articles.

NOTE: if you take this course at a 400-level, you will write 12-15 pages, and you will cite 5 published and peer-reviewed research articles from a scientific journal.

Today, we'll only deal with step 1, how to create online surveys with SurveyMonkey.com

First, we are going to look at a few sample surveys we’ve created in ENGL 300-1 last semester:

A. Understanding Autism Through Supervision

B. What Second Language Teachers Think About AAE/Ebonics as Second Language

C. a) Language Acquisition Among Twins
b) It's Cause We Is Twins?

D. Teaching English as a Second Language (ESL)

E. Learning a Foreign Language

I am going to model how to create the template. You all have to name your surveys the following way:

Lastname_topic

For example:

Voss_grammar

If your topic name is really long, abbreviate it. For example, don’t write “apraxia in children with Down’s syndrome,” but call it “DS apraxia.”

You have to save your online survey under the correct label for your class I’ve created (either 300-1Fall 08, or 300-2 Fall 08).

Your further TASKS will be:

1) to pick a topic that in some way deals with "language acquisition" (not confined to pure grammar). You can take any topic we’ve talked about before, such as ESL, AAVE, Asian ESL learners, slang, dialect, accent, autism, twins, Tourette, Down’s syndrome, grammar teaching, grammar learning, dyslexia, apraxia, or invent your own topic. You can also make up a survey consisting entirely of grammar quizzes, to find out how much your interviewees know about grammar, and what types of grammar they know least about.

2) to figure out who your audience is going to be (will your questionnaire be for students, parents, teachers, education majors, or guardians; or relatives/parents of autistic or disabled children? We have an autism center in WHAM downstairs, in case you want to find contact persons there.) NOTE: You are NOT allowed to do the survey with any faculty members of SIU!!!

3) to assemble questions on paper about your topic that you might ask in the survey

4) to note down emails of 20 (no more and no less!) persons you are going to interview. Take into consideration that many people don't answer email surveys. So, if you address 20 people, count on it that 50% won't respond, anyway. If you have less than 10 interviewees, that won't give you a valuable research basis, and your survey will be void.

We will do these preliminary tasks on Monday 13^th, Wednesday 15^th, and Friday 17^th next week in class. If you miss a class session, you have to do them at home; otherwise, you’ll get left behind and won’t be able to use the software simultaneously with the others.

We will create a URL for our online survey and email it out to our interviewees (AFTER I have given my consent in written form that your letter and survey are ready for publication!). Accompanying this URL will be a friendly letter of introduction no longer than one page. Here’s the prompt (we will do this on Wednesday, Oct. 15^th, together in class):

1) Write a letter of introduction to the persons you will interview. State

- your name;

- class;

- instructor;

- why you do this survey;

- that you don't need consent by the Human Subjects Committee (HSC)/ Institutional Review Board (IRB) of SIU to conduct this survey, because it doesn't involve minors, or take blood samples, and is not for publication but for in-class practice only;

- that the survey is anonymous

- what the aim of your survey is

- how long it will take (not longer than 10 minutes)

- what the deadline is for taking the surveys, before you close them for data analysis

- that your subjects can have the results of your survey from you, when it is finished

- how you will compensate them for taking the survey, if you do that

- say THANK YOU for taking the survey.

Next Blog Summary Text: Down's Syndrome

2008-10-08T06:39:00.000-07:00

Under this link, you can find our new blog summary text about Down's Syndrome by J.A. Rondal.

The summary is due on Friday, Oct. 10th, by David Tabler.
The responses are due next Monday, Oct. 13th.

I will distribute the movie guide for the Down's syndrome movie we are going to watch in class today (and probably finish up this Friday).

The movie guide won't be collected for a grade, but you should take notes under the corresponding headings while watching it, because five of these might be on the final exam.

If you miss class today or Friday, it is your responsibility to copy a peer's movie guide so you have something to learn from for your final exam in December.

Speeded processing of grammar and tool knowledge in Tourette’s syndrome

2008-10-06T12:22:00.000-07:00

"Tourette's syndrome (TS) is a developmental disorder characterized by motor and verbal tics. These tics are typically fast and involuntary and result from abnormality in the brain. They can be vocalizations or motor movements and may be very simple to very complex. It has been linked to abnormal levels of dopamine, which serves as a crucial neurotransmitter in the regions of the brain associated with TS. Most studies to date have examined vocal tics from a neuropsychological standpoint rather than looking at actual language.

The authors of this article propose that knowledge of grammatical morphology is stored in two places, depending on its nature. One, the lexicon, stores forms that break the rules, such as the past tense of spring. Because it breaks the general "add -ed" rule, it is memorized in a rote form and stored in the student's lexicon. However, words that do follow the rule are not stored individually, but the rule is stored in the grammar. These are stored in completely separate regions of the brain. The lexicon, being primarily declarative in nature, is dependant on the hippocampus. The procedural memory (grammar) relies strongly on the frontal/basal-ganglia circuits. This is the same area of the brain affected by TS. Dopamine is highly important to this entire system. These differing localizations for memory lead to relatively normal delcarative memory in those with TS, while procedural memory can be abnormal in many ways.

One such way procedural memory can be affected is in the actual learning of something procedural. Severe difficulty in a weather-prediction task indicates that this difficulty may root back to the caudate nucleus. Other tasks involving other procedural memory structures are not as consistantly affected. Other procedural tasks (goal-directed movement) seem to be enhanced in TS males. Also, mental rotation seems to be impaired in TS males, but improved in TS females. Research and biology both support that the acetylcholine-based declarative memory system remains largely ufaffected by TS.

Given this background information, the authors conducted a study of TS patients (7 male, 1 female) and their abilities with language. The participants were diagnosed by the criteria in the Tourette's Syndrome Study Group (1993) and were not excluded for expressing comorbidity of ADHD or OCD, as these commonly occur with TS. Five of the seven children were taking medication for TS. 7 male and 1 female, normally-developing children were used as controls. Subjects were asked to produce past tense verbs presented in sentence contexts using four types of verbs (consistent regulars, irregulars, inconsistent regulars, and novel (made up) verbs).

Subjects were then presented with 96 items (32 items commonly manipulated or interacted with, 32 items rarely manipulated or interacted with, and 32 filler items) and timed on how long it took them to name the depicted item.

The researchers results reflected no significant difference in production of irregular verb forms, inconsistant regulars, over-regularization errors, regularized, or irregularized errors. The only noteworthy difference was in production of consistant regular past tenses, for which TS subjects showed a nearly-significant deficit. With respect to time, the TS subjects were significantly faster than the controls on consistent regulars, over-regularization errors, and regularized responses to novel verbs, but not significantly faster on irregulars, inconsistent regulars, and irregularized responses.

In the naming task, TS subjects did not differ from the control group for naming of either type of object and there was no within-group difference between the types of items, either. TS subjects responded significantly faster on manipulated objects, but not on non-manipulated objects.

The fact that a difference of time, but not of accuracy was found set the researchers to figuring out why. Typical confounds were quickly eliminated by research design. One could quickly argue that this supports a single-mechanism model of language (only uses declarative memory). However, the word traits that generally support a single-mechanism model were also controlled for. These models also generally explain accuracy, which did not significantly vary. The results support a conclusion that language production depends in part on procedural memory and that the abnormalities in procedural memory cause faster-than-normal responses in TS subjects. The researchers then discuss language processes and trends that could result in significantly faster response times. They then assert that these findings support that the rapid tics and vocalizations are merely a visible indicator of the fact that many things are sped up, including cognitive processes.

In-Class Monday, Oct. 6th

2008-10-06T09:01:00.000-07:00

HOMEWORK for Wednesday, Oct. 8th: Answer to the blog about Tourette's syndrome and Speed Processing.

In-Class work on Monday, Oct. 6th:

1) mini lesson
2) mini lesson (diagramming sentences)

3) group work:

Get together in four groups. Each group picks up three posters.TASK:

A. Using your black grammar book for help, create a sentence, diagram it on your poster, and explain it in front of your partner group.

B. Invent a similar sentence using what you have explained, write this sentence on your second poster, and let your partner group diagram it on your sheet.

C. Diagram a sentence, but leave out the words!! Note them down on a separate sheet of paper. Let your partner group use your poster with the diagram to fill it with meaningful words!

Preview of the week:

On Wednesday, Oct. 8th, we are going to watch a movie about Down's syndrome. This info is test relevant for the final exam. You will receive a movie study guide to fill in during the movie. If you missed class, you need to contact a peer to get the notes.

On Friday, Oct. 10th, we are starting with our new unit, the research essay. Attendance is very important! If you miss any class during this unit, you must contact your peers to get copies of what we have done; otherwise you probably won't be able to conduct the survey (electronically) and write your research paper.

On Monday, Oct. 13th, we'll hear the next two mini lessons:

1. Tiara Spencer: pronoun cases
2. Ronesha Johnson: pronoun-antecedent agreement

Next Mini Lessons: Mon., Oct. 6, and homework

2008-09-29T06:10:00.000-07:00

The next two mini lessons will be on Monday, October 6th:

1) David Tabler (active & passive voice)

2) Creighton Jackson (sentence diagramming)

HOMEWORK for ALL for Mon., Oct. 6:

Read about sentence diagramming in Grammar for Grammarians, so that you have a fairly good overview of how it's done (important for in-class activity).

AND: Bring the book Grammar for Grammarians!!!

For those who hold the mini lesson:
Please don't forget to submit your one-page overview about what you're going to teach for the 6 E's!

Homework for Monday, Sept. 29th

2008-09-25T21:02:00.001-07:00

Read the following page about the world-famous experiment with children with autism and the control group, children with Down's Syndrome. (Click on the link "Autism experiment" on the website that opens. The font looks tiny; just click on it with the cursor, and you'll see it through a magnifying glass!)

The last article we read about autism (see blog summary) mentioned this experiment, without describing it in detail.

Be prepared to be able to describe the experiment in the mid-term exam - it is about the difference in logical thinking between those two groups of students/children.

Accents from Italy

2008-09-24T10:47:00.001-07:00

Colin Ott, Creighton Jackson

Today, we'll take a trip to Italy and learn how to speak with an authentic Italian accent.

Listen to the following link as a precursor to what we will all learn today.
http://web.ku.edu/idea/europe/italy/italy1.mp3

Another Great Clip to get a deep Sicilian Accent.
http://accent.gmu.edu/browse_language.php?function=detail&speakerid=316

Now that you've heard the accent, lets set about disecting it.

There is typically one pronunciation for every vowel:

A = ah

E = eh

I = Ee

O = Oh

U = Oo

-ng- pronounces both consonants.

Initial sm- pronounced as zm-

Dental Fricatives (-th- as in thousand) are nonexistent and usually pronounced as -d-

Words which end in consonants are often ended with a heavy accent (often pronounced, stereotypically) as a schwa. This is what is responsible for the “That’s-a Spicy-a meat-a ball-a” phrase.

Now, some practice:

Pronounce the following sentences:

The singer and the banker go to the cafe every Tuesday.

This is the thousandth anniversary of something important happening.

It's a small world after all.

That's a spicy meatball.

Another one bites the dust.

Today is the first day of the rest of your life.

Now take a look at this clip from "Life is Beautiful" and Italian movie starring Roberto Benigni speaking English.

London Cockney Accent

2008-09-24T10:46:00.000-07:00

Julie, Katrina, Randi, and Stephanie

Hello, actors! We're auditioning you for our new play, London Calling. In order to land a part, you need to master a London Cockney accent.

To get an idea of what we're looking for, click here to listen to a soundbite of a woman speaking with a London Cockney accent.

American English is very different from British English with a London Cockney accent. Here are some tips to help you master the accent:

Drop your h's (Bloody Hell is now Bloody 'ell)
Turn r's at the end of words to h's (Car is now cah)
Replace t's and d's in the middle of words with glottal stops (Bottle is now bo'uhl)
Pronounce u sounds in words as yu sounds (Stupid is styupid)
Pronounce ee with long e sounds, not short i sounds (Been is been, not bin)
Use me instead of my (You got me books 'ere)
Use ain't instead of isn't, aren't, etc. (Well, ain't you a sight for sore eyes)
If -y comes at the end of a word, such as in "happy", pronounce it as a lax "i", like in "it", but raise the pitch of your voice

Use this children's rhyme as your monologue for the audition. Try your best to use a London Cockney accent. Break a leg!

Hey diddle diddle,
The cat and the fiddle,
The cow jumped over the moon;
The little dog laughed
To see such fun,
And the dish ran away with the spoon

No Need for Subtitles: Iraq Sound Files

2008-09-24T10:44:00.000-07:00

Iraq is located on the European continent. Formally a part of the Ottoman Empire, Iraq gained its freedom at the end of World War I. They have struggled to maintain their freedom ever since. Because of this, Iraqi people have migrated to the United States to live freely. While living among us, they have been able to adapt our habits, culture and language. Although they are able to learn standard English, they will always have an accent. If you, as an actor, want to convince others that you are an Iraqi native, you might want to start by listening to an authentic accent. Do you believe you have the ability to learn this accent and speak it so clearly that you don't need subtitles, yet it still sounds authenic?

Here are some videos that may get you one step closer to that dream....
In Video 1, an Iraqi man is joking around about the difference in his English because of his accent.

Video 2, is a sample of Iraqi Arabic language

Here is a list of rules for speaking with an Arabic Accent:

Use a heavily trilled "r," almost a "hr" sound.

Pronounce "ch" as "ty." ("Chapter" sounds like "Tyapter")

For the "aw" sound of "a," use a long "o" sound. ("Talk" sounds like "Tohk")

Short "o" and "i" often become "aw." ("Work" sounds like "Wark" and "Thirst" like "Thawrst")

Short "e" and "u" often become "ah." ("Dependance" sounds like "Depahndance" and "must" becomes "mahst")

Try saying the following sentences with an Iraqi accent:

I must talk to you. (I mahst tohk to yaw.)

We are going to church today. (We ohre gawing taw tyahrt tawday.) don't forget to trill the "r's"

Don't chicken out. (Dawn't tyahk-ahn awt.)

Read the first chapter of the book. (Read thah fawrst tyap-tahr awf thah book.)

I must work this afternoon. (I mahst wawrk thaws afternawn.)

By Tiara, Ronesha, Jeff and Abby

Irish Accent

2008-09-24T10:41:00.000-07:00

Brittany Lingle, Michaela Bazar. Brian Pullyblank

The following link is a link to a sound clip of an Irish accent.
http://web.ku.edu/idea/europe/ireland/ireland.htm

The following video is a clip of P.S. I Love You. Gerard Butler is an Irish actor speaking in his native tongue.

If you want to succeed as an Irish actor, you'll need to be able to convince your audience that you actually are whatever nationality you're portraying. Here are some tips to master an Irish accent:
1. Soften your vowels: use "Ah" instead of a long "A"
2. Harden consonants: use a hard "D" instead of a breathy "D"
3. Speak with a lyrical quality: Irish accents have a very musical tone
4. Practice, Practice, Practice

Instructions courtesy of http://www.ehow.com/how_2002845_speak-irish-accent.html

Here's an Irish poem for you to try out your Irish accent:
A Wish for a Friend
Wishing you a rainbow
For sunlight after showers—
Miles and miles of Irish smiles
For golden happy hours—
Shamrocks at your doorway
For luck and laughter too,
And a host of friends that never ends
Each day your whole life through!
http://www.islandireland.com/Pages/folk/sets/bless.html

The following link is a link to an audio file of the Irish national anthem:
www.national-anthems.net/windowmedia/EI

Learning Irish

2008-09-24T10:35:00.001-07:00

PJ, Charlotte and David present Learning Irish

Break a leg actors! We are putting on a play by Irish Playwright Connor McPherson. It's called The Sea Farer and a significant Irish accent will be necessary in order to pull off the lines successfully.

The following is a teaser clip of the newest play by Connor McPherson called The SeaFarer
found on YouTube.

Here is a sound bite for you to listen to of a man speaking with an Irish Accent.

Pronunciation of Irish-English is inherently different from the American English that we are used to. The major differences comes in the vowel sounds, as well as phonetic pronunciations.
Vowels:
I becomes oi, such as I"ll becomes Oi'll
Long A's become even longer, such as aaable.
Short U's are lengthened, bunt becoming boont, with the exception of u preceding a c, which becomes a short E
Short E's become long A's, everything becomes ayv'rything
Short A's become ah, such as can't becoming cahn't
Th becomes just t
Oi becomes just I
R's are over-annunciated

The dialect itself is also very slow-paced, as the Irish love to hear the sound of their own voice. Therefore, unlike the Scottish clip which is very quick and similar to a Chicago or New York dialect in speed, Irish dialect is very similar in speed to a Southern drawl. The dialect also has a musical tone to it, so when speaking adopt a sing-songy voice.

Irish vocabulary is not all that different from vocabulary already found in the English language, due to the fact that the Irish speak English. However, there are some holdovers from the original language of Ireland, Gaelic, as well as some interesting terms that hold different meanings than their American English counterparts.

Megusshlah: "My darling"

Chiseler: a con-artist, or an unsavory man

Tosser: a fool

It's far easier to sing an Irish dialect, due to its already musical nature, so as practice, we'll use a sample of the Flogging Molly song "Drunken Lullabies" in order to hone our skills.

"Drunken Lullabies" by Flogging Molly
I watch and stare as Rosin`s eyes
Turn a darker shade of red
And the bullet with this sniper lie
In their bloody gutless cell
Must we starve on crumbs from long ago
Through these bars of men made steel
Is it a great or little thing we fought
Knelt the conscience blessed to kill

Must it take a life for hateful eyes
To glisten once again
Cause we find ourselves in the same old mess
Singin' drunken lullabies

Sound Files: France

2008-09-24T10:35:00.000-07:00

Amber, Jamie, and Renita

Good Afternoon Students! We are going to be learning to speak with French today. This will help you along the road to greatness. Well, let's get started!

Let's talk about the French alphabet, and it's pronunciation. Here's a chart that tells the letter of the alphabet, and how it is pronounced.

"A" - Pronounced 'ah' "N" - Pronounced 'en'
"B" - Pronounced 'bay' "O" - Pronounced 'op'
"C" - Pronounced 'say' "P" - Pronounced 'pay'
"D" - Pronounced 'day' "Q" - Pronounced 'koo'

"E" - Pronounced 'uk' "R" - Pronounced 'ehr'

"F" - Pronounced 'ef' "S" - Pronounced 'es'

"G" - Pronounced 'ghay' "T" - Pronounced 'tay'

"H" - Pronounced 'ash' "U" - Pronounced 'oo'

"I" - Pronounced 'ee' "V" - Pronounced 'vay'

"J" - Pronounced 'jhay' "W" - Pronounced 'doo-blaw-vay'

"K" - Pronounced 'ka' "X" - Pronounced 'ex'

"L" - Pronounced 'el' "Y" - Pronounced 'ee-grek'

"M"- Pronounced 'em' "Z" - Pronounced 'zed'

Some of these letters can also have accents, this will change the way they sound. Here are different versions of some of the letters: â, ç, é, è, ê, î, ï. They are not different, they are merely letters with accents. Also, the letter 'H' is not pronounced, or it is typically pronounced very lightly. One last thing, for words with more than one syllable, you would stress the last syllable the heaviest. (Info courtesy of: http://www.france-property-and-information.com/french_alphabet.htm )

If you are trying to speak English with a French accent, here are a few tips:

1. Roll your 'r's. This is done by pushing your tongue to the back of your throat and pronuncing the r while your tongue is in the back of your mouth. You can also replace the r with a rough h sound. While doing this, think about gargling, hacking, or groaning. It is essentially the same sound.

2. Eeeeeelongate your e's.

3. Remember that a 'th' sound in English is more of a 'z' sound in French.

4. If you have to pause to think about what you are going to say next, you do not want to say, "hmm." The French equivalent of this moment of thought is "euh." If you are a Frenchman who speaks English a little uncomfortably, you will want to throw in a lot of "euh"'s.

(Info courtesy of: wikihow)

Try some examples:
a) Riding in the rusty red Rio with Rachel made me really reconsider her driving abilities.
b) Raoul loves rice and risqué reality shows.
c) The rain in Spain -- excuse me, France -- falls mainly on the plain!
d) These turkies have not been thoroughly cooked in this oven; the thing is broken!

Here is our first clip of a French speaker.
(Right click and save to desktop, open it from the desktop)

The following is a clip from the French film, Amelie. Watch it and listen to how the native language sounds.

This next clip is taken from Monty Python and The Holy Grail. Of course, the accent is fake (as noted by the French taunter). This could, perhaps, be a great example of how not to use the accent.

And finally, the last video is a "Learn French" clip in which a man slowly goes through the French alphabet while the camera focuses on his mouth. He shows how the letters are formed.

Good Luck!

Homework for Friday, Sept. 26th

2008-09-24T06:34:00.000-07:00

Up-date:

We will hear ONE mini lesson today, Wednesday, Sept. 24th: Renita Tanner.

After that, we will start with the group work about our sound files, which we will continue on Friday. The presentations will be next Monday, Sept. 29th, at the smartboard.

HOMEWORK for Friday, Sept. 26th: Read the blog post about "Dialect Boundaries" which we haven't dealt with yet, and answer to it with a comment on the corresponding thread.

We will hear the other mini lesson (Amber Pankau) on Friday, and after that we will finish up our sound files project. In case you don't finish on Friday, make sure you exchange emails with your group members to do it at home. If you exchange your grammar300 emails, the other group members can log into the blog thread of the person who wrote it for the group, to edit it and/or insert their own contributions!!!

In-Class Friday, Sept. 26th: Sound Files of Accents

2008-09-23T08:44:00.000-07:00

FOR THIS LESSON, BRING A HEAD SET, IF YOU HAVE ONE!!! (for Friday, Sept. 26th)
__________________________________________________________

Today, we are working in groups to deal with our self-chosen dialect sound files.

This time, we are not talking about dialects of different states of the United States, but about dialects AND accents spoken by non-Americans when they speak English. They can be native speakers of English (English, Scottish, Irish, Australian, etc.), or of a different origin (Russian, German, etc.).

Prompt:

Imagine your group of 3-4 is a training camp for future actors who have to stage a play in a certain dialect or with a certain accent. You are the trainers and have to teach your actors what this dialect/accent sounds like, what the major differences are with regard to Standard English (American English), and how to practice it. Thus, you need some kind of assignment or pronunciation exercise for them.

If you want to spice up your short instruction, you can add youtube files or other videos with sound, besides the soundfile from the IDEA homepage that you have to use. You may also add pictures.

Required components:
a) title and label
b) working sound file URL of dialect or accent
c) short written explanation of pronunciation and vocabulary
d) short pronunciation exercise
e) voluntary: youtube file or other video of people who speak this dialect/accent
f) voluntary: pictures (hyperlink them to source; otherwise it's plagiarism)
g) presentation of your group's instructional plan in front of the class (smartboard; ca. 5 min.) on Monday, Sept. 29th

Get together in a row with 3-4 people, and go to the following homepage:
IDEA (International Dialects of English Archive).

TASK 1: Pick ONE dialect or accent you want to talk about. Create a new blog thread for your group (only one person is typing, and can edit this entry), invent a headline and label, and insert your URL to the dialect sound file you've chosen. You need to come up front to the smartboard computer to actually HEAR your sound file, because your PC's don't have sound - unless you have a headphone with you. I'm bringing one to class. So select a sound file first (group discussion), and then try it out. If it's not what you wanted, you may always change it and take it in turns with the other groups to hear the new sound file you selected.

Ideally, no two groups should have the same dialect/accent, so we'll put the topics on the board to avoid double entries.

TASK 2: Explain in a short paragraph the major differences in pronunciation and vocabulary of speakers of your dialect/accent. Post this on your new thread.

Then, create an exercise. Finally, insert pics and other sound files (voluntary).

Format: you can address your audience (= actors) like you addressed your students in your WebQuests. Imagine they read your blog entry and work with it.

TASK 3: Look on the blog from Spring Semester 2008 for some good layout examples:
http://grammarians2008.blogspot.com/search?q=dialect
Beware: Those students had a different prompt. They were simply creating lesson plans, and have lots of sociology stuff in there. We are instructing actors, not kids who learn about the history and economy of certain countries.

TASK 4: In case you don't finish in class today, exchange emails with your group members. The one person who opened the thread is the only one who can type into it, so you need to email this person your components (if you delegated work) so that he/she can put it up on your thread before Monday's class (Sept. 29th).

P.S.

And this is what happens if your actor students don't learn anything from your intro to their dialect or accent - Dialect Laughing: 16 Horrible Movie Accents ;-)

next 2 mini lessons: Wednesday, Sept. 24th

2008-09-19T08:09:00.000-07:00

We'll hear our next two mini lessons on Wednesday, Sept. 24th:

1) Renita Tanner (parallel structure / parallelism)

2) Amber Pankau (lie/lay; sit/set; rise/raise)

Be prepared ;-)

For those who do the mini lessons: Don't forget to hand in your 1 page overview of what you are going to say about the 6 E's!!!

Language Acquisition and Autism

2008-09-18T19:52:00.000-07:00

PLEASE LEAVE YOUR COMMENTS BY WEDNESDAY, SEPT. 24th!!!

_________________________________________________

This article focused primarily on the acquisition of language by autistic children and the influence of social interactions. The article states that "autism is a pervasive developmental disorder that is characterized by delays and deficits in language acquisition, the absence of imaginative behaviors such as pretence play, repetitive or stereotyped activities, and profound impairments in social functioning."

Many people believe that language is basically determined by social interactions. This article reports that there are other factors involved in acquiring language. By studying the language development in autistic and Down syndrome children, researchers have found that one's social impairments are an important factor.

Autistic children tend to have difficulties with personal pronouns. They often reverse the 'you' and 'I' in conversations. In a study of pronoun usage amongst children with Down syndrome and children with autism, research revealed that autistic children had more problems with pronoun reversal while Down syndrome kids had issues with 'me' and 'my.' The study also revealed that the children only misused one or the other. They did not incorrectly use 'me'/'my' and 'you'/'I' at the same time. This study leads researchers to believe that autistic children are confused about speaker/listener roles.

Forming questions is also an important part of language. Studies show that Down syndrome kids ask more information seeking questions compared to autistic kids. As the children advanced, the autistic kids asked more complex questions but the DS kids still asked mostly information seeking questions.

The research leads people to believe that there is a disassociation of form and function for autistic children learning language(more specifically, grammar).

Twins vs. "LD"(Language Development)

2008-09-17T22:53:00.000-07:00

The article was explaining how their is an assumption that twins are somewhat delayed in language development and they are prone to language disabilities. In other words, twins are known to not catch on quicker than non-twins, who are also known as "Singletons."

The reason this assumption came about was because their were several studies done giving facts that twins are more prone to language delays and disorders because of biological and social factors. These studies also showed that twins are catching up with "singletons" on standarized language test during the childhood.

Day(1932) and Davis(1937),are two researchers who did two of the largest studies on the language of twins as a group. Both researchers used similar methods for each study and therefore came out with somewhat similar results. Day's study consisted of 80 pairs of twins and 140 singletons. The age range of the children were 1.5 to 5.5. Twenty pairs of those eighty twins were between the ages of 2,3,4,and 5 years of age. From this study, 50 utterances were recorded among the children while they were playing with toys that were giving to them by the experimenter. The end results were that among the different levels of language complexity,twins were seen to be at least 2 years behind the non-twins(singletons) by the age of five,whereas Davis, who used pairs of twins between the ages 5-9, found that on certain levels of structural measures, the twins caught up with the "singletons" on average, but will probably have problems with articulation. However, there were several things that the studies lacked, which would not make their information credible.

Among these two studies were some others which made this topic very controversial. Although throughout all of the studies, their results were somewhat correlating, their were still different ways of how each researcher came up with their results. At the end of all of the studies, all results were "on average." It was found that some reason for the child's disability was because of biological factors. However, these conditions are not just found among twins. It can also be found among non-twins (singletons) as well.

What do you think about twins and this language disability? Do you think their is a difference between twins and any other person with a language disability? Do you believe that others(non-twins/singletons) are more exempt from this language disability than twins?

The Language of Thieves

2008-09-17T06:40:00.000-07:00

You have time to comment on this summary until class time this Friday, Sept. 19th.

_______________________________________________________

THE LANGUAGE OF THIEVES

When you think of the word “slang” what comes to mind? Almost certainly no one thought of phrases such as “shut your pie hole”, “fiddle sticks”, and “gosh darn it”, all phrases that we have either used ourselves or heard someone else say at least once in our lives. Though most people know the meanings of such phrases they are considered slang terms which essentially contradicts the definition of the term slang. To clarify, the term slang derives from the word “slenja” which literally translates to “sling the jaw” and in Shakespearian days slang was a way to keep the world oblivious to conversations between thieves.

Partially because of its historical context many would argue that slang is a derogatory language used specifically for concealment as the teacher believed in the article entitled Slang: A Lesson in Ninth-Grade Composition. On the contrary, others, such as the student in the story, would argue that slang is a way of expressing oneself in a relevant manner to prevent being excessively vindictive. One thing that the teacher and student agreed upon was slang could be taken in a positive context.

For instance, “window shopping”, “speeding”, and even “has-been” are phrases that have been widely accepted by the American culture because they are said to be unobjectionable and also because there are no other words in the English language to describe such thoughts.

After all is said and done, slang is what you make of it. Since not everyone understands slang terms it can be used to conceal a conversation, but, slang can also be used to express oneself when shouting expletives is not quite appropriate.

Now that you know a little more about the history of slang you should share some of your favorites with the rest of the class. In the comment area please share at least one term that you use instead of resorting to profanity. Example: “fiddle sticks”.

-L.W.

In-Class for Monday, Sept. 22nd: Dialect Boundaries

2008-09-14T18:10:00.000-07:00

Establishing Boundaries of Dialect – Where to draw the Line?

For our new topic (dialects), it is important that you know the difference between SLANG and DIALECT.

BUT – if it is regional, where does dialect begin, and where does it end? Is it measurable???

Peruse the following link to the research article about the “Mapping of Dialect Boundaries.” You can also access this document by opening the pdf link. Do selective reading – skim the 23 pages, and pick out the essentials!

PROMPT:

Focus on the question whether it is possible for lay people (not researchers) to establish “boundaries” for dialects – look at the people’s statements in the article: “we have more of a twang to our words,” “never noticed much difference,” “they speak more broken hillbilly slang,” “southern Ohio is like West Virginia but not as twangy,” “well their vocabulary is different,” “they have a different kind of drawl in their voice,” “they have their own way of saying things,” “they slur their words,” “I don’t quite get it… they just talk kind of strange,” etc…….

Could you distinguish certain areas around the place where you grew up or lived for a long time that speak a dialect different from your own? (Name them!) Do you know exactly where the demarcation line is, and what is it, an interstate?

When would you consider such boundaries to be true, so they can be made official? Is there a way at all to ascertain a border between regions where different dialects are spoken?

Post your reflection in a comment to this blog.

In-Class Monday, 15th: Accents, Dialects, and Intonation

2008-09-14T14:15:00.000-07:00

On Monday, we are going to begin a new topic: "Dialects & Accents."

In some dialects/accents, the words seem to melt together, and it is hard to tell them apart. There's a technical term for that:

Oronyms (or homophones) - these are words which sound the same. A homophone describes one word of a pair or group of words that have the same sound (like "prince" and "prints"; "allowed" and "aloud"), while oronyms are strings of words (phrases) such as iced ink and I stink.

A definition of oronyms can be found in the book The Language Instinct by psycholinguist Steven Pinker:

[In speech] it is impossible to tell where one word ends and the next begins. The seamlessness of speech is... apparent in "oronyms," strings of sound that can be carved into words in two different ways:

The good can decay many ways.The good candy came anyways.
The stuffy nose can lead to problems.The stuff he knows can lead to problems.

TASK 1:

As a small exercise, pick one or two partners, and try to translate the following story.
It is made up entirely of homophones, and was written in 1940 by a professor of French named H. L. Chace, who wanted to show his students that intonation is an integral part of the meaning of language.Write down only ONE translation per group on a piece of paper. It is easier when you read the text out loud. The group who finishes first has won.

LADLE RAT ROTTEN HUT

Wants pawn term, dare worsted ladle gull hoe lift wetter murder inner ladle cordage, honor itch offer lodge, dock, florist. Disk ladle gull orphan worry putty ladle rat cluck wetter ladle rat hut, an fur disk raisin pimple colder Ladle Rat Rotten Hut.

Wan moaning, Ladle Rat Rotten Hut's murder colder inset. "Ladle Rat Rotten Hut, heresy ladle basking winsome burden barter an shirker cockles. Tick disk ladle basking tutor cordage offer groinmurder hoe lifts honor udder site offer florist. Shaker lake! Dun stopper laundry wrote! Dun stopper peck floors! Dun daily-doily inner florist, an yonder nor sorghum-stenches, dun stopper torque wet strainers!"

"Hoe-cake, murder," resplendent Ladle Rat Rotten Hut, an tickle ladle basking an stuttered oft. Honor wrote tutor cordage offer groin-murder, Ladle Rat Rotten Hut mitten anomalous woof. "Wail, wail, wail!" set disk wicket woof, "Evanescent Ladle Rat Rotten Hut! Wares are putty ladle gull goring wizard ladle basking?"

"Armor goring tumor groin-murder's," reprisal ladle gull. "Grammar's seeking bet. Armor ticking arson burden barter an shirker cockles."
"O hoe! Heifer gnats woke," setter wicket woof, butter taught tomb shelf, "Oil tickle shirt court tutor cordage offer groin-murder. Oil ketchup wetter letter, an den - O bore!"

Soda wicket woof tucker shirt court, an whinney retched a cordage offer groin-murder, picked inner windrow, an sore debtor pore oil worming worse lion inner bet. En inner flesh, disk abdominal woof lipped honor bet, paunched honor pore oil worming, an garbled erupt. Den disk ratchet ammonol pot honor groin-murder's nut cup an gnat-gun, any curdled ope inner bet.

Inner ladle wile, Ladle Rat Rotten Hut a raft attar cordage, an ranker dough ball. "Comb ink, sweat hard," setter wicket woof, disgracing is verse. Ladle Rat Rotten Hut entity betrum an stud buyer groin~murder's bet.

"O Grammar!" crater ladle gull historically, "Water bag icer gut! A nervous sausage bag ice!"
"Battered lucky chew whiff, sweat hard," setter bloat-Thursday woof, wetter wicket small honors phase.

"O Grammar, water bag noise! A nervous sore suture anomolous prognosis!"
"Battered small your whiff, doling," whiskered dole woof, ants mouse worse waddling.

"O Grammar, water bag mouser gut! A nervous sore suture bag mouse!"
Daze worry on-forger-nut ladle gull's lest warts. Oil offer sodden, caking offer carvers an sprinkling otter bet, disk hoard hoarded woof lipped own pore Ladle Rat Rotten Hut an garbled erupt.

Mural: Yonder nor sorghum stenches shut ladle gulls stopper torque wet strainers.

TASK 2: Do either/or as a comment to this blog:

a) either, write a sentence containing a homophone and/or oronym, and render this sentence in both possible ways,

2) OR, review what "mondegreens" are, and write down one that you have (mistakenly) heard when listening to lyrics.

In-Class Wednesday, Sept. 15th: URL's for WebQuests

2008-09-12T09:05:00.003-07:00

On Wednesday, we will quickly post our URL's on this blog thread (hyperlink your topics!), and then we'll hear two mini lessons.

If you finish your WebQuests earlier, you are welcome to hyperlink your URL before Wednesday's class.

Your homework for Friday, September 19th, will be to read your peers' WebQuests, and compare their professionalism with your own.

Pick your favorite WebQuest (only ONE; it can be your own), and publish the name of its author in a comment to this blog entry, stating in ONE sentence why you found it so extraordinary. The person who wins gets to choose our next reading for the blog summaries!!!
Then, grade YOUR OWN WebQuest with the following grading sheet, which you also received in an email, and either bring your printed-out self-evaluation sheet to class on Friday, and submit it in the first 10 minutes of class, or email it to me before Friday's class starts.

If you are not in class on Wednesday, figure out at home how to hyperlink your WebQuest URL (click on "publish" in the WebQuest editor, and copy the URL; then, go to this blog entry, click on the globe with the paper clip, and hyperlink this URL with "paste" to your topic). Publish by class time on Wednesday. If it isn't published by class time, it won't be graded because your peers and I cannot see it.

I will only grade WebQuests for which the URL's were posted before or in Wednesday's class, and for which I have received your self-evaluation on Friday. No late assignments accepted.

Name of Author............ Topic of WebQuest, hyperlinked to URL

1. Michaela Bazar..............Australian Slang

2. Charah Gates ............ 1920's Slang

3. Abby Hoover.................Drug Slang

4. Charlotte Jackanicz.... 1920's Slang

5. Creighton Jackson...........Australian Slang

6. Stephanie Jacques...1920's slang

7. Ronesha Johnson.... Prison Slang

8. Katrina Kosma: 1920's Slang

9. Pamela LaBelle...Skateboarding slang

10. Brittany Lingle- 1920s Slang

11. Randi Mcfadden...1960's Slang

12. Colin Ott... 1920s slang

13. Amber Pankau....Railroad slang

14. Julie Pioter ...1960s Slang

15. Brian Pullyblank......1960's slang

16. Jeffrey Ryden ....... Slang in the Year 2020

17. Tiara Spencer.... Prison Slang

18. David Tabler ... Prison Slang

19. Renita Tanner....1960s Slang

20. Jamie Wolf ....cockney rhyming slang

21. Alicsander Ortega.....drug slang

SynchronEyes

2008-09-10T10:39:00.000-07:00

What do you think about SynchronEyes

a) as a teacher

b) as a student???

Differentiated Instruction for kids with SLI

2008-09-09T20:30:00.000-07:00

Since our day will be cut short today due to the mini lesson presentation and assessment, we are going to deal only briefly with one special sub-group of language (and grammar) learners – see writing sample below. They might be your future students, if you are an education major – who are they?

TASK 1: Try to rewrite the text below in Standard Written English:

Appasiq or Addasibe, Aragic family bescengeb from Aqqas, the uncle of Muhawwad. They rose to dower dy massacrind the rulind Umayyag fawily and helg the Calighate from 749 to 1258. Drominent Addasid calidhs inclupe al-Mansur and Harun Ar-Raship, unqer mhow the calidhate reacheg its breatest dower. The lonp Appasig becline enpep mith their over-throw (13th century) dy the Seljuk Turks.

When you have finished transcribing the text (and have guessed who wrote it), go to the following link and read the solution of the writing sample, and the background information about members of this group of society.

Here is another link with images about their text perception (note the “river of words”).

Our concern is now how to teach such students the English language. Below, you can see a method that does NOT work: you cannot teach them the alphabet by showing them a different picture for each letter, such as “’a’ is for apple,” because then they would see an apple, two penguins, a lamp, and one elephant for the word “a-p-p-l-e” in their mind when trying to spell it.

Homework for Monday, September 15th, will be

1. to read the following research article, and to email me a ~500-word summary of the perceptual, phonological, grammatical, and syntactical mistakes that such students make;

2. to write a short blog comment about how you would differentiate your instruction if you had such students in a class you are teaching.

Sharpening

2008-09-08T11:33:00.001-07:00

Since the student who was responsible for publishing the post about "Sharpening" did not do so, I am herewith offering the corresponding blog thread from ENGL300-1. Below is the summary; the student gave a prompt for your comments. The deadline for posting your comments is Friday, September 12th, 2008, at class time.

__________________________________________________________

“Sharpening”, the selection we had to read was from the same book we read about Engfish from, Telling Writing by Ken Marcrorie.

A lot of what Marcrorie discusses in this section expands on what he started mentioning in Engfish. Remember how Marcrorie talked about how we tried to make overly wordy sentences that didn’t really mean anything? Marcrorie discusses in this section ways to “sharpen” our sentences, or to make them sound better, and this process really will make our sentences sound less “Engfishy”.
One of the main points Marcrorie makes is using active verbs instead of passive verbs. Instead of using a lot of linking verbs like ‘is’, we should try to use action verbs that suit what we’re saying instead.

Example:

-- Reading this section is assisting us in becoming better writers. (Passive verb phrase is assisting.)

Versus

-- Reading this section improves our writing style.

Clearly, the second one sounds a lot more convincing. It also cuts down on the number of unnecessary words, which was one of the main aspects of Engfish.
The other main point that Macrorie brings up is all the use of unnecessary words and the overuse of the pronoun ‘it’. Rather than beating around the bush by saying things like ‘It seems that reading this will help me’, Macrorie argues that we should just get to the point and say ‘Reading this will help me’. By avoiding all the extra words, we sound a little more authoritative, don’t you think? We also sound a lot more convincing, or at least that’s how it seems to me, and I can’t really think of any situation where we wouldn’t want to sound convincing in our writing.

Obviously, passive verbs and ‘it’ can’t always be avoided, but we should always try to avoid them in situations where we could be using better and more colorful words!

For discussion:

What did you think about the article? Have you had any experience with writing that needs a little sharpening, or maybe have you seen instances in which you’ve used a lot of “its”, “seems”, and passive verbs yourself? (I know I’m guilty of it!) What do you think is the best way to try to avoid this? (Since these aren’t really errors, I know it’s a lot harder for me to catch myself doing it. I mean, I just used the word ‘it’ and ‘is’ in that sentence!) If you have any other thoughts, too, you can just put them here.

by Laura Treat, ENGL300-1

Objectives and Standards - for WebQuest

2008-09-07T20:34:00.001-07:00

We need two special things for our WebQuests: objectives, and standards.

1. Let’s start with the teacher’s objectives. They tell us your expectations of what your students should know after having done your WebQuest, and what you will grade them for.

Of course, you can write down more than one objective, but one is a MUST.

How to write instructional objectives (ABCD formula) according to educational research:

Audience (A)
Behavior (B)
Condition (C)
Degree of Mastery (D)

Cognitive Objectives (comprehension level): sample sentences

(C) Given a paragraph in a newspaper article,
(A) the 5th grade student (be specific!)
(B) will be able to accurately identify the grammatical subject of each sentence and explain his or her decision
(D) for all sentences given.

Look at the sample sentences on this webpage, and formulate an ABCD objective for your WebQuest lesson plan in the same manner.

http://tlt.its.psu.edu/suggestions/research/Write_Objectives.shtml

TASK: Write your objective(s) on your site of the WebQuest that says “TEACHER PAGE.” This is where other instructors will look to find the purpose of your lesson plan (your expectations of your students; i.e., your objectives).

2. Standards

Look at my sample WebQuest about Anne Frank and the Holocaust: Under the link “STANDARDS” you have to insert the Illinois Learning Standards that are important for the lesson you teach. They can deal with reading, writing, oral communication, technology, research, etc.

Go to the ISBE (Illinois State Board of Education) homepage, http://www.isbe.state.il.us/

Then, click on Illinois Learning Standards (http://www.isbe.state.il.us/ils/Default.htm) and select the ones for the subject you want to teach in your WebQuest. For English it would be English Language Arts (http://www.isbe.state.il.us/ils/ela/standards.htm). Down at the bottom of the page you find the five categories for the State Goals / Standards:

Goal 1: Reading
Goal 2: Literature
Goal 3: Writing
Goal 4: Listening and Speaking
Goal 5: Research

Open those goals as a Word document (not pdf file!), go to the grade level you want to teach (e.g., middle school or high school), and copy the goals that apply for your WebQuest lesson plan, and paste them into your WebQuest on the site that’s called “STANDARDS.”

An example for one goal would be:

LATE HIGH SCHOOL

Goal 5 (Research)
C. Apply acquired information, concepts and ideas to communicate in a variety of formats.

5.C.5a Using contemporary technology, create a research presentation or prepare a documentary related to academic, technical or occupational topics and present the findings in oral or multimedia formats.

You will have multiple goals to copy and paste, depending on what you want your students to do (research the Internet, read multimedia sources, write an essay, hold a PowerPoint presentation about their findings, fill in a worksheet, etc.).

REMINDER: MINI LESSONS

Next class session, Wednesday, September 10th, we will start presenting our mini lessons. The topic of the first lesson is "Clauses & Phrases." By now, you should all have our two textbooks (you had two weeks to get them). All mini lesson topics (except for the "dash"; for this one, I will provide you with a research article) are chapters in our blue textbook by Martha Koelln!!! Some info can be found in Grammar for Grammarians (which is mainly about diagramming sentences). So - if you don't have the textbooks yet - borrow them from a peer and copy your chapter, or get them from the library. You can also (and should!) google your grammatical topic, and present your findings (or use online quizzes to assess your peers).

When you've done your mini lesson, please hand in your overview (at least one written page about the 6 E's you've dealt with) and any handout you might have distributed!

Slang of Insider Groups in Society: WebQuests

2008-09-04T16:31:00.000-07:00

We are going to create a Lesson Plan again; this time focusing on the 6th big E, the E-Search. We will also have a big chunk of Engage and Explore in our Learning Cycle.

Today, we are going to learn a new software tool: WebQuests.

These are meant to be online lesson plans that teachers can use in class, providing their students with links to do research about certain topics. (This is point 6 from our Learning Cycle, the "e-search.") The kids go on a "quest" on www and expand their previous knowledge.

The WebQuests have several different steps the kids have to follow, and they also offer a rubric at the end, so the kids know what they will be graded for. Also, they have a welcome page that explains the topic and what they are going to do.

Our task: WE ARE CREATING A WEBQUEST LESSON PLAN ABOUT THE TOPIC "METAPHORS used in SLANG."

PROMPT 1:

Read the following 1-page excerpt from the diary of a medical intern, written by Perri Klass. In it, she explains how she had to learn a "totally new language" in order to understand the slang of nurses and doctors. It is like a "secret language," so that the patients won't know what is wrong with them when the medical staff talks about them. Beware - some expressions are quite offensive!

PROMPT 2:

Choose a topic from the following list (or google your own topic) - it needs to be the special language/dictionary of ONE group of society.

soldiers' slang (Slang from Operation Iraqui Freedom)
prison slang
rhyming slang (England; Cockney)
police slang
computer slang
railroad slang
1920's slang
1960's slang
Mountain Bike Slang
Australian Slang
Death Slang
Antarctic slang
drug slang

When you have chosen your topic (and your dictionary of a certain slang), you have the FIRST COMPONENT of your WebQuest lesson plan. Here's an overview of all the components you need:

COMPONENTS of WEBQUEST lesson plan:

1. a link to your slang dictionary
2.1 a welcome page (Intro) that tells the kids (address them; let me know their grade level) what the topic of your lesson is (which group you're talking about)
2.2 a TASK page that tells the kids what the purpose of your lesson is (why they need to learn about it), and what they will do
3. an assignment page (Process) with e-search assignments (links) for the kids. Here, you need to tell them how to present their findings (such as, to write down what they researched on a piece of paper, fill in a study guide that you prepare, do a ppt presentation, etc.).
4. a grading rubric

For task 2.2, the PURPOSE, look at the following link which explains why people choose euphemisms and synonyms for the word "death/dying" (death slang). Your task in 2. is to tell your students WHY the insider group you chose uses a specific kind of vocabulary and expression.

For task 3, the PROCESS, you should have the following components:

3.1 I expect you to define the words SLANG and METAPHOR for your students. Give them an example for a metaphor (taken from your dictionary). You can also make them write down their own definitions, and then let them click on a link to an online dictionary that defines those terms correctly.

3.2 Create a brief text using the slang you're talking about (either, write it yourself, or use the translation engine on your website). Let the kids translate it into Standard Written English without looking at the dictionary for help. Then, give them the solutions in a later section of your webquest, to check their responses.

3.3 Give them the link to your dictionary, and their first assignment (e.g., create a 10-item dictionary with words chosen from it on their own, etc.)

3.4 Give them some kind of writing assignment about YOUR insider group's slang that you will grade with your grading rubric (prompt examples: "Write a short story using this slang." or "Write an essay about why it is important to learn a certain slang if one wants to "belong" to a group of insiders." or "Is it better to remain true to one's origins and speak one's own language, or does one have to adapt when joining a different group?" or "Why can the use of metaphors be good/bad sometimes?" or "If you were a patient, would you prefer that the doctors speak clear text with you, or wouldn't you mind them talk in secret language?" or "Is a secret language ment to INCLUDE or EXCLUDE people?" or "Develop your own secret society. Write a short essay about what kind of language you would use." BE CREATIVE!!!)

3.5 Create your Grading Rubric with the online functions that WebQuest offers.

SOFTWARE: modeling how to create WebQuests

Go to the homepage of WebQuest. You need to sign up and register for a "30 day free trial." Then, we'll model together how to create the background template and colors, etc. The online builder is pretty easy and self-explanatory, and will guide you through all steps. Remember to ALWAYS SAVE what you typed before you click on another field; otherwise, you'll lose everything!!! You can also insert pictures (which you should do, depending on the grade level you instruct.)

To give you an idea of layout possibilities:

Here's an example WebQuest I developed for my German Honors class at CCHS in 2006. It's about Anne Frank and concentration camps.

Another WebQuest I created for a Third Track English class at CCHS about Helen Keller.

TIMELINE for this project: We will work on it for three class periods (today, Monday, and Friday); the rest will be homework. DUE DATE: Wednesday, September 17th. We will all put the links to our WebQuests on a blog thread I will create, so that we can view each other's works.

On WEDNESDAY next week, Sept. 10th, we will start with MINI LESSON 1, topic "Clauses and Phrases," by Brian Pullyblank. So -- be prepared! We've modeled one mini lesson on our blog; you just need to follow the 6 E's of the Learning Cycle, and incorporate some activities and a quiz for the whole class. Handouts are always appreciated, but no must. Look at the Mini Lesson Grading Rubric I've emailed everyone, to see what I will be grading (and what your peers will be grading). You're welcome to use technology. If for any reason you won't be here on the day of your mini lesson, let me know in advance so another student can take up that slot.

How Can AAE Speakers Become Effective SWE Writers?

2008-09-04T12:00:00.001-07:00

This article presents five different methods of teaching AAE speakers to write in SWE. Each method has its ups and downs, but there are some methods that have fewer negative side effects that go along with them.
Of the five approaches, the traditional approach is the most dictatorial and uncompromising. In the traditional approach, the teacher eliminates almost all forms of AAE in the classroom. This means that she does not allow her students to speak it, write it, or even read it. By preventing her students from reading texts that are written in AAE, she is keeping them from some influential literary works that would help expand their understanding of the African American culture. Also, the method of assessment that is used in the traditional approach is flawed. The traditional approach relies on standardized testing to assess whether or not the students are becoming more adept at SWE. However, standardized testings can at times be unclear and a student may score lower than he/she normally would. Finally, the traditional approach completely eliminates the language that AAE speakers grew up hearing. With the use of this method, students are being told that those who taught them to speak this way are uneducated and incorrect.
Fortunately, the other four approaches to teaching SWE are substantially more tolerant to AAE than is the traditional approach. In The Second Dialect Approach, the teacher underlines the differences in AAE and SWE as though they are two completely different languages and students “translate” works from AAE to SWE. It is true that this approach is much more tolerant to AAE. Teachers will speak in correct Standard English to the students but not necessarily correct the students when they speak AAE. This approach allows students to still embrace their background of language. However, I still do not feel that this is the most effective method when it comes to writing in SWE because it does not enforce consistency in writing. Students may write poetry in AAE but are told to write essays and reports in SWE.
Between The Dialect Awareness approach-which teaches the importance of all dialects/languages, the Culturally Appropriate Approach, and the Bridge Approach, I feel that the Culturally Appropriate Approach is the most effect. This approach is founded on African American culture. In essence, it teaches that using SWE can empower a student just as the usage of AAE can. It creates “Black Standard English: the combination of SWE grammar with the rhetorical styles that marks authors and speakers as black.” It also explains how the usage of SWE has been an important part in African American history. It uses the example of Martin Luther King, Jr. speaking in Standard English and at the same time using AAE characteristics. This Culturally Appropriate Approach gives AAE speakers a reason to feel proud of using SWE. It gives them the knowledge that they are not simply conforming to what is considered acceptable in the English language but are instead modeling themselves after some of the great African American speakers and writers in history.

What Is AAE?

2008-09-01T21:06:00.000-07:00

AAE, or African American English, is different than Standard American English. But is it really that much different? This particular article looked at how linguists tried to make sense of this phenomenon known as AAE. To give you an understanding of just how popular AAE speech is amongst African Americans today, it is estimated that 80 to 90 percent of all African Americans speak AAE. There is a wide variety of terminology associated with AAE. It can be classified as "broken" English, slang, dialect, as well as a language. Linguistics may play a large roll in trying to understand just exactly what AAE is, but politics is also a huge factor. Many people argue that AAE breaks the rules of Standard English. However, is there actually a universal standard for speaking proper English in America? The American public places a lot of emphasis on formal writing skills, or Standard Written English. Proper grammar is important to many Americans, therefore the grammatical problems observed in AAE speaking students is a major concern. Verb use is one of the most common grammatical problems AAE speaking students have both in their writing and speech. For instance, an AAE sentence would look like this: He be busy. Where as the Standard English equivalent is: He is always busy. These two sentences essentially mean the same thing, with the only difference being the use of the verb be. Is it fair then, that we label AAE speakers as uneducated and illiterate because they do not know how to follow the rules of language? Can we say that AAE has no established guidelines or discernible rules and simply classify it under "broken English," or "bad English," that has little meaning and value? That would be discriminatory in the sense that each individual has their own"speech community." This speech community is a comfort zone where people feel safe to express or say what they want, when they want, without being ridiculed. Therefore, what makes AAE speech any different? Many people view AAE speech as simply "slang" or street lingo spoken amongst African Americans. This isn't entirely true as more and more people are using AAE speech because of its popularity in mainstream America. Whether it is heard or seen on the television, radio, or billboards, the media is starting to use more and more AAE "slang" to promote and attract the attention of its viewers. Even though at times it may be difficult to understand AAE speech, many American English speakers can actually relate to and understand this form of communication. Also, it not uncommon for American English speakers to incorporate and borrow words from AAE speakers. With that being said, should AAE speech be considered a language? There are three components that identify a system of speech as a language: pronunciation rules (phonology), rules that convey meaning (semantics), and grammatical rules (syntax). "Since language is a distinguishing feature of humans, the denial of language is the same as the denial of humanity." People are free to decide individually whether or not AAE speech is a language, but it all depends on a person's view of AAE's origins. Where they think AAE came from and can it be an actual language? In conclusion, "Linguistic research shows that AAE is neither broken English nor slang, for it possesses not only an enduring vocabulary but also its own rules for grammar and pronunciation." If that is true AAE is a language, but it comes down to personal preference and whether or not you want to believe it.

In-Class, Sept. 3: What Should Teachers Do?

2008-09-01T13:17:00.001-07:00

In-Class Activity for Wednesday, September 3rd:

We are going to finish our AAVE posters (15-20 min.), and present them to the class (3-5 min. per group). In case we finish early, you can begin the following homework assignment:

Homework for Friday, September 5th, 2008:

Go to the following link and read pages 93-100 from Lisa Delpit's article "What Should Teachers Do?"

Then, choose one question out of the questions 1, 2, and 3 at the bottom of this article, and post your answer (small essay, about 250-500 words) as a comment to this blog.

NEXT BLOG SUMMARY: "How Can AAE Speakers Become Efficient SWE Writers?", to be done by Michaela Bazar, for coming Friday, Sept. 5th. The responses by everybody as blog comments will be due coming Monday, Sept. 8th.

Left-over copies of the text which I'll distribute in class will be deposited in the letter box outside my office door, FANER 3202B, for pick-up, in case you missed class on Wednesday, Sept. 3rd.

Writing Samples: What's Wrong Here???

2008-08-28T15:57:00.001-07:00

LEARNING CYCLE: Finding Out the Rules

enagage: I'm always engaging ;-)

TASK 1 (explore):

Read the following writing samples, and note down any mistakes you may find on a piece of paper. You have five minutes. Then, we'll talk in class about the mistakes we've found. One student will write them on the board as a bullet-pointed list of categories. Question: Who, you think, has written those examples (age, group of society)?

EXAMPLE 1

When entering a university or college, most students parents put a word or two into their child ear. If the student listen, its on him or her. But the advice your parents usually give you is right. Most students are introduce to drugs and alcohle and is put with the delima should they use it. Then start to think back at what they parent told them. They let it float in one ear and out the other.

EXAMPLE 2

As the showed end for that week my friends and I were preparing to leave, but stop to socialize like everyoneelse was doing. For some strange reason we were singled out. "Gentlemen, cross the street", yelled the officer. We kept talking because we didn't know if he was referring to us. "Get off the property and cross the street", yelled the officer. So, I turned around and gestured to my friends lets leave and as we were crossing the street me friend Theron got snatched up by an officer for no reason. The officer grabbed him threw him up against a car and twisted his arm behind his back for no reason. Theron ask what did he do and he said, "Shut up, your getting arrested tonight", and handcuffed him. Naturally, as friends we tried to help; in all the comotion my friend Chris got hancuffed also. So, they took Theron and Chris back inside the building.

TASK 2 (expand):

Each student on his/her own: Read over the handout "Appendix A: Student Writing Samples and Analyses" which I will distribute. The introduction will tell you who wrote these samples. This lesson is not about discrimination, but about learning of a totally different language including grammar, which has its pros and cons. Pick two to three additional writing samples (you can do more if you're very fast), looking for different "mistakes." In the following, we won't call them "mistakes" any more, but "deviations from Standard English." Add them to our class list on the board (with sample words). You have 10 minutes.

TASK 3 (explain):

Get together in groups of 4, and pick up 1-2 sharpies and a poster page. Use chapter II which I will distribute, "What Are the Distinctive Features...?", and create a poster with a well-organized overview of the distinctive features, including short samples. You can use our previously created category list, too. Just make sure it is a brief overview and fits on one page of your poster. You have 15-20 minutes. Write all your group's members' names on the BACK of your poster, so I can grade it after class!

HINT: You can assign different sub-chapters to each of your group's members, to work faster. This way, you won't all have to read the same text, but can delegate the topics.

Hang up your poster, and present it briefly to the class. (evaluation; assessment)

THE NEXT BLOG TEXT is the handout "What Is...?" which I will distribute in class. If you're not present today, pick it up from the mailbox outside my office door in FANER 3202B where I always leave all handouts distributed in class.

THE BLOG SUMMMARY is due on Wednesday, Sept. 2nd, and will be done by Brian Pullyblank.

Everybody's BLOG RESPONSE can be posted as soon as his summary is published on Wednesday, and is due on Friday, Sept. 4th, before class time.

NOTE:
Deadline for each blog response is ALWAYS the time a new blog summary appears online. I am NOT going back to search for belatedly added comments (unless you were sick and brought me an official excuse). That means, you can post to Alicsander Ortega's summary about "Sharpening" until Brian has published his "What Is...?" After that, I won't look at the old entries any more, so you won't get any points for late assignments. You can post to Brian's summary until the next one, due on Friday, Sept. 4th, by Michaela Bazar, appears online. I will distribute this text on Wednesday, Sept. 2nd.

EXCEPTION: If one of the people who do the summary decides to post before his/her deadline, for example, today instead of next Wednesday, that's fine, but your response (= comment) still won't be due before next class time, because that would have been the real due date. If you want to, you can respond earlier.

Internet Lingo - Literacy of the Future?

2008-08-26T12:47:00.000-07:00

dEr cls, 2day w'r gunA deal W txt msgN slang. w'r gunA do a cr8tive ritN asynmnt, as wel as a :-[ thinkN response. I hope Ull Njoy deez tasks.

Read the following excerpt from Language and the Internet:

"A Mori/Lycos UK survey published in September 2000 showed that 81% of mobile phone users between the ages of 15 and 24 were using their phone for sending text messages, typically to co-ordinate their social lives, to engage in language play, to flirt, or just to send a 'thinking of you' message. Apparently, 37% of all messagers have used the service to tell someone they love them. At the same time, reports suggest that the service is being used for other purposes, such as sexual harassment, school bullying, political rumour-mongering, and interaction between drug dealers and clients.

The challenge of the small screen size and its limited character space (about 160 characters), as well as the small keypad, has motivated the evolution of an even more abbreviated language than emerged in chatgroups and virtual worlds (...). Some of the same abbreviations appear, either because of their 'obvious' rebus-like potential (e.g. NE1, 2day, B4, C U l8r ['later'], and Z ['said']) or because the generally youthful population of users were familiar with Netspeak shorthand in its other situations (e.g. Msg ['message'], BRB ['be right back']).

Basic smileys (...) are also used. Capital letters can be given syllabic values, as in thN ['then'] and nEd ['need']. But the medium has motivated some new forms (e.g. c%l ['cool']) and its own range of direct-address items, such as F2T ['free to talk?'], Mob ['mobile'], PCM ['please call me'], MMYT ['Mail me your thoughts'], and RUOK ['are you OK?']. Multi-word sentences and sequences of response utterances, especially of a stereotyped kind, can be reduced to a sequence of initial letters: SWDYT ['So what do you think?'], BCBC ['Beggars can't be choosers'], BTDT ['Been there, done that'], YYSSW ['Yeah, yeah, sure, sure, whatever'], HHOJ ['Ha, ha, only joking']. Users seem to be aware of the information value of consonants as opposed to vowels, judging by such vowel-less items as TXT ['text'] and XLNT ['excellent'].

The process saves a great deal of time and energy (given the awkwardness of selecting letters on the small keypad), and in those companies which still charge by the character (as opposed to the whole message), there is an economic value in abbreviation, too. In a creation such as ru2cn mel8r ['Are you two seeing me later?'], less than half the characters of the full form of the sentence are used. Even more ingenious coded abbreviations have been devised, especially among those for whom argot is a desirable safeguard against unwelcome surveillance."

Crystal, David (2001). Language and the Internet. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, England. Pages 229-230.

_________

Task 1: Creative Writing... (post on blog)

Pretend you are high school students. Develop a short blog entry with any kind of text written in text-messaging slang (employing emoticons, if you wish).

Then, take another student's post, and try to translate it! Post the translation on this blog, too, referring to the name whose Internet lingo you are translating, so we all know what you're answering to. Once a response is posted, nobody else can publish his/her solution any more. The winner is the person who gets most translations right ;-)

In the beginning, try without cheating. If you don’t get it all, you can use a guide, for example http://www.webopedia.com/quick_ref/textmessageabbreviations.asp
http://www.lingo2word.com/lists/emoticon_listA.html

Have fun!

Task 2: Critical Statement.... (email to me)

Write a comment (250-500 words) about how you perceive people's use of text-messaging slang (your students, yourself, your friends, peers, etc....). Do you see it as a problem/threat at all? What do you think about the English language of the future? What is your personal experience? Do you use it yourself? Do you have examples (from student teaching, etc.)? How do you deal with it? If you've never encountered it before - how would you react if your students / team mates, etc. would use this kind of language in official writing (school, newspaper, office, etc.)?

HOMEWORK for this Friday, August 29th:

I've distributed our first blog reading today in class: SHARPENING. Read this text for Friday. The second person on our blog list will do the summary and post it for Friday (Alicsander Ortega), because the first person on our list (Michaela Bazar) won't be there and will do the second blog summary instead.

When he has posted his summary of the article "Sharpening" by Ken Marcrorie (the writer of ENGFISH), you can all begin posting your comments to the text to his new blog thread.

The comments are due on Wednesday next week, since Monday is off!!!

Using Adverbs Abundantly -- "Tom Swifties"

2008-08-24T13:50:00.000-07:00

Today, we are going to introduce ourselves to one another. Why didn't we do this the first day of class? Because... there were still people switching and dropping courses, and finally finding out that we're not business English ;-)

After hearing about everybody for approximately 10 minutes altogether, we'll work in groups, so you'll get to know your neighbors.

First task (everyone on his/her own):
Go to the following website and learn what "Tom Swifties" are.

Task 2:

Get together in groups of 3-4. Go to the following webpage (and other related ones you find yourself). Your group's task is to create a 12-item test for another group that this group has to solve. Get the emails of the other group's members, and email them your quiz. The group that solves most of the 12 items it gets from another group wins!! You need to retype Tom Swifties that you find on the webpage, but you leave out the last word, i.e., the pun, for the group to fill in the blank.

Examples:

1. How do you start a model-T Ford without a battery?" asked Tom _____________ .

(answer: CRANKILY)

2. "I have to wear this cast for another six weeks," said Tom _________________ .

(answer: DISJOINTEDLY)

3. "I'm shocked," said Tom _____________________ .

(answer: ELECTRICALLY)

You should select sentences that people are able to guess when they think hard.

EMAIL me your 12-item quiz (with solutions). Only one per group, please! Indicate your group members names in this email (because you'll all get points for the quiz).

Task 3:

Invent 1-3 Tom Swifties on your own!!! Publish them as a comment to this blog. If you work in groups, indicate all your names on your blog entry. If you can't finish in class, this will be homework for Wednesday.

Mini Lesson for Asian ESL student

2008-08-21T08:26:00.001-07:00

Now you have made your first experiences with mini lessons, and most of you have done it very well. There were lots of possibilities to explain this grammatical structure to students. Room to be creative!! Kudos to the people with cool attention getters.

This was our initial practice, so don't worry if it wasn't perfect yet. I will email out the best solutions from both my grammar courses, so you have an example of what it should have been like.

Some have missed the topic - the topic was not the difference between Me and My as in "this is me dress, this is my dress" - we were not teaching pronouns to beginning learners of English. We were teaching how to construct pronouns coupled with -ing forms (gerunds), such as "Do you like him driving? Do you like his driving?"

Our topic was GERUND PHRASE with POSSESSIVE ADJECTIVE. The main difference between using either ME or MY is that in one case, the verb with the -ing form acts as an object with an attributive adjective (HIM), and in the other case, it is a GERUND with a possessive adjective (HIS).

Let's go back to our example, "Do you like him driving?" It has a different sense than the other sentence, it means you actually dislike HIM driving, e.g. when he's drunk. It places disdain on the driver rather than on the action, the driving. HIM becomes the object, and DRIVING is the attributive adjective.

The second example means in general; "do you like his driving," i.e., his driving (style) in general, or does it frighten you. You don't like HIS driving because he always drives too fast. It places the disdain on the ACTION, the driving, not on the subject, the driver. DRIVING here is a gerund, serving as the (accusative) object of the sentence. (What do you like? His driving.) HIS is the possessive adjective.

So be careful -- sometimes, it does not work to give the kids a handout with "wrong sentences" and "right sentences" -- here, both were right, they just had different meanings.

_____________________________________

Today, we are constructing another mini lesson; this time for an Asian student who has English as a second language (ESL).

In order to deal with diversity in our students, we need to understand the background of their native languages. We do this by reading research, by observing our students, and by simply asking them.

Task 1: Proofread the sample text below. It is an original text written by an SIU TESOL student last year. (And she was a good student!) Then, take a piece of paper, and repair as many mistakes as you can find. Rewrite the sentences correctly, with regard to good grammar AND style.

The Beijing is a modern city and there are a lot of places to visit. First, there are many new building was build. One of the new buildings, it looks like a bird’s nest. Then, it have a big history. You can visit a lot of old buildings to know the history, just like “the summer Palace”. Finally, many people come from different country, there are kinds of restaurant. You can eat which you want to taste. Beijing is a nice place.

Task 2: In class, we will discuss a list of specific errors that occurred, and we will group these errors into categories.

Here is an example for a category: modifiers

In Chinese, modifiers always precede the noun, whereas in English they can follow the noun, especially for attributive clauses. Therefore, Chinese students often have problems constructing an attributive clause. For example:

· Their owners may want to come to the store knows the pets better.
· These are all good strategies should be used.
· There are some people want to live in the countryside.
· The Plan provides lots of good statistic numbers which very helpful.
· My grandfather is the only person who influenced by his actions.

Another category: pronouns

One salient error is the leaving out of the relative pronouns, because they don’t exist in Chinese. For instance, the first sentence, if written in Chinese, would be like: “Their owners may want to come to knows the pets better the store.”

To find more categories, take the following ERIC document for help. (Look only on pp. 47-62 for specific error types.)

Task 3: Pick one of your categories, or one category mentioned on pp. 47-62, and write a short passage how you as a teacher/tutor/editor would explain to the Asian writer above WHY this can’t be said in English. Use her sentences as samples, and give her some other examples, too. Please write with quotation marks (how you would actually say it to the student). Give plausible examples of right/wrong sentences, and explain to the ESL student how to use the grammatical form you picked correctly. (Don't just explain, "we do it this way in English.")Email this assignment to me. If you can't finish in class, this will be homework for next Monday, August 25th.

Here is an example of how a teacher explained article use to an ESL student:

In a case study, a Costa Rican boy used the “the” too often, for example, “the nature has a lot of secrets.” The teacher replies: “Let me ask you, if you are walking in the woods, where is nature?” – “It’s in the trees. It’s kind of … everywhere,” the student replies. “Right. It’s everywhere. So nature is a very general noun. We talk about nature but we are not talking about a specific place or specific trees…” (Celce-Murcia & Larsen-Freeman 1983, 9-10).

Task 4:
Post a short comment to this blog about your own experience with Asian students, if you are observing/student teaching and have made any experiences so far. You can also write about what you observed outside of class with regard to Asian ESL persons. Or, post your personal thoughts about teaching children of diverse cultures. What would you do to make it easier for them? Any accommodations? Or would you treat them like the rest of your students? If you had an Asian student in your class who wrote great essays but placed the articles wrongly each time, would you take points off or give her the good grade her content deserves? If you give her the good grade, would it be fair to your American students who get points off for mechanics??? Let your conscience speak.

HOMEWORK: Read the complete article (the ERIC document above).

Mini Lessons and Learning Cycle

2008-08-19T18:01:00.000-07:00

I am a believer in constructivist teaching, and hands-on practice. Students learn by inquiry; they find out things on their own rather than by listening to a lecture how it is done. You don't need to favor this teaching method, but in order to accept or reject it, you should experiment with it a bit.

Today, we are going to model a Mini Lesson as an example for the ones each student is going to present.

This is the topic: the difference between "Me" and "My" plus -ing form. For example: Do you like my teaching? Do you like me teaching? Other examples from a teacher's instruction:

FINITE AND NON-FINITE CLAUSES

Finite clauses /sentences – finite verb forms, i.e. the verb is conjugated (past, present, future)
Non-finite clause – non-finite verb forms (no time aspect)
-ing clauses and infinitive clauses

Examples of non-finite clauses:

-ing clause with a subject:
Your changing the plan has caused a lot of trouble.
Do you mind me/my smoking?
I heard about Jim arguing all night.

Hint: you may use websites such as this one for help.

Your first task for this hour (and your homework for Friday, August 22nd, if you can't finish in class today) will be to create a Learning Cycle (LC) for an English class (grade level of your choice)about this topic.

This is an explanation of a Learning Cycle: LC

According to this model, a Learning Cycle consists of 5 E's:
Engage (you catch your students' attention to the topic)
Explore (the kids find things out by themselves)
Explain (students try to analyze the problem; you explain the rules to them)
Expand (kids get a different task to apply what they've found out)
Evaluate (you assess their comprehension)

Some people even suggest that a LC does not only have 5 E's, but 6! The mysterious number six is "E-search." Read the following article: http://science.nsta.org/enewsletter/2005-05/sc0411_47.pdf

Now, develop a lesson how you would teach the ME/MY grammatical issue to your audience, using all 6 E's, and email this lesson plan to me. You can make a separate heading for all 6 E's, and just say what you would do, and what the students would do. You are allowed to use the Internet for ideas. For the "explore" and "expand" part especially, you are welcome to do games or quizzes, etc. For the "evaluate" part, you should create a small test or quiz with sample questions. It should look user-friendly, depending on the age-group you chose - a handout you would actually use if you were the teacher of a class.

When you're done with this, here's your second task:

Post a short comment on this blog what you think about the Learning Cycle model. Originally, it was conceived for math or sciences classes. Do you think it is useful for English (or any language, or ESL) classes? Would you use it? Were you taught this way? Your personal opinion...

Engfish

2008-08-19T14:22:00.000-07:00

Welcome to Grammar 300-2!

2008-08-12T22:02:00.001-07:00

Welcome to Dr. V's grammar 300-2 class!

This is going to be a fun course. Let's jump in at the deep end right away: here's your first prompt, which will be homework for Wednesday, August 20th, in case we don't finish in class today - go to the following link

http://www.kristisiegel.com/engfish2.htm

Read the excerpt "The Poison Fish" from Ken Marcrorie's book Telling Writing.

It talks about ENGFISH, a common form of student writing AND textbook writing that you might have encountered already. This course is all about AVOIDING it!! Learning more about grammar and style will make us better writers and editors, which is beneficial for whatever career we are pursuing.

Your task: write a short blog comment about your personal experience with ENGFISH - are you maybe student teaching, and have seen it in your kids' writing? Or did you produce ENGFISH texts yourself in certain situations? Did you see it in textbooks? What do you think about the term? Does it work for you, or do you think it is inadequate? Better suggestions? Or do you perhaps have a funny example of ENGFISH you want to share? How can its use be avoided? How can you become a better writer?

Hint:
Your blog comment should be about as long as this entry -- if it's too long, people won't be thrilled to read it, and if it's too short, it can't contain very much insight. Consider this blog as a discussion board. You can offer your own stories, or react to your peers'. The only time you have to publish a longer article here is when it is your turn to summarize a chapter reading from our textbooks or articles I distribute.