BLOG 15

Last week, I did an interview with Jillian and it took all of 3 minutes-less actually- so Dr. Chandler decided to show me how it was done. (I answered questions but didn't actually conduct any questioning).

First thing I learned: It is 100 times better to have interview questions prepared.

Actually the intervieewd started off pretty rough, which may be typical. Dr. Chandler asked jillian recall questions such as where she was when the twin towers fell, what she remembered about the classroom, she even got creative when jillian couldn't recall much, and asked her if she remebered what color she was wearing.

Jillian had given only a handfulof information at the beginning:

She was in a cathlic elementary school when it happened
They hadn't told the students what was going on, but she knew somethging had happened because people were crying
They let the kids home go early and she took the bus home
Her sister, who is older than her knew more about it than she because the middle school teachers had told their students
She did not knowe exactly what happened until she got home and started watching television as well as hearing from her sister- at this point the second tower had not fallen

Then, after what seemed like an average interview, it took off after Jillian mentioned her friend in a response to a question freom Dr. Chandler about if she knew someone who was directly affected.

At this point Jillian opened up about a friend whose father had died quite recently from cancer which was developed from all of the smoke inhalation and debree from the site of the attack.  One question.

At that point the interview could have gone another 5-10 minutes easy, but alas, we were out of time.

short anal. Draft

Karl Covington

ENG3029

Short Analysis- Rough

21 March 2013

 

It seems to me that there has been a fundamental change in instructor feedback on writing since I started college back in the spring semester of 2011. In my freshman composition class, my instructor would hand back papers with red pen markings so abundant that it looked as if the whole paper was simply wrong. Words, sentences, and even whole paragraphs would be crossed out; marginal comments were frequent, and never positive, and if he were to offer praise of any kind, it would only occur during one of the few individual conferences students had with him during the semester. It was very discouraging at first, but ultimately became the reason I wanted to become a better writer. Today, it has been my experience that most instructors do not provide feedback in this way at all, actually it is almost opposite. In this paper, I‘ll be looking specifically at a popular style of digital feedback in which instructors comment throughout the paper in margins, and write in paragraph form their overall feedback on the paper as a whole, placing this paragraph either at the beginning or the end of the paper. After reading the feedback from the sample, as well as feedback from papers of my own, I have a few questions: Will this style of feedback really (in most cases) get the best out of a writer? If so, what level of writer should it be for? I’ll be analyzing the language of a sample of feedback to see how the instructor gets the student to understand what he/she should do, and projecting how effective the comments may be; in some cases, compared to how effective the harder style of feedback may have been.

THE LANGAUGE

One of the first things I noticed about the feedback is that it is what I will refer to henceforth as soft. That is, the language is not very straightforward, but leaves room for disagreement. In sample 4 of data set 4, several of the teacher marginal comments start with the words I’m not sure. A great deal of the rest of them is peppered with other non-threatening phrases such as I feel like and I wonder if.

The language of the comments is written in a way that tells the reader of the instructor’s perspective and what they are getting out of it. This is in juxtaposition to the more traditional style of having the teacher stand in more of a judgment seat. In total, 14 of the 19 comments have language in which the instructor purposely identifies his view as a subjective feeling and/or uses words like might or maybe (usually a combination of these two things). One of the five remaining is praise and therefore is completely direct, and two of them simply reference another comment. Here is an example of the language present in most of the marginal comments:

Comment [ML5] This part seems incomplete to me. What else might students need to know about citing sources? It’s more than just the particular style they use.

Notice the way the professor the professor keeps from making a judgment of this particular part of the paper by using the verb ‘seems’ instead of ‘is’ and further bolsters his position as a reader by adding the words ‘to me’, which implies that his observation is subjective and could possibly be an error on his part. Furthermore, the instructor asks a question that gives the student a reason for why readers may find the particular section incomplete. The instructor phrases it as a question, but I think it could be as effective in a form of a statement. Then the teacher ends with a statement that seems to me to combat the potential student response of “nothing” in response to the previous question. In my opinion, the instructor has covered both bases in this marginal response. He/She has identified a problem, and provided a solution, while at the same time, passively aggressively in my opinion, implying that there is no way to avoid the proposed solution. Here is what I believe a more traditional form of marginal comment would read:

This part is incomplete. Talk about what more students need to know about citing sources.

In my opinion, both forms will accomplish the same results in the case of comment 5, and furthermore, I think they are completely interchangeable in the case of many students for one major reason.

POWER RELATIONSHIP

Whether the language in feedback is soft or direct, the professor can often get what they want accomplished, I believe, because they know that the student knows that despite the language, the teacher is the ultimate judge. Comment 5 is the perfect example, actually. The instructor could essentially say all three things in statement form, without recognizing his subjective vantage point. However, the student knows that because the instructor took the time to write it, whether he says it softly or directly, he/she should re-work the section or redo it.

The power relationship becomes clearer in the summary feedback.

“I know it may seem like I’m asking you to do two contradictory things: condense and expand at the same time. To a degree, I am.”

Here, perhaps more than at any other point in any of the feedback, the instructor fully possesses his role in the power relationship. Not in a distasteful or arrogant way, but direct nonetheless.

 

Blog 13-sample 4 short analysis

4 of the 19 teacher comments started out with the words "I'm not sure". A great deal of the rest of them are peppered with language  like I feel like or My gut tells me or I wonder if.  I understand the reasoning behinfd this language, and appreciate it, but in a case where something is out of place or simply illogical, I'd rather be told so directly. Here's my question:

Is it always ideal to use this soft (for lack of a better word) style of feedback? I mean, what things need to be said more directly, and to which kind of students? Are there guidlines to guide severity of comments.

This is the first time I have read all of the comments before reading the closing paragraphs at the end. What I noticed reading the comments in order right way was that though they may appear so visually, the comments are not entirely isolated, in fact, some of them build off of each other, and many serve similar purposes. An example of this is how many of the comments talk about mentioning information earlier in the paper.

As far as the content of the comments, some are positive and the others do all they can to not be negative haha. Comment 16 is especially funny.

"I’m not sure I see how these sentences fit into this part of the project.  Maybe they would work better earlier?"

This comment in particular is one that really prompted my research question, because, in my  opinion, it seems like the first sentence in the comment is all that is needed, or just the second sentence, but definitely not both.  In my opinion to say both is redundant. If I know that my reader does not see a logical connection, I know that I have to either:

a. Change the sentence or tweak my project so that the reader understands what I mean to convey or

b. Take it out of that section

Here, I feel that the instructor is trying to be nice by leaving the comment open-ended. Personally, what made me interested in pursuing writing was a teacher whose comments were austere and unforgiving, and I understand many people who be de-railed by this, but I would upper level writers wo already know they are competent, even good writers be de-railed? Perhaps some, but I think a large number woud not.

To my disappointment, The whole message of the teachers comments could only be realized if one read both the parenthetical comments and the final paragraph comment at the end. This comes as a disappointment because I usually only read the end comment. Still, in this example, the teacher directly stated for the student to reference the individual ones, which may not be the case with other professors.

 

Blog 12

As someone who has received both kind of teacher comments ( summary of main points in the top and bottom), my first question is what makes people certain people respond to individual comments or not. In my case, I've never really responded to all of the individual comments, unless I saw one comment in particular a really easy fix, and even then I didn't do all of them. Of course the answer to that begs the question of whether it really matters where teacher put the general paragraph. In my opinion, the best thing, as Dr. Chandler pointed out, is for prof's to have a discussion with students on how to read their comments. Why do teachers have to do this among advanced level English and Education majors? I think I can answer this one fairly simply. Besides the very important fact of every teacher doing comments differently, school, as a instruction, has pretty much instructed students to respond immediately to any critiques/ suggestions of the students, and doing this will get students their desired grade.

Interview analysis

Angela's persona in the excewrpt from interview one is one of a very young, sort of naive girl, who happened upon a pedophile (on the phone). Still, she does not own up to her own wrong, except for acknowledging the fact that her mom would kill her. She was definetely in the mindset of a child for this reason.