We expect to see a lot of lower scores on the “distinct sentences” portion of the Microlab, but many students this semester lamented low scores in “misplaced modifiers” and “pronouns.” Several students had already seen comments on their papers about…
Team-based Learning: ad campaign
I’m toying with a new idea for the team-based learning (TBL) unit of Comp 1. The lesson uses TBL methods and develops multi-modal composition skills by creating audio, video and static graphics. Last year I allowed greater student direction by…
The Royal Order of Adjectives..
I found this graphic at http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/adjectives.htm Thanks to Chad for the head’s up. It illustrates what we spoke about in class – native speakers intuitively understand but Non-native speakers have to learn.
Cultural or Academic Informants
If one goes to the writing center (WC), one gets the most out of the trip by going in prepared. Have a few specific questions or issues you want to address ready and present them to the consultant before you…
Minimum length on Papers
Many students complain that English classes frustrate them because of subjective grading, and that rules of grammar can be flexible. For the most part that isn’t quite true. Teachers do “grade norming” exercises with colleagues and find that we in…
plagiarism and copyright
image from the dilbert website at http://dilbert.com/ 9-2-10. Click to see full size image.
Writing and Power
Grabbed the above image from a boingboing post on Woody Guthrie, an old artist activist who wrote a couple of my favorite songs (the motorcycle song and alice’s restaurant). I like it because it highlights a point I try to…
Sunflowers – photo essay
It’s sunflower season. Field 5 .1 miles north east of Lawrence on Hi-way 24/40 – about halfway to Tonganoxie from Larryville on west side of road. I put the roadsigns below – but the field of yellow is hard to…
Beloit College Mindset list.
The Beloit College Mindset list came out this week. Find it here or find some discussion why it’s relevant here. In it teachers are reminded that most freshman this semester were born in 1992, and their cultural references differ from…
Persied meteor shower?
Last night Perseid Meteor shower reached its peak, and we bundled up the family on a picture quest. My wife captured the moon over KU campus with 3 planets aligned – Mars, Venus and Saturn – over the top. We…