Me, Feeling like a Grammar Snobbee

I have to say that I really enjoyed reading this book. It did feel like a guilty pleasure to read it at times, though, because she's so outright rude to quite a few folks. Her meanness is rather humorous, so I guess that's a redeeming feature. Another thing I like about it is the fact that the chapters are so short. It makes the thoughts more manageable for me, and I can organize them in my mind better. (It also made me feel like I was reading it a lot faster than I really was.) Her use of anecdotes served as perfect introductions, illustrations, and conclusions for the various points she made. The only thing I have to say against the book is that it wasn't crystal clear about some of the rules and actual lessons she was trying to teach. Sometimes, she made perfect sense, but sometimes I had to read a section several times before I grasped the concept she was trying to convey. The titles and sub-titles were also good and attention-getting. Overall, I like it.

Class today was enlightening... and condemning. I'd forgotten how much I didn't know about English grammar. I was starting to get the idea that I didn't know a lot when I tutored two ESL students last week at the Writing Center and then tutored a few middle school kids at a local Baptist Church. I think that both of those groups of people know more than I do about the topics we covered today. Sometime, I really need to just buckle down and read a technical English book. "Grammar Snobs" is wonderful, but I wonder if it covers everything (or at least most things) I don't know. It's my hope that if I will actually do that and then work a lot with those struggling middle school students on their English assignments, I'll be able to be where I need to be as for as grammatical knowledge is concerned. We'll see what happens.

The Rhetorical Triangle and Me

First off, I thought this lesson was interesting because I have seen a similar triangle before, but the vertices were labeled differently. My Comm 210 lecture professor drew a triangle and labeled the top part as "the thing in the head," the left part as "the thing itself," and the right part as "the symbol." His point was to illustrate that meanings are not in words but in people. When someone says "dog," it is a verbal symbol that represents the real thing and also all of the connotations related to dogs that are in the person's (and other people's) head(s). That was an interesting concept, but I think that the rhetorical triangle is much more sensible and a lot more applicable to life. I like how it has the ability to illustrate the relationship between the writer, the audience, and the subject. I also thought it was helpful when we came up with a few words to describe each of those three aspects of literature. Oddly enough, I used the various techniques we learned the very next day while I was working on my chapter for the Writing Center book. I'd been stumbling along through a first draft, and it was going all right. I had a very detailed outline that helped me to organize my thoughts and include meaningful content, but an overall vision for the paper was nonexistent. After I drew the triangle in a scalene manner (placing myself closer to the topic than the audience), I used a few words to describe each of the three parts. With this relationship in mind, I was able to concoct a clearer vision of what I ultimately wanted to accomplish with the chapter. It is now coming along much more easily and clearly. Wonderful!

Respons to Dr. King's Letter from a Birmingham Jail

This is an amazing letter; I can't believe I've never read it before. It reminds me so much of the autobiography of Mahatma Gandhi. Both of these men had such similar views that it's almost eerie. I particularly enjoyed all of the quotes Dr. King incorporated from various sources, religious and secular. I was almost surprised, though, that he never quoted or referenced Gandhi, whose own non-violent protests against injustices in South Africa and India were so effectual. The four basic steps of a non-violent campaign that Dr. King enumerated seem to have been taken straight from the pages of Gandhi's philosophies. Both of these men collected the facts pertaining to social injustices; they both tried to solve the problems by using the system; they both went through great pains to ensure that they and their compatriots were purely motivated with correct ideals; and they both participated in direct action - whether it was civil disobedience, boycotting, marching, or another non-violent method.

It's interesting to note that both King and Gandhi were both very well educated and deeply religious. Gandhi studied law in England, and although he technically remained Hind throughout his life, he studied, loved, and accepted many different religions. Often times, these two arenas of human endeavor (i.e. religion and academia) are seen as incongruous, but in the case of these two men, they are harmoniously complementary. Perhaps, the level of education they attained caused them to seriously wonder about the unjust inequalities around, the fervor of faith in their hearts aroused them to action against those injustices, and, once again, their level of education enabled them to defend their cause with the logic and the language of the intelligentsia of their respective times. Although they both were of high status in many circles, neither was hesitant to be demeaned in prison or suffer other physical privations in order to pursue holistic liberation for their people.

The part of the letter that I thought was the most bitingly poignant was when Dr. King referred to "the white moderate" who is shallow and more devoted to order than to justice. That hit home to me because I think that myself and many other people (whether they are white or not) fall into that attitudinal category. Those of us who are lukewarm ought to remember Dr. King's statement in the first half of the letter: "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly." Injustices abound in our own country and around the world. One needs not look far to find some way or place to help. We must use time creatively, be "extremists for love," and "decide to rise from the dark dungeons of complacency to the bright hills of creative protest." Let us join the ranks of those hill-bound travelers.

Mary Pipher... and Beyond!

Although I think Mary Pipher is a little extreme in her views about how writing can and does change the world, I think she brings up some very good points and quotes. One topic she addresses very well, I think, is her description of a "change writer." The attributes, characteristics, and qualities she says must belong to a change writer are quite legitimate: open-mindedness, acceptance, urgency, a dash of subjectivity, a smidgen of objectivity, etc.... I hope she doesn't believe that all writing must be like this because that would definitely shut out a lot of good works that might have been created with different intentions. One of my favorite quotes so far is, "To make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe," by Carl Sagan. This one came at the commencement of Chapter 6: Diving In - Getting Started, which is an appropriate place for it. I'm still trying to figure out if she included it for reasons other than humor. This is all I've come up with so far: 1) The universe is already created, so we don't have any excuse not to write; therefore - get started! 2) Since the universe is already created, we're really not writing from scratch because we have other stuff with which we can work. 3) We need to create in our minds the universe surrounding and incorporating a work before we can begin writing about it. All of these different perspectives, I feel, are legitimately accurate interpretations of the quote as well as interesting insights into how one can interpret the title and scope of the whole book. For, if we do live in a universe as big as some scientists make it out to be, what difference does one apple pie or one piece of writing make? Can one apple pie or one literary work really change the world? Maybe, but at the very least, they could change the way one person perceives the world. All that can be hoped is that they somehow influence more people for the better than for the worse.

Writing Assignments From Different Perspectives

I thought it was interesting that all of the assignments had at least traces of most of the composition theories. To me, that really makes sense for several reasons. Papers should have at least some minimum requirements and, if the professor sees fit, some standards of formatting and grammar that would be benefit students by helping them learn how to do certain types of writing. With that in mind, it's important to incorporate elements from the Current Traditional Theory. In order to enable students to fulfill those minimum requirements, it helps to teach them the elements of the writing process, even if they choose not to follow it lineally. This is where the Cognitive Process Theory is useful. The finding of a personal voice, which is so important in Expressivism, I feel is important in order for student's work to be truly original, interesting, and contributive to the greater whole of collective literature. Social Constructionism's emphasis on community and having an awareness of context, I believe, is an extraordinarily helpful attribute for students to have so that they can better understand their broad audience, and so that the audience can better understand them. To me, an appropriate combination of all of these theories is the best way to develop an effective and useful assignment.

"Whales" from a Current Traditional Perspective

From a Current Traditional perspective, there were many things right with the whaling paper: words were spelled right and there weren't many grammar, punctuation or mechanics issues. That being said, I would still critique the paper in several ways. First of all, there are no paragraphs. I found at least four places where new paragraphs could have began. Secondly, the word "you" should be avoided in this type of writing, which I assume to be expository. Also, about two-thirds of the way down the first page, "Indian Tribe" is written; I believe that "Tribe" shouldn't be capitalized. Citation is another issue. Periods should go after the parentheses of in-text citations, and a works cited page should be included. In some areas, parenthetical in-text citations follow sentences that have not quotation marks around or within them; those marks should be included for specificity. It seemed that the paper as a whole was coherent in that it simply placed information before the readers so they could make decisions for themselves about the issue.

Strengths, Weaknesses, and Ambitions

As a writer, I think my main strength is that I'm willing and anxious to experiment with new words.  I enjoy perusing dictionaries and trying to implement the curious ones into my writing. On occasion, when I can't find the type of word I need, I try to alter an existing word to suit the situation.  This flexibility helps me keep my writing fresh and interesting for me and for the reader(s).  Unfortunately, this is also one of my great weaknesses as a writer since I often misuse words and thereby inculcate confusion.  Also, I often can't remember the definitions of the new words I use, so I can't even understand what I wrote when I revise my work.  In the future, I hope to be able to accrue a prodigious vocabulary so I will be better accoutered for expressing myself and piquing other people's thought processes.