Class February 4

You did some writing on the "theme" or focus for your literacy narrative, and then you listed some stories that you would want to include to support that theme. You posted this writing on your blog (labeled as Blog 4) - and by sometime late tomorrow (Friday) I hope to give you some feedback about how you are doing in terms of the assignment.

You also did some writing - made some notes on your writing process for this project => as evidence of a particular experience composing a particular essay. I expect that you will use memories of other experiences writing papers, stories, poems, letters, emails, etc - that will provide different kinds of evidence of how you write. You also posted this to your blog - and labeled it as Blog 4.

I will be looking over the rest of your posts this weekend to give you feedback. Specifically I will be reading/grading:

Blog 1: Post your understanding of the main points from your sections of Aaron & Joshi. This is NOT supposed to be an essay / finished writing => these are reading notes and will not be evaluated based on grammar, spelling or style. I will be looking for evidence that you grappled with the ideas in this reading. Also write down questions - and words you may not be sure of.

Blog 2: respond to the following prompts:

What factors represented as influencing our relationships to written language in the essay on cultural stories?

What can we learn about writing from biological-linguistic perspectives and theories? What can we learn about writing from social linguistic perspectives and the analysis of new literacy narratives?

Blog 3: Sum up your understanding of Ong's main points.

We spent the rest of class discussing Ong (see the previous blog for Dr. Chandlers Spark notes on this article). These are some complicated ideas - and I realize I come across with strong opinions - but the truth is many of these ideas are far from being clearly "right" or "wrong" in the empirical sense. If you think back over the different theories about writing we have read so far - already it is apparent that contemporary scholars have different ideas about how writing works, what it is, and what it does.

For Monday:
Blog 5: Post your draft for your literacy narrative.

We will spend class workshopping your draft essays. The more you write - the more you will have to work with. I am really looking forward to reading your writing!

Have a great weekend and see you Monday!