I posted grades this morning via the UAT VPN. I don't know how long it takes for grades to percolate through the system; but, once you get to see your grade, do feel free to get in touch if you have any questions about your grade.
Despite the rough start, the class came together, and I was impressed by both the quantity and quality of the learning I saw taking place in your portfolios.
Thank you for all your hard work. As you move into your 102 courses, do feel free to get in touch for any help I may provide.
Steve
Friday, December 21, 2007
Monday, December 17, 2007
Comments on Portfolio Drafts.
Your portfolio drafts are clearly coming together. For a few, there's development left in terms of your cover letters and inventories. For most, you've got a single revision and proofread. For a select few, you've pretty much made your case. Most everyone is doing excellent work.
I have responded to everyone who has asked me to collaborate, via google docs on their drafts. This time, I did so as a response to your emails inviting me to collaborate and, where it seemed useful, in comments on your drafts themselves.
When you submit your final portfolios, do so via google docs. Name the file via your last name and the title "Final Portfolio: final Draft." To insure you're the only one who can view your grade, invite just me as a collaborator.
In the meantime, I will check my prof.brandon@gmail.com email each morning and again either in the afternoon or evening. I will have my cell phone with me: 505-553-3853. Do call with questions, concerns, etc.
As you move toward your last drafts and turning in (publishing) your portfolio, please do feel free to write or call. I'll try to limit new content to the blog, but if a basic idea needs clarification, I will post on it.
Steve
Steve
I have responded to everyone who has asked me to collaborate, via google docs on their drafts. This time, I did so as a response to your emails inviting me to collaborate and, where it seemed useful, in comments on your drafts themselves.
When you submit your final portfolios, do so via google docs. Name the file via your last name and the title "Final Portfolio: final Draft." To insure you're the only one who can view your grade, invite just me as a collaborator.
In the meantime, I will check my prof.brandon@gmail.com email each morning and again either in the afternoon or evening. I will have my cell phone with me: 505-553-3853. Do call with questions, concerns, etc.
As you move toward your last drafts and turning in (publishing) your portfolio, please do feel free to write or call. I'll try to limit new content to the blog, but if a basic idea needs clarification, I will post on it.
Steve
Steve
Sunday, December 16, 2007
Good Enough Process Writing.
A student wrote that knowing one's writing process and knowing one change they could make was "what process was all about." They were correct.
In the reply I wrote back, posted below, I describe the writing process I encourage students in my developmental classes to adopt as a starting point to developing their own process. I reiterate the fact that writing processes are messy and variable, but they profit from being made more systematic; and, I reiterative that learning to better one's process isn't rocket science.
The truth is one's writing process is usually messy. When I teach developmental writing, I teach students to go through all the steps in process writing but to do it in several passes, as they move from the sentence, paragraph, section, and completed draft.
Prewriting consists of thinking about the questions: "What can/should I say next?" and "What kind of sentence do I want to write?" I encourage students to compose the sentence in their heads, and then draft them on the computer. After they've got a sentence down, I have them revise it once or twice--no more--and proof it once. Then they rinse and repeat until they've drafted a paragraph.
Once a paragraph is in place, I have them revise for focus, content, and development, and proof the sentences once again. As they complete sections of a text, I have them revise and proof once again.
Mostly I'm giving them a system to follow and develop from. In the system I teach, they have they revise and proofread at multiple places in the process, so they're writing gets better in what looks from the outside as a longish drafting process. Over time, I move them to writing a sentence a minute and a paragraph every ten minutes or so, knowing that if they need to and the world forces such practice, they'll become increasingly fluid and faster.
As I move them into longer texts, I introduce the value of prewriting before drafting and thinking about the text as a whole; but, many writers stick with the draft and revise method of writing all of their careers. It works well enough.
I think that last thought, working well enough is the key to process. You come up with a process which works. It doesn't have to be elegant. It doesn't have to be pretty. It does have to be capable of producing the texts you need to produce, and these texts need to be good enough to accomplish your purposes on the audiences for whom they are targeted. Later, you improve an ugly process as need arises, and you study and reflect enough, so you can improve if needed. Mostly, such improvements consist of adding in a technique, trick or trying out a new idea for being more effective.
Near the beginning of class, I said, "Learning to be a good writer isn't rocket science. It's mostly common sense, some tools for thinking about your writing systematically, and practice."
In the reply I wrote back, posted below, I describe the writing process I encourage students in my developmental classes to adopt as a starting point to developing their own process. I reiterate the fact that writing processes are messy and variable, but they profit from being made more systematic; and, I reiterative that learning to better one's process isn't rocket science.
The truth is one's writing process is usually messy. When I teach developmental writing, I teach students to go through all the steps in process writing but to do it in several passes, as they move from the sentence, paragraph, section, and completed draft.
Prewriting consists of thinking about the questions: "What can/should I say next?" and "What kind of sentence do I want to write?" I encourage students to compose the sentence in their heads, and then draft them on the computer. After they've got a sentence down, I have them revise it once or twice--no more--and proof it once. Then they rinse and repeat until they've drafted a paragraph.
Once a paragraph is in place, I have them revise for focus, content, and development, and proof the sentences once again. As they complete sections of a text, I have them revise and proof once again.
Mostly I'm giving them a system to follow and develop from. In the system I teach, they have they revise and proofread at multiple places in the process, so they're writing gets better in what looks from the outside as a longish drafting process. Over time, I move them to writing a sentence a minute and a paragraph every ten minutes or so, knowing that if they need to and the world forces such practice, they'll become increasingly fluid and faster.
As I move them into longer texts, I introduce the value of prewriting before drafting and thinking about the text as a whole; but, many writers stick with the draft and revise method of writing all of their careers. It works well enough.
I think that last thought, working well enough is the key to process. You come up with a process which works. It doesn't have to be elegant. It doesn't have to be pretty. It does have to be capable of producing the texts you need to produce, and these texts need to be good enough to accomplish your purposes on the audiences for whom they are targeted. Later, you improve an ugly process as need arises, and you study and reflect enough, so you can improve if needed. Mostly, such improvements consist of adding in a technique, trick or trying out a new idea for being more effective.
Near the beginning of class, I said, "Learning to be a good writer isn't rocket science. It's mostly common sense, some tools for thinking about your writing systematically, and practice."
Saturday, December 15, 2007
General Advice about Your Cover Letters.
I've spent the morning editing and commenting on cover letters and portfolio drafts. Here's three pieces of advice I used repeatedly:
1. "Use specific examples to develop your discussions and claims."
2. "Contextualize the examples you provide by discussing in the text of your letter/portfolio why your example is significant."
3. "Focus your discussion on what you have learned and not on the effort you put in to learn."
Let me develop the last of the three a tad more. Effort has some impact on your grade in every aspect of life, but in college, professors are much more concerned with what you have learned, your expertise, and the demonstration of your skills than they are in how hard you've worked. If all goes well, work in college (and in life) is demanding, challenging, difficult, and engaging. The same is true of that you'll find in most careers worth the work you put in to keep them. You do the work which is necessary to succeed. It's expected, and it usually receives very little praise. Usually, you get kodus for being productive, not for how hard you've worked to be productive.
Ben Franklin once said, if you want to get praised for how hard you work, you must be seen to work. This is why he made sure he was seen delivering his own papers, that is, so folks would notice, and his ethos (his reputation) would be raised as a hard worker. His delievering the papers, however, would have been meaningless if he didn't have the papers to deliever.
1. "Use specific examples to develop your discussions and claims."
2. "Contextualize the examples you provide by discussing in the text of your letter/portfolio why your example is significant."
3. "Focus your discussion on what you have learned and not on the effort you put in to learn."
Let me develop the last of the three a tad more. Effort has some impact on your grade in every aspect of life, but in college, professors are much more concerned with what you have learned, your expertise, and the demonstration of your skills than they are in how hard you've worked. If all goes well, work in college (and in life) is demanding, challenging, difficult, and engaging. The same is true of that you'll find in most careers worth the work you put in to keep them. You do the work which is necessary to succeed. It's expected, and it usually receives very little praise. Usually, you get kodus for being productive, not for how hard you've worked to be productive.
Ben Franklin once said, if you want to get praised for how hard you work, you must be seen to work. This is why he made sure he was seen delivering his own papers, that is, so folks would notice, and his ethos (his reputation) would be raised as a hard worker. His delievering the papers, however, would have been meaningless if he didn't have the papers to deliever.
Reminder: Due Dates for Portfolio.
A *draft* of the portfolio is what is due Sunday. This draft should consist of draft versions of your cover letter, inventory, and evidence sections.
The final portfolio is due Wednesday, the last day of class. I want folks to take the time between Sunday and Monday to revise, polish, and ask any last minute questions.
Since one of the lessons I hope you will learn is the value to be gained in taking the time to collaborate, go through multiple revisions, and to proofread carefully, please do take the time between Sunday and Wednesday to make sure what you turn in is your best work.
Also remember, if asked, I'll be happy to look at drafts and offer revision suggestions. If you take advantage of this route, please preface your draft with the specific questions you want answered. Don't ask vague questions, like, "Is this all right?" Or questions like, "What kind of grade would this draft get if I turned it in now?" Focus your questions on specific concerns about the writing, rhetoric, structure, format, etc. of your draft. This will allow you to practice your budding metadiscourse and for me to give specific, useful pieces of advice which will help you improve your portfolios.
Write with questions.
Steve
The final portfolio is due Wednesday, the last day of class. I want folks to take the time between Sunday and Monday to revise, polish, and ask any last minute questions.
Since one of the lessons I hope you will learn is the value to be gained in taking the time to collaborate, go through multiple revisions, and to proofread carefully, please do take the time between Sunday and Wednesday to make sure what you turn in is your best work.
Also remember, if asked, I'll be happy to look at drafts and offer revision suggestions. If you take advantage of this route, please preface your draft with the specific questions you want answered. Don't ask vague questions, like, "Is this all right?" Or questions like, "What kind of grade would this draft get if I turned it in now?" Focus your questions on specific concerns about the writing, rhetoric, structure, format, etc. of your draft. This will allow you to practice your budding metadiscourse and for me to give specific, useful pieces of advice which will help you improve your portfolios.
Write with questions.
Steve
Friday, December 14, 2007
My expectations of you at this point in your writing career.
I wanted to pull the last point I made in the "Portfolio, FAQ" post out and develop it more. I also wanted you to take special notice of what I say here. It has to do with my expectations of you as a writer at this point in your life as a writer. Here's a more developed statement, and I hope it eases some of your worry about what I expect of you and, more importantly, what you should expect of yourselves:
"You need to remember: you are at the end of a first semester, freshman level writing class. I don't expect you to do everything perfectly or be able to produce fluent, fully effective prose with ease. If you could produce such with ease, you wouldn't need to be in freshman writing.
At this point in your development as a writer, I don't expect you to fully understand or to be able to implement and use every outcome or to write stunning prose. You should still be struggling, pushing your personal envelop, experimenting, and working on writing good, solid sentences and paragraphs. You should be experimenting with learning how to research and write different kinds of documents and figuring out a repertoire of moves which will serve you well in later writing. One of the joys of early learning is the freedom you have to experiment, screw up, and learn from experimentation, all with less costly consequence than the same mistake will have in later life.
Few people do well the first time they try something, and most are struggling the twentieth. They should be. Few things which are worthwhile can be conquered in a semester or a year. You know I believe in a crafts' approach to writing, one where you are always in the process of acquiring new skills as your needs and desires change and mature. I'm still working on writing better sentences, paragraphs, and documents. This continued struggle is part of the fun of being a writer.
I do expect evidence of:
1) substantial work toward producing better, more successful writing,
2) that you've learned the basic linkage between opinion and support,
3) that you understand and have begun to use process writing, and,
4) that you have a budding knowledge of rhetoric.
Most importantly, I expect you to have learned some useful techniques and a process through which you can make yourself a better writer."
"You need to remember: you are at the end of a first semester, freshman level writing class. I don't expect you to do everything perfectly or be able to produce fluent, fully effective prose with ease. If you could produce such with ease, you wouldn't need to be in freshman writing.
At this point in your development as a writer, I don't expect you to fully understand or to be able to implement and use every outcome or to write stunning prose. You should still be struggling, pushing your personal envelop, experimenting, and working on writing good, solid sentences and paragraphs. You should be experimenting with learning how to research and write different kinds of documents and figuring out a repertoire of moves which will serve you well in later writing. One of the joys of early learning is the freedom you have to experiment, screw up, and learn from experimentation, all with less costly consequence than the same mistake will have in later life.
Few people do well the first time they try something, and most are struggling the twentieth. They should be. Few things which are worthwhile can be conquered in a semester or a year. You know I believe in a crafts' approach to writing, one where you are always in the process of acquiring new skills as your needs and desires change and mature. I'm still working on writing better sentences, paragraphs, and documents. This continued struggle is part of the fun of being a writer.
I do expect evidence of:
1) substantial work toward producing better, more successful writing,
2) that you've learned the basic linkage between opinion and support,
3) that you understand and have begun to use process writing, and,
4) that you have a budding knowledge of rhetoric.
Most importantly, I expect you to have learned some useful techniques and a process through which you can make yourself a better writer."
Researching a Genre: The Portfolio.
Anytime you encounter a genre new to you, like the portfolio, research it online. There are numerous sites which deal with the Freshman English portfolio, and a few minutes spent doing some research on these sites can provide some valuable ideas for your own. You'll also be learning to research genres, not an inconsiderable skill. You also might want to look at the "reflective cover letter" or "reflective learning."
It's funny how many folks will research the right stereo or computer to buy, but it never occurs to them that they can research how to write better and things like genre or how to conquer sentence fragments.
Write with questions.
Steve
It's funny how many folks will research the right stereo or computer to buy, but it never occurs to them that they can research how to write better and things like genre or how to conquer sentence fragments.
Write with questions.
Steve
Portfolio, FAQ:
1. How do you want me to submit the portfolio?
Create one long document in which the major sections are separated by page breaks, and then add me as a collaborator to it. Since everyone now knows how to use Google Docs, use this program. As always, feel free to get collaborative help on the document. One of the things you're learning is to use others in your writing process.
Following this plan, you'll get to see your grade earlier, as I can leave it in the comments. Make sure you *want* everyone on your viewer/collaborative list to see your grade; so, edit your share list accordingly. If it's all right to leave your grade at the beginning of the document, leave me a note at the beginning of the document telling me it's all right to post your grade in the document. At the least, having one long document separated by page breaks will allow me to have every thing you want to say and use in one place, and I can search the document with some ease. This shared format meets the rule of making things as easy as possible for both reader and author to fulfill their goals/needs. Within the portfolio feel free to connect via links to other documents or work you want me to see and think about.
If this format doesn't work for you, we can negotiate other options; so, feel free to ask. I can think of web pages which would work here.
2. What's the overall format for the documents I include?
a. Cover Letter
b. Inventory
c. Evidence supporting the claims made in the cover letter and inventory
3. What should I put in the cover letter?
Your cover letter is the place where you make a claim as to the grade you have earned and convince me to believe your claim. You can use this space to address what you anticipate to be my concerns about your performance, tell me the lessons you've found most valuable from the class, make claims about the effort you've put into the class, show me in action what you have learned, explain why you didn't do an assignment or turned it in late, etc. In specific, I will be looking to see if you've picked up what the major lessons of the class are and if you're: 1) able to speak about them in the context of your learning; and, 2) if you put these lessons into practice in your letter. Frankly, I'm also hoping to learn how to make the class more effective for students like you in the future.
4. How will you grade the cover letter?
I will be looking at the quality of your claims and the quality of the support you put together to help me believe your various claims. In terms of claims, I will judge them by how they are made and on their plausibility. In terms of support, I will look for sufficient support and a good deal of evidence, epically examples and clarification. The evidence should be plausible, detailed and--in most cases--specific. I will look at your ability to speak knowledgeably about the work you include in the evidence section and about your own writing. I will look at your tone, voice, and style and judge its appropriateness to the writing situation. Since this is a letter written to an English professor about your learning in his class, I will look at issues of usage and grammar. Finally, I will look for evidence that you've used process writing to construct the document.
5. How will you grade the inventory?
Again, I will look for specific claims about what you know/learned about the outcomes and how you use the skills and knowledge they describe in your writing and/or other aspects of your communication. I'm looking to see if you've come to be able to speak knowledgeably about yourself as a writer and speaker. If you remember my post about metadiscourse, I'm looking for evidence to see if you've gained and/or started a useful metadiscourse about your writing and yourself as a writer. I'll look at how you use examples from the evidence section to support your claims.
6. What can I include in the evidence section?
Any writing or other work you've done as a communicator.
7. What should I include in the evidence section?
Since we both share the work you've done as an author in this class, this work should become the basis of your portfolio. You shouldn't try to include it all. When I say work, I mean pre-writing, notes, emails, comments on papers on which you've helped, proofreading exercises, posts, etc. All this is fair game.
You may also include or point to work you've done else where, in your daily life, for a job, or in school. This includes creative writing, games, photos, etc.
You can also include excerpts from longer pieces or let a single piece of evidence do multiple duty.
If you haven't done all the work for the class, support the arguments you make in the cover letter and the inventory with work from outside the class, and address the fact you didn't do all the work in the cover letter, explaining why. Since I'm training you to make a good argument and to use rhetoric, here's a high stakes place to implement your skills. I'm looking for evidence you've learned, not that you've toed the line; and, I don't really care when you learn, that is, as long as you do and can use the knowledge.
8. What should I not do in the evidence section?
Don't just do a core dump. Pick and choose your evidence. Part of what I'm looking at is your ability to pick evidence which supports your arguments well. Portfolios are meant to showcase your work in such a way that they support the purpose for which you put them together. In this case, you're trying to get a handle on your self as a writer, your work in this course, and what you've learned in the course. (Oh, and I assume you hope to garner a high grade for the course.) I'm trying to do the same and to use the material to make a fair judgment of the grade your work in the course had earned.
Don't hand me the kitchen sink. Think of your audience here. Just like students, professors are *very* busy folks at the end of term. We've got lots of reading and thinking about students and their work to do. We're meeting and working with worried students, and we're taking care of the business of the university knowing that folks will not be very available over the holidays to help. The upshot is we appreciate students who help us do the best job we can.
Don't make the mistake of not having some sort of organization for your evidence section. Don't go overboard here, but I need to be able to find the work you speak about in your cover letter and in your inventory. Assume your reader is tired, has been reading and grading for a day, has had too much caffeine, and needs to take a break. Imagine how pleased this reader is when he is able to find the information he needs to make an informed, fair decision with relative ease.
9. What are your expectations as an audience concerning the work I've done?
You need to remember: you are in a first semester, freshman level class. I don't expect you to do everything perfectly. I don't expect you to fully understand or to be able to implement and use every outcome. Heck, you know I believe in a crafts' approach to writing, one where you are always in the process of acquiring new skills as your needs and desires change. I do expect evidence of substantial work, that you've learned the basic linkage between opinion and support, that you know and have begun to use process writing, and that you have a budding knowledge of rhetoric. Most importantly, I expect you to have learned some useful techniques and a process through which you can make yourself a better writer.
Create one long document in which the major sections are separated by page breaks, and then add me as a collaborator to it. Since everyone now knows how to use Google Docs, use this program. As always, feel free to get collaborative help on the document. One of the things you're learning is to use others in your writing process.
Following this plan, you'll get to see your grade earlier, as I can leave it in the comments. Make sure you *want* everyone on your viewer/collaborative list to see your grade; so, edit your share list accordingly. If it's all right to leave your grade at the beginning of the document, leave me a note at the beginning of the document telling me it's all right to post your grade in the document. At the least, having one long document separated by page breaks will allow me to have every thing you want to say and use in one place, and I can search the document with some ease. This shared format meets the rule of making things as easy as possible for both reader and author to fulfill their goals/needs. Within the portfolio feel free to connect via links to other documents or work you want me to see and think about.
If this format doesn't work for you, we can negotiate other options; so, feel free to ask. I can think of web pages which would work here.
2. What's the overall format for the documents I include?
a. Cover Letter
b. Inventory
c. Evidence supporting the claims made in the cover letter and inventory
3. What should I put in the cover letter?
Your cover letter is the place where you make a claim as to the grade you have earned and convince me to believe your claim. You can use this space to address what you anticipate to be my concerns about your performance, tell me the lessons you've found most valuable from the class, make claims about the effort you've put into the class, show me in action what you have learned, explain why you didn't do an assignment or turned it in late, etc. In specific, I will be looking to see if you've picked up what the major lessons of the class are and if you're: 1) able to speak about them in the context of your learning; and, 2) if you put these lessons into practice in your letter. Frankly, I'm also hoping to learn how to make the class more effective for students like you in the future.
4. How will you grade the cover letter?
I will be looking at the quality of your claims and the quality of the support you put together to help me believe your various claims. In terms of claims, I will judge them by how they are made and on their plausibility. In terms of support, I will look for sufficient support and a good deal of evidence, epically examples and clarification. The evidence should be plausible, detailed and--in most cases--specific. I will look at your ability to speak knowledgeably about the work you include in the evidence section and about your own writing. I will look at your tone, voice, and style and judge its appropriateness to the writing situation. Since this is a letter written to an English professor about your learning in his class, I will look at issues of usage and grammar. Finally, I will look for evidence that you've used process writing to construct the document.
5. How will you grade the inventory?
Again, I will look for specific claims about what you know/learned about the outcomes and how you use the skills and knowledge they describe in your writing and/or other aspects of your communication. I'm looking to see if you've come to be able to speak knowledgeably about yourself as a writer and speaker. If you remember my post about metadiscourse, I'm looking for evidence to see if you've gained and/or started a useful metadiscourse about your writing and yourself as a writer. I'll look at how you use examples from the evidence section to support your claims.
6. What can I include in the evidence section?
Any writing or other work you've done as a communicator.
7. What should I include in the evidence section?
Since we both share the work you've done as an author in this class, this work should become the basis of your portfolio. You shouldn't try to include it all. When I say work, I mean pre-writing, notes, emails, comments on papers on which you've helped, proofreading exercises, posts, etc. All this is fair game.
You may also include or point to work you've done else where, in your daily life, for a job, or in school. This includes creative writing, games, photos, etc.
You can also include excerpts from longer pieces or let a single piece of evidence do multiple duty.
If you haven't done all the work for the class, support the arguments you make in the cover letter and the inventory with work from outside the class, and address the fact you didn't do all the work in the cover letter, explaining why. Since I'm training you to make a good argument and to use rhetoric, here's a high stakes place to implement your skills. I'm looking for evidence you've learned, not that you've toed the line; and, I don't really care when you learn, that is, as long as you do and can use the knowledge.
8. What should I not do in the evidence section?
Don't just do a core dump. Pick and choose your evidence. Part of what I'm looking at is your ability to pick evidence which supports your arguments well. Portfolios are meant to showcase your work in such a way that they support the purpose for which you put them together. In this case, you're trying to get a handle on your self as a writer, your work in this course, and what you've learned in the course. (Oh, and I assume you hope to garner a high grade for the course.) I'm trying to do the same and to use the material to make a fair judgment of the grade your work in the course had earned.
Don't hand me the kitchen sink. Think of your audience here. Just like students, professors are *very* busy folks at the end of term. We've got lots of reading and thinking about students and their work to do. We're meeting and working with worried students, and we're taking care of the business of the university knowing that folks will not be very available over the holidays to help. The upshot is we appreciate students who help us do the best job we can.
Don't make the mistake of not having some sort of organization for your evidence section. Don't go overboard here, but I need to be able to find the work you speak about in your cover letter and in your inventory. Assume your reader is tired, has been reading and grading for a day, has had too much caffeine, and needs to take a break. Imagine how pleased this reader is when he is able to find the information he needs to make an informed, fair decision with relative ease.
9. What are your expectations as an audience concerning the work I've done?
You need to remember: you are in a first semester, freshman level class. I don't expect you to do everything perfectly. I don't expect you to fully understand or to be able to implement and use every outcome. Heck, you know I believe in a crafts' approach to writing, one where you are always in the process of acquiring new skills as your needs and desires change. I do expect evidence of substantial work, that you've learned the basic linkage between opinion and support, that you know and have begun to use process writing, and that you have a budding knowledge of rhetoric. Most importantly, I expect you to have learned some useful techniques and a process through which you can make yourself a better writer.
Wednesday, December 12, 2007
Is there a difference between structure and format?
A student wrote with the question above. Find my response below:
Structure refers to methods of the organization of ideas or content, as in comparison and contrast, chronological, least important to most, etc. Format deals more with how a document is laid out in terms of appearance. There is some overlap between the two, and no doubt this overlap and how loosely I've used the terms is the source of some of your confusion.
Let me know if you need any further clarification.
Structure refers to methods of the organization of ideas or content, as in comparison and contrast, chronological, least important to most, etc. Format deals more with how a document is laid out in terms of appearance. There is some overlap between the two, and no doubt this overlap and how loosely I've used the terms is the source of some of your confusion.
Let me know if you need any further clarification.
The Relationship Between Writing and Literature.
In reading back through your papers and my blog, I realized that part of the big picture I hadn't offered you is the relationship I see between the study of literature and the study of becoming a better writer. Also, I haven't let you see me writing for audiences other than the class.
The following response will help correct both oversights. It's written to colleagues--that is, college professors-- who teach freshman writing, and it's part of an ongoing conversation about the place of literature in the 101/102 sequence of courses you're currently taking. In fact, it might have some impact on how 101/102 gets taught at UAT, so feel free to wade in via the comments if you want to offer a student perspective. One of the lessons I've taught you is that what you say is driven by the audience for whom you write, so you'll find this post heavily laden with jargon and ideas specific to the discipline and profession of English. Don't worry about getting a handle on each and every idea. Do spend some time thinking about the moves I make in framing my argument.
I expect my audience to be unreceptive to the idea of not using literature as the basis of teaching freshman writing, so I work to limit and distance myself from the very arguments I introduce and want them to believe. By distancing myself and introducing each idea as tentative but well thought out, I'm hoping readers who are opposed to my stance will have faith in how I think and, hence, give my ideas more thought and closer attention.
I'm also working to frame my argument as a tentative position in an ongoing discussion. I make this move because I don't want my audience to feel they *have* to take a position in response to my argument and defend it. My purpose here is to get them thinking and, as a by product, get them questioning some of the assumptions on which their current position is based.
In part, this is an ethos move. I'm a long term member of this discourse community, and I don't want to create clear areas of intellectual turf which *have* to be defended. Mostly, it's positioning myself as a member of the community who is willing to be reasonable and change my mind, that is, if I'm given enough good reasons to so do.
In assuming this stance as an author, I encourage readers who oppose my argument to take a *higher* moral stance in which they are even more willing than I to change their minds. I encourage readers who share my position to feel good about the ethos of "our crowd," and I show readers who are undecided that my side and, in particular, I know how to participate in public, civil debate. In other words, regardless of how my opponents respond, I come out looking reasonable, possibly more reasonable than do they, and well positioned to concede any ground I need to concede.
Finally, the post may well give you some useful insights into why I designed the course as I did and where the knowledge I presented fits into the larger picture of your English curriculum.
As always, write with questions.
My post follows:
"Miles' passionate argument for the value to be derived from literary study has had me thinking a lot about my own take on how literature can be used to teach critical thinking and reading and in trying to figure out my uneasiness with using literature in my own freshman writing classes. As usual in such situations, I've fallen back on writing to try to articulate my own current thinking on the subject. Forgive a rather long post, and I share it with some trepidation, but the relationship between literary study and writing is at the heart of much of our current discussion as a writing faculty, and I wanted to spend the time it took to figure out where I stood, give Mile's argument the thought and reflection it deserves, and--most important--try to get a handle on the implications for students."
"The truth is, I don't remember ever having to come to love the "L" word. As far back as I can remember, I've been an English geek, and I've always loved literature. The desire to keep literature alive in society, more than anything else, was what brought me into the profession; and, in many instances, the insights I see students gain into their own lives through learning to interpret literature well are what have kept me going."
"My own passion for having useful stories stay in circulation is one of the reasons I love teaching American and Native literature. Listening to Native storytellers and writers, I've learned that literature isn't a nice add on for communities and individuals. It's an essential tool though which communities define their selves, survive in the face of challenge and change, and find a basis for a shared understanding of the world which unites. For me, literature isn't just one more aspect of culture; it is an essential aspect of healthy individuals, communities, and societies. Mary Lou Atawaka in _Selu_ and Leslie Silko in _Ceremony_ both write about how a shared wealth of story is "the stomach of people" and of how stories assist us in remembering who we are and in finding our place in the world."
"To help her students understand a Cherokee take on the place of literature in their lives, Atawaka shares a corn seed with each of her students . In the discussion which follows, Atawaka tells the story of Selu, the Corn Mother, and the lessons Selu has for the people. One of these lessons is:
"Eat the individual corn seed, and it will help sustain you. Plant the same seed with those of your classmates, cultivate them together, and the seeds which will sustain one of you for a short time will sustain the whole class and others; indeed, the crop you can grow will provide not only food but seeds for the community which, in its turn, will grow and prosper. But corn needs a special kind of cultivation. If a seed is planted and cultivated alone, a corn plant will grow, and it will flower, but it won't be able to produce more corn. In the kernel of corn lays the stomach of the people. To be productive, each kernel needs to be cultivated among other corn plants, and each will help pollinate the other. Literature is corn, and story lays at the literature's kernel. Both are sacred. From them we can derive harmony, the food of the individual and community, and the sharing which is the basis of each."
"Each time I teach literature, I spend a day with the students talking about story, community, and society; and, I've used Atawaka's story of the Corn Mother and distributed my share of NDN corn. I tell you this, because I want you to understand the place of literature in my own life and world and to provide a basis for a discussion of why I don't teach Western literary analysis in my writing classes."
"In other posts, I've discussed how our very love of literature can undermine the task of teaching writing. To equate literary writing with good writing or to equate literary analysis with good reading is a dangerous equation for students of writing and critical reading to adopt. Why?"
"1) Our understanding of literature and how to form our understanding of it is very much connected to our Romantic, Modernist, and Post-Modern roots. The essential lessons of each philosophy are so bound up with how literature is taught and understood in the academy and society at large that it is difficult, if not impossible to tease out the dangerous ideas from the useful. I don't want to get sidetracked too much here, but a brief overview of what I mean might be useful."
"1a) One legacy of Romanticism is the view it propagated of the author as genius. While great writing *may* be the product of genius and talent, anyone with the drive, discipline, the right rubrics and schema, and the chance to practice can produce good, solid, craftsman like writing. By good writing, I mean writing so crafted as to allow the author to accomplish his or her purposes with a text."
"Tied up in the Romantic view of the author as genius is the belief that the ability to write well is governed by talent. It isn't. Also, tied up in Romanticism is the dangerous notion that one is either right brain or left, good in math or in the humanities, and if one is good in the sciences or technology, one isn't good in English. We've all dealt with the legacies of this last, but the single most dangerous legacy of the Romantic view of author is the arrogance which accompanies the Romantic author's view of his or her self. Whenever we provide a basis for the individual to cultivate the belief they are of higher sensibility (however you want to define that last), we are on dangerous ground. Think of Hitler and Superman here if you want. I usually think of Elias Boudinot and how his view of himself as a Romantic author contributed to the death of most of two generations of Cherokees along the Trail of Tears."
"1b) If anything, the legacy of Modernism is worse. If literature is to have any use in the world outside of producing pretty words and insightful prose, not that these last aren't useful, it has to be part of how society works, not a separate category of thought requiring an elite, hyper-trained intelligence or an absurd amount of leisure. The Romantics began the focus on the individual at the cost of community engagement, but the Modernists brought the notion to full flower. With the Modernist, there's a nostalgia for the social role literature and the author once played in society, but too often it's a despairing nostalgia. I'm a firm believer that it was the Modernists view of literature which combined with a research orientated professorial chaste to make the study and appreciation of literature much more difficult than it needs to be. Add in author/critic Romantic arrogance, American Anti-Intellectualism, and the high vs low literature split, and you have a recipe for the study of literature being seen as irrelevant to how the majority of society lives. If you're looking for someone to blame for the increasingly marginalized place of literature in society, you could do much worse than to look at the Victorian 'Art for Art's Sake' crowd and the disciples of Eliot. We live with the legacy of making literature an intellectuals' sport rather than a lived part of the citizen creating a good life and a working community."
"1c) Post-Modernism is too easy a target. It is the natural by-product of the Romantics and Modernists. We communicate every day, and we manage to do things useful work with writing; but, Post-Modernism celebrates the breakdown of communication and an Existential and Linguistic explanations of why communication doesn't and can't work. These explanations, in turn, are derived from the false dichotomy of idealism and realism. Add in the emphasis our culture places on novelty, as opposed to the value of creation within a set of assumed limitations of genre, and you have folks assuming the paradoxical stance of creating works which celebrate the "new" insight that they can't be understood. Such Play is dangerous, that is, if it's taken to the extreme suggested by the logic of Relativism."
"1d) My point here is that students bring all these existing rhetorics to our English/writing classes which explain why literature isn't important and shouldn't be, and they can fall back on any of them to rationalize a lack of success and, worse, unwillingness to do the work required to become a good writer. Regardless of the truth behind these rhetorics, they allow students to view literary analysis is an elitist activity with little (if any) connection to their lived world and where many professionals are willing to admit 'right'--as opposed to 'better'--interpretations are impossible. From the right perspective, these beliefs are partly true and very useful. This is the main reason I find it easier to approach teaching writing as a separate field of study only tangentially related to the study of literature, and I actively work against the identification of English classes and the profession as a whole with literary study."
"2) My next point is an obvious insight, but it's one, as trained professionals of literary interpretation, we too often forget, namely, just as the use of genre or the assumptions about the roles of audiences and authors are specific to discourse communities, so to are interpretative rubrics. The theories of hermeneutics which govern how we construct interpretations in literary study are part and parcel of our discourse community and the ideas of the professional reader and critic which have governed it."
"While many of our practices, like close reading, can translate well into other disciplines and ways of looking at the world, they are far from the only useful ways of looking at the world, that is, the only critical thinking and reading rubrics which need to be learned. On a related note, our students often bring extensive training in the interpretative rubrics of literary analysis. Talk to many of them, and they'll describe high school English as a series of courses which consisted of little writing and much reading of literary texts, classroom discussion of these texts, and attempts to learn rubrics and the use of rhetorical device such as irony, tone, and symbolism."
"The fact that this focus on literary device and writing which is aware of itself as high literature is a product of Modernism and New Criticism--that is, the product of hermeneutic and professional legacies specific to literary study as a discipline in the 20th Century--is lost on most, if not all freshman. A nuanced view of how we as a discourse community interpret literature as just one among many competing theories of how to construct interpretations isn't a view easily fit into a writing course, that is, without spending a *lot* of time on the history of literary study, information which most students will never need to know."
"As a side note, one reason I get so excited about the Reynold's Learning Communities and Writing Across Communities is that I can borrow a focus on other critical thinking and interpretative rubrics or, more precisely, I can let other teachers focus on these rubrics, and I can spend my time teaching writing and its interpretative rubrics instead of how to construct a good literary interpretation."
"3) All this brings me to what I consider the most essential point, namely, there are enough reading rubrics specific to rhetoric and writing to take up any one year of the curriculum; and, for most students, freshman writing will be one of the few moments in a crowded curriculum where they will get exposure to writing specific interpretative rubrics and get a chance to practice them with an informed teacher grounding their study. I find it enough to do to get students to understand the author/audience/text triad and how it forms successful communication. Add in the ethos, logos, pathos triad; how to figure out an author's purpose and its effects on how a text is constructed; researching genres; the notion of discourse community; audience analysis; process writing, and you quickly come up with a rich set of critical thinking rubrics which are writing and rhetoric specific."
"At most, we've got a limited number of assignments which will fit into any 112 or 111. Here's a set of my current set of favorites:
*Research a discourse community and write a description of the kind of writing which is done in the community. Here, I try to get students to focus on a discourse community of which they are a member or which they want to join as a professional.
*For each piece of formal writing and some of the informal, write an analysis of who your audience is and what you want to accomplish with your text. I find personal metadiscourse blogs useful for this kind of writing about writing.
*Research a genre and how to write effectively in the genre. As part of this assignment, develop a format the class will follow in producing successful examples of this genre of writing. I usually ground this assignment in a researched, online review and individual, group, and class writing and discussion.
*Research an area of the writing process or your most common surface level writing problem and write a "how to" process paper in which you describe to an audience of your peers how to recognize, fix or improve your "problem."
*Write a process paper in which you describe a process you currently use. I follow up on this assignment with a discussion of process writing and Kaizen, by getting students to identify one aspect of the process they describe which they could improve via a small, high impact change, and, increasingly, with a self description of the process they have used to create a specific genre of writing and of a specific, small change to the process which could make to become more effective or efficient writers.
*Research and write about the ideas of ethos, logos, pathos, and telos. Using these terms, analyze a common communication situation such as dating, the job interview, or the teacher/student relationship.
*Using the description of the learning outcomes described in the syllabus, do an inventory of where you are as a writer and how your knowledge and skill set compares to that expected of freshman writers. Update your response to each outcome as we discuss and complete the formal writing projects in the class. As you draft and revise this inventory, make sure to make clear claims about your learning and the outcome and to support this claim with discussion, illustrations, and examples from your own writing.
*Write a cover letter for a class portfolio in which you reflect on what you have learned in the course and what you have found to be most valuable. As part of this letter, make a claim concerning the grade you believe you have earned, and provide me with sufficient reasons and examples from your work this semester to believe your claim.
*Pre-writing, proofreading, and revision exercises as part of each of the assignments."
"That's a lot to fit a year of any curriculum. Add in a growing, articulated, nuanced definition of what constitutes good writing, and there's enough to teach and do without ever once talking about high literature."
Steve
PS As a kind of footnote, I should add that I don't believe in a clear division between rhetoric, writing, and the study of literature, that is, if we see and teach literature as including a broad range of texts and literary analysis as making sense of the author's intentions and the historical and social situations in which a text did its major work. In fact, I've come to distrust easy categorizations in general in favor of the value I find in forums like this where inquiry is dialogic and insights derive from debate, messy, muddled explanations, and each insight flows out of continual discussion and reflection. My current take on the relationship between literature and writing is that both are best seen as aspects of rhetoric whose hermeneutic and composition practices interpenetrate one another. This take has me focusing on rhetoric as the more fundamental and useful methodology through which to teach writing at the freshman level, but it is just my take, and it is just my take at this moment.
The following response will help correct both oversights. It's written to colleagues--that is, college professors-- who teach freshman writing, and it's part of an ongoing conversation about the place of literature in the 101/102 sequence of courses you're currently taking. In fact, it might have some impact on how 101/102 gets taught at UAT, so feel free to wade in via the comments if you want to offer a student perspective. One of the lessons I've taught you is that what you say is driven by the audience for whom you write, so you'll find this post heavily laden with jargon and ideas specific to the discipline and profession of English. Don't worry about getting a handle on each and every idea. Do spend some time thinking about the moves I make in framing my argument.
I expect my audience to be unreceptive to the idea of not using literature as the basis of teaching freshman writing, so I work to limit and distance myself from the very arguments I introduce and want them to believe. By distancing myself and introducing each idea as tentative but well thought out, I'm hoping readers who are opposed to my stance will have faith in how I think and, hence, give my ideas more thought and closer attention.
I'm also working to frame my argument as a tentative position in an ongoing discussion. I make this move because I don't want my audience to feel they *have* to take a position in response to my argument and defend it. My purpose here is to get them thinking and, as a by product, get them questioning some of the assumptions on which their current position is based.
In part, this is an ethos move. I'm a long term member of this discourse community, and I don't want to create clear areas of intellectual turf which *have* to be defended. Mostly, it's positioning myself as a member of the community who is willing to be reasonable and change my mind, that is, if I'm given enough good reasons to so do.
In assuming this stance as an author, I encourage readers who oppose my argument to take a *higher* moral stance in which they are even more willing than I to change their minds. I encourage readers who share my position to feel good about the ethos of "our crowd," and I show readers who are undecided that my side and, in particular, I know how to participate in public, civil debate. In other words, regardless of how my opponents respond, I come out looking reasonable, possibly more reasonable than do they, and well positioned to concede any ground I need to concede.
Finally, the post may well give you some useful insights into why I designed the course as I did and where the knowledge I presented fits into the larger picture of your English curriculum.
As always, write with questions.
My post follows:
"Miles' passionate argument for the value to be derived from literary study has had me thinking a lot about my own take on how literature can be used to teach critical thinking and reading and in trying to figure out my uneasiness with using literature in my own freshman writing classes. As usual in such situations, I've fallen back on writing to try to articulate my own current thinking on the subject. Forgive a rather long post, and I share it with some trepidation, but the relationship between literary study and writing is at the heart of much of our current discussion as a writing faculty, and I wanted to spend the time it took to figure out where I stood, give Mile's argument the thought and reflection it deserves, and--most important--try to get a handle on the implications for students."
"The truth is, I don't remember ever having to come to love the "L" word. As far back as I can remember, I've been an English geek, and I've always loved literature. The desire to keep literature alive in society, more than anything else, was what brought me into the profession; and, in many instances, the insights I see students gain into their own lives through learning to interpret literature well are what have kept me going."
"My own passion for having useful stories stay in circulation is one of the reasons I love teaching American and Native literature. Listening to Native storytellers and writers, I've learned that literature isn't a nice add on for communities and individuals. It's an essential tool though which communities define their selves, survive in the face of challenge and change, and find a basis for a shared understanding of the world which unites. For me, literature isn't just one more aspect of culture; it is an essential aspect of healthy individuals, communities, and societies. Mary Lou Atawaka in _Selu_ and Leslie Silko in _Ceremony_ both write about how a shared wealth of story is "the stomach of people" and of how stories assist us in remembering who we are and in finding our place in the world."
"To help her students understand a Cherokee take on the place of literature in their lives, Atawaka shares a corn seed with each of her students . In the discussion which follows, Atawaka tells the story of Selu, the Corn Mother, and the lessons Selu has for the people. One of these lessons is:
"Eat the individual corn seed, and it will help sustain you. Plant the same seed with those of your classmates, cultivate them together, and the seeds which will sustain one of you for a short time will sustain the whole class and others; indeed, the crop you can grow will provide not only food but seeds for the community which, in its turn, will grow and prosper. But corn needs a special kind of cultivation. If a seed is planted and cultivated alone, a corn plant will grow, and it will flower, but it won't be able to produce more corn. In the kernel of corn lays the stomach of the people. To be productive, each kernel needs to be cultivated among other corn plants, and each will help pollinate the other. Literature is corn, and story lays at the literature's kernel. Both are sacred. From them we can derive harmony, the food of the individual and community, and the sharing which is the basis of each."
"Each time I teach literature, I spend a day with the students talking about story, community, and society; and, I've used Atawaka's story of the Corn Mother and distributed my share of NDN corn. I tell you this, because I want you to understand the place of literature in my own life and world and to provide a basis for a discussion of why I don't teach Western literary analysis in my writing classes."
"In other posts, I've discussed how our very love of literature can undermine the task of teaching writing. To equate literary writing with good writing or to equate literary analysis with good reading is a dangerous equation for students of writing and critical reading to adopt. Why?"
"1) Our understanding of literature and how to form our understanding of it is very much connected to our Romantic, Modernist, and Post-Modern roots. The essential lessons of each philosophy are so bound up with how literature is taught and understood in the academy and society at large that it is difficult, if not impossible to tease out the dangerous ideas from the useful. I don't want to get sidetracked too much here, but a brief overview of what I mean might be useful."
"1a) One legacy of Romanticism is the view it propagated of the author as genius. While great writing *may* be the product of genius and talent, anyone with the drive, discipline, the right rubrics and schema, and the chance to practice can produce good, solid, craftsman like writing. By good writing, I mean writing so crafted as to allow the author to accomplish his or her purposes with a text."
"Tied up in the Romantic view of the author as genius is the belief that the ability to write well is governed by talent. It isn't. Also, tied up in Romanticism is the dangerous notion that one is either right brain or left, good in math or in the humanities, and if one is good in the sciences or technology, one isn't good in English. We've all dealt with the legacies of this last, but the single most dangerous legacy of the Romantic view of author is the arrogance which accompanies the Romantic author's view of his or her self. Whenever we provide a basis for the individual to cultivate the belief they are of higher sensibility (however you want to define that last), we are on dangerous ground. Think of Hitler and Superman here if you want. I usually think of Elias Boudinot and how his view of himself as a Romantic author contributed to the death of most of two generations of Cherokees along the Trail of Tears."
"1b) If anything, the legacy of Modernism is worse. If literature is to have any use in the world outside of producing pretty words and insightful prose, not that these last aren't useful, it has to be part of how society works, not a separate category of thought requiring an elite, hyper-trained intelligence or an absurd amount of leisure. The Romantics began the focus on the individual at the cost of community engagement, but the Modernists brought the notion to full flower. With the Modernist, there's a nostalgia for the social role literature and the author once played in society, but too often it's a despairing nostalgia. I'm a firm believer that it was the Modernists view of literature which combined with a research orientated professorial chaste to make the study and appreciation of literature much more difficult than it needs to be. Add in author/critic Romantic arrogance, American Anti-Intellectualism, and the high vs low literature split, and you have a recipe for the study of literature being seen as irrelevant to how the majority of society lives. If you're looking for someone to blame for the increasingly marginalized place of literature in society, you could do much worse than to look at the Victorian 'Art for Art's Sake' crowd and the disciples of Eliot. We live with the legacy of making literature an intellectuals' sport rather than a lived part of the citizen creating a good life and a working community."
"1c) Post-Modernism is too easy a target. It is the natural by-product of the Romantics and Modernists. We communicate every day, and we manage to do things useful work with writing; but, Post-Modernism celebrates the breakdown of communication and an Existential and Linguistic explanations of why communication doesn't and can't work. These explanations, in turn, are derived from the false dichotomy of idealism and realism. Add in the emphasis our culture places on novelty, as opposed to the value of creation within a set of assumed limitations of genre, and you have folks assuming the paradoxical stance of creating works which celebrate the "new" insight that they can't be understood. Such Play is dangerous, that is, if it's taken to the extreme suggested by the logic of Relativism."
"1d) My point here is that students bring all these existing rhetorics to our English/writing classes which explain why literature isn't important and shouldn't be, and they can fall back on any of them to rationalize a lack of success and, worse, unwillingness to do the work required to become a good writer. Regardless of the truth behind these rhetorics, they allow students to view literary analysis is an elitist activity with little (if any) connection to their lived world and where many professionals are willing to admit 'right'--as opposed to 'better'--interpretations are impossible. From the right perspective, these beliefs are partly true and very useful. This is the main reason I find it easier to approach teaching writing as a separate field of study only tangentially related to the study of literature, and I actively work against the identification of English classes and the profession as a whole with literary study."
"2) My next point is an obvious insight, but it's one, as trained professionals of literary interpretation, we too often forget, namely, just as the use of genre or the assumptions about the roles of audiences and authors are specific to discourse communities, so to are interpretative rubrics. The theories of hermeneutics which govern how we construct interpretations in literary study are part and parcel of our discourse community and the ideas of the professional reader and critic which have governed it."
"While many of our practices, like close reading, can translate well into other disciplines and ways of looking at the world, they are far from the only useful ways of looking at the world, that is, the only critical thinking and reading rubrics which need to be learned. On a related note, our students often bring extensive training in the interpretative rubrics of literary analysis. Talk to many of them, and they'll describe high school English as a series of courses which consisted of little writing and much reading of literary texts, classroom discussion of these texts, and attempts to learn rubrics and the use of rhetorical device such as irony, tone, and symbolism."
"The fact that this focus on literary device and writing which is aware of itself as high literature is a product of Modernism and New Criticism--that is, the product of hermeneutic and professional legacies specific to literary study as a discipline in the 20th Century--is lost on most, if not all freshman. A nuanced view of how we as a discourse community interpret literature as just one among many competing theories of how to construct interpretations isn't a view easily fit into a writing course, that is, without spending a *lot* of time on the history of literary study, information which most students will never need to know."
"As a side note, one reason I get so excited about the Reynold's Learning Communities and Writing Across Communities is that I can borrow a focus on other critical thinking and interpretative rubrics or, more precisely, I can let other teachers focus on these rubrics, and I can spend my time teaching writing and its interpretative rubrics instead of how to construct a good literary interpretation."
"3) All this brings me to what I consider the most essential point, namely, there are enough reading rubrics specific to rhetoric and writing to take up any one year of the curriculum; and, for most students, freshman writing will be one of the few moments in a crowded curriculum where they will get exposure to writing specific interpretative rubrics and get a chance to practice them with an informed teacher grounding their study. I find it enough to do to get students to understand the author/audience/text triad and how it forms successful communication. Add in the ethos, logos, pathos triad; how to figure out an author's purpose and its effects on how a text is constructed; researching genres; the notion of discourse community; audience analysis; process writing, and you quickly come up with a rich set of critical thinking rubrics which are writing and rhetoric specific."
"At most, we've got a limited number of assignments which will fit into any 112 or 111. Here's a set of my current set of favorites:
*Research a discourse community and write a description of the kind of writing which is done in the community. Here, I try to get students to focus on a discourse community of which they are a member or which they want to join as a professional.
*For each piece of formal writing and some of the informal, write an analysis of who your audience is and what you want to accomplish with your text. I find personal metadiscourse blogs useful for this kind of writing about writing.
*Research a genre and how to write effectively in the genre. As part of this assignment, develop a format the class will follow in producing successful examples of this genre of writing. I usually ground this assignment in a researched, online review and individual, group, and class writing and discussion.
*Research an area of the writing process or your most common surface level writing problem and write a "how to" process paper in which you describe to an audience of your peers how to recognize, fix or improve your "problem."
*Write a process paper in which you describe a process you currently use. I follow up on this assignment with a discussion of process writing and Kaizen, by getting students to identify one aspect of the process they describe which they could improve via a small, high impact change, and, increasingly, with a self description of the process they have used to create a specific genre of writing and of a specific, small change to the process which could make to become more effective or efficient writers.
*Research and write about the ideas of ethos, logos, pathos, and telos. Using these terms, analyze a common communication situation such as dating, the job interview, or the teacher/student relationship.
*Using the description of the learning outcomes described in the syllabus, do an inventory of where you are as a writer and how your knowledge and skill set compares to that expected of freshman writers. Update your response to each outcome as we discuss and complete the formal writing projects in the class. As you draft and revise this inventory, make sure to make clear claims about your learning and the outcome and to support this claim with discussion, illustrations, and examples from your own writing.
*Write a cover letter for a class portfolio in which you reflect on what you have learned in the course and what you have found to be most valuable. As part of this letter, make a claim concerning the grade you believe you have earned, and provide me with sufficient reasons and examples from your work this semester to believe your claim.
*Pre-writing, proofreading, and revision exercises as part of each of the assignments."
"That's a lot to fit a year of any curriculum. Add in a growing, articulated, nuanced definition of what constitutes good writing, and there's enough to teach and do without ever once talking about high literature."
Steve
PS As a kind of footnote, I should add that I don't believe in a clear division between rhetoric, writing, and the study of literature, that is, if we see and teach literature as including a broad range of texts and literary analysis as making sense of the author's intentions and the historical and social situations in which a text did its major work. In fact, I've come to distrust easy categorizations in general in favor of the value I find in forums like this where inquiry is dialogic and insights derive from debate, messy, muddled explanations, and each insight flows out of continual discussion and reflection. My current take on the relationship between literature and writing is that both are best seen as aspects of rhetoric whose hermeneutic and composition practices interpenetrate one another. This take has me focusing on rhetoric as the more fundamental and useful methodology through which to teach writing at the freshman level, but it is just my take, and it is just my take at this moment.
Tuesday, December 11, 2007
Where I Am in Responding to Papers
I'm about two-thirds of the way through the backlog of drafts I received over the weekend and yesterday. I'm plugging ahead and am getting a lot of joy in seeing your writing and the progress being made in it.
I'll return tomorrow morning to commenting. Do feel free to write with any questions about the comments I've already left.
Steve
I'll return tomorrow morning to commenting. Do feel free to write with any questions about the comments I've already left.
Steve
Your Comments As Collaborators and Their Payoff
I can't tell you how pleased I am with everyone's performance over the past couple of weeks. As I've read the papers on which I've been added as a collaborator, I've been very impressed with the thought each of you have given to each others writing. I've been even more impressed on how the drafts have been improved as a result.
It's time I let you in on the learning which is taking place in the background. I've borrowed from my response to a particular student in this explanation:
As you help others create more successful documents, you're having to create either a conscious or unconscious dialogue with yourself about what constitutes good or better writing. You're having to compare this concept to that which is in front of you, and you're having to make specific recommendations and judgements, so your ideas can't just be abstract. In the profession, we call such an internal dialogue about writing "a metadiscourse."
Achieving a working metadiscourse means your cognitive understanding of your own literacy has taken a major step forward. You've practiced this metadiscourse and over the next few years, you'll probably--if your cognitive trajectory as a writer follows most others--make the metadiscourse more conscious and detailed. Getting this kind of metadiscourse started is one of the things which I build into my freshmen course designs, so it just happens as a necessary incidental.
Moreover, you've now got access to a host of terms and rubrics for making your metadiscourse richer and more nuanced; and, as you've written on them for your outcomes inventory, you've had to learn them at least well enough to write on them and to see examples in your own writing.
My point is this, much of the learning from this course will mature and flower over the next few years, and you might not even notice it happening. The truth is, there's only so much which can be done to help students become better writers in five weeks. In fact, five week sections of freshman writing violate understood best practice in the field. I took these limitations as challenges and focused on planting the seeds which can, if you cultivate them, make you a better writer over time.
It's time I let you in on the learning which is taking place in the background. I've borrowed from my response to a particular student in this explanation:
As you help others create more successful documents, you're having to create either a conscious or unconscious dialogue with yourself about what constitutes good or better writing. You're having to compare this concept to that which is in front of you, and you're having to make specific recommendations and judgements, so your ideas can't just be abstract. In the profession, we call such an internal dialogue about writing "a metadiscourse."
Achieving a working metadiscourse means your cognitive understanding of your own literacy has taken a major step forward. You've practiced this metadiscourse and over the next few years, you'll probably--if your cognitive trajectory as a writer follows most others--make the metadiscourse more conscious and detailed. Getting this kind of metadiscourse started is one of the things which I build into my freshmen course designs, so it just happens as a necessary incidental.
Moreover, you've now got access to a host of terms and rubrics for making your metadiscourse richer and more nuanced; and, as you've written on them for your outcomes inventory, you've had to learn them at least well enough to write on them and to see examples in your own writing.
My point is this, much of the learning from this course will mature and flower over the next few years, and you might not even notice it happening. The truth is, there's only so much which can be done to help students become better writers in five weeks. In fact, five week sections of freshman writing violate understood best practice in the field. I took these limitations as challenges and focused on planting the seeds which can, if you cultivate them, make you a better writer over time.
Kaizen and Your Process Papers
Years ago, a friend who helps politicians manage campaigns told me about the rule of three. The rule of three was his notion that if a candidate is asked or answers the same question more than three times, she should develop a public answer and broadcast the answer. In responding to Jason's process paper draft, I realized I was saying something to many of you in my responses to your process paper. More importantly, I realized it was one of the major lessons I hope you'll take from this course. Find my response below:
You've seen me make this point in comments on other papers, but I'll repeat it again. To become a fluent, efficient, effective writer, you have to know your writing process as well as you do the processes you've described in this paper. The insight you gained into your creative process should be the first of a continuous process of improvement you can achieve via Kaizen. As you improve your processes and your understanding of them, both conscious and unconscious, your products will show a corresponding improvement .
You can do the same with your writing process. Articulate where you are and what processes you use now to write, find a high impact place to make an improvement in the processes you use to create documents, research what others have done to improve their process, implement the change, and review. Over the course of time, you can obtain any level of accomplishment as a writer you desire. It's just a matter of putting in the work and giving writing your full attention while you write.
You've seen me make this point in comments on other papers, but I'll repeat it again. To become a fluent, efficient, effective writer, you have to know your writing process as well as you do the processes you've described in this paper. The insight you gained into your creative process should be the first of a continuous process of improvement you can achieve via Kaizen. As you improve your processes and your understanding of them, both conscious and unconscious, your products will show a corresponding improvement .
You can do the same with your writing process. Articulate where you are and what processes you use now to write, find a high impact place to make an improvement in the processes you use to create documents, research what others have done to improve their process, implement the change, and review. Over the course of time, you can obtain any level of accomplishment as a writer you desire. It's just a matter of putting in the work and giving writing your full attention while you write.
When the final portfolio is due.
Speaking with Paul yesterday, I realized there is some confusion about due dates. I want you to have the *draft* of your portfolio done by Sunday. This means, you should have completed revisions of your cover letter, the outcomes inventory, any papers you want to revise, and picked what writing you'll include in the evidence section of your portfolio. The evidence section can include writing you've done in class or elsewhere, drafts, pre-writing, notes, etc. The evidence section contains the work you'll point to as evidence and example in your cover letter and in your inventory.
Your final portfolio will be due on the last day of class, that is, 19 December. If you have a largely done draft ready by Sunday, this schedule will give you three days for final polish, proofreading your cover letter and inventory, re-thinking and re-reading.
Please DON'T try to put the portfolio or the draft of it together in one day. This is a recipe for an unsuccessful portfolio. Give yourself time to think, write, revise, reflect, and polish. Learning the value of slowing down the writing process and giving yourself the time needed to do your best work is one of the major lessons of the class. Take it to heart. I'll be looking for evidence you've done so when I look at and grade your portfolios.
Your final portfolio will be due on the last day of class, that is, 19 December. If you have a largely done draft ready by Sunday, this schedule will give you three days for final polish, proofreading your cover letter and inventory, re-thinking and re-reading.
Please DON'T try to put the portfolio or the draft of it together in one day. This is a recipe for an unsuccessful portfolio. Give yourself time to think, write, revise, reflect, and polish. Learning the value of slowing down the writing process and giving yourself the time needed to do your best work is one of the major lessons of the class. Take it to heart. I'll be looking for evidence you've done so when I look at and grade your portfolios.
Monday, December 10, 2007
Research, Sources, and Documentation
A student wrote with questions about a couple of bullets dealing with research, the use of sources, and documentation. Here's my very quick response:
On the bullet: "Understand a writing assignment as a series of tasks, including finding, evaluating, analyzing, and synthesizing appropriate primary and secondary sources."
A primary source is the text being discussed. On a literature paper, the primary source would be the literature you're to analyze. A secondary source would be criticism about the literature. What this bullet is referring to is that:
1) Readers are interested in hearing your take on the primary source, not just a mishmash of what others have had to say.
2) The last statement implies that you're learning how to use secondary sources to support what you have to say and not substitute for your own opinion.
3) The bullet is also getting at how the views of others can help you see aspects of your primary text you otherwise wouldn't have considered or not considered in the same light.
4) Finally, the bullet gets at how you go about bringing together in your own thought and writing the set of your own opinions about a primary text and the secondary criticism from which you've learned. This is the synthesis angle.
5) The bullet's focus is on how research fits into the writing process. It's something one usually focuses on in the second semester of freshman writing, but you should know that research is almost always a part of writing.
No one can know everything, even in their areas of professional specialization; so, part of being an authority (an author) on a subject is educating yourself, that is, doing research, on the gaps in your knowledge. Usually such research is quick. You might check and verify a fact you include in your writing. Sometimes, research involves getting a handle on a complex problem, process. or technique. Here you have to figure out which sources are worth your attention and realize that in most subjects worth talking about there will be varying opinions on the subject; so, part of what you're researching, analyzing, and synthesizing is the *current* conversation and players discussing your subject.
On the bullet: "Practice appropriate means of documenting their work."
This bullet is simpler. Use the form of documentation expected by the audience/discourse community for whom you write. Realize that different disciplines have different forms of documentation. Using the forms of documentation expected by a discourse community is an ethos move. It proves you know how the discourse community handles the interrelated problems of the ownership of ideas and who an author relies on in developing their thinking.
Most audiences could care less about the sources for your thinking. This isn't true in the academy, where plagiarism is a major issue; and, more importantly, ideas have histories which move into and out of acceptance. What you, as a writer, need to remember is to do your research on what form of documentation is expected. In the academy, you do this by visiting the websites of the professional organizations governing a disciplines discourse. They'll usually have guidelines as to how to document. Visit MLA.org for an example. Most libraries have style sheets or citation guides, and short versions of both appear in many writing guides. Last but not least, sites like bibme can help, as can programs like Endnotes or the new version of Word.
On the bullet: "Understand a writing assignment as a series of tasks, including finding, evaluating, analyzing, and synthesizing appropriate primary and secondary sources."
A primary source is the text being discussed. On a literature paper, the primary source would be the literature you're to analyze. A secondary source would be criticism about the literature. What this bullet is referring to is that:
1) Readers are interested in hearing your take on the primary source, not just a mishmash of what others have had to say.
2) The last statement implies that you're learning how to use secondary sources to support what you have to say and not substitute for your own opinion.
3) The bullet is also getting at how the views of others can help you see aspects of your primary text you otherwise wouldn't have considered or not considered in the same light.
4) Finally, the bullet gets at how you go about bringing together in your own thought and writing the set of your own opinions about a primary text and the secondary criticism from which you've learned. This is the synthesis angle.
5) The bullet's focus is on how research fits into the writing process. It's something one usually focuses on in the second semester of freshman writing, but you should know that research is almost always a part of writing.
No one can know everything, even in their areas of professional specialization; so, part of being an authority (an author) on a subject is educating yourself, that is, doing research, on the gaps in your knowledge. Usually such research is quick. You might check and verify a fact you include in your writing. Sometimes, research involves getting a handle on a complex problem, process. or technique. Here you have to figure out which sources are worth your attention and realize that in most subjects worth talking about there will be varying opinions on the subject; so, part of what you're researching, analyzing, and synthesizing is the *current* conversation and players discussing your subject.
On the bullet: "Practice appropriate means of documenting their work."
This bullet is simpler. Use the form of documentation expected by the audience/discourse community for whom you write. Realize that different disciplines have different forms of documentation. Using the forms of documentation expected by a discourse community is an ethos move. It proves you know how the discourse community handles the interrelated problems of the ownership of ideas and who an author relies on in developing their thinking.
Most audiences could care less about the sources for your thinking. This isn't true in the academy, where plagiarism is a major issue; and, more importantly, ideas have histories which move into and out of acceptance. What you, as a writer, need to remember is to do your research on what form of documentation is expected. In the academy, you do this by visiting the websites of the professional organizations governing a disciplines discourse. They'll usually have guidelines as to how to document. Visit MLA.org for an example. Most libraries have style sheets or citation guides, and short versions of both appear in many writing guides. Last but not least, sites like bibme can help, as can programs like Endnotes or the new version of Word.
On Comments, Criticism, and How to Use Both.
I'm back online, and I'm making my way through the backlog of papers which came in over the weekend and on which I owe you comments. By the way, let me know if, for whatever reason, you haven't received comments on earlier papers. With these, just send me another invitation to join you again as collaborator and add comments. As my classes wrap up this week here in Richmond, I'll have more time to devote to going through your papers and offering comments.
A quick note on my comments: if you're expecting a paper on which I've bled red, you'll be disappointed. What you'll see in my comments is that I'll concentrate on how to improve your writing process and on what you've done well in terms of handling the rhetoric. I'm trying here to give you advice which will have the biggest impact on making you a better writer and communicator. Often, I will make a suggestion as to what I would do in the next revision, and less frequently, I'll point you to surface level issues on which you need to work.
Years ago, I learned if you give a student too much information, they'll pick and choose which pieces of advice to which to give their attention, or, worse, they won't do anything; so, I now leave fewer comments, and I try to make these comments as useful as possible.
In other words, I want you to think about everything I have to say. I'm trying to help you write, not judging you as a person. If I say you're doing something well, I'm not just being kind. Consider adding the skill in which I compliment you to your memory and continue to use it in future writing. If I point to the next largest issue to revise, remember my hierarchy for advice is: 1) thesis, 2) focus, 3) development, 4) organization, 5) how you incorporate the thinking of others; 6) tone, 7) paragraphing, 8) word choice and awkward phrasing; 9) surface level issues. If I've skipped over one of these areas, chances are you're doing OK with it, or the mistakes you may have made don't distract from your paper's effectiveness as much as the area on which I do concentrate.
Other things to remember about my comments:
1) You are the author, not me. I'm offering criticism and advice. I'm working as a good editor would. You decide if you agree with my input or not. Just remember, my advice is that of someone who's spent an adult life focusing on the issues I'm talking about. You'd be paying much bigger bucks if you were paying my consulting fees, and folks pay those fees to hear me drone on.
2) I make mistakes. Sorry, but it's true. I'm human, so are you. Read everything I or anyone else says with charity and a grain (or a cup) of salt; but, value the honest criticism of others more than gold. In our culture, we tend to avoid confrontation to a fault, even if someone would be better off hearing a less than flattering comment. The value I place on honest criticism is one reason I valued the discussion I read of my and the class's faults near the beginning. I'll use these comments to improve the next section I teach. I want you to learn to take criticism in the same vein. Too many good writers are so concerned with avoiding criticism, they'll never publish their work or they get writer's block. Writers write texts audiences read. Audiences can be tough. Get over it, or, better, accept it as a tool you can use.
3) If something I say doesn't make sense, write. I'm here to offer a better explanation, and you're paying me for the privilege of teaching. Make me earn my bucks.
4) If you have a question about an aspect of the paper on which I don't comment, write me with it.
5) Finally, remember I'm criticizing your writing, not you as a person. Chances are, even if I think your writing isn't the best, I'll read you with charity, and I'd still like you as a person. See two above.
6) Have patience. Treating you like a real writer and working as an editor would means it takes time for me to form my comments. If a comment is time critical, as always..l
Also, this morning I posted a rather long entry on the drafting phase of the writing process and the problem of procrastination. Make sure to read it and pull off any information which might help update your knowledge of the outcomes.
Finally, don't forget to do your bit in the discussion of the rhetoric of dating. I'm hoping you'll learn a little about dating, and I'm hoping the discussion will give you some major insight into rhetoric.
As always call or write.
A quick note on my comments: if you're expecting a paper on which I've bled red, you'll be disappointed. What you'll see in my comments is that I'll concentrate on how to improve your writing process and on what you've done well in terms of handling the rhetoric. I'm trying here to give you advice which will have the biggest impact on making you a better writer and communicator. Often, I will make a suggestion as to what I would do in the next revision, and less frequently, I'll point you to surface level issues on which you need to work.
Years ago, I learned if you give a student too much information, they'll pick and choose which pieces of advice to which to give their attention, or, worse, they won't do anything; so, I now leave fewer comments, and I try to make these comments as useful as possible.
In other words, I want you to think about everything I have to say. I'm trying to help you write, not judging you as a person. If I say you're doing something well, I'm not just being kind. Consider adding the skill in which I compliment you to your memory and continue to use it in future writing. If I point to the next largest issue to revise, remember my hierarchy for advice is: 1) thesis, 2) focus, 3) development, 4) organization, 5) how you incorporate the thinking of others; 6) tone, 7) paragraphing, 8) word choice and awkward phrasing; 9) surface level issues. If I've skipped over one of these areas, chances are you're doing OK with it, or the mistakes you may have made don't distract from your paper's effectiveness as much as the area on which I do concentrate.
Other things to remember about my comments:
1) You are the author, not me. I'm offering criticism and advice. I'm working as a good editor would. You decide if you agree with my input or not. Just remember, my advice is that of someone who's spent an adult life focusing on the issues I'm talking about. You'd be paying much bigger bucks if you were paying my consulting fees, and folks pay those fees to hear me drone on.
2) I make mistakes. Sorry, but it's true. I'm human, so are you. Read everything I or anyone else says with charity and a grain (or a cup) of salt; but, value the honest criticism of others more than gold. In our culture, we tend to avoid confrontation to a fault, even if someone would be better off hearing a less than flattering comment. The value I place on honest criticism is one reason I valued the discussion I read of my and the class's faults near the beginning. I'll use these comments to improve the next section I teach. I want you to learn to take criticism in the same vein. Too many good writers are so concerned with avoiding criticism, they'll never publish their work or they get writer's block. Writers write texts audiences read. Audiences can be tough. Get over it, or, better, accept it as a tool you can use.
3) If something I say doesn't make sense, write. I'm here to offer a better explanation, and you're paying me for the privilege of teaching. Make me earn my bucks.
4) If you have a question about an aspect of the paper on which I don't comment, write me with it.
5) Finally, remember I'm criticizing your writing, not you as a person. Chances are, even if I think your writing isn't the best, I'll read you with charity, and I'd still like you as a person. See two above.
6) Have patience. Treating you like a real writer and working as an editor would means it takes time for me to form my comments. If a comment is time critical, as always..l
Also, this morning I posted a rather long entry on the drafting phase of the writing process and the problem of procrastination. Make sure to read it and pull off any information which might help update your knowledge of the outcomes.
Finally, don't forget to do your bit in the discussion of the rhetoric of dating. I'm hoping you'll learn a little about dating, and I'm hoping the discussion will give you some major insight into rhetoric.
As always call or write.
Process: Procrastination and Drafting
When I talk to the class about drafting, I usually include a lecture on procrastination. Since this section meets online, I thought I'd include three links with good articles on procrastination along with my current top ten ways of dealing with procrastination. The last full week of class also seemed a good time to talk about procrastination, writer's block, and some tricks to use when you encounter loggerheads in the drafting phase.
Procrastination is a problem with which I've struggled for years, mostly out of fear. The task seems too large. I worry I'm not good enough. I worry I'll be judged lacking. The task isn't well enough defined. You get the idea. You've been there. Chances are, if you don't learn to deal with the habit of procrastination, you'll be there again.
Over the years, I've found a host of advice and a few tricks which have helped me. As you read through the ten rules which help me, read one, stop, think about it, read it again, and move on to the next.
1) Take control. One of the worst aspects of procrastination is that one feels out of control. You know you have a task to do. You know your life would be better for doing the task. It seems irrational you'd avoid doing it. You must recognize that not doing something is a choice. You choose to not. That's OK. It's your choice, but go into the decision with your eyes wide open. Allow yourself time to articulate all the consequences of your choice not to do. Examine your choice rationally. Don't avoid this examination. Then, if you still decide not to do, OK. You've made that choice. Live with it as your choice. Chances are, however, the articulation will add that extra bit of umph you'll need to find the motivation to do.
2) Find motivation. One productivity coach argues the only problem with procrastinators is they're under motivated. There are all kinds of ways to find motivation. Try visualizing in as much detail as possible a scene where you've done the dreaded task and succeeded with it. Envision the results. Envision success. Try to stay away from dwelling on the negative consequences of not doing. Concentrating on them will trap you into feeling more anxious and frustrated, two feelings which we avoid by procrastination; so, you'll might find yourself procrastinating on finding the motivation to succeed.
3) Deal with stress. There's more advice out there with dealing with stress than most any other subject. Truth is, up to a point, stress and anxiety are your friends. They're one aspect of your motivation. Learning to embrace the increased feeling of stress which comes from starting or anticipating starting a project is a major step in overcoming procrastination. Past a certain point, however, stress and anxiety become part of the pattern of procrastination. You avoid the stress and anxiety associated with a task by distracting yourself with more enjoyable behaviors. Indeed, one way of thinking about procrastination is as delaying a stress inducing task by substituting more pleasurable tasks which temporarily reduce stress. Note the word temporarily. To deal with stress, you've got to establish good habits. You must exercise. You must get enough sleep. The best method I've found, however, is to meditate. I meditate on the task at hand. I meditate on what it would feel like to succeed. I remember in detail past successes and project them into my visualization of my success doing the task at hand. I also have learned the habit of every day meditation. Now just looking inward, shifting my posture, and breathing correctly eases stress. To get to this point, however, you've got to meditate daily, so you can learn to associate on a deep level certain ways of breathing, thinking, and posture with calm. Another trick is to meditate walking, step-by-step to a place where you feel comfortable and mentally settling down there. My mental, stress reducing walk is one in the mountains where I grew up. It ends at at a waterfall. Each step takes me deeper into the woods. With every mental step, I can feel a little of life's weight dropping off. When I settle down at the waterfall, I am at peace.
4) Learn your triggers. There's something(S) causing your procrastination. It might be you learned to rebel by not doing; and, paradoxically, you're not doing gave you a sense of control. You might have certain fears which trigger avoidance. Learn to recognize the behaviors you use to avoid and procrastinate, and use these as an index to the things which cause you to procrastinate. Once you learn what triggers avoidance, you can think about your triggers from a more objective distance and plan how you'll react to them rather than reacting with knee-jerk avoidance.
5) Do a little bit. Identify one physical action which will bring your task closer to completion. Sit down at the computer. Open the word processor. You get the idea. The trick is to make sure you identify a single, physical act. You can't "write a paper." You can spend 15 minutes brainstorming or free-writing.
You must then give yourself permission to do your one task. Then identify the next task. Rinse. Repeat. Often just getting a little momentum will make the dreaded task less stressful, give you a small success on which to build, and help you motivate yourself.
Another trick is to use a timer program. You can download them from the web. Set your timer for 5, 10, or 15 minutes. Give yourself permission to just work till your timer runs out. Often, just getting started with those few minutes is enough to overcome the worst of the initial, anticipatory fear--the stress inducing fear which you procrastinate to advoid. If the first few minutes weren't all that bad, set the timer again. Rinse. Repeat. If the first few minutes prove too much, then all you've lost is doing so many minutes of the work you know you need to do anyway.
Don't do too much. Most productivity coaches recommend moving your timer up to a routine of 48 minutes working with a 12 minute break following. There's good psychology behind the 48 minute mark. It's why many classes are divided into 50 minute sections.
6) Do the dreaded task first thing in the morning. I have an established morning routine. I get up with Nance. We get a bath. We go for a walk. We fix breakfast and eat it. We give each other seven lucky kisses, and she goes to work. I start my morning with the mediation I discussed above. I then do the dreaded task. Productivity coaches call this doing the worst chore first, eating one frog each day. Once you've eaten your personal, daily frog, everything else is easier. Seriously, before I do anything else, before I allow myself to get distracted, I set my timer for 48 minutes, and I work on the task I want to put off the most. I identify this task the evening before, and I've meditated on the task and it's success. Usually, I can then make progress.
7) Sprint. Not the telephone company, sprint though your dreaded task. Once you learn the 48 minute rule, you give yourself permission (just like your 5, 10, or 15 minute sessions) to do as much as you can in that 48 minutes, then quit. Often, however, you'll find that first 48 minute sprint gives you enough momentum you'll want to keep going.
8) Reward yourself, but be careful. If you've worked for the 48 minutes, give yourself a little reward. You'll have to figure out your system of rewards. Maybe it's a cup of tea or a brownie. I don't know. I do know you don't want to reward yourself with one of your avoidance behaviors. It's then too easy to quit and fall back on bad habits.
Don't forget to give yourself the big rewards. If you manage to complete the dreaded task on which you've tended to procrastinate, reward yourself. Take a day off. You then deserve the reward. Those rewards, both big and little, are part of the ammunition you can use when you visualize success, and they're part of the motivation you can use to get started and to keep going.
9) Don't try to be perfect. You aren't. Remember Kaizen? It's about picking the lowest fruit and then learning to pick the higher. It's about getting some reward with each effort. If you don't do because you want what's done to be perfect, you'll never do. Learn this lesson. Do a good enough job, and if you have time, polish it into a better one. You want the success of getting a job done which does well enough. You can then spend time working out a better production process so the next job will be better. If you keep up with the plan, sooner rather than later, you'll find yourself producing a pretty damn good product. It still won't be perfect. The Second Law of Thermodynamics applies to the world we share, but your products will do the work you want them to do. Usually.
10) Make mistakes joyfully. Remember my earlier post. Learning to embrace the opportunity a failure offers is a major step toward dealing with the stress and anxiety which causes you to procrastinate. OK, so the product you produced didn't meet standards. It didn't reach your goals for it. What didn't you do that you should? The only way to test a product is by giving it a chance to be used and judged in the field. If it fails, learn why. Alter your process for the next time. The only sure way to fail is to give up and rest on your failures.
Here's a freebie: overcoming the habit of procrastination is a long term process. You picked up the habit of procrastination over a lifetime. Learning to overcome the habit won't happen in a day. It's a process. Work on one aspect of your problem at a time. Focus on the successes as they build up. Embrace your failures as another opportunity for success. Give yourself the time you need, and take the time. When you slip up, get back on the horse and give yourself credit for the ground you've covered.
Enough lecture. Here are three articles on procrastination and tricks for making yourself write. They can give you a other perspectives. Read them. If I can help, make an appointment and we'll talk.
http://www.psychologytoday.com/rss/pto-20060324-000001.html
http://webhome.idirect.com/~readon/procrast.html
http://www.sfwa.org/writing/strategies.html
Procrastination is a problem with which I've struggled for years, mostly out of fear. The task seems too large. I worry I'm not good enough. I worry I'll be judged lacking. The task isn't well enough defined. You get the idea. You've been there. Chances are, if you don't learn to deal with the habit of procrastination, you'll be there again.
Over the years, I've found a host of advice and a few tricks which have helped me. As you read through the ten rules which help me, read one, stop, think about it, read it again, and move on to the next.
1) Take control. One of the worst aspects of procrastination is that one feels out of control. You know you have a task to do. You know your life would be better for doing the task. It seems irrational you'd avoid doing it. You must recognize that not doing something is a choice. You choose to not. That's OK. It's your choice, but go into the decision with your eyes wide open. Allow yourself time to articulate all the consequences of your choice not to do. Examine your choice rationally. Don't avoid this examination. Then, if you still decide not to do, OK. You've made that choice. Live with it as your choice. Chances are, however, the articulation will add that extra bit of umph you'll need to find the motivation to do.
2) Find motivation. One productivity coach argues the only problem with procrastinators is they're under motivated. There are all kinds of ways to find motivation. Try visualizing in as much detail as possible a scene where you've done the dreaded task and succeeded with it. Envision the results. Envision success. Try to stay away from dwelling on the negative consequences of not doing. Concentrating on them will trap you into feeling more anxious and frustrated, two feelings which we avoid by procrastination; so, you'll might find yourself procrastinating on finding the motivation to succeed.
3) Deal with stress. There's more advice out there with dealing with stress than most any other subject. Truth is, up to a point, stress and anxiety are your friends. They're one aspect of your motivation. Learning to embrace the increased feeling of stress which comes from starting or anticipating starting a project is a major step in overcoming procrastination. Past a certain point, however, stress and anxiety become part of the pattern of procrastination. You avoid the stress and anxiety associated with a task by distracting yourself with more enjoyable behaviors. Indeed, one way of thinking about procrastination is as delaying a stress inducing task by substituting more pleasurable tasks which temporarily reduce stress. Note the word temporarily. To deal with stress, you've got to establish good habits. You must exercise. You must get enough sleep. The best method I've found, however, is to meditate. I meditate on the task at hand. I meditate on what it would feel like to succeed. I remember in detail past successes and project them into my visualization of my success doing the task at hand. I also have learned the habit of every day meditation. Now just looking inward, shifting my posture, and breathing correctly eases stress. To get to this point, however, you've got to meditate daily, so you can learn to associate on a deep level certain ways of breathing, thinking, and posture with calm. Another trick is to meditate walking, step-by-step to a place where you feel comfortable and mentally settling down there. My mental, stress reducing walk is one in the mountains where I grew up. It ends at at a waterfall. Each step takes me deeper into the woods. With every mental step, I can feel a little of life's weight dropping off. When I settle down at the waterfall, I am at peace.
4) Learn your triggers. There's something(S) causing your procrastination. It might be you learned to rebel by not doing; and, paradoxically, you're not doing gave you a sense of control. You might have certain fears which trigger avoidance. Learn to recognize the behaviors you use to avoid and procrastinate, and use these as an index to the things which cause you to procrastinate. Once you learn what triggers avoidance, you can think about your triggers from a more objective distance and plan how you'll react to them rather than reacting with knee-jerk avoidance.
5) Do a little bit. Identify one physical action which will bring your task closer to completion. Sit down at the computer. Open the word processor. You get the idea. The trick is to make sure you identify a single, physical act. You can't "write a paper." You can spend 15 minutes brainstorming or free-writing.
You must then give yourself permission to do your one task. Then identify the next task. Rinse. Repeat. Often just getting a little momentum will make the dreaded task less stressful, give you a small success on which to build, and help you motivate yourself.
Another trick is to use a timer program. You can download them from the web. Set your timer for 5, 10, or 15 minutes. Give yourself permission to just work till your timer runs out. Often, just getting started with those few minutes is enough to overcome the worst of the initial, anticipatory fear--the stress inducing fear which you procrastinate to advoid. If the first few minutes weren't all that bad, set the timer again. Rinse. Repeat. If the first few minutes prove too much, then all you've lost is doing so many minutes of the work you know you need to do anyway.
Don't do too much. Most productivity coaches recommend moving your timer up to a routine of 48 minutes working with a 12 minute break following. There's good psychology behind the 48 minute mark. It's why many classes are divided into 50 minute sections.
6) Do the dreaded task first thing in the morning. I have an established morning routine. I get up with Nance. We get a bath. We go for a walk. We fix breakfast and eat it. We give each other seven lucky kisses, and she goes to work. I start my morning with the mediation I discussed above. I then do the dreaded task. Productivity coaches call this doing the worst chore first, eating one frog each day. Once you've eaten your personal, daily frog, everything else is easier. Seriously, before I do anything else, before I allow myself to get distracted, I set my timer for 48 minutes, and I work on the task I want to put off the most. I identify this task the evening before, and I've meditated on the task and it's success. Usually, I can then make progress.
7) Sprint. Not the telephone company, sprint though your dreaded task. Once you learn the 48 minute rule, you give yourself permission (just like your 5, 10, or 15 minute sessions) to do as much as you can in that 48 minutes, then quit. Often, however, you'll find that first 48 minute sprint gives you enough momentum you'll want to keep going.
8) Reward yourself, but be careful. If you've worked for the 48 minutes, give yourself a little reward. You'll have to figure out your system of rewards. Maybe it's a cup of tea or a brownie. I don't know. I do know you don't want to reward yourself with one of your avoidance behaviors. It's then too easy to quit and fall back on bad habits.
Don't forget to give yourself the big rewards. If you manage to complete the dreaded task on which you've tended to procrastinate, reward yourself. Take a day off. You then deserve the reward. Those rewards, both big and little, are part of the ammunition you can use when you visualize success, and they're part of the motivation you can use to get started and to keep going.
9) Don't try to be perfect. You aren't. Remember Kaizen? It's about picking the lowest fruit and then learning to pick the higher. It's about getting some reward with each effort. If you don't do because you want what's done to be perfect, you'll never do. Learn this lesson. Do a good enough job, and if you have time, polish it into a better one. You want the success of getting a job done which does well enough. You can then spend time working out a better production process so the next job will be better. If you keep up with the plan, sooner rather than later, you'll find yourself producing a pretty damn good product. It still won't be perfect. The Second Law of Thermodynamics applies to the world we share, but your products will do the work you want them to do. Usually.
10) Make mistakes joyfully. Remember my earlier post. Learning to embrace the opportunity a failure offers is a major step toward dealing with the stress and anxiety which causes you to procrastinate. OK, so the product you produced didn't meet standards. It didn't reach your goals for it. What didn't you do that you should? The only way to test a product is by giving it a chance to be used and judged in the field. If it fails, learn why. Alter your process for the next time. The only sure way to fail is to give up and rest on your failures.
Here's a freebie: overcoming the habit of procrastination is a long term process. You picked up the habit of procrastination over a lifetime. Learning to overcome the habit won't happen in a day. It's a process. Work on one aspect of your problem at a time. Focus on the successes as they build up. Embrace your failures as another opportunity for success. Give yourself the time you need, and take the time. When you slip up, get back on the horse and give yourself credit for the ground you've covered.
Enough lecture. Here are three articles on procrastination and tricks for making yourself write. They can give you a other perspectives. Read them. If I can help, make an appointment and we'll talk.
http://www.psychologytoday.com/rss/pto-20060324-000001.html
http://webhome.idirect.com/~readon/procrast.html
http://www.sfwa.org/writing/strategies.html
How to deal with the "other programs" bullets in your inventory.
A student wrote with a question about how to deal with the set of "other program" bullets in each section of the WPA outcomes. My response appears below. Since, it will save you time, you might want to read it.
"Yes, you should respond to these bullets, but you can respond to them as a group rather than individually. Remember, the idea behind the inventory assignment is for you and me to get an idea of what you know and what you still need to study in terms of writing.
"These "other program" bullets indicate that your other professors in different programs have a responsibility to pass along knowledge about writing which is specific to their discipline as a discourse community. If they don't, you have to be proactive and seek this knowledge out. The "all programs" bullets should, hence, serve as an indication of the kind of information you should seek out. My guess is you already have some of the knowledge, as many of you are fairly savvy readers in your particular fields. If you have some of the know and a lack other aspects, just say so."
"Write with questions."
"Yes, you should respond to these bullets, but you can respond to them as a group rather than individually. Remember, the idea behind the inventory assignment is for you and me to get an idea of what you know and what you still need to study in terms of writing.
"These "other program" bullets indicate that your other professors in different programs have a responsibility to pass along knowledge about writing which is specific to their discipline as a discourse community. If they don't, you have to be proactive and seek this knowledge out. The "all programs" bullets should, hence, serve as an indication of the kind of information you should seek out. My guess is you already have some of the knowledge, as many of you are fairly savvy readers in your particular fields. If you have some of the know and a lack other aspects, just say so."
"Write with questions."
Friday, December 7, 2007
The Rhetoirc of Dating
It's often difficult for students to get their heads around how powerful even the basic insights of rhetoric can be. Learning to think of the various facets of the rhetorical triangle--the author/audience/message--and how it can be used in a real world situation often helps.
I'd like you to spend some time thinking of the rhetoric of dating, and participate in a discussion of the subject via comments to this post. Comments are an odd rhetorical genre, and they lend them selves to short entries in which the various authors offer specific insight into the topic of a post or to the thoughts offered by others. The purpose for everyone in the comments is to gain or provide useful information and insights into the subject of the original post.
Let me help you get started.
If we think about rhetoric at all we're used to thinking about the rhetorical situation as static and too often from the author's viewpoint. Many of the most valuable insights of rhetoric, however, come from seeing how the roles of author/audience shift, how each achieves their rhetorical purposes, and how different kinds (genres) of texts are constructed in a dynamic, real world situation.
If you've never thought about the rhetoric of dating, it's a fun topic. To get started, ask your self the basic questions surrounding dating and rhetoric:
What are the purposes each party hopes to achieve?
What kinds of texts do the different parties construct to achieve their purpose?
How do the three appeals of logos, pathos, and ethos work in these texts?
How do the two authors learn about their audience?
What are the needs of the two parties as audience?
What interpretative rubrics do the parties use to get a handle on the other party as author/person?
Think for a moment of the various genres (kinds of repeating interactions which hold common expectations) which govern dating.
There's the first date. There's the first kiss. There's the car. There's dress. There's deciding on topics of conversations at various points in dating relationship. There's the second date and the third. There's the breakup. There's introducing the date to one's friends or to the ex. There's the problem of intimacy. The list goes on.
Think of how you develop ethos with your date. Think of how you use logos and pathos to make yourself appealing. Think of the various opportunities to loose ethos. Think of how you develop identification with your audience. Think of all of these as they apply to the genres of dating.
I think this is enough to get you started. As always...
I'd like you to spend some time thinking of the rhetoric of dating, and participate in a discussion of the subject via comments to this post. Comments are an odd rhetorical genre, and they lend them selves to short entries in which the various authors offer specific insight into the topic of a post or to the thoughts offered by others. The purpose for everyone in the comments is to gain or provide useful information and insights into the subject of the original post.
Let me help you get started.
If we think about rhetoric at all we're used to thinking about the rhetorical situation as static and too often from the author's viewpoint. Many of the most valuable insights of rhetoric, however, come from seeing how the roles of author/audience shift, how each achieves their rhetorical purposes, and how different kinds (genres) of texts are constructed in a dynamic, real world situation.
If you've never thought about the rhetoric of dating, it's a fun topic. To get started, ask your self the basic questions surrounding dating and rhetoric:
What are the purposes each party hopes to achieve?
What kinds of texts do the different parties construct to achieve their purpose?
How do the three appeals of logos, pathos, and ethos work in these texts?
How do the two authors learn about their audience?
What are the needs of the two parties as audience?
What interpretative rubrics do the parties use to get a handle on the other party as author/person?
Think for a moment of the various genres (kinds of repeating interactions which hold common expectations) which govern dating.
There's the first date. There's the first kiss. There's the car. There's dress. There's deciding on topics of conversations at various points in dating relationship. There's the second date and the third. There's the breakup. There's introducing the date to one's friends or to the ex. There's the problem of intimacy. The list goes on.
Think of how you develop ethos with your date. Think of how you use logos and pathos to make yourself appealing. Think of the various opportunities to loose ethos. Think of how you develop identification with your audience. Think of all of these as they apply to the genres of dating.
I think this is enough to get you started. As always...
"The Big Picture, the Rhetoric of Dating, and some logistics.
This afternoon, my wife and I are leaving for Baltimore to pick up a sail boat we bought. Since I don't know if we'll be able to get a room with internet access, I wanted to warn you I may be out of touch for much of the coming weekend.
I've been impressed by how the class has come together over the past week. I've had a chance to comment on almost everyone's work, and the central concepts underlaying the class are now in place. For the remainder of the class, you'll be working on revisions of your portfolio, and an initial draft of the portfolio cover letter is due this Sunday. As you write it, take a few hours to read through the various posts on the blog and to think about what I've said in these posts, in my comments on your papers, and in emails to you. Also, think of the work you've done and, in particular, the advice you've given and received through collaborating with your classmates. As you try to make connections between all of this discussion and work, reflect on how each applies to the outcomes and your inventory of yourself as a writer.
As we move into next week, I want you each to email me with questions you have about what the outcomes mean. I'm hoping to bring the various aspects of the class together over the next week and to provide you with a "big" picture of how you can use the knowledge from the class in your careers and lives. As part of this process, I'll be introducing a post on the the class blog on the rhetoric of dating, and I'd like the class to use the comment feature of the blog to discuss dating a rhetorical situation. Why dating? It's one thing to figure out the fairly straightforward rhetoric of the teacher/student rhetorical/writing situation, but rhetoric gets fun only when you begin working out some ways to make it do useful work for you. If you're married, think of how dating fits and fitted into your current relationship and provide advice for those in the class who aren't in a committed relationship. Finally, as you discuss the rhetoric of dating, spend some time thinking of how the rhetorical situation of dating is similar to those you find in other aspects of your life.
Steve
I've been impressed by how the class has come together over the past week. I've had a chance to comment on almost everyone's work, and the central concepts underlaying the class are now in place. For the remainder of the class, you'll be working on revisions of your portfolio, and an initial draft of the portfolio cover letter is due this Sunday. As you write it, take a few hours to read through the various posts on the blog and to think about what I've said in these posts, in my comments on your papers, and in emails to you. Also, think of the work you've done and, in particular, the advice you've given and received through collaborating with your classmates. As you try to make connections between all of this discussion and work, reflect on how each applies to the outcomes and your inventory of yourself as a writer.
As we move into next week, I want you each to email me with questions you have about what the outcomes mean. I'm hoping to bring the various aspects of the class together over the next week and to provide you with a "big" picture of how you can use the knowledge from the class in your careers and lives. As part of this process, I'll be introducing a post on the the class blog on the rhetoric of dating, and I'd like the class to use the comment feature of the blog to discuss dating a rhetorical situation. Why dating? It's one thing to figure out the fairly straightforward rhetoric of the teacher/student rhetorical/writing situation, but rhetoric gets fun only when you begin working out some ways to make it do useful work for you. If you're married, think of how dating fits and fitted into your current relationship and provide advice for those in the class who aren't in a committed relationship. Finally, as you discuss the rhetoric of dating, spend some time thinking of how the rhetorical situation of dating is similar to those you find in other aspects of your life.
Steve
Craft and Process: How to Enjoy Writing
I return to the idea of process so many times in 101, because shifting one's focus from product to process is at the heart of enjoying writing. Over the years, I've gotten used to students saying, "I hate writing," or "I hate English." Given the kind of instruction many have received and the scanty rewards students too often receive for very good, hard work, it's an attitude which is easy to understand. The attitude is only reinforced by the you're-either-good-at-math-and-science-OR-English rhetoric which exists in our society.
The truth is both math and English are the same craft. Once you've moved through the basics and laid a good foundation, both become ways of describing the world and making sense of it. The problem is, it's usually late in high school or in college where math or writing and communication get to be fun, and by this point, most are just ready to be done with both. For me, math didn't make much sense until I hit physics and learned that math can be used to describe and figure out the world. English didn't make much sense until I began to move beyond thinking that the only kind of writing which mattered was the rhetorical situation in which teacher=audience and purpose=grade.
It helped that I grew up among potters and other craftsmen. The model of work I learned wasn't that of getting the right grades to make it up to the next test. I learned early on that one gains a sense of purpose through one's work--one's craft, and the real challenge and satisfaction in the world is in getting better, not in being the best.
A response I wrote this morning to a near perfect student paper explains better what I mean by this connection between paying attention to process, craft, and enjoying one's work. Think of yourself as a craftperson writer, and writing and English become much more fun. Find my response below:
The truth is both math and English are the same craft. Once you've moved through the basics and laid a good foundation, both become ways of describing the world and making sense of it. The problem is, it's usually late in high school or in college where math or writing and communication get to be fun, and by this point, most are just ready to be done with both. For me, math didn't make much sense until I hit physics and learned that math can be used to describe and figure out the world. English didn't make much sense until I began to move beyond thinking that the only kind of writing which mattered was the rhetorical situation in which teacher=audience and purpose=grade.
It helped that I grew up among potters and other craftsmen. The model of work I learned wasn't that of getting the right grades to make it up to the next test. I learned early on that one gains a sense of purpose through one's work--one's craft, and the real challenge and satisfaction in the world is in getting better, not in being the best.
A response I wrote this morning to a near perfect student paper explains better what I mean by this connection between paying attention to process, craft, and enjoying one's work. Think of yourself as a craftperson writer, and writing and English become much more fun. Find my response below:
"We share a love of Tolkien. Over the years, as I ran out of his fiction to read, I’ve read his scholarship. If possible, he was an even better scholar of the Anglo-Saxon and Medieval Europe than he was a fiction writer. He’s among a handful of scholars, including CS Lewis and B. Russell, who I can read for fun. The kind of precision he showed in coming up with the languages for his fiction is present in all of his writing, and it's always a joy to read the writing of one who loved the craft as did Tolkien. (And, yes, I am an English geek.)"
"As you review this piece, try to figure out all the things you’ve done to make the text so successful, and I’d like to encourage you to think again about the process you used to create Rivendell. How did you learn to do the various tasks involved? What specific steps did you repeat over-and-over again? How did you organize your research? "
"The notion of Kaizen, making the processes you use more effective through continuous small improvements, as it applies to writing involves knowing how *you* create in the same detail as you know how you created Rivendell. To be an efficient writer as well as a good one, you’ve got to get to the point where you know the processes involved in writing. "
"I’d encourage you to look at the processes you used in creating your Rivendell and to find one aspect of a process to change. Let this one change be the start of a lifetime of learning and refining your knowledge of how to work more effectively. Try to identify the change you could make which would have the most impact either on the final product or on saving you work. Implement this change, and after you’ve used the new process, review again. This kind of continuous attention to the tools and processes you use in your craft pays off in having a flexible set of strategies you can use to create and which you can draw on to as you run into loggerheads as you work. With a nuanced understanding of how you work and the repertoire on which you have to draw, you can move around the problems which arise with alacrity. This ability to encounter problems and move around them with the same ease with which you normally create is the measure of a master craftsperson. Spend some time watching an old time craftsperson at work to get a handle on what I mean by an ease and alacrity with how one can work. Folks who have been at their trade for years are a joy to watch as they work. They move with the same practiced ease as an Olympic athlete, and you can find them around you every day. More importantly, you can become such a worker."
"The other main advantage to such an approach to one’s work is that one soon finds that there is always a way to make one’s process better. In fact, you begin to take a lot of pride in your knowledge of how best to work. As your work flows, you know you’re producing a good, solid, beautiful, and useful product. At this point you become a master of your craft."
"As always, write me at prof.brandon@gmail.com with questions,"
Steve
Thursday, December 6, 2007
Some further clarification...
A student wrote for clarification about two of the assignments on which you're working this week and when the last day of the course will be:
1. The last day of class will be the 19th. Next Sunday, the 16th, you'll have a draft put together of the *whole* portfolio, and you'll turn this draft in. This week you're working on a draft of the cover letter, which is due this Sunday. The last three days of class, you'll have a chance to proofread and polish your portfolio, and I'll have a chance to answer any last minute questions and provide clarification on concepts and assignments.
2. On the pre-writing exercise: you're to do the pre-writing exercise--the continuing assignment you do in your metadiscoruse blog--for the Sunday formal drafts; this includes the draft of the cover letter due this Sunday and the draft of the process paper you just completed.
3. On the peer editing assignment: I think you may be confusing proofreading with revision. In revision, you make changes to deep level content. Issues of voice, tone, paragraph development, paragraph arrangement, thesis, focus, citation, etc. all fall under revision. In proofreading, you are looking at surface level features, that is, the features of writing which have the least to do with meaning. Here, you look at issues of spelling, sentence structure, minor stylistic changes, and issues of grammar, punctuation, and usage. These changes should be the ones you're making in the peer-editing assignment. In the peer editing assignment you're doing this week, you're dealing with surface issues of the text, so you'll make changes in the sentences of the text instead of making comments at the top of the text. As you do you'll highlight the changes you make in your color. Please note the difference between this editing/proofreading exercise and the collaborative comments you've been making about each other's drafts.
The reason proofreading and revision are usually presented as two different stages of the writing process deal with how best to invest one's time. Think about it, it just isn't efficient to go through multiple revisions of a draft proofreading as you go; instead, you can learn a process to catch most surface level errors and go through the proofreading process once *after* you've stopped changing the text you'll proof.
1. The last day of class will be the 19th. Next Sunday, the 16th, you'll have a draft put together of the *whole* portfolio, and you'll turn this draft in. This week you're working on a draft of the cover letter, which is due this Sunday. The last three days of class, you'll have a chance to proofread and polish your portfolio, and I'll have a chance to answer any last minute questions and provide clarification on concepts and assignments.
2. On the pre-writing exercise: you're to do the pre-writing exercise--the continuing assignment you do in your metadiscoruse blog--for the Sunday formal drafts; this includes the draft of the cover letter due this Sunday and the draft of the process paper you just completed.
3. On the peer editing assignment: I think you may be confusing proofreading with revision. In revision, you make changes to deep level content. Issues of voice, tone, paragraph development, paragraph arrangement, thesis, focus, citation, etc. all fall under revision. In proofreading, you are looking at surface level features, that is, the features of writing which have the least to do with meaning. Here, you look at issues of spelling, sentence structure, minor stylistic changes, and issues of grammar, punctuation, and usage. These changes should be the ones you're making in the peer-editing assignment. In the peer editing assignment you're doing this week, you're dealing with surface issues of the text, so you'll make changes in the sentences of the text instead of making comments at the top of the text. As you do you'll highlight the changes you make in your color. Please note the difference between this editing/proofreading exercise and the collaborative comments you've been making about each other's drafts.
The reason proofreading and revision are usually presented as two different stages of the writing process deal with how best to invest one's time. Think about it, it just isn't efficient to go through multiple revisions of a draft proofreading as you go; instead, you can learn a process to catch most surface level errors and go through the proofreading process once *after* you've stopped changing the text you'll proof.
Wednesday, December 5, 2007
Knowledge of Conventions: Sources, Ethos, and Wikipedia
Ah, the Wikipedia question. Let me begin by saying, I use it, and it's a good source for starting research on fairly broad questions or for general questions which don't *have* to be right. I rarely use it alone, just as I rarely use the internet alone. Read: when an answer needs to be right, cross check it between several sources.
The problem many in the academy have with Wikipedia is they don't get the fact that Wikipedia is based on the same thing on which all research sources are based, namely, the informed opinion and judgement of the flawed human animal. It upsets some that those writing have agendas of their own. Of course, this never happens in the academy. (Please note the sacrasm.) It upsets some that those writing don't have the credentials to prove they are experts. It upsets some that what is said on Wikipedia isn't vetted by those with credentials given by the academy.
What many don't realize is that there's a marketplace for ideas just as there's a marketplace for other comodities. Academics often adopt the stance that they are above such mundane concerns as the give and take of the market place. In society, bad ideas will be identified, that is, if they are dangerous enough, if there's reward in such identification, or if there's self-worth to be gained.
The real question, however, isn't if Wikipedia is a good source or not, it's if you should use it and, if so, when. As always, the answer is, "It depends on the rhetorical situation." If you're writing for an academic audience, that is, a discouse coummity who doesn't accept Wikipedia as a valid source, then in almost all situations, you should conform to the expectations (the conventions) of your audience. Think of such a view of sources as an ethos appeal. One of these conventions of most in the academy is to reject Wikipedia as a valuable source.
In short, you use the sources your audience values. In the academy, the valued sources are those produced by, well, the academy. This means academic journal articles, the publications of academic and professional associations, and books produced by academic presses. The best of these souces have teams of editors and readers who act as a collective jury as to the value of an article or book. These folks are respected experts. The academy has developed this means of vetting the ideas which they palce into circulation over decades. Wikipedia, which might prove a better model, has only been around years.
The problem many in the academy have with Wikipedia is they don't get the fact that Wikipedia is based on the same thing on which all research sources are based, namely, the informed opinion and judgement of the flawed human animal. It upsets some that those writing have agendas of their own. Of course, this never happens in the academy. (Please note the sacrasm.) It upsets some that those writing don't have the credentials to prove they are experts. It upsets some that what is said on Wikipedia isn't vetted by those with credentials given by the academy.
What many don't realize is that there's a marketplace for ideas just as there's a marketplace for other comodities. Academics often adopt the stance that they are above such mundane concerns as the give and take of the market place. In society, bad ideas will be identified, that is, if they are dangerous enough, if there's reward in such identification, or if there's self-worth to be gained.
The real question, however, isn't if Wikipedia is a good source or not, it's if you should use it and, if so, when. As always, the answer is, "It depends on the rhetorical situation." If you're writing for an academic audience, that is, a discouse coummity who doesn't accept Wikipedia as a valid source, then in almost all situations, you should conform to the expectations (the conventions) of your audience. Think of such a view of sources as an ethos appeal. One of these conventions of most in the academy is to reject Wikipedia as a valuable source.
In short, you use the sources your audience values. In the academy, the valued sources are those produced by, well, the academy. This means academic journal articles, the publications of academic and professional associations, and books produced by academic presses. The best of these souces have teams of editors and readers who act as a collective jury as to the value of an article or book. These folks are respected experts. The academy has developed this means of vetting the ideas which they palce into circulation over decades. Wikipedia, which might prove a better model, has only been around years.
Your participation grades...
A student wrote to ask how I would be grading the 40% of the final grade which is tied to class participation in lew of the problems with my getting assess to the course in the first week and the subsequent problems we arose as a result.
With a few edits for the larger audience, here's my response:
"I rarely grade harshly in the first place."
"Considering the first week and subsequent problems in communication and getting the class going, I'm inclined to give everyone full create on class participation if they've done the formal assignments (the ones due on Sunday), helped each other via collaboration, and done the proofreading assignment this week."
"This means most everyone is at an "A" as of now. The rest of the class grade (60%) will be based on the portfolio you put together. Check the recent posts on the class blog for clarification of the portfolio assignment."
"The truth is, I feel somewhat guilty for the confusion at the beginning of class. Students not having access to the correct class shell was a mistake out of my control, but not communicating with the class as you struggled with the first assignment was a teaching tactic which may have worked well in past sixteen week sections; but, it definitely didn't help the learning environment in a five week course in which the first week was pretty much blown. I'm seasoned enough that I should have anticipated the effect of the changed rhetorical situation or, at the least, given it more thought. Instead, I went ahead and did what worked in the past.
Take the situation as a lesson, namely, you have to pay attention to every rhetorical situation, especially those with which you believe yourself so familiar you believe you can work by rote rather than conscious judgment. The other lessons? Own up to mistakes you make, and try your best to learn from them. This is the reason the last step in the rhetorical process is review. You look at what worked and what didn't, and you try to remember. By the way, it's easy to remember the screw ups, but also remember what worked well for use the next time. Just make sure you remember that every rhetorical situation is in some ways a new one.
It's a credit to the students at UAT and in the class that you were able to work under such difficult circumstances, and the class showed a degree of flexibility I've rarely seen among students anywhere else. In any event, I appreciate the class staying with me.
With a few edits for the larger audience, here's my response:
"I rarely grade harshly in the first place."
"Considering the first week and subsequent problems in communication and getting the class going, I'm inclined to give everyone full create on class participation if they've done the formal assignments (the ones due on Sunday), helped each other via collaboration, and done the proofreading assignment this week."
"This means most everyone is at an "A" as of now. The rest of the class grade (60%) will be based on the portfolio you put together. Check the recent posts on the class blog for clarification of the portfolio assignment."
"The truth is, I feel somewhat guilty for the confusion at the beginning of class. Students not having access to the correct class shell was a mistake out of my control, but not communicating with the class as you struggled with the first assignment was a teaching tactic which may have worked well in past sixteen week sections; but, it definitely didn't help the learning environment in a five week course in which the first week was pretty much blown. I'm seasoned enough that I should have anticipated the effect of the changed rhetorical situation or, at the least, given it more thought. Instead, I went ahead and did what worked in the past.
Take the situation as a lesson, namely, you have to pay attention to every rhetorical situation, especially those with which you believe yourself so familiar you believe you can work by rote rather than conscious judgment. The other lessons? Own up to mistakes you make, and try your best to learn from them. This is the reason the last step in the rhetorical process is review. You look at what worked and what didn't, and you try to remember. By the way, it's easy to remember the screw ups, but also remember what worked well for use the next time. Just make sure you remember that every rhetorical situation is in some ways a new one.
It's a credit to the students at UAT and in the class that you were able to work under such difficult circumstances, and the class showed a degree of flexibility I've rarely seen among students anywhere else. In any event, I appreciate the class staying with me.
Your personal, metadiscourse blog address.
In a comment, Robert made what I think is a brilliant suggestion, that is, getting your blog addresses all in one spot. The Q&A is getting somewhat difficult to navigate. If you would, enter your metadiscourse blog addresses in the comments to this post. I'll collect them and post them in a separate post. Remember, this is a fairly public forum, so edit out any information you don't want shared with the larger world.
Steve
Steve
Clarification on the Assignments for the Week
One of your classmates had a question about the assignments for the week. Since he was seeking clarification, I assume a number of you would like it as well. It follows:
There are three assignments going on: 1) by proofreading the papers of three or four of your classmates, you're to apply three or four of the techniques I described in the post on proofreading; 2) you'll be going back through your WPA inventory brining it up to date while looking at what you learned during the past week in the posts, discussion and in writing your process paper; 3) and, finally, you'll be drafting your cover letter for your portfolio and beginning to think about what to put in the evidence section. This last is the draft which is due Sunday.
The first assignment is designed to give you the chance to learn to practice different tactics for proofreading and to learn just how helpful others can be in the proofreading stage of writing. It's rare for a writer to be able to see the errors in their own writing without either the luck of an editorial eye, lots and lots of practice, or an outside reader. You should notice how this assignment continues the discussion of process writing and helps one get some experience with a few of the WPA outcomes. The best way to handle this assignment is to collaborate through google docs and highlight your work in a special color. This is why I asked for a key to the colors used in highlighting the changes made.
The second assignment is one you should try to do each week of the course following turning in your draft for the week on Sunday, that is, running back through your responses to the WPA outcomes and adding in new knowledge and insights you've gained through doing the writing for class, thinking about the posts I've made, and interacting with me and your classmates. In a previous post, I gave you some advice about how to structure each entry, that is, 1) you'll make a claim about your understanding of the outcome; 2) you'll clarify what you take the outcome to mean; and 3) you'll provide examples of your use of the outcome from daily life or, the best bet, from the writing you've done in for this course or elsewhere. Look at the post on opinion+support=good writing for an idea of what I have in mind.
The last assignment is the one due Sunday. It's a *draft* of the cover letter for your portfolio. Your cover letter will be divided into three parts: an introduction, the body, and a conclusion. In the introduction you'll make a claim for your grade in the course. You'll also provide a summary of your argument for this grade, and you'll introduce and transition into the body of your letter.
Since most of the outcomes I hope you'll gain from the course focus on learning desceibed in the WPA outcome, the inventory on which you'll be learning can literally be cut and pasted into your cover letter as the body of the letter. Also remember, the main insights I hope you'll gain are into how to make *yourself* a better writer and communicator over a lifetime investment in the craft. Your conclusion will consist of what you found valuable from the course, and I hope you'll take the opportunity to give me some advice on what worked for you and what didn't in how the class was taught. The focus in the conclusion should again be on what you learned, but you should focus on what you found valuable. While I want you to better understand the learning outcomes and how to apply them, the lessons from the course you value most may not come from the outcomes. In any case, it's more than likely that the value each of you place on the various outcomes will be different.
Your cover letter should be structured like a typical academic essay cum letter. Start with "Dear Steve" and end with the salutation of your choice. Double space the entire document, and it's OK to use sub-headings. Use "I" as you write, as in, "I learned...," etc.
I hope this helps. Do write with further questions.
Steve
There are three assignments going on: 1) by proofreading the papers of three or four of your classmates, you're to apply three or four of the techniques I described in the post on proofreading; 2) you'll be going back through your WPA inventory brining it up to date while looking at what you learned during the past week in the posts, discussion and in writing your process paper; 3) and, finally, you'll be drafting your cover letter for your portfolio and beginning to think about what to put in the evidence section. This last is the draft which is due Sunday.
The first assignment is designed to give you the chance to learn to practice different tactics for proofreading and to learn just how helpful others can be in the proofreading stage of writing. It's rare for a writer to be able to see the errors in their own writing without either the luck of an editorial eye, lots and lots of practice, or an outside reader. You should notice how this assignment continues the discussion of process writing and helps one get some experience with a few of the WPA outcomes. The best way to handle this assignment is to collaborate through google docs and highlight your work in a special color. This is why I asked for a key to the colors used in highlighting the changes made.
The second assignment is one you should try to do each week of the course following turning in your draft for the week on Sunday, that is, running back through your responses to the WPA outcomes and adding in new knowledge and insights you've gained through doing the writing for class, thinking about the posts I've made, and interacting with me and your classmates. In a previous post, I gave you some advice about how to structure each entry, that is, 1) you'll make a claim about your understanding of the outcome; 2) you'll clarify what you take the outcome to mean; and 3) you'll provide examples of your use of the outcome from daily life or, the best bet, from the writing you've done in for this course or elsewhere. Look at the post on opinion+support=good writing for an idea of what I have in mind.
The last assignment is the one due Sunday. It's a *draft* of the cover letter for your portfolio. Your cover letter will be divided into three parts: an introduction, the body, and a conclusion. In the introduction you'll make a claim for your grade in the course. You'll also provide a summary of your argument for this grade, and you'll introduce and transition into the body of your letter.
Since most of the outcomes I hope you'll gain from the course focus on learning desceibed in the WPA outcome, the inventory on which you'll be learning can literally be cut and pasted into your cover letter as the body of the letter. Also remember, the main insights I hope you'll gain are into how to make *yourself* a better writer and communicator over a lifetime investment in the craft. Your conclusion will consist of what you found valuable from the course, and I hope you'll take the opportunity to give me some advice on what worked for you and what didn't in how the class was taught. The focus in the conclusion should again be on what you learned, but you should focus on what you found valuable. While I want you to better understand the learning outcomes and how to apply them, the lessons from the course you value most may not come from the outcomes. In any case, it's more than likely that the value each of you place on the various outcomes will be different.
Your cover letter should be structured like a typical academic essay cum letter. Start with "Dear Steve" and end with the salutation of your choice. Double space the entire document, and it's OK to use sub-headings. Use "I" as you write, as in, "I learned...," etc.
I hope this helps. Do write with further questions.
Steve
What does plagiarism have todo with conventions?
A student wrote with a great question, that is, "What does plagiarism have to do with writing conventions?"
If you think about the definition of writing conventions I've been using with you, that is, a shared but arbitrary set of expectations governing communication within a discourse community and/or rhetorical situation, then you realize that the notion of conventions is pretty insidious.
There are conventions of behavior governing most author/audience interactions. There are conventions about the value of words and who owns them and the ideas the words encode. Words are tangible. At least, words are tangible in relation to something as intangible as an idea.
Conventions reflect and reproduce the beliefs of society. The notion of property ownership is an essential one to a working capitalist society. It might also be essential to a working democracy. In our society, we also have to value innovation and, hence, novelty; indeed, sometimes we place too much value on novelty and not enough value on experiences which aren't novel. (This last is just my opinion.) In any event, combine the social value placed on novelty and innovation with that placed on ownership and control of ideas, and you have most of the recipe you need to give an idea like plagiarism--stealing ideas, words, or the structure of texts--some pretty heavy weight.
Throw in one last factor, namely, the German university system. I won't go into the German university model. Suffice it to say, the model was adopted in Americia in the late 19th Century as a means of encouraging the production and circulation of the complex knowledge surrounding science and technology. One side effect was that most professors get rewarded by producing knowledge and by the reputation they bring to their universities. This is why teaching may take a back seat to research and writing at some universities (but not at UAT!). Combine the idea of the professional author with patents, copyright, and the way professors are rewarded in the current university, and you create the notion that one's ideas should be given proper homage, respect, and remuneration. Remember, in many respects, university education is meant to socialize the community's leaders and reproduce the institutions of society, including the university itself. Professor's value the knowledge they produce, so they expect everyone to value it equally.
As always...
If you think about the definition of writing conventions I've been using with you, that is, a shared but arbitrary set of expectations governing communication within a discourse community and/or rhetorical situation, then you realize that the notion of conventions is pretty insidious.
There are conventions of behavior governing most author/audience interactions. There are conventions about the value of words and who owns them and the ideas the words encode. Words are tangible. At least, words are tangible in relation to something as intangible as an idea.
Conventions reflect and reproduce the beliefs of society. The notion of property ownership is an essential one to a working capitalist society. It might also be essential to a working democracy. In our society, we also have to value innovation and, hence, novelty; indeed, sometimes we place too much value on novelty and not enough value on experiences which aren't novel. (This last is just my opinion.) In any event, combine the social value placed on novelty and innovation with that placed on ownership and control of ideas, and you have most of the recipe you need to give an idea like plagiarism--stealing ideas, words, or the structure of texts--some pretty heavy weight.
Throw in one last factor, namely, the German university system. I won't go into the German university model. Suffice it to say, the model was adopted in Americia in the late 19th Century as a means of encouraging the production and circulation of the complex knowledge surrounding science and technology. One side effect was that most professors get rewarded by producing knowledge and by the reputation they bring to their universities. This is why teaching may take a back seat to research and writing at some universities (but not at UAT!). Combine the idea of the professional author with patents, copyright, and the way professors are rewarded in the current university, and you create the notion that one's ideas should be given proper homage, respect, and remuneration. Remember, in many respects, university education is meant to socialize the community's leaders and reproduce the institutions of society, including the university itself. Professor's value the knowledge they produce, so they expect everyone to value it equally.
As always...
What are conventions in writing?
Conventions, the expectations you should share with your reader about communication, are arbitrary. They are sometimes formally agreed on; sometimes they're unstated. In both cases, you are usually still expected to follow the conventions. Ignorance of law isn't an excuse.
Conventions are meant to make writers' and/or readers' lives easier, not harder. Sometimes the reader's interests dominate which conventions are adopted and followed; less often, those of the writer dominate. Like any kind of semi-binding arbitrary agreement, conventions change to meet new circumstances. Discourse communities which don't change die off.
For some, conventions change too fast. Bring up grammar as a topic, and you'll hear complaints about the speed or fact of change in the conventions governing language usage. For others, change can't happen soon enough. For instance, do you know the usage rules behind how to use "whom"? If you do, you are among the minority. Chances are, "whom" is on the way out of the language and the conventions of polite, formal language usage. It's headed the way of "thou" and "thee." "Y'all" or/and "you guys," on the other hand, that is, a different second person plural from "you," are on the way in. It's up in the air which one of these words will be arbitrarily decided on as "correct."
In addition to surface level issues like grammar, usage, and the format of a particular kind of text, there are conventions which govern deep level concerns, such as, what constitutes legitimate evidence, who can say what, the genres in which a conversation will occur, the content and diction which are allowed, and how meaning is constructed.
Conventions are idiosyncratic to individual discourse communities, but remember, there are no firm borders in human behavior or socities--especially in something as basic as communication. Discourse communities interact and interpenatrate, and there are frequent disagreements about which conventions are right and which are wrong. Those in power usually decide.
In the author/audience/text rhetorical triangle, there are conventions of how interpretation takes place as well as in the form of the text. Encode a text wrongly, that is, don't follow the conventions, and you'll add to the noise in the communication circuit and reduce the chance your audience will understand you fully and your chance to fully realize your purposes in communication.
Think of writing conventions as mind fields you *have* to cross, and the analogy will pretty much hold. Be careful to follow someone else when you enter into a discourse community and are discovering where and what the conventions are. Move carefully until you know where the conventions are. Step off the known path with some trepidation. Most of the time you'll get out intact, even if you've stepped off the path, but the chance is there for some bad consequences. Armor helps. Armor in communication is knowing the language and conventions of those in power in any particular rhetorical situation. When in doubt, keep quiet. If you still have to move prior to learning what conventions are in place, follow your experience and try to armor yourself in the conventions of those in power in the larger community.
Learning the conventions expected of you in each rhetorical situation in which you seek to communicate is essential to producing successful texts, but no one can know them all. There are too many discourse communities, conventions, and each is always in flux. More importantly, conventions are always embedded in the relationship between author and audience; in fact, conventions are specific to each rhtorical situation. You can, however, learn most conventions by talking with existing members of your discourse community, by looking at model texts and using them as a touchstone, or by doing research. As always, practice and repetation helps.
I encourage you, for instance, to research the conventions surrounding the use of portfolios as a genre in the academy. This information will prove valuable in this class, in putting together your senior portfolio, and in keeping the portfolio of your work you might use to get a job in industry. In this class, the portfolio is relatively low stakes. Your senior portfolio and the one you might use in your career on the other hand...
As always, write with questions. You might, as an additional forum to the Q&A threaded discussion on the class site, emails to me and one another, responses and exchanges in your docs, also comment on and ask questions about the posts in the blog in the blog itself. I left the comments turned on to facilitate just such communication.
Conventions are meant to make writers' and/or readers' lives easier, not harder. Sometimes the reader's interests dominate which conventions are adopted and followed; less often, those of the writer dominate. Like any kind of semi-binding arbitrary agreement, conventions change to meet new circumstances. Discourse communities which don't change die off.
For some, conventions change too fast. Bring up grammar as a topic, and you'll hear complaints about the speed or fact of change in the conventions governing language usage. For others, change can't happen soon enough. For instance, do you know the usage rules behind how to use "whom"? If you do, you are among the minority. Chances are, "whom" is on the way out of the language and the conventions of polite, formal language usage. It's headed the way of "thou" and "thee." "Y'all" or/and "you guys," on the other hand, that is, a different second person plural from "you," are on the way in. It's up in the air which one of these words will be arbitrarily decided on as "correct."
In addition to surface level issues like grammar, usage, and the format of a particular kind of text, there are conventions which govern deep level concerns, such as, what constitutes legitimate evidence, who can say what, the genres in which a conversation will occur, the content and diction which are allowed, and how meaning is constructed.
Conventions are idiosyncratic to individual discourse communities, but remember, there are no firm borders in human behavior or socities--especially in something as basic as communication. Discourse communities interact and interpenatrate, and there are frequent disagreements about which conventions are right and which are wrong. Those in power usually decide.
In the author/audience/text rhetorical triangle, there are conventions of how interpretation takes place as well as in the form of the text. Encode a text wrongly, that is, don't follow the conventions, and you'll add to the noise in the communication circuit and reduce the chance your audience will understand you fully and your chance to fully realize your purposes in communication.
Think of writing conventions as mind fields you *have* to cross, and the analogy will pretty much hold. Be careful to follow someone else when you enter into a discourse community and are discovering where and what the conventions are. Move carefully until you know where the conventions are. Step off the known path with some trepidation. Most of the time you'll get out intact, even if you've stepped off the path, but the chance is there for some bad consequences. Armor helps. Armor in communication is knowing the language and conventions of those in power in any particular rhetorical situation. When in doubt, keep quiet. If you still have to move prior to learning what conventions are in place, follow your experience and try to armor yourself in the conventions of those in power in the larger community.
Learning the conventions expected of you in each rhetorical situation in which you seek to communicate is essential to producing successful texts, but no one can know them all. There are too many discourse communities, conventions, and each is always in flux. More importantly, conventions are always embedded in the relationship between author and audience; in fact, conventions are specific to each rhtorical situation. You can, however, learn most conventions by talking with existing members of your discourse community, by looking at model texts and using them as a touchstone, or by doing research. As always, practice and repetation helps.
I encourage you, for instance, to research the conventions surrounding the use of portfolios as a genre in the academy. This information will prove valuable in this class, in putting together your senior portfolio, and in keeping the portfolio of your work you might use to get a job in industry. In this class, the portfolio is relatively low stakes. Your senior portfolio and the one you might use in your career on the other hand...
As always, write with questions. You might, as an additional forum to the Q&A threaded discussion on the class site, emails to me and one another, responses and exchanges in your docs, also comment on and ask questions about the posts in the blog in the blog itself. I left the comments turned on to facilitate just such communication.
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