Lucretia’s Learning Record
A1- Interview with my boyfriend about myself:
I basically know Lucretia’s writing through letters,
internet chats and e-mails, all them very informal texts and in our native
language, Portuguese. What I can say about her writing is that it is very
peculiar. She always writes a lot, and very quickly when we are talking through
internet chats. I think she does like writing, since their letters are always
at least ten pages long. She is repetitive, sometimes, and not very objective.
She likes to go into details. She never just tell me the fact, always
describing it precisely, giving her opinion about everything. Although
repetitive and prolix, her writing is very logical and she has style. Because
of the kind of texts I’m used to seeing, they are always very informal, and I
have to say that Leticia has no worry about the aesthetic aspect of her
writings, which makes it sometimes hard to be understood (maybe because she
writes fast and doesn’t want to interrupt her thoughts). But I think her texts
are always involving.
Rather
than her writing, Leticia reads very slowly. I think she takes a too much time
to read anything; she says it is because she pays close attention to whatever
she reads, but I think that it is because she can be easily distracted. Or
maybe she likes reading so much (and she is always reading something) that she
does’t want it to finish…
As a non-native speaker of English, I’ll write first
about my “writing, reading and thinking experience” in my native language,
Brazilian Portuguese. I’ve always enjoyed writing, for school purposes, for
business purposes, or just for personal purposes, such as diaries and letters.
In school, I’ve always had good grades in composition classes and it doesn’t represent
a hard task to me. Sometimes I feel a certain difficulty in summarizing my
ideas or the ideas of a text, when there are limitations of any kind such as
number of lines, words or pages. Thus, when doing a test, for example, I often
need more space than what I have, but it hasn’t been such a big problem (when I
try, I can be more concise. Is just that I tend to write more than I was asked.
Even in letters I use to write a lot).
About reading, I like it very much, and I’m always
reading a literature book. I don’t read very quickly. It’s hard for me when I
have to read something for college and have time just to skim through the text,
in order to get just the main ideas. I like to read things carefully, and when
studying, I like to take notes of what I’m reading, so I tend to spend a lot of
time on it and often I do not go through everything I was supposed to read.
I believe that my thinking is quite organized. I usually
plan mentally things before writing and have no special difficulties to
organize my thoughts or make them logical.
When it comes to English, which is my second language,
things change a bit. I don’t dislike writing in English, but if writing in
Portuguese is just natural and I don’t even consider it a task, even when I’m
writing formally, following rules, to write in English will demand some effort,
lots of “visits” to the dictionary, and a lot of thought before finishing each
line. To write informally in English is ok for me, and I like it (like in
letters or e-mail), but when it is a paper for college, a formal letter or such
things, I have some difficulties and a lot of doubts. I have doubts concerning
grammar, vocabulary (sometimes I just don’t find the words I want) and whether
a structure or a word is adequate or not, for that situation.
I think my “thinking” in English is pretty logical, as
well (I don’t know if I can separate my thinking according to the language I am
using…). The problem is that sometimes, because I lack some vocabulary, I don’t
know exactly how to say the things I want. But writing this text, for example,
wasn’t hard, and I could say all the things I wanted to.
Evidence: Observations
08/30/2000: Our first homework was
to go to 3 of the 6 internet sites the professor listed in the syllabus. The 3
I have chosen were about LR (Learning Record). I’ve learned, in general, it is
the record of our activities through the whole semester. That is the “place” we
are supposed to post our exercises, paper and observations to. I had some
doubts when reading this, for example, if it is part of our portfolio. I still
don’t know exactly what this LR is.
08/31/2000: Today I visited the
other 3 sites listed in our syllabus. I could see lots of examples of student
works (observations, interviews, samples of work), more explanations about the
grade system and more explanations about the 5 learning “topics” (confidence
and independence, knowledge and understanding, skills and strategies, use of
prior and emerging experience and critical reflection). It’s a bit more clear
for me now.
09/01/2000: Today we went to an LR
and saw examples of students work (which I had already seen). Then professor
Nelson showed us how to do some of the LR activities, such as post “things” to
the forum. We have tried it, posting an issue of our choice to the forum.
09/02/2000: I went to UGL today to
go to the Student Guide site, to read about plagiarism, collusion and the
penalties for that. It is interesting to notice how much UT professors (or
I read the 19th
chapter of Everything’s an argument, about
Intellectual Property. I thought it was really interesting the question whether
ideas should be considered a property or not. The author thinks it should be,
and I guess I agree with him.
We were asked to write
an argumentative paper on whatever subject we wanted. I wrote mine about
Brazilians and soccer. I wasn’t really concerned about being extremely correct
in my writing since the purpose of this task was more to see how is our writing
at this moment.
09/05/2000: in class (Tuesday) we
discussed a bit about plagiarism (based on the texts we had read for homework)
and started an exercise where we were supposed to identify where we could find
plagiarism in the given texts. It was good to have practical examples on that.
Professor Nelson gave us some “hints” about how to avoid it in our personal
papers and texts and then started to talk briefly about Stasis Theory and the
three types of argument we have according to it.
09/05/2000: I read the Stasis
Theory chapter on the book Everything’s
an argument. It was good to clarify the things we had seen about it with
Professor Nelson in class, concerning Definition, Evaluation and Proposal
arguments. I also read a Daily Texan article about the UT staff sickout.
09/06/2000: I went with a partner (Leonardo)
to the UGL and there we went to the UGL’s site to present ourselves to the
library. We could learn some good things, for example, where to find
periodicals, where to get help when doing a research, etc.
09/06/2000: today we finished the
exercise we had started the day before, on plagiarism and then we tried to
apply the Stasis Theory to the Daily Texan article, finding examples of the
three types of argument. It was not difficult to find them.
09/06/2000: as a homework we had to
read another Daily Texan article, about the same subject (the sickout). I
started looking for the three types of argument. This time I had some doubts to
classify some of the sentences I had read.
09/07/2000: today we discussed the
new article we had read at home. I could
see that the various types of arguments are sometimes mixed, and that writing a
text bearing in mind the difference between them can help us producing a more
logical text. Professor Nelson
introduced some ideas of Toulmin Theory,
giving us general definitions of assumptions, evidences, claims, etc. It was a
little bit confusing for me.
09/08/2000: I’ve read about Toulmin
Theory on Everything’s an argument.
The concepts are clearer for me now, but I still have some doubts, I don’t now
if I can separate them very precisely.
09/10/2000: I interviewed Fabiane
Laube, a Brazilian girl who took 306Q the last summer with professor Rula Diab.
She thought it is a fundamental course for those who wants to improve English
writing in general but mainly for academic purposes.
I wrote a 1-2 pages text about my goals
concerning this course and how it can be utile to my life, college, and my
career, and about what I would like to focus my activities on, during the
course. It is something difficult and I thought of choosing something related
to literature or maybe literature in ESL classes. I don’t know if it is a
possible topic, but for the moment that’s what I have in mind. I think that
choosing the right topic is the first step toward an easier development of the 5
learning dimensions.
As homework we had to right what we think about the LR record and how
it can help us in this course, to post it to the forum for tomorrow. I’m sure
it is very important and efficient as a learning tool, and since we would have
everything recorded, we would be able to evaluate our own works and
development, which can help us with critical reflection.
09/11/2000: I’ve chosen another article from Daily Texan
(about concerns over tragedies in concert events) and tried to make an analysis,
based on Toulmin theory, picking up from the text examples of “claims”,
“reasons” and “warrants”. I think this kind of analysis can help us to gain
independence and criticism when reading articles, in general, since we become
more prepared to see the text objectively.
09/11/2000: in the second half of
the class we had a mini-lecture by professor Nelson about our definition paper,
mainly, and the topical proposal, due on
Friday. I’m not very confident yet about how to do the paper and there are
things that I couldn’t clearly understand, but I have a slight idea of how my
paper is supposed to be structured, though I ‘m not quite sure about my topic
yet.
09/11/2000: in the internet, I’ve
read a text by Professor Nelson about the Definitional Argument. He gives
explanations, examples and tips on the subject and on the topic proposal. I
guess it is more clear now what we are supposed to do to our first paper.
09/13/2000: in TILT homepage and
through its exercises I could learn a lot about internet and library research.
I thought the readings were a little bit boring, but it is still worth reading
and doing the quiz. It gave me some useful tips and instructions on how to do
more efficient research.
I tried to write my
topical proposal, but I had some difficulties to do it. I’m thinking about a
topic related to literature, but I can’t figure out an specific claim.
09/14/2000: I talked to professor
Nelson about my topic, and I couldn’t really define a literature related topic.
So, I’ve decide to take something on Linguistics, probably about animal’s
language (whether they do or don’t have language). The topic is very
interesting and I’ve gone through something related to it n my “Introduction to
the study of language” course. But yet, I’m not very confident about writing on
this.
09/15/2000: I’ve finished and
posted my topic proposal. I’m sure it is a very interesting subject, but I
don’t know if I will find enough support to my claim. Actually, I’m not sure
I’m myself convinced that my claim is really true.
09/20/2000: I’ve done a lot of
research in the internet about my topic and started to write it, but I can see
it is not going to be easy. I cannot find arguments, based on an acceptable and
reasonable definition of language, to support my claim.
09/20/2000: I’ve finished the
exercise about transition and coherence. I hope it will be helpful when writing
my paper. I thought the two texts professor Nelson gave us to analyze are
coherent, although the second seems more coherent to me. But in both texts, I think
the authors used too much repetition to achieve that coherence.
09/20/2000: I’ve written my topic
proposal again. It’s not an easy subject again, but I’m more convinced of my
claim, for now.
09/22/2000: today I’ve finished my
rough rough draft and put them to the folder. Since I only decided to my
definitive topic yesterday, I had a lot of difficulties to write it for today.
My draft wasn’t very good, because I didn’t have time to work a lot on it.
09/24/2000: I’ve worked the whole
weekend on my paper, doing research and writing it. It’s was difficult, since
we have a structure to be followed. I’m not sure if my paper is very well
organized, I guess it is a bit confusing, sometimes.
09/25/2000: today we applied the
things we had learnt on Friday. With a partner we did the peer review of two classmates’ drafts. I think it
is good to develop collaboration as well as critical reflexion, since we can
apply a lot of things in our own drafts, from what we observe on our
classmate’s draft. We didn’t finish it in class, so each one copied one of the
2 papers to continue the review outside class. I took Jim’s paper.
09/26/2000: I’ve continued the peer
review on Jim’s paper. It is difficult to analyze a classmate’s draft.
Sometimes you feel like something is not very good, but you can’t identify
exactly what it is. Other times you just don’t think there is anything wrong. I
think it is makes us more critical, toward other’s and our own works.
09/27/2000: based on chapter 3 from
our book, we’ve discussed, using DIWE, the text we had read about Tori
Spelling. I like very much this DIWE activity. Discussions in class are always
very interesting, and they help developing interaction and mutual respect.
09/28/2000: I’ve read the Daily
Texan article professor Nelson gave us, about disagreements between law makers
and
10/01/2000: I’ve read chapter 4
from Everything’s an argument, “Arguments
from the heart”. It talked about how to use arguments from the heart to
convince your audience, and how they can be negative to your text, if misused
(like when you make something seem ridiculous, in a rude or uneducated way, or
when your argument is affected by prejudices).
10/02/2000: I had my conference
with professor Nelson about his observations on my rough draft. There were a
lot of observations and some were not very clear for me. I could see a lot of
weak points in my text, though I don’t agree completely with all the
observations. But I could see that a lot of things have to be changed, so that
I can make my arguments more effective and my paper more interesting. It was
great for the critical reflection aspect.
10/03/2000: I’ve worked a little
bit more on my paper, bearing in mind the observations professor Nelson made
about it, on my text and in the conference. It is hard to change some things.
But it certainly develops a lot the rhetoric aspect of learning.
10/04/2000: I’ve answered a
classmate message about his evaluative paper. I don’t know if my observations
can be helpful, but I think it is always good to listen to other opinions.
I’ve finished module 3
from TILT. It was about how to find and identify library items by the call
number, how to analyze the credibility of information found on web sites and
how to avoid plagiarism, making correction citations and quotations.
10/05/2000: I’ve worked more on my final
paper, trying to finish it. I’m not sure if I could make it less confusing and
more convincible.
10/08/2000: I’ve read chapter 21
from Everything’s an argument, about
how to document the sources used in papers and researches in general. The
author mentions many kinds of sources, and I think it is one of the useful
things I’m learning in this course.
10/09/2000: In class, we had a
free time, and I could read some of the pages from the sources I had chosen for
my paper, but actually I think they were not very good. I have to keep on
searching.
10/10/2000: I just want to mention
that now I give more importance to this “collaborative aspect of learning” than
I did before. I tried to help a classmate from my “Language and Thought”
course. She sent everybody an e-mail about the paper and the topics we had to
write (within 2 days!) and I tried to
help her the best way, through e-mail, as well.
10/12/2000: for today we had to
respond to at least one classmate’s Discussion Forum posting. I’ve read all
them and tried to respond to the one’s I thought were the most interesting or
to those I could be more helpful with my response. I answered to John’s,
Cindy’s and Kim’s posting. I hope I could help a little, at least.
10/16/2000: I wrote an e-mail and
sent it to the whole class asking about their opinion on
10/16/2000: Professor Nelson gave
us more explanations on LR, discussing criteria, topics to be evaluated and
grades.
10/19/2000: I’ve worked more on
my LR. I think it is hard to choose the
best samples of work, because sometimes it is difficult to say which works,
specifically, are the most representatives to our improvements. I’ve started
written my midterm summary and found it really difficult to do, because it is
hard to evaluate our own works and development in class. It is a good
practicing for critical reflection.
I think this course, so far, has been pretty interesting
and utile for me, not only for my writing, but also for other subjects and for
my academic skills in general. In the rhetoric area I think that comparing the
1st Rough Draft with the 2nd, I was more confident and it
was a little bit easier for me to write it, although I still had some
difficulties. I also had to write papers to other subjects and I tried to apply
things I learnt here: the models, schemes, theories and general knowledge
before writing those papers. Now I try to make a general scheme before starting
writing and I think I’m more concerned about transition between ideas and
paragraphs. I have been already aware of the importance of having a good
introduction and conclusion, but now I’m more conscious about how to do it and
how to connect them to the body of my texts, though it still takes a long time
for me and I change a lot my mind while trying to produce a coherent text. Of
course I still have a lot of spelling and grammar problems as well, but I think
this takes a lot of practicing. Maybe the most important thing I’m learning
with this course is to try to evaluate my own texts, taking into consideration
things such as my supposed audience and possible rebuttals. I think that the
peer reviewing helps us a lot to become more critical toward our own papers.
Analyzing someone else’s paper using the criteria and strategies we’ve been
learning here can help us evaluating our papers more objectively.
I think Research was maybe the area I developed more
through this course, mainly internet research, because I only had a basic
knowledge on that before coming, but I could improve it and now I’m much more
able to do an efficient research. I used already search engines such as Yahoo,
but I didn’t know, for example, how to use refinement devices. Now I take less
time and get better results. I know that you determine how efficient your
research is from the very beginning, when choosing the keywords, the sources
(books, periodicals, etc.) and alternative words. Another very important thing
is to analyze critically the sources you have in order to select the best ones
(since you’ll never have enough time to read everything available) as well as
to check the credibility of the source, mainly if it is on Internet.
In the collaboration area I think I developed it very
much through group works, although I did
it already in my university in
C: Evaluation
I guess so far my
goals are been achieved in this course My writing is improving (I think I’m
more “fluent” to write) and I could relate my works here with one of my main
areas of interest, which is literature, mainly in the research area. I did my 1st
paper on that topic (literature), although I have chosen a totally different
one to my 2nd paper. I believe that I deserve a X so far.
For the 2nd half of the course I would like to
continue developing equally the 3 areas of learning (rhetoric, research and
collaboration). I’d like to mention that I like very much the group discussions
and I think we should have this at least once a week. I also would like to
suggest that, during open classes, we could do the optional assignments. It is
hard to have time to do them, and since they are part of the course, I think it
would be a good idea if we could at least read the optional texts in those free
classes.