Writing Center Discussion

Speaking of Writing Centers... UNM has CAPS for general tutoring, and the College of Education has a Graduate Student Writing Center (that caters only to the coe graduate students). I've yet to hear of a student having a good experience getting writing help at CAPS. It's a big hole here at UNM. There are a couple of options... one is to lobby for and build a writing center from scratch (not the best choice), the other is to partner in some way with CAPS to attach a writing center to their program with its own tutoring pedagogy practices separate from CAPS. You cannot tutor writing the same way you tutor math. Any suggestions? Does anyone know who has responsibility for CAPS?

Recipe Thread

Use this thread to post your recipes.

Anuradha Kowtha
Pulihora recipe (Tamarind Rice)

Cook 3 cups of rice (cook with a little less water so the rice is a tad bit dry).
While the rice is cooking, add a ¼ tsp of turmeric powder to the water.
In a small pot, make the thiragamata (mixture of spices)
Put ¼ cup of oil
1 tbsp of black mustard seeds, cumin seeds, urad dhal (little white lentils), channa dhal (yellow lentils)
2 – 3 dried chilies, crushed
1 – 2 fresh chilies (or a jalapeno), cut
handful of curry leaves
½ cup of peanuts or cashews
Once the spices are put into the pot, cook it for a few minutes on low heat. Wait for the lentils to brown and the mustard seeds might pop. Caution: It is easy to burn this mixture, so be watchful.
In a small bowl, add ¼ tsp of chili powder, ¼ tsp asafetida powder, and ¼ tsp fenugreek powder.
Pour the hot oil/spice mixture into the small bowl with the spice powders.
When the rice is cooler (especially if you will mix the ingredients with your hand), mix the oil/spice mixture, 1-2 tbsp salt, and ½-1 tbsp of tamarind paste.
Mix well.

Dadojanam (Yogurt rice)
Complete steps 1-6. In step 7 do NOT add tamarind paste.
5-10 minutes prior to serving, add about ½ cup of buttermilk and 4 cups of yogurt. Mix well.

Maps

Using the comment function, talk about or paste in your maps in progress. See the assignment and example. Please post early so that you can look at each other's efforts on this project.

Assignment:

http://www.unm.edu/~sromano/english640/assign4.htm

Computers and Composition

Here's the link to PDFs for a recent issue of Computers and Composition. It's a must read for those of you doing anything related to media. (Also Tom will enjoy the ESL article). Blog your comments on methodology, opening lines, uses of student text, conversations joined, news--anything that seems a little different.

http://www.unm.edu/~sromano/english640/PDFs/Computers%20and%20Composition/

NEW NOTE: Here's a link to Cynthia Selfe's and Gail Hawisher's article about how they have, over the years, thought about their roles as editors. Useful for those of you publishing in this journal. Note that a heading on down is called "Turning to Recent Times"

http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/pedagogy/v004/4.1hawisher.html

Your Personal Research Area

Use this space to report on your personal research results. You should assemble a set of about 6 articles that comprise the conversation you're planning to join. Talk about what you're seeing there and how you'll use either key terms, opening gambits, or theoretical frames.

Report here, too, if you're having trouble locating appropriate articles and ask classmates for help, maybe, devising key terms, and so forth.
The assignment page for this week includes what to do about the Zimmerman database problems:
http://www.unm.edu/~sromano/english640/assign3.htm

Conferences and Listservs

Post here your observations about Rhet/Comp Conference opportunities. Take the opportunity to discuss your plans for submissions.
Pay particular attention to the CCCC site, looking at the workshops and categories for presentation.
http://www.unm.edu/~sromano/english640/conferences.htm

Also post here comments on your meanderings through the listservs. Be sure to do key-word searches for your areas of interest to see what turns up. Report in on successes.
http://www.unm.edu/~sromano/english640/listservs.htm

Here's a link to the 2008 ATTW conference site, which will eventually get corrected on the assignment page. ATTW meets nearly concurrently with CCCC. You can submit a single proposal to both conferences, or could last time I heard, thus doubling your chances. We need to investigate this possiblity. Do look at the presentation titles closely for matches with your interests.
http://cms.english.ttu.edu/attw/conference/conference

Writing Center Journal

The Writing Center Journal is back on line and 23.1 is available article by article or in its entirety.
http://136.165.114.52/wcj23.1/wcj23.1.html

Take a look, too at the blog (most recent post is about tutoring so of interest to Katie). In fact maybe this is a good opportunity to explore the blog as an important resource.

WAC Journal

The WAC Journal issue 18 is available on line, on the home page. You can download the entire volume at once or selectively. It looks like past issues are readily available too, for browsing.

http://wac.colostate.edu/journal/

Rhetoric Society Quarterly

I've made pdfs of the summer 2007 issue of Rhetoric Society Quarterly (37.3). Here's the link.

http://www.unm.edu/~sromano/english640/PDFs/Rhetoric%20Society%20Quarterly/

But keep trying to access RSQ on your own, as access to journals via Zimmerman is critical for your next move.

Technical Communication Quarterly

Here's the URL where you can grab PDFs of TCQ.

http://www.unm.edu/~sromano/english640/PDFs/TCQ/

KAIROS

Here's the link to the online journal KAIROS:
http://english.ttu.edu/kairos/

Read issue 12.1 (Fall 07). (The spring 08 issue is up too, but 12.1 was the available issue in December when I was making choices.) I'll be eager to hear your thoughts on the conversation, the format, the publishing opportunities. Look all around this site.

Composition Studies

Articles for volume Composition Studies 35.1 (Spring 2007) are in pdf on the course website:
http://www.unm.edu/~sromano/english640/PDFs/Composition%20Studies/

In addition, you should take a look at the guidelines for 2 kinds of submissions:
http://www.compositionstudies.tcu.edu/submissions.html (regular stuff)
http://www.compositionstudies.tcu.edu/coursedesigns.html (course designs!)

College Composition and Communication

CCC Thread:
Some thoughts on developing your own reading protocols, using the CCC comics article as an example.

If you find the content of an article relevant to your research interests, then please do talk about that content in your blog posts (in addition to taking good personal notes). For example, “Comics as Sponsors of Multimodal Literacy” provides a really fine rehearsal of key arguments/authors in media literacy (Kress, New London Group, selected authors) and plain literacy (Brandt). It offers key terms and concepts (literacy sponsorship; the three kinds of design). All of this is fair game for discussion, say, between Greg and Candice and Leslie, who work in this area and who may want to add on, clarify, question, etc. the content itself.

If, however, you are not particularly interested in multimodal literacies, you can still observe very important features of this article. Note especially how much time this author spends on general discussions of literacy - > multimodal literacy in relation to time spend on the case study itself. This is because editors know that readership for comics (the case study) is small, but that readership for issues in literacy and media literacy is large. So if you have a case study type of article in mind, you can begin noticing how other writers distribute the weight between examples and generalizations. (Case study at the end is not the only way to accomplish this weighting, so let’s look for other versions of distribution).

As an aside—note the insertion of the classical inheritance into a contemporary situation—also a common move.

College English

This is the "launch" message for our College English thread. Please use the comment function so that all of our College English comments remain together for easy reviewing.

So what do you think about this strand of discourse among teachers of writing?