by Dr Davis on August 20, 2009
Stephen Zelnick writes of poetry wars with his students at Minding the Campus.
His side of the battle is this:
I told a student her interpretation of a poem was wrong. From that moment I was regarded as an enemy to freedom.
I invited my students to engage with me in online debate on whether an interpretation could be wrong. What follows is their side of the argument. My arguments failed to dent their belief that a poem means whatever a reader thinks.
For their side, read the whole Poetry Wars article.
by Dr Davis on August 20, 2009
The New York Times has an interesting article (from 2004) on business writing and email issues.
“E-mail is a party to which English teachers have not been invited,” Dr. Hogan said. “It has companies tearing their hair out.”
A recent survey of 120 American corporations reached a similar conclusion. The study, by the National Commission on Writing, a panel established by the College Board, concluded that a third of employees in the nation’s blue-chip companies wrote poorly and that businesses were spending as much as $3.1 billion annually on remedial training.
This is one of the reasons that being able to write is so important. As a good writer, an employee is more valuable.
So that’s what I’m going to be working with this semester. Two of my classes are geared towards making employees better writers.
by Dr Davis on August 20, 2009
I will be teaching a lot of students this semester.
I am teaching only composition classes. I will have 129 students… That’s a lot of grading.
I was originally teaching one of my classes in a particular classroom that only has room for twenty students. When they moved me, one of the classes got extra students and one of the classes didn’t. I don’t want to mention it because I am already in an overload situation. So I think I will just take the grace of the mistake and go with it.
School starts Monday. I have the syllabi for one course completed. I have another one about half done… And the last one… I haven’t even started.
