Midterm

When thinking about teaching a first-year composition course, I believe it is important to first consider some fundamental questions about the purpose of education. I believe that students need a solid foundation in composition and rhetoric, especially in tertiary education; however, the meaning of both composition and rhetoric are in a state of volatility. Students need to question themselves, their culture, and various texts with which they are interacting in order to form personal opinions and develop new ideas. This means students need to efficiently access information, to think critically about that information, and to creatively and effectively communicate this information in a variety of genres using multiple modalities. Students should be learning a variety of tools that help them research, think critically, and express their ideas, in order to become contributors to the academic community.

Rhetoric plays a vital role in this process because composition is concerned with the dialectic. The traditional five canons of rhetoric: invention, arrangement, style, memory, and delivery, offer students a valuable lens to view argumentation. Because arguments are being communicated in a growing number of diverse genres, the basic definition of composition needs to be expanded. Basically, first-year courses need to teach students two things: how to think critically and form personal opinions; and how to communicate these ideas in a variety of modes and genres.

I like a lot of Peter Elbow’s ideas for several reasons. For example, his advocacy for freedom and exploration in writing and his emphasis on voice are important in student discovery (Elbow, 15). However, I think that too much freedom leaves students without a vision, and therefore, encumbers students from expressing their voices. Elbow’s expressivist pedagogy succeeds in helping students to explore their personal ideas, but unfortunately falls short in setting students’ individual ideas in the context of a larger academic conversation. Expressive writing has its place, but in first-year composition courses there needs to be a greater focus on situating oneself in a greater academic discourse.

As Patricia Bizzell claims, Elbow and fellow theorist David Bartholomae are not quite as different as they would like to think (Bizzell, 174). Bartholomae also believes in acknowledging students as important contributors to academic discourse; however, he differs in that his focus seems to be more geared towards content rather than the student. Gerald Graff takes this notion one step further in explicitly declaring the main focus of composition to be argumentation (Graff and Birkenstein, ix). The college environment is a place where ideas should be continually posited and challenged which necessitates a group of scholars (students included) that think critically about these ideas and formulate new ones. Graff’s work has helped to restore the role of rhetoric in the academy which, in turn, has also had major implications in composition courses. The claim that we should focus on the conflict itself and the realization that no solution will be resolved perpetuates an open culture of diverse ideas. This is the type of culture we should preparing first-year student to participate in.

Furthermore, Bartholomae notes the necessity of students positioning themselves individually within their larger cultures. Patricia Bizzell comes in perfectly here because her holistic approach not only bridges the gap between Elbow and Bartholomae (Bizzell, 174), but also focuses on students understanding their specific social and cultural positions, so that they might better comprehend their place in the larger academic discourse. This self awareness allows students to better contextualize their arguments and to appreciate the diverse multiplicity of perspectives in this increasingly globalized world. I also like Bizzell because she discusses the importance of teaching students the writing structures and styles that will be effective in expressing these ideas. This ideally combines critical thinking and communication.

Finally, Walter Ong supports my pedagogical vision of first-year composition courses in that he acknowledges the momentous affects that shifting modes of communication have on education. Ong is known for his consideration of oral culture and the paradigmatic changes that took place with the advent of the alphabet and furthermore with the printing press. In addition, Ong posits an idea of secondary orality in which, due to the influence of technology, our society is transforming into one that foregrounds the digital word (Ong, 134). This idea has helped me understand that the very nature of communication is transforming, namely due to the internet and the various tools available through the net. Therefore, education should be changing too, otherwise it will be left in the dust (which is already beginning to happen, at least in secondary education). It is essential not just to use technology as a tool, but to use inquiry to explore the outcomes of utilizing various modes and genres in communication. The bottom line is that students should have many opportunities to use technology in first-year composition courses; however, students must also spend time thinking critically about the various social, political, and cultural implication of using technology as a tool.

In short, first-year composition courses should be about learning to formulate and articulate ideas in the academic community. This means taking into account one’s social, cultural, and political situation when forming ideas as a part of the wider discourse. Students should be able to articulate their ideas in a number of modes and should be especially adept in doing so digitally.

Works Cited

Bartholomae, David. “Writing with Teachers: A Conversation with Peter Elbow.” College Composition and Communication. 46 (1995): 62-71.

Bizzell, Patricia. “On the Possibility of a Unified Theory of Composition and Literature.” Rhetoric Review. 4 (1986): 174-180.

Elbow, Peter. Writing without Teachers. 25th Anniv. Ed. Cambridge: Oxford UP, 1998.

Graff, Gerald and Cathy Birkenstein. They Say/I Say: The Moves That Matter in Academic Writing. New York: Norton, 2006.

Ong, Walter. Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word. 1982. London: Routledge, 2002.

Teaching Pedagogy 2.0

This semester I have been forced to rethink some very core ideas about teaching and education. Questions about the purpose of secondary and tertiary education, the curriculum of English, Language Arts, and/or Composition courses, and the role of educators in the classroom have been floating around my brain for weeks now.

The biggest challenge that I have been faced with is the use of technology in the classroom. This issue takes precedent because the role one allows technology to take in his pedagogy is directly related to the way he views the purpose of education and curriculum. I have thought deeply about the use of computers in the secondary language arts classroom and have considered the challenges and potential pitfalls it poses. On the other hand, I have also pondered the potential that digital technology has in engaging and motivating students in a profound new way. Students need to learn to use technology as a tool and not to become technology indulgers as Cynthia Selfe would say.

One of the most interesting things to look at is the multitude of new genres that are developing thanks to the internet. Wikis, blogs, and web 2.0 necessitate new understanding of the terms author, audience, and ownership. Thinking critically about the political, social, and cultural implications of changing from a society centered on print to one centered on the digital word is crucial. Furthermore, digital literacy needs to be included in language arts curriculum because students are now using digital means of communication almost exclusively when outside the classroom. Communicating effectively should be one of the primary goals of language arts; however, communication and literacy take on new meanings in the digital age.

I still believe that the primary goal of teachers should be to foster critical thinking in their students. Students must learn to respond to a variety of ideas, developing their own unique positions. Whether students go on to continue their education or go straight into the workforce, complex thinkers create a better society. Likewise, civic literacy should be an essential part of the classroom because thoughtful citizens also create a better society. These may be idealistic notions, but I believe that teaching students to be responsible citizens is an important role of the educator.

Kathleen Yancey

The three main ideas which shape the work of Kathleen Yancey are technology, portfolios, and assessment. While I am not as familiar with her work with the latter two, I have found abundant evidence of that shows how her work with technology has helped to shape current methods in composition and rhetoric. Rhonda’s use of the interview with Yancey added great insight into one of the important theorists we are studying this semester. In addition, Yancey, like Selfe with memory, is interested in the five rhetorical canons and how they can be applied to our evolving definition of texts and literacy.

Rhonda mentioned two works that Yancey stated as those of which she is most proud. One of these is the article “Made Not Only in Words: Composition in a New Key” which I read as a part of my annotated bibliography, so I thought I would share a bit. This piece is based on the CCCC chair address in 2004 and addresses the current “tectonic” changes in literacy. Yancey does so by comparing the writing public of today to the reading public that developed in nineteenth century England in that they are both socially constructed, politically and economically driven, and that both take place outside of the traditional education system. The growing number of genres that students are using means that students can no longer be considered educated by mastering reading and writing alone (305). Communication and education have turned digital, but most assessment methods are lagging drastically behind. This is interesting in light of CSAPs, which many of us have just finished. We are still asking students to respond chirographically (not even through print) though the vast majority are far more adept with the digital word. Yancey backs a new curriculum emphasizing the textual relationships and context of composition. Finally, Yancey identifies three keys to composition that address a writing public: the circulation of composition (the view that all “writing” is done as a part of a conversation), the canons of rhetoric, and deicity of technology. Deicity deals with the time and space in which texts are created.

Yancey brings up a lot of interesting new ideas regarding the incorporation of technology and challenges her audience to embrace the idea of composition in a new key. I personally found this article to be both challenging and inspiring. The author speaks with such passion that it is hard not to get excited about trying new methods to challenge students to think critically about the world around them. In particular, I am interested in her discussion of the cannons of rhetoric, which she believes are all interrelated though she focuses mainly on the two most neglected ones, memory and delivery.

Cynthia Selfe

Selfe seems to be interested primarily in the social, political, cultural, and historical issues surrounding the use of technology in education. She supports the utilization of technology but more importantly argues that a closer look should be taken as to how the implication of technology is affecting both students and educators, and the climate of education as a whole.

One of the first acknowledgements that Selfe makes (and unfortunately relatively few secondary teachers are making) is that outside of the educational setting students are engaging with technology obsessively, impulsively and often thoughtlessly. This brings up a couple of issues. First of all, educators of an earlier generation are rarely as tech-savvy as their students, so a new form of digital divide is increasing between these two groups. Secondly, students are not only imprudently accessing information, but they are also recklessly supplying information about themselves. Students may have adept skills in using technology, but they need to be taught to use these skills in tandem with critical and metacognitive thinking.

Selfe’s interest in hypertext theory is very interesting to me. This theory is somewhat associated with postmodern theory in that it favors a decentered rather than linear view of texts. Likewise, hypertext theory concerns arrangement in terms of the five canons of rhetoric. In terms of authority and ownership, many changes have taken place since print culture, blurring the lines between reader and writer. I like this theory because, though we don’t know all of the implication technology will have on society, this is a good way to begin reflecting on the monumental changes our society is experiencing.

Selfe and her fellow collaborators like Gail Hawisher advocate critical thinking when incorporating technology because they make the point that technology is not neutral – though who control it have a political agenda just like with any other medium. It is crucial that students learn to see the political connections associated with their use of this tool and not to be simply blind indulgers of technology.

Erika Lindemann

There are two major ideas about Erika Lindemann that stuck out to me after Rebecca’s presentation. First, Lindemann is firmly entrenched in the camp that rejects the use of literature in freshman composition courses. Second, Lindemann advocates a System model for the teaching of freshmen compostion courses which attempts to reconcile the differences between the process and product models of writing. These arguments are important because they bring up some interesting questions like: What should be the purpose of entry level composition classes? How should literature be defined?

I think the most important argument that Lindemann makes in her dispute with Tate about whether or not to use literature in freshmen comp classes is that students need opportunities to engage with a variety of genres, styles, and modes of writing. These types of courses should not be designed to breed English majors only; the reality is that most of these students will be moving on to other areas of study far away from literature like engineering, business, or computer information sciences. With students heading in such an array of directions, it is important that they cultivate skills that enable them to engage with many different types of texts. Furthermore, students should be prepared to participate in argumentative discourses outside of the academy and, therefore, need a host of rhetorical and composition skills in order to effectively do so. In addition, as mentioned in class, when using literature to model writing, one runs the risk of the literature becoming the focal point instead of the actual writing.

Lindemann’s system model of teaching composition supports these arguments because it is focused on students' writing. Positioning herself between Peter Elbow and David Bartholomae in their debate, Lindemann not only accepts and rejects ideas from the two, but posits her own notions as well. Belief in the careful reading and analyzing of texts, preparing students to “negotiate the demands of writing in varied disciplines” (Wasil handout), and developing a collaborative environment are all essential ideas to the System model. I also love the quotation that Rebecca provided from Lindemann: “Our goal is to improve writers, not individual pieces of writing.” Unfortunately, there are too many teachers that fail to adhere to this advice.

Kenneth Bruffee

Bruffee is a major advocate of collaborative learning and believes this process contributes to significant benefits in the attainment (or invention) of knowledge. In addition, Bruffee supports the use of collaboration in writing centers, the composition classroom, and in writing in other disciplines as well. Bruffee’s collaborative theory is grounded on social constructivist epistemology which asserts that knowledge and even reality do not exist until they are socially constructed. In some ways Bruffee’s ideas seem to coincide with Graff’s well-known decree to “teach the conflicts” in that students are learning to situate themselves in a larger academic discourse. However, Bruffee’s ideas are not purely based on argumentation; instead, he sees the collaborative process as a time of creating knowledge.

I agree with Bruffee in that collaborative learning has many benefits: it is a way to attain new points of view, it challenges students to develop their own position, and it engages students in the dialogic academic setting. My major contention with Bruffee is his assertion that learning can only take place socially. While I concede that all knowledge is ascertained through some sort of interaction between ideas, I argue that this can be done by an individual. A student can go to the library on their own, pick up a book, and engage with the author of that text. Though many people may benefit from having a group discussion about the contents of the book, why is it impossible for the individual to develop his own opinions and to attain knowledge without the collaborative process?

I would like to learn more about the specific methods that Bruffee advocates for the collaborative process in terms of composition. This collaborative process seems to include, though is not limited to, the peer review process. But how else does he socialize the learning process? Furthermore, in a model like this, how does the instructor ensure that groups are engaging in higher order thinking rather than conversing on trivial points on a text and making superficial corrections to writing?

Hugh Burns

Hugh Burns’s visit to class last week was a real pleasure. Burns has an engaging and approachable personality. His talk focused on many of the foundational ideas of rhetoric like the seven liberal arts of Ancient Greece which include the trivium (logic, rhetoric, and grammar) and the quadrivium (arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music). The quadrivium is particularly interesting because of the assertion that students must master the seemingly disparate fields of mathematics, science, and music before grappling with philosophy. Though these ideas are literally thousands of years old, they tie in well with the emphasis on an interdisciplinary approach to higher education that Burns supports. Burns is an advocate of Writing Across the Curriculum and also considers the role of technology in areas other then English.

Burns also spoke on the four Language Arts which are speaking, writing, listening, and reading. The first two are heuristic which involves solving problems under conditions of uncertainty, while the latter two are concerned with hermeneutics or interpretation. The most interesting part of Burns’s talk was when he spoke on his area of expertise: technology. He provided an interesting perspective on programming software that applies algorithms to language. A three pronged approach to artificial intelligence was also explained by Burns, which includes knowledge acquisition, knowledge representation, and search. Finally, I found his approach to writing interesting. Burns stated that he writes about four or five pages daily without completing any prior research. He said that he “tries to get the light to come on in here [motioning to his heart]” before validating his ideas through research. This ensures a certain authenticity of ideas.

Burns also spoke on Wayne Booth, a literary critic from the University of Chicago. His first and most influential book Rhetoric of Fiction defends the role of the author, specifically an “implied author” or speaker who posits some statement of truth. This idea goes against the theories of New Criticism which attempt to view a text in isolation, apart from contextual information. Other works include A Rhetoric of Irony, Modern Dogma and the Rhetoric of Ascent, The craft of Research, and Rhetoric of Rhetoric.