Don’t you hate when you sit down to write a really important document only to find that an hour has gone by and all you’ve done is look at pictures of funny dog faces? If so, you may need to take drastic steps to keep yourself on task.
A few years ago, someone took those steps, threw them into a text box, and called it “Write or Die”. The result isn’t the matter of life and death it makes itself out to be, but the site does keep you focused on the writing project at hand. In the developer’s words,
Write or Die is a web application that encourages writing by punishing the tendency to avoid writing. Start typing in the box. As long as you keep typing, you’re fine, but once you stop typing, you have a grace period of a certain number of seconds and then there are consequences.
Sound a bit ominous? Curious about the consequences? Find out more at writeordie.com and try the free Web App.
Given that yesterday we posted about the importance of revision, and because Monday was the NCTE’s Fifth Annual National Day on Writing, we thought we would continue the trend and usher in this Friday by celebrating writing.
But writing in English is the worst. Don’t you think?
Whether it’s your first, second, or fifth language, I think we can all agree that the amount of time and effort it takes to master the English language – and especially the written English language – is just ridiculous. The only thing more irritating than the number of rules the language has is the number of times they’re broken. In that sense, English grammatical rules sort of seem like the points on television’s “Whose Line Is It Anyway?”: they just don’t matter.
That’s why we love the fantastically witty post “8 New Punctuation Marks We Desperately Need” from Mike Trapp and the sometimes crude folks at College Humour. It’s not the first time bloggers have suggested alternative punctuation marks on that site, but we particularly like this list. We’re especially fond of the “Morgan Freemark”, which Trapp explains as follows:
Reminds readers that they can read words in any voice they want, so maybe they should read these words in Morgan Freeman’s voice.
Because let’s none of us pretend that we’ve never defaulted to Mr. Freeman’s voice when bored reading to ourselves. Read more about the Morgan Freemark and other punctuation the modern world demands here.
It’s hard enough to establish some kind of authority as a GA or TA without those dreaded, glaring spelling mistakes that we all commit from time to time.
Yes, like Kathleen Wynne before me, I’ve recently been guilty of a few grammatical goof-ups and spelling snafus. For someone who has taught writing and copyedited for academic publications, there is no worse feeling than when one of these incidents happens in a public place, in front of students, or *gasp* in front of supervisors. As many of you have probably found in your roles as GAs and TAs, these types of slip-ups are extra embarrassing when you’re trying to prove that you are knowledgeable enough to advise others.
The problem is that, just like the famous saying about bowel movements, everybody goofs on grammar and spelling from time to time. Ernest Hemingway, for instance, couldn’t have cared less about either, and thousands of magazines and news stories are published with the most splendidly heinous errors every week. But while few question Hemingway’s authority based on his spelling ability, your own language skills can drastically affect your credibility in the classroom. In short: spelling mistakes happen, but they can be prevented by committing to strong revision practices that lead to good editing habits.
Revision
There is more to revision than just editing or proofreading. Revision is about reconsidering intentions and matching them to actions – in this case matching an intended message to the resulting piece of writing. Blau and Burak (2012) suggest that there are five steps to revision that range from the ideological (Refocusing) to the mechanical (Editing and Proofreading):
Refocusing
This is typically where you would revisit the original purpose for writing and assess whether your written work achieves that aim. You might list off the points you wanted to make and compare them to your current presentation, noting where ideas were missed, altered, or incomplete.
Reordering
There are many different positions on effective ordering. Some writers suggest opening the body of your writing with the strongest point that supports your position, while others suggest leading with your second strongest point and reserving your strongest for last. Some compositions focus on sequential events or processes, and will therefore have a natural order. Whatever the case, reordering is about assessing the arrangement of paragraphs (and even the sentences within those paragraphs) and determining whether they demonstrate the progression of ideas in a way that best supports the writer’s position/purpose.
Adding and Cutting
When reviewing a piece of writing, it is also important to assess the level of detail being presented and its appropriateness. What is appropriate will depend on the realities of the medium, the awareness or abilities of the audience, and any other imposed limits such as word counts. Adding should be used when an idea requires additional information in order for your audience to understand it as you intended. Cutting, as suggested, should be used to remove unnecessary information, repetition, redundancies, and even inefficient language.
Editing and Proofreading
So often this type of revision is reduced to spellcheck programs and grammar issues. These concerns certainly play a part in editing and proofreading, but stylistic concerns are equally as important. By “stylistic concerns” I mean the particular requirements of a genre, publication, institution, or audience. The requirements may pertain to layout, language use, spelling, citation style, or any other issue. Issues such as sentence variety, parallelism, transitions, and clutter-free syntax are also things to watch for at this stage.
***Notice that each stage gradually moves through different levels of analysis from macro to micro.***
Proofreading Strategies
Spellcheck is all well and good, but it’s useless when it comes to context. That means that your spellcheck program won’t be able to tell the difference between describing your teacher as “foul” or “fowl” (though the difference is pretty important). That’s why productive proofreading starts with the writer. Technology aside, there are some strategies even seasoned veterans rely on when performing final proofreads:
Reading aloud. It may sound silly, and you probably won’t be comfortable doing it in public at first, but reading your work aloud is one of the best ways to identify awkward syntax, shifts in tense, and even subject-verb agreement. When you read in your head, your brain will often correct these types of errors, ignoring redundant phrases and adding missing words/letters. Enunciating carefully can often trigger our innate sense of “proper” grammar. When and if you do find an element that needs correcting, be on the lookout: Gibson (1989) warns that we are most likely to miss mistakes that immediately follow each other.
Reading with a partner, alternating for each sentence. Alternating breaks the momentum we often gain while reading our own work that sometimes causes us to skim, misread, or overlook errors that are clear when we read sentence by sentence. The addition of a separate reader also theoretically keeps the process on task. Read from start to finish, and then finish to start, sentence by sentence. Reading backwards is another way to disrupt momentum and focus on each syntactical unit. Keep a list of common errors to help you narrow your search in future reads.
Practice reader response with a partner. As those of you who have ever participated in book reviews, peer review, or critiques will know, there is no greater test for a piece of writing than to have it analyzed by other, informed readers. Having a partner read and respond to your text can offer important critical insight. In order to reach that insight, however, your partners will have to review your writing meticulously. Reader response will often, then, provide grammatical and syntactical suggestions as a welcome side-effect of critical engagement.
Each of these strategies is designed to isolate your writing at the word, sentence, and paragraph level in order to consider how they all work together as a whole. Those suggestions that require a partner are also a good opportunity to gauge how successful you have been in expressing your original idea.
References
Blau, Susan and Kathryn Burak. Writing in the Works. 3rd ed. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2012.
Gibson, Martin L. The Writer’s Friend*:*And A Companion For Copy Editors And Others Who Work With Publications. Ames : Iowa State University Press, 1989.
Information in this post has been adapted for the University of Windsor’s Writing Support Desk’s presentation entitled “Editing and Revision”.
It’s not that we want to focus on what’s stressful on Mondays, it just seems that everything stressful seems that much more stressful the day after Sunday.
So many of the tips and resources we share here are practical that we thought it was time we got philosophical. University Affairs has been publishing on university life for a long time. Jo VanEvery has also been writing about professional development for quite a while. When the two teamed up to write about how to manage your stress a few weeks back, the result was a mix of clinical and spiritual advice. As VanEvery explains, stress within academia can depend a lot upon your position,
But whoever you are, the keys to managing stress are universal and are found in the opening lines of a prayer (sometimes known as the serenity prayer) by Reinhold Niebuhr: accepting the things you cannot change, having the courage to change the things you can, and knowing the difference between the two.
To find out the difference according to VanEvery, read more of her article here. You might want to check out VanEvery’s blog, too.
Midterms have already or are about to start, which is no fun whether you’re writing them or grading them. Making matters bleaker, the sun no longer sticks around until supper time. Worse than that, your favourite sports team also just lost the big game, your favourite t.v. show just got cancelled, and you have to do that thing you don’t want to for that person you don’t really like.
April aside, isn’t October just the worst?
Yes. We can’t fix that. Instead here’s a clip of Shakespearean space cowboy Patrick Stewart teaching us about the quadruple take in the YouTube sensation Quadruple Take Masterclass. Because some Fridays you just want to watch a notoriously severe actor give an informal lecture on the most obscure topic imaginable so that you can forget your troubles. Maybe we can also learn something from Stewart’s teaching style (but mostly we’ll just laugh at the idea of Captain Picard in a hoodie).
In our special Tuesday version of Monday Motivation, we figured we could all use a little extra motivation to counteract the tryptophan.
This piece by Dora Farkas should do nicely. Dora’s blog provides a lot of great advice for graduate students (but really all students) on how to be successful in university. Our favourite is learning to “eat that frog” – a term Dora borrows from Brian Tracy’s best-selling book of the same name. In Dora’s words,
According to an old proverb, if you begin your day by eating a live frog, you will have the satisfaction of knowing that that’s the worst thing that can happen to you all day. To apply the metaphor to a work day, your frog is the action that will have the most impact on your results, one that perhaps you have been procrastinating. Examples include learning a new software, getting your workspace organized or writing a manuscript. Think about which frog you would need to eat to make the biggest leap in reaching your goals.
Don’t get us wrong, turkey is great, but do yourselves a favour this Tuesday and eat your frog before you eat all those Thanksgiving leftovers. And read more from Dora here.
Today is Friday, but it’s also the day before Thanksgiving weekend. So, double the celebration. But do you even know why you should be celebrating? Maybe you think you know what Thanksgiving is all about, but are you sure?
A while back I read an article about one teacher’s struggles with culturally responsive teaching when teaching about Native American culture for the first time with limited knowledge. The article, written by Jioanna Carjuzaa and Holly Hunts from Montana State University-Bozeman, was featured in Collected Essays on Teaching and Learning, a peer-reviewed journal focused on the teaching and learning practice and based here at the University of Windsor. In the article, Hunts recounts how her research on Native American culture revealed that many of the assumptions she had about the history of Thanksgiving in the United States – as a holiday commemorating the time “Indians” saved a group of pilgrims on the verge of starvation – were actually false. (Read this and other CELT articles here.)
So are you sure you know the history of Thanksgiving here in Canada? If not, you may want to take a look at what the scholars at KidzWorld can tell you about the real story of Canadian Thanksgiving.
As you may have heard, October 10th has been declared World Mental Health Day by the World Federation of Mental Health (WFMH) and the World Health Organization (WHO). The purpose of this initiative is to raise awareness of mental health issues.
According to research, mental health issues should be of special concern to those involved in higher education. As reported by the CTV’s W5 in September, “it is apparent that the number of students considering suicide, and succeeding, appears to be growing, and the whole issue of mental health has become a real worry on university campuses all over Canada.” These and other revelations led the Canadian Association of College and Universities Student Services (CACUSS) and the Canadian Mental Health Association to partner in outlining tangible ways that higher education can support both learning and mental health (read their report “Post-Secondary Student Mental Health” here). In general, the recognition is that students are feeling more pressure than ever in their post-secondary education, and this is adversely affecting mental health.
Your Role In Mental Health Awareness
All GA/TAs play an important role in supporting mental health. As facilitators in classrooms and labs – and even as evaluators and mentors – we often recognize signs of stress, depression, or just general ill-health in our students. While tact and taboo might prevent us from addressing these issues, voicing your concerns with students that you feel are at risk in a respectful and non-confrontational way may cause those in need to seek help.
It is important to be informed on the types of resources offered to students seeking support for mental health issues. Here on campus at the University of Windsor, the Student Counseling Centre offers support on everything from mental health to learning disabilities or difficulties. On their website, you can also find links to other community services providing mental health resources in the Windsor area. There are also a number of independent organizations dedicated to students’ mental health, such as Students Against Depression. Based in the United Kingdom, this group provides resources and outlets for students experiencing depression. Discussing these types of resources in your classroom goes a long way towards informing your students on what resources are available to them.
It’s also important to keep an open dialogue with your students. One-on-one time isn’t always possible, but don’t be afraid to check in on your students’ stress level. Compassion can go a long way.
Your Own Mental Health
Don’t forget that you are a student too, and that means you’re just as susceptible to the pressures of school life. We’ve posted or linked to resources in the past that suggest ways that you can maintain your own mental health and the mental health of your peers. It’s also important that you recognize that counseling is available to everyone – even those who tend to act as counselors for their students.
Always be mindful of how you manage your stress. The University of British Columbia’s “Stress Busters” suggest that eating right and sleeping regularly (oh, you haven’t heard about sleep?) are important ways to combat stress. It may also help to reach out to resources here on campus at Windsor such as the S.T.E.P.S. program or Campus Life Line.
It’s a student-eat-student world out there. Maybe. Or maybe it just seems like that sometimes.
Or maybe you just feel like you’re always in competition with your peers. Especially among graduate students, it’s common to feel like you always have to “keep up with the Jones'” by publishing more, teaching more, and otherwise out-dueling your colleagues. But Kaitlin Gallagher would like you to know that it’s just not worth it to think of your academic success in terms of how much more you’ve done than your cubicle-mate or lab partner. As Kaitlin argues,
There are benefits to checking in and seeing where you are at compared to others, but not to negatively comparing achievements. A shift in attitude can help to turn unhealthy thoughts into productive actions.
To find out how you can turn envy into something positive, read the rest of Kaitlin’s article on GradHacker here.
We all search for models for success that we can emulate: Jay Gatsby had Benjamin Franklin, Luigi had Mario, and pretty much the whole of Generation Y has Steve Jobs. The problem with those types of rigid models is that sometimes they lead to success and other times they just lead to horrible stress.
That’s why you could do worse than to emulate comics legend Jack Kirby. A while ago, Lifehacker posted some lessons we could all learn form Kirby’s tumultuous career. While they may not seem relevant to the budding academic, each has some wisdom to offer on a Monday morning spent trying to motivate yourself for the week ahead:
- Teach Yourself Skills You Need: We may not be learning to draw like Kirby, but as GAs/TAs there is plenty we don’t know. Worse yet, there’s plenty we want to know/feel we should know/have been told we ought to know. Each of these things we learn in due time from our supervisors and our peers, but the important thing is to never lose that dedication and belief that allows for infinite learning. Always search out new ways to improve your skills.
- Learn When Perfection Isn’t Possible: Specifically, within the academic context, remember that self-improvement is a learning process. It’s not that Kirby was advocating slacking off; it’s just that he recognized that following through on responsibilities is always more important than absolute perfection. Often times the obsession with perfection can be debilitating, preventing us from finishing projects or ever even starting. There will be time for reflection after your project is complete, but you’ll need to finish first in order to have something to review.
- Know How (and When) to Say “No”: Often times it seems like this isn’t an option, especially when things get busy. Some demands that people have of you just aren’t realistic. Don’t overextend yourself in an effort to please everyone. Remember that your work as GAs/TAs is about your development as scholars and educators – not about scoring extra points for walking your supervisor’s dog.
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