I want to say that the efforts by Mitch Daniels to abridge academic freedom are a massive embarrassment for our university, a clear indication of his dedication to advancing his conservative ideology from his position as president, and a terrible warning about what he intends to do in his tenure. Even if he has not […]
Continue reading →Here’s a fact about me and my writing process that I have long hidden from teachers and peers: I don’t take notes. Ever. I remember way back in sixth grade when my shame first came to light. In my school district, you attended K-5 at one elementary school (and how I wanted to stay there […]
Continue reading →This summer promises to be a heady time for me. I’ve been setting aside money for some time, so that I might be able to live this summer without having to work. I’m doing so because I’m taking my preliminary exams at the end of July. I can’t believe coursework has come and gone so […]
Continue reading →This coming semester (which begins on Monday, eep!) will be my last required set of courses. After this spring, I’ll have completed my five core courses, finished two secondary areas, and taken my linguistics requirements. I will still take classes next year; that’s quite common in my program. I’ll be taking a class in statistics […]
Continue reading →For those who are interested, the classes I’ll be taking this fall include Seminar in Language Testing, a class on assessment of language proficiency through test instruments. The class will examine the history, theory, and application of standardized tests for evaluating language proficiency, both oral and written, cross-linguistically. Rhetorical methodologies, a class dedicated to research […]
Continue reading →It’s a little funny to be getting excited about a semester that starts in late August, but I’ve ordered my textbook and crafted my syllabus for next semester. And I’m getting very excited. First, I’m excited to teach with The Short Guide to College Writing. It’s everything that most college textbooks aren’t. I don’t mean […]
Continue reading →As a mere consumer of journalism, I tend to think that what’s necessary in journalism isn’t just an adversarial attitude but a universally adversarial attitude, that is, skepticism towards all parties in a given dispute. That doesn’t mean that you try to achieve a phony balance by pretending that the facts support all parties equally. […]
Continue reading →A webtext I wrote for the online journal Writing Commons has survived the peer review process and been published. WC’s webtexts are designed as resources for students to develop their writing and multimedia compositions; mine considers the effective use of the first person in academic writing. You can check it out here.
Continue reading →I’m going to tell you a story, or really, a paraphrase of someone else’s story. Richard Fulkerson, a compositionist and Professor Emeritus in the Texas A&M system, wrote a series of controversial articles (over a span of decades) that traced a history of formal composition study and the dominant theories within. The beginning of that […]
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