inquiry project and article

I did not think that there was an article in Cross Talk In Comp Theory that was about my topic as a whole. However, I do think that perhaps Nancy Sommers article that deals with student writers and experienced writers could be applied. In her article she talks about the process that an student writer goes through and the process that an experienced writer goes through when revising. An experienced writer will look at the whole paper and focus on the ideas while a student writer will simply look at grammar problems. I think that this can somehow relate to my topic with the fact that experienced writers have been exposed to more advanced literature and other types of texts where as a student writer has not had the same amount of experiences with other discourse communities that perhaps an experienced writer has had. May be this cna tie into my topic but we'll see I think it might be a stretch.

Survey questions?

Here are a couple of questions that I want ot put on a survey or questionnaire.

1) Do you feel like you are a skilled writer?
2)On a scale of 1 to 5 (five being the best) how would you rate your reading level?
3)On a Scale of 1 to 5 (five being the best) how would you rate your writing?
4)Do you think that there is a correlation between reading and writing?
5)Do you think that people who read a lot are naturally better writers than people that don't read as much?

in class 10/31/07

Whom could I talk to who could provide me with information that has factness about this question?

I know a few teachers at different grade levels. I think that one teacher would be more educated on the topic. He is an English teacher for high school students; he also has a Masters Degree in reading strategies. This weekend he is going to a reading conference and I have asked to interview him on the topic. Since this topic revolves around everything he teaches and has studied I think that he will have strong opinions about the topic.

What could I read that would provide me with information that has factness about this question?

I can read articles by theorists that have opposing views on the subject. One might say that reading is directly correlated with writing while others may disagree. Perhaps there have been newspaper articles that have covered this topic, or certain researchers that have tried to tackle the correlation have written studies on the topic

What else could I do besides talk to people and read to acquire information or factness about this question? (Jolliffe 75)

I would like to observe some of the class rooms and see how reading and writing are being taught. Do teachers teach both reading and writing together or are they separate entities all together. I would also like to create a survey about the topic and see if everyday people that don’t teach composition or reading think that there is a link between the two.

Inquiry project

Crystal Vela

English 401

October 29, 2007

The general public would be interested in my topic because it might motivate parents to read more to their children, if they knew that it would help their kids later in life in all aspects. I think that the general public will question if there is a correlation and if there is does it matter. They might just have general questions like why does this matter. On the other hand I think that scholarly community would question if there was a correlation. They would also ask if it mattered what a person read. Do people that read scholarly work all the time write well? I think that the general public and a scholarly discourse community would have different questions for the most part. I think that people generally believe that if you read a lot then you will be able to write well. However people believe that if you are well read you will be able to write in all areas, academic, business and creative, perhaps this is not true. I think that it is a little too early to write about the expectations of certain texts articles.

Professing Mulitculturalism

I believe that Lu is saying that she wants to make people aware of grabbing and importing and how they depict multiculturalism. Import "meanings, implications and consequences" (pg 487) is something that is available to someone that grabs it. In order for someone to grab it they have to grasp the idea and envision it and then be able to articulate it. Lu wants to explore how to have teaching methods that invite a multicultural approach, specifically to students that have many errors in their writing. She has two major concerns, one is that there is a division between the ways that we approach style in theory and in teaching. Her second concern deals with how teachers of composition feel a division in their different roles; as teachers, students or scholars. I think that there is a connection to this article and Royster's article, this article is a way for people of different backgrounds to be heard. I think that this will give teachers a better understanding of their students work. There are two examples of writers that were questioned on their ability to write. Stein took responsibility for her writing and said that everything she wrote was intended to be written that way. Dreiser on the other hand had other people whom he thought were more educated than he was revise his book, and he took all of their suggestions and changed everything. Dreiser was not confident in his writing due to the fact that he did not have the best experience in college. The difference between Stein and Dreiser was that Stein was past the error phase and had moved into a style phase whereas, Dreiser could not find common ground in grammar, so he was stuck in the error phase. Lu has students read "real" works and then makes them take it apart and see what makes it a good paper. She thinks that this will do three things, one help the student hear colliding voices, then it will urge them to take a position on the voices and last to consider their position in the context of diverse discourses. Lu also has her students read sample writings with errors that they think they can fix easily, and the other is to look for styles that will help the writer negotiate a new position.

Inital Thoughts on Inquiry Project

Part I: Exploration
1. Identify the issue or problem that you plan to focus on in your Inquiry Project.

I want to focus on Latino students and literacy. I want to know why they are not excelling in that subject and find if there are ways to improve the situation

2. What is your personal connection to and interest in this topic?

I am a Latina student and when I was younger I was in ESL and found that we never spoke English in the class, only Spanish. I also have very important people in my life that do not read very well and they think that it is because they weren't taught the right way. They say that their experience in ESL class was not completely beneficial because it allowed them to hang on to Spanish and not achieve high standards in literacy.

3. What opinions do you already hold about this topic?

I feel that their is a problem with how minorities are being taught to read when you can go into a low income school with a high Latino population and you find that many of them cannot write or read at their grade level.

4. What knowledge do you already have about this topic. What are your main questions about this topic? What are you most curious about?

I don't have a lot of knowledge on the topic. My basic information is that I have seen this happen first hand and I know people that are not at the level they should be at in reading because they were put in programs where it was fine to speak Spanish and only learn the basics of English. I want to find out what are the problems and see if there are any new strategies on how to teach Latinos literacy. I want to see what programs are in place to teach literacy to Latinos and try to understand why it is not working. Basically what are the problems.

6. How might composition theorists and researchers approach or study this topic? Does this approach differ from those of other related disciplines (such as communication studies)?

I think that a composition theorist and reacher's would try to do a study on Latino students in different situations and see if they excel or not. For example does a student that is in a low income school not as literate as a Latino student in a school that has no funding problems?

7. How could you research this topic outside the library (for example, through interviews and/or observations)?

I think that there are books out there that I can look at. Perhaps there are some articles on the subject.

Part II: Focusing
Write an initial claim, or an open-ended question, to guide your research on this topic. Make it specific but exploratory. Remember that a good claim opens up an area of inquiry about a topic; a claim should invite evidence, support, and debate.

I want to know why Latino students are not excelling in reading and what are some ways to improve the situation.

Out Of Place

I grew up in a predominately Latin community. I went to a high school that was 98% Latino and the 2% left was a mixture of different races. Although my high school and neighborhood was predominately Latino, I did have a mixture of friends. I thought that I was diverse because I did not just hangout with people that shared my ethnicity, but when I came to Elmhurst College I thought otherwise. I was complete culture shock I did not know what to expect and since I am the first person in my family to go to college I had no one to warn me about it. The high school I attended was not the best when it came to academics, so when I came to this school which wasn't very Freshman friendly and went to classes that I knew nothing about it hit me like a ton of bricks. I felt like I did not belong here and I desperately wanted to go back to the place I was most comfortable in. The situation got so bad that I even contemplated dropping out and attending my hometown community college. Not only did I feel like I could not compete academically with other students but I generally felt like an outcast. It also did not help that at the end of the semester some teachers would confuse me for another Latin girl in my class, one that I looked nothing like. I know its hard to remember names, I taught a literacy class to 200 kids, but it can't be impossible. There was one time when I was in a class that was not talkative. There was hardly any conversation and for the most part the teacher did not mind, but one day I guess he got tired of hearing his own voice and he wanted the students to talk. No one spoke up about his topic, and I think that he was a little upset. He began to tell a story of a friend that would go down to the boarder of Mexico and shoot at Mexicans that were trying to cross the boarder illegally. I was appalled by his comments considering I was the only person in the classroom that was of Mexican decent. At that moment I felt so small. I was pulled right into those feelings of not fitting in, and being out of place. It was the worst experience that I have had at this school, one that I never really told anyone until now.

When the First Voice You Hear is Not Your Own

When the First Voice You Hear is Not Your Own

I found Royster's article to be a bit confusing. I thought that the article was more about communication than writing. She thinks that people writing about people within a certain community or the community as whole could be a problem. This does not just exist between boarders or countries but in races and religion. Royster's three scenes seems to work together to try to show that we need better our communication in order to be understood in other communities. She says that there is a possibility to make a universal discourse but I think that she is trying to say that people are poor communicators in general. People are more concerned with talking and not listening. As I said before I didn't understand this article to it's fullest, but this is what I gathered form the article.

What We Need to Know About Writing

Bizzell

In Bizzell's article"What We Need to Know about Writing" that the writing problem is a thinking problem. She goes on to say that we think students come up with their own ideas and just need a little help putting those ideas into words. Those students that came up with better ideas were simply smarter students. The students that did not have great ideas were just not as bright as the other students and therefore needed to be exposed to good models of writing. This reminds me of Perl's article with the experienced and unexperienced writers. Perl stated that unexperienced writers were not looking at the whole picture when writing and revising a paper. Unexperienced writers need to overcome grammar and focus on the purpose of the paper. When it comes to inner directed and outer-directed theories I would have to say that I think I understand the outter-directed theory better. It makes sense that discourse communities would impact your writing. Even though you belong to a certain community that does not limit you to one area of that community. You can have a family conversation and a work conversation and even though the topics will vary it does not mean that the discourse came from two different places.

Inventing the university response

I found this article a little on the difficult side to understand. In the beginning David Bartholomaes' states how the writers do not know what voice to speak in. He states that beginning writers need to mimic experienced writers style. Students don't necessarily have to be an expert on the issue that they are writing about, all they have to do is act like they are. If students do what Bartholomaes' says, then he thinks that they will be able to open up to a different discourse community. He also says that the student should write in the language of his readers. If they don't know how to do that, it's all really just faking it. Act like you know what you are talking about. I think that this article can relate to Hayes and Flower with the fact that writing is a cognitive process with the goals the writer creates. Along with this article the writer has to also create goals to have a product that a certain community will understand. I can relate to this in some ways. I too have fallen victim to having to produce a paper about something I knew nothing about, but you have to get through it. So, I read up on it and tried to mimic the things that I read and in the end I turned out with a good grade.