March 20

Noden Chapter 9,

Before I start I want to ask a question.  After spending hours of precious sleeping time pouring over quotations and secondary sources, second guessing your thesis, waging war in your head over word choices; how many essays has anyone in class written that you actually liked?  An essay you were proud of?  One that you were interested in reading?

I can only think of one.  I wrote freshman year in my English 101 class at IUP about a coming of age story on Che Guevara and a motorcycle trip he took which changed his perspective for life.

I have to admit, I am not too thrilled with this chapter.  I did not expect to be reading about non fiction writing in a grammar book.

I did enjoy the rejection of the 5 paragraph essay.  I have always tried to push the creative boundaries of my non-fiction writing.  The release of my bondage to the 5 paragraph essay was a momentous occasion.  I remember even in high school when my senior English class was writing our literary criticisms we were instructed to write sections as we would a 5 paragraph essay.  Turning towards this new model, one can see different elements of Introduction, exposition narration quotation, description and conclusion into a beautiful, intertwining piece of art.

I like the idea a lot.  But, I struggle with the concepts.  I read the ideas and they make sense.  Many of the types of introductions can be pared with the lessons we learned last class about painting with stronger verbs and adjectives.  But stringing all of these together effectively?  I doubt my own skill.  Reading theory in a book is nothing compared to practice


Noden Chapter 10- Revising, my second favorite part of writing....

Young Harvey sums up my own perspective, "How do I proofread for errors?  I don't know when I'm making an error.  If I knew what an dangling participle was, I wouldn't have dangled it in the first place" (231) -- I laughed so hard at this quote.  Personally I struggle with active/passive voice, comma splice, along with a few other spelling mechanical errors.

Every time I write these blogs I feel like a downer.  So please excuse me ahead of the next few paragraphs.  I am frustrated because even if these books do present good ideas I am skeptical.  I may want the outcome to work.  I just do not know how I can accomplish what teachers with years of experience have accomplished.

Noden suggests there are four sections when it comes to revision:  form, content, style and conventions.  For each of these sections he presents little ideas and checklists for each section of revision.

First he talks about style.  Style, I was always previously taught, was the hardest to bring out in a paper.  Content was always held above form.  He suggests returning to the idea of brush strokes we learned earlier to help stylize.  My worry comes in because I do not remember any of the brush strokes.  And if I do not how will my students effectively learn them and apply them to this revision.

For the use of Conventions he suggests having a checklist to go over when revising.  I actually like this idea because then it gives me a specific type of grammar to focus on at a time while editing a paper.  The form checklist refers to the ideas of the last chapter.  Noden emphasis that each genre will have different requirements that we much meet as writers.  The checklist helps us make sure we covered everything we need to cover.

Content, the usual focal point of most teachers and students when writing a paper.  The checklist for this section focuses on Unity, Development, Coherence and Clarity.  Sound familiar?  Oh yes.