My Conviction of The Five Paragraph Essay

When I started college, I was introduced to the five paragraph essay by a professor who I now see as my mentor. It made so much sense to me to explicate what I am tying to convey in three distinct yet succinct paragraphs. After attending graduate classes, I realized that there are several ways to compose an essay and I deduce that the City University uses the five paragraph theme because it as helpful for the professors to grade as it is effortless for some students to compose.

This semester I read a few essays such as "The Five Paragraph Essay", "My Five Paragraph Theme Theme" that where not in favor of this method of composing essays. The issue that I had with the latter essay is the fact that the author went out of his way to ridicule this system, yet he offered no alternative method of teaching students how to organize their essays in a lucid manner in which the professor can comprehend the points that were being made. The entire article was satirical to the point where I wondered if the writer has ever taught any ELL.

The third essay that I read in reference to the five paragraph essay was "Traci's 44 List of Five Paragraph Essays" which I found to be brilliant. Unlike the other two essays, she did not even attempt to lampoon the system that is currently being used in Universities across the country. Instead she created ten fabulous theme prompts for writing original five paragraph essays. Cultural competence is a major asset when teaching students how to write and think in a new language. The traditional five paragraph essay is a wonderful way to teach foreign students the rules of writing a clear well organized essay. For the critics that disagree with this notion, I would like to ask them a single question. If you were learning to speak, read, listen, and write in a language that had a totally different alphabet system, would you want a system as clean cut and feasible as the five paragraph essay, or would you want various other techniques that might confuse you?" Empathy is the key to understanding and understanding is greater than knowledge!!!           

My Interview with Dr. Gladys Carro

The semester is grinding to a halt, and I realized that, regardless of the readings, and the classroom implementation of various pedagogical concepts (which I'm sure will be very contributory to my future practice), I was still moderately apprehensive about entering a classroom of my own. So, I decided that if I really wanted to do something, I should learn from someone who excelled in that field. That idea lead me to interview one of my favorite professors in the CCNY English department.

The interview that I conducted was with Dr. Gladys Carro. being that the meeting was someone impromptu, I decided not to quote her directly because it was ore of a discourse than a traditional interview. The main question that I asked her was "what advice can you give a budding adjunct?" She explained to me that the only way to learn how to do something is by practicing. I then asked her what I should do if I feel inundated with a classroom full of students who are not grasping the material. She smiled and told me to focus on my main goal which is to make sure that their papers are comprehensible.She explained that if I can understand what they are writing, that I can easily introduce the more complicated features of the English language.

Rhetorical Modes

I was elated when I learned that there were modes of writing other than the commonly used argument, cause and effect, comparison contrast, and description essays. When I started LaGuardia Community College, I remember not even hearing of any of those essays, or even caring that they existed. I must also confess that I was a recluse who did not care about telling any professor what I thought about my life or about any ancient text. When I transfered my economics credits to CCNY and decided to become an English major, I learned that expression of any type is a form of therapy and that writing was the best way to record how I felt about any given topic at any given time. A few weeks ago when we were assigned to read about these rhetorical modes, I was introduced to the Classification, Extended definition, Exemplification, Narration, and Narration modes and I began thinking of how many possibilities I will have when the time comes for me to start writing prompts for my students in the future.

Revision Strategies of Student Writers and Experienced Adult Writers by Nancy Sommers

***FRUITS***
"Two representative models are Gordon Rohman's suggestion that the composing process moves from prewriting to writing to rewriting and James Britton's model of the writing process as a series of stages described in metaphors of linear growth, conception--incubation--production."(378)

"What is impossible in speech is revision: like the example Barthes gives revision in speech is afterthought. In the same way each stage of the linear must be exclusive or else it becomes trivial and counterproductive to refer to these junctures as stages"(379)

"Writing has spacial and temporal features not apparent in speech-- words are recorded in space and fixed in time --which is why writing is susceptable to reordering and later addition. Such features make possible the dissonance that both provokes revision and promises from itself, new meaning."(386)

"For the experienced writers the heaviest concentration of changes is on the sentence level,and the changes are predominantly by addition and deletion"(386)

Understanding Composing by Sondra Perl

***FRUITS***
Steps to Retrospective Structuring
"1) The most visible recurring feature or backward movement involves re-reading little bits of discourse. Few writers I have seen write for long periods of time without returning to what is already written down on the page." (364)

"2) The second recurring feature is some key word or item called up bythe topic. Writers consistently return to their notion of the topic throughout the process of writing."(364)

"3) There is a third background movement in writing, one that is not so easy to document. It is not easy because the move itself cannot immediately be identified with words. The move draws on sense experience, and  can be observed if on pays close attention to what happens when writers pause and seem to listen or otherwise react to what is inside of them."(364)


Steps to Projective Structuring 
"1) Although projective structuring is only one part of the composing process, many writers act as if it is the whole process. These writers focus on what they think other want them to write rather than looking to see what it is that they want to write."(368)


"2) Many writers reduce projective structuring to a series of rules or criteria for evaluating finished discourse. These writers ask 'Is what I'm doing correct?' and does it confirm the rules that I've been taught?"()

Collaborative Learning and the "Conversation of Mankind" by Kenneth A. Bruffee

***FRUITS***
"collaborative learning is discussed sometimes as a process that constitutes fields or disciplines of study and sometimes as a pedagogical tool that works in teaching composition and literature. The former discussion, often highly theoretical, usually manages to keep at bay the more troublesome and problematic aspects of collaborative learning."(636)

**WEEDS**
None.

***BASKET***
This was the article that Peter Hawkes responded to, I feel just as interested in this article as I was in Hawkes'. The most effective method of teaching students grammar, is teaching them how to recognize their own errors.

Collaborative Learning and American Literature By Peter Hawkes

***FRUITS***
"Only two things are necessary for collaborative learning-- a group and a task. Because a good task is difficult to design much of what I say will  be about task development"(140)

" When i say collaborative learning I mean any method of small group work similar to the one advocated by Kenneth Bruffee (1985), where groups of five students work on the same learning task and then report the findings through a group recorder to the class. "(140)

"Few advocates claim that collaborative learning is more effective than the lecture in presenting the 'facts' -- the historical background, terminology and critical principles - that inform a discipline and that every teacher feels obliged to cover."(141)

" Of course, students need guidance in understanding the debate before they attempt to join it. Therefore my next step is to write (or rewrite) lectures, which among other things build towards the issue of the novel's ending."(142)

***WEEDS***
The one problem that I have with this essay is the fact that it would be virtually impossible for students to cover all of the grammatical features that stump them in one semester, without dedicating the class solely to grammar alone.


***BASKET***
This reading reminds me of the Joyce article on metawriting. This is an effective method of making students aware of the problems that they are making. Perhaps I can have students break up into small groups and research the topics that give students the most difficulties such as subject verb agreement, articles, number, verb conjugation etc... 

When Older Students Can't Read by Louisa C. Moats

***FRUITS***
"If students receive instruction in phonological and alphabetic skills and learn to apply that knowledge to decoding words, they are very likely to succeed at reading."(36)

"when an individual's reading comprehension is more impaired than his or her listening comprehension, inaccurate and slow word recognition is the most likely cause."(37)

"Very poor readers must have their phonological skills strengthened because their inability to identify speech sounds erodes spelling, word recognition, and vocabulary development. For less severely impaired readers, educators must often target text reading fluency."(37)

"If students do not know the words they are reading, they must expand their vocabularies and learn a repertoire of comprehension strategies."(37)

"Language-deficient children often miss the subtle differences in speech sounds that distinguish words from on another--for example, pacific/specific; gold/goal; fresh/flesh; anecdote/antidote."(37)

"Phonological awareness, decoding, spelling, grammar, and other language skills can be taught as a linguistics course in which instructors use such adult language as phoneme deletion and morphemic structure. "(38)

"Great texts such as fables, poems, oral histories, and adapted classics promote student engagement. Even if students are working on word recognition, they will benefit from daily opportunities to discuss meaningful material"(39)

**WEEDS**
None


***BASKET***
This reading will be especially helpful with helping students to learn about sentence structure. I will try to apply everything into my lesson planning.

On the Use of Metawriting to Learn Grammar and Mechanics by Douglas James Joyce

***FRUITS***
"We have bought into the concept of writing to learn, yet we do not ask our students to write about those very topics that cause us so much frustration: grammar and mechanics. I am convinced that writing about writing-Metawriting- may be the single most effective tool we can use to assist our students in grammar and mechanics as they learn to compose formal academic essays. "(24)
 This article discusses one effective method of teaching grammar without the traditional trite and tedious explicit in class drills. By asking students to research those grammatical errors that frequently occur, the professor is essentially asking them to look in the mirror with their thinking caps on.

***WEEDS***
None

***BASKET***
Everything! 

Results Of Last Month's Syntax Search

        Last month, I ventured out on an academic expedition in which I searched for techniques for helping my students to improve their sentence structures. After searching for weeks, I realized that there is no preordained way to teach sentence structure. I must admit that my ambivalence has me torn between relief and displeasure. The feeling of relief derives from the fact that I finally have a solution to the problem and the I am slightly disappointed due to the fact that I do not have an easier solution to present to my students.
       The remedy for the syntactic structure is simple. The most effective way to improve a student's writing skills is to help them with reading comprehension. First of all because, the only way to deal with the nuances that come with the teaching of prepositions, articles and diction is to make the students read the way native speakers of English use them. There are many inconsistencies that even Doctorate Professors of English consider to be convoluted. So, by teaching them to become efficient readers, I will also be teaching them to enhance their lexical skills, map syntactic patterns, and to juxtapose  the differences between the rules of writing in their languages and in English. 

Whose Job Is It To Teach English?

       I have been fortunate enough to have been working for the CCNY Writing Center for the last four semesters. The reason why this experience is so felicitous for me is because, as a tutor I feel as though I am a hybrid between a student and a professor. From the student perspective, I empathize with having to work assiduously to meet deadlines, research topics from hours to weeks, stay up all night writing papers, and work tenaciously to satisfy all of the professors expectations (if not exceed them). On the other side of the spectrum, I can relate to the professors because it is my job to look at the students assignments and decide what I have enough time to teach them in fifty minutes. Time is always of essence in those ephemeral sessions, this is why my regular students must make numerous appointments throughout the week, so that they can correct their papers with my help, and receive instruction on how to express themselves proficiently by using the grammatical rules of the English language.
       When I talk to my associates who are adjunct professors, some of them tell me how hard it is to teach grammar within a short one hour interval, therefore if the students want to learn grammar they must go to the writing center to get help. Other professors tell me that native speakers of English should have been taught grammar in grade school and it is not their job to teach it, so they sentence the students to the writing center and demand a receipt as evidence of their attendance. Simultaneously, when I went to visit my old high school teachers, they explained that grammar should be taught in elementary. Although I have not had the opportunity to visit any elementary schools, this inane cycle of irresponsibility makes it clearly indicative that the elementary schools will accuse someone else for school children NOT learning grammar (perhaps Sesame Street).
       There is a psychological term called the Diffusion of Responsibility, which can be described in a succinct example such as this one; a group of individuals witnessing an accident and each person expecting another person to help the victim. Instead of standing up and doing what is right to allay the situation everyone feels as if he or she is not responsible and points the finger to someone else to save the day. When I see a student who is taking 200 or 300 level English classes, but can barley write a comprehensible sentence, I feel very melancholic for the student that the public school system has failed him. All I can do is try my best. When I start teaching, perhaps I will try to sneak mini grammar tips into my lesson planning. Most importantly when professors complain about how poor their students are in writing, those words must enter my ears as a pungent cacophony that becomes scrambled in my brain before it processes. I should not listen to such negativity because learning should be fun and if my students are not learning, I must work harder or get some help.     
     

Searching For Inspiration

       One of the most important aspects in pursuing any goal is motivation. In addition to the mental alacrity that is requisite for teachers to suddenly modify lesson plans in order to aid struggling students, an effective educator must always have the enthusiasm that will enable her to galvanize her students in an attempt to attain the goals that were set for the day, week, month and semester. So, if it is the teacher's responsibility to motivate the students, the conundrum is, whose job is it to inspire the teacher?
       When life takes its toll and leaves us feeling lethargic and apathetic, should we carry this contagious raincloud of insipid fog into our classroom with us? If so, the only inevitable result would be a hurricane of bromidic proportions, in which the students are contaminated with the same boredom, or lured to sleep by our lack luster lessons that lay out as lullabies (if this occurs we'd better not penalize them for snoring louder than we speak)! What then should we do to make the classroom experience enjoyable for ourselves and for our students?
        The first thing I did was make a list of some of the funnest classes that I have ever taken, in CCNY and in my life. For the record, the CCNY professors that topped my fun list were; Brandon Judell, Dr Hamilton, Dr Leondopolos, David Unger and of course Dr Mikao Kaku. The next step will be for me to set up meetings with them and the other teachers from the prior schools in which I attended. Next I will amalgamate their ideas into a guide that will grow on a constant basis as a reminder of my promise to give every serious( not all of them are studious) student my time and attention for the entire semester that we are merged. I am also in the process of making a list of the greatest teachers of all time with Confucius topping the list and researching their philosophies on education. To be continued.... 
   

The Transition: Levitating From A Student To A Teacher

I wonder, is moving from a student to a teacher really a levitation? I make this inquiry simply because I give credence to the notion that both reading and writing are transactional phenomena that require the efforts of both the producers and the recipients, to create the event of awareness. For example Li Bai might have written an anthology of Chinese literature, but every reader will approach the book with his or her own experience that will give the readings new meanings that are generated from the readers background knowledge. With this being said, I always thought of a classroom as symbiotic realm in which students and the teacher can interact to achieve one goal: making the world a better place. The teachers job is to take her knowledge of the subject and use her skills not only to "recite" the material (as many teachers and college instructors do), but to plan lessons with efficacy that will motivate students to want to attain their full scholastic potential. In return students will ascend academically from grade school, to middle school, to high school, to college and beyond. After college, it is inevitable that students will enter the workforce and pursue careers that will be beneficial to society. This is the reason why I see the class as a team and the teacher as the coach of that team. If a diligent student is not able to grasp the material by the end of the semester, the teacher should share the shame and consider the possibility that he is simply a walking tape recorder. There are too many educators that are teaching for fiscal gain instead of teaching students what they need to know in order to move up in society. This is the reason why I must delve deep into the theories and methodologies of pedagogy and train myself to be effective in my field, for the right reasons.

Self Awareness: The Most Substantial Tool in Teaching

         As a budding educator, I have learned a plethora of useful theories of pedagogy, affective methodologies of implementing those theories into classroom curricula and I've even journeyed through the mind of a student and conducted research on the three styles of learning: visual, auditory and kinesthetic, as well as the Multiple Intelligences Theory which states that students have one or more of eight different talents that experienced teachers can utilize in order to facilitate the learning process. The theory states that every student is intrinsically gifted with; verbal linguistic, bodily kinesthetic, musical rhythmic, intrapersonal, interpersonal, logical mathematical, natural or visual spacial intelligence, that would allow him/her to easily grasp concepts that might have seemed to have been convoluted prior to the awakening of their slumbered learning skills.
        All of this knowledge will be very conducive in my teaching practice, however, the most formidable discipline that I have ever studied, is discipline itself! Who am I? Why do I want to teach? And most importantly, what are my weaknesses? Reverting to my background in economics, I conducted a SWOT(strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats) Analysis on myself and was faced with a reality that was conspicuous, yet frequently neglected. The biggest problem that I currently grapple with is procrastination, and instead of procrastinating to find a solution for the procrastination, I "abruptly" went on a treasure hunt in pursuit of a remedy for this pestilence. My journey led me to a book called Eat That Frog by Brian Tracy which offers an array of superlative advice on subduing the deliberate deferment of important tasks.

***FRUITS***

• "Decide exactly what you want to accomplish in each area of your life"(7)
• "Plan every day in advance"(13)
• "Apply the Pareto Principle also known as the 80/20 rule to everything"in other words if you have 10 things on your daily itinerary, two of those tasks will result to more than the rest of the items put together, so procrastinating will in essence lead to shortcomings. Also you (I) should resist the temptation of finishing the easiest tasks first. Eating a frog means accomplishing a feat that is not easy, but doing it because it will get me closer to where I need to be. (20)
• "Long term thinking often improves short term decision making"(27)
• Go back to the basics of A,B,C's "The power of this technique lies in its simplicity..."An A item is defined as something that is very important, something you must do or else face serious consequences etc....(32)