Student Writing Analysis

Paper one had a good grasp on sentence structure (simple, and some complex), one thing that I saw while reading and trying to critique (without using red marks) is that, yes, they have a good grasp on sentence structure, but they still need to work on a couple things. The sentences were all very similar and they could use some variety. I want to see them working on long as well as short sentences. They also had commas in some funky places, and some spelling errors. A sentence that I saw that was good was this, “As racial discrimination and ethic violence grow in complexity, they become more of a challenge for the international community.” I think that this student could definitely be an ELL student and that it why some of there sentences start with a famboys.

Paper two also knew how to form complete, simple sentences; they really tried to experiment with complex sentences (and did succeed at times). If they just moved their commas around a little they would have good complex sentences. They do a good job experimenting with the comma so I was happy to see that they weren’t scared to try new things. Sometimes people can be scared of the comma. A couple sentences would be perfect if they just changed the comma placement such as changing this, “I’ve seen people get killed or hurt because of envy, for example a lot of people develop anger and hate on other people because they envy what they have.” To this, “I’ve seen people get killed or hurt because of envy, for example, a lot of people develop anger and hate on other people because they envy what they have.” I think that this student would benefit from learning correct comma placement and furthering their knowledge on complex sentences. This student could also possibly be an ELL student, because their word placement is a little off.

Paper three, this student does a really good job at short simple sentences. They have a good grasp on how to use a comma in a list, but they could benefit from learning how to use a comma in complex sentences. I would want to teach this student complex sentences and the correct placement of a comma in a complex sentence. Another thing that this student does really well is the use of parentheses. They even have the period in the correct place. The sentence is, “Everybody always says, ‘you have a problem with that person just kill them.’’’ I thought they did a good job with the structure of that sentence. I would also want to teach this student sentence structure, and I think they are an ELL student.

Looking at all of these three papers as a whole, I think that the one thing that they all have in common that they need help with is sentence structure. They need to be adding sentence variety and using more complex sentences in their writing. I think that giving a lesson on commas will be helpful for them to then move onto more sentence complexity. Another lesson that I would teach them would be about apostrophes, because I see a bunch that aren’t supposed to be there/need to be there. I think that all three of these students are ELL and that they have just recently learned these rules.

World English

For my World English project, I am going to focus on Canada and how American and Canadian English coincide. I wanted to focus on Canada, because the country is so close to ours but they have just a different influence on their speech and culture. French-Canadian is spoken more on the east side of the country, whereas on the west side of the country the influence of French is not as strong. I want to answer some questions in my presentation: How/when did French infuse Canada? OR When did Canada change over to Canadian-English instead of French-Canadian? Has Canada always spoke English or was there a time in their history that they only spoke French? How does this relate back to students and their learning of language? (Or in my case since I am not necessarily going to teach and I want to do more editing/writing) how does the culture/speech of Canada influence how we speak today? Does it have any impact? These are a couple questions that I want to focus on. I have found a couple academic sources about the history of Canadian-English/French-Canadian, and I have also found some non-academic sources about the differences in American English and Canadian English. I want to make a prezi or PowerPoint of some sort. I always feel like prezi’s aren’t as boring, but I want to make sure that I add some sort of graphics to my presentation also. 

Here are the sources that I have right now (I will probably find more as I go along):

http://www.jstor.org/stable/3050502?seq=2

http://www.yorku.ca/twainweb/troberts/raising.html

http://public.oed.com/aspects-of-english/english-in-use/canadian-english/

http://ntserver1.wsulibs.wsu.edu:2056/stable/3444544

** The link might not open if you click on it, you might have to copy and paste it into the browser.

Movie Blog

In my part of the Video was the O Pioneers O Pioneers part. What I liked about this part was that it looked at Canadian language, train language, riverboat, gold miners, and cowboy language. I liked that it broke it up into sections and gave different examples of sayings that we use in our everyday language. “Oh boy I’ve got it”, “Long time, no see” these are both examples that show how far back in time our language expands. To me, it was cool to see where all of our sayings come from and how they differ from region to region. Even our accents differ from region to region. For example when they talked about Canada, and how there is a border between them and Niagara and there is a difference in speech.

Response to Delpit article

A few questions came up when I was reading Delpit’s article. One being, is the way that we speak varies from state to state, country to country, is this the correct way to speak, and who is to judge the way to speak? [a long sentence]. Is there really a right or wrong way to speak? Here in Washington it seems like we don’t have any accents. The way we speak sounds normal to us, but when we travel to different states they sound different to us. [Compound sentence + a fanboys] Delpit talks about how Oakland had an Ebonics debate about the African American language. Why is that race being targeted for the way they speak, because who is to say what the norm is for speaking? Another thing that Delpit brings up was when she was searching the Internet and read the comments about the African Americans during the Ebonics debate. The people that were making those comments, about how African Americans don’t know how to speak, are the people that are probably so ignorant to the fact that everyone in this country speaks differently than the next.  [A very long sentence] Reading this article will help me with my writing [a shorter sentence]. It really brings to life that you cannot judge a person for talking differently then you. To them, you also speak differently.

COMPLEX SENTENCES WOOP

This week our patterns were more focused on the structure of sentences. Mainly focusing on complex sentences. This week I learned many things that I didn’t know about sentences. I never knew what a subordinating conjunction as, until this week (I obviously knew what they were but I didn’t know that’s what they were called). Here are examples of my complex sentences:

Even in the small town of Wenatchee, Washington there are problems with gender roles in classrooms. I had the chance to talk to a teacher who taught at a school district in Wenatchee. This teachers name was Kelsey and even though she has only been teaching for two years she is well versed on the day-to-day happenings in the classroom, she also happens to be my cousin. After bringing up the subject of my paper, she told me a story of when she was teaching kindergarten [Independent clause, dependent clause, coordinating conjunction];

Or this sentence could look like this:

I brought up the subject of my paper after she told me a story of when she was teaching kindergarten [Independent clause, dependent clause, coordinating conjunction]; the principal took one of the White student’s out of her class and placed the girl in another class. They did this because the other class had too many Hispanic students in one class; the school needed a White student to make the class more equal in race. This story is specific to the topic of racism and gender roles. The issues of race and gender differences in classrooms are obvious, but are the correct things being done to fix the problem? Teachers should be focused on students having a fair chance at succeeding in school as every other student. Sharon Chubbuck author of the article titled, Individual and Structural Orientations in Socially Just Teaching: Conceptualization, Implementation, and Collaborative Effort asks the questions, if students will access more knowledge if they look at students needs individually or the needs of the whole classroom?

As you can see it changes the context of the paper. While the first one is of her telling me her story after I told her about the subject. The second is me bringing up the topic of my subject after she told me about this story.