Student interview for Place-Based WAC/WID writing instruction in Upper Divison English, clip 6 of 10

Abstract

Brief excerpt from interview: Research is my weakest point, because who wants to sit there and read a bunch of numbers? I am not a scientific person... It doesn't interest me, but I know that in order to get your point across, you have to show that part in your writing. I'd rather just sit there and write about stories about growing up in Makiki Stream and Makiki area, and I'd rather just research moʻolelo from the olden days. I kinda just plow through [scientific research]... Google it and see where Google takes me. I think that's part of being an English writer, or a writer period. You have to decipher what is good information and what is bad. It's not even only Google. As Candace showed us in our class, developers can twist statistics to fit what they want it to fit. To have you think what they think about the land, but in actuality it's not like they represent [the statistics fairly]. This course really makes you look at maps. Candace showed us a map about Mauna Kea and you just look at a map like... you're just looking at the place. You're not really looking closely at the details. [Candace] would point out to us 'Oh why did they label this a wasteland?' If you closely at those things... misspellings of things on the map, and you wouldn't necessarily [notice]... [Candace] would ask you 'Why do you think it's misspelled? Does that show that this person is not from the [Native] Hawaiian community and therefore they don't understand the spelling of language and thus this map may not reflect the [Native] Hawaiian community?' Because... if they were from that community, they'd know how to spell things.