I have a tender spot for students who struggle to find their tone as they enter an academic conversation. I remember writing my first (terrible) essay in college with no idea how to assert my heartfelt (and weak) claim: “Shakespeare’s Hamlet is brilliant!”   So, ham-handedly, I conjured an antagonist and self-righteously typed on my IBM Selectric something like: “While some people fail to recognize Shakespeare’s brilliance, I will argue that Hamlet proves Shakespeare is indeed a brilliant playwright.” The comments and grade on that paper were sobering, and (thanks to a skilled instructor) helpful to my growth as a thinker and writer. But I remember well the late-night struggle to enter a serious conversation about literature.   Early in each semester, my own writing students often reach for outrage as a conversational entree (“X’s idea is ridiculous!”) or sarcasm (“X claims to be a social justice advocate but totally fails to recognize their own privilege!”). In a recent accidentally amusing malapropism, a student trashed an author for being “totally hippocratical.” (Alas, the author in question was not a doctor.)   But who can blame students for assuming an "argument" must be built on forceful disagreement? Most of what we hear in the public sphere are gut-level judgments rather than reasoned analysis. Students can be forgiven for mistaking agreement with weakness, or believing that generous and empathetic readers simply are not tough enough to take a stand.   Our task, as writing instructors, is to model the tone of academic conversations, and to make the syntax of engagement transparent, so students can practice it. In 2019, I’ve found the Burkean metaphor (“Imagine a parlor!”) doesn’t take our students very far. So, in our book, From Inquiry to Academic Writing my co-author, Stuart Greene, and I offer steps to help demystify the process:   Steps to Writing Yourself into an Academic Conversation: Retrace the conversation, including the relevance of the topic and situation, for readers by briefly discussing an author’s key claims and ideas. This discussion can be as brief as a sentence or two and include a quotation for each author you cite. Respond to the ideas of others by helping readers understand the context in which another’s claims make sense. “I understand this if I consider it from this perspective.” Discuss possible implications by putting problems aside, at least temporarily, and asking, “Do their claims make sense?” Introduce conflicting points of view and raise possible criticisms to indicate something the authors may have overlooked. Formulate your own claim to assert what you think. Ensure that your own purpose as a writer is clear to readers.   You may have other steps you’d add to this list, and, certainly, as we close-read texts with students, we can name and “close write” additional rhetorical moves that academic writers make. Providing students the opportunity to name and practice these moves helps them see that syntax itself can guide their tone, helps them generate ideas, and provides structures for nuanced analysis.   Ultimately, our goal is to foster thinkers and writers who are inspired to engage meaningfully with ideas, as Bedford New Scholar Cecilia Shelton’s recent post demonstrates so powerfully.   By modeling thoughtful engagement with writers’ ideas inside our classroom, we can give our students the practice they will need to engage thoughtfully in the public sphere, too. Photo Credit: April Lidinsky ... View more

For students to do well in the courses I teach, they have to understand how the course software works. Since the courses are 100% online, the spaces that our course software creates become the classroom where we interact. If students cannot get to those spaces or do not fully understand how they work, they can fail the course. Given this potential, I make time for software instruction, no matter how packed the course is with subject area content and related work. Generally, I approach software instruction as needed to complete activities in the course. For instance, I talk about how to use banded rows to increase table readability as students work on an assignment that requires creating a table. The software instruction is directly tied to doing well on the activity, so students are motivated to learn the related technical skills. The challenge is knowing when students will need help with the software that doesn’t relate to specific assignments. Students come to the course with a variety of experience, so I cannot assume that they all need the same instruction. I encourage students to help themselves by linking to the documentation from course materials. Beyond that, I’ve relied on two strategies: Wait until someone asks. Look for patterns that suggest students need help. In both cases, I either provide a link to the documentation or provide a customized explanation with video or screenshots. These techniques work, but I’d like to do more. This term, I decided to focus on software instruction from the first day of classes. I gave students a curated list of links to the student guide to the software. Focusing on the commands and tools that I knew students needed for the course reduced the number of documentation links 90%, from 241 to 24 links. No longer do students have to search through pages and pages of information to find what they need—and I benefit from linking to the official documentations, which I don’t have to maintain. I asked students to read through the entire list. I don’t expect them to memorize the list or click on every link. I just want them to remember there was a resource that listed the main tools they need to use in the course. After skimming through the list, they chose at least one software task to learn more about. I asked students to read the details in the documentation and then try the tool. For extra points, students could post a reply describing what they found in their exploration. To my happy surprise, the activity yielded 75 replies. Students explored a variety of tools, focusing on whatever interested them. Repeatedly, students explained that they had found some capability in the software that they never knew existed. Will students remember everything they read? Undoubtedly not, but they do know where to find details on the key commands they need for the course. Since this was the first activity in the course, students and I can draw on it for the entire term. Overall, it seems like a successful strategy that I hope to continue using. How do you make time for software instruction in your courses? What resources do you share with students? Tell me about the strategies you use by leaving a comment below. I look forward to hearing from you. Photo Credit: _MG_3783 by VIA Agency on Flickr, used under a CC-BY 2.0 license. ... View more

Ashley Shaw is a graduate student at Kennesaw State University working towards a Masters in the Arts of Professional Writing with a focus on composition and rhetoric. She teaches First-Year English Composition and Rhetoric courses and works at a private high school during the day. Along with teaching experience, she has worked as an editor and a marketer and brings these experiences into the classroom to help students learn how they will use academic lessons when writing in professional settings. “Do I really need to learn this?” “Will I ever actually do this again?” “I’m a [fill in the blank] major. Will I ever actually have to write this stuff?” These are questions I hear all of the time from students. The short answer to these questions is, of course, yes. However, saying yes isn’t always enough.   Professional Writing in an FYC Classroom   Having worked in the professional world before coming back to school to teach, I have seen the effects of a lack of professional writing in FYC classes: Writers are not less capable, but, in my experience, they are less confident and less sure about how to begin a writing assignment in the workplace. Because of this, I use examples from various professions to show how the learning objectives and tasks of the class apply to the types of writing students will do outside of school.   Background Reading   The St. Martin’s Handbook: Ch. 2, “Rhetorical Situations” The Everyday Writer (also available with Exercises): Ch. 3: “Rhetorical Situations” EasyWriter (also available with Exercises): Ch. 1: “A Writer’s Choices”   Assignment: Writing for a Real Audience   In this assignment, I set out to show students how to focus on their audience by using marketing and sales strategies. Businesses conduct a lot of research to create something called buyer personas, which are detailed descriptions of unique audiences to whom the marketer markets and the salesperson sells. By having my students create buyer personas, I hope to instill in them an understanding of how to target their writing to specific groups of people in a wide variety of rhetorical situations.   Assignment Learning Objectives  Students will be able to create audience profiles Students will be able to recognize how audience affects all rhetorical choices (tone, medium, etc.)   Project Components  Buyer Persona Sheets Weird Product Description (Real or Imagined) Potential Sales/Marketing Groups   Assignment Steps   1. Introduce the Concept of Audience in Professional Settings This activity takes place in the class right after a lesson on audience in academic settings, and it starts with a demonstration of how audiences are used in the fields of sales and marketing. To begin, I show the class a couple of real buyer personas, examples of which can easily be found with a Google search. We then talk about what they are and how they help business professionals address specific audiences in order to be more successful with their sales pitches.   2. Set up the Sales Situation Now that they understand what buyer personas are, the class divides into five groups. I then present them with a weird product that they will be “selling.” For example, last semester, we worked on selling Gelli Baff - a tablet designed to turn bathwater into gel. Each group gets assigned a specific audience. For the bath gel, I used the following audiences: Parents Kids Investors Buyers at Toy Stores Non-parent present buyers (grandparents, aunts and uncles, etc.)   3. Work with Buyer Persona Sheets After they find their groups and get their audience, I hand out buyer persona sheets. In their groups, students research their target groups and how to relate to them before filling out the sheet. Boxes the students fill out include  A representative name and drawing (“Grandma Gayle,” a retiree, for the non-parent present buyers; “Bill the Buyer,” a tired, middle-aged man, for the toy store buyer, etc.) Goals, motivations, and hobbies of the group Demographics (age range, marital status, and education level) Expectations for their toy purchases Word choice, tone, and preferred communication methods   4. Create and Share Sales Pitches Once the groups finish creating buyer personas, they plan short sales pitches. They make choices about what medium to use (as examples, the kids group and the parents group planned commercials, while the investor group planned a PowerPoint presentation) and what to say in the presentation (the kids’ commercial focused on small words and “fun” and “cool” concepts, whereas the parents’ focused on price and safety.)   After the groups finish planning their sales pitches, each group shares what they created with the class.   5. Reflect on the Activity Following the sales pitches, we reflect. The class discusses how different each pitch was even though each had the exact same purpose. We then talk about how audience is this important in anything we write. We also talk about how doing the same types of thinking and research about audience can help us write anything, from a research paper to a cover letter to a text sent to a parent versus a friend.     Reflection   At the end of my English 1101 class, the students write a letter to next year’s students. The letter includes things like what they learned in the class, what they wished they had done differently, what recommendations they have for future students, etc. After I did this assignment, I was surprised by how many of the letters included some version of understanding audience and how to target writing towards that audience. Because of this activity, they expressed the ability to understand the rhetorical choices they should make surrounding individual audiences. Moreover, they learned that making the best rhetorical choices requires a little bit of thought and research into who the audience is. Doing this research helps them begin the writing task in a much more confident manner. ... View more

Twenty-six years ago, almost to the day, I set about rewriting the general introduction to what would become the first edition of Signs of Life in the U.S.A. Seeking something of sufficient magnitude and familiarity to effectively introduce an audience of composition students to the then-unfamiliar (and ostensibly forbidding) field of cultural semiotics, I chose the Superbowl, which, I noted, is "more than just a football game. It's an Event, a ritual, a national celebration, and show-time" for those corporate high rollers who can afford the ever-increasing cost of advertising.   As I contemplate the semiotic significance of Superbowl LIII, it's as if I am being visited by the Ghost of Superbowls Past, comparing the present game to those that have gone before and wondering about the future. And at first glance, much remains the same. The Superbowl is still an Event, is still a national ritual, and its advertising has come even closer to overshadowing the game itself, with specially made commercials released in advance, game-time polling to "elect" the most popular ads, and plenty of post-game punditry devoted solely to the advertising.   But there is also a detectable difference this time around, a pivot away from the past into an unsettling present in which the words "national celebration" may appear to no longer apply. For Superbowl LIII was as riven by pre-game controversy as it was afflicted by a generally lackluster performance on the field, a disturbing dissonance that makes the Ghost of Superbowl Present a rather ominous apparition indeed.   The causes of this dissonance are well known. They include the infamous un-called pass interference that helped put the Rams into the NFL final and galvanized the city of New Orleans into creating its own game-day counter event—not to mention the filing of a couple of lawsuits. And they also include the on-going controversy swirling around the Kaepernick-inspired taking-a-knee protests that, having been suppressed by the NFL, resulted in an artist boycott of the half-time show. Which led, in turn, to yet another controversy involving the rather-less-than-household-word band that, so to speak, crossed the picket line to perform.   But beyond these more particular conflicts there looms the vast conflict that is America itself today, which no amount of "unity" advertising (one of the notable commercial themes to be found in Superbowl LIII's ad lineup) is likely to disperse. The situation is such that it's ironic now to think how, once upon a time, the Dallas Cowboys could award themselves the distinction of being "America's team," and make it stick. Today such an epithet might be regarded as an oxymoron.   Interestingly, one sign of unity that I did detect on Superbowl Sunday appeared in New Orleans itself, where a highly diverse population of all ages turned out for an anti-Superbowl party that really looked to be more fun than the usual script for the conquering-heroes victory parades staged in the cities of the actual winners of the game. Could it be that we have here an example of a way of coming together in a common cause wherein both winning and losing are irrelevant?   Alas, no. For the unity displayed on the streets of New Orleans on Superbowl Sunday was motivated by anger and resentment, an us-against-the-world vibe quite in keeping with the overall tenor of American politics these days. The partying crowd in New Orleans had wanted to win, and, being denied their victory, chose defiance.   When you add into the mix the elaborate conspiracy theories that enveloped the game—accusations that the Rams/Saints game was rigged by the NFL high command to get L.A. into the Superbowl to help pay for the new five billion dollar stadium being built there—a dark new significance begins to emerge. Indeed, with bizarre accusations that the entire NFL season had been rigged circulating through the Internet, the specter of an America so torn by distrust and disillusionment that even its favorite one-day sports event can't escape conspiratorial contamination rudely enters the picture. If this is the Ghost of Superbowl Present, what will the Ghost of Superbowls Future bring?     Image Credit: Pixabay Image 3558732 by QuinceMedia, used under a Pixabay License. ... View more

I wonder how many teachers of writing are getting tired of the word “optics”? I know I am. The word has been around a long time—it popped up several times during the Carter administration in the ‘70s, and it’s familiar to Canadians, who use the related French word optique. But its use seems to me to have grown exponentially during the Trump administration, with the emphasis so much on how things look, what “looks” get ratings up, and most of all on how things are perceived—as opposed to what they really are.   In such a time, visual rhetoric comes to the fore, or to the rescue! Certainly we have a plethora of examples of “optics” for students to examine, explore, and evaluate. Many writers remarked on the fairly stunning optical contrast between the Republican and Democratic “aisles” during the 2019 State of the Union address, where the Republican look was decidedly white, older, and male and the Democratic look was anything but. And the President, with Speaker Nancy Pelosi—practically glowing in all white—right behind him and a veritable sea of suffragette white-clad Congresswomen seated together in front of him, actually lost the spotlight when the women in white jumped up to clap and cheer and shout when he mentioned the large number of women now in the House. A video clip from that event would provide very fertile ground for rhetorical analysis, as would a series of still images. Optics indeed.   I was also fascinated earlier this week by the President’s rally in El Paso, Texas, where he got the crowd chanting “finish the wall.” Supporters, also largely white, wore uniform red MAGA hats, so viewers saw a sea of red at that rally. Just across and down the street, Beto O’Rourke held a counter-rally, beginning precisely as the President’s rally launched, and again the “optics” were fascinating. The President behind a podium, in a dark suit, white shirt, and bright red tie, shook his fist and scowled, speaking in sound bites that resemble his tweets. Across the way, O’Rourke, collar unbuttoned and sleeves of his shirt rolled up, strode back and forth across the stage, earnest and impassioned, speaking both English and Spanish. Examining just the body language of the two speakers would yield a rich rhetorical analysis, as would looking closely at the crowd responses, and at the self-presentation of the speakers and of those who introduced them. Finally, I think students would get a lot out of looking closely at the styles of delivery on display at this rally and counter-rally, both in terms of content (what the two were saying) and attitude/stance (how they were saying it). Certainly this event provides ample opportunity for practicing close reading and rhetorical analysis.   Over 30 years ago, Kathleen Welch startled her audience by declaring that delivery, the final and long-neglected canon of rhetoric, was by far the most important of the five (invention, arrangement, style, memory, and delivery). She was prescient in that announcement, which has proven to be dead accurate. And since we are living in a time of image saturation, of “optics” wars on every front, this is a very good time to focus on delivery and on analyzing how it works to persuade (or dissuade) listeners.   Happy Valentine’s Day, everyone!   Image Credit: Pixabay Image 720677 by skeeze, used under the Pixabay License ... View more

This week, I have a short post on a great resource (and one related class activity) that I found on Twitter as I was reading through messages with the #womeninTC hashtag. The TC stands for Technical Communication. The hashtag is a great source of ideas, articles, and support for those of us who teach technical writing. Here’s the Tweet from Dr. Amelia Cheley (@plaidsicle) that inspired this post, with a transcript following: Transcript, with capitalization consistent with the original: dr. amelia chesley (@plaidsicle): for the first day of class this week, I had my tech com students analyze several random, real memos (including this one lettersofnote.com/2010/08/star-t...) and then each compose a random, imaginary memo themselves. I am loving what they've come up with so far! #womenintc [3:26 PM 16 Jan 2019] The activity sounded like fun, so I immediately clicked through to see the STAR TREK/Casting memo. Not only did I find an entertaining memo, but I was sucked into the website’s assortment of letters, memos, and other notes from the famous, the infamous, and the unknown. It is a rich collection of primary material that could be used in many classes, not just in technical writing. My imagination is spinning with the options. I’m sure I will have some specific writing activities to share in the coming weeks, but for now, I’m going to end with a list of ten favorites from the site: SEVEN LITTLE MEN HELP A GIRL Subject: Toilet Paper SPECIAL INSTRUCTIONS TO PLAYERS Gee whiz, that master alarm certainly startled me On bureaucratese and gobbledygook IN EVENT OF MOON DISASTER Is there a space program which we could win? The Tiger Oil Memos To All Potty-Mouthed Inbetweeners I was ready to sink into the earth with shame As you wander through the site, I am sure you will find something entertaining. Let me know what you find, and share any ideas you have for using the site. Just leave me a comment below. ... View more

  On January 22, New York’s Democrat-controlled legislature passed and Governor Andrew Cuomo signed into law a controversial Reproductive Health Act that has conservatives crying foul. Liberals and conservatives alike can understand the law’s purpose: To protect the rights currently protected by Rowe v. Wade should that historic decision be reversed on the federal level. New York’s Reproductive Health Act goes a step farther to decriminalize abortion. As is often the case, those on both sides of the issue need to read what the law really says. And once again, definition of key terms is central to how the new law is interpreted. Abortion legislation has long had to address the difficult concept of when life begins. Something as simple as referring to the product of conception as a fetus as opposed to a child can color how a law is viewed. Legislators have also had to confront what “late-term abortion” means. Donald Trump, Jr., recently referred to “post-term abortion,” which seems to be a medical impossibility: “And when I watch those Democrats standing there saying that, ‘Oh, it’s terrible that you can’t let someone kill a baby that is in the process of being born, in labor or shortly thereafter’ something’s very wrong.” Trump took Virginia Governor Ralph Northam’s comments about how he would deal with a non-viable baby or one with severe deformities out of context to say that Northam would “execute a baby after birth.” Killing a baby in the process of being born, during labor, or shortly thereafter would not be right by anyone’s standards, and numerous charges of double homicide have been brought against those accused of killing a pregnant woman whose child consequently dies. This is not, however, the meaning of the term abortion. Speaking out against the New York legislation, Trump, Sr., said, “Lawmakers in New York cheered with delight upon the passage of legislation that would allow a baby to be ripped from the mother’s womb moments before birth.” Why anyone would rip a baby from its mother’s womb moments before birth is unfathomable and is, again, hardly an abortion. Key words in the legislation explain under what circumstances abortion would be allowed. What the New York law says is this: A health care practitioner “may perform an abortion when, according to the practitioner’s judgment based on the facts of the patient’s case: the patient is within twenty-four weeks from the commencement of pregnancy, and there is an absence of fetal viability, or the abortion is necessary to protect the patient’s life or health.” Doctors have long since defined when a fetus is viable or can survive outside of the womb. The term “viable” refers to both the fetus’s gestation period and its condition. All but seven states currently place limits on when an abortion can be performed based on viability—generally 20-24 weeks after conception. The tragedy of having to make the decision to abort a child after the point of viability usually arises because doctors have determined that the child will be stillborn or will die very soon after birth. For most women that decision is not lightly made. Before Rowe V. Wade, a pregnant woman whose fetus was dead could not abort the child under medical supervision but had to wait until her body aborted it. Not everyone agrees whether an unborn child should be sacrificed to save the life of the mother. Even more controversial is whether that should be done to protect the mother’s health, since “health” covers a lot of territory, including mental health. The language surrounding abortion is full of pitfalls and is emotionally charged because it touches on some of Americans’ most firmly held beliefs, whether it is belief in the rights of the unborn or the right of women to make choices regarding their own bodies. Photo Credits: “Anti-abortion protest at Planned Parenthood” by Fibonacci Blue on Flickr, 4/6/12 via a CC BY 2.0 license and "Women's March against Donald Trump " by Fibonacci Blue on Flickr, 1/21/17 via a CC BY 2.0 license. ... View more

This week's guest blogger is Krysten Anderson, Assistant Professor of English at Roane State Community College For many students, studying literature isn’t a priority in college. Depending on their degree path, some students will never have to take a survey course, while others might encounter literature only in Composition classes.  Knowing that most students will not end up as English majors, explaining literature’s importance can be a tough sell.  Helping them see the relevancy of studying fiction, poetry, and drama can be tricky, unless they’re made to consider the value of literature early on, and especially if they come to that realization on their own. Every semester, I like to start the first day with a discussion: What are your expectations for this class?  While the course syllabus will certainly cover my expectations of students, it’s less clear to them what their expectations of the class are (or should be), which is why I like to pick their brains on day one.  If I can understand what they’re worried about or what topics they’re unfamiliar with entirely, I can then address those fears and blind spots as we move through the semester together.  This time, however, I added a twist: Instead of simple discussion, I wanted to begin with a debate.  To add another challenge, I wanted to change students’ minds in just two minutes.             On the first day of class, I put a topic on the board: Should students have to study literature in college?  Naturally, the consensus was “no,” but I wanted them to really think about the question and address some long-term (and seemingly unrelated) outcomes of studying literature.  To help lead them to their yet-to-be-discovered revelations, I put students in groups of four.  If there was a group of five, one student would serve as the “moderator.”  Once settled in their groups, I explained that we would be working for two-minute intervals, but I didn’t reveal that they would be switching sides at some point.  Here are the rules of the debate.  After the second step, I recommend explaining each upcoming step as they move through the process. Pair off within the group of four. Decide who wants to argue for studying literature and who wants to argue against studying literature.  Note: If five are in the group, one student can be the moderator. Once they have decided the sides they are going to take, put two minutes on a timer and tell them to write down (in their pairs) as many supporting points as they can during that time. At the end of two minutes, it’s time to present their arguments. Each pair has two minutes (one minute per person) to present their side to the other pair, but there is no debate just yet, only listening, from the other pair.  If there is a moderator in the group, that person should be paying attention to each pair’s argument, taking notes if needed, and deciding who’s making the stronger claims. Tell each pair that they’re now switching sides but that they can consider their groupmates’ arguments as they form their own reasons for or against studying literature. Repeat steps 2, 3, and 4. Once we had finished, it was time to process their answers.  I opened a blank Word document, created two columns (“For” and “Against”), and turned on the overhead projector, so students could see the responses from each group.  As I began typing out their answers, it was startling to see the volume of creative and practical reasons they came up with for studying literature.  Likewise, it was surprising to see how few responses made up the opposing side, the side many professors might imagine would be inundated with reasons not to study literature.  Even if students professed to be “bored” with it, and even if they “didn’t have time” to read it, they couldn’t deny the “life lessons” and “comfort” that literature could offer them.             Despite the nature of teaching, it’s not every day that we’re able to see students struggle with holding an opposing belief; rarer, still, is witnessing students changing their own minds about a deep-seated opinion.  As professors, we want to instruct students to “think critically,” but commanding that to happen won’t always make it so.  Perhaps the simple act of self-doubt is the best way for students to come into knowing, and it’s even more powerful because they arrived there themselves.       ... View more

I’ve been in Sweden visiting at the University of Orebro, where we talked about gender neutral language in general and gender neutral pronouns in particular. Teachers and scholars there are as concerned with language equity as we are in the U.S. so we traded stories about “singular they” and alternative pronouns. One colleague remembered reading a study that rewrote a passage to use gender neutral language throughout and reported that readers had a harder time understanding and remembering the gender neutral message, which seemed to have lost specificity. I was fascinated by this study—but my Swedish colleague could not remember where she had read it or any further details: if anyone knows of this study, or any others like it, I would be very grateful to have that information.   While I’ve been focusing on gender neutral pronouns and how to advise students to think carefully about their use of pronouns and about preferences those they address may have, I completely missed a book by James W. Pennebaker—though it’s been out nearly a decade. In The Secret Life of Pronouns, Pennebaker, who is Regents Centennial Chair of Psychology at the University of Texas at Austin and a well-known researcher on the relationship between writing and health, studies low function words (like pronouns and articles) to see what they may reveal about the social and psychological states of speakers who use them. Pennebaker and his team use analytical programs like the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count to analyze very large bodies of text and determine correlations. For example, when pundits criticized President Obama, saying that he was overly-fond of “I words” and suggesting that this signaled self-centeredness, Pennebaker went to work. As he reported, his research showed that Obama used fewer instances of I words than any other modern President. Further, this research revealed that people who are confident and self-assured (like President Obama) generally use fewer I words than insecure speakers, who rely on them much more heavily.   Of special interest to me is Pennebaker’s study of speakers/writers who shift between first and third person pronouns. These people, Pennebaker finds, tend to be able to shift perspectives, looking at an issue from other people’s points of view. This is a very intriguing finding, one scholars in writing studies and writing programs might well pursue. We now have enough large collections of student writing to carry out analyses using Pennebaker’s tools (or ones of our own design). Doing so could give us new information we could share with students about their own pronoun usage—at the very least. So perhaps it’s time to broaden and deepen our interest in pronouns: who knew they had such an exciting secret life?!   Image Credit: Pixabay Image 623167 by nile, used under the Pixabay License ... View more

I am continuing to look at suggestions for working with multilingual students in FYC and IRW co-requisite classrooms. This week, I’d like to consider vocabulary development, an area of struggle for many students in basic writing classrooms, but particularly for multilingual writers. When I poll my students about writing concerns, a lack of vocabulary is often mentioned as a barrier or challenge. My current IRW co-requisite supports a writing-about-writing (WAW) FYC course, which means I am asking my students to tackle some tough reading assignments, and it is in the context of those reading assignments that I first address vocabulary. Before students begin a WAW reading assignment, I provide a reading guide that includes some key vocabulary words. The guide primes students for the text and scaffolds the reading for them, allowing them to work through the content without repeated stops to refer to a dictionary or a translator. But this initial exposure to lexical items is only the start of the learning process; even though students will see the words multiple times within the context of the reading, “acquiring” these words means understanding more than a translation or a definition.   Most linguists or language teachers would include the following as part of “knowing a word”:  pronunciation, spelling, register, part of speech, connotations, and collocations, in addition to the dictionary definitions. And for many words, there are multiple definitions to consider. Within my IRW classes, therefore, I target a set of critical vocabulary throughout the term. I choose words that I know students will encounter more than once in our class readings, words that are critical for discussions of language and writing. I may also choose words that occur on the Academic Word List, which is a list of words and word families that occur across multiple academic disciplines. When I “target” words, I introduce and highlight these words as they occur in context, and I provide focused practice and opportunities for use.  What does that look like? To highlight words in context, consider these strategies: Preview the words before a reading. Highlight the words in a reading by reading paragraphs aloud, emphasizing target words, and discussing the sentences in which they occur. Incorporate the words in lectures and include them on class handouts and assignment instructions, giving students a chance to hear and see them. Ask students open-ended questions that include the words. To provide more focused instruction, consider these ideas: Provide related parts of speech. For example, when students learn the noun “concession,” I also teach the related verb “concede.” Then students practice with both words, using cloze (fill in the blank) and grammatical judgment exercises. The latter type of exercise requires students to determine whether or not something is a possible sentence. For example, students must determine if we can say, “I will concession this point.” If they decide it is not acceptable, then they offer an alternative: we’d have to say “concede this point.” Provide collocations. We can make concessions or offer concessions, but we don’t do concessions. We make a concession on or about a certain issue, and we concede that something is the case; we don’t make concessions to an issue (although we can make a concession to a person), and we don’t concede to do something (with an infinitive). Again, I present this information explicitly (a chart works well to show verb + prepositions combinations), point to it in our readings, and provide practice exercises. I frequently draw the incorrect sentences for these exercises from examples in student writing, and students often seemed relieved to have the clarification. Look at contrasts carefully. As students study words and look at translations, they may encounter similar words with different connotations or nuances. With concession, for example, students may want to understand the difference between a concession and an admission; we discuss those differences explicitly. At times, students ask questions I can’t answer immediately. After all, there are many things about words that I know intuitively but have never been required to articulate. I will think about the question for a day or two, perhaps ask a colleague or consult the OED, and then take an answer back to the class. We also make the fact of tacit knowledge a topic of class discussion, emphasizing that all of us, as language-users, have such knowledge about language. Celebrate attempts to use the words, whether successful or not.   While some of these activities may seem daunting or time-consuming, it actually takes little time to preview words and find ways to emphasize them within the context of other class activities. The focus exercises are not particularly hard to draw up either, and can be implemented in just a few moments at the beginning or the end of a class.   Finally, instructors can let students guide on-going vocabulary study by asking for some basic feedback at the end of a class period or as part of a reflection journal: What are three words from our reading or class discussion that confused you or that you’d like to know more about? For more about vocabulary and multilingual writers, I recommend the work of Paul Nation, Keith Folse, or Michael Lewis. What are your strategies for helping multilingual writers learn and use new vocabulary? ... View more

Andrew Hollinger (nominated by Randall Monty) is pursuing his PhD in Technical Communication and Rhetoric at Texas Tech University, and expects to finish in May 2020. He is the coordinator for first year writing at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley. In addition to teaching in the writing program, he also teaches technical communication, and composition theory and pedagogy. His research interests include articulation theory, especially around teachers, students, and Education; writing studies; experience architecture and public rhetoric; and pedagogy. FYW is Liminal We forget, I think, what it’s like to not know how to write, think, study. Or, rather: what it’s like to not know something and also not know how to deal with it. Professional scholars and writers thrive in unknowing and inquiry; perhaps it’s the thrill of discovery and articulation that drives us. At the very least, we’ve acclimated.   Enter first year writing. While trying to become (very poetic and all), students enter our classes where they are confronted with many of the misconceptions they’ve been writing and working and learning under for the last twelve years of their schooling, things like there is one way/method/protocol that anyone can follow to produce “good” writing (that pesky universal discourse that even we have trouble dissuading our peers across campus of), or that getting better at grammar or vocabulary will translate to better writing, or that someone either has it or they don’t (I’m a math person, anyway), and so on. Overcoming the misconceptions is, itself, a daunting task. Add to that our content—writing is an activity and a subject (What does that mean?); “good” writing is contextual and situational (How do I know the situation?); not all composition is alphabetic text on a page (What?!)—and it’s a wonder our students don’t glimpse the syllabus on the first day and walk out.   The assumption, it sometimes seems, is that students and faculty outside of the writing program and rhet/comp  think first year writing is an obligatory course, a hurdle to jump. Show up, writing the essays, get your grade, and move on. The truth is more complex and less poetic.   First year writing is part of the first year experience—whether or not the course formally resides within a university-wide FYE infrastructure. Traditional students are transitioning from high school. Nontraditional students are trying to transition into a school mindset. Many students (even the “good” ones, whatever that means) don’t know what it means to be in college. What does it mean to be a scholar? What does it mean to engage with the genres and media and conventions of a discipline? What does it mean to think and struggle through ideas? Without guidance, many students end up making it through their time in college simply surviving, without really experiencing the full possibilities available to them.   First year writing, then, serves several functions and purposes: the teaching of (multimodal) composition and the larger social project of helping students enter the university (in all senses of “enter”). That is, first year writing is uniquely situated to perform the important work of teaching our course content while also equipping students for success in their other courses, in the jobs, and perhaps even interpersonally (though that’s a blog post for another time) if we, as instructors, can develop assignments that deliberately respond to both the academic and social areas our class is already in.   Assignments Can Be Bridges Enter (again) first year writing and my assignment, Research Three Ways: Becoming an Academic. This project (three separate assignments) is intended for the second course in a two-course first year writing sequence, but could easily be adapted for the first course or a single course. The initial assignment is fairly common, a research paper. My own classes focus on writing as its own subject as well as threshold concepts, so students often write about topics that concern writing, reading, literacy, and learning. However, this assignment should work well with any focus, theme, or writing approach.   The interesting thing about this assignment is what happens during the writing of the research paper. Students are asked to track, color code, and annotate their revisions. (Why not just use “track changes” on Word or Google Drive or Draftback? You could. I like this approach because it slows the process down and requires students to make physical moves that parallel their cognitive maneuvers and rhetorical decisions.) This part of the assignment communicates early to students that We will be drafting and revising; it’s not even possible to write this paper the night before it’s due. Writing happens on purpose. Even when we are incidentally clever, the choice to leave it in constitutes a rhetorical choice and a purposeful composer. Additionally, done this way, the assignment asks students to frame and contextual their revisions.   Working through a research paper like this is like walking through a building with all the scaffolding still up. It’s easier to see how things were constructed, why this beam has to go here or why this wall has windows but this one doesn’t. Not only does the element of the assignment put everything on display (which is a great teaching tool), but it allows us to talk through the kinds of things we do automatically when we write for our own jobs. It goes back to the first year experience: this is what it is like to think through a problem and struggle through its solution. In this moment, we’re teaching students how to write and also how to be successful college students.   The remaining elements of the project, the conference presentation and the public document continue the twin processes of writing instruction and scholarly invitation and cultivation. After completing the research paper, students reframe their work as a presentation and then remix it as a document for a public (and, usually, lay audience). Pedagogically, students are engaging with multimodal composition and revision practices. They are self-editing and recasting their work to fit new and novel scenarios while still maintaining connections to the original research goals and products. For the larger college picture, we are inviting students to be scholars while also demonstrating how to work and think through their other courses.   First year writing is an important course, one with its own content, theory, pedagogy, threshold concepts, and implications. It is also a course that is inherently liminal, interstitial. Our students are moving and becoming. Even our content is constantly evolving. This assignment is one small way that we can help our students lean into the unfamiliar in productive and meaningful ways. To view Andrew's assignment, visit Research Three Ways: Becoming an Academic. To learn more about the Bedford New Scholars advisory board, visit the Bedford New Scholars page on the Macmillan English Community. ... View more

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 guest blogger is Kim Haimes-Korn a Professor of English and Digital Writing at Kennesaw State University. Kim’s teaching philosophy encourages dynamic learning and critical digital literacies and focuses on students’ powers to create their own knowledge through language and various “acts of composition.” She likes to have fun every day, return to nature when things get too crazy, and think deeply about way too many things. She loves teaching. It has helped her understand the value of amazing relationships and boundless creativity. You can reach Kim at khaimesk@kennesaw.edu or visit her website: Acts of Composition. Overview This multimodal assignment is not original. In fact, I have seen many versions and applications of the idea but it is a great starting place for digital and visual storytellers. It is also popular in a textual form called Six Word Stories, often attributed to Hemingway’s legendary six-word story: For sale: baby shoes, never worn. Authors expand this genre to include other short-short versions such as sudden fiction or flash fiction that constrain conventions based on length and careful selection to achieve a narrative line. Although this idea has been around for a while, it is gaining new life through social media outlets such as Twitter, Tumblr, Reddit, and Facebook that now feature this challenge for their users. Students can search for examples and submit their own stories on designated sites such as sixwordstories.net. This exercise asks students to carefully consider the ways that very few words can take the shape of a story and advance a storyline. I like to have students analyze them and try their hand at composing these stories. This helps them begin to understand narrative theory, literary analysis, and the power of carefully selected language. It also is a good exercise for understanding and working with rhetorical constraints (only six words) and genre expectations. When teaching digital storytelling, I use a similar assignment in which I have students compose a Five Image Story. Flickr has an existing group for visual storytellers to engage in this challenge: The Five Image Story. Here students can join the group and analyze examples of Five Image Stories for sequence and narrative line, visual effectiveness, and impact of the story.   They can also join the conversation, respond to others’ stories, and contribute their own. They must submit five images, in sequence without any text, except a title. I have students compose and submit their Five Image Stories to the Flickr conversation and post them on their blogs to share with their classmates.  Background Readings and Resources The St. Martin’s Handbook: 3e, “Organizing Verbal and Visual Information” and Ch. 3f, “Storyboarding”. The Everyday Writer (also available with Exercises😞 Ch. 5d-e: Organizing Information EasyWriter (also available with Exercises): 2d: Planning and Drafting, Storyboarding Steps to the Assignment Open up the conversation about the nature of stories. Have students identify what makes an effective story: engagement, meaning, progression, change, perspective, impact, etc. I usually have them participate in an online conversation about the meaning and shape of stories and then work in small groups in the classroom. We then try to generate a list from these conversations. Here are a few example responses:   Most importantly, stories describe a journey. Stories pass down knowledge and wisdom; offer advice; act as warnings; and serve as a reflection of the culture in which they were created. Humans have been telling stories for thousands of years. It is as innate as the need for companionship and belonging. Stories surround us all the time. I hear stories in music and podcasts; I read stories online, in books, in the news; I live my own story every day.  Stories at their most basic are comprised of a beginning, middle, and end. Stories are everywhere, just waiting to be told.  Next, I introduce the idea of the Six Word Stories and the Five Image Stories and we analyze a couple of examples.  Then, I send students to the Flickr site and have them join the group and look through the posted stories. As a group, they choose ones they like, discuss them, and connect to the features and ideas generated in their Meaning and Shape of stories conversation from earlier. Once they have an idea of the genre, they move to composing their own Five Image Stories. I have them post to Flickr to participate in this public archive and post to their own blogs for our class. In addition to their title, I require them to include a context statement on their blog (as I do for all Multimodal Mondays blog posts). Students then review the Five Image Stories of their classmates. Students present their stories and teammates discuss what makes them effective and engaging. Each team chooses a couple they consider strong and presents them to the full class. Reflection on the Activity This is a great activity to get students thinking about narrative and digital storytelling – an important component of multimodal composition. It challenges them to think conceptually and to begin to understand genre and structure. It teaches students the importance of image composition, curation, selection, arrangement, and constructing narrative lines. I am always interested in the different types of stories they create. Some are stories of progression, such as Sean’s advancing narrative of a kitten to a cat or Lydia’s story of experiences with her friend over a span of years. Some confine their narrative time span to a shorter time, such as Elijah’s story of a single day in his life. Some students reflect back on defining experiences, like Donna who includes images of tickets she has collected over the years. Others, like McKenna, project forward and engage in a predictive story about where she wants to travel in the future. Many students focus on significant objects to reveal something about their individual stories and some students, like Andrew, create conceptual stories that speak to universal ideas.  He captured unstacking nesting dolls to represent the idea of “Together We are Strong.” Follow the links below to view some student examples Lydia’s Five Image Story McKenna’s Five Image Story Andrew's Five Image Story ... 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