Tag: composition

Writing, Feedback, and Film Editing

Thanks to Mrs. T and Izzy for giving me lots of space and quiet to work today.  I met the daily 800 word quota I set for myself when I’m working on a novel.  Lately, it’s been more like 800 words four days a week.

Kathy Patrick Pulpwood Queens Girlfriend Weekend William Torgerson Love on the Big Screen
Pulpwood Queens Favor Safari Print
photo by Natalie Brasington

I followed up my writing by meeting another daily quota: I read seven student papers. At that rate, I’ll have them done in seven days, which would put me a day ahead of schedule. This semester I’ve spaced out my face to face classes’ assignments so they come in at a different time than the writing of the online students.

Kathy Patrick Pulpwood Queens Girlfriend Weekend William Torgerson Love on the Big Screen
This Banner Blew Down After I filmed it
(I didn't steal it)

I spent the whole rest of my day doing color correction to the Girlfriend Weekend “For the Love of Books” documentary. To be truthful, rather than call it color correction, I should probably call it “color improvement.” When I’d do an adjustment, it would take a while for Final Cut Pro to render the change, and while it was “working,” I watched videos from NYU’s “Media Talks.” The more I learn about their master’s degree in publishing the more I’m impressed by it.

We used my kids' puzzle map to
illustrate my trip to Jefferson, Texas

I should note that my wife Megan made the little airplane in the picture.

There are some good videos related to the book business on the NYU site here.

Golden Lines from College Writers Who Write With Me

One thing that I have found out in my life is that sometimes you won’t always understand everything.

-Taylor L.

When you think about it, everything in life has to do with how you say things.

-Fabiola N.

If I never bare my soul to the internet, it will never be taken by it.

-Jessi L.

I can’t even put a number on how many papers I have turned in, papers that have taken many hours of preparation, research, and hard work, only to never see them again.

-Thomas S.

Students want stories that relate to real life and to what’s going on today.

-Francesca C.

College Composition Students Discuss Their Internet Reading and Writing

Surprise, these students all read books.

Maybe I’m being dramatic, but I know after some days of checking email, reading websites, responding to student blogs, and dropping in on the various social media sites I participate in, I feel way more anxious and scatterbrained than usual. It’s a feeling Nicholas Carr notes too in his book The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains.

Several of the writers I’m working with this semester at St. John’s University joined me to discuss their upcoming literacy autobiographies within the context of Carr’s book.  Here’s some highlights of our conversation and a link to where I’ve published our discussion.

Nicholas Carr The Shallows William Torgerson St. John's University Love on the Big Screen
My fellow podcasters: Sean, Elizabeth, and Jessi

Shawn is a business management major who is also a baseball player. Although during the podcast, Shawn seems to take the side of reading around on the internet over reading books, he ends the program by recommending us to the writer and chef Anthony Bourdain who has written Kitchen Confidential and Medium Raw.

Elizabeth takes science courses even though she doesn’t much like science and she spends hours reading around on Wikipedia.  She also suggested a book to read at the end of the show: Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell.

Jessi seems happy to be a pharmacy major and wants to someday own a lime green Volkswagen Beetle. She speaks highly of Tumblr and recommends the magna Bleach.

Here are a few of the lines we discuss from Nicholas Carr’s The Shallows:

“Once I was a scuba diver in the sea of words. Now I zip along the surface like a guy on a Jet Ski” (7).

 “As soon as you learn to be a ‘skilled hunter’ online, he [O’Shea] argues, books become superfluous” (9).

Nicholas Carr The Shallows William Torgerson St. John's University Love on the Big Screen

“Calm, focused, undistracted, the linear mind is being pushed aside by a new kind of mind that wants and needs to take in and dole out information in short, disjointed, often overlapping bursts–the faster, the better” (10).

You can download the complete audio podcast here or search for us via “Digital Book Club” on iTunes.

Writing Group Lesson Plans for College Composition Class

The writers in my classes regularly get into groups and read their writing to one another.  If left to their own devices about what to do in these groups, the students are usually either very quiet or they point out what they see as errors.  In the spirit of trying generate conversation, we read an except from Peter Elbow’s Writing Without Teachers.  During the class before the small group workshops, we practiced the methods outlined by Elbow as a whole class.  There were two brave students who agreed to read their work aloud to the class.  We talked about the text after the reading using the directions below.

Writing Groups in Action

Directions:

  1. The entire essay gets read out loud by the writer or someone the writer chooses.
  2. Everyone should “listen” with a pen and, as Elbow says, “point” to words and phrases that get into your skull.  Mark these spots as you read or listen.

Complete 3-7 silently in your daybook and then share.

  1. When the piece is completed, everyone takes time to silently write ½ page in their daybook that describes the “movie of their mind” that occurred as they listened to the piece.
  2. Summarize the main points of the article by writing a sentence in your daybook.
  3. Choose a word from the text that summarizes it.
  4. Choose a word NOT in the text that summarizes it.
  5. Write a metaphor for the piece.  If it the essay were (an article of clothing, weather, terrain, an instrument, or anything else you can thing of) what would it be? In other words, I might say, “Jerry’s piece was a tornado.”

As you share 3-7 with your group, hopefully conversation will arise.

  • You don’t need to write it in your daybook, but how did the writer do when it came to a title, signal phrases, parenthetical citations, and a works cited page?  Can you help each other with any of these things?

After all the pieces have been read and discussed

  • Write at least ½ page in your daybook answering the following.  Explain how the group went today.  What suggestion do you have for improving the group’s interaction?  What went well?  What needs work?  What does the work have you thinking about?  What do you think needs to happen next with your essay?
This Semester's Writers Seem Especially Dedicated to the Process

My Reflections

As expected, the groups were slow to start but the students began to relax and talk more as the class went on.  I think I had the students writing too much in their daybooks.  The writing took awhile and I think it killed the conversation.  I think an adjustment would be to have the students write everything that is above except for the movie of the mind.  Someone could just speak that and students could offer their own thoughts in comparison to the one movie of the mind that is shared.

The students bring four copies of the paper to class.  One of those goes to me.  I think next time I’ll have the students write on the drafts instead of in their own daybooks.

Students are often late the day a paper is due.  I had students form groups of four and as soon as they had four, they began the workshop.  They were free to leave after they finished.  Some groups used the full eighty minutes and some were done in an hour.

College Composition Students on their Writing Center Visit

I recently had my students write an “About Me” essay as it might appear on an Electronic Portfolio, a cover letter for a job, or an application for graduate school.  The assignment comes from a campus initiative toward incorporating ePortfolios and from what I’ve noticed about students’ writing who come to me as they approach graduation and are faced with writing such texts.  The students met with writing center consultants and wrote reflections about their visits.  With the students’ permission, I’m sharing some lines from their reflections.  I also snapped a few pictures of the writing center at St. John’s University where I teach.

Welcome to the Writing Center!

The people at the front desk are cheery and good-natured. I quickly passed this off as a trait of English majors.

–Max Blitzer

My expectations prior to going in [to the writing center] were to meet with a nerdy, potentially socially awkward valedictorian type of student.

–Daniel Herrera

Consultants Not the Grim (or nerdy) Writers Some Students Expect

I realized that I was actually doing most of the talking; she [the consultant] was just a mediator and I answered my own questions.”

–Malgorzata Stapor

Students Often Surprised How Nice It Is In The W.C.

 

When we were first assigned to go to the writing center to get help on our “About Me” essay, I was honestly confused.  How could someone help me write about myself?…When we sat down I tried to explain to her [the writing consultant] how I did not really understand the purpose for me being there.  Shortly, she explained to me how their job was to bring out ideas that we ourselves might have missed.

–Bibin George