Revised and Renewed

The effects of Standardized Testing in America

            When people in the United States think of school, many different images can pop into their heads. First, many may think of the classic school houses of the old days, with chalkboards, books and so on. Some may think of an elementary school, where student’s received recess, coloring, games, the ABC’s, and 123’s. Or some think about junior high and all the puberty and anxiety of dying to be in high school.  Or lastly you can think of high school, which involves maturity, sports, clubs, social relationships and so on.  Yet as some schools may still have these things, the concept of school as a place of fun and play is a thing of the past. In today’s society schools have become hyper focused on standardized testing, which has become one of the most controversial issues in education.  Standardize testing has effects on schools succeeding and struggling to meet the governmental standards and the raising expectations for students and educators, of which they are all feeling the pressure. Yet the real question is, whether it benefits those it affects or not.

            In order to fully understand standardized testing, one must go back and see how it came to be what it is today.  Beginning with the most familiar era, the Industrial Revolution in the 1800’s, where standardize testing became a way of efficiency. The reasoning behind this was because, more people continued to move in from the country to the city and teachers found that testing this way was easy to accommodate the large numbers of students states Dan Fletcher (1). Once World War I hit, standardized testing was given as aptitude quizzes called “Army Mental Test to assign U.S. servicemen jobs during the war effort” (1).  In the 20^th century a French psychologist Alfred Binet discovered a specific intelligence test which led more psychologist to the testing concept. Following the intelligence test, in 1905 a University of Kansas professor by the name of Frederick J. Kelly created the multiple-choice exam. Shortly after the creation of multiple choice tests, scanning machines were created. By now the test was a way to test intelligence only, and not be bias to other factors. Yet the test did not work out as well as one hoped, due to Ellis Island immigrants. Due to this dilemma experts decided to put more emphasis on measuring the learning rather than intelligence. Today, standardized testing is defined as “A test with specific tasks and procedures so that comparable measurements may be made by testers working in different geographical areas” (Standardized Tests). Standardized testing is found in a vast majority of schools, with some starting as early as 3^rd grade and continuing to 1.5 million high school students whom will take the ACT in 2009 alone; not including its sister test the SAT. If exams weren’t scary enough for students, researcher and Time Magazine writer Dan Fletcher educates students that today, test like the (SAT and ACT) are “One of the largest determining factors in the college-admissions process, particularly for ‘elite schools” (1). 

REVISED

When people THROUGHOUT the United States REFRENCE SCHOOLS, different images MAY INSERT their MINDS. First, many may RECALL the classic school house, with chalkboards, books and STRAIGHTEN DESKS. Some may INVISION elementary school, where students receive recess, coloring, games, the ABC’s, and 123’s. Some MAY INVISION junior high and the puberty, emotions, drama and longing high school.  Lastly, SOME MAY INVISION high school, which involves maturity, sports, clubs, and social relationships.  Yet VARIOUS schools still have these things, the concept “SCHOOL” as a place of fun and play are considered the past. Today’s society HAS become hyper focused CONCERNING standardized testing, which has become A controversial issues WITHIN education.  Standardize testing effects schools ATTEMPTS AT ACHIEVING governmental standards and raising expectations for students and educators: CAUSING PRESSURE. Yet the real question, DOES TESTING benefits those THE TEST affects.

            THE HISTORY BEHIND standardized testing, BEGINS with the Industrial Revolution. DURING THE 1800’s, standardize testing became a way of efficiency. MORE PEOPLE CONTINUED MOVING FROM COUNTRY TO CITY AND TEACHERS FOUND THE TEST AS AN ACCOMODATION AMONG LARGE SCHOOLS states Dan Fletcher (1).  Once World War I hit, standardized testing was given as a aptitude quiz called “Army Mental Test WHICH ASSIGNED U.S. servicemen jobs during the war effort” (1).  DURING the 20^th century French psychologist Alfred Binet discovered a specific intelligence test which led more psychologists to the testing concept. Following the intelligence test, University of Kansas professor Frederick J. Kelly created the multiple-choice exam. SHORTLY AFTER MULTIPLE CHOICE TESTS, SCANNING MACHINES WERE CREATED. DUE TO ELLIS ISLAND IMMIGRANTS, THE TEST DID NOT WORK AS INTENDED. Experts put more emphasis EVALUATING learning rather than intelligence. Today, standardized testing CAN BE defined as “A test with specific tasks and procedures so that comparable measurements may be made by testers working in different geographical areas” (Standardized Tests).  A VAST MAJORITY OF SCHOOLS INCORPORATE STANDARDIZE TESTING, AND ADMINISTRATE THE TEST FROM 3^rd grade, AND COMMONLY TAKEN VIA 1.5 million high school students whom will take the ACT in 2009 alone; not including ACT’S sister test the SAT. Researcher and Time Magazine writer Dan Fletcher educates students that today, test like the (SAT and ACT) are “One of the largest determining factors in the college-admissions process, particularly for ‘elite schools” (1). 

Revision of Previous Posting

Alright,  here goes nothing on revise the paper, I've taken different piece of my paper from English 324.

Experience and Mr. Russell may be my inspiration of why I chose teaching, yet it's not precisely the core of why I want to teach English. As I mentioned earlier, even when I was younger I knew that no matter what I did in my life I wanted to make a difference, and I had thought medicine was the only way I could. But I was wrong. Looking deeper at high school, I realized how much some of my teachers and ,experiences impacted my life ,and the way I think about myself and my worldview [ Participles].  From those experiences, I would like to take what I have learned and return that favor as a teacher to future generations. I want to move from ‘being inspired’ to ‘being inspiring.’ I want to push students to do their best, and believe in them when nobody else will.  With this desire and mindset, I have chosen English as my subject to teach.


Yet, there was one man in particular that I found  inspired me in wanting to be in the education field; that man would be my principal Mr. Ken Russell. Mr. Russell , a high school principal, was not like most principals, he was the type of man who would get up in the morning eager to set out on another adventurous day in high school with teenagers [Appositive]. Which, most can say, not a lot of adults would be enthusiastic enough to want to spend eight hours with teenagers!When he would arrive at school he was ready to do anything; converse with students, dance in an assembly in front of the school, sing a song on the loud speaker, or the best of all, memorize every student’s name.

During my sophomore year I began my chemistry series at Washington State University, and discovered that chemistry was not my friend. As the months passed,  the classes were harder, and  my love for medicine began to abate from a wild boil to a mild simmer. Chemistry, a class of agony and bore took over my joy [Adjective Out of Order], and I decided I wasn’t going to make it into medicine with this mindset. 


Question: When you have an Adjective out of Order, does it have to be at the end of a sentence , or can it be at the beginning? 

American classic books like To Kill a Mocking Bird, The Scarlet Letter, Animal Farm, etc can help students, but adding more genres  can be useful as well.  [Noun Absolutes].


She ran alone in the rain, seeing her breath floating throughout the air, and goosebumps rising upon her skin. [ Absolute Phrase]

Not so positive about Appositives

 Alright,  here goes nothing on revise the paper, I've taken different piece of my paper from English 324.

While my experience and Mr. Russell may be my inspiration of why I chose teaching, it is not precisely the core of why I want to teach English. As I mentioned earlier, even when I was younger I knew that no matter what I did in my life I wanted to make a difference, and I had thought medicine was the only way I could. But I was wrong. Looking deeper at high school, I realized how much some of my teachers and ,experiences impacted my life ,and the way I think about myself and my worldview [ Participles].  From those experiences, I want to take what I have learned and return that favor as a teacher to future generations. I want to move from ‘being inspired’ to ‘being inspiring.’ I want to push students to do their best, and believe in them when nobody else will.  With this desire and mindset, I have chosen English as my subject to teach.


Yet, there was one man in particular that I found really inspired me in wanting to be in the education field; that man would be my principal Mr. Ken Russell. Mr. Russell was not like most high school principals, he was the type of man who would get up in the morning eager to set out on another adventurous day in high school with teenagers [Appositive]. Which, most can say, not a lot of adults would be enthusiastic enough to want to spend eight hours with teenagers! When he would arrive at school he was ready to do anything; converse with students, dance in an assembly in front of the school, sing a song on the loud speaker, or the best of all, memorize every student’s name [Appositive].


During my sophomore year I began my chemistry series at Washington State University, and discovered that chemistry was not my friend. As the months passed, and the classes got harder, my love for medicine began to abate from a wild boil to a mild simmer. Chemistry, agony and bore took over my joy [Adjective Out of Order], and I decided I wasn’t going to make it into medicine with this mindset. 


With my reasons and inspirations in line of why I wanted to be a teacher, I quickly jumped into classes relating to teaching, and even signed up for several hands on volunteer opportunities [Noun Absolutes].While my nerves and fears of not being prepared to teach others are still within me, I feel confident that the classes I am enrolled in this semester (especially writing classes) will help me feel ready to take responsibility for students’ education in the future.


I'm hoping most of these are right, the only part of the brush strokes I feel most confident in is the appositives, the hardest one for me is the absolutes. Are there actual definitions of the brush strokes that we can find, rather than just examples? 

Back in the Act

                It has been a week without blogs, and I can say with confidence that I think this week we are in need for some blogging. From the past week I gathered quite a bit of information and still am somewhat unsure if I’m using it properly.  Starting out with the clauses and phrases, when it comes to phrases I feel like they are pretty straight forwards, it’s the clauses I’m more worried about.

I know that a clause includes a subject-verb and following the subject you have a sentence and an independent clause. Yet when following the verb and a dependent clause you’re using AAAWWUBBIS.  On a side note of AAAWWUBBIS’s I feel like once again I don’t remember learning them in elementary school. Back to dependent clauses though, I understand that you put a comma in if the relative pronoun in nonrestrictive but you don’t use a comma when the relative pronoun is relative. My only concern for these two rules knows when something is relative or nonrestrictive.  For example “People [that] screamed at the concert drove me crazy”. Here I can see that the meaning is not needed, therefore there is no comma.

                The next thing we learned was the [sent, EXTRA, ence], where the AAAWWUBIS’s introduce a clause.  In class we also discussed when something is broad we don’t need the AAAWUBIS or the comma, yet when the subject is not broad “or specific” we do use the comma. In our examples in class I understood when something was too broad of a reference or not. It was when my peers and I got down to reviewing our own work we started to second guess whether everything was broad or not.  I think this specific concept will take time to fully grasp.

                On Thursday we switched things around and had more of a discussion based class, which I really enjoyed.  I found that many of us were in the same boat, that we didn’t remember learning how to write, it just clicked. I didn’t really think about it until our discussion, but I thought I remembered learning how, but I don’t I just remember the worksheets of “Capitol letters touching both solid lines, and lower case letters touching the dashed lines”. Yet, on the subject of Dora I’d have to say that my way of learning in the home and in school was much different. I really don’t think if I had taken home what Dora did, my parents wouldn’t just read it and say good job, I think they would have been worried and worked more with me.  Also, I feel my teachers were never like Dora’s and never let me get tired of writing and had me approach it another way. AFTER LOOKING BACK ON OUR DISCUSSION, I THOUGHT IT WAS GREAT PRACTICE FOR BECOMING A TEACHER, BECAUSE WE ALL SHOULD BE DISCUSSING WHATS WORKING IN OUR CLASSROOMS AND WHATS NOT, IN ORDER TO HELP EACH OTHER.

Question of the week: How do we define what is broad, and what is not? Can it be debatable? 

The Verbs

It has been about a month now in English 326, and I have got to say my brain is full of grammar already. Each week I come in excited to learn more about grammar, which is surprising because I’ve already learned these concepts way, back when. Yet that doesn’t stop me, I continue to soak up any information I can get that will help me.

            This past week I was happy that we answered my previous week’s question, which was what exactly transitive and intransitive verbs are. I now know that intransitive verbs can stand by themselves. (i.e. She moved to Alabama). Along with the intransitive, I know transitive verbs as well (i.e. the dog holds the ball in his mouth). However, I’m not sure if I have the transitive verbs down. As you know, the next concept we learned was linking verbs which link a subject do a description of the subject. (i.e.  She is getting annoying).

            Despite the fact that I know the definitions of these concepts, I am hesitant in making them up in my own sentence and lacking the confidence that they are correct. I know that if I was given a sentence I could figure out which of the three it was (transitive, intransitive, and linking).  I think that with time in my writing I will gain the confidence to know that I’m writing a certain sentence. The exercises we do in class are really helpful, and I think are beneficial, not only for us as students, but teachers as well. I think that as a future English teacher, I may use these activities to help my students improve their writings.

            On Thursday, I really enjoyed going over the co-conditioning conjunctions of FONSBAY. To be honest, I can’t really remember learning this throughout school. I also never thought about the concept with however. I’D BE INTERESTED TO SEE MY PAPERS; WITH THIS MISTAKE. The only question I really have for this week is when would be a time to use a compound sentence. Also what is the exact definition of a compound sentence? Is it just when two adjectives combined to describe the subject? 

And, now I Feel Refreshed on Word Classes

            This past week for me has taken me back to the good ole days of school. You know the days were school was quite enjoyably, and we were more enthusiastic to learn. This makes me have to say that I am continually excited to be enrolled in this class. Throughout this past week, I have felt that I have begun a complete refresher on elementary grammar.

            Starting off, during these week we went over all world class aka “Parts of Speech” , which I enjoyed defining them and receiving quick examples that I can continue to look back on. I know now a day’s lots of us know what a noun, verb adjective and adverb does, yet sometimes it doesn’t help to refresh or learn more about them. For example with a verb you can always put an –ing on it. “They want to go jump…”, “They want to go jumping”. Also on adjectives knowing that they are comparative and superlative, is something I feel I may have never know or forgot. (i.e. “happy, happier, happiest”).

       Secondly, going over what we titled hard core grammar, was also a bit of a refresher. I feel that this example of subject and verb is something students know a sentence must have, but never really check to understand. As any level teacher, including college, I feel that teachers should refresh on this specific grammatical concept. I say this because even in the newspaper activity we did, some of us were unsure of the subject and verb. Which, I might add the newspaper activity is a great exercise for this purpose.

         Lastly, I enjoyed going over the personal pronoun chart. I felt that going over the singular and plural was stimulating, yet then going over it in different parts of speech helped even more, especially getting into the plural subjects. I know for myself as a writer sometimes I sometimes have trouble translating what I say in my head onto the actual paper. AND, I will end up switching my narrative form. My question for this week is somewhat a simple one, yet I have been struggling with it in class. In class we talk about transit and intrasit verbs I believe, what are these exactly and when can we use them in our sentences? 

Slight grasp... yet till lacking full confidence

            Despite the fact that I have had years of grammar and English classes, coming into this class I feel like I am a novice yet again. With that being said, this past week alone has enlightened me on how many little details I have forgotten about since elementary school. For example, I forgot the specific difference between single and plural possession. While, I may have not forgotten when I write, meaning the difference is just in the back of my brain. I have forgotten the rules we were taught. Therefore, I have to say that I am delighted to welcome the new grammatical rules that are taking over.

If I understand correctly, the rule of apostrophe s is that when it is singular ownership it’s apostrophe s, yet when it’s plural the apostrophe is after the s. Additionally, doing the exercise on rhetorical punctuation, I overwhelming realized the difference in punctuation means. You can easily turn a sentence with explanation into a question, with the simple switch of a comma. “Private, property; No swimming allowed! Versus Private Property, No? Swimming allowed”. Secondly, “extra-marital sex versus extra marital sex”, I never realized the difference between the two, and all it is, is a dash! Lastly, with the number three exercise I learned how placing someone’s name in a specific, spot can confuse people on who the subject actually is.

            Continually, I had never thought about the clarification an apostrophe makes when it comes to abbreviating words. Such as the example of M’s meaning Mariners, and therefore not being mistaken for Ms. Little mistakes like this can easily be mistaken and the apostrophe makes all the difference. Throughout, our scrapbooking activity (house style), I have found it interesting to see what my magazine is doing. However, as a future teacher I am curious to know if we go off our personal preference like our magazines, or is there a correct way?

Yet, despite all I may have learned our remembered I still don’t feel I have a complete grasp on apostrophes. An example, of my confusion would be what exactly we do with words such as YOURS, THEIRS, OURS. (Just a side note, word wants me to put an and in and I really want to as well). What happens with possessive pronouns? In addition, if someone could clarify if I have the apostrophe rule correct in my first paragraph, please let me know.