Archive for the 'Revision' Category

Flowery Writing

Published
by
Olga
on March 16, 2010
in Process and Revision
. 0 Comments

I had big writing plans for the weekend, including my cac.ophony post. After spending the whole Sunday drafting a conference abstract and having no topic in mind for my blog post, I ventured out into the rain… Around 11 pm I found myself buying flowers at a local grocery store. I always confuse florists when I randomly pick up individual stems rather than completed bouquets. And then I usually say no to the easy filler of Baby’s breath. No such fluffy nonsense in my Ikebana!

Photo credit Ikebana Arts Studio

Ikebana is a form of Japanese floral art whose major premises are minimalism, symmetry, and organic composition. The stems must be positioned at designated angles, and they must be visible, not hidden in a vase. For this purpose, Ikebana arrangements are made in a kenzan, a flower holder consisting of many closely positioned spikes upon and between which the stems and twigs are placed. If kenzan is not a part of a larger container, it can be placed in one that is best suited for the given arrangement.

Ikebana has a very rich history and philosophy that I have never had a chance to study; for instance, in the most basic composition three stems are slanted in certain ways to symbolize the relationship between heaven, earth, and human being. When I work on my flower arrangements, I don’t usually think about these higher meanings. But I do enjoy every step of the process from selecting flowers to finding the right surface and background in my apartment for the finished arrangements. I wish I could say the same about writing.

And yet last night Ikebana taught me something really valuable about writing: concentration and discipline cannot fully preempt chaos. There was a moment when my major stems were in place, but the arrangement wasn’t appealing. It didn’t express what I intended it to express. Usually by the end of process, I’m pleasantly surprised that the final composition is more exact and beautiful than I imagined it to be. This was not the case yesterday!

I was upset, but then reminded myself that I wasn’t fully done, that there were several small flowers and leaves I could add to reshape the arrangement. Not really having faith in my actions, I cut my remaining thin stems and began sticking them into the kenzan. Magically, my imbalanced composition was transformed into a (not exactly minimalist) cascade of yellow daisies!

Now I have to go back to my conference abstract, and I so hope it will be transformed in the same way.

Linked Pursuits: Writing and Golf

Published
by
Ryan
on June 10, 2008
in Fun, Golf, Revision, Writing Instruction and literature
. 10 Comments

Editor’s note: in advance of this weekend’s U.S. Open, this is the first in a series of posts exploring the metaphorical relationship between golf and writing.

Golf can be a bit of a mystery to those who have never played. Mainly it probably appears (a) boring and (b) much easier than it really is. Writing can also look that way to the uninitiated, and in fact golf and writing have a lot in common.

Both are solitary, addictive pursuits of an ultimately unreachable perfection. How, you ask, is golf solitary, what with all the crowds and the playing partners and the caddies in the pro game, let alone the beer-imbibing camaraderie-filled version more common to hackers like me? First because, even when you’re betting (thanks to a handy little invention called the handicap system) you’re always pretty much competing against yourself. Second, golf is intensely mental in its requirements – you have to try to remain calm and make measured decisions in the face of literally infinite small disasters and somehow shake off the feelings of deep depression and self-abuse that can accompany them: golf looks so doable and yet it’s so insanely difficult – again, like good writing (watch Tiger Woods: his menacing rage after a poor swing is always transformed in the space of half a minute into what I can only call a fierce serenity of absolutely purposeful concentration as he prepares for the next shot)Tiger. For comparison, think about those blues you get when you receive back your dissertation draft all marked to hell by your advisor — it’s really hard to stop moping and continue sometimes.

The mental pressure in golf results in large part from the fact that one spends drastically more time thinking about hitting shots than actually executing them (as writing takes so much longer than reading). A swing takes about a second; it can take you ten minutes to find your wayward shot in the bushes, as cac.ophony blogmaster Luke Waltzer can tell you. And what does one ponder while walking from tee to ball or lining up a putt? Where are my feet? Is my posture right? Am I standing too close or too far from the ball? Should I try under or over those trees? Is my grip too tight or too loose? Am I keeping my left arm straight? Am I keeping my head down? (Yes, simply watching the ball proves to be very, very difficult.) Full swing? Half swing? Wind direction? Topography of the green? Location of water? (It pulls putts toward it if it’s sizable.) These are just a few questions that go into every shot.

The key of course, like with writing, which has its own army of minutia to consider in each sentence, is, through practice and patience, to make as much of this as possible automatic. If you never spend time either writing or reading, each comma and each “its” vs. “it’s” decision can be a tiresome burden. If you never spend time either writing or reading, then it can be hard to even know where you went wrong – just like in golf, merely figuring out what to work on to improve can be an extraordinarily daunting propect all its own.

This Thursday the United States Open begins at the beautiful Torrey Pines Golf Course in California, where almost every hole offers up a vista of the Pacific framed by those craggy little west coast tress that look so picturesque against an evening sunset. So we will take the opportunity this week to talk about where golf meets communication/writing. I encourage everyone to tune in to watch a bit of the action and then (consistent with public safety) to grab a club and try to hit a ball where you’re aiming – beware: it’s as easy to get hooked as it is to slice. (Also, everyone interested in pinnacles of human achievement should consider taking time just to witness Tiger – in golf he’s Bird or Jordan, he’s Gretsky, he’s Ted Williams or Dimagio, he’s Faulkner or Dickinson, he’s Rembrandt; he’s someone your grandkids will have heard about.)

Fore!

Revision Workshop

Published
by
Olga
on November 9, 2007
in Faculty Development, Peer Review, Resources and Revision
. 0 Comments

 On November 30th, Cheryl Smith and I will be giving a revision workshop at the CUNY’s WAC meeting.  The description of the workshop is pasted below.  We were thinking about distributing a bibliography of current research on the subject.  We’re just beginning to put it together and would welcome any suggestions.  

Working with the Draft: Techniques for Helping Students Revise

WAC practitioners traditionally argue that the best way to use writing effectively in our teaching is to scaffold assignments, moving from low stakes (or informal) free-writing and pre-writing to more high stakes drafting and revising of essays.  But once students have completed their first drafts of an essay assignment, how can we use those drafts as a teaching tool?  A teacher’s careful comments can certainly guide students in their revision process, but relying on this single technique may not always help students develop as self-sufficient, powerful, and active writers.  How can we help them understand the most fundamental element of writing-revision-and grow as confident and careful readers of their own and their peers’ work?  The session will take participants through a variety of student-centered draft revision activities that can be used in courses across disciplines. 

It’s the Process, Silly!

Published
by
Deborah
on June 13, 2007
in Oral Communication, Pedagogy, Peer Review, Powerpoint and Presentations, Process and Revision
. 0 Comments

A lightbulb went on in my head in the last couple of weeks. In May and June I have had the opportunity to work with students in the capstone course for the Healthcare MBA that Baruch sponsors with Mt. Sinai Hospitals. They were required in groups of three to develop and submit a business plan which they would then present to “juries” playing the role of venture capitalists, bank loan officers, or hospital board of directors. It was my job to videotape a dress rehearsal with them, offer my suggestions from the perspective of communication style, and then watch the videotape with them. I have done a very similar version of this with undergraduate senior-level Business Policy students for two years. It has always seemed like a useful process to me, and I have always been convinced that it benefited the students.

However, I think I made connections between my own academic work and the work with MBA students this spring and a few things clicked into place more clearly. I don’t know how long I’ve told students, “writing is a process.” (Imagine you are hearing that mantra from an annoying professor, battered at you in a sing-song-y voice.) But I think it sunk in a little further for me. After watching 11 groups of successful medical professionals present solid Powerpoint presentations, that nonetheless still needed revision, and watching them watch themselves on video, the light went on. Prior to this they had already submitted the paper versions of their business plans, and felt well prepared. But in addition to the videotape making clear the various nervous tics they had while speaking, or that they engaged the slide screen far more than they did the audience, it also helped them see the entire scope of their presentation, how well its various parts fit together, and where they needed to change the emphasis. They could clearly see if their argument needed bolstering with evidence in some areas, or increased clarity in others.

Watching them, I realized that the only way their presentations could make it to the ‘next level’ so to speak, was by going through this final review and revision process. Not only that, for these students especially, I was truly more of a coach and facilitator than anything else. It was a combination of my experience, their experience, the videocamera, and their own critical review of themselves, that really made the process worthwhile. I wouldn’t say they didn’t need me, but it was the process and the assemblage of them, me, the camera, and the review, that was essential.

Inventing the Critical “I”

Published
by
Jenny
on February 12, 2007
in Feedback, Liberal Arts, Pedagogy, Process, Revision and literature
. 1 Comment

In the Uses of Literature, Italo Calvino writes that “[t]he preliminary condition of any work of literature is that the person who is writing has to invent that first character, who is the author of the work.” Literature classrooms present an interesting paradox: although the work under discussion is literature, students are asked to produce critical works, not literature. Yet, when asked to discuss or write about a work of literature, students are often happier, indeed more comfortable, with relating the work to their lives (in a sense creating a type of literature?) instead of looking at the work with a critical eye.

I think that we can apply Calvino’s “preliminary condition” in the classroom. It may be easier to think of Calvino’s “preliminary condition” alongside something that Nancy Sommers writes about in “Revision Strategies of Student Writers and Experienced Adult Writers.” She writes that “experienced writers imagine a reader (reading their product) whose existence and whose expectations influence their revision process. They have abstracted the standards of a reader and this reader seems to be partially a reflection of themselves and functions as a critical and productive collaborator–a collaborator who has yet to love their work.” Just as a writer of literature must first invent an “I” who is, according to Calvino, the author of the work, a successful writer, according to Sommers, imagines (or invents) a critical “I” to shape the work into an effective piece of writing.

Students in literature courses will inevitably encounter religious texts and be asked to write on them or do some comparative work. They are often hesitant to engage in this work, so close are they to their personal selves, the personal “I.”

I once had a student in an out-of-class workshop say that she couldn’t write on religious texts; she was afraid that her writing might be deemed offensive, that she might say “the wrong thing.” One student in an in-class workshop said that he hoped he wouldn’t have to do a presentation on a piece of writing as controversial as a 17th-century sermon. His impulses were to blame the sermon for outcomes in history rather than reading the sermon as a piece of literature.

Instead of having our students write unimaginative and often weak theses, I’m wondering if we should instead be trying to help them invent an “I,” a critical collaborator with which to think through and write, an “I” that can help them to author critical essays without the personal “I” impressing itself needlessly into the work. Perhaps the “preliminary condition” of any literature course should be the invention of this “I.”

GW faculty development seminar this Friday

Published
by
Joanna
on October 31, 2006
in Blogs and Blogging, Faculty Development and Revision
. 2 Comments

Hi everyone — the Great Works team is hosting its second faculty development seminar of the semester this Friday, 11.03.06, 10:00 am-1:30 pm, in VC 8-210. We held a very lively seminar on engaged reading last month, and will focus on revision this time around.

If you’re interested in faculty development and would like to sit in, please let me know as soon as you can via email at giuttari27@gmail.com. (Lunch is included and small group activities are on the agenda, so we’ll need a head count.)

If you’re interested but can’t make it this Friday, fear not! Our third seminar on how to create a student-centered classroom will take place in early December, so I’ll send out another invite once it rolls around.

Finally, the GW FDS also has its own blog, which you’re welcome to peruse; it’s password-protected, so just send me an email if you’d like to have a look.

BOO!
Joanna

Purpose-built Wikis

Published
by
James Drogan
on September 29, 2006
in Group Composing, Peer Review, Revision and Wikis
. 0 Comments

EdTechPost brought me a post NoteMesh – another student-centric note taking service.  Upon first read, I thought this sort of collaborative approach to note-taking — an essential skill in my estimation — to be detrimental to learning.  Maybe not.  Maybe collaboration between the stronger and weaker students could result in “the rising tide lifting all boats.”

After all, an essential element of education is, in my view, the development of knowledge, skill, and experience in working on teams.

Blogs for Books: An Experiment

Published
by
Joanna
on July 25, 2006
in Audience, Blogs and Blogging, Peer Review, Revision, Technology and Wikis
. 1 Comment

Hi all — there’s an intriguing article in today’s Chronicle of Higher Education about McKenzie Wark, a New School professor who has posted his (as yet unpublished) book manuscript online and is taking comments from the general public. He was inspired by both Wikipedia and the academic blog format.

You can check out the article here:
Book 2.0: Scholars turn monographs into digital conversations, by Jeffrey R. Young

And you can check out — and comment on! — Wark’s e-book here:
GAM3R 7H30RY

Are we about to see the line between book authorship (and editing) and blogging erased?

Wikis in group authoring

Published
by
Cristina
on April 9, 2006
in Process, Revision and Technology
. 2 Comments

Noticeable shifts in style and grammar in a group-written paper can make it difficult reading. Further, a student may sometimes develop her assigned section in isolation from the rest of the paper, failing to build on what others have written. I’ve talked about these issues with students I have worked with. But until I picked someone else’s brain and found this page on wikis in education, I wasn’t sure how to make the collaborative writing process easier.

This is one way wikis can help. Students set up a wiki site for their drafts, with each student getting a page to write her assigned section in. After each section has been revised, say, two or three times, each student moves on to the next section and applies her revisions. She then moves on to the next section, and so forth. This may force each student to engage and build upon what others have written, as well as be committed to the overall focus and quality of the paper. Wikis smooth the workflow by eliminating the cumbersome process of emailing a Word document because several versions of the paper can be accessed via any Internet-connected computer. Wikis store a document’s history and allow “rollbacks” of changes — no messy strikethroughs and red fonts in Word’s “Track Changes” feature to deal with. I’d love to hear what others think of this process as well as any other thoughts on collaborative writing.

Digital Audio Comments in the Age of iPod

Published
by
Cristina
on March 7, 2006
in Revision and Technology
. 3 Comments

If margins of student papers aren’t enough real estate for your comments, or if you don’t have time to meet all students individually, then Jeff Sommers has a low-threshold application for you. He suggests creating digital recordings that you can insert in Word drafts, directly email to students, or deposit in Blackboard’s Digital Drop Box. Your operating system should already have voice recording software; if not, you can use free, cross-platform downloads like Audacity. Here are some sample commentaries. They are like student-teacher conferences you can take home and listen to in a more comfortable setting with your paper in front of you. Sommers’ recordings are on average only about 5 minutes long, but he covers a lot of ground. Compared with the usual scrawlings on margins, the audio comments are clearer, more precise, more personal, and tackle at length how strongly/weakly ideas are developed. This can encourage students to be more thoughtful about revision instead of basing it solely on where the red ink is. (Here are some interviews with students.) Does anyone think that such an application would be useful in his/her work? What would be the hurdles for you (self-consciousness, time, learning the technology, etc.)?