The first thing I should reveal to you about improving your grammar at the University of Arkansas is this: there's no better place to get help than at the Quality Writing Center (the QWC, in short).
Go ahead: go to their website and look around. You'll find a lot of useful resources that you probably didn't even know existed. For example, did you know that the tutors at the QWC offers online tutoring? Free grammar handouts that you can download as .pdfs? They even have a blog. So, even if you can't make it in for a face-to-face tutorial, the Quality Writing Center still has lots of ways to assist you.
QWC Director Bob Haslam and his team are committed to helping U of A students grow as writers; I encourage you to let them!
Thursday, January 7, 2010
Introductions and Confessions
Now that I'm asking you all to create your own blogs on Blogger, I guess it's time for a confession: this is the first time I've ever blogged ever. So, in case you are feeling intimidated, don't.
We are going to explore blogging together, and we almost certainly are going to learn a lot in the process. I don't expect your blogs (or mine) to be perfect, but I do expect them to improve over the course of the semester. We will read the blogs of the people in the class; then we will wade out into the internet, locate blogs we like and figure out what we like about them; and we'll read some tips and pointers from experts about how to compose a really awesome blog and write really incredible blogposts.
My goal with this assignment is to help you learn a new kind of writing (blogging) that you can take with you and use in your life beyond college. You'll learn more about this in your assignment description, but for now just know that I'm hoping this assignment will be fun and a welcome change from writing papers.
I'd like for all of you to start thinking about what topic or theme you want to focus on in your blog. This topic will be the backbone of your message. Maybe you could start by thinking about your hobbies. Are you into fishing? Knitting? Cooking? Hiking? These are all great topics. Alternatively, you could consider issues you are concerned about, like the environment, the economy, or social activism. Another way to approach choosing a topic might be to look at your life and identify anything really important to you that you want to write about: perhaps you are a new parent or you are taking care of an elderly relative, or maybe you just started a new job---or lost an old job---and your life has changed dramatically as a result. Blogs can be written about anything.
I've chosen to write about grammar for my blog, not because I'm TOTALLY into grammar or anything, but because this is an English class, after all, and I figured weekly blog posts might be an (almost) painless way to review a few basic concepts.
The tone you choose for your blog is equally important. Blogs can be funny or serious, casual or professional. You'll want to think about the tone and style you are going to try to achieve before you start blogging. (We'll see if I can succeed in making grammar hilarious: I aim to try.)
You'll also want to consider your audience; to a great extent, your other decisions will depend upon your choice of audience. Who is your target audience? How can you best reach them? For example, you are my target audience...although I expect to pick up lots of interested followers from around the world. Hey, I can dream....
As I said at the beginning, don't worry! We'll work our way through this stuff as we work our way through the semester, and I'm sure you'll all have a lot of fun.
We are going to explore blogging together, and we almost certainly are going to learn a lot in the process. I don't expect your blogs (or mine) to be perfect, but I do expect them to improve over the course of the semester. We will read the blogs of the people in the class; then we will wade out into the internet, locate blogs we like and figure out what we like about them; and we'll read some tips and pointers from experts about how to compose a really awesome blog and write really incredible blogposts.
My goal with this assignment is to help you learn a new kind of writing (blogging) that you can take with you and use in your life beyond college. You'll learn more about this in your assignment description, but for now just know that I'm hoping this assignment will be fun and a welcome change from writing papers.
I'd like for all of you to start thinking about what topic or theme you want to focus on in your blog. This topic will be the backbone of your message. Maybe you could start by thinking about your hobbies. Are you into fishing? Knitting? Cooking? Hiking? These are all great topics. Alternatively, you could consider issues you are concerned about, like the environment, the economy, or social activism. Another way to approach choosing a topic might be to look at your life and identify anything really important to you that you want to write about: perhaps you are a new parent or you are taking care of an elderly relative, or maybe you just started a new job---or lost an old job---and your life has changed dramatically as a result. Blogs can be written about anything.
I've chosen to write about grammar for my blog, not because I'm TOTALLY into grammar or anything, but because this is an English class, after all, and I figured weekly blog posts might be an (almost) painless way to review a few basic concepts.
The tone you choose for your blog is equally important. Blogs can be funny or serious, casual or professional. You'll want to think about the tone and style you are going to try to achieve before you start blogging. (We'll see if I can succeed in making grammar hilarious: I aim to try.)
You'll also want to consider your audience; to a great extent, your other decisions will depend upon your choice of audience. Who is your target audience? How can you best reach them? For example, you are my target audience...although I expect to pick up lots of interested followers from around the world. Hey, I can dream....
As I said at the beginning, don't worry! We'll work our way through this stuff as we work our way through the semester, and I'm sure you'll all have a lot of fun.
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