"THE THOUGHT OF REVISION"

The thought of revison really scares me. It is nearing towards the end of the semeter and teachers are beginning to return drafts back to students with "the red pen" comments describing what students should do differently so the paper could be better. Some students to not even have to deal with this, because their paper may just need a few words added or taken away. The idea of turning a paper in scares me. I had to turn in a paper for one of my professor with no clue of what he expected. He told the class what he wanted in the paper, how he wanted it set up and the due date. There was no rough draft to be turn in, no annotated bibilography, nor how he was going to grade it, just what he wanted in it. It was stressful because he not know how I orginially wrote made me think that he would not look at the paper with the thought that "this young lady normally has difficult to writing, so let me see what I can help her with now." Revision is so important for me because it lets me know my mistakes and it five me the oppotunity to build off of them.
I know in the previous blog prompt, the class was asked to dicuss the assignment rationale and what would I change about it. After looking over the assignment various times, I actually felt relief because I was able to go in and change the errors that Fornes had pointed out to me.
Revision is very important in writing because students are able to enhance their writing skills

The Research Presentation

After working on this research project for some time now, I have come across several solutions to preventing plagiarism in the classroom. If you read my blog, "plagiarism: is it a victimless crime," you may have notice that I was focused on whether students should be at fault for plagiarizing. With extensive research, I have rephrase my topic and now it deals with Preventions for Plagiarism In the Classroom: who participates in it and why, and what should be done about it. For my presentation, I plan to show a clipping of a student who felt overwhelmed with school, work and his personal life that he did not have time to complete his work for school. This resulted in plagiarism. The clip will be effective because it will demonstrate who participates in it and why.

In class about two weeks ago now, Professor Fornes presented a paper that had several pieces of writing on it. The class was responsible for identifying whether or not the student plagiarize or not. This was an activity that I was interesting in because it definitely related to my topic. I plan to do a similar activity,however ask questions instead of handing out a paper. I know that you have not seen the clip yet, but these are the type of questions that will be asked after showing the clip:
1. If a student came to you with this excuse, how would you react?
2. What type of suggestions would you offer to prevent this from happening.
3. Would your response be different if this was a high school student.
As far as the annotated bib., most of those sources will be included in the final paper. There are six sources that I listed in my bib., however I came across several others that were quite interesting to also use. So give me some feedback, what would you be interesting in looking forward to in my presentation? What do you want to hear about? How can I make sure that this presentation is useful?
Hoping for some good feedback....

Creative Writing

Summary: Chapter Six focuses on teachers and their ability to prepare students for writing using several different concepts. The chapter introduces several main points. Creativity, perception and conception. The chapter further discusses theorist and their thoughts on writing. According to the chapter, "not only does prewriting encourage students to see their subject and envision an audience, percptual problems all writers must solve, it also aids thinking' (93). While much of this is important, the chapter main focus was cognition and what most teachers should know about it. According to the chapter, "we should avoid overgeneralizing what researchers tell us about how people learn and allow for differences among indivduals, research on cognitive development offers useful principles for writing teachers to consider" (106). Writing is essential to each individual student and should be taken very seriously.
Response: Creativity is a good way to get the mind working and to get students engage in their writing. It helps them understand writing a lot more when they are able to insert their own ideas. As a future educator, I hope that by the end of the first four weeks of school, I will know where each of my students stand with writing, so that I can enhance their writing skills more and more each time. Writing can be so difficult for some students. I know this, because it was hard for me and still is at times, especially when I cannot get my thoughts together. Writing is an essential part of today's society and should not be taken lightly.

"I know what I know and I write it" - Octavio Paz

The chapter focuses on teachers and their understanding of cognition. Cognition is defined as knowing (87). The chapter points out two ways of gaining knowledge, one through awareness, seeing or perception, secondly through judgment, think, or conception. The chapter also focused on the creativity students put into their work and how they go about generating their ideas. The question asks how do we think students' work differs from discipline discipline, both formally and a mode of inquiry.
Personally, when writing, it takes a lot for me to get my ideas together, organize them, and them have them making sense of one another. Writing has not been my favorite task, however it has become something that I quite enjoy without the many errors. As for the discipline of the writing, it varies on what you are particularly writing about. If I am writing a paragraph about my dog, surely I would not be so precise as for when I am writing an entire research paper. The research paper would be more developed, and include several important details to explain my thesis.
Typical writings for students may or may not help them. Depending on what a student may be writing about can determine whether or not it will or will not help them. Students need feedback in general to understand if their writing is getting better or not. In other fields, writing can definitely help out, if the student has an understanding of how to write. For example if a student is focusing on a communication project, the way they write has nothing to do with the way they speak about their project. This is the same in mathematics, the way a student print their notes, has nothing to do with the way they solve it. Writing may only be a big thing if the student is focusing on research papers for those particular classes.
Relating back to the chapter about knowledge, students must have some sort of knowledge about their writing. Writing is a process that takes time and effect. I can honestly say that it has been a process for myself.

The Game is On...But There is No One Paying Attention!

Summary: McClure refers to collaborative learning in many ways that other teachers would do so. It is hard to get students to help one another out in group work, because once they are together they are more than likely going to talk about something that does not have anything to do with the topic at hand. McClure mentions teacher who attempt to play that "rough" role to get students to pay attention to what they are doing, but what good would being "tough" or "rough" if the student isn't learning anything. Collaborative learning is not an easy task and many educators can relate to that.

Response: From past experiences to present time, I had to participate in groups that are not as focused as I am about the assignment. Most of the time, the group and I end up discussing several other things that are totally not on topic. As a future educator, I believe that collaborative learning will be one of my more difficult tasks to deal with, especially when working with high school student. There are several technique that would be of good use, I just have to figure out which one would be best.

The Writing Room: "How can I help you improve your paper?"

The Writing is such an essential unit here at USCA. As a Education major with a concentration in English, the writing room has helped me a great deal in developing well-detailed paper. According to Lunsford, who introduces several different writing centers, points out several characteristics of a good writing room. She refers to the writing center as "The Center as Storehouse." Personally, I believe that the writing should be a center where student at any university should go and receive reliable help with their papers. With both the tutors and the teachers working to help each student here at USCA, the writing room should be, according to Lunsford, "a collaboration in learning abstractions, learning higher achievement, problem finding as well as problem solving. The Garrett Writing Center is an example that exemplified our writing room here at USCA, because it had all the characteristics listed above and more.

Peek-a-Boo: I see you looking....!

Response: The Turnitin Debate that I read was quite interesting. The article argued that not all professors agree with the website. Some professors thought that the website was taking away their ability to teach students the correct way of writing and citing information. According to the text, "Turnitin is not designed to replace instruction. As any educator knows,teaching students how to read thoughtfully, write fluently, and cite properly is an inherently complex and difficult task. There is no software,book, or automated process that can ever replace a dedicated teacher." Turninit.com is only a website that will prevent or even allow plagiarism.

Summary: Personally, I think that turnitin.com has its disadvantages and advantages. As a future educator, I will always try to accept outside help that will enhance a student's writing. Preventing plagiarism in the classroom will definitely be one of my goals. As Button stated, "Turnitin was created to help make the internet a safer place for research and collaborative learning. Like other educational tools such as course management systems, films, and even textbooks, its successful application in the classroom is to a great part dependent on the skill and motivation of those educators who use it," and I totally agree wit him.

Oh Man!! "Who has Copied Now?"

Plagiarism had become such a common "technique" that both high school and college students have been participating in. According to my own definition, plagiarism is taking someone else's work and identifying it as your own. Through research, I have come to find that many students do not mean to plagiarize because many of them to not know that they are doing it until a teacher or a fellow classmate points it out to them. In both the high school and college classroom, a teacher should be able to make a distinction between both intentional and unintentional plagiarism. More teachers are moving towards technology to help them guide the way they grade papers. Turn It In. com has become a well-known website that some teachers are using to identify if students have plagiarized or not. In my opinion, this type of detection can be effective for teachers, especially for me as a future educator. Teachers should do their best to teach students the correct way of writing and the proper way to cite, which brings me to my next point. Students should be familiar with the common knowledge, referring to known facts such as when the country was set set free, or who was our first president. In my own definition, students should know the babies. Many would then question, does stating the common knowledge, a way of plagiarism? Well that is when your own answer comes into play...

Does the Audience Matter?

Summary: The article by Lisa Ede and Aundrea Lunsford entitled "Audience Addressed/Audience Invoked: The Role of Audience in Composition Theory and Pedagogy," emphasized on the idea of whether the focus of a student's work should worry about what the readers may think about it. According to the article, the question was "to be for or against an emphasis on audience in composition studies." There were several authors that inserted their thought about what the readers should focus on, especially when dealing with the audience. The article further stated that "Those who envision audience as addressed emphasize the concrete reality of the writer's audience; they also share the assumption that knowledge of this audience's attitudes, beliefs and expectations is not only possible, but essential." This article reflected well-detailed information about the audience and its effect on composition studies.

Response: In my opinion, the audience matters maybe 92% of the time. The author/writer should focus on how the audience will take their writing because if it was something being sold, it must catch the audience's attention in order for it to be purchased. With college papers that are written day in and day out, most professors like students who write about interesting topics, more modern and less drawn out. Whether the audience is young or old, they all matter because their the one who are going to be responding to it. On the other hand, the other 8%, those are the expressive writers, those who write how they feel regardless of who the audience may be. This can sometimes be good, because the students is able to reflect one's feelings without being judged. However, on the hand, it may cause some controversy. The audience plays a big role in composition studies, because the audience is who we are writing for.

Writing Assignment...?

Thinking back to English 101 my freshman year, that class consisted of so many writing assignments. It helped my writing in so many ways because my teacher was behind me guiding me the entire way through all the papers. As a junior now, I am required to turn in a junior writing portfolio that will be judged on how much my writing has developed. When relating to the content, the junior portfolio asks each student to collect several papers that were well written and write about why there were chosen to be apart of the portfolio. As stated earlier, it works as a piece of writing that is judged according to how much my writing has grown in two years. As far as its meaning, the portfolio really is not that meaningful, except if someone fails it. the portfolio must receive a grade of C or better to pass. If not, then the 201 class, Writing to the University is to be taken. Over the two years there are several assignments that professor issue to help students gain writing skills. With these assignments, they can be used to build a very detailed portfolio, with the many papers that are written, it also helps students to gain reading skills because they read their papers to make sure that there are limited grammatical errors and spelling errors. English 101 and 102 are classes that help build more knowledge of the correct way of writing, with this knowledge a well, written portfolio will be produced.