Blog 15

Christopher Caruso

Blog #15

For my Oral History Interview, I interviewed Sarah Brittain about her experiences during the September 11th Attacks.  During the incident, Sarah was twelve years old and in the 7th grade.  She was in the middle of English class when another teacher walked in and told her English teacher to turn on the television.  Sarah sat in the classroom and watched the smoking buildings live on television.  With her own eyes she saw the plane crash into the second tower.  During the questioning until this point, Sarah appeared calm and collected, yet hesitant to talk.  She then revealed that this was the first and only time that she saw her stepfather cry.  It was here that Sarah, with a shaky voice revealed that her step-father's best friend, who was very close to the family, was actually in the 34th floor of one of the towers when they were hit.  His body was never found.  It was at this point that the memories began to become to much for Sarah, and she began to cry.  At this point, after I temporarily left the room to fetch Sarah some tissue paper to dry her tears, I felt that this interview was becoming too much for Sarah to handle emotionally, and we stopped the questioning right then and there.  Even after over eleven year, the tragic events of the attacks still deeply affect people to this day.  Perhaps what the professor that assigned this interview topic failed to realize (possibly due to her living in the Mid-West during the events) is that people who lived on the East Coast during these events, specifically people within the Kean University area due to its close proximity to New York City, tend to remember these events much more sensitively than most others, due to many individuals directly or indirectly knowing others involved with the attacks in some way, shape, or form.  Sometimes it is hard, and virtually too painful or uncomfortable for certain individuals to dig up such memories that they have spent years trying to come to terms with.  As such, what I learned from this interview was how to tell when an individual feels uncomfortable by certain questions and certain situations, and also learned at what point an individual should drop an interview if the subject becomes too much for the interviewee to handle.

Blog 14

Christopher Caruso

Blog #13

For as long as mankind has been around, one of the most crucial aspects of human beings that has set themselves apart from all other species is the sheer intricacy and complex development of language.  Language can be defined as the creation and articulation of audible sounds and words in order to communicate between other human beings.  Through the use of language, mankind as a species has been able to express itself in ways that seemingly no other creatures can, successfully building whole civilizations, philosophies, and social groups on the use of language alone.  There are many ways for individuals to express certain types of language, whether they are trying to tell jokes to appear witty, trying to persuade others to conform to a certain belief, or trying to gather data for the sake of knowledge.  Out of all of all of the ways that humans utilize language, there is no usage that is more crucial and more intimate than interpersonal communication, which can be defined as casual talk between at least two individuals.  One can learn so much about a certain group, subject matter, way of life, individual life, etc. just by communicating with another person in a respectable fashion.  This notion is more apparent through the art of interviewing than anything else.  By studying not only the information that an individual relays through an interview, but also the way that the language is presented and expressed, an interviewer can extract crucial hidden information hidden within the language use itself.  Whenever one is ever giving an interview, it is completely crucial that one must be able to listen in between words and pay attention to details such as the speaker’s discourse, pattern in words, use of tense, tone of voice and level of confidence on the subject matter just to name a few.  To prove how studying such things can reveal crucial hidden information, I shall be doing an analysis of the interviews from Data Set 5.

The interview Data Set 5 that I focused the most of my analysis on was the Adult Learner and New Literacies interview.  This interview was primarily about an individual who relates his or her experiences with computers in school, and their initial rejection of computers.  During the first excerpt of this interview, one of the first things that immediately caught my eye was the fact that every single one of the interviewee’s responses were presented in the past tense.  This little observation could be crucial, as it implies that whatever conflicts or fears that the interviewee experienced has since been resolved and are in the past, meaning that he or she does not feel this way about computers now.  Another important aspect to point out is not only the tense of the interviewee’s speech, but also the repetition of certain phrases such as “I guess” and “maybe”.  Normally, when someone that is being asked a question begins their answer with a phrase like “I guess”, it can be safely assumed that they do generally know the answer, yet choose not to answer the question in the form of a declaration as a way to promote humility.  An interesting note is that throughout the chat, the interviewee kept responding to the interviewer in the form of “I”, which strongly indicates that even though he keeps saying “I guess”, he is at least confident enough in his own answers that he is willing to directly take responsibility for his words and past actions.

When the interview reaches its second excerpt, a big thing to point out is the fact that the interviewee no longer speaks in a singular “I”, but instead uses more inclusive words such as “us” and “we”.  During this excerpt, the interviewee is no longer referring to his or her own experiences, but rather the collective experiences of the classroom as a whole.  Since the main focus of this excerpt is describing how the interviewee eventually learned how to overcome the fear of using computers in the classroom, one could make the argument that the reason the interviewee takes the effort to include the rest of his class is to alleviate his own insecurities about not feeling comfortable using the computer.  In other words, by mentioning to the interviewer that the classroom that he or she was in was a class specifically for learning how to work with computers, the focus is indirectly shifted off of the interviewee’s individual lack of comfort in using computers, as there are now a whole classroom of students learning how to use the computer not just the interviewee.   It is also within this excerpt that the interviewee’s speech begins to add a little more filler.  Unlike the first excerpt, in which the majority of the interviewee’s answers were very terse and straight forward, the interviewee in the second excerpt appears to develop speech with more “ahs”, “likes”, and “ums”.  Because of the fact that the interviewee is focusing more on the class as a whole, as opposed to the just his own self”, it is possible that the interviewee is attempting to choose his or her words more carefully, since he is representing a general group instead of his individual self.

Blog 13

Christopher Caruso

Blog #13

For my short analysis project, due to the fact that my main method of gathering data for my case study will be in the form of personal interviews, I feel that it would be best if I did an analysis on one of the interviews from the numerous data sheets.  By analyzing the interviews from Data Set 5, I will not only gain a firmer grasp on how to give a proper interview and choose my words and prompts wisely,but I will also be able to better read between the lines of my interviewee's answers, language, and word choice.  Specifically, the interviews that I intend to analyze are the two excerpts from the Adult Learner & Technology data sheet. Some of the questions or issues that I may bring up during my analysis include (but are not limited to):

Any correlations in the choice of words spoken by the interviewer/interviewee

Any significance in the tense in which the interviewee is speaking

Interviewer's/Interviewee's confidence in the subject matter being spoken

Difference in the way the interviewer/interviewee speaks between excerpt 1 and excerpt 2

Frequency in the amount of filler sounds (such as ah or um)

When it comes to relating the subject material back to Gee, a large portion of Gee's material will be coming from chapter five of his book, and will touch up on topics such as form-function correlations, critical discourse analysis, situated meaning, etc.

Blog 11

Christopher Caruso

Blog #11

For our question our group decided to look at what teacher comments can show us about the teacher’s grading style. We think that by looking at the teacher comments, we can get an idea of what that teacher’s personal style is, specifically what their most important considerations are in a student’s paper.

In order to begin answering this question, we would first need to classify the different kinds of comments. After this, we can look at how frequently and with what intensity the different kinds of comments appear. Finally, we can consider what the frequency, intensity, and typology might indicate about the professor’s style and preferences.

An example of different Categories of teacher comments include:

comments referring to Grammar & Mechanics

comments referring to Organization

comments referring to Development                                                        

comments referring to Clarity

We could then analyze the comments to see how frequently these different types appear. If a large percentage of comments refer to the paper’s Development, for example, we could draw the conclusion that Development is of primary importance to the teacher.

As far as intensity, I think it is possible to compare different teacher comments for differing levels of passion. Certain comments may be simple suggestions, while others may indicate a higher level of interest from the teacher. For example, a comment like “This is vague” contrasted with a comment like “This section seems incomplete. What else might your reader need to know? Try giving a specific example”. Since the latter is more detailed, we might conclude that the professor who wrote it has a greater level of interest in the student’s ability to be clear and detailed.