TORDA'S SPRING 2021 TEACHING
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      • PARTNER INTERVIEW MINI-PAPER
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    • ENGL 298 Second Year Seminar: This Bridgewater Life
    • ENGL406 RESEARCH IN WRITING STUDIES
    • ENGL 493 THE PERSONAL ESSAY
    • ENGL 493 Seminar in Writing & Writing Studies: The History of First Year Composition >
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    • ENGL 513 COMP THEORY & PEDAGOGY >
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Blog489 ENGL489 Advanced Portfolio Workshop

Need to be in touch with me? 
LEE TORDA
310 Tillinghast Hall
Bridgewater State University
508.531.2436
ltorda@bridgew.edu
www.leetorda.com
Spring 2015 Office Hours:
Tuesdays 2:00 to 4:00
Fridays 11:00 to 12:00 (noon)
and by appointment.
Preamble, Part I: Two summer I had the privilege of working with some students on an Undergraduate Research Abroad trip to Israel. Students researched and wrote pieces about culture and life in Israel through a blend of ethnographic methodology and creative non-fiction. One thing we did while we were on our trip is take turns posting to a blog about our journey. I think that for the most part we did a pretty good job and the feedback from readers (albeit readers who were on our side to begin with) was positive. It was the first time I ever participated in a blog. Here is the link: http://bsuinisrael.tumblr.com/

So of course my first instinct was to inflict the practice on future students.

Preamble, Part II: One of the challenges of teaching writing in a classroom to students who want to write outside of the classroom is mirroring the way people write in the real world. One of the most difficult and somehow fraught aspects of writing in the real world is that real readers read you—not for a grade, but because they like what you are writing. As a monumental testament to how little grades actually matter, students are much less nervous about having their teacher read and grade their writing than they are about having regular people read and not grade their writing. A blog is public. It’s not as public as Time, but it’s still out there, Harrry, it’s out there. And there is the possibility for other people to read what you wrote. And that is why I am, in fact, inflicting this project on all of you: I want to raise the stakes a little.

Preamble, Part III: Lots of blogs suck. I would like ours not to suck. I do not want it to be about our class or cutesy stuff about writing—bad clichés that there is plenty of and more on the internet already. It’s asking a lot, I know, but I’d like to come up with an idea for a blog that was general enough to allow all of us to have something to say, but, at the same time, not be so general that it’s about nothing at all.

Finally, the actual assignment: During our second class meeting, we will, as a class, decide on a blog—based on personal expertise and interest as well as collective expertise and interest. Once we’ve made some decisions. I will set up a blog on this website and invite the rest of you to give feedback and suggestions to the look and feel of the thing. Then we’ll start, me included, posting, one entry a day, every day, until the last day of classes this semester. It will work out to roughly three posts per person (about). 

Part of the challenge of this assignment is that blogs are a particular genre (as is writing for all social media). It has a kind of language that is not the language of your essays for you Am Lit class. It is a language of words and pictures and stuff. Lots and lots of stuff. So we'll need to think about the genre as a genre, and your success as a blogger will in part depend on how well you write in the genre. 




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  • Home
  • ENGL 489 Advanced Portfolio
    • ENGL 489 AUTHOR BIOS
    • ENGL 489 CLASS DISCUSSION BOARD
    • ENGL 489 SYLLABUS >
      • GUIDELINES FOR BEING PRESENT ONLINE
    • ENGL 489 PORTFOLIOS
    • ENGL 489 WRITER'S NOTEBOOK (ASSIGNMENTS)
    • ENGL 489 ICRN (ASSIGNMENTS)
    • ENGL 489 RETHINK/REVISE (ASSIGNMENTS)
    • ENGL 489 Interview with An Author (ASSIGNMENTS)
    • ENGL 489 MENTOR TEXT MEMOIR (ASSIGNMENTS)
    • ENGL 489 FINAL PROJECT (ASSIGNMENTS)
    • ENGL 489 Professionalization Presentations (ASSIGNMENTS)
  • ENGL 301 Writing & Teaching
    • ENGL 301 CLASS UPDATES
    • ENGL301 CLASS PROFILE PAGE
    • ENGL301 CLASS DISCUSSION BOARD
    • ENGL 301 SYLLABUS DAY
    • ENGL 301 PORTFOLIOS
    • ENGL 301 READING JOURNALS (assignment) >
      • ENGL 301 LT WRITING AND STUFF
    • ENGL 301 INTERVIEW WITH A TEACHER (assignment)
    • ENGL 301 FLASH MENTOR TEXT MEMOIR (assignment)
    • ENGL 301 BOOK CLUB (assignment)
    • ENGL 301 RESEARCH IN TEACHING DIVERSE POPULATIONS (assignment)
  • ENGL344 YA LIT
    • ENGL 344 CLASS PROFILE PAGE
    • ENGL344 CLASS UPDATE
    • ENGL 344 SPRING 2021 CLASS DISCUSSION BOARD
    • ENGL344 YA LIT SYLLABUS >
      • GUIDELINES FOR BEING PRESENT ONLINE IN ENGL101
    • ENGL344 YA LIT assignment: Flash Memoir YA Edit
    • ENGL344 YA LIT assignment PECHA KUCHA
    • ENGL344 YA LIT assignment WRITE YOUR OWN YA
  • Previously Taught Classes
    • ENGL101 Writing Rhetorically >
      • 101 SYLLABUS
      • BOOK CLUB >
        • How to do virtual BOOK CLUB
        • BOOK CLUB OPTIONS
      • PARTNER INTERVIEW MINI-PAPER
      • 101READER'S NOTES
      • THE BIG DEAL: Archival Ethnography of Bridgewater State
      • THE BIG TALK: Alumni Interview Project
      • THE BIG IDEA: WE ARE BRIDGEWATER: FINAL PROJECT & PRESENTATION
    • ENGL 202 BIZ Com >
      • ENGL 202 Business Writing SYLLABUS
    • 226 Writing & Writing Studies
    • ENGL 227 INTRO TO CNF WORKSHOP
    • ENGL 298 Second Year Seminar: This Bridgewater Life
    • ENGL406 RESEARCH IN WRITING STUDIES
    • ENGL 493 THE PERSONAL ESSAY
    • ENGL 493 Seminar in Writing & Writing Studies: The History of First Year Composition >
      • ENGL 493 Assignments: Annotated Bibliography & Presentation
    • ENGL 513 COMP THEORY & PEDAGOGY >
      • CLASS PROFILE ENGL 513 COMP T&P
    • ENGL 511 Reading & Writing Memoir
    • DURFEE Engl101
  • BSU Homepage