Monday, October 28, 2013
Blog #4: Affective Dimensions of Writing
Ernest Hemingway is attributed to have said, “There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.” Writing can be a beautiful way to express one’s thoughts, feelings, and emotions. Or to write one may answer the question, “What would your eyes say if they could speak?” I believe that everyone has something to say and that it can be said by some means. Some people can perfectly capture their sentiments with the right words. Others, myself included, sometimes struggle to find the right words.
“The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug.” -Mark Twain
I am sometimes a writer, but not always. Sometimes I am an athlete, at other times I am a musician, a painter, or a photographer. Ideally I think I like to steal other people’s expressions to express my own. It is probably why I like reading and quotes so much. As a child I don’t recall writing often for my personal pleasure, but I did begin to keep quotes and sayings that I enjoyed.
I have grown from a word robber to an occasional blogger, if I have something exciting to blog about. Exciting to me generally revolves around three subjects: adventures, pet peeves, or food. I probably have a more intimate relationship with food than most people, so maybe that is how I communicate. I am definitely not a journal writer, but I probably should be. Sometimes I am too quick with my words and it would probably improve my non-edible relationships if I vented through writing before being so quick to open my mouth and say the first things that come out of it. In lieu of journals I write emails to my family. I’m sure if I changed the beginning to “Dear Diary” I would have a very nice collection of journals but I never save these emails. I guess I don’t journal because I don’t feel I have the time and most things feel so trivial and I feel that I waste too much time going into detail, yet if it is not detailed I feel that it was boring and pointless to even mention. Do you see my struggle? I don’t twitter and I try to keep my Facebook addiction to a minimum, so I don’t post updates on Facebook very often.
I also go on tangents (if you didn’t notice) which may be another reason I don’t write a lot. Tangents are a hard habit to break. I am making progress though (I wrote a tangent but decided not to add it, but I suppose telling you about the tangent I didn’t add is a tangent in itself).
I have a few very memorable writing assignments. One was for my sophomore English teacher, Mr. Talley. Mr. Talley had us do some creative writing and write a story. My imagination soared with this assignment and I enjoyed the positive feedback I received about my story. I always like writing assignments that feel easy or that I have good ideas to write about or how to write it. Another writing assignment I enjoyed was a persuasive essay for my college English class. My instructor gave me permission to write this essay in the same style as Swift's A Modest Proposal which I loved. I enjoyed the satire and irony in writing about shipping off country music fans to Australia (see- a pet peeve!).
Writing assignments that I dislike are long, boring, tedious, and hard. I had one French writing class and I hated the teacher because she would never give out high grades because, "A paper can always be improved upon." Bah. It is already hard enough to write in French, never mind writing the "perfect" paper. It took me a long time (I'm not sure if I am still there) to come to terms with writing in French overall. It is a terribly difficult thing you see, the whole language is different and some American ideas, words, and phrases, just don't work right in French. One of my mentors in France, Annick, taught me that I needed to take on a different personality to be able to successfully write in French that was not my own.
I feel that this is important for all language learners to know, you aren't going to be able to say things quite how you want to, but you can figure out how to work around it and basically say what you want to. Another influential theme that should flow throughout any writing assignment is the ability to be creative and the validation of outside ideas. This is an excellent way to get students to connect to writing, but letting them write how (and possibly what) they want to. I think it is finding that balance between having some guidelines (we all secretly like boundaries, you know) and freedom to create. I guess that means being able to write outside the box? :]
Friday, October 11, 2013
Blog #3: Affective Dimensions of Reading
Affective Dimensions of Reading
I consider myself a good reader. I like reading and I generally don't find difficulty in reading. I’ve been reading since I was young. My mother used to read us children The Great Brain as we ate breakfast. She encouraged me to read and helped me to grow my own collection of books; I loved reading The Bearstein Bears and still own quite the collection of the series. Now I enjoy reading junior fiction. I relish in stories of fairy tales, princesses, and that sort of thing. I like reading when it is for my own enjoyment and personal pleasure. I also don’t mind reading textbooks if they are particularly interesting (but one can only read so much textbook in one day).
I enjoy reading except when it is something that I don’t like to read that is forced upon me because I naturally don’t read things I don’t like to read, like obituaries. I only read the comics in the newspaper, and that is a tendency of persons who are more likely to be depressed, but I completely understand why they don’t read the rest of the paper. I dislike very much historical fiction. I also don't enjoy analyzing texts. My most unpleasant reading experience with French literature was very unpleasant, rather painful, and I’m quite sure I am still scarred from the experience. While studying in France I took a French literature class in which the professor took enjoyment in torturing us by requiring us to read À la Recherche du Temps Perdu, (Remembrance of Things Past is the English title, not that you should read it unless you wish upon yourself a slow and painful death) by Marcel Proust. I hate Proust. I respect that he has some writing skill, but really when your skill is putting to sleep through fifty pages about how you can’t sleep one night, no one wants to read on and find a sentence that is NINE HUNDRED FIFTY-EIGHT words long. Proust drags you through time so slowly that to quote Proust himself, "An hour is not merely an hour.” No, it is much more painful and drags you slowly, ever so slowly through the coals of hell. See the end of this post for an excellent piece on the attempt to read Marcel Proust.
Less than pleased to find Proust in the Pere Lachaise Cemetery in Paris.
To have students interested in reading it is important to avoid books such as Remembrance of Things Past and The Scarlet Letter. Books need to be age appropriate, entertaining, and applicable for the students. It is imperative for students to know the relevance of reading the text. All of the texts I truly loathed seemed very irrelevant in my studies.
I share the view of Oscar Wilde, “If one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again, there is no use in reading it at all.” Reading for students needs to be enjoyable and should never be more painful than being skinned alive like reading Proust is. Teachers need to be less hung up on finding texts that others have been deemed to have a particularly outstanding literary importance and find texts that will be more enjoyable to the students. Perhaps students could have options of what they read in class. Maya Angelou, a renowned poet in our time has said, “Any book that helps a child to form a habit of reading to make reading on of his deep and continuing needs, is good for him.” It doesn’t matter if this is Captain Underpants or Tom Sawyer; the importance is that the child is reading. Reading is at the foundation of our society. I think that you can help students to see themselves as readers by letting them see you as a reader, encouraging reading, and providing opportunities to read. You can take opportunities to read to your class, let them know what you have been reading over the weekend, as well as have books related to your subject that students can look at when they have completed assignments early. Teachers can also create activities which center on student reading.
This antidotal text describes efforts to read Proust rather well:
Crawling Up Everest
By Russell Baker
On July 18 the two of us set out together to read Remembrance of Things Past by Marcel Proust. We have been reading it fairly steadily ever since, thanks to our stocked kits of smelling salts, and are determined to keep on reading until we either finish or die in the attempt.
Our first diary entries--of a Shackleton's expedition in literature--are presented below because this is a moment that cries out for public examples of heroism to remind us again of the greatness of which Americans are capable.
Few deeds can be more heroic than an attempt to read Remembrance of Things Past from beginning to end. Some persons will quarrel with this. Some will argue that true heroism lies in sitting through all of Wagner's Die Valkyrie. Others will hold that it consists in enduring a festival of Andy Hardy films. Every man has his Everest. None is so formidable as Remembrance of Things Past.
Remembrance of Things Past is longer than Everest is tall. When all seven volumes are piled together the stack is more than six miles tall. This great length is due not only to the incredible number of strained similes contained in the novel's seven volumes, but also to the dense layers of tedium packed into almost every paragraph.
Reading it is a feat to test Hercules, Washington, Lindbergh, John Glenn or John Wayne. "Life is too short and Proust is too long," Anatole French is said to have explained when asked why he had not read it. Perhaps so.
To help in the struggle I have retained a Sherpa reader who is highly prasied among his countrymen for his ability to read anything. His name is Tenzing. Once Tenzing read the inaugural address of Warren G. Harding in its entirety, and to show that this was not a fluke, went on to read The Last of the Mohicans almost halfway through.
To protect ourselves against the temptation to cheat by skipping several volumes, we are reading aloud, every last word. The opening diary entries follow:
July 18: Would anyone believe 12,000 words about a man who had a hard time going to sleep when he was a boy? We read twenty-two pages of this before Tenzing gets ugles and say I have betrayed him by not telling him that this is a plot to bore him to death. Fortunately, I am asleep by this time and cannot take offense.
July19: Another twenty pages today. The narrator--Proust, I suppose--still couldn't get to sleep. In a sudden flurry of narrative action Proust drinks a cup of tea and eats a cookie, which remind him of his boyhood, especially an aunt and a church he associates with that age, and an inability to go to sleep.
July 20: Only six pages tonight. Proust remembers the church again and, in a plot complication, recalls a stained glass window. Tenzing revives my heartbeat with brandy after seven hours of reading the paragraph on pages forty-nine, fifty, and fifty-one. Our medical team pleads with us to turn back.
July 22: Our first crisis tonight. Lifting the book to begin, I was seized with acute indolence, which the doctors say is common in the tertiary stage of tedium gravis. It was brought on by my conviction that Proust was going to remember the church's steeple while my life ebbed away.
Recovered enough tonight to read again. Proust tells absolutely everything about a meal that was prepared when he was a boy--asparagus, chicken, potatoes, marrow, spinach, apricots, roast leg of mutton, biscuits, preserves, coffee, cream, pepper and salt, bread, butter, knives, folks, spoons, table cloth ... Tenzing says I must get a grip on myself.
July 23: Tonight we read for three weeks and finish nine pages. Proust reads in his garden and remembers veal.
July 24: Hurrah! Seventeen pages in just thirty-two hours tonight! Proust thinks of an invalid aunt and a musician who rather thinks he would like to play for some guests but is too shy to mention it.
July 25: Tenzing is in a deep depression. "That rotten Proust is going to think of the church again," he predicts at dinner. "Compared to Proust," he tells me, "Uncas, Chingachgook and Warren Harding are as much fun as Mae West." I take Tenzing to see an old Terry Thomas movie, which reminds both of us of brussels sprouts.
July 26: Refreshed by our night off, we plunge through twenty-seven pages about Proust's boyhood passion for hawthorn blossums. Tenzing collapses in hysteria, cursing hawthorn blossums, spinach, church steeple and stained glass windows.
Our medical team order us to take a week off. With 60,000 words behind us we have barely dented the book, but we feel heroic and American. Next week, says Tenzing, who has peeked ahead, the plot will thicken. He believes Proust is about to take a walk in the country. I already begin to look forward to it. Or is it merely anticipation of the ticket tape parade up Broadway?
Less than pleased to find Proust in the Pere Lachaise Cemetery in Paris.
To have students interested in reading it is important to avoid books such as Remembrance of Things Past and The Scarlet Letter. Books need to be age appropriate, entertaining, and applicable for the students. It is imperative for students to know the relevance of reading the text. All of the texts I truly loathed seemed very irrelevant in my studies.
I share the view of Oscar Wilde, “If one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again, there is no use in reading it at all.” Reading for students needs to be enjoyable and should never be more painful than being skinned alive like reading Proust is. Teachers need to be less hung up on finding texts that others have been deemed to have a particularly outstanding literary importance and find texts that will be more enjoyable to the students. Perhaps students could have options of what they read in class. Maya Angelou, a renowned poet in our time has said, “Any book that helps a child to form a habit of reading to make reading on of his deep and continuing needs, is good for him.” It doesn’t matter if this is Captain Underpants or Tom Sawyer; the importance is that the child is reading. Reading is at the foundation of our society. I think that you can help students to see themselves as readers by letting them see you as a reader, encouraging reading, and providing opportunities to read. You can take opportunities to read to your class, let them know what you have been reading over the weekend, as well as have books related to your subject that students can look at when they have completed assignments early. Teachers can also create activities which center on student reading.
This antidotal text describes efforts to read Proust rather well:
Crawling Up Everest
By Russell Baker
On July 18 the two of us set out together to read Remembrance of Things Past by Marcel Proust. We have been reading it fairly steadily ever since, thanks to our stocked kits of smelling salts, and are determined to keep on reading until we either finish or die in the attempt.
Our first diary entries--of a Shackleton's expedition in literature--are presented below because this is a moment that cries out for public examples of heroism to remind us again of the greatness of which Americans are capable.
Few deeds can be more heroic than an attempt to read Remembrance of Things Past from beginning to end. Some persons will quarrel with this. Some will argue that true heroism lies in sitting through all of Wagner's Die Valkyrie. Others will hold that it consists in enduring a festival of Andy Hardy films. Every man has his Everest. None is so formidable as Remembrance of Things Past.
Remembrance of Things Past is longer than Everest is tall. When all seven volumes are piled together the stack is more than six miles tall. This great length is due not only to the incredible number of strained similes contained in the novel's seven volumes, but also to the dense layers of tedium packed into almost every paragraph.
Reading it is a feat to test Hercules, Washington, Lindbergh, John Glenn or John Wayne. "Life is too short and Proust is too long," Anatole French is said to have explained when asked why he had not read it. Perhaps so.
To help in the struggle I have retained a Sherpa reader who is highly prasied among his countrymen for his ability to read anything. His name is Tenzing. Once Tenzing read the inaugural address of Warren G. Harding in its entirety, and to show that this was not a fluke, went on to read The Last of the Mohicans almost halfway through.
To protect ourselves against the temptation to cheat by skipping several volumes, we are reading aloud, every last word. The opening diary entries follow:
July 18: Would anyone believe 12,000 words about a man who had a hard time going to sleep when he was a boy? We read twenty-two pages of this before Tenzing gets ugles and say I have betrayed him by not telling him that this is a plot to bore him to death. Fortunately, I am asleep by this time and cannot take offense.
July19: Another twenty pages today. The narrator--Proust, I suppose--still couldn't get to sleep. In a sudden flurry of narrative action Proust drinks a cup of tea and eats a cookie, which remind him of his boyhood, especially an aunt and a church he associates with that age, and an inability to go to sleep.
July 20: Only six pages tonight. Proust remembers the church again and, in a plot complication, recalls a stained glass window. Tenzing revives my heartbeat with brandy after seven hours of reading the paragraph on pages forty-nine, fifty, and fifty-one. Our medical team pleads with us to turn back.
July 22: Our first crisis tonight. Lifting the book to begin, I was seized with acute indolence, which the doctors say is common in the tertiary stage of tedium gravis. It was brought on by my conviction that Proust was going to remember the church's steeple while my life ebbed away.
Recovered enough tonight to read again. Proust tells absolutely everything about a meal that was prepared when he was a boy--asparagus, chicken, potatoes, marrow, spinach, apricots, roast leg of mutton, biscuits, preserves, coffee, cream, pepper and salt, bread, butter, knives, folks, spoons, table cloth ... Tenzing says I must get a grip on myself.
July 23: Tonight we read for three weeks and finish nine pages. Proust reads in his garden and remembers veal.
July 24: Hurrah! Seventeen pages in just thirty-two hours tonight! Proust thinks of an invalid aunt and a musician who rather thinks he would like to play for some guests but is too shy to mention it.
July 25: Tenzing is in a deep depression. "That rotten Proust is going to think of the church again," he predicts at dinner. "Compared to Proust," he tells me, "Uncas, Chingachgook and Warren Harding are as much fun as Mae West." I take Tenzing to see an old Terry Thomas movie, which reminds both of us of brussels sprouts.
July 26: Refreshed by our night off, we plunge through twenty-seven pages about Proust's boyhood passion for hawthorn blossums. Tenzing collapses in hysteria, cursing hawthorn blossums, spinach, church steeple and stained glass windows.
Our medical team order us to take a week off. With 60,000 words behind us we have barely dented the book, but we feel heroic and American. Next week, says Tenzing, who has peeked ahead, the plot will thicken. He believes Proust is about to take a walk in the country. I already begin to look forward to it. Or is it merely anticipation of the ticket tape parade up Broadway?
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