Carnegie Notes from Oct. 31^st through Nov. 4^th

This week in class we spent even more time on coordination, subordination, and run-ons. I found the repetition useful as some of them were still not fully grasping how to punctuate with certain words (e.g. some were still trying to use a semicolon with a subordinator). I had to insist that they kept their book in front of them (with the chart on coordinating conjunctions, subordinators, etc. and what punctuation to use with each) because they were not all remembering on their own how to punctuate in each situation. Of course, there were five or six in my 189 class who could do it off the top of their heads without a moment’s hesitation, and some could examine the chart and remember, but a few just still didn’t get it. I mentioned about how they’d done practices on WebCT relating to finding the beginning of the second complete thought, but they seemed to feel it was harder doing it with their papers. On Friday, they went to the lab and corrected ALL run-ons, fragments, verb errors, spelling errors, organization problems, and weak details. Many of them only got through the spelling and fragments in their papers, but they did an excellent job of correcting them and even got into the spirit of “I could use this word, or I COULD use that word instead and it would sound better.” Again, a few (three or four) still seemed clueless about even what a run-on was (despite it being marked clearly on their papers), though they are students with severe learning disabilities, and it does take them longer on everything. I’m curious to see how their next papers will look after two weeks of practicing run-ons, after having corrected all run-ons on previous papers, and after two weeks worth of covering run-ons in class.