Writing Assignment, the Assignment

English 110 Freshman Composition

Instructor: DFaye Anderson

 

Assignment #2: Reflections on Your Experiences as a Reader and Writer

First Draft Due in Class on Tuesday, March 18, 2015

Final Draft Due in Class on Thursday, March 27, 2015

 

For this assignment, you will read and annotate an excerpt from The Autobiography of Malcolm X. In the excerpt, Malcolm X writes about his inability as a teenager to communicate in written English. We will discuss his motivations and the strategies he used to develop his abilities as a reader and writer. Then you will write an essay about your own experiences with language, the challenges and discoveries you’ve had as a reader and writer.

 

Reading Assignment

Read and annotate “Learning to Read and Write”

excerpt from The Autobiography of Malcolm X

The excerpt is available at Blackboard. In addition it is available online at a number of sources. Simply Google Malcolm X “Learning to Read.”

Remember: As you annotate, of course you will underline or highlight facts and ideas. Use the margins to summarize (bullets work). Use context clues or a dictionary for new words. (If you don’t want to interrupt your reading each time you read a new word, simply circle it and then look up all the words later.  (You just have to promise to actually do that!)When you annotate you are having a conversation with the author. Write down questions that come to mind as you read. If something surprises, pleases or disturbs you, write down those comments, too. Annotating will enhance your understanding and appreciation of strategies did he employ to improve his ability to read and write?

After you have read the excerpt take a few minutes and answer the Reporter’s Tricks aka the 5 Ws:

Who are the people in the excerpt?

What is the central idea? What strategies did Malcolm employ to his reading and writing skills?

Where was he when he began his work to improve?

When (time period) did he learn?

Why did he want to communicate more effectively?

How old was Malcolm?

 

Connections

Think about your experience learning to read and write:

     a) Learning to print and write cursively

c) How and where you learned to communicate in English if it is your second language

     d) The role of oral storytelling in your family

e) Early reading habits, your first books, favorite children’s books and stories

f) Languages spoken/read/written in your household as a child

g) Personal writing: diaries, journals, creative writing, emails, tweets, and texts

h) Other languages you can read/write/speak

I) joys and challenges you’ve face as a reader and writer

In class: Be prepared to discuss the excerpt and share your insights in class on Tuesday, March 18, 2014.

The Essay

You will write a paper about your challenges and triumphs as a reader and writer of English. You will be able Use the discussions we had last week to jumpstart your brainstorm. The paper will go through several steps leading to the final, publishable product.

 

Brainstorm and discuss

Freewriting

Outlining

Draft 1                           Tuesday, March 18th

Conference

Revise and submit final draft     Thursday, March 27th

 

We will devote some class time to writing and editing your paper, but much of the writing will take place outside. I want to encourage each of you to make an appointment to conference with me during my office hours (Thursdays 4-6/Rm 6/323), or online, via Aim (Tues 8-10pm). If you are unable to conference with me, I encourage you strongly, to take your first draft to the Writing Center, before submitting it. Evidence of careful proofreading should be obvious.   

 

Your paper should include a title page, with a graphic that is appropriate. The first draft should be at least 2 (two) pages long, and the final paper, 3-4 pages.

 

Attached is a rubric which will be used to evaluate your essay and a proofreading checklist you can use to correct grammatical errors.

 

CRISP Proof Reading Checklist

 

          Re-read your essay several times for content and organization. You are not just looking to correct errors, but you are revising in order to communicate more effectively, your ideas to your audience. When proofreading for grammar conventions, you can look at these five categories:

 

Capitals at the beginning of each sentence.(Names, etc.)

Run On sentences and fragments

Indent each paragraph

Spelling homophones: their/there/they’re; too/to/two, etc.

Punctuation at the end of each sentence.

 

     It’s easy to remember: take the first letter of each category and together they spell CRISP. You want your writing to be clear and crisp!

 

 

 

Writing Assignment, the Text, Malcolm X and "Learning to Read"

 

 “Learning to Read” excerpt from The Autobiography of Malcolm X

Born Malcolm Little on May 19, 1925, Malcolm X was one of the most articulate and powerful leaders of black America during the 1960s. A street hustler convicted of robbery in 1946, he spent seven years in prison, where he educated himself and became a disciple of Elijah Muhammad, founder of the Nation of Islam. In the days of the civil rights movement, Malcolm X emerged as the leading spokesman for black separatism, a philosophy that urged black Americans to cut political, social, and economic ties with the white community. After a pilgrimage to Mecca, the capital of the Muslim world, in 1964, he became an orthodox Muslim, adopted the Muslim name El Hajj Malik El-Shabazz, and distanced himself from the teachings of the black Muslims. He was assassinated in 1965. In the following excerpt from his autobiography, coauthored with Alex Haley and published the year of his death, Malcolm X describes his self-education. I became increasingly frustrated at not being able to express what I wanted to convey in letters that I wrote, especially those to Mr. Elijah Muhammad. In the street, I had been the most articulate hustler out there. I had commanded attention when I said something. But now, trying to write simple English, I not only wasn’t articulate, I wasn’t even functional. How would I sound writing in slang—something such as, “Look, daddy, let me pull your coat about a cat…”

Many who today hear me somewhere in person, or on television, or those who read something I’ve said, will think I went to school far beyond the eighth grade. This impression is due entirely to my prison studies.

It really began back in the Charlestown Prison, when Bimbi first made me feel envy of his stock of knowledge. Bimbi had always taken charge of any conversations he was in, and I tried to emulate him. But every book I picked up had few sentences which didn’t contain anywhere from one to nearly all of the words that might as well have been in Chinese. When I just skipped those words, of course, I really ended up with little idea of what the book said.

I saw that the best thing I could do was get hold of a dictionary—to study, to learn some words. I was lucky enough to reason also that I should try to improve my penmanship. It was sad. I couldn’t even write in a straight line. It was both ideas together that moved me to request a dictionary along with some tablets and pencils from the Norfolk Prison school.

I spent two days just riffling uncertainly through the dictionary’s pages. I’d never realized so many words existed! I didn’t know which words I needed to learn. Finally, just to start some kind of action, I began copying.

In my slow, painstaking, ragged handwriting, I copied into my tablet everything printed on that first page, down to the punctuation marks.

I believe it took me a day. Then, aloud, I read back, to myself, everything I’d written on the tablet. Over and over, aloud, to myself, I read my own handwriting.

I woke up the next morning, thinking about those words—immensely proud to realize

over 

that not only had I written so much at one time, but I’d written words that I never knew were in the world. Moreover, with a little effort, I also could remember what many of these words meant. I reviewed the words whose meanings I didn’t remember. Funny thing, from the dictionary first page right now, that “aardvark” springs to my mind. The dictionary had a picture of it, a long-tailed, long-eared, burrowing African mammal, which lives off termites caught by sticking out its tongue as an anteater does for ants.

I was so fascinated that I went on—I copied the dictionary’s next page. And the same experience came when I studied that. With every succeeding page, I also learned of people and places and events from history. Actually the dictionary is like a miniature encyclopedia. Finally the dictionary’s A section had filled a whole tablet—and I went on into the B’s. That was the way I started copying what eventually became the entire dictionary. It went a lot faster after so much practice helped me to pick up handwriting speed. Between what I wrote in my tablet, and writing letters, during the rest of my time in prison I would guess I wrote a million words.

I suppose it was inevitable that as my word-base broadened, I could for the first time pick up a book and read and now begin to understand what the book was saying. Anyone who has read a great deal can imagine the new world that opened. Let me tell you something: from then until I left that prison, in every free moment, if I was not reading in the library, I was reading on my bunk. You couldn’t have gotten me out of books with a wedge. Between Mr. Muhammad’s teachings, my correspondence, my visitors, and my reading of books, months passed without my even thinking about being imprisoned. In fact, up to then, I never had been so truly free in my life.

As you can imagine, especially in a prison where there was heavy emphasis on rehabilitation, an inmate was smiled upon if he demonstrated an unusually intense interest in books. There was a sizable number of well-read inmates, especially the popular debaters. Some of them were practically walking encyclopedias.

Book after book showed me how the white man had brought upon the world’s black, brown, red, and yellow peoples every variety of suffering. I saw how since the sixteenth century, the so-called “Christian trader” began to ply the seas in his lust for Asian and African empires, plunder, and power. I saw how the white man never has gone among the non-white peoples bearing the Cross in the true manner and spirit of Christ’s teachings—meek, humble, and Christ like…

I have often reflected upon the new vistas that reading opened to me. I knew right there in prison that reading had changed forever the course of my life. As I see it today, the ability to read awoke inside me some long dormant craving to be mentally alive. I certainly wasn’t seeking any degree, the way a college confers a status symbol upon its students. My homemade education gave me, with every additional book that I read, a little bit more sensitivity to the deafness, dumbness, and blindness that is afflicting the black race in America.

Not long ago, an English writer telephoned me from London, asking questions. One was, “What’s your alma mater?” I told him, “Books.”

Response #2 Interrogating texts: From Deferent to Efferent and Aesthetic Reading Practices"

DFaye Anderson

Professor Gleason

ENGL 0862

Dec. 2014

 

“Interrogating texts: From Deferent to Efferent and Aesthetic Reading Practices”

by Cheryl Hogue Smith

                        Cheryl Hogue Smith’s ideas and strategies resonated with me because many of my high school students are basic writers and readers. She spoke of the need to help those students to think about what they think about when reading.  Trapped in feelings of inferiority and frankly inexperience, they internalize their difficulty reading into a disorder or deficiency of their part. The lack of success at reading feeds into their negative feelings and then, running away from those negative, they  give up on tackling challenging texts.  Smith doesn’t suggest this, but I think one way to help students acknowledge these feelings is to have them examine, early in the semester, their feelings about writing and their history as writers, something freshmen here at CCNY do in the Literacy Narrative. I think in addition to assigning such an essay though, I’d also have students answer a survey of questions on their history as readers and  writers. The survey could serve as the prompt, the primer  for the essay.

                        Anyway, I think it’s important we acknowledge the gorilla in the room, to use an analogy Smith uses to another advantage. Sharing this experience will inevitably help students see that they are not alone, that everybody is the same and unique. Ms. Anderson’s eyes glaze over when she has to read the instructions for the new electronic toy or a theater review in the Village Voice.  As in life, what matters is how you respond to an event or challenge.

                        Working on the emotional response is not a one unit we’ll complete in a week, or even two. This effort will be ongoing. Attitude is everything.  So I like Smith’s emphasis on reflection and discussion of what you don’t understand. She makes it safe not to know. How empowering is that? Sort of like brainstorming – (almost) nothing you write down is wrong!  That would encourage the deferent reader to take a risk on his own feelings and reactions.  The repetition of the cycle of reading/writing/ discussing will become automatic. Multiple readings of a text is a simple strategy. There is a payoff. You just have to manage the monster in your head. Tell him, “This too (feelings of inadequacy), shall pass!

Response #1 "Making Meaning Clear: The Logic of Revision"

DFaye Anderson

Professor B. Gleason

ENGL 0862

Dec. 2014

 

“Making Meaning Clear: The Logic of Revision”

by Donald M. Murray

 

            Donald M. Murray advocates revision in his article, not simply to find out what is wrong, but as a way to find meaning.  “I have faith that if I read carefully - if I listen to my own developing voice – I will discover what I have to say.” (35) Discover what you have to say? I’d wager that most people don’t approach writing with this Christopher Columbus perspective. Yet, it is exactly the way I work when writing fiction or poetry.  I am absolutely working on the faith that it will all be revealed to me; I will discover what happens in the story, if I just stay at it – and stay open. Murray posits the same can be true of non-fiction writing, and he proposes a method to get there.

            You read for focus, form and voice. Murray believes you read your draft the first few times and focus only on its meaning. “A good piece of writing says only one thing.” (36) You read the draft in order to determine what you mean, and not for grammatical errors. Initially, you try to read as a stranger would. What is the meaning? Is additional information needed? Is there superfluous information? Is there evidence sufficient to support each point?  You read quickly, resisting the temptation to edit or revise with a pen.

            Then you read slower and you’re reading for form, but form is in service to the meaning. Do you catch a reader’s attention with your lead? Is there a variety of documentation? If there is a title, and is it an accurate reflection of the writing?  Finally, you read your draft slowly. Now you are looking at the organization of your paragraphs. You want to be sure that each paragraph speaks to only one point. Have you used the 2-3-1 arrangement of you argument? Have you checked for grammar issues?

            Murray’s position gives authority to the student and dovetails into Cheryl Hogue Smith’s ideas about empowering students to value their reactions to a piece they’ve read.  Smith, like Murray, turns the normal paradigm on its head when she asks students to focus on what they don’t know, instead of what they know.

            Murray’s technique requires several readings and rewrites of your draft. I’ll have to work to move students away from several notions in order to facilitate that: number one that I am the first line of defense when revising, secondly, that all that is required of them is to incorporate corrections that I’ve indicated. I must help them move out of the headset that looks to fix the things that are wrong, and finally, away from the idea that revision is punishment.  Revision is a way to talk to yourself, which implies that you have something of value to say.  Maybe that’s where I begin.

Response #3 "Universal Design and Multiple Literacies"

DFaye Anderson

Professor B. Gleason

ENGL 0862

Dec. 2014

Response #3

“Universal Design and Multiple Literacies: Creating Access and Ownership for Students with Disabilities”

            Martha G. Michael and Beverly J. Trezek are my new education sheroes. They are the authors of the third review selection, “Universal Design and Multiple Literacies: Creating Access and Ownership for Students with Disabilities.”  Initially, I thought I’d write about their wonderful advocacy in behalf of students with special needs. I admire those who fight for justice, so Michael and Trezek are easy, gratifying choices. I thought I’d write about their work to spread the gospel of Universal Design, a term borrowed from architecture, and loosely translated means to plan access for everyone.  In today’s classroom, students arrive with a wide range of skills and abilities. At my own school, a charter high school in the south Bronx, approximately 25% of our students have Individualized Education Plans (I.E.P.), educational plans for students who’ve been identified as having learning disabilities.  This access is gained by taking advantage of multiple literacies, the ability to learn and to show what you’ve learned through means other than pen and paper, or script literacy. I was ready to champion the champions of the marginalized.  And then I caught myself.

            Differentiation is the implementation of multiple literacies.  That means instruction may utilize the film, 12 Years A Slave, create a blog or post a YouTube clip of your classmates rapping about the solar system.  It might be a PowerPoint presentation of the Crusades, or drawing of the set of the play, The Lower Depths. Limited access to electronic? You can maneuver around that. Graphic organizers of all shapes and for lots of projects help visually oriented learners. An interview with a community leader can yield first person history reports. Of course, one of the best ways of learning is through experience.

            I was ready to congratulate the ladies on their efforts to assist young people. And then I had another thought. Differentiated learning is an effective method for reaching students who don’t do well with pen and paper, but students aren’t the only ones benefiting here. Seriously, who doesn’t like to create out of their ideas and talent? Script Literacy is tame, a weary lady rocking in her rocking chair, compared to differentiated teaching. I like the challenge of figuring out ways of using recorded music and film and live music and role playing and the other arts in the classroom. Differentiated teaching benefits students, but I’m having pretty good time over here, too.

 

Response #5, "Peter Elbow, Heretic"

DFaye Anderson

Professor B. Gleason

ENGL 0862

Dec. 2014

“Peter Elbow, Heretic”

            Peter Elbow is a blasphemer! Take him and staple him to the smart board, as a reminder to our student writers – you must always, as you write, keep your audience in mind. It is for them that you produce prose.

            Reader-based writing is what we teach our acolytes. Keeping audience foremost in your thinking while writing, it had been believed, led to direct, effective communication. Readers are not in our heads. Their entrée to our thinking is through written word, so we must write with that guidepost. Peter Elbow advocates instead for a writer-based writing, where the audience takes a backseat, at least initially, when we write. He believes that audience awareness, early in the writing process, can actually impede our efforts at communicating, causing students to freeze up, and rather than express their authentic selves, to produce prose that they think will please the reader, who, too often, is only the teacher. Elbow doesn’t freeze out the audience entirely. Audience does have a place in his thinking. He simply believes that “ignoring the audience can lead to worse drafts, but better revisions.” (172)

            In the article “Closing My Eyes as I Speak: An Argument for Ignoring the Audience,” peter Elbow discusses two contrary theories of cognitive development. The Piagetian model is the “inside out” view. Humans begin life self-centered and, learn to decenter and come to appreciate the world outside of themselves as they grow older.

 

The opposing view, represented by Vygotsky, says we develop our cognitive capacity through social interaction, and then later learn to perform them in private.” (179)

            Thankfully, I’ve learned, for my own writing, the efficacy of keeping a foot in both camps. I am always aware, and teach my students to remember that the reader needs them as a guide into their meaning. Whatever you want them to know, or feel, must first be written down. But I also am aware of the paralysis that can creep in if you are always aware of someone perched on your shoulder and you think that they are judging and evaluating your writing.

 I can’t say I’ve always been conscious that it could hinder my students though.  I have been in the “try harder” camp with them. I’ve seldom used free writes, but I can see how that can liberate them up to express their real selves. They can thereafter take the best of the free write, and in revision, begin to address the needs of the audience. Peter Elbow makes good sense, even if he goes against the grain.

Works Cited

Elbow, Peter, “Closing My Eyes as I Speak: An Argument for Ignoring Audience.” Ed.  T. R. Johnson. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2008.172-194.Print.