JCCC has been in national news via tweets of the president’s comments at a public breakfast in Washington DC . KC Star, Pitch and others have reported. Apparently he has discouraged raising the mill levee to support the school (see…
Show don’t tell
I write this on many student papers, but I wonder how many can guess what I mean. I write “Show don’t tell” when students bury the lead by using unnecessary vague pronouns (sometimes the “lead” or point of which they…
Library research
There have been some cool library research orientation guides. They are free and sharable across most platforms. Rutgers has some great animations on citing sources, avoiding inadvertent plagiarism, and the like. Library of the Living Dead the free…
Great logical fallacies infographic (?)
Order the poster for logical fallacies here: –
On the relevance of Media to Composition
I always get a few students who don’t see the point of using media in a composition classroom. This always surprises me. How many people see themselves writing essays for a living? How often will we write essays in our…
Rules for beginning writers.
Got wind of this advice for beginning writers from BoingBoing, who found it from VS Naipaul. 1. Do not write long sentences. A sentence should not have more than ten or twelve words.2. Each sentence should make a clear statement.…
Research in the news.
A new research study on composition reports An analysis of research papers written in first-year composition courses at 15 colleges reveals that many students simply copy chunks of text from the sources they cite without truly grasping the underlying argument,…
Quoting the dictionary: Faculty responses
In an unscientific poll of Composition 1 instructors at JCCC, 8 have weighed in. When asked how they felt when a writer quoted the dictionary in the introduction of an essay, 7 of 8 chose “Arrgh. I hate it” with…
Citing the Dictionary
For some reason people like to start papers with by citing a dictionary. Maybe writers think it kills 2 birds with 1 stone in that a) it’s an in-text reference and demonstrates a quote and b) gets something on paper.…