9/26

So, Friday in class, I talked with you all a little more about my reasons for not giving you grades on your essays.  One thing I want each of you to feel is a bit more ownership of your essay.  If you think it’s an A or B or C paper, it’s just important for you to know why you think this and what you think you could have done differently, or what you did well.

The other thing we did was talk about the wiki’s and formulate a plan for each group. I sent you all emails that should allow you to log in to your wiki pages.  I’m really excited to see what you all come up with.

 

I’m going to send you an email and write a post for what I expect you to be doing next week on Friday in class.

L

currently listening: the lint song – mc lars

9/25 – yawning faces

So today I had to share with you my research process, so that I could give you a model for how to start research from a very broad topic, and narrow it down to a smaller one. Just to recap, here is sort of the outline of my research:

1) googled a variety of phrases, including “valley girl,” “valley speak,” “san fernando dialect” “California dialects,” etc. During this phase of the search, I found information on Wikipedia that helped me to think about who spoke “valley” and I also got some information that helped me search further–two areas that have been studied: the word “like” and the “HRT” or “uptake” feature.

I also got a few names of researchers. I found links to the Frank Zappa song (and also to a movie called “Valley Girl,” starring Nic Cage, which I didn’t mention today…) and I also found links to audio sources that showed examples of Valley Speak, or made fun of it. The poem making fun of valley speak eventually helped me to formulate one of my main questions, which is what the uptake signifies to listeners.

2) I also attempted to do scholarly research through the Hunter Library databases. I tried the same words, and also tried names of some of the researchers I knew had studied this sociolect. Much of the research I could locate was in books (and I couldn’t go to the library at midnight… so I opted only for info that was available online in a full text format). I used the following databases, that you will also find helpful, I think:

ERIC; EBSCO; JSTOR; Sage Communication; PsycInfo; Sociology Full Text

3) At this point, I had a lot of information but I didn’t really have much scholarly info, so I clicked on the “Chat with a librarian” tool. I spoke with a guy in Hawaii and he offered some search options, none of which helped much. He told me that there probably isn’t a lot of research into this topic, which was not a bad thing, because then at least I could say something without it just being a total regurgitation of others’ work.

4) I spoke with a friend from California, and she explained her perceptions to me. I also spoke with another friend, who just helped me by listening to me talk through the issue. I can’t stress how valuable this was in keeping me going!!!!

5) I returned to some popular news sources, looking in the NYTimes. This is when I began to find some more references to the uptake as related to uncertainty, and also related to female speech patterns. I didn’t go much further than this, but I certainly could continue.

I’m going to start work on my wiki, and you can look at it whenever. It will be a work in progress, so I will be working on it when I have time, from now til Friday… I haven’t really done anything yet, except start with a working title…

here is the link:

http://likelikelike.wikispaces.com/

currently listening: I wanna be sedated – the ramones

and: baba says cool for thought… we think it’s cool too.

9/23

More of you read your essays today, muchas gracias! Then we discussed the things we think are most important in a good essay, in descending order:

main concept/idea

engaging to reader

strong sense of voice

supporting details to back up idea

structure overall, and structure within paragraphs

syntax in sentences

sentence variation (length and style)

grammar, punctuation, spelling

I think those are the main ideas we mentioned–forgive me if there are some I have forgotten.

Then I gave back your essays. Some of you seemed frightened and disappointed by the amount of red ink. Two things I have to say about that: 1) I only chose red because it stood out, and I am sorry, because I know it has horrible connotations of “bad bad bad!”

2) I am really hopeful that I haven’t destroyed the sense of trust and admiration I have in you and of your writing skills. I am not just here to judge, just to give suggestions, even if they may be in red ink.

This is why I will not be giving you grades on your essays throughout the semester. You are all well-aware of the the amount of effort you put into your essay, the ways it could be improved, and the things that you really loved about it. I know you think I am better poised to grade your essay than you are, but I’m really not. You are all much harder graders than I would be, and I think you all know that the true grade should be about you, and how you have pushed yourself. You can always get grades in other classes, but THIS class is about learning to push yourself and more importantly to take pride in the things you do well. This class is about understanding and strengthening your writing process. Of course, your COURSE grade will be reflective of your overall work. And if you grade yourself too hard (or too lightly) in my opinion, we’ll discuss.

Ok, so tomorrow we will work on building wiki pages. I would like for you to come to class tomorrow with some strong ideas (or a strong idea) on what you would like your wiki page to address. We may do some switching up in the groups depending on the interests you have.

Ok, seacrest out.

l

currently listening: tift merritt “another country”

9/19

Tuesday morning, and I just realized I forgot to post a summary of our last session. I gave each group an outline/list of questions and issues that we had raised and discussed in relation to alternate varieties of English, and asked each group to discuss those issues.

I. Ebonics

What is Ebonics? Who speals it, why do they speak it, where did it arise?

What is the value of Ebonics? Culturally? Professioanlly? Artistically?

What exactly was the Oakland School board trying to accomplish with their decision in 1996?

What is the different between EBonics and Standard English? What is the place of each dialect in culture and education?

What are the attitudes people hold about EBonics and why?

II> Functions of Language Varieties

What makes Standard English “Standard”? What is the purpose of having one main form of English used in an educational setting?

How can varieties of language allow us to express different things?

What does our own language variety say about us? What do we think of others’ language varieties?

How is language used as a means to resist? How do non-standard varieties of the language change when “the man” begins to usurp them? How does the man do this?

III. Judgments and Success

What is the relationship between language and academic/professional success?

What is the role of classism and racism in our linguistic beliefs?
What language does a child bring to school? What linguistic traditions? How can those be utilized rather than eradicated?

IV. Hip-hop. slang, valley speak etc

How do we view each of these different;y?
What types of language hierarchies do we have in our heads?

What is the role of media in transmitting attitides towards different linguistic varieties?

We discussed these topics in small groups, and I asked each of you to begin thinking about what you might want to write a wiki page about, with your group.

9/17

All right, so excellent job today… I had so many thoughts swimming in my head that I could even take a nap on the subway to my other job, which I usually do!

Here are some the threads I thought were most interesting today:

What kinds of value do different types of languages, dialects, speech patterns have? Who invests them with that value? (Aesthetic vs. practical)

How can language be used as a means to resist? Does creating a coded language exclude those that aren’t a member of the group? How does standard English exclude some groups? How does Ebonics exclude? What is the difference in these two types of exclusion?

What is the relationship between language and intellect? Which types of speaking and writing make one seem more intelligent? Which topics and issues make one seem less intelligent? (as someone put it: drugs, money, pussy)

How does racism play itself out in our current linguistic situation?

What should a teacher be willing to do to help a student? What should be required of a student in terms of writing, in order to be considered competent?

How is testing changing the nature of our education system? How does testing in standardized language affect non-standardized speakers?

These are all things to think about, along with the many other freat ideas you all brought up. Please also refer to the attachment, which is a list of quotes from the readings, which I tried to organize into different topics.

As I said in class, for Friday, I would like you to choose a particular topic or question and write at least a page of your thoughts and reactions. This will serve as a rough rough draft for future writing on this topic.

Two things I want to impress on you

1) remember to always be thinking about why something is the way it is, and who stands to gain from that. power power power, hierarchy, intellectual superiority–who gets what from making judgments on these topics?

2) I appreciate everyone’s comments and hope we all remain open to differences of opinion.

quotes-from-the-readings-on-ebonics

See you Friday,

L

ps currently listening to “superstar” by Lupe Fiasco