"And I was like totes magotes!"

So Paige's post got me thinking about one of the grammar quirks I've developed...and that would be the overuse of the word "like" in popularized American speech. When I was a freshman in high school, my Honors English teacher, in an effort to make us all more aware of our own dialect, had an assignment she created to help rid us all of these extra "likes." She passed out to each student 25 of these "like" cards and for the duration of the quarter, we were assigned to act as the "like police." At any point if we heard someone else use the word "like" incorrectly, then we could instantly call them out on it and demand the possession of one of their "like" cards. Whoever ended up with 25 cards at the end of the quarter received 100% for the assignment. If you happened to have more than 25, then they served as bonus points. I thought this was one of the most clever, most annoying activities ever. But, as it had to my peers, it made me so much more aware of how I spoke, and ultimately how other people spoke.

For a long while afterwards I would intrinsically pick up on when someone overused the word like, and it became incredibly annoying. I don't hear it so much anymore, but when somebody REALLY overuses the word I pick up on it pretty easily.

I found this funny video that attempts to justify and explain the "like" issue: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f8fbrUjjivw

Even if it does have all these so-called justified uses, I still find it extremely annoying.

Here's some things to think about (that kind of go back to what we talked about earlier in the semester in class):

If modifiers and other language quirks characteristic of dialects are OK in moderation, when are they acceptable and when are they not?

Should there be some sort of "police system" between Standard English and spoken English?

Is it really only English majors, teachers, and grammar buffs that find these overuses annoying?!

Grammar Nazi

I thought this video was funny. While correcting Hitler's grammar in a crisis situation may be a bit of an exaggeration, it made me think about how distracting poor grammar can be. When I am having a conversation with a friend, I sometimes find myself distracted if they choose to say "good" rather than "well." I know that no one can speak perfect English, and there are probably errors in this post. Although grammatical errors are unavoidable, they certainly are distracting.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f8fbrUjjivw

Addicted or Adapted?

After reading the New York Times article on America's youth being "addicted" to technology, it made me stop to analyze my own device usage. In the article, ut discussed how students can multi-task with various devices but fail to push that same sort of attention and skill toward academics. While reading this article, I realized that since I was reading the article from my laptop, I was logged into my Facebook, Twitter, and Yammer account along with checking the weather and selecting songs on my iPod with my cell phone by my side. I checked each item periodically for any updates on the homepage while reading.

It's not that I have difficulty reading, it's just if I'm not intrigued with what I am reading, I think of all the possible tasks I can be doing. Honestly, while I was reading this article, I sidetracked and realized that I forgot to take my medicine for my strep and check for the weather forecast of tomorrow. And writing this blog, I am still checking for any recent updates on my accounts. By performing all these different tasks, I feel productive. If I sit to focus on one assignment, I keep thinking of the other assignments I can complete if I do them all at once.

The article discusses how this form of multitasking isn't good for any student, but in this generation of advanced technology, we need to be able to function with all of them. Watching television and playing video games are forms of distraction, separate from productiveness. Those are meant to distract us from reality. It may seem that way for a computer with Facebook and such, but at least the computer has the programs and files that can make one productive.

Maybe I'm just speaking for myself and not for all students, but when I'm operating technology, I feel like a hamster in a wheel. I can accomplish so much if I continue in a constant motion, but when I stop to take a breather, I lose track of what I need to get done. Every day I have a set schedule. With caffeine to assist me, I walk all over campus running errands and attending classes. But once I receive that one text message from a friend to meet up for lunch, I figure I deserve a break to sit down and relax for an hour or so. And within that hour of doing basically nothing, I become lazy and need to motivate myself to continue on with my day.

I probably look like a technology addict with my iPod and cell phone all in one hand and operating them with my other hand, while drinking coffee wearing my sunglasses and carrying my books on my way to class. And it's probably a very addict thing to say that I'm in a zone when I'm surrounded by technology. But the reason why I would seem this way is because of those adults who aren't fully adapted with the technology of today. My mom would complain of how much time I spend on my phone with texting but when she gets on the computer to check her mail, she looks like she has never maneuvered a keyboard before.

I remember taking computer classes in middle school and high school where they trained us how to successfully operate a computer and even how to type without looking at the keyboard. It was like that course was meant to make us one with the computer. So is really our fault as the youth of the nation to be consider addicts when we are practically forced by society to use these products in order to survive? I remember the good old days when I handed in a printed paper to my teacher when it was due. Now there's the Angel dropbox for that.

How to Write Good

I found this article by some guy named Frank Visco as I was stumbling from site to site and it is probably one of the funniest things I have ever read. The best part about it is that it does not explicitly declare its comedic value, but relies on its subtle irony to provoke a laugh. I think it speaks strongly for the power of words to evoke emotion. One of my professors this year once said, "Never use a multisyllabic word when a big word will do." Here are some of Visco's words of advice.


My several years in the word game have learnt me several rules:

Avoid alliteration. Always.
Prepositions are not words to end sentences with.
Avoid cliches like the plague. (They're old hat.)
Employ the vernacular.
Eschew ampersands & abbreviations, etc.
Parenthetical remarks (however relevant) are unnecessary.
It is wrong to ever split an infinitive.
Contractions aren't necessary.
Foreign words and phrases are not apropos.
One should never generalize.
Eliminate quotations. As Ralph Waldo Emerson once said: "I hate quotations. Tell me what you know."
Comparisons are as bad as cliches.
Don't be redundant; don't use more words than necessary; it's highly superfluous.
Profanity sucks.
Be more or less specific.
Understatement is always best.
Exaggeration is a billion times worse than understatement.
One-word sentences? Eliminate.
Analogies in writing are like feathers on a snake.
The passive voice is to be avoided.
Go around the barn at high noon to avoid colloquialisms.
Even if a mixed metaphor sings, it should be derailed.
Who needs rhetorical questions?

Writing System-A Savior to the Hmong?

In the beginning of Writing from these Roots, Duffy talks about literacy and rhetoric. He incorporates different definitions for each that really caught my attention. On the other hand, what surpirsed me, was that he is only concerned about thinking about literacy from a "writing system" viewpoint. Some of the authors we have studied before view literacy more than just the practice of pen and paper; it's something more complex. I did, however, connect the practice of memorization and copying to that of the Amish literacy. Yet, by Duffy viewing literacy the way he does (to some point) he limits readers to see the Hmong as "literate" people.
What I have learned so far is that the Hmong are literate. They were a functioning community and had ways of communication and transmitting messages even after the destruction of their books.

Here are some questions to think about..

So do you think the writing system for the Hmong could be the answer to all their problems?
Do you think it could be the great "savior" of all the people?
Do you think the writing system helped them to establish their own true Hmong identity?

The "Hoax"

I found this video on Stumbleupon and found it really interesting. It was produced by the creators of South Park, as the animation might imply. Regardless, I think it says a lot about the underlying emotional and psychological factors that drive us to succeed in the education system. The video describes the hoax of education which is that we are pushed through grade after grade, always looking forward, but never living in the moment. Looking forward to the end of the semester, I can't help but believe this "hoax." This year, along with my first two years at PSU have gone by so fast and I'm not quite sure how much I can say for it. Anyway, I hope the link works, Enjoy!

http://www.stumbleupon.com/su/2dOH8G/www.neticons.net/music_life/

Facebook Illiteracy

Last night I was at a party where I was talking to this guy I had just met. As we were talking, I mentioned something I saw or read on Facebook, and he said he didn’t know what I was talking about since he didn’t have a Facebook. I looked at him like “What? You don’t have a Facebook?” as if this was the weirdest thing I’d ever heard. I usually just assume everyone of my generation has one or at least knows how to use one. After asking him why he didn’t have one, he just said he doesn’t feel like taking the time to learn how to use it.

This got me thinking…First, since I just assumed everyone has a Facebook, should the use of Facebook be considered as a source one needs to be literate in in today’s society, just like Microsoft Word or Excel? If this is the case, then the guy I was talking to clearly wasn’t literate in these social networking sites. What is to become of him if he ever needs to get a job that requires the use of Facebook or something similar? Second, taking a broader perspective, as society moves on, we have to keep updating what we are literate in while also retaining our old forms of literacy (most of the time). If I was an employer of a company and found out the guy from the party wasn’t literate in Facebook (or any other important site), I am not sure I would hire him; I would think of him as lazy, not wanting to learn a new literacy. I may be taking this a little too far as Facebook really isn’t that important to know how to use, but as new forms of literacy are being invented and as we grow older, I think it’s important that we move with the times and learn how to use whatever it is. I want to be literate in everything I can be, and if it means learning how to use a certain program or whatever, I’m going to learn it so I won’t be that old teacher someday who the class makes fun of because I can’t use a common program that they all know how to navigate easily.

Hand Writing-The things people come up with

Well I thought this site was something interesting to share. I happened to stumble upon it and it amazes me how we can use technology to create stuff such as this! This is a really good way to learn and see what letters look like and be able to personalize it. This could be geared toward any age group-whether you are 5 or 20-if you need help with your hand writing this is a website that can help you. It just shows there are options and creative and neat things to use that the internet offers us. You create what word (s)/letter (s) you want to practice and print out the worksheet and write away! (I thought maybe this was something geared to a more personal reference. If you know someone who is struggling to write this could help. Just another way to practice.)

http://www.handwritingworksheets.com/

Private Writing

In class we have brought up numerous times the privatization of writing. I constantly go back to the fourth grade during these discussions when I was very much concerned with others reading my work. I used to write ridiculously small--for two reasons: first, I thought that my writing looked neater when it was smaller, and second, because by writing smaller, a reader had to be very close to read it. Printing small made writing private for me, it gave me a sense of ownership and control in who could and couldn't read my thoughts. Part of the reason for such concern over my writing was due to public scorn I experienced that year when my teacher used my essay as a bad example. She put my paper up anonymously and if I hadn't felt the need to brag about my work no one would have even known it was mine. This unfortunately was not the case and basically everyone in the class knew this "poor" example was mine--I was completely horrified and started writing small. I eventually got over this writing phobia and became proud of my writing and the ideas I described, but for awhile I was highly private in my writing. I felt like sharing this story and wondered if any of you have similar experiences be them public humiliation or just personal fears.

Literacy from Infancy

This is just a fun little story and I wanted to share it with the class--one of the themes for my auto-ethnography is sponsorship. I'm focusing mainly on my mom, so I emailed her and asked her to think of any stories about my youth that would be useful for my paper. She wrote back two stories:

1. This is a true story I wish I could do a study about it. When I was pregnant with you I had a 1st grade class that absolutely loved reading. They read anything in sight and I read to them every day before they went home, hence I was already reading to you. Now the classes that I had with Ryan and Eric (my older brothers) liked other things and I see how they are affected by that too. So you tell me does it make a difference that I was reading to you before you were born? I think so. -- It is true, I've loved to read since I was little. It's funny because, for the most part, my brothers absolutely hate reading, so I was the family exception. But even when I was in 1st grade I was reading chapter books before most of my peers. I found it interesting that my mom thinks this is because she read to me before I was born.
2. This one I still tell to my class and they laugh about it. The famous PHONE BOOK STORY. You were probably 6 months old when you pulled the huge phone book out of the cupboard and sat down on the floor and started to flip page after page. Of course your mouth was moving 60 miles an hour with baby babble but it was the beginning of reading. -- My mom's told me this story a thousand times and for some reason I still find it hilarious. Mostly because at that age the phone book probably weighed more than I did, so whenever I picture it I picture myself getting squished by a huge phone book. But it also makes me laugh because I can vaguely remember doing this multiple times throughout my youth, just because I wanted to "read".

I just thought these two stories were interesting and a little funny, so I figured I'd share. Does anyone else have a stories from their parents about childhood literacy?

Maybe if you're stranded on an island...or something

http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=7274694n

I found this clip from CBS about handwriting and its pertinence in today's society. It's fairly interesting, though I think that most telling part comes at the very end when the fourth graders (I believe they're fourth graders) comment on the practicality of writing by hand and not with computers.
I also thought that the claim that children who learn to write on computers are better writers than those who learn to write by freehand first. I'm not sure I completely agree with that, or what the correlation is between a persons skill as a writer and what they used (keyboard or pencil) when learning to write. What are your thoughts?

Conflict Theory and How Much Schools Suck

To start off this post, I would like to quote Deborah Brandt from Literacy in American Lives: "Schools, they suggest, devise curriculum and assessment tools that protect society's pecking order and justify its reward system." The "they" in this quote refers to educational critics. These critics are applying a conflict theory perspective to their analysis. This perspective takes from Marxist theories, so if you have a basic grasp of Marxism then you can understand conflict theory.

The question to be answered here is whether schools actually provide equal opportunity and social mobility to everyone in America. In the past, racist beliefs had most citizens against social mobility for African Americans, but now our schools ideally provide equal opportunity. If Brandt's book and college in general has taught me one thing, it's that American schools are not perfect tools of social mobility. It's not as simple for someone coming from a low income SES family to go to school, go to college, and suddenly become middle-class.

Okay, so conflict theory tells us that American education has a long way to go before it truly provides equal opportunity. In general, I don't think Brandt or other critics believe school is bad for students. Enter John Gatto. Gatto retired from education after almost 30 years of teaching. After his career, Gatto left teaching with a highly critical stance on how schools are affecting students. I'll end this post with a link to some of his books and a clip of him speaking. What do you think about Gatto's beliefs?

http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ogCc8ObiwQ

blog

I did a presentation on this blog comparing it to another blog/open forum I have in another class for my ENG 474 class, which is about problems with/ opening up public discourse. to sum up the presentation I basically compared how and why ours works as apposed to the other one in the class and would like to pinpoint my reasons as to why I think this blog works and whether or not you all agree.

1. we have an in depth rubric that states what the teacher is looking for. even to do the minimum to pass this assignment we must post often and critically think about our posts, not just regurgitate what the last person stated

2. There is an incentive/grade attached to it.

3 Though given a strict rubric based on mechanics, amount of postings, and other things we are given a lot of freedom on what we can post, from personal stories to Simpson clips.

4. most of us have a vested interest in this topic because of our major, because of this it makes us want to know more and contribute from other sources ( as apposed to a gen ed class where many of the pupils could care less about what is going on)

5. We have a small class where we must sign in and be accountable for our posts.

Some of the reasons why my other blog didn't work well in creating discourse, or even barely getting basic participation is because it is in a large class, where people don't know each other so they don't care to leave meaningful comments, or even original posts worth commenting on. It is also set up in angel showing that the teacher doesn't have the time to care about it, and also with such a large class there is no way the teacher can keep up with all of them.

I feel as though our class is a set up for "the perfect situation" and my other class is more of the reality that is faced for educators, big classrooms with kids that aren't motivated. But how can you spend time motivating a class of 80 (or more) kids when you have to grade them too?

handwriting

I think this sums up our generation's handwriting.

http://theoatmeal.com/blog/handwriting

Have I Learned Anything?

We've talked a lot about how we value literacy as a culture, so I thought I'd share a little anecdote. This morning I was reading the Collegian and came across the following letter to the editor.

In response to the March 16 article, “Activist speaks out against West Virginia mountaintop removal,” I live in an area of Mercer County where the blasting has severely damaged wells.

Like a lot of communities, we had a meeting and spoke with the company doing the removal.

Low and behold, afterward they rushed to the strip mine.

Today’s blast jarred my grandparents’ hearth from the fire place.

Yet, this is small compared to the countless wells lost, sunk and caved in.

Now these are blasts that they claim we can’t fill.

I’m looking for activist who can help us with our problem.

Scotty Jones
Montcalm, W. Va.

My initial reaction was "Wow, this guy writes like a 5th grader." After that split-second, initial judgment was passed, I realized not only what I had just thought, but also the implications of those thoughts and their relation to the letter. Scotty Jones of West Virginia finds himself in a situation where he and his community are completely helpless at the hands of a large and apparently uncaring mining company, but my first thought passed judgment on his grammar and stylistic choices.

Needless to say, I was a bit disgusted with myself. The meaning and purpose of the text is clear– a concerned community seeks the help of students. Why then, did I respond to the inadequacies of the text rather than to its call for action? The simple and unfortunate truth is that we have been taught, especially as we progress through academia, to judge people based on their writing. We have been assigned value for years based on our writing skills, and the judgment that I passed was simply an automatic reflection of that fact. Unfortunately, this mindset caused me to miss the bigger picture. Aside from the destruction of a community, I completely disregarded secondary questions such as "What is Scotty Jones' primary use of literacy?" Clearly, it is not primarily used for writing academic essays. Nevertheless, Mr. Jones realizes that the practice of literacy can be used to help his community. I feel angry at myself for judging him based on his poor stylistic choices.

Has anyone else had an experience like this? It's a bit of a shock to realize that even when we claim to value content and meaning over form and structure, all of these aspects contribute to our overall understanding and assessment of writing.

Stability & Value

Brandt's text Literacy in American Lives, makes a case for stability as a driving force of literacy contrasting Raymond Branch's rise to computer literacy and Dora Lopez's struggles with Spanish literacy. Even though both individual's grew up in the same area and had father's working for a University, their circumstances were quite different. Raymond's father was a professor and Dora's a shipping clerk. Additionally, computer literacy was on the rise and interest in accumulating it was growing. Spanish literacy on the other hand was not as necessary nor largely sought to attain. Due to these differences, acquiring literacy proved much easier when presented with a need for it. This made me think about my experience with Spanish literacy. I took four years of Spanish in high school and one semester here at college. Furthermore my mother teaches Spanish to eighth graders as a living. Despite this, I never mastered the language, would never claim to be bilingual, and become extremely anxious at the thought of having to speak Spanish. Part of the reason I never mastered the language was the lack of necessity. It was always something extra, something to fluff up my academic record but not something that I had to excel at. My future did not require becoming literate in Spanish, and so I didn't. Though I would not claim to be technologically savvy, I do know how to use the web, Word Processor, and other applications related to my studies. My experiences largely support Brandt's findings. How does your own literacy acquisition correspond to the need/value relation? Besides familial influences, as illustrated with Dora, what else drives an individual to acquire a literacy not currently popular or necessary?

Handwriting

When I first read about the May who was deterred from writing by a authority figure telling him that his handwriting has terrible, I thought, that's absurd. Handwriting has nothing to do with the quality of what is said.
Then I thought back to my experiences in elementary school. I was always complimented on my handwriting. I can remember asking my mother to buy me those workbooks that has the three lines and you have to trace the letters printed in the lines and then write them free hand. I loved doing those activities because I knew that I was good at them and that I would get more positive reinforcement after completion. This is what started my love for writing.
That said, I was told in third grade that I had a speech impediment; that I couldn't speak correctly. This news made me want to avoid talking, and marks that time when I stopped verbally voluntarily participating in class. I didn't want to speak incorrectly and get chastised for it.
So maybe it is not so absurd that the May abhorred writing so much, with his awful handwriting being the starting point. It's amazing really how much influence such comments can have on our development. It took me years to get over the belief that "I can't speak right" and actually participate in classes, and it is something that still affects me today.

Literacy-just an "Indiviual good?"

Brandt's book, "Literacy in American Lives" gives me a new outlook on what literacy can be to different people. In an article we read prior to this there was a quote/idea that really stood out to me,
"In the old ideology, literacy was a value added. It was suppose to turn people into something. in the new ideology, literacy (like other human skills) figures as a cost of production. People are suppose to turn it into something." (Brandt U. S. Literacy)

So what are some thoughts about that passage? Do you think it's to better ourselves or for the benefit of someone else?

The value that we have on literacy changes from person to person. I think we are losing touch with what we learn and take away; we are too worried about how to advance for others. Literacy is now a means of production. . .what value is there left?

Online Courses

The subject of technology in literacy has come up frequently on this blog and in our class. And while the majority of us may tend to believe that technology is synonymous with higher levels or greater expectations of literacy, this article definitely opposes that notion.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/06/education/06online.html?_r=1&ref=education

After reading the second paragraph, where Hamilton copied and pasted Wikipedia entries into his paper, the first thought that went through my head was: "Finally they are acknowledging the truths of online coursework." I mean really, adults can't be THAT dumb. Although plagiarism repercussions exist at almost any educational institution, that clearly did not stop this kid. As many of you probably know, online classes are offered here at Penn State just like they are at a variety of other colleges and universities. The difference is that for the most part we can choose to take an online class or opt for a regular classroom experience. However, it seems like according this article, as online coursework filters down to high schools, it poses problems for the students, and in Hamilton's case it is not only a disciplinary problem but a motivation problem.

This article reiterated a lot of the points we've also brought up in class, like, what do you do with sub-par kids who aren't learning or don't have the desire to learn? Well, as the sources in this article so lovingly point out: you stick them in a classroom with the absence of an adult to teach them that plagiarizing is wrong, because the production imperative of literacy argues that since these students didn't invest the effort or desire to learn the first time (e.g. in English 3), you can find an alternative avenue to push them through the system, and at a much cheaper cost.

One final thought: Although this is unrelated to anything I said above, I thought that it was interesting all of the students featured in the photograph for the article were African American. Who is this article portraying to benefit from online coursework, and what are their levels of literacy?

old teachers illiterate?

I was sitting in my wilderness literature class last night painfully watching my 60+ year old teacher struggle to figure out how to do something on the new Microsoft Word in front of the entire class. After a few minutes of everyone watching him flounder around, a boy in my class shouted out what we’d all been thinking of how my professor could correct the “problem.” Still not understanding, my teacher just closed out the entire Microsoft Word and moved on with his lesson clearly frustrated and distraught.

What does this remind you of? To me, this was a real-life example like Deborah Brandt’s claim that higher standards of literacy are needed as the economy ages. Brandt writes, “Fierce economic conditions, including the changes in communication they stimulate, can destabilize the public meanings and social worth of people’s literate skills” (26). When my professor got hired to teach maybe 30 years ago, there was obviously no need to be computer literate; knowing how to use Microsoft Word was definitely not in his job requirements. Today, however, knowing how to use core programs on a computer is a must in most professional jobs. For my generation, this is not an issue as we grew up with computers and understand them easily. For my teacher’s generation though, computers are like a foreign object; working with them doesn’t come naturally and as a result, the “social worth of their literate skills” is lowered if they can’t handle this new form of literacy.

Therefore, the standard of literacy that is required to get a job today is much different than it was a couple decades ago. However, is “literacy” becoming more complex as society changes, or are new forms of literacy simply replacing old forms and more knowledge isn’t really being expected out of the newer generations?

Don't Insist on English

This presentation by Patricia Ryan exemplifies only a few ways that adherence to a certain language or dialect can create barriers for literacy learning. As we talked about in class today, confining one's self to a certain literacy ideology can restrict the types of literacy that one can develop.

Sponsors

In Brandt's introduction to her book she mentioned that a sponsor of literacy does more than just help another person, he/she can also help him/herself. This got my thinking about class I took last semester, English 443 The English Renaissance. We talked a lot about the patronage system, how rich lords and ladies would sponsor writers so that the writer could write and not have to worry about living expenses. This created better writing and a thriving literacy environment, which we can all agree is good for the writers. The sponsors benefited because the writers would dedicate their work to them, in these long complimentary poems at the beginning of their work. These poems were usually slightly ridiculous because each writer was trying to out-compliment their sponsor. So one writer would write that his sponsor was the most beautiful woman (sponsors of art were often woman) in all of England, another writer would say that his sponsor was the most beautiful in all the world, and another writer would say that his sponsor rivaled the gods in her beauty. Each writer wanted to portray their sponsor or patron as the best so that person would continue to sponsor him. From this you can also see a pitfall, these poems were pretty bad sometimes. Writers felt so pressured by the sponsors to write something great and complimentary that the actual writing was poor or too weighed down by praise (that doesn't always seem sincere) to be good.
I think that some of these pitfalls can be applied to us today. I know that in some of my papers I wanted very much to please a teacher or parent (my sponsors) that the paper ended up falling flat. Or sometimes I would read a book just because I thought it was the book that I thought my sponsors would want me to read, but I wouldn't really be taking anything from the book, just reading it for appearances. Both of these result in poor literacy. The paper didn't display those aspects of writing that it should of, and there was absolutely no analysis or understanding that went along with my reading of the book (or really even appreciation).
Yes, it is good to have someone that is pushing you to read and write at your best level, someone who encourages you. But we can put so much weight in what these sponsors think that it can negatively effect literacy, I think.