#2

In Christensen's article, she discusses the way teachers often subject students to harsh criticisms and systematic disadvantages based on their assumed "inadequacy" as a result of their SES (Socioeconomis status). For example, her teacher made her stand in front of the class and pronounce words in her "incorrect" way, as compared to the pronunciation of a girl in a higher economic class (Christensen, 100). Christensen discusses the desire of teachers to provide students with a handle on Standard Edited English for career and academic purposes, and the harmful ways in which that desire manifests. In chapter 1 of Grammar Alive, three goals are discussed—of which, Goals B and C are most relevant to my interpretation of the Christensen article [use of an em dash to emphasize the importance of Goals B and C, and to highlight that I might focus on these goals in the sentences following]. Using culturally responsive teaching (attempting to understand and incorporate students' backgrounds and communities in their education to avoid unfair assumptions and exclusion) is very important to me as a future teacher. Goal B explains that there are different varieties of writing and English language that are appropriate for different contexts, instead of only academic, Edited English being the only correct form. This reflects the huge variety of uses for the English language, and emphasizes that it's illogical to only force SAE on students, as they use colloquial and informal communication more often. Goal C urges the reader to reflect on students' cultures and language varieties and to view them as valid and correct. Respecting the rules for grammar and language in their varieties is important because it validates the student's identity, and encourages other students to respect each other as well—if teachers refuse to acknowledge the rules of grammar that students follow in their home languages, they will never get recognized for their efforts, and a major part of their identity will be dismissed or deemed incorrect [em dash used to emphasize the latter part of the sentence].


I chose to experiment with em dashes in this piece in order to emphasize my main points. Persuasive writing seems more powerful when em dashes are used, and I always feel uncertain about my own use. For some reason, it always feels incorrect when I try to place them in my writing, since the rules have always seemed unclear to me.

Blog Post #1 self-assessment

This semester, I would like to focus on two main goals– one practical and the other more creative. The goals are: to build confidence in my use of commas, as I tend to go overboard and thus perpetually doubt my comma placement, and to explore creative options for punctuation such as colons, semicolons, and em dashes.

When I write, I tend to overuse commas. In fact, I may even be doing so right now, in this post. Truly, it is hard to tell. If anyone reading this can help me structure my sentences around punctuation other than commas, then by all means, help me! All jokes aside, I do actually want to branch out from my comfort zone and experiment with some new syntax. Aside from the more tongue-in-cheek examples of repetitive comma usage, another comes to mind. When emailing regarding a lost package, I struggled to keep the tone somewhere between friendly and formal. I ended up getting so nervous about my commas that I created an awkwardly long sentence with pauses in the wrong places: "I have two packages that I thought never arrived, but I was finally able to get info on them and it turns out they arrived a couple days earlier than predicted, before I had filled out the mailbox slip with my name." Though I didn't reconstruct the sentence before sending the email, I caught it when I was compelled by typo anxiety to read through again.

Stylistically, I'd like to work on my informal writing skills. My years of AP English classes and Standard English-focused education has led me to develop my formal and academic writing skills, but neglected my creative and more expressive skill development. My first genuine creative writing piece was assigned last year for my Queer Literature Studies class, in a fictionalized biographical paper. By challenging myself, I designed some impactful sentences wherein I got to use punctuation that I don't frequently get to use in academic writing. An example: "Consider this: a twelve year old girl. Any face, any name– the serials don't matter. She is riding home from a family potluck, a small and anticipatory dessert box in her lap." In the first few sentences of my piece, I used several punctuation types. It allowed me to hit the main bullet points of scene-setting that I needed to open my story. It also lent an air of impatience, I think, to have so many short and pointed sentences. I would love to experiment more with informal or unusual uses of grammar and punctuation, in order to build on my emotional tones in my creative writing.