Alondra Arias

Professor Brian Graves

LANG 120

25 January 2017

Anzaldua, Gloria. Borderlands/La Frontera: the New Mestiza. 3rd ed., San Francisco, Aunt

Lute, 2007, pp. 75-97.

Throughout the text, Gloria Anzaldua describes the adversity she went through as a

borderland child growing up in an Anglo country. Struggling to find an identity, she recalls times

where she was reprimanded for trying to incorporate a different language style into her teachings

to Chicano students during the 1970s. Anzaldua vividly captures the internal struggle that many

Chicanos cope with as they try to adapt to the demands of living with both English and Spanish

speaking communities. The mix of these languages begins to form new varieties that, even now,

have a negative stereotype associated with them making Latinos and Chicanos in North

America even more insecure. Instead of being shamed for her choice of language styles, she

chooses to embrace the diversity of her tongue and will continue to do so until she no longer has

to accommodate others for her illegitimate language. Anzaldua then goes on to describe her

personal writing process and how her cultural background gives her the ability to write stories

through her experiences. She implies that writing is an art in the way that it is created and shaped

by the writer and their decisions in life.

Alondra Arias

Professor Brian Graves

LANG 120

6 March 2017

Howard, Rebecca Moore, Tricia Serviss, and Tanya K. Rodrigue. Writing from Sources,

Writing from Sentences. Writing and Pedagogy, vol. 2, no. 2, 2010, pp. 177-92.

There were multiple authors that contributed to this article which details inquiry about

students writing and their sources. Rebecca Howard, Tricia Serviss, and Tanya Rodrigue all

have significant backgrounds with writing disciplines coming from several states like West

Virginia, New York, Massachusetts, etc. The article became published in 2010 and centers

around students instances of copying, patchwriting, paraphrasing, and summarizing within their

respective works. I can only assume that these three women, some of which are professors,

intend to use this knowledge to teach their students or other faculty about the importance of

understanding sources rather than simply using ideas on the sentence level which can be

restraining at times. They claim that due to these restraints associated with working on a sentence

level idea, plagiarizing becomes inevitable. These students must learn to understand more than

just a few sentences and use the knowledge to strategically support their ideas without direct

reliance on the sources.

Alondra Arias

Professor Brian Graves

LANG 120

2 March 2017

Mcclure, Randall. "Googlepedia: Turning Information Behaviors into Research Skills." Writing

Spaces: Readings on Writing, vol. 2, ed. Charles Lowe and Pavel Zemliansky, Parlor

Press, 2011, pp. 221-41.

By writing this piece in a the internet age of 2011, Randall Mcclure studies two students

and their research process as they look for information through open web resources. Mcclure

suggests that many students, like the ones in this study, start the research process by searching

through Googlepedia a combination of searching for links via Google and Wikipedia. He

argues that even though both resources can provide a good starting point, students should turn to

his or her university library for specific and reliable information. Because most students use

Googlepedia as a go-to way to writing research papers, I believe that Mcclure wants to dispel the

belief that it is the easiest or most efficient way to acquire sources. Mcclures claim would most

benefit students looking for reliable sources or shorten the time it takes to gather subject

information. Because Mcclure is an English professor, the amount of students he may encounter

that swear by this Googlepedia formula must be high enough to merit concern, therefore,

relevant to today's writing theory.

National Council of Teachers of English. First-Year Writing: What Good Does It Do?: A Policy

Research Brief. Council Chronicle, vol. 23, no.2, Nov. 2013.

In this article, the National Council of Teachers of English is trying to give evidence of

why and how first year writing courses are beneficial to freshman. Many students, both during

2013 when this was published and throughout subsequent years, opt to take AP-like or dual

enrollment courses that can transfer over to college which can count as a first year writing class.

The Council wants to prove that first year writing courses are essential to a freshmans

development both in and out of the classroom. They claim that these courses enhance a students

knowledge of rhetoric, metacognition, and their ability to engage with their writing in an

appropriate academic manner. Because of the many benefits, this group of teachers want to

transform the way incoming freshman are analyzed based on their individual writing rather than

if they made a high enough grade in high school to be able to opt out of FYW courses. They plan

to do this by showcasing how diverse FYW can have an impact on the cognitive development of

a student.
Alondra Arias

Professor Brian Graves

LANG 120

23 February 2017

Russell, David. Activity Theory and Its Implications for Writing Instruction. Reconceiving

Writing, Rethinking Writing Instruction. Ed. Joseph Petraglia. (Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum,

1995): pp. 51-76.

In this 1995 piece, David Russell begins by explaining what activity theory is and how it

relates to writing. Russell also argues for a reformation in General Writing Skill Instruction

courses. As a professor at Iowa State University, I imagine he may be trying to reach to other

scholars or instructors in a variety of fields in order to expand the idea of the uses of writing in

society. At a time in the U.S where most GWSI courses teach students how to write rather than

teaching them about writing, Russell wants to dispel the myth of an autonomous literacy. He

highlights the problems associated with these types of courses such as the lack of content, rigor,

expectations, and determining effectiveness. He shows how activity systems work to provide

students with an objective and tools to get to that objective but those tools can vary depending on

what discipline is being studied. There is no general formula for learning to write because an

activity system will not allow for it.

Alondra Arias

Professor Brian Graves

LANG 120

31 January 2017

Sommers, Nancy. Revision Strategies of Student Writers and Experienced Adult Writers.

College Composition and Communication, vol. 31, no. 4, 1980, pp. 37888.

Nancy Sommers study is centered around the revision process of students versus that of

experienced writers. Her subjects were primarily from Boston and Oklahoma City where she has

directed both of the writing programs at those universities. Sommers points out the linear model

of writing and how it constricts a students ability to grow by levels of revising. She suggests that

most inexperienced students revise by simply rewording while writers with more experience see

the process as cyclical with levels that require them to look at the arguments within the work.

She writes this article targeted to mostly teachers and other professors while arguing that the

linear model that is taught today does not function because writing develops like a seed.

Students are more focused on following rules and making sure they do not deviate from them

because that is what they were taught. The students fail to pay attention to the ideas and form of

their writing which is something that is a primary concern for experienced writers. Sommers

explains that writers should seek to bring their own meaning into everything they write and can

do so by learning to revise properly.

Sommers, Nancy, and Laura Saltz. The Novice as Expert: Writing the Freshman Year. College

Composition and Communication, vol. 56, no. 1, Sept 2004, pp. 124-49

In this article there are several case studies in which Nancy Sommers and Laura Saltz

both explore the idea of a freshman year without academic writing. The studies are focused on a

group of 400 Harvard University students and their four years of undergraduate writing. The

importance of writing in the freshman year is focused on as students must accept the role of an

apprentice in order to gain new skills. This, however, must not continue throughout the entirety

of any students college careers or they could be stuck in a rut without growing. This theory

becomes a message to other students who may not understand the importance of being a writing

novice. Students also discuss how different college would be without writing which shows how

that could affect their personal development. The authors seem to claim that by exploring ones

own interests through writing students can discover new aspects of themselves. Doing this will

allow for a student to grow as a novice then write as an expert throughout the rest of their

academic careers.
Alondra Arias

Professor Brian Graves

LANG 120

28 February, 2017

Thonney, Teresa. Teaching the Conventions of Academic Discourse. Teaching English in the

Two-Year College, vol. 38, no.4, May 2011, pp. 347-62.

In this piece, Teresa Thonney begins by challenging David Russells theory that there are

no general set of rules that can be applied to any writing and then taught to students. Thonney

references several other scholars as far back as 1969 showcasing that this topic is still relevant

even at the time in which she wrote her article in 2011. By supporting her own case with various

studies, she provides evidence of several strategies that scholars of different disciplines follow

which prove successful in academic writing. She showcases several ways the scholars have used

these writing strategies in six major disciplines. Thonney claims that first-year writing

compositions can teach these strategies in order for the students to be able to then expand upon

in their respective majors. The article can be intended for those who want to understand or

improve the way freshman first year-writing courses are taught are exposed to both Russells and

Thonneys theories in which they can then choose to support or challenge them.
Alondra Arias

Professor Brian Graves

LANG 120

24 January 2017

Villanueva, Victor. Excerpt from Bootstraps: From an Academic of Color. Urbana, IL: NCTE,

1993. 66-67. Print.

Victor Villanueva describes the process of assimilating to life outside of the Army by

attempting to balance the demands of an unfamiliar university setting versus that of a previous

community college setting. Trying to overcome the insecurity of being a minority, Villanueva

consistently strives to improve his own work and to understand the secret behind writing. After

experiencing college through the perspective of a student and professor, he recalls a struggle that

is all too familiar to a student transitioning in their writing journey. He explains that by

examining his professors publications, he attempted to integrate the patterns apparent in their

work into his writings. Like most college students seeking undergraduate degrees, Villanueva

temporarily found success in this strategy but later discovers that his writing cannot expand

solely on those patterns but through deeper connections and rhetoric. Villanueva suggests that

those students who struggle with language can succeed by understanding rhetoric and what it

teaches. The power of rhetoric in various disciplines can lead a writer to understand the

conscious choices made during the writing process and its effects.