I kicked off Spring semester with some discussion questions meant to work as icebreakers. Two of the prompts are fairly typical: one asks students to talk about an object significant to their careers, and the other asks students to brainstorm characteristics of technical writing based on their experience and observations. As an alternative to those two fairly customary discussion topics, I devised this third, more playful prompt, “Your Career and the Zombie Apocalypse”: Imagine that the Zombie Apocalypse is upon us. The walking dead are bearing down upon your part of the country, and everyone in the world is working to stop them and preserve life in the world as it was before the zombie awakening. As a way to introduce yourself to the class, write a reply that tells us the following:  your major and career goal (i.e., what do you want to be when you graduate?). what one thing people in your career can do right now* to stop the zombies. how that one thing will be effective. *In other words, this one thing needs to be a capability that your career already has. You cannot make up some solution that does not exist. That would be too easy 🙂 I’m delighted to report that the Zombies Discussion has been the most popular by far. Even more significant to me, students’ responses are showing a wonderful level of creative and analytical thinking. For instance, one computer science major suggested creating programs that analyze live video streams, comparing appearance and movements to what zombies look like and the ways that zombies walk in order to determine when zombies are near. Not a bad solution, I think. Even better, however, were the replies . One student asked how the program would tell the difference between zombies and people in zombie costumes. Another wondered how the program would differentiate between zombies and people with mobility issues, like senior citizens or people with injuries or disabilities. Other students have talked about military drone strikes, protecting information systems, security of the water supply, crowdsourcing reports of outbreaks, social media survivor networks, cures and vaccinations, DNA modification, landscape barriers, and more. Zombies aren’t really my thing, but the success of this icebreaker has convinced me that they have a place in this course. I am even wondering about an all-Zombie section of technical writing. Imagine the assignment opportunities: Technical Description of a Zombie Instructions for Trapping a Zombie Directives for Zombie Safety Zombie Sighting Field Report Zombie Incident Reports Recommendation Report on a Zombie Apocalypse Solution There are so many options—and a good bit of fun to be had. I swear I would try this next term if we had a way to advertise a special focus section of technical writing on my campus. Who knew that an icebreaker would be so inspiring? What kinds of icebreakers do you use? More importantly, are there zombies in your writing classroom? Leave me a comment below to tell me about your classes. I’d love to hear from you.   Photo Credit: Zombie Zone by Michel Curi on Flickr, used under a CC-BY 2.0 license. ... View more

This semester, I am teaching a second semester college writing class on writing about literature through a rhetorical understanding of academic writing. The class includes English majors and potential majors in the humanities, as well as students whose interest range from STEM to social sciences. The diversity of majors and the course constraints offer interesting questions for building a syllabus (as explained in a previous post) and for designing assignments. In selecting readings and tasks for the course, I considered the following challenges in critical thinking and motivation: Critical Thinking.: What would encourage students to think outside the box of previous training? Whether students excelled as creative writers in high school, or studied literature for the sole purpose of succeeding in standardized tests, how might students discover new approaches to understanding literature? Motivation. How can the class present students with opportunities to experience for themselves implications of literature for everyday life? How could students observe the persuasive power of language while challenging themselves to grow as writers through rhetorical practice? Inspiration emerged as a keyword for both challenges. Inspiration allows us to think outside the box, while providing connections between the sublime and everyday life. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the word inspire has these origins: Middle English enspire, from Old French inspirer, from Latin inspirare 'breathe or blow into' from in- 'into' + spirare 'breathe'. The word was originally used of a divine or supernatural being, in the sense 'impart a truth or idea to someone'. Inspiration as breathing is a powerful metaphor. Considering these roots, I understood that it would be important to choose the readings for our first day with great care. I offered the class this introduction to the course: This section of the course is based on the principle of what the 19th-century poet John Keats called negative capability, inspirational power of beauty. Writing may not be easy, and sometimes writing is not very pretty -- but writing, both process and product, can be a powerful inspiration in our lives. Keats and James Baldwin (who we will read later this semester) believed this-- and so do I. This is the reason I became a writer and this is why I am a teacher. Welcome to this Spring 2019 community of writers! Our next step would be to read and listen to the words of two seemingly different examples: Kendrick Lamar’s i (from the album To Pimp a Butterfly) and Shakespeare’s Sonnet 116 (“Let me not to the Marriage of True Minds.”). Yet these readings share a deep sense of the emotional labor of love and love’s connections to inspiration. Kendrick Lamar’s text repeats the refrain, “I love myself,” and his words and body language in performance underscore the hard work involved in honoring this love. Shakespeare’s sonnet, in describing what love is not, address the constant need for discovering what love is. Considered in the same moment, these readings point to literary approaches to questions of love, and the meaning of such questions for everyday life. I imagine that students will offer even more insights into these connections. With these considerations in mind, we will work our way toward beginning the first essay of the semester that will hopefully inspire my students critical thinking and motivation in their writing. Follow these steps to complete Essay #1: Write journal entries that summarize and analyze each of the poems in your own words. Use evidence from the poems and the literary terms to support your ideas. All journal entries are based on your interpretations and opinions using evidence from the readings. Select at least one of the literary terms|key words that interests you. Write a journal entry that applies the literary terms to one of the poems. Refer to previous journal entries to explain your selection. You can write the entry as a poem, or as a conventional journal entry in paragraph form. Refer to previous journal entries to explain your selections. Choose at least one of the poems from the list below as a focus for Essay #1. Write a journal entry that explains your choice. Refer to previous journal entries to explain your choice. Investigate negative capability in the poem, the inspirational power of beauty (Poetry Foundation Website). Write a journal entry that responds to this prompt: Which Literary Terms|Key Words allow you to better understand this inspiration? Why? Offer as many details as possible. Include details from previous journal entries as appropriate. This entry serves as a draft. Revise drafts for a  final essay that showcases your best work on Unit 1. Make a google.doc for your final essay and share it with me. Copy and paste a link to your google.doc in the course management submission portal. Only submissions with shared google.doc links can be evaluated. POEMS: Eight poems spanning more than 400 years of British and American Literature: Sonnet 116: Let Me Not to the Marriage of True Minds (William Shakespeare 1609) The Tyger (William Blake 1794) Aunt Jennifer’s Tigers (Adrienne Rich 1951) Harlem by Langston (Langston Hughes 1951) kitchenette building (Gwendolyn Brooks 1963) My Brother at 3 A.M. (Natalie Diaz 2012) A Small Needful Fact (Ross Gay 2015) i  (single version)(Kendrick Lamar 2015; performance 2014) LITERARY TERMS: A poem is as intricate as a motherboard and just as complex. Just as there are specific words that can help users to explain a motherboard’s wiring, there also are terms that allow readers and writers to explicate the circuitry of a poem. All of the terms are applicable to your own writing for the course, and can be for rhetorical analysis to better understand the meanings of persuasive language and the impact of this language for the audience (Aristotle’s definition of rhetoric). Here are several of those terms: imagery, irony, personification, tone. ... View more

Today's featured guest blogger is Lisa DuRose Professor at Inver Hills Community College  On the first day of my Introduction to Literature course, as soon as we’ve finished our introductions and reviewed course policies, I distribute the first assignment, a poetry analysis. Although we’re still just getting to know one another, students are quick to react. “Poetry?” asks the bubbly guy in the corner, who just won a prize for memorizing everyone’s name. And from the look I his face, I can tell he’s not thrilled. He has not selected this course to be enraptured by poetry. This student, and most of his classmates, enter my Introduction to Literature course to fulfill a general education humanities requirement. We’ve just learned, from class introductions, that the room is filled with a wide variety of backgrounds--from high school students to a retired military personnel to retail managers—and an even wider swath of career interests: nursing, finance, neuroscience, teaching, family counseling, physical therapy, etc. Few identify as English majors. Even fewer declare a love for poetry. This setting is ripe with urgency. In their entire college career, this may be the only course where these students read poems, where they get the rare opportunity to be startled by their own humanness and consider, in the words of the late, beloved poet Mary Oliver, “their one wild and precious life” Because of this sense of urgency, I always begin the course with an analysis of a poem, a recently published poem, far from the scope of Shmoop.com and Sparknotes.com study guides. This assignment works as a formative assessment tool, a way to determine how much knowledge of poetry students already possess; however, the assignment also provides me with a chance to slow down the pace of students’ typical reading experiences and ask them to really consider the way a poem works. Designed as a sort of “tell me what you notice about this poem,” the informal assignment gives them a low-stakes chance to practice a skill they will use throughout the course: paying close attention to language. Like the students themselves, the short papers produced from this assignment are varied in knowledge of poetic devices and sophistication of analysis. After this initial assignment on a poem, we devote several weeks to the study of fiction, and after that, we launch into a three week unit on poetry. As such, by the time we delve into poetic devices and look at the contours of a poem’s design, the first poem students encountered in the course is slowly fading from their mind. After the poetry unit, we launch into the study of drama and by then, that first poem is a distant memory. All of this memory loss works perfectly when the course nears completion and that first poem reappears in a portion of the final exam that now asks students to perform a much deeper analysis, apply poetic devices with sophistication, and convincingly demonstrate how a variety of critical approaches could open up the poem to varied and rich meanings. This final summative assignment allows students to return to the poem that may have caused trepidation at the beginning of the course, but this time they are equipped with more tools and experience. The assignment has consistently worked well at demonstrating the confidence and skills students have gained in the course. Many of them are impressed with their evolution as they’ve gone from providing a surface-level description, to conducting a close reading of a poem. In their final reflection of the exam, they often remark on their growth: At first analyzing poetry was definitely not my strong suit at the start of this class, but recognizing the specific diction, syntax, imagery, and audience each poem contained aided me in combining everything I could figure out about each poem in order to find the overall theme and meaning. After this class I feel better prepared for writing essays about literary texts since I was able to develop a better understanding of different techniques. Digging deep into this poem and all the poems we did in this class was enjoyable as it allowed me to be free with my thoughts and build on them as I continued to read. I appreciate that the students feel more confident and less weary of poetry at the end of the course. And though I realize this new found appreciation for poetry will not convert any of them into English majors or, heaven forbid, poets, I do hope that they learn, as Mary Oliver advised that “Poetry, to be understood, must be clear. It mustn’t be fancy.”  ... View more

What with all the hoopla surrounding Gillette's notorious "toxic masculinity" commercial, I feel almost obliged to address it in this blog. The challenge here is to provide a semiotic angle on the ad's significance without getting tangled up in a debate on what it is trying to say about male behavior. Rather, the semiotic question concerns what the ad is telling us about contemporary American society as a whole, which has gotten me thinking more about razor blades than since I stopped shaving in 1979. A shrewd analysis of the ad in the Washington Post has given me a useful opening on the problem, and so I'll begin there. In "What Trump’s fast-food feast and Gillette’s woke razor blades have in common," Sonny Bunch draws a interesting parallel between Donald Trump's fast food spread for the Clemson Tigers and Gillette's ad by arguing that each was choreographed, in effect, to appeal to one side in the current national divide, while aggravating the other. As Bunch puts it, Trump "plays right to his populist strengths, assembling a mélange of foods that every American is familiar with and most Americans have eaten . . . [setting] a perfect trap for his critics, whose sneering at the feast will come off as elitist . . . [and thus playing] up the 'us against them' angle that has formed the heart of his appeal." Gillette, for its part, is playing to "what it hopes to claim as its base: the Ethical Consumer Signaling His Virtue, a valuable subset of customer, as Nike discovered with its Colin Kaepernick campaign." In short, Bunch concludes, "both the Fast Food Feast and Woke Gillette are explicitly designed to inspire mockery and, therefore, implicitly designed to encourage the us-vs.-them dichotomy that defines modern American life." Now, whether or not Gillette harbored any intention to provoke, there is plenty of evidence that its ad certainly did so, as can be seen by a quick Internet search on the topic. Quite predictably, one can find conservative media outlets like Fox News railing against it, while Vox, for its part, is in accord. The polarization is just as Bunch describes it to be.   All this raises a question, then, as to the actual effectiveness of politically provocative advertising in itself. The most common measure of such effectivity, of course, is financial: that is, whether a provocative ad campaign increases sales and stock valuations for the company that creates it. For example, as I've noted in an earlier blog, the big question surrounding Nike's Colin Kaepernick campaign was what would happen to Nike's stock price. When the stock at first drooped, antagonistic pundits declared the campaign to be a failure. When Nike's stock recovered, the ad was declared a success. Similarly, Jack Neff at Ad Age observes that, since Gillette's object in its "toxic masculinity" ad is to attract millennials to its products, "the ultimate test of whether Gillette has turned millennials into believers will be sales."   Neff, of course, is right, just as anyone who argues that Nike's Kaepernick campaign is a success because the company's stock price is currently up is right. After all, increasing profits is what advertising is for. But does commercial success equate to cultural success?  Gillette's claim is that its ad is intended to start a "conversation" about male behavior—presumably to do something about it.  So, is the Gillette ad successful in that sense?   Here the measure of success is much more difficult to determine. Did Coca Cola make the world a better place with its "I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing (in Perfect Harmony)" campaign? Have the Benetton Group's United Colors and Unhate campaigns achieved their (noncommercial) goals? Will Gillette really cause a conversation that will make men behave better?   One way to approach this problem is to consider Bunch's contention that the Gillette campaign (and others like it) antagonizes even as it appeals, reproducing the us-vs.-them dichotomy that afflicts the country today. If Bunch is right, Gillette is preaching to a choir, not converting the opposition, and that is hardly likely to improve the situation. Wouldn't a more Rogerian approach be more effective?   Perhaps, but in the current cultural and political climate, a Rogerian ad campaign probably wouldn't get much attention, thus negating the financial and social goals of a socially conscious corporation. Controversy both sells and rallies the troops, and one can hardly blame Gillette for doing what everyone else is doing.   Then there's the whole problem of consumer activism, as a possible oxymoron, to consider. The question here is not unlike that posed by the phenomenon known as "slacktivism"—a derogatory term for social media activism that ends at clicking "like" buttons, signing petitions, and retweeting political tweets (you can read more about this in Brian Dunning's "Slacktivism: Raising Awareness" in the 9th edition of Signs of Life in the USA). That is, purchasing a product because the company that sells it shares your values (or wants you to believe it does) is an act of consumption, not a direct action, even though buying a product for political reasons may feel like doing something meaningful. But is it?   What we have in the end is a powerful signifier of what it means to live in a consumer society. In such a society, consumption, as the measure of all things, is routinely confused with action, whereby wearing the tee shirt is regarded as a substantive political act. This sort of thing can be quite good for the corporate bottom line, but whether it is good for democracy is another question.   Image Credit: Pixabay Image 2202255 by WikimediaImages, used under a Pixabay License ... View more

Most teachers of writing I know are concerned, along with their students, about using inclusive language in (and out of) the classroom, and especially in acknowledging that the traditional male/female binary doesn’t come close to adequately addressing the fluidity and range of human gender and sexuality. These insights have been a long time coming. As a white woman raised in the south, I grew up with that binary firmly fixed and would never have thought of questioning it—until I got to college. I was an avid student and eager to take advantage of every lecture, concert, or other cultural event offered at my state school, so I found myself one evening in a big auditorium to hear a talk by philosopher Alan Watts. I remember that he drew an imaginary line across the stage and then said that it represented human sexuality, and that every point along the line was different, that the range of our ability to experience sex stretched literally from sea to shining sea. I don’t remember much else about the lecture, which occurred over half a century ago. But I do remember sitting in the auditorium at the end of the talk feeling as though I were looking over an abyss and understanding, for the first time, just how much I had to learn about what it meant to be human.   Well, that’s why we go to college—and I hope students everywhere are being led to question their own assumptions and to expand their ways of thinking. So I’ve been a big advocate of the use of gender neutral language. In the latest edition of Everything’s an Argument, we talk about pronoun preferences and quote Peter Smagorinsky: “It may well be that “ze” and “zir” will replace current pronouns over time" (as "Ms." has replaced "Mrs." or "Miss"). And of course the use of singular “they” is now regularly accepted, as in “Jamie called me and so I called them back.” The important point is that writers and speakers need to be sensitive to difference and need to choose terms (like pronouns!) appropriately.   That goes for identity labels as well, and in this regard I was interested to read an essay by Jonathan Rauch called “Don’t Call Me LGBTQ: Why we need a single overarching designation for sexual minorities” in the January/February 2019 issue of The Atlantic. Rauch argues that “LGBTQ is coalitional and inclusive. But no matter how many letters are added, one group is pointedly excluded.” After much thought, he says, he has come to the conclusion that “the alphabet-soup designation for sexual minorities has become a synecdoche for the excesses of identity politics—excesses that have helped empower the likes of Donald Trump.” So Rauch urges us to “retire the term” and replace it with a single letter: Q. . . . the term would be understood to encompass sexual minorities of all stripes. When we speak of ourselves as individuals, we would use gay or lesbian or transgender, or whatever applies. When we need a blanket term, we would simply call ourselves Q. As in: the Q population and Q equality. Q is simple and inclusive, and carries minimal baggage. When we speak of Q equality, we are saying that discrimination against sexual minorities—or for that matter sexual majorities—is not the American way.   As writing teachers, we have an opportunity to engage students in exploring terminologies and labels of all kinds—and to help them to use language in describing others that is inclusive and sensitive to difference. In doing so, we help them become more conscientious and effective communicators. And as always, we stand to learn a great deal from their discussions.   Image Credit: Pixabay Image 3751930 by SharonMcCutcheon, used under the Pixabay License ... View more

Every term, I end up turning in a few students for violations of the Honor Code. It sucks. I don’t like filling out the paperwork. I don’t like the feeling that students try to trick me. The students involved are all definitely unhappy. The most typical violation has been copying passages from sources word-for-word without any citation—without even quotation marks for that matter. When challenged, most students have responded that they didn’t realize citations and quotation marks were required. I certainly understand errors in bibliographic format. That kind of error is easy to make, especially when citation styles change every few years. It concerns me, however, that students can get to Junior and Senior standing at college without understanding how basic documentation of quotations works. Given what I have been seeing, I have stepped up my documentation lessons to take on the issue directly. Students read the information on research and documentation from their textbook. In my case, that includes the following from Markel & Selber’s Technical Communication: Chapter 6: Researching Your Subject Chapter 7: Organizing Your Information Part A: Skimming Your Sources and Taking Notes Part B: Documenting Your Sources I also have students review the resources available on the Virginia Tech Honor System website: Definitions of Academic Misconduct Information for Students FAQs for Students and Families Tips to Prevent Cheating in the Classroom In addition to this basic instruction, I asked students to discuss the intricacies of academic research in the class’s online forum. To get the conversation started, I asked students to read through the questions and answers on the Academic Honesty Quiz from the University of Rochester. After reviewing the quiz, I asked students to consider these questions, noting that they did not need to address every quiz question in their responses: Do your agree with their results? Would you offer a different answer? Are there more options than the quiz suggests? What are they? What would you do if you were the teacher involved? What questions about plagiarism (or other academic dishonesty) do you have that aren’t discussed in the quiz? Some of the situations in the quiz are relatively straightforward, but others led students to question policy and academic responsibility. The questions related to notes falling out from under a desk and failing to log off a computer in particular resulted in engaged conversation. I will definitely use this discussion strategy again next term. I may also add some infographic representations of some of the basic principles that students should follow. The textbook and Honor System readings are long and dense. Highlighting some of those points in a more visual format should help emphasis the concepts. What do you do to help students understand the principles and ethics of academic research? How do you demonstrate and discuss documentation? Tell me about your practices or leave a question in the comments below. I’d love to hear from you!   Image credit: Meme generated on the ICanHasCheezburger site. ... View more

Laura Wagner, writing for the Concourse section of Deadspin, called her post about the Covington High School controversy in Washington “Don’t Doubt What You See with Your Own Eyes.” What we have learned over the last two weeks is exactly the opposite—that we do need to question what we see. The extreme tension that exists in our nation was once again apparent after brief clips went viral showing teenagers from the school, some wearing Make America Great Again hats, seeming to taunt a Native American elder, Nathan Phillips. These clips were quickly followed by longer videos and the argument that there was more to the situation than was immediately apparent from the shorter clips. Some who posted the clips have apologized for taking them out of context. Others stand by their condemnation of the teenagers. Either way, anyone who expresses an opinion about the confrontation on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial should watch more of the most complete video than what was originally aired. In argumentation, context does matter. Even the New York Times had to admit a rush to judgment: “Interviews and additional video footage suggest that an explosive convergence of race, religion and ideological beliefs — against a national backdrop of political tension — set the stage for the viral moment. Early video excerpts from the encounter obscured the larger context, inflaming outrage.” Those who condemn the students say they know taunting and disrespect when they see it. One young man, Nick Sandmann, faced down Phillips in what most consider a rude and rather odd and awkward way. You can read his account of what he was trying to do. His actions have led to his appearance on Today and an invitation to the White House as well as calls for his expulsion and death threats against him and his family. You can also read how Phillips felt threatened by the students, who, after he approached them, encircled him. It may not be relevant that the students largely resisted the temptation to fight back when a small group of African American Israelites yelled all sorts of vulgar and insulting comments at them. This belligerent group turned their attention to the students only after exhausting their insults directed toward Native Americans nearby. They targeted the students because some were wearing the MAGA hats and, seemingly, because the students are Catholic. It is relevant that Phillips approached the students, trying, he says, to defuse what he saw as a volatile situation, instead of their approaching him to disrupt his chanting, as was implied by the early reports. (A typical early headline read, “Teens in MAGA hats taunt Native American elder at Lincoln Memorial.”) The students were shouting school chants—and jumping; Phillips was drumming and chanting. When he approached them, they continued chanting and jumping—and dancing—to his drumbeat. If there were chants of “Build the Wall” or “Trump 2020,” as some have claimed, they are not audible in the video. We have all known obnoxious teenagers. Many of us were probably, at times, obnoxious teenagers ourselves. America saw Nick Sandmann with a smart-aleck smirk on his face and a red MAGA hat on his head—and attacked. When I watch with my own eyes the video of what happened before and during the encounter on the steps of the memorial and when I read what Sandmann and Phillips say about what happened, I can’t judge the honesty of what they say about their reasons for what they did. I can argue, though, that the telling of what happened by the annoying teenager matches more closely the facts of what happened than does the telling by the weathered elder. Photo Credit: “tunnel vision” by André P. Meyer-Vitali on Flickr, 10/22/2011 via a CC BY 2.0 license. ... View more

This blog series is written by Julia Domenicucci, an editor at Macmillan Learning, in conjunction with Mignon Fogarty, better known as Grammar Girl.     Let’s ring in the new year with a blog post that focuses on prepositions in Grammar Girl podcasts.   Podcasts have been around for a while, but their popularity seems to increase every day—and for good reason! They are engaging and creative, and they cover every topic imaginable. They are also great for the classroom: you can use them to maintain student engagement, accommodate different learning styles, and introduce multimodality.   LaunchPad and Achieve products include collections of assignable, ad-free Grammar Girl podcasts, which you can use to support your lessons. You can assign one (or all!) of these suggested podcasts for students to listen to before class. Each podcast also comes with a complete transcript, which is perfect for students who aren’t audio learners or otherwise prefer to read the content. To learn more about digital products and purchasing options, please visit Macmillan's English catalog or speak with your sales representative.  If you are using LaunchPad, refer to the unit “Grammar Girl Podcasts” for instructions on assigning podcasts. You can also find the same information on the support page "Assign Grammar Girl Podcasts." If you are using Achieve, you can find information on assigning Grammar Girl in Achieve on the support page "Add Grammar Girl and shared English content to your course." If your English Achieve product is copyright year 2021 or later, you are able to use a folder of suggested Grammar Girl podcasts in your course; please see “Using Suggested Grammar Girl Podcasts in Achieve for English Products” for more information.   Podcasts about Prepositions Ending a Sentence with a Preposition [5:29] How to Kick Your Preposition Habit [5:45] Choosing the Correct Preposition [7:28] Don't Take Prepositions So Literally! [12:46] Preposition or Adverb? [16:03]   Students can do a lot more with podcasts than simply listen to them. Use one of the following assignments to encourage students to engage further with the Grammar Girl podcasts.   Assignment A: Whether or not you should end a sentence with a preposition is an ongoing debate. Ask students to write a short essay or response analyzing this debate. Have them use at least three outside sources, including the Grammar Girl podcast "Ending a Sentence with a Preposition." As they write, students might consider the following questions: Who feels it’s okay to end a sentence with a preposition? Who does not? How do they use prepositions in their own writing? In speech? Which side of the debate do they agree with? Do they see an argument for both positions?   Assignment B: Have students listen to a podcast on prepositions, such as “Don't Take Prepositions So Literally!”  and then have them write a short response discussing and reflecting on the experience. (All Grammar Girl podcasts come with transcripts in LaunchPad—students can also read the podcast transcript to inform their response.) Have students consider the following questions: How is listening to information about prepositions different from reading about them? How is it the same? What does the host do to connect with the listener? What new information did the student learn about prepositions? Can they pinpoint any element of the podcast that helped them remember this new information?   Assignment C: Ask students to listen to more than one podcast about prepositions, such as "How to Kick Your Preposition Habit" and "Preposition or Adverb?" Have them also read the transcripts. In addition to the questions above, have them write a response considering the following: How do the podcasts compare? Does the information about prepositions overlap, and if so, where? What is different about the coverage of prepositions in each podcast? What content or information is conveyed through audio that does not appear in the transcripts? Is any additional information found in the transcripts that is not apparent from just listening to the podcast?   Have you used any podcasts about prepositions in your class? How did you use them? Let us know in the comments!   Credit: Pixabay Image 1834859 by pexels, used under a CC0 Creative Commons License ... View more

This week's guest blogger is Pamela Arlov Associate Professor of English at Middle Georgia State University. Metrophobia sounds like it should be the fear of cities, but it is in fact the fear of poetry, and many of my first-year literature and composition students have it. It’s my job to effect a cure.      I have no illusion that this class of mostly non-English-majors will form a poetry circle or a Billy Collins fan club. But I do know that my students need poetry. Like all forms of literature, poetry provides a frame of reference for understanding life, and it does so concisely and memorably. If, at some crucial point in their lives, my students remember a poem, write a poem, or seek out a poem, my job is done.   When I teach poetry, I teach the usual components: terminology, figurative language, and rhyme. I expose my students to a wide range of poetry, dispel the myth that poetry means whatever the reader wants it to mean, and teach them to analyze based on what the poem actually says. But I also try to include extra elements that I hope will make it stick.  Here are my top four:   I let students write a poem, an idea borrowed from a colleague. As we begin poetry, students almost always ask if they will have to write a poem. I make it an extra credit item and do not require any particular form, only originality and the willingness to read the poem aloud in class. Sometimes a handful of students participate, sometimes almost a whole class. Students may not remember Keats’s “Ode on a Grecian Urn,” but they will remember a poem they wrote. Occasionally, a student tells me that a poem about a family member has been shared and treasured among the family. I let students analyze poetry in groups. When students talk about poetry together, they work out ideas in the poem in a way that they might not do alone or in class discussion. I often start with Edwin Arlington Robinson’s “Richard Cory.” This poem used to be a standard, but most of my students are not familiar with it. I divide the class into four groups, and each group reads the poem, discusses it, and takes responsibility for explaining one of the four stanzas to the rest of the class. I always suggest that they have a member of their group read it aloud first. As they reach the end of the poem, I am often treated to audible gasps and exclamations of “What?” as Richard Cory, with his seemingly perfect life, “[goes] home and put[s] a bullet through his head.”  When I hear that reaction, I know that students have gone beyond logical analysis and made an emotional connection with the poem. I use music to make connections. When we read Emily Dickinson’s “Because I could not stop for Death,” students easily see in the first stanza that “me” and “Immortality” are exact rhymes that suggest that the rhyme scheme will continue in the second stanza. But they are always resistant to the idea that “away” and “Civility” in the second stanza are near rhymes, and it doesn’t get any better with “Ring” and Sun” in the third stanza. So I bring up the lyrics video to Magic’s “Rude,” a song my students are familiar with.  We look at the near rhymes suit/you, hand/man, say/family, choice/boys, and by the time we get to away/galaxy, they are sold, partly because the singer pronounces the words in a way that helps the listener understand that the words are meant to rhyme: away/galax-ay rather than away/galax-ee. I also show them how almost all of Emily Dickinson’s poetry is written in ballad stanza and can thus be sung to the theme song of Gilligan’s Island (“The Ballad of Gilligan’s Isle”).  I even have a sing-along, even if it’s mostly me singing while my students laugh. I set aside a day to celebrate poetry. Taking inspiration from the Favorite Poem Project, I ask students to bring in their favorite poem. I direct them to Poets.org,  Poetry Foundation, and to the Poets Laureate page of the Library of Congress for inspiration. I offer extra credit and bring cookies, and we read our favorite poems aloud.   I will never know if my students actually make poetry a part of their lives, but the fun lies in trying to make poetry accessible and memorable. What are your tricks of the trade? Please comment and let me know! ... View more

I’m writing this posting on January 21, MLK day, and so I have been thinking of him and of his legacy as I do every year this time. Of course I remember exactly where I was on Thursday, April 4, 1968: I was still at the school where I was teaching 10 th and 11 th grades, working on plans and reading student work when a colleague knocked and told me King had been shot. I rushed home and, like most of the rest of the country, turned on radio and TV and sat, horrified and weeping, at what I was seeing and hearing. I remember feeling as if our country was close to exploding—so much hatred and violence. And of course I didn’t even know at the time what was coming—more assassinations, more protest, more violence, more hatred.   But King’s legacy has been about love and peace and connecting, not with violence and hatred, and that is one reason for hope, even today when, once again, hatred and racism and violence are on the rise. King’s message rises above all that and offers hope. We need that message now more than ever.   On this day, I am gathering donations for our local food bank, and I expect many of you are offering some service today as well. In addition, I want to recommend two items for teachers of writing everywhere to consider as we think of MLK. The first is a brief video produced by the Annenberg Foundation Trust in partnership with the Gandhi King Institute for Nonviolence and Social Justice in honor of Dr. King's 90th birthday. As you’ll see, the video features interviews with civil rights leaders conducted by documentary filmmaker Jesse Dylan. I loved hearing these inspiring voices and the message they bring to us today.     Secondly, I am currently reading The Making of Black Lives Matter: A Brief History of an Idea by Christopher J. Lebron. It’s not an easy read for me, each chapter leaving me seething with anger at the injustices so thoroughly documented while also admiring Lebron’s scholarly work and especially his use of some of my own personal heroes—Ida B. Wells, Audre Lorde, Zora Neale Hurston, Anna Julia Cooper. In it, Lebron traces not just the history of the #BlackLivesMatter hashtag but the ideas and feelings and struggles of a much older, rich tradition preparing for this imperative demand for equal rights—and equal dignity.   White people like me need to ask ourselves if we are among those Lebron refers to as “morally dimwitted,” that is, people who are convinced of the rightness of their own positions yet “whose moral perceptions are so deeply mired in racial privilege that the critical perception and judgment needed to correctly interpret problems is suppressed to the point of motivating asinine observations and assertions.” As an example of such moral dimwittedness, Lebron asks readers to “imagine what it is like to read, as a black person in the wake of Freddie Gray nearly losing his head—literally—while in police custody: well, if he wasn’t doing anything wrong, why did he run? As if being legitimately afraid of the police . . . were reason at all to be practically decapitated by the state.” Have you heard such questions asked after a police killing of a young black male? I certainly have and I expect our students have too. Lebron asks us to face such dim-wittedness head-on, revealing it for what it is and offering a different, and more just, question in its place.   Lebron’s searing history is dark and devastating. But he does see some reason for hope when “three women decided that not one more black person’s life would be taken without America being forced to answer the question that black intellectuals have been asking for more than one-and-a-half centuries: do black lives in America matter or not.” Lebron concludes that we are still waiting for the answer to this question.     Writing programs and writing teachers can continue to ask the question, and can engage their students in looking at various answers to it and examining their own responses. We can ask students to analyze their own assumptions and those nearest to them, to learn to look at issues from other perspectives and to listen to those who hold those other perspectives openly and with respect. There is good work that we can do to help answer the question “do black lives matter” and, in doing so, to honor the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr. Image Credit: Pixabay Image 393870 by skeeze, used under the Pixabay License ... View more

This is the scene outside my campus office right now. The phrase “bleak midwinter” comes to mind while I dwell on the absurdity of typing “Spring 2019” on my syllabi. No matter the weather on your campus, it can be tough to summon the mojo for new classes in the middle of the teaching year. But, as I tell my students every snowy January: We may begin in a deep freeze, but we’ll end in flowers.   So, with a New Year’s buzzword – “intentionality” – in mind, I’ve appreciated posts like Miriam Moore’s “Be It Hereby Resolved” on what to commit to in the coming semester.   It might even be worth reflecting on our late-summer teaching goals, as in Traci Gardner’s stimulating post, “My New School Year Resolutions.”   Both of these posts remind us that being an effective teacher doesn’t always mean doing one more new thing. Instead, it may mean doing the things we do best, but with more intention.   So, I’ll share a short list of classroom practices I’m re-committing to this semester that ask little more of me than being intentional. I’d love to hear yours.   Coming to class a little early to chat with students informally. It’s easy to forget how much more quickly this fosters community. At the end of each class, I’m making an effort to hang by the door and say goodbye to students individually, and by name, if possible. (For online classes, a chat space can offer room for informal community-building.) Learning students names early and using them often, both aloud and in written comments. It’s a simple, effective way to let students know they are seen and valued. And speaking of seeing: In face-to-face classes, I’m intentional about making solid, clear eye-contact with every single student during the class period. Rather than just repeatedly scanning the room, I am deliberate about making a real connection that says “I see you.” I remember how much this meant to me as a student. Students sit up when I really “see” them, and they often speak after I’ve engaged with them visually. They know I’m paying attention to them, and they pay attention to the class. Ensuring every student speaks right away, every day. Breaking the silence in the first five minutes makes it more likely students will participate during the rest of the class. This might mean a lightening round of “Question of the Day” — something silly to get to know one another (“What’s your favorite candy?”), or something more pedagogically nutritious (“Two words to describe your reactions to today’s reading,” or “Read a sentence you’d like to talk about from today’s text.”). Including reflection opportunities for students as often as possible. I wrote last fall about incorporating student journals into my class. This semester, I’m duplicating this effort but with a lighter touch — more consistent written reflection at the end of a class, or in the middle for five minutes after we’ve addressed a challenging concept. I’m trying to teach self-reflection as a habit, rather than an assignment.   Unsurprisingly, these intentions feel good and help me do good beyond the classroom, too.   Snowflakes may be flying, but these practices remind me that teaching well can feel like bursting into bloom.   Photo Credit: April Lidinsky ... View more

The last assignment in my Incubator series is a research poster, designed to test students’ understanding of document design and audience. The activity focuses on the same topic as the White Paper Assignment students worked on for the penultimate writing project. The assignment has two underlying goals: Students will recast the information from their white papers for a different audience and purpose. Students will focus on visual design to communicate their messages. As with previous assignments in this series, the assignment below has some minor changes to remove specific information that is relevant only to the students in my classes. References to “Markel & Selber” in the assignment refer to chapters in Technical Communication. Research Poster Assignment Background You will design a poster presentation, based on the details in your white paper. Your poster will be part of a poster session that the incubator sponsors for the local community. Like the white paper, the presentation will focus on the incubator goal of public outreach and education. As an extension, additional investors and clients also attend the session, so you have the potential to make critical connections for your business. The Scenario This week, you received the following memo explaining details on your company’s participation in the December poster presentation event:  Ut Prosim Incubator    1872 Inventors Way, Blacksburg, Virginia 24060      Interoffice Memo     To: December Poster Presentation Participants From: Traci Gardner, Ut Prosim Director Manolito Reyna Bautista, Manager of the Public Outreach Office Subject: Preparing Your Research Poster Date: October 29, 2018 Now that you have your white papers well under way, it’s time to begin work on your research posters for the December poster presentation. We have invited 250 local business, university, and community leaders to the upcoming event. Members of the general public can also attend. Your poster presentation (like your white paper) is due by November 26 [Portfolio 2 due date]. Research Poster Purpose and Audience Your research poster focuses on the same purpose as your white paper. As explained in the call for proposals, your research poster will inform non-expert readers about a technical topic relevant to the work and mission of your company. These documents will share what we do and why we do it with the university, alumni, and local community. Your poster will contribute directly to our goal of public outreach and education. As an objective research poster, your document will either provide knowledge or information about a subject relevant to your company or provide solutions to a problem or challenge that relates to your company—or even a combination of both goals. The audience for your poster presentation differs slightly from that of your white paper. You will communicate your research to the general public, university community, and potential investors and clients who will attend the session. Poster Content Your research poster will define or explain your topic and discuss it with the goal of informing your readers about it fully and with relevant, specific details. To follow the customary poster presentation structure, you need to shape the information into a Problem-Solution organization. Imagine that your topic either is a problem or a solution to a problem, and then discuss how to solve it or how it solves the problem. For instance, for a white paper that focuses on best password management strategies, the problem for your research poster would be password hacking and security. The solution would be your password management strategies. You should focus on this structure for your poster: Introduction Problem Discussion Solution(s) Conclusions & Recommendations Works Cited You should present the information in your report objectively; that is, without letting opinion shape what you have to say. Its goal is to provide a response to the question "What is [your subject] all about?" This doesn't mean you can't present opinions about it, but those opinions must come from experts in the field. For example, Expert A thinks the subject of your article is a fantastic option for reducing the need to irrigate crops, but Expert B is sure it won't work as planned. You can present these opposing viewpoints, and draw conclusions about why one option is preferred. Poster Presentation Expectations Size: 48" X 36", presented in landscape orientation (horizontal). The size is absolute, based on our display boards. Document Design: Use a polished, professional layout that relies on design strategies that increase the document’s readability. Must use appropriately-sized headings, text, and images. People need to be able to see your work. Graphics and Visual Elements: Include as many relevant graphical elements (e.g., photos, illustrations, graphs, tables) as necessary to present your ideas. Avoid clipart (which typically looks unpolished or unprofessional), and use only graphical elements that directly relate to the information in the presentation. All graphical elements must be your company’s intellectual property, or you must provide complete documentation. Graphical elements that are not your own intellectual property must meet fair use guidelines. Research Support: Information must be supported by fully-documented research, including short, relevant quotations. In addition to citing published research studies, you can take advantage of the campus community by tapping university experts on the topic you are discussing. Documentation Format: APA citation style (or the appropriate style for your field, if desired—for instance, an electrical engineer can use IEEE). Submission Format: *.ppt, *pptx, or Google Slides link. Deadlines To ensure that we have time to review and edit your submission, please submit your research poster by 11:59 PM on Monday, November 26. If additional time is necessary, you can take advantage of the grace period, which ends at 11:59 PM on Thursday, November 29. Any Questions? If you need any help with this project, please let either of us know or contact Traci’s assistant, Leslie Crow <lcrow@utprosimincubator.org>. Relevant Details Note: These details apply to all of the projects you include in your portfolio. Your company’s address is [Your Company Name], Ut Prosim Incubator, 1872 Inventors Way, Suite #[you choose a number], Blacksburg, Virginia 24060. Your company’s phone number is 540-555-5555. You may create a fictional Internet domain for your company, and use that domain for a web page address and your email addresses. If you’d like, you may create other information (including a logo) for your company as appropriate. Be sure that you use the information that you create consistently across all of your projects. The Project Assignment Step 1: Review your notes on the topic and audiences, as established in your proposal. Your proposal should have the basic starting information that you need to begin work on your research poster. Step 2: Examine the information about research posters in the readings. Review the following readings for specific details on the information and details to include in your research poster: Markel & Selber, Chapter 21: Making Oral Presentations Markel & Selber, Chapter 18: “Using a Problem-Solving Model for Preparing Recommendation Reports” (starting on p. 472) Woolston, Chris. “Conference Presentations: Lead the Poster Parade.” Nature 536 (115-17). 4 August 2016. Miller, Jane. Preparing and Presenting Effective Research Posters Step 3: Examine the information about presentations in the readings. The textbook provides complete details on how to write proposals. Follow the textbook as you work on your project. In particular, be sure that you do the following: Use “Figure 18.1 A Problem-Solving Model for Recommendation Reports” (on page 474 of Markel & Selber) to structure your information. Follow the advice in the “Ethics Note: Presenting Honest Recommendations” (on page 477 of Markel & Selber) to ensure your poster meets the ethical requirements of your field. Review the “Checklist for Preparing and Presenting an Effective Research Posters” [sic] (starting on page 326 of Miller) to determine the information to include on your poster. Follow the extensive advice in “Best Practices for Effective Scientific Posters” to arrange your content, design your work, and polish your presentation. Use the details in “Appendix Part B: Documenting Your Sources” for information on APA citation style (starting on page 622 of Markel & Selber) and information on IEEE citation style (starting on page 639 of Markel & Selber) to gather relevant details for your documentation and citations. Note that you may alternately use the citation style that is relevant for your field if you prefer. Step 3: Write and design your poster. Work steadily on your poster for the entire two-week period. Do not leave the work until the last minute! Create your research poster, as requested in The Scenario above, with all of the details you have gathered in your research. Remember that your poster should be a factual and objective document. Do not include fictional information about your topic. Review the assessment guidelines below to ensure you have met all the requirements for the instructions. As you work, also keep the following points in mind: Use plain language to make the ideas easy to find and read. Refer to the resources from Module 2 as needed. Follow all relevant ethical guidelines as you work using the Writer’s Checklist at the end of Chapter 2 (on page 40 of Markel & Selber). Follow the suggestions for emphasizing important information, using the Writer’s Checklist for Chapter 9 (on page 211 of Markel & Selber) to check your work. Use the Writer’s Checklist for Chapter 11 (on page 288 of Markel & Selber) to ensure that your document takes advantage of design principles to make it reader-friendly. Make a good impression with accuracy and correctness. Your document should be polished and professional. Step 4: Check your draft against the Writer’s Checklist. Be sure that you include the required features for your research poster. Review your project, using the Assessment Criteria below. Step 5: Review your draft for design and basic writing errors. Everything you write should use accurate/appropriate image editing, grammar, spelling, punctuation, mechanics, linking, and formatting. These are important basic writing skills that you should have developed in high school. Review your project, using the Writer’s Checklist at the end of Markel & Selber, Chapter 10 (on page 242 of Markel & Selber). You can also consult the information on “Sentence-Level Issues” in Markel & Selber, “Appendix, Part 😧 Guidelines for Multilingual Writers (ESL)” (on page 683 of Markel & Selber). While the section is labeled for multilingual writers, it is useful for everyone. It includes explanations and examples for many common mistakes writers make. Step 6: Submit your draft to your Writing Group in Canvas. Post a rough draft of your research poster to your Writing Group in Canvas in the 11/08 Draft Feedback Discussion in Canvas. Additional instructions are in the Discussion. Post a draft of your research poster by November 9. If you are late submitting a draft, your group may not have time to provide feedback. Step 7: Provide feedback to your Writing Group in Canvas. Provide feedback to the members of your writing group in the 11/08 Draft Feedback Discussion in Canvas, by November 12 (end of the grace period). Use the information on the Writing Groups page to provide constructive feedback that will help your group members make concrete improvements to their drafts.  Step 8: Revise your draft. Use the feedback that you receive from your group members to revise and improve your document. You can share your draft again with your Writing Group, if you desire. As you revise, keep in mind the advice in the steps above, as well as the Assessment Criteria below. Step 9: Include a polished version of your project in Project Portfolio 2, due November 26. Have your Research Poster finished and ready for submission in your Project Portfolio 2, which is due Monday, November 26. The grace period for Project Portfolio 2 ends at 11:59PM on Thursday, November 29. Assessment Criteria For All Technical Writing Projects All technical writing projects should meet the following general criteria: Makes a good first impression as a polished and professional document. Meets the needs of the intended audience. Demonstrates how to emphasize important information. Uses layout and formatting that makes information easy for readers to find and read, and that follows the standards you have set for your company. Is written in plain language, which communicates the ideas clearly. Follows all relevant ethical guidelines. Uses accurate/appropriate grammar, spelling, punctuation, mechanics, linking, and formatting. For Research Posters Your project should meet the following criteria for effective instructions: Has a clear, compelling title that is specific to the poster. Adopts a tone and approach that will appeal to readers. Demonstrates a clear understanding of the research literature on this topic. Provides details and explanation of the information arranged in this structure: Introduction Problem Discussion Solution(s) Conclusions & Recommendations Works Cited Relies on sources that are accurate, unbiased, comprehensive, appropriately technical, current, and clear. Uses quotations from research sources to support and strengthen the project. Includes presentation graphics that meet these five characteristics (see Markel & Selber, pp. 587–589): It presents a clear, well-supported claim. It is easy to see. It is easy to read. It is simple. It is correct. It is either your own work or meets fair use guidelines. Provides accurate and complete in-text citations for all information that is not the author’s own work (including information that is paraphrased, quoted, and summarized). Includes a Works Cited section (e.g., bibliography) that does the following: identifies each source cited in the poster contains complete and accurate information for each citation. uses either APA citation style or the preferred citation style for your major. Demonstrates a clear relationship between the graphics and the accompanying text.   Students were generally successful with this assignment. Aside from errors in the size or shape of the posters, the most typical challenges related to the balance between words and visual elements and the design issues such as the font size. When I teach the genre again, I will spend more time on design, to help students learn how little changes can make a significant difference. I am thinking of an activity where students are given the content for the poster and work on how to design the piece as a possibility. Now that the term has come to an end, students have worked their way through all of these assignments. The different activities connected relatively well, but the projects had the typical issues that I see when assignments are not as authentic as possible. Specifically, the imaginary companies that students created were not always an exact match for the projects. Additionally, students were required to make up information for some of the writing projects. In more authentic writing scenarios, all the details would be established and known. There is still value in the Incubator idea, but I need to do some more development to help ensure students succeed. If you have any ideas that will help me revise any of the assignments, please leave me a comment below.     Photo credit: Digital humanities poster session by Quinn Dombrowski on Flickr, used under a CC-BY-SA 2.0 license. ... View more

One of the crucial elements in teaching, and performing, popular cultural semiotics is the identification of the larger contexts (or systems of associations and differences) in which particular popular signs may be situated. This means that one must be aware not only of current popular movies, TV shows, consumer trends, etc., in order to conduct semiotic analyses of them, but that one must also be ever attuned to what one might call, for lack of a better term, the "spirit of the age." In this vein, then, my first blog for the new year will constitute a semiotic analysis of the spirit of the digital era, beginning with what will likely appear to be a rather peculiar starting point: namely, the eighteenth-century European Enlightenment. I start here due to a purely fortuitous decision to pull an old book off my shelf last week that I should have read forty years ago but didn't, until now: Garry Wills' Inventing America (1978). Now, I don't want to get involved here in the somewhat controversial thesis Wills proposed about the sources of Jefferson's thought and language when he first drafted the Declaration of Independence—that's something better left for specialists in the field. Rather, I am only interested in the extraordinary revelations of the ins and outs of Enlightenment thinking that Wills masterfully presents. In a word, Wills reveals that behind the Newtonian clockwork universe informing much of Enlightenment discourse was a veritable religion of the number. And I'm not just talking about the quantitative advances that led, towards the end of the eighteenth century, to the Industrial Revolution and the emergence of scientific modernity; I'm talking about the ecstatic belief that Newtonian methods could be applied to the explication of, and solution to, every human problem. Let me offer (courtesy of Wills' ample citations) a particularly striking example. Here is Francis Hutcheson's algebraic formula for the measurement of human morality as presented in the second edition of his founding text for the Scottish Enlightenment, Inquiry into the Original of our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue (1726): M = (B + S) X A = BA + SA; and therefore BA = M - SA = M - I, and B = M - I/A [where B = Benevolence, A = Ability, S = Self Love, I = Interest, and M = Morality]. Actually, there's more to the formula than I've reproduced here, but you'll get the point. Here, from a Presbyterian Divine, we find dramatic evidence of the extraordinary prestige of the Newtonian method, the belief that if Newton could use mathematics to measure and explain the universe, philosophers could do the same in measuring and guiding, humanity. Sound familiar? Substitute the words "big data" for "mathematics" and you've got the current zeitgeist in a nutshell. For here too, from Steven Pinker to the purveyors of AI, digital humanists to data analysts, Educause to edX, and so on and so forth ad infinitum across our cultural spectrum, we can find what is effectively a religious faith in the omnipotence of numbers. The Enlightenment accordingly offers a significant point of association to which we can relate our current l’esprit de l’époque. But (and I can never repeat this often enough) the significance of a phenomenon lies not only in what it can be associated with but also in its differences from similar phenomena within its system. And there is a difference between the origins of the enormous cultural prestige enjoyed by Enlightenment mathematics and of twenty-first century data worship. For while the Enlightenment was wowed by Newton's scientific achievements (achievements, it can be added, that long preceded any large-scale commercial applications), the wow factor today (as I have noted before in my blog on the "religion" promoted by the now-defunct corporation Theranos) derives from the unimaginably huge fortunes that have been made, and will continue to be made, by the corporate masters of big data. Google effectively started it all by finding a way to monetize its free services by tracking our online behavior and selling it to marketers, making personal data the holy grail of post-industrial capitalism (Facebook, of course, is the second biggest name in this tradition). The difference, in a word, is between science and commerce, with the Googleplex and its offspring occupying the cultural role once occupied by Newtonian physics. To put it another way, here is yet another signifier of our hypercapitalist culture. Whether or not this hypercapitalist faith is a good thing or not is a value judgment, and since the goal of teaching cultural semiotics is to provide students with the critical equipment necessary to make informed judgments of their own, not to dictate those judgments to them, I will withhold my own here. But I will say this much: Hutcheson's equations, as well intentioned and nobly founded as they may have been, look pretty silly to us today. And I can't help but wonder how our current data-infatuated zeitgeist will look to future culture critics. Image Credit: Pixabay Image 3088958 by xresch, used under a Pixabay License ... View more

Today's featured guest blogger is Shane Bradley, Administrative Dean, Writing Program Director, and Assistant Professor of English at Erskine College. My wife bought a wooden sculpture at a thrift store. Unusual, gaudy, frighteningly top-heavy, I couldn’t take my eyes off it. More precise adjectives than the three in the previous sentence I cannot provide, for doing so might undermine this post.   On the second day of my high school EN 101 (Composition) course, she delivered her prized sculpture to my classroom. I’d asked her to let me take it, but with a laugh, she told me that wasn’t going to happen as long as I was riding my bicycle to school.   “And be careful with it,” she instructed as she relinquished the piece. “It’s fragile.”   Okay, there’s one more adjective.             Fifteen students looked on as if I’d just been handed a stuffed meerkat or a bowl of balut, exotics we don’t see often in rural South Carolina. Silently, I placed the sculpture on the table, stood back, and allowed raised eyes and fresh brains to scrutinize the curiosity before them.   “Your assignment is to describe this.” They moaned, already bored with another mindless descriptive assignment. “But there’s one caveat: Use no adjectives, adverbs, or proper nouns.”             Stunned silence.   “In fact, no talking at all. Study it; take a closer look. Touch it carefully, but do not share your ideas.”   For twenty minutes they scribbled, scratched, annotated, erased, and synthesized. At last, I asked for their descriptions.   “This was hard,” a student said. “I didn’t realize how much I depend on adjectives.”   I shuffled the stack and prepared to read. “The thing looks like a leaf. It has veins and is shaped like a triangle.”   “Good metaphors,” I said.   “Somebody used the word thing,” a student added. “We can do better than that.”   “It reminds me of a feather,” another writer imagined.   “But what kind of feather?”   “I can’t tell you,” the author quipped. “That would mean using adjectives.”   I smiled.   “She has a history,” I read. “Once a tree, somebody cut her down and carved from what was left of her an object that resembles the leaf of a willow. The wood is the color of river sand. Through the leaf runs a rod, like rebar, and it holds the sculpture to a base made of wood. She longs to once again be a tree, to feel wind in her leaves. She longs for her past.”             We listened to the description devoid of adjectives, and in our minds a picture emerged. Students looked at each other in surprise, for they weren’t sure one of their own had the ability to create such an image, much less an archetypal story.             The years have taught me that students want to be challenged, that they thrive on the intensity that comes from having to create without sufficient tools – in this case, adjectives. What this deprivation promotes, though, is the necessary push beyond that which is easy to that which requires innovation.             Our students will usually venture to the boundaries we set, but if we make those boundaries too narrow, we deny students the opportunity to test their imaginations.             What was the sculpture? A leaf? A feather? A tree long dead turned into an object of curiosity? No matter, for if given the chance, our students will help us see the world around them in a new light. All we have to do is provide the initial motivation and a gentle nudge. Then, and only then, might those ubiquitous descriptive assignments become extraordinary. ... View more