Comments for papermemory

Comment on Have abortion, Siri will not travel by Tom Brown

Tom Brown — Fri, 02 Dec 2011 01:50:16 +0000

I love my iPhone and think Siri is great.. But suppose lucky I am a man and will not need an abortion.

Comment on Have abortion, Siri will not travel by Michael

Michael — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 15:32:14 +0000

What a funny replied from Siri, the answer so censored.

Comment on Have abortion, Siri will not travel by casasr

casasr — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 05:24:47 +0000

Linda, What are some reasons you can think of for why someone might want to get an abortion?

Comment on Have abortion, Siri will not travel by Linda

Linda — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 01:21:09 +0000

Why do someone needs to find abortion while giving birth is the Gods gift to women. They should be missing something or they want to get rid of someone who wants to see the new world.

cheers,
Linda

Comment on I swear I’m straight…except for the gay sex part by Michael J. Faris

Michael J. Faris — Sun, 26 Jun 2011 19:17:56 +0000

Good points, all around. You should read Ferguson’s article “Race-ing Homonormativity,” which extends your footnote to show how homonormativity actually works through rhetoric of ethnicity, and worse, through reinforcing whiteness as citizenship.

Comment on T.V. and fiction, an irony retrospective by daniel Yoo

daniel Yoo — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 06:04:59 +0000

two things. the first has to do with the latent but very real sense of anger I’ve always felt when someone, usually a few years younger than myself, describes something as ironic. the second as to do with a simpson’s episode (homerpalooza), in which the following exchange takes place:

Teen 1: Oh, here’s that cannonball guy. He’s cool.
Teen 2: Are you being ironic, dude?
Teen 1: I don’t even know anymore. (sic)

Comment on to begin with… by casasr

casasr — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 18:55:39 +0000

<> I agree, except that I’d go beyond the citation and include the inclusion of outside sources all together. First-year writing students haven’t had to–nor do they see a reason to–sound like their stuffy English teacher in high school, or any of their totally un-cool professors in college. Supporting my arguments–why would I want to do that? I already know what I think about everything is a commons attitude indeed.

<> Also true. So, to make my students understand the difference I ask them (on the very first day of class) to tell with a show of hands how they would go about a hypothetical assignment: If I said go home tonight and write me 500 words on abortion, how many of you would 1) immediately locate your pre-existing opinion and then go on the internet to find articles to support it?, and how many would 2) admit that you may not know what you think about abortion–admit that you think you know what you know about abortion–and then go on the internet to read a lot about abortion so that you could could come to a clearer understanding of what you’ll want to say?

Inevitably I get a huge show of hands for the former and the few I get for the latter would suggest that these students didn’t really understand what I was asking. What I mean for them to understand is that, in my class at least, critical thinking comes before any other consideration, and that if we are only looking for sources we will find them–that’s what the internet is there for anyway, to help us establish that there’s an alien colony in Nigeria (if that’s what we wanted to argue). I tell my students that they are better served by not being 100% sure of what they want to say; they’re better served by leaving some room for discovery in the course of their research and their writing.

What’s mostly true is that students don’t see why they should sound like you and I when they write; they’ve spent the last 10 or so years trying NOT to sound like you and me, and here I am, suddenly, telling them that this is the new game they have to play if they want to be read seriously. Unfair? Unreasonable? Totally.

I’d like to think that I spend most of the time in my class covering the writing process, which include information literacy, effective research strategies, but first and foremost, critical thinking as writing.

Thanks!

Comment on to begin with… by Sara McDonald

Sara McDonald — Mon, 28 Dec 2009 17:54:32 +0000

I think it’s a reasonable hypothesis, but you have to consider also what these students have been exposed to in the past. It’s only when you’ve gone through a certain amount of training in academics that you can really start to see the value of citations. Until then, it seems like a ridiculous requirement. I’ve never had my writing teachers encourage me to read scholarly journals, and so I always took citations as some obnoxious boundary to creative thinking. After some time, and much reading, I’ve started to understand the relationship between citing research and then including “original” thought.

Many students are taught to support every single argument made in a paper, and they lose any personal investment in the essay. It seems that they aren’t even allowed to include their own interpretations of the information they are citing, for fear that the teacher will say “Where’s your source for this?”

So from a personal perspective, I think the reluctance to cite sources is really about the overemphasis placed on citing sources. I’ve gotten by in many of my classes by thinking of something that I want to say and then finding some source that supports that. Hardly an academic approach (or is it?), but it works because teachers are really only looking for sources.

I don’t have the background in scientific or academic literature that would allow me to make quick references without a LOT of searching around, and neither do most undergrads. Nor do we have the skills to quickly (and accurately) decipher much of the academic information out there, especially considering that we have to churn out 3-5 papers in a semester with at least 5 sources each. The process, then, is incredibly intimidating.

Courses like “library science” and even “academic theory” may prove very helpful for students who WANT to jump through these hoops but really don’t understand it.

Without those courses, instructors who require quality work should spend a good deal of time covering the process of research and citation, not just saying “follow MLA and if you have any questions consult the handbook or come by my office.” Many students don’t even know what their questions are.

Comment on American Neorealism on a Sunday morning by Mr WordPress

Mr WordPress — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 04:05:37 +0000

Hi, this is a comment.
To delete a comment, just log in, and view the posts’ comments, there you will have the option to edit or delete them.