WELCOME

Welcome to our Eng 100 Blog “Conversation Beyond the Classroom”! The title of this blog refers to the community of active readers & collaborative learners we are creating by sharing our academic writing for Eng 100 with each other + a larger group of students, instructors, academics, and just about anybody who chooses to follow our blog! When you write and post your reader responses here (and, later, as you write your essays for the course), I encourage you to use this audience to conceptualize who you are writing for and, most important, how to communicate your ideas so that this group of academic readers and writers can easily follow your line of thinking. Think about it this way: What do you need to explain and articulate in order for the other bloggers to understand your response to the essays we’ve read in class? What does your audience need to know about those essays and the authors who wrote them? And how can you show your readers, in writing, which ideas you add to these “conversations” that take place in the texts we study?
As students of Eng 100, you will use this blog to begin conversations with other academic writers on campus (students and instructors alike). We become active readers of each other’s writing when we comment on posts here. And, best of all, we are using this space to share ideas! I encourage you to use this blog to further think through the topics and writing strategies you will be introduced to this quarter. As always, be sure to give credit to those people whose ideas you borrow for your own thinking and writing (you should do this in the blog by commenting on their post, but you will also be required to cite what you borrow from your peers/instructors if and when it winds up in your essays. More details on that later…).
Finally, keep in mind that writing to and for this audience is a good way to prepare for the panel of readers (faculty at WCC) who will be reading and assessing your writing portfolio at the end of the quarter. We hope that as a large group of active readers, we can better prepare each other for this experience. But, in the meantime, let’s have fun with it! I am really excited see how far we can take this together!


--Mary Hammerbeck, Instructor of Eng 100

Wednesday, January 26, 2011

Quotation Sandwhiches...mmm turkey..

As the prominent author Richard Wurman states, “The most essential prerequisite to understanding is to be able to admit when you don’t understand something.” If you can’t admit that you don’t understand whatever is being presented to you, then you’re going to be as confused as a deer in the headlights when it comes time to pass that information onto someone else. Basically, Wurman is saying that in order to understand materials given to you- whether it be a mechanics handbook or a math problem- you need to be ignorant and ask questions to help you in understanding. Wurman also states, “When you can admit that you don’t know, you are more likely to ask the questions that will enable you to learn.” In making this comment, Wurman urges us to think outside the box; let your ego take a nap and ask questions. I’ve always believed that you will never learn all that you can if you don’t ask questions.
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