#7

LA-I like the idea of descriptive research and classification studies. There's a lot less work involved than in quantitative studies...no control groups, no treatments, a lot less confusion. There are numerous variables, but it still seems like a neater study to conduct. I also like the prediction factor and how that might play out after a study is completed.

Still, all the math and the weights really overwhelm me. As usual. Weights are about making variables equal? Why? Am I reading that right? What determines if variables are stated in raw score form or standard form?

Brodkey-A lot to read and re-read in terms of the way it's written. Very heavy. Anyway...I agree. Although assignments have a purpose, unless you know students are intentionally putting in zero effort, what they write should, yes, analyzed for errors, but only *after* they have been allowed to express their thoughts and have them validated. The idea of error analysis becomes secondary because although they know they have to go back and fix conventions, they also know what they wrote was approved. If error analysis is primary, why should they put their thoughts on paper if they won't actually be "read"?

And about discourse and the letters...those teachers were more relaxed...the writers...and they made errors because they were not THE teacher. They were completing an assignment. There are times I get emailed from my brother, an engineer with an MBA...and there is not one capitol I when he uses it alone, and sometimes there is no punctuation. I know full well he knows how to write "I" and use basic conventions correctly. But he may be in a rush, not care, knows he is capable if and only if there is a grade or money involved...could be many reasons. Even laziness in terms of typing. These people wrote that way because they were students, no matter what their role in life was outside of being a student in her class. Subconscious? Possibly. Like my brother, I sometimes think it takes more effort to go out of your way to undo what you've learned. I mean, don't you have to purposely NOT make an I capitol? I'd have to think about not using the shift key simultaneously with the i. I don't think about it at all when I type. Like just now. ...and at the same time some of the teachers who were corresponding appeared to think they were better than the students? Interesting. You can see the students think that. The one exchange, although the author didn't show all of it, tells me that the one student (Dora) never mentioned the murder again because Don was not interested in hearing it. He would ask her surface-level questions, but as soon as it got deep, she sort of made a joke of herself and reverted back to allowing Don to take the reigns in their correspondence. I wonder if this is because she thought he wasn't interested, or she thought he was too smart for the things that go on her "bum" world. Did he really not care? Seems like it. He ignored her attempts to tell him more personal things...and she never got a response to those things. So she stopped bothering to make him feel like she thought he was funny. He seemed very self-absorbed and purposely oblivious to me. There's this push-pull thing with many of the correspondences in that class...among all the students...the ABE students attempting to give off a smarter air than what is reality, knowing they are corresponding with educated people...and the teachers actively pushing them off their little pier of hope. The only one that seemed to over come this was the peer-type relationship of Ellen and Pat.

For me, I think knowing what you are capable of far outweighs actually trying to make people see it. It makes you more approachable, and by far, it is more impressive when others find out themselves rather than someone asserting their education, or money, or talent. I was almost embarrassed for the educators that sort of pushed the ABE students to the side as if their lives just were not of the importance that the life of an educated professional. Very interesting article...