ENGL 505A

Hey guys,

This is a computer lab activity I did early in the semester to familiarize students with Purdue's world famous OWL. The other point of the activity was to teach students about the structure of the paragraph and essay without, you know, actually having to teach it. The first time I assigned it, I had it available on my class web site, students opened it, and they typed their answers in. In the future, I might print it out. While this wastes papers, that will help me avoid students simply copying and pasting their answers into the blanks.

Crissy

Christensen writes, "I cannot conceive any useful transactions between teacher and students unless they have in common a language for talking in sentences" (251). As the focus of high school writing courses moves further and further away from grammar and mechanics, rare is the first year university student who is completely comfortable using such grammatical terms as 'modifier', 'relative clause' and 'subordinate clause'. And, as someone who has taught undergraduate linguistics courses, getting them up to date is no small task.

For very early, very late or just very lazy classes, I have found it beneficial to start the hour off by an activity that gets the students up out of their seats and gets their blood flowing. I introduced two such activities last week.

As I read Harris' article, it was interesting comparing her observations of peer response and tutoring with my own, most recently as an ESL instructor and as a student in a rhetoric class long ago and far away.