Although I was not in class last Thursday night, I decided to keep up with my blogging and educate myself with what a Multigenre piece of work really is. After reading other blogs that were posted as well as googling "multigenre papers" I discovered that this way of writing seems to bevery appealing to me and maybe even my future students.
I have never written, nor have I heard of Multigenre papers and the idea of centralizing one idea using mulitple styles of writing and perspectives is fascinating to me. There have been many times that I have written research papers, 7-10 pages long and by the 5th page I felt bored with my own topic. However, after reviewing what a multigenre paper is, I feel as though this is my opportunity to finally get all of my and other critic's ideas out onto one piece of work.
The freedom to write about one topic using different, even conflicting perspectives is definately an advantage to me. I feel as though writing this way will help diminish my anxiety of writing a formally structured paper. Because this paper is so informal, the ideas that I have for the paper will be easier to express.
Tuesday, March 27, 2012
Tuesday, March 20, 2012
Introducing.....PRONOUNS
Anderson's chapter on Pronouns: The Willing Stand-Ins outlines different strategies that are helpful for teachers to instruct to their students the importances and differeces between pronouns, as well as the uses of apostrophes. I especially like the way Anderson was about to outline the different points of view that prouns are used (First, Second, and Third person).
The section about Marking Text-- In Reference to Pronouns is a great sample of how students can learn to discover pronouns within writing. First, the students are able to recognize which point of view the excerpt is told in. By noticing that the piece is in first person, the students are then able to identify that pronouns such as he, she, it, we, and us will be used in order to refer to something or someone else. What I found most interesting was the group activity the teacher had the students do. Anderson states "In groups, students find pronouns and put boxes around them. Then, students draw arrows back to whatever the pronouns are referring to (their antecedents)" (106). I find this helpful because it gives students a chance to read through a piece and physically recognize which pronouns are referring to what antecedents.
Again, Anderson points out agreements within pronuns by listing pronun words used singularly, plurally, and pronoun agreements that be used both singular or plural. Anderson states that "whenever possible, we should be gender inclusive" and adding that "changing single subjects like student to students will save you from this problem" of using strictly male pronouns (107). An activity that I really found helpful dealing with singular and plural pronouns was Anderson's Where Have All the Pronouns Gone? Here, the pronouns were removed and replaced with blanks for students to fill in the appropriate pronoun using the provided slips of paper from an envelop.
Another interesting point I found of Anderson's is his section on The Case of the Pesky Pronoun. Here he is able to explain to students a trick to ensure they are using the pronouns I or me in the right order when adding in another person to their sentence. The error sentence reads: Me and Javier went to the holiday dance. Because this is wrong, Anderson teaches the student the trick that the guest always goes first. Then it reads: Javier and me went to the holiday dance. In order to know this this is the correct agreement, Anderson says to read the sentence without Javier and. Since the sentence doesn't sound correct as: Me went to the holiday dance. The student is then able to realize that the correct sentence should read: Javier and I went to the holiday dance. I struggle with this concept myself sometimes but after reading this section, I believe I will keep this little trick in mind.
In Noden's text I found the way he outlined the different ways of writing introductory leads to be very interesting. Not only in my non-fiction writing but in my adacemic writing as well, I struggle to come up with a successful interesting opening statement or paragraph. Reading about the different introductory leads gives me a lot of insight on how I can spice up my introductions when writing. A few that I found the most interesting were Noden's suggestions of the Question Lead, the Imagine Lead, and the Statistical Lead.
Overall I believe that both texts are helpful to improve student's writing. Anderson is able to clear up any complexities or confusion by giving tricks to understand the concept of pronouns. Noden, on the other hand, describes the many ways that an introduction paragraph can be intriguing by adding facts or getting the readers attention with visual aspects.
The section about Marking Text-- In Reference to Pronouns is a great sample of how students can learn to discover pronouns within writing. First, the students are able to recognize which point of view the excerpt is told in. By noticing that the piece is in first person, the students are then able to identify that pronouns such as he, she, it, we, and us will be used in order to refer to something or someone else. What I found most interesting was the group activity the teacher had the students do. Anderson states "In groups, students find pronouns and put boxes around them. Then, students draw arrows back to whatever the pronouns are referring to (their antecedents)" (106). I find this helpful because it gives students a chance to read through a piece and physically recognize which pronouns are referring to what antecedents.
Again, Anderson points out agreements within pronuns by listing pronun words used singularly, plurally, and pronoun agreements that be used both singular or plural. Anderson states that "whenever possible, we should be gender inclusive" and adding that "changing single subjects like student to students will save you from this problem" of using strictly male pronouns (107). An activity that I really found helpful dealing with singular and plural pronouns was Anderson's Where Have All the Pronouns Gone? Here, the pronouns were removed and replaced with blanks for students to fill in the appropriate pronoun using the provided slips of paper from an envelop.
Another interesting point I found of Anderson's is his section on The Case of the Pesky Pronoun. Here he is able to explain to students a trick to ensure they are using the pronouns I or me in the right order when adding in another person to their sentence. The error sentence reads: Me and Javier went to the holiday dance. Because this is wrong, Anderson teaches the student the trick that the guest always goes first. Then it reads: Javier and me went to the holiday dance. In order to know this this is the correct agreement, Anderson says to read the sentence without Javier and. Since the sentence doesn't sound correct as: Me went to the holiday dance. The student is then able to realize that the correct sentence should read: Javier and I went to the holiday dance. I struggle with this concept myself sometimes but after reading this section, I believe I will keep this little trick in mind.
In Noden's text I found the way he outlined the different ways of writing introductory leads to be very interesting. Not only in my non-fiction writing but in my adacemic writing as well, I struggle to come up with a successful interesting opening statement or paragraph. Reading about the different introductory leads gives me a lot of insight on how I can spice up my introductions when writing. A few that I found the most interesting were Noden's suggestions of the Question Lead, the Imagine Lead, and the Statistical Lead.
Overall I believe that both texts are helpful to improve student's writing. Anderson is able to clear up any complexities or confusion by giving tricks to understand the concept of pronouns. Noden, on the other hand, describes the many ways that an introduction paragraph can be intriguing by adding facts or getting the readers attention with visual aspects.
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