Blog Prompt #1

This week, please read the pdf "What Happens When Basic Writers come to College?"  It can be found under the "Handouts and Readings" Section of our Moodle page (Box 3).  Here are the discussion questions, please answer each question with a full paragraph.  Refer to the Moodle Book on Blogging Instructions for information about due dates and grading policies.

Also, we will be chatting about this in class some, so you may want to keep a printed copy of the pdf in your notebook or organizer.  This applies to all readings we will do.  (Most readings will be from your books, though).

#1  Discussion questions for “What Happens when Basic Writers come to College?” by Patricia Bizzell

1)       Bizzell focuses a lot on world views of entering college students and seems to think it is a very important part of how they will develop as writers.  She writes, “If with great effort students can acquire the academic world view without having to give up their original world views, we do not know what benefits might motivate the effort, although there is some evidence that such benefits exist (see Patterson, Hoggart)”.  What sort of benefits could there be to drafting your papers with your own world view leading your thought processes?

2)      Bizzell claims that in the process of receiving a college education, “The student is asked to take a certain distance on all of his or her Commitments, to weigh them against alternatives, and to give allegiance only as a result of a careful deliberative process. In this sense, the academic world view cannot coexist peacefully with another world view in which standards for commitment are different”.  To what extent is she right, and to what extent can you argue that students can keep their original world views intact during and after education, sort of “play both fields”?

Model Blog Post (Example from a past class of my own)

As promised, here is an example of a discussion assignment from a past class that I took, my response to the assignment, and some of my peer's comments to my response.  This should give you a good idea of what our blog posts and comments will end up looking like for this class.  Note that these posts are less formal than a polished paper, but that we are still conducting our discussions in a professional, thoughtful, and thorough manner.  A good rule to remember for the way that you interact with your peers on the class blog: "pretend that your grandma is watching".    :)


Keep in mind: 

If this discussion seems a little hard to follow, it is probably because you may not be familiar with Alaska Native Literature, so don't fret.  Also, the course was English 450, not 101, so we had definitely had quite a bit of practice already with analyzing literature and writing about it.  In italics, I will explain some important things for you to observe about how we created our posts and comments.


This was the discussion prompt that my teacher posted for us all to answer:

This week's readings provide a brief overview of American Indian/Alaska Native history ("Educational Chronology"), two readings discussing indigenous oral and written genres, and an introduction to an anthology of Native oral texts edited by Brian Swann. These readings were meant to give you a sense of the range and depth of Native American oral and written texts--and some of the difficulties inherent in presenting oral translated texts in written form. I've also provided an external link to Shirley Kendall (local Tlingit elder) telling a Raven story in English, to help bring to life the oral stories which are such an important and rich part of American Indian/Alaska Native traditions.

For this week's discussion post, please comment on the readings in general. Identify something new you learned, or something that surprised or intrigued you in any of the materials. Second, comment on the story Kendall told. What was the experience like for you to hear it--was it familiar or new? What do you compare it to in your listening/reading experiences. Third, comment on the Swann "Introduction". What issues or problems does he seem to be raising about the translation of Native oral texts and their presentation/presence in some anthologies? What do you think of his ideas?
Finally, raise one or more open ended questions for your peers.

(I always read the discussion post prompts twice and sometimes make a list of every question that my teacher wants me to answer, so that I make sure not to leave anything out.  I want my full points for the work that I do.)

This is my response to her prompt:

History Translation and the Oral Narrative

 (Notice that I made an interesting title for my post.  Titles are important!  They make your audience want to keep reading.)

       The Chronology left me with a lot of questions.  A simple timeline can be informative, but the history behind each date is what I always want to find out more about.  For instance, the US bought Alaska in 1867.  In 1869, Kake was “destroyed” and Angoon was “bombarded” by US troops.  I’d like to know more about the events that preceded these attacks by the US against its newly acquired soil (and thus, people, as manifest destiny would have it).  Was this simply an attempt on the part of the government to quash any form of resistance that may be a potential threat from the Native peoples living in these areas, or was there an actual clash?  What happened on those lands between the time of the attacks and the 1912 decision by the people of Kake to symbolically assent to the US by burning their totem poles?  If anyone knows of ‘testemonio’, either oral or written that came from the Native people living in that time period (that makes it sound like it was sooo long ago) I’d be very interested.

(Notice that there is a lot I don't know about the subject.  I'm not pretending to be an expert and risking losing credibility with my teacher or peers.  I'm discussing what interested me most and highlighting what I need to learn.  Several peers posted links to websites that I used to learn more, and that was helpful.)

            Kendall’s creation story in particular was unfamiliar to me, although the part that raven often plays in creation stories is something that I am vaguely familiar with, perhaps just from living in Alaska so long and being exposed to many different Native cultures.  What I remember is raven diving into the water to pull earth up from the sea, but of course, there is no one correct story when dealing with belief systems, which are always relative.  As soon as this story played for a few moments, my daughter perked up next to me and told me that her class had heard and read it.  I’m glad that in Alaska, kids are getting formal exposure to folklore that existed before many of the things they are reading today.  The visual aspect of the recording was important not only for keeping you tuned in, but the clips of the people enacting pregnancy or the baby crying further supports the concept of folklore as a more physical thing than a piece of writing on paper.  The storyteller(s) better engage with their audience through movement.

(Again, I am bringing my little bit of familiarity to my reading of the story to help me understand, and then highlighting some of the more interesting things that I picked up on while listening to it.)

            Swann makes an interesting point about collecting native works into anthologies.  So many different languages cannot be translated and placed side by side without proper historical and linguistic context being introduced, because it makes the compilation as a whole seem choppy and not very cohesive otherwise.  I am the type of person who wants to skip past the intro right into the real literature, so I would appreciate less introductory material at first glance, but without it, it is apparent that I wouldn’t be getting a fully beneficial exposure to the culture.  Also, he mentioned that over time, adaptations and retelling can cause a story to change, or the source of it to become obscured.  The this, coupled with a lack of background information, can serve to undermine the integrity of the work and the ethnic framework that it comes from.  A point that he made about most of Western culture being preserved in writing, really proves how detrimental the push to quash Native languages has been and will continue to be.  These cultures, which have traditionally passed their cultural history down through oral folklore, have had their facility in their languages severely suppressed, if not eradicated, and this was the only method of passing on their history.  What a chillingly effective way to erase a people from history.  

(You can see that I looked to find some of the main arguments that the author made, and focused on those in my post, rather than trying to retell his whole essay.  I made connections between his main points and my  personal experiences as a reader, and also put them in the context of what is going on in our culture today.)

            My final thoughts:  with native language programs becoming more widespread, do you think that the languages can be properly passed on, or have they been affected by too much suppression and change (to their actual structure, as well as to the society that has grown to favor Americans of all “races and colors” speaking English as the official and acceptable language) to fully recover?

(Notice that I completed all of the questions that the professor asked me to, and answered them in full paragraph form.  I like to write my blog posts in a Microsoft Word Document, so that I can look over them, spell check them before I post them, and have a saved copy, just in case something goes wrong with me typing it into the post and accidentally losing it before it sends, or something.  I keep adding all of my posts to the Word Document as the course goes on, and that way if technology somehow fails with the posting process, I always have that back up.  I copy and paste my blog post from the document into the blog composition box.)

 Here are two comments that my peers posted in response to my post:

There is a part of me that would like to believe that our languages can be saved. I'd like to think that if I learned to properly speak my Native tongue, then I could teach my daughter. But then, every Native woman would have to do the same, and that language would have to be the primary language in the home. I have some cousins who were spoken to in Gwichin Athabascan and they can understand but not able to speak, so they can't speak to their children. Additionally, I would have to relocate in order to learn from a Native speaker, or try to learn from a book. Learning from a book results in "lost in translation". The perfect recovery plan is that all the women in all the communities learned their languages and committed to its exclusive use in the home and there was an elder speaker, then maybe the languages would survive.

(This student answered the question that I put to my peers, bringing her personal experience into the discussion, which gives her some expertise on the subject.)

and

Like what Brian Swann said about a language must be a living thing, I believe a language must be growing. It can not be preserved, but instead must be fed like a starved poodle until it is a hungry wolf again. As I studied in my Yup'ik language class, I learned that many of the words were borrowed Russian and English words with slight modifications. I quickly saw that the best words were one that described a thing or idea, instead of borrowing the foreign word. The problem with Yup'ik language is that not many new words are being developed. Also, because there is a desire to preserve the language, "good slang" and "word-smithing" are discouraged. If you look at the English language, you will see it is very different from its origins. We no longer speak Olde English thee and thou, yet the language has flourished, growing vastly deep in usage and meaning. New words are crafted with incredible frequency, while new usage is squeezed from old words and phrases. A language like Yup'ik needs this kind of usage and play to keep growing. From what I learned of the language, I feel it would be a perfect language for poetry and playful prose. This is a word-smither's and sentence-bender's dream language.

(This student commented on something from the body of my post, extending the discussion even deeper than I had.  As he is a speaker of an Alaska Native Language, and I am not, he was able to add some expertise and deeper understanding to the conversation.)

Important things to learn from this model:

DO

• Read the prompt thoroughly and make sure to answer everything that is asked of you
• In your comments to your peers' posts, bring your personal expertise into it, if you have any
• Make connections to other things we read, or to today's culture

DON'T

•  Get off topic in your original post or on your comments to peers' posts
• Post writing that you haven't read aloud for errors and spell checked first
• Respond to peers like this if you think of something about the reading that they didn't post:
• "You missed something obvious!  Blah Blah Blah . . ."  (Rude!) Respond like this:
• "You know what else is interesting is Blah Blah Blah . . ." or:
• "When you mentioned Blah, it made me remember Blah"

Welcome to our Class Blog!

I'll begin with a bio post, because I'm going to ask you to do the same thing (directions on the Moodle Blogger Instructions book).

My name is Maia Butler and I am a student at ULL completing the requirements for a Master's Degree in English Literature.  My Bachelor's degree in English Rhetoric was obtained from the University of Alaska.  When I grow up, I want to be a college professor, which means I will need to finish my Master's degree, obtain a PhD, and then I can teach composition and literature classes for the rest of my days.  What I am doing now to reach that goal is lots and lots of reading, writing, taking classes, and working hard on assignments from my professors.  I have a ten year old daughter who likes to dance, sing, skateboard and decorate cakes.  She is much better at math than I am.  I have a fiancee who enjoys video games, comic books, and who just published his first novel.  He has a three year old son who loves race cars, trains, and is much better at playing the batman lego video game than I am.  We like to take the kids to the zoo if it's not too hot.  Some of my favorite things to do in my spare time are: read, play scrabble, watch movies, keep in touch with people on facebook, cook, and explore Lafayette.  I can enjoy lots of different types of music, but I love music from the Caribbean the most, probably.

Now, there is my bio and I'm excited to see yours.  Next, I will post an example that gives you an idea of what a thorough discussion post will look like (directions also on the Moodle Blogger Instructions book).  I will post the questions that a professor from long ago asked us to answer in our discussion post, and I will post my answer.  I will also post some comments that my peers wrote in response to my post.  Hopefully, this will provide you with a good model of what I am looking for from you.