English 108 Updates

English 108A, Early Fall Start 2022

Assignments and Updates

This page has the most up-to-date information available on this website. Please check this page frequently throughout the quarter!!

(Information on this page will be listed in reverse chronological order--beware!)

For help with grammar and mechanics, try:

http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/678/01/

Friday: Your account of your Learning Conference:

In weeks 3 and 4 you will have gone through a complex process to participate in our academic conference, most of which had to be new to you. You will have worked as a member of a research team, navigated the UW library system, read various sources to find something you could use for your presentation, and found a way to organize your thoughts into a 2 minute chunk, and then you will have actually performed it, too. That is a lot of steps, few of which were familiar or easy.

After the conference, write a 2-3 page narrative. Start with an account of your part of the presentation. Begin your account by setting the context and describing the topic your group took up. Describe your group's work and how you proceeded--did this go well? were you all working together towards your best presentation? What problems did you have to solve?

In the second part of the narrative, describe the most prominent or inspirational learning moment(s) from your total conference experience.

Thursday, September 15: Learning Conference

Wednesday, September 14:

Read: "Why Can't Everyone Get A's?"

Write: What do you think the real point of this piece be? Is it that we shouldn't give A's? or does he really mean that everyone should get A's? Or...? What do you think?

Tuesday, September 13: Turn in My Learning Profile, and Practice for Conference Presentation.

Friday, September 9: Group Proposal for Conference Presentation Due.

Thursday, September 8: Full Proposal for My Learning Profile

This will be a 2 page (200-400 words) draft in which you explain: 1) how you see yourself as a learner, 2) a summary of your strengths and weaknesses; and 3) how/why the learning concepts we've encountered this term that might apply to or explain the anecdotes. The Full Proposal will be due September 8 at the beginning of class.

Tuesday, September 6: Come to class ready for a quiz on the Learning About Learning Appendix This will be a beginning to working on the English 108 Learning Conference. See the Blackboard.

Friday, September 2

Writing: final draft of My Writing Life Due at 9:30am

Thursday, September 1

Reading: Ramirez and Beilock, "Writing About Testing Worries Boosts Exam Performance in the Classroom." Science Vol. 331 14 Jan 2011, pp. 211-213.

Writing: We talked about the Working Memory on Wednesday; here are researchers experimenting with what might be a way of reducing anxiety in students of math who are taking a test. So two things to write brief notes about:

a. knowing something about writing and about stress, does this seem a viable research project? do you think writing before an exam could reduce anxiety among students taking the exam?

b. having read their account of their experiment, what is it there that seems the most convincing data: the graph, the description, or?

Wednesday, August 31

Reading 1: "Why Don't Students Like School?Because the Mind is Not Designed for thinking."

Writing: Describe one thing about the brain that Willingham describes that is NOT designed for thought!

Reading 2: read the two My Writing Life papers I distributed today, and use the 6 Criteria to assess them.

Tuesday, August 30:

Reading: Learning About Learning, Part 1. We'll have a short quiz in class.

Writing: For Tuesday you will be writing your first paper. For the full assignment click on this link: My Writing Life

You wrote on the first day of class about yourself as a writer; that was in a way an exercise to help you start thinking about who you are as a writer. This assignment asks for something more in depth.

If, once you have read through the assignment, you have questions, send me an email.

(For Website Search for John Webster Washington)

For Friday, 26 August:

I. Scavenger Hunt in the Syllabus:

1. When are my office hours? What do you do if you need help outside of office hours?

2. What are the goals of English 108? Why do we learn learning theory?

3. What is the OWRC and where is it?

4. What is ECI?

5. What one book do I recommend? Why do you think I recommend it?

6. What is my policy on correcting your grammar?

7. So if it’s a writing course, why the emphasis on cognitive learning theory?

8. What is plagiarism, and what will I do about it?

9. What is the average GPA of first-year students at the UW?

10. Where is my office?

11. What is the English 108 grade policy?

II. For Friday, 26 August:

Reading: Herb Kohl, "I Won't Learn From You," pp 1-13 (ending with the paragraph the finishes half way down the page.).

Writing: write responses as full as you can to any three of the seven questions below:

1. How does Kohl explain his decision to not learn Yiddish? Why did he later come to regret his decision?

2. How was Kohl’s motive for not learning Hebrew different from his motive for not learning Yiddish? How does he explain his motives for each?

3. Kohl talks about “complex factors” behind the failure of children to learn various things. What does he mean by that? Think about a time in your own life when you found something difficult to learn, or even failed or refused to learn something. Can you remember the incident and what was going on in YOUR mind? Tell us the story!

4. Kohl’s point of view is retrospective here; he is looking back at himself as a learner (or not-learner!). His current point of view is different from the view he took as a child. How is it different, and why?

5. Kohl talks about learning as potentially being “a major loss of self.” How can this be? We go to school not to lose ourselves but to develop ourselves into more effective and able thinkers. In Kohl’s thinking, in what way could this be a loss?

6. Kohl talks about creating a “strategy of empowerment” for enabling Barry to learn to read. What does he do to empower Barry? Have you ever had a teacher who you felt either empowered or disempowered you? What happened?

7. Think about the way in which Kohl makes his argument. What does he use as a means to convince you that he knows what he is talking about—a quality of writing we call “authority”? Find an example of ways in which Kohl develops “authority” for his argument?

(This is itself a "writing assignment," so think of your answers as short answer paragraphs.)