Read-Think-b4-u-Write

If you listen to some people, they complain about how young people today can't string five words together into a coherent sentence, BUT today more people then ever before can read and write. Why is that? It's called T-E-X-T-I-N-G! In this digital age if you can't keyboard, you're sunk. Every job everywhere involves some form of written communication. Hard to believe that 757 million adults cannot read or write. Maybe it's just third world countries. But no! In America this may seem foreign to us, but guess again there are 32 million adults that cannot read or write. Think about that. How do they go to the store? How do they pay their bills? How do they take public transportation? How do they read medication labels? What does it mean to be illiterate? It means you, your children, and your family will live in poverty. There's even a Literacy Day (Sept. 8) to help raise awareness of this problem. Do you know someone that struggles with reading ...

Have you read Lord of the Rings ? How about The Great Gatsby or The Catcher in the Rye ? If you have then you are reading banned books. In honor of Banned Books Week (Sept. 30) here are the top twenty banned "classic" books according to the American Library Association (ALA) . 1. The Great Gatsby , by F. Scott Fitzgerald 2. The Catcher in the Rye , by J.D. Salinger 3. The Grapes of Wrath , by John Steinbeck 4. To Kill a Mockingbird , by Harper Lee 5. The Color Purple , by Alice Walker 6. Ulysses , by James Joyce 7. Beloved , by Toni Morrison 8. The Lord of the Flies , by William Golding 9. 1984 , by George Orwell 11. Lolita , by Vladmir Nabokov 12. Of Mice and Men , by John Steinbeck 15. Catch-22 , by Joseph Heller 16. Brave New World , by Aldous Huxley 17. Animal Farm , by George Orwell 18. The Sun Also Rises , by Ernest Hemingway 19. As I Lay Dying , by William Faulkner 20. A Farewell to Arms , by Ernest Hemingway Why are books b...

Who needs teachers when you can let a robot do the grading? Some colleges have recently started using robo-graders to score English assessment tests and students already know how to "beat" the system. Students who have taken the test, offer the following advice: use big words with lots of syllables, spell every word correctly, and write at least a six-paragraph essay. The New York Times recently ran an article entitled "Facing a Robo-Grader? Just Keep Obfuscating Mellifluously" . Here's the advice they gave students when writing an essay scored by E-Rater (not really, but this is what the studies found): Write your own subjective truth. Don't worry about whether your prose is factual or not, it seems that Robo-Graders can't tell the difference between whoppers and facts. Write really long and seemingly complicated sentences because E-Rater does not like short sentences; not even dramatically short sentences. Do not begin sentences with ...

The little words called the busy "P"s . . . at, far, in, from, by, with, to, on, of, over, across and so many others. The Preposition's job: "Connect noun or pronoun object to some other word in the sentence . . . and they never stand alone." But what exactly is a Preposition? The University of Ottawa Writing Center says: A preposition links nouns, pronouns and phrases to other words in a sentence. The word or phrase that the preposition introduces is called the object of the preposition. A preposition usually indicates the temporal, spatial or logical relationship of its object to the rest of the sentence as in the following examples:      The book is on the table.      The book is beneath the table.      The book is leaning against the table.      The book is beside the table.      She held the book over the table. ...

Let's jazz it up at Conjunction Junction. If this tune doesn't stick in your head for the rest of the day . . . Conjunction junction what's your function? Conjunctions are: and (additive, this AND that), but (the opposite of and, not this BUT that), and or (when you have a choice, like this OR that). Conjunctions hook up words, phrases and clauses to make them work right. Pretty easy, right? Let's look at subordinate conjunctions and coordinate conjunctions. Here's some tips from the OWL at D'Youville College in New York: >Subordinate Conjunctions A subordinate conjunction is a word or phrase that begins a dependent clause. Examples of subordinate conjunctions are the following: since, because, when, if, after, although, until, etc. Example #1 I don't function as well as I normally do when I get tired. Explanation: The subordinate conjunction is "when," and it begins the dependent clause "when I get tired." Exam...

Students often say their high school teachers told them to never use "I" in their papers. I'm not sure I agree, but the problem for high school teachers may be an annoying inundation of "I" constructions, "I think this" and "I believe that" coupled with the uninformed "I" analysis written by teenagers who have been told that they are "entitled to their own opinion." Well, that's just fine, as long as it is an informed opinion and not just an opinion based on some tingling nerve ending. But is using "I" really bad? In the Spring 2011 issue of Inside English Charles Hood of Antelope Valley College asks "Why do Students use "I" Appropriately in Speech and Yet so Badly in Papers?" Here are four kinds of student "I" uses that he found ineffective: The Invisible Man I. That is, there is no human agency in the paper; instead sentences (often fragments) appear out of the et...

Here's the next installment of School House Rock--this time in a country western song about nouns. For the rest of the day you'll be singing "Every person, place, or thing that you can know, ya know their nouns." But there is a lot more to nouns than just concrete people, animals, places, or things. It is also abstract ideas. Here's a larger explanation of nouns from the University of Ottawa . Proper Nouns You always write a proper noun with a capital letter, since the noun represents the name of a specific person, place, or thing. The names of days of the week, months, historical documents, institutions, organizations, religions, their holy texts and their adherents are proper nouns.       Last year, Jaime had a Baptist and a Buddhist as roommates. Common Nouns A common noun is a noun referring to a person, place, or thing in a general sense -- usually, you should write it with a capital letter only when it begins a sentence. A common noun is...

As a kid, Saturday morning included not only Scooby Doo cartoons, but also School House Rock, cartoons with catchy phrases to help kids learn grammar, U.S. History, math, and science. What better way to learn grammar than to get some crazy tune stuck in your head? First, watch The Tale of Mr. Morton . Believe me, you'll be humming this until bedtime. Next, an explanation of Subjects and Predicates from the University of Ottawa . "Every complete sentence contains two parts: a subject and a predicate. The subject is what (or whom) the sentence is about, while the predicate tells something about the subject. In the following sentences, the predicate is enclosed in brackets { }.      Judy {runs}.      Judy and her dog {run on the beach every morning}. To determine the subject of a sentence, first isolate the verb and then make a question by placing "who?" or "what?" before it -- the answer is the subject.  ...

What should your professor notice about your paper format? NOTHING! The only time your professor will notice something about your paper's format is when you don't bother following standard college level formatting, or you do something creative--teachers interpret this as strange or just plain wrong. This tells the professor you cannot follow instructions and leaves them wondering what other instructions you didn't bother following. The last thing you want to do is get your professor in a bad mood when he or she has a red pen in their hand. There are two basic styles of papers used in college classrooms; one is the APA style (American Psychological Association), and the other is MLA (Modern Language Association). The APA style is used in science classrooms, so if you're going for a Bachelor of Science degree, you'll most likely being using this format ( click here for a sample APA paper ). If you plan on receiving a Bachelor of Arts degree, you'll most...

Every life has its bmups, errr, I mean bumps, but don't let these basic grammar and spelling mistakes be one of them. One of these errors on a resume can cost you a job. Already have a job? Well, these blunders used often enough in emails or other interoffice communications will keep you on the bottom rung of the ladder. Leslie Ayers at Free Republic offers seven grammar and spelling mistakes that will make you looks stupid. Here is Leslie's top 4: You're / Your The apostrophe means it's a contraction of two words; "you're" is the short version of "you are" (the "a" is dropped), so if your sentence makes sense if you say "you are," then you're good to use you're. "Your" means it belongs to you, it's yours. * You're = if you mean "you are" then use the apostrophe * Your = belonging to you Correct Example: You're going to love your new job! It's / Its This one...

Cheating is rampant and not just in the college classroom. Recent scandals include the Atlanta school district where hundreds (yes, hundreds) of teachers and administrators, NOT STUDENTS, changed answers on state wide tests in order for the district to look good (meaning get more money) on standardized tests. You can blame "No Child Left Behind," for pushing up standards, but my response to those teachers who say the standardized test drove them to it: Didn't you always give tests in your classes? Of course, you did. But I digress . . . Great Neck, New York high school students paid to have their SAT tests taken by others with fake IDs and handwriting samples - tests that cost high schoolers $1 a point, meaning some paid more than $2000 for a good SAT score. David Wangaard and Jason Stephens in the Winter 2011 edition of Excellence and Ethics posted the results of a three-year study of academic motivation and integrity. The two researchers "surveyed ...

In argumentation, warrants or assumptions can be a tricky concept for readers and writers to grasp. Claims are supported by evidence and warrants – those underlying beliefs or values taken for granted by bloggers, advertisers, politicians, and writers. Assumptions can come from cultural values, biological or scientific beliefs, intellectual (logical) tenets, or idiosyncratic viewpoints. In writing and visual communication some warrants (or assumptions) are explicit, but most are implied and your understanding of texts, both visual and written, relies heavily on your beliefs. So having said all that - What does this strip remind you of? What are some of the underlying warrants or assumptions of this strip? Since comics often present information in a humorous way, what do you need to know in order to get the joke about visual communication? What is the joke? The author seems to be making a prediction, what is it? Do you agree or disagree? Is there anything, or any step,...

During the 2008 presidential election, I taught English at an institute of higher learning where the class focused on politics. What a great way for students to learn something about the presidential candidates, American history, and critical thinking. Throughout the quarter, we had lively and spirited conversations about the limitations on free speech and the press. For the final, I asked students to analyze a political cartoon that spoofed The New York Times for releasing sensitive material. This Times was dated April 17, 1775 and displayed a drawing of the old north church with headlines that read “One if by land; two if by sea. Secret Lantern Signals of American Colonists Revealed.” The first couple of paragraphs stated that an anonymous source had revealed the “secret plan for tomorrow to warn Patriot Colonist Militia Forces of the route the English Regular Soldiers plan to take as they move their forces to Lexington and Concord.” Student essays were to focus on how polit...

Greg Mortenson ends Three Cups of Tea with a "vision that we all will dedicate the next decade to achieve universal literacy and education for all children, especially for girls. More than 145 million of the world's children are deprived of education due to poverty, exploitation, slavery, gender discrimination, religious extremism, and corrupt governments" (Mortenson and Relin 333). What is your vision to achieve the goal of universal literacy?

Greg Mortenson's focus for the CAI is empowering girls through education. On a trip to Korphe, the reporter who accompanies Mortenson is amazed by the pluck of Jahan, a young woman educated in Korphe's school. "Here comes this teenage girl, in the center of a conservative Islamic village, waltzing into a circle of men, breaking through about sixteen layers of traditions at once: She had graduated from school and was the first educated woman in a valley of three thousand people. She didn't defer to anyone, sat down right in front of Greg [Mortenson], and handed him the product of the revolutionary skills she'd acquired--a proposal, in English, to better herself, and improve the life of her village" (Mortenson and Relin 300). One of the themes of Three Cups of Tea is that education can solve the problem of terrorism. "[T]error doesn't happen because some group of people somewhere like Pakistan or Afghanistan simply decide to hate us. It happens...

Why does Mortenson feel that "CAI schools should educate students only up through the fifth grade and focus on increasing the enrollment of girls" (Mortenson and Relin 209)? And, what does this say about Pakistani society? Why do you think the U.S. requires student education to the 12th grade? And, what does this say about our society?

Jonathan Kozol in "The Cost of an Illiterate Society," believes that people who can't read or write "are forced to cast a vote of questionable worth. They cannot make informed decisions based on serious print information ." He prefaces this comment by quoting James Madison, one of the Founding Fathers, who said, "A people who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power knowledge gives" ( RC,WW 403). Do you read your voter's handbook? Do you understand your voter's handbook? How do you think your literacy contributes to your voting decisions?