Status: Tags: Links: notes/) EDUC 100W - Selected Questions and Issues in Education
EDUC 100W Reading Responses
Responses
- EDUC100W Week 2 Reading Response
- EDUC100W Learning Reading Response
- EDUC100W Teaching and Curriculum Reading Response
- EDUC100W School and Study Reading Response
Principles
- If there are parts you don’t understand, it’s fine to bring that forward. Saying something like, “I’m not clear on why the author says it this way,” or “I don’t fully understand their meaning when…” is perfectly welcome, so long as you have thought about it sincerely. Asking questions like this can be part of good scholarship!
Preparation
Note Taking
- Annotate pdfs to retain fresh ideas😍 Take note of:
- Key points made by the author(s): these can be large, overall concepts (once you have read the article/chapter as a whole), or more specific ones
- Points that stand out for you, personally. Explain why they stand out for you.
- Connections and key themes you see between the readings. It’s valuable higher-level thinking to see how things are connected; you still want to be specific to what each writer is saying in their own right, however.
Writing
Tips
- Can be super specific
- The
butdoesn’t have to be a major part, it can be faint
Revision checklist
Components
- Summative (possibly critical)
- Demonstrates understanding
- A good summary does not sound redundant; it’s adding your own personal flair
- Reflective educational analysis that critically questions readings
- reflective/personal/experiential component
- Show personal growth
- Position yourself in relation to it
- Considers positionality (asian, male, immigrant), and acknowledges it in the beginning
- Ideas
- Try not to float between connections, choose a couple that best fit the paper
Characteristics
- EXPERIENTIAL, CRITICAL
- Critical thinking
- Quotations are integral to a successful response
- Compare, synthesize, fully utilize papers
- Use google scholar to cite
Format
- 2 pages long, double spaced
- Catchy title
Passive vs. Active Voice
When writing, you should be aware of the difference between active vs. passive voice.
In active voice, the subject of the sentence acts upon its verb; in passive voice, the subject of the sentence receives the action.
Rain hit the window. (active)
The window was hit by the rain. (passive)
Passive voice is not wrong or incorrect but using it too much can make your writing indirect, longer-winded, and less readable. I read through a lot of passive voice in the first RR ; ).
Let’s hear from Stephen King on why (and how) to avoid the passive voice:
King, Stephen. 2000. On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft. NY: Simon and Schuster, pp. 122- 124.
“[One] of my pet peeves [has] to do with the most basic level of writing, and I want to get [it] off my chest before we move along.
Verbs come in two types, active and passive.
With an active verb, the subject of the sentence is doing something. With a passive verb, something is being done to the subject of the sentence. The subject is just letting it happen. You should avoid the passive voice. I’m not the only one who says so; you can find the same advice in The Elements of Style.
Messrs. Strunk and White don’t speculate as to why so many writers are attracted to passive verbs, but I’m willing to; […] The passive voice is safe. There is no troublesome action to contend with […] I think unsure writers also feel the passive voice somehow lends their work authority, perhaps even a quality of majesty. If you find instruction manuals and lawyers' torts majestic, I guess it does.
The timid fellow writes “The meeting will be held at seven o’clock” because that somehow says to him, “Put it this way and people will believe you really know.” Purge this quisling thought! Don’t be a muggle! Throw back your shoulders, stick out your chin, and put that meeting in charge! Write “The meeting’s at seven.” There, by God! Don’t you feel better?
I won’t say there’s no place for the passive tense.
Suppose, for instance, a fellow dies in the kitchen but ends up somewhere else. “The body was carried from the kitchen and placed on the parlor sofa” is a fair way to put this, although “was carried” and “was placed” still irk the shit out of me. I accept them, but I don’t embrace them. What I would embrace is “Freddy and Myra carried the body out of the kitchen and laid it on the parlor sofa”. Why does the body have to be the subject of the sentence anyway? It’s dead, for Christ’s sake! Fuhgeddaboudit!
Two pages of passive voice–just about any business document ever written, in other words, not to mention reams of bad fiction–make me want to scream. It’s weak, it’s circuitous, and it’s frequently tortuous, as well.
How about this: “My first kiss will be recalled by me as how my romance with Shayna was begun.” Oh, man–who farted, right? A simpler way to express this idea–sweeter and more forceful, as well–might be this: “My romance with Shayna began with our first kiss. I’ll never forget it.” I’m not in love with this because it uses with twice in four words, but at least we’re out of that awful passive voice.
You might also notice how much simpler the thought is to understand when it’s broken up into two thoughts. This makes matter easier for the reader, and the reader must always be your main concern; without Constant Reader, you are just a voice quacking in the void. […]
Will Strunk [author of the above mentioned Elements of Styles writing manual] felt that the reader was “in serious trouble most of the time,". E.B. White writes in his introduction to The Elements of Style, that the reader is like “a man floundering in a swamp, and that it is the duty of anyone trying to write English to drain this swamp quickly and get the man up on dry ground, or at least throw him a rope.”
And remember: “The writer threw the rope”, not “The rope was thrown by the writer.” Please, oh please!"
Normative vs. descriptive claims
A descriptive statement provides an account some state of affairs without saying whether that’s good or bad.
A normative statement provides an evaluation or judgement, saying that something is good or bad, better or worse, relative to some standard or possible alternative.
In other words, a normative statement is a claim about how things ought to be. For example, “rap music is better than country music,” “If you want to pass the course you should do the readings,” “A university degree is necessary to get a good job.”
The point is simply to notice that there is a difference between descriptive language claims and normative claims. Normative judgments, if we are going to accept them as more than opinion, need to be critically unpacked, discussed and debated.
[In philosophy, this normative-descriptive distinction is sometimes also referred to as the “is/ought” distinction or the “descriptive/prescriptive” distinction.']
What is critical/scholarly writing?
This distinction, takes me to my last point – what does it mean to be critical and engage in critical-scholarly writing? I’ve received several questions from you folks, about what exactly constitutes scholarly/critical writing in contrast to other types/modes of writing, such as narrative or memoir forms.
On this point – I’d like to offer you the following pdf handout (attached), called THE ABSTRACT GAME (or) How do scholars u****se words to signify value?
This is an approach/practice I developed to help my students better engage with academic journal abstracts and articles. The intention behind this assignment/game is to familiarize yourself with:
- the way scholars use language to signify value to their readers
- the utility behind the abstract format of academic journals
- what scholarly writing is and what/who it is for
Prompts for ideas and structure
Guidelines
- Choose one core idea from the assigned seminar texts that were important to you. It may seem like the most central idea, or one that has led to an “aha!” moment for you or one that you find problematic.
- Choose a key quote from one of the readings that illustrate this idea for you and explain why.
- Then discuss how each of the readings connects to this idea. Do the authors say similar or different things? How do they provide different insights on it?
- Examine, explain, reflect on personal experiences to the reading
- be specific about what a particular author is saying on this topic (what one author says will be different from what is expressed by another)
Evaluation
The final assessment of these responses to the readings will be based on two main areas.
- Reflection: your ability to meaningfully reflect and examine your own position, relationships, feelings, and responses to the reading[s]
- Engagement with readings: Your ability to articulate and critique core ideas from the reading[s] as well as make connections and comparisons to other readings.
A+ (100%) Meets all the criteria for an A, but shows either outstanding creativity or deep insight.
A (90%) In addition to meeting all the criteria for a B, your reading response (RR) makes clear that you have engaged in both meaningful reflections on your own reading/learning process as well as engagement in synthesis of the readings themselves (i.e. summarizing, contrasting, comparing, and synthesizing). In your RR, you are able to conceptually develop several significant threads, driving deeper exploration or application of the ideas encountered through the readings and through reference to both your own life experience and growth as a learner
B (75%) Your reading response (RR) is thoughtful, well-written and coherent. Your RR shows evidence of being able to understand the readings at least minimally but generally unable to reflect on the readings deeply and meaningfully in relation to course ideas and/or your personal experiences.
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Created:: 2021-09-15 18:07