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[the] English-Blog [.com]
This hot new web log is designed specifically for those in the English language arena that tries to fill an overtly obvious gap between the pre-existing English language blogs by offering a much more comprehensive (and controversial) approach. In its introductory post, the "English-Blog" promises to be "smart, savvy, witty and sometimes funny" by taking on the field of teaching the language arts
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A Typical Day in the Life of a University-Level *Literature Undergrad*
2008-05-06 18:12:17
Enjoyed the literature class and now considering/thinking of becoming a "Literature Major" in your current postsecondary program of study? The following two 10-minute videos from the University of Wales in Bangor follows "Rich," a representative literature undergraduate student through a typical day of school to show you *(partly) what this field of study entails at the higher education level.
'A Day in the Life of an English Literature Student I'
Video Source: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q8UOMGQfuLk
In the second video . . .
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*Eudora Welty - Wearing Away Paths
2008-05-01 06:56:00
Image Source: http://media.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/photo/2005/08/12/PH2005081201306.jpg
Students . . .
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The Minor Characters of *The Sun Also Rises*
2008-02-28 15:36:35
Image Source: http://www.gmu.edu/library/specialcollections/sunrise2.jpg
28 February 2008
Hello Students,
I was very impressed with your comments on Hughes's "On the Road," in the last blog entry, and with your engagement with the text of Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises in our last meeting. As with the meeting before last, several of you stayed after class to discuss your experiences with the work. Even though I may seem to be in a hurry at times, I do appreciate those remarks and I am always happy to see someone "turned on" to a piece of literature they've never encountered before.
To recap what we did in last night's meeting and your current assignment . . .
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Critical Theory and Langston Hughes's *On the Road*
2008-02-14 04:45:29
Image Source: http://ftp.ccccd.edu/mtolleson/American%20images/LangstonHughes.JPG
13 February 2008
Students,
Once again, I enjoyed your involvement in our class discussion tonight.
Please click on the link below to see the details of this week's blog writing assignment...
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Theory
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Conflicts in 20th Century American Literature
2008-02-07 04:45:03
Image Source: http://images.amazon.com/images/P/0374516812.01._SCLZZZZZZZ_.jpg
6 February 2008
Students,
I enjoyed your involvement in our class discussion tonight.
Please click on the link below to see the details of this week's blog writing assignment . . .
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Century
Literature
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New to Teaching Writing? Eleven Things You Should Know
2008-01-18 15:40:06
Image Source: http://www.soe.umich.edu/es/images/chalkboard.jpg
Hi Readers,
Allyson of Learning to Teach Tech-Comm, a freelance writer and graduate student teacher, posted a list of eleven things that took me many semesters to learn by trial and error. For me, the advice is quite useful. What tips for composition teachers would you add to this list?
Eleven Things You Could Start Doing Today for the Benefit of Your Students' Writing
A few days ago, someone forwarded and email called "Eleven Things You Could Start Doing Today for the Benefit of Your Students' Writing" to the WPA listserv. I wanted to comment on it, but this is the first time I've had the chance because of the conference, as well as just keeping up in general. I'm not going to reproduce the e-mail comments under each item, but instead reproduce the items with my own thoughts.
1. Give writing assignments in written form, not just word of mouth
This one really is important. I pretty much figured that out within a ...
Teaching
Writing
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A Message To Those Who Create Their Own Words
2008-01-14 00:36:13
Image Source: http://www.eidenmyr.com/images/misc/quizresults/wordsmith.jpg
Ok, follow me here: If someone is another's "girl" it used to mean that the "girl" was someone's girlfriend. But, if someone is another's "boy" (an English expression frequently repeated by other males), it apparently means something altogether different (and not a servant).
I freely admit that I know I'm getting old; I happen to know that many of us, English teachers included, hear certain trendy, new expressions that we . . .
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When Chicago Gives You Lemons: Make MLAde!
2008-01-08 19:38:39
Image Source: http://www.mla.org/images/docstudio/chicago07_logocolor.gif
Happy New Year!
I just returned from Chicago where I attended two professional conferences, the American Association of Teachers of Slavic and Eastern European Languages (AATSEEL) and the Modern Language Association (MLA). I presented at AATSEEL, interviewed at MLA, and did some valuable networking at both, which were held concurrently this year.
Much fun is . . .
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Chicago
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Speculative Fiction: The Consequences of Transforming Adjunct Teachers into Robots
2007-12-23 16:56:47
Image Source=http://www.neatorobotics.com/neato/images/robot_teacher.jpg
Hi Everyone,
It's the end of the year and time to review some speculative fiction...about the future.
This hilarious, yet horrific, short story--sent to me by my dissertation committee director--should have come out at Halloween. Coming out during the Winter holiday season, it sort of reminds me of the fused "Halloween-Christmas" holiday of the far-future as depicted in Matt Groening's sci-fi Futurama episode, "A Tale of Two Santas." The "war" aspect seems to satirize the now archetypal robot-war backstory of either the Matrix series (The Animatrix) the new Battlestar Galactica series, or many other science fiction classics. Now, we have a "teacher" story. Could Michael Moore or Al Gore please make this into a film?
The Chronicle of Higher Education, by the way, is a great resource for those in our field by the way--as much as I read them, I should give them a shout-out once in a while. This dystopia, fr ...
Consequences
Fiction
Robots
Teachers
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Humor - The Post Ph.D. Blues
2007-12-16 23:31:05
Image Source: http://www.jazzartpaintings.com/wjpt19.jpg
Hello Readers,
This week's contribution was sent to the English-Blog by Natalie Dorfeld:
The Post Ph.D. Blues
Sometime around mid-June, I received a large yellow envelope from my alma mater, Indiana University of Pennsylvania. It was my prestigious Doctor of Philosophy diploma. I should have been cutting the rug like Snoopy in the midst of a happy dance, but I wasn’t much in the mood for celebrating. Instead, I buried it under a pile of junk mail and quietly deliberated the age old question: diagonally or horizontally? (I opted to mow the lawn in a diagonal cut.)
To truly comprehend this little known funk in English circles, otherwise known as the post Ph.D. blues, we must start at . . .
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Blues
Humor
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Has the Need for Assigning Homework Passed?
2007-12-08 20:35:44
Image Source: http://www.republicofd.com/homework.gif
Hello Readers,
A sporadic discussion topic in the education media has concerned itself with whether or not school-aged children really need all the homework they are normally assigned. Is it busy-work or is it necessary to the development of their minds. Critics claim that kids are already in school most of the day...isn't time spent on creative endeavors--i.e. "play"--and other activities that stimulate the imagination equally important? What about physical activity--translate: exercise? With an obesity epidemic in children of the developed world, should there be a more balanced approach to . . .
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Homework
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How a Linguist Sings the Blues
2007-12-06 23:41:37
Image Source: http://store.perspicuity.com/sections/Products/Linguist.jpg
Thanks to Chris Swanson of Perspicuity.com and Mark Liberman of Language Log! Please visit their sites.
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Blues
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When Teaching English Becomes a Child's Death Sentence
2007-12-05 05:25:58
The Teddy Bear incident in Sedan has stirred a lot of attention in the Western media recently and overshadowed this slightly older story from Elyas Wahdat of Reuters News on November 15. Of interest, perhaps, to the overseas English-language teaching community:
Taliban Kill Afghan Boy for Teaching English
KHOST, Afghanistan (Reuters) - Taliban militants shot dead a teenage boy in southeastern Afghanistan for teaching English to his classmates, police said on . . .
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Child
Death
English
Teaching
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Need a *Magic* New Teaching Methodology? Introducing *Harry Potter* Pedagogy!
2007-12-03 18:59:14
Image Source: http://raincoaster.files.wordpress.com/2007/04/harry-potter-is-being-punished.jpg
I was skeptical at first, but it seems that those Harry Potter books may actually have a purpose beyond pop-culture's claim to have begun a renaissance of reading interest in British and North American youngsters. I have previously used the structural framework of the Harry Potter narrative, as an outline at least, to demonstrate Joseph Campbell's Monomyth (the Hero's Journey) model in my literature classes--especially when stacked up against *Star Wars*--with some success. Demonstrating how myth/fantasy can a subtle reflection of reality is one thing (for some students, some real magic is needed!). However, . . .
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Harry Potter
Magic
Teaching
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Will Colleges Join the Voluntary System of Accountability?
2007-12-01 19:04:18
From Robert Morse's "Morse Code: Inside the College Rankings" in U.S. News & World Report:
Will Colleges Join the Voluntary System of Accountability?
Public colleges have a golden opportunity to make a statement on the importance of releasing their educational data to the public. All they have to do is participate in a plan called the Voluntary System of Accountability, developed by the National Association of State Universities and Land-Grant Colleges and the American Association of State Colleges and Universities, which combined represent 600 public schools that enroll 7.5 million students and award about 70 percent of U.S. bachelor's degrees each year.
The highlight of this plan is . . .
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Accountability
System
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Questioning Othello: Truth, Justice, and the English Renaissance Way
2007-11-26 18:26:01
Image Source:http://www.geocities.com/themodpoet/graphics/literary/othello_title.jpg
26 Nov. 2007
Students,
Today, in our first class meeting since the holiday, you chose a question from the supplementary material at the end of William Shakespeare's Othello and wrote an open-book response.
Please . . .
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English
Justice
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How to Pronounce *Iocaste* and Other Fun Pronouns from Literature
2007-11-19 16:09:58
Hi Students,
Even after my long-winded explanations of phonology and etymology in our class lectures, some of you still have questions on how to pronounce some of the names from Oedipus Rex (or, Oedipus, The King).
Below, I have reprinted a few worthy explanations from voices younger than mine. Perhaps their explications are simpler to understand . . .
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Fun
Literature
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The Hero's Journey and More - Exploring Patterns in Short Narratives
2007-11-16 16:05:24
Image Source: http://threshold.monomyth.org/images/MonoMythex.jpg
16 November 2007
Dear Literature Students,
[NOTE: The instructions for this extra-credit assignment applies to (and, is only open to) students who had previously signed the student-teacher contract indicating that they would be participating. If you did not sign-up for the "auto-A" option, you do not need to do this. Also, those who did sign-up but managed to get to the writing center before I withdrew that condition of the assignment, are also excused from republishing on the English-Blog].
If this applies to you, per the terms of your optional, extra-credit assignment (modifications of which were discussed today in class) please share your research from Essay #2 below.
Note that my comments on your paper will be candid, format-focused, and public, so please present your very best effort. Visitors, please feel free to comment on the content of any of these essay contributions.
Click HERE to read the rest of the ...
Exploring
Hero
Journey
Patterns
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Do You Talk To Your Dissertation? - What It Might Sound Like if You Could
2007-11-09 01:47:23
Image Source: http://home.earthlink.net/~typographer/images/covers/09McGrath.gif
Ok, this is one of the funniest things that's been e-mailed to me in awhile. Sorry, I just have to share this. If you have ever been caught up in the vortex that is called "dissertation writing" you can possibly relate to this gentleman's rant. I'm assuming that . . .
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Sound
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Rumors of *Two-Spaces-After-a-Period*'s Death Are Highly Exaggerated
2007-11-06 02:42:14
Image Source: http://www.digitaljournal.com/images/photo/TypingMonkeyLarge.jpg
Friends,
I learned to type on an actual manual typewriter in the 1980's folks! The one space thingy just looks too "internety," if I may use that word, on printed hardcopy. Same with the extra space between paragraphs and no paragraph indentions. Should we or shouldn't we make distinctions between the two types of writing?
I've found that . . .
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Death
Rumors
Spaces
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Using the Articles 'A' or 'An' Before the Words 'Historic' or 'Historical'
2007-11-03 18:55:45
The rule seems simple enough doesn't it? Except for words such as "heir," "hour," "honor," or "herb" the article "a," (not "an") precedes a word beginning with the letter "h." That's how I was taught, yet the either archaic or exceptional "an" article still crops up here and there, even in more "respectable" venues like NPR, one of the supposed final bastions of clear, crisp, and articulately spoken Standard American English. Is public media's incorporation of the, for example, commonly-heard British and Canadian usage of "an" before "historic" mere pretentiousness on their part or some refusal to use Standard American English "rules" on the air? To many, this bold grammatical choice is unoffensive, but how are we to--as teachers--properly explain this inconsistency to EL learners and even native-speakers in grammar and writing bridge courses? Below is an excerpt from James Dvorkin's reply to a recent letter by Charles Everest about NPR's on-air grammatical faux-pas. (Please note E ...
Articles
Historic
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Thanks for Your Application - The Ultimate Rejection Letter for English Teaching Jobs
2007-10-27 16:02:36
If you're like me, a college adjunct instructor looking for full-time, tenure-track employment, you are probably applying to a lot of universities. You may even be keeping a collection of "rejection" letters. Sending out customized application packets to all of these institutions can be not only time-consuming but expensive. It can get a little disheartening when those rejections begin to stack up. A colleague of mine recently held a "bonfire" session for her collection of rejection letters, after finally securing her first tenure-track job--a kind of emotional release from the trauma! An older professor I had during my master's program once counseled me on the application process and showed me a file cabinet drawer full of his old rejection letters. He said he kept them around for occasions just such as mine--when we began to feel discouraged from being told "thanks, but no thanks" continually. The letter at the link below, found at a site called chaosmatrix.org, sums up the fe ...
Application
English
Jobs
Letter
Teaching
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