Week 2: Mc Gee and Ericsson Summary "MSGC the Invisible Grammarian"

  In the article, “The Politics of the Program: MS Word as the Invisible Grammarian” Tim McGee and Patricia Ericsson informs English composition teachers, Language Arts teachers, Literacy specialist, and students how MSGC may have an invisible grammar influences on the writing process.  Because of the wide spread availability of MSGC, the authors bring awareness to MSGC users by sharing three major concerns about the software’s design, content, and negative effects it may have on a student’s writing performance.  They argue “As composition teachers, deciding whether or not to use technology in our classes is simply not the point—we have to pay attention to technology.” McGee and Ericsson urges users to not rely on the MSGC for proofreading, but pay attention to who is correcting our grammar and influences our style. 

Week 2: Tim McGee and Patricia Ericsson

The primary audience for this article titled “The Politics of the Program: MS Word as the Invisible Grammarian” written by Tim McGee and Patricia Ericsson are English teachers, language arts teachers, literary specialist, students, and users of Microsoft Word Grammar Checker (MSGC).  The purpose of this article is to bring awareness to composition teachers that the MSGC software has limits in its designs and context and how it may have an effect on a student’s writing performance. The authors basically critique the software since so many writing students are users of this software. The authors’ exigence to share this article centers around how can composition teachers minimize the harm MSGC could cause on the writing process.  The software is designed by computational linguists, not by teachers of writing.  This proses a concern for teachers who allow their student to use this technology (MSGC) in their classroom, because of the widespread availability of this program to writing students. Unfortunately, the MS Word grammar checker can be a hindrance to early in the composing process, because the program corrects the users work while the writer is in their drafting stage and the program has gaps in the its grammar artificial intelligence. Personally, MSGC has helped me in my writing.  I find the spelling and grammar checker very useful and its suggestions help improve my writing. As far as manipulating the program to work for me, I have not done so. I basically have left all the default setting in place and just use what the program offers. I believe teachers should not require MSGC for all writing at the elementary level.  Young writers should have the freedom to write freely without having to think about spelling or sentence structure. Grammar and structure can be corrected over time, but over correcting a student during their writing process can hinder their confidence to write.

Define These Terms.

Define the following terms in your own words.

1. Audience is the spectator or listener of what someone's thought.
2. Purpose is what do you want to accomplish.
3. Exigence is a concern that prompts you to do something.
4. Genre is a category of writing.

What do these words have to do with writing?

1. Every author writes to an audience to relay a message to his or her reader.  The audience may differ depending on what the author is trying to convey.
2. The purpose of writing is the message.  What exactly do I want my reader to know about a particular topic, story, etc. 
3. Exigence is the passion or interest behind the topic from the author.  Exigence ignites the author from a thought to an action.
4. Genre is the wide category of writings a writer can choose to write about. 

My Strengths and Weaknesses

My strengths and weakness about my academic writing experiences.  I prefer to bullet them.

Strengths

• Research and Brainstorming: I like the research part of writing a paper.  Reading studies and understanding different peoples' perspectives about a topic.
• Structure: I enjoy formulating the structure of the paper.  I like constructing an outline about the topics and subtopics that I am going to writing about.
• Detail Oriented: I try to pay attention to the details of articles so I can have a better grasp of what the author's message.

Weakness

• Developing a thesis: I struggle at first with coming up with my thesis statement; however, by the time I am well into the paper, my thesis always comes together.  I find it easier to just begin my papers and fine tune my thesis as I go.
• Over thinking a topic
• Typing: I am an extremely slow typer.
• Remembering MLA and APA documentation

Favorite Work:

• Education Key Assessments
• Two years ago, I started a Facebook group.  I posted inspirational and motivational quotes to women who were in different stages in their life.  One of my seasonal topics came from the book The Magic of Thinking Big.  Some quotes that I grabbed from the book created some interesting dialogue among us and urged us to do big things in our life.