paper progress

at this point i feel as though my paper is coming along nicely. i am at the halfway point for page six and found more resources to include to help solidify my main points. i am happy with the progress of my paper and think that it is easier than i had originally imagined it being.
i did not get much farther than i was on wednesday beacuse i went back and re-organized a few parts so that it flows together better.
one of my problems has always been citing sources internally and i am finding myself mixd up again on how to cite different things such as websites with no author, websites with multiple or one author, scholoarly articles done by a "taskforce," and so on. i will have to dig out my MLA handbook over the weekend and learn the correct way to do it.

Seminar paper drafting

I am getting pretty far with drafting my paper. The thing taking the most time is the organization of it. Bcause there is so much information, it is taking much consideration when breaking things up into different paragraphs. I want to be sure my paper flows without any confusion or jumping around. So far I've got about 3 pages and still have a lot more to write about. I am currently in the middle of writing why the topic I chose is important and I am finding there are more reasons than what I had originally thought.
Wednesday I will continue working on what I ended with today.

Factness and my Inquiry project

When thinking about whom I can talk to that would provide me with information containing “factness,” I realize that there are a larger number of people in which I could talk to than I had originally thought. Because my topic is based on young children and how their development of literacy skills is affected by issues surrounding speech, I could talk to parents of these children and obtain their take on the topic. Someone with firsthand personal experience, such as a parent, is bound to have some sort of opinion on my topic; parents not only deal with their child’s issue outside of the realm of education, they also deal with it in everyday life.
Second, I am certain that the teacher(s) of a child who is struggling with either a speech delay or impediment would have plenty of facts on how this child’s problem may or may not be affecting their growing knowledge of literacy. The only catch is that I would have to interview a teacher whom has had many years of teaching experience with preschool and kindergarten-aged children and who also places a great emphasis on literacy. I believe that a teacher with these credentials would be extremely beneficial in contributing information that has factness to my research.
I also would consider interviewing a teacher who belongs to a different discourse community aside from a school setting. This would be a daycare teacher who has had years of experience teaching three-five year olds. My current job has given me some insight on the different types of problems in which can occur in young children when it comes to literacy and I am lucky to know five people whom have encountered problems relating to my topic as they have worked in the field for four plus years. Because a daycare has a more informal atmosphere than an actual school would, these coworkers of mine may have different opinions and examples than a school teacher would.
I also cannot leave out speech therapists and teachers who are certified to teach children with special needs. I may include people such as Jan Writer, a professor at Elmhurst College, who specializes in catering to children who have needs other than what constitutes the norm. She also teaches college students these same things. I may opt to include her as she may have information that has factness to it and I may also look up and interview some of the speech professionals we have at Elmhurst College. These people will have one on one experience working with children who have speech impediments and these professionals may be able to provide me with some of their knowledge. Texts that hold factness that relates to my topic may be harder to come across as I am yet to find anything. I feel as though the best type of information regarding my topic would be found in texts written by former or present teachers along with scholars, researchers, and possibly even credible doctors and physicians. These people are all bound to have important information that has factness and will help me with my research topic. Besides interviewing the people above listed and reading texts relating to my topic, I can and will use electronic journals to find articles with factness relating to the topic of speech issues and the development of literacy in young children. Also, I can conduct my own research in two ways. First, by handing out surveys to parents with young children along with preschool and kindergarten teachers I will gain more insight on just how many children are experiencing issues regarding their speech development, and how it may or may not affect their ability to learn literacy at the same rate and level other children their age are learning.
Secondly, I can go to a school, daycare, or both to observe preschool and kindergartners to see how they learn literacy and how the children with learning barriers are taught; I am curious if their learning is at the same pace/level as the other children who do not have any restrictions or barriers on their development. I believe my observations will acquire some factness and information that would not be learned otherwise.

Audience is important

When deciding on what text to use to help me with my inquiry research, I opted to revisit an article that we have already read and discussed. This article is Ede and Lundsford’s Audience Addressed/Audience Invoked. I chose to re-read this because the more I think about the topic I have selected for my Inquiry Project, the more I feel as though the greatest way to make my paper successful is to really put thought into who my target audience is. My topic may be interesting and appealing to many members of the "general public," however; being that it relates to children and education, I feel strongly that there is a certain audience I should be shooting for.
Ede and Lundsford’s article reminded me that I need to be aware differences between audiences and that I should select one specific group of people in which I wish to affect. Doing this can only lead to a successful, well thought out paper.

Inquiry paper thoughts

I think the general public will find this topic important, however; the audience my paper will draw will be a select group of people. The people I am expecting to be most interested in my paper are people with young children and/or people who are considering having children. Readers will find the question of issues concerning speech delay and how it affects a young child’s learning of literacy most interesting and helpful when they have a connection or some sort of personal experience with the topic.
I don’t see why a scholarly discourse community would not be interested in the questions and concerns my paper may raise when preschool and kindergarten-aged children are the ones who will be running the country in the not so distant future. If a discourse community is labeled as “scholarly,” then it is assumed that they will care about the education and emerging problems of our youth.

I think that the topic of speech delay and how it affects the learning of literacy in a young child is universally believed to be a quite important and more common problem in schools today. The number of children being diagnosed with speech delays and impediments is growing more and more each year and it is important to know how it affects a child’s learning. With new knowledge of how it affects learning in certain areas, specifically literacy in this case, teachers will know where and how to adjust their lesson plans so that all children will receive equal opportunity at success in the classroom.
My experience working at a daycare for over two years has left me with the impression that parents depend on teachers to notice learning disabilities that may be present in their children and expect the teachers to correct it without any professional outside help (i.e. speech therapist). In today’s society, most parents are too busy with their lifestyle aside from their children to take the time to get the help their child needs and assume that their child’s schoolteacher will correct it, or the problem will correct itself in time. I’m hoping that this idea will change with the results of my paper.

I am writing this paper with hopes that the results will have an effect on my target audience and that after all is said and done, people will take action on the problems existing not only in terms of speech impediments but in other areas of a child’s life as well. I am going to write this paper in hopes that parents and teachers will learn a great deal about how critical it is for children to learn literacy at the preschool/kindergarten age and that existing issues in their development may have an impact with their learning.

Inquiry project

Part I: Exploration
1. Identify the issue or problem that you plan to focus on in your Inquiry Project. For my inquiry project, I would like to focus on the issues surrounding literacy at an early age (preschool-kindergarten).

2. What is your personal connection to and interest in this topic? The personal connection I have that raises my interest level in this topic is my love for children aged four-six. Although I love children of all ages, I feel that the preschool years are the most important to a child’s learning. Not only is their learning just important, the children are interested and curious about everything. This makes for the perfect time to introduce a child to literacy.
I was a tutor many years ago, it was more of an informal thing for a neighbor I used to baby-sit, for a five year old who was just beginning to learn how to read. She was having many problems differentiating sounds to words and tended to read without pausing for periods and commas. Tutoring her made me appreciate the instruction I had from a young age but also made me realize that not everyone is taught to read properly from an early age.

3. What opinions do you already hold about this topic?
I believe that literacy is one of the most critical areas of learning for a young child and if it is not taught correctly or early enough in a child’s life, the instruction will not be as effective as it would have been earlier on.
I also believe that by simply reading to your or other children on a daily basis, many times a day, is crucial to their interest in reading themselves and learning the language. Although reading is important, the tone of voice in which you read in is just as important. The more a child senses you are engaged and willing to read, the more they will want to take part in reading as well.
4. What knowledge do you already have about this topic. What are your main questions about this topic? What are you most curious about? I do not have any professional teaching experience nor have I done any observing at any schools, however; working at a daycare with various age groups for three years has given me some sort of feel for the need for reading and literacy instruction at an early age.
I am curious about the process in which a child learns literacy and how people (parents, teachers, etc.) go about expanding on their learning and keep up their interest in the subject.

6. How might composition theorists and researchers approach or study this topic? Does this approach differ from those of other related disciplines (such as communication studies)?
After answering the questions above, I am beginning to see that an approach to this topic would best come from psychologists who do research on children and their learning process and habits. A researcher may delve into the issues surrounding literacy and gather their information through surveys of people with young children and possibly by conducting interviews with teachers and or parents to explore teaching methods and thoughts on literacy in general.
7. How could you research this topic outside the library (for example, through interviews and/or observations)?
I feel as though I would have an easy time researching he topic of learning literacy in young children because I presently work at daycare in which I work with children of all ages and have access to other teachers’ thoughts and opinions.
Also, my sister-in-law’s mother and aunt and uncle are all middle school teachers whose lesson plans all include reading and writing. I could interview them on their views and methods of teaching literacy and inquire about the types of issues they see regarding the child’s learning of literacy throughout a typical school year.
Lastly, I could put out a survey to parents of young children in which would address their child’s learning habits and how the parents themselves help their child acquire the knowledge of reading.

Write an initial claim, or an open-ended question, to guide your research on this topic. Make it specific but exploratory. Remember that a good claim opens up an area of inquiry about a topic; a claim should invite evidence, support, and debate.

There are many issues revolving around the subject of literacy in young children and if the issues are not met at an early enough age, chances for that child’s knowledge on the topic are not guaranteed to be as successful as a child whose needs have been met and have been properly taught language and literacy.
Parents and teachers of young children need to realize how crucial it is for a child to be introduced to literacy at a young age.

Reflection on my own experience

The situation I can think of goes way back to when I was a child, about fourteen or fifteen years ago. I know there are more, but this particular situation left me feeling uncomfortable and had somewhat of an impact on the person I am today. I feel as though the situation I was put in somewhat shaped me to be the person I am today; quiet and reserved when in front of large groups of people.
I remember my childhood quite fondly when I think back to the days my mom would drop me off at my grandma’s house and we would do whatever in the world we could think of. Shopping, going out to lunch, watching TV, and playing cards and board games were most of the things we took part in during our long summer days together when I did not have to attend school. It was the best time of my life. I was completely spoiled by my grandma and she saw nothing wrong with it. I spent endless nights at my grandparent’s house and my grandpa was just as much fun as my grandma, teaching me about golf, computers, boxing, and flying (he was a pilot and had his own small plane at the time). The list could go on forever about the things I learned and did with my grandparents.
Although I had the time of my life from the moment I was dropped off at grandma’s to the time I left, I was missing some interaction with kids my age. I went to a small, catholic school, so I had lots of close friends there, but the best ones I had always seemed to go away for the summer. This left me to find kids to play with around my grandma’s house. The day I met Melissa, a neighbor from own the street who was two years older than me, was what I thought to be the start of a very good friendship. She was older, knew better games to play, and she had a brother one year younger than me. The perfect sized play group, or so I thought.
The first couple days I new Melissa we had a blast and could mostly be found playing outside in my grandma’s nicely kept, big yard. It wasn’t until about three days into our friendship when she said something to me that left a part of me scarred and sometimes afraid to speak in front of large groups of people. Melissa told me to my face that I “talk like a baby.” She did not mean it in the sense that I cooed and gurgled, yet she said this meaning that I had a voice like a baby. My voice was never loud or unbearable, as I was always a mild mannered kid yet, there was something about the tone I held when I spoke which lead my new BFF (or what I had thought to be) to say something hurtful like this to me.
As I looked back on the situation as I was growing up, I always kept in the back of my mind, the look on her face and the tone of her voice as she told me that I talked or sounded like a baby, a little kid even. I was eight years old, I did not want to be viewed as a little child… I thought I was big and smart. Now that I am an adult, I still look back on that day and realize that she did not actually mean the words she spoke; she was upset that my grandma had called me in to get cleaned up before my mom came to pick me up. Melissa spoke those words out of frustration that I had to go inside and could not stay out to play with her and her brother any longer. Even though I know that Melissa may not have truly meant those words, I always keep that comment glued in the back of my head and I feel as though it has given me the type of personality I have today.

Royster

Royster set up her arguments into three scenes and to me it seemed as though her main issues are with participants within a discourse community who take the authoritarian role a little farther than it needs to go, ultimately offending the listeners. I will put myself into an example: I work with children of all ages, mostly the infants and two year olds. Other than working with them for 30 hours a week, I have no outside experiences that would make me credible enough to tell the parents how to raise their child. When the parent comes to pick their kid up at the end of a day, I have no room to lecture them and tell them what kind of food they should feed them for dinner, when to put them to bed, and so on. Although I have had learned enough knowledge about children to know well enough how to take care of them, it would be offensive and completely uncalled for. Royster believes it does not matter how much knowledge you have aquired or how much education you have had; if you have no personal life experiences with a topic, you are in no position to take the authoritative role.
Royster also touches on academic discourse, communication styles and how we need to change our methods so taht we can expose ourselves to a wider range of dicourse communities. This in turn will help us gain experience and knowledge within a broader contexts and societies.

Flower and Hayes

The Flowers and Hayes article talks about the cognitive process theory and how it has four main points: writing process is understood the best when thought of as a set of distivtive thinking processes which takes place during the act of composing; hierarchical organization is a part of the writing process; composing is a process in which the writer is achieving their own goal; there are two ways which writers create their own goals: generate high-level and supporting goals, changing their goals based on what they have learned. During the cognitive process, Flower and Hayes believe that authors usually tend to stay away from the usual writing stages.
Flower and Hayes also talk about the act of writing and its three major parts: the task environment, the writer’s long term memory, and the writing process. First, the task environment is described as everything that is outside of the writers ability. The second element is the writer’s long term memory where a writer stores a lot of knowledge of their audience and writing ideas. Third and lastly is the process of planning, translating, and reviewing. This stage is when the writers produce representations of what they will write about; more or less like the brainstorming process. Translating comes second and is when the writer puts their ideas into words and lastly, the reviewing is the final writing process when a writer reads and rereads his work, evaluates, and revises.
This article seemed like something I had learned a long time ago and also describes my writing process. Because of this, I feel as though the article was a lot easier for me to understand than most other articles we have read in the past. Flower and Hayes reiterated the process of composing to writers everywhere.

David Bartholomae

The article by David Bartholomae, "Inventing the University," seems to me to be very much about the way students must create an audience to go along with the discourse of his paper. Bartholomae talks about how the student must "invent the university for the occasion" or, "speak our language... define the discourse of our community." He argues the fact that it is very hard for students to take on the role of teacher in their writing but eventually address their audience differently throughout their paper and seem to take on the role of the one with authority. Bartholomae talks about how it is important for a writer to revise their work in such a way as to acknowledge their readers and suit the writing more towards their expectations. Students who are taught to revise by keeping their readers in mind will be more successful within their community discourse.
That is what I got out of the article so far, after about five to ten pages in it all seems to start to run together. I'm hoping that class discussion will make it more clear.

"Bitch" doesn't always hold true to its definition

I'm pleased that we were able to discuss the magazine Bitch in class because it helped me to better understand the article I had previously read on audience addressed and audience invoked. The point was brought up about how this magazine is so much different from other magazines such as Cosmo, which I happen to be a subscriber to (thanks mom). Although I get issues of Cosmo mailed to me once a month, I read it for fun, for pure entertainment. Quite honestly, I sometimes get a kick out of the articles they publish and expect people to take seriously. Bitch, on the other hand, is a different type of magazine that I would never purchase based upon the fact that it is about feminist issues in pop culture, however; not only does the bigger title of the magazine make me somewhat curious as to what it is all about, the article we read in class made me certain that I would like this magazine. Audience invoked... that's me, and they got me. I'm sure I would be able to find many other people who are not feminists that would enjoy reading this magazine. It is something different from the everyday magazines people read, and it is nice for a change once in a while.

Audience Addressed/Audience Invoked

Just as the title of the article sums up, Lisa Ede and Andrea Lunsford's "Audience Addressed/Audience Invoked: The Role of Audience in Composition Theory and Pedagogy," the article is arguing for and against the importance of the audience when it comes to writing. The conclusion is that the writer must "balance the creativity of the writer with the different, but equally important, creativity of the reader. It must account for a wide and shifting range of roles for both addressed and invoked audiences."
The author's argue against many other views on this topic and agree with the article by Walter Ong, "The Writer's Audience Is Always a Fiction." In his article, Ong argued the fact that audience is the most important part of the whole composition process. An author must imagine his or her audience before writing, so that the readers will have an easier time putting themselves in the role playing position. In Ede and Lunsford's article, they agree with this by saying "For a writer, the audeince is not there in the sense that the speaker's audience, whether a single person or a large group, is present."
Overall, the article spoke about two very different important things: audience addressed and audience invoked. The later explains that "The central task of the writer, then is not to analyze and audience and adapt to discourse to meet its needs. Rather, the writer uses the semantic and syntactic resources of language to provide cues for the reader." And audience addressed can be seen as writers who imagine an audience emphasizing the knowledge of the audience's beliefs, attitudes, and expectations.

Response to Ong

In Ong's article, "The Writer's Audience Is Always a Fiction," he speaks about the differences between audiences when it comes to writing and publicly speaking. From what I understand, he believes that a writer needs to imagine the type of audience they are writing their book for; who's going to buy it, who's going to find it most useful to them. However, when it comes to speaking, the speaker already has a general idea of who their audience is going to be and therefore does not need to "fictionalize" their audience and put it in sync with their speech.
To help myself better understand this, I related it to going to see a movie. Movie trailers and advertisements tell the audience what the movie is going to be like, and from this a certain type of audience is drawn in. Just as talking or giving a speech would be, the director of a movie has a certain audience in mind and knows that people not interested in that certain genre will not attend. On the other hand, authors need to dig a little deeper and imagine the type of audience that will be reading their work and make sure it appeals to them.

Murray and Emig

I found the two articles to be very insightful and interesting, however; I felt as though Murray's was easiest to understand in that it was short and to the point. Although the articles are the same in that they both speak of writing and process, they also have their differences.
First, Murray believes that it is up to the students to compose a successful paper and that it is never finished; there is always room for improvement. He speaks of the steps to writing and how process is the most important part of creating a finished product.
On the other hand, Emig's article was longer and focused primarily on listening, writing, reading, and talking as a means to a successful outcome. She believes that ideas for writing come from the student's surrounding environment and that language is cruicial to writing.

Writing history timeline questions

The timeline we created revealed that education has been adapted over the years as changes in society took place. Due to the influx of immigrants and the two wars, a curriculum was needed in the educational system to keep up with these major changes and thus a change was made to keep up with current times. The most important aspect of the continuous change in education was the fact that it prepared people for the wide world outside of the classroom. It gave people the skills they needed to achieve success in the real world.
Although education was originally for the wealthy, the continuously changing societies affected this trend. Over time, education became availiable to people of all class levels.
Education had always been left up to english, literature, and rhetoric. Over the years, the major staple in education had been set, and although changes occured through time, teachers and students produced results that were positive.