Today’s guest blogger Kim Haimes-Korn is 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. One of the most valuable skill sets for students is collaboration. Multimodal tools open up opportunities for rich collaborative spaces that give students experience working together in productive ways. Digital collaboration also provides opportunities for engaged learning and the sharing of technological and design knowledge. I emphasize this across all of my classes and group my students into Content Design Teams for the semester to encourage cohesive group identity along with an ongoing commitment and team responsibility. In these teams, students compose, review, and revise all kinds of interactive, non-linear digital projects such as blog posts, infographics, interactive feature articles, and videos. Students provide ongoing feedback on multimodal projects and work together to brainstorm and pitch ideas, form peer response groups, and write collaboratively for engaged team projects. Background Reading for Students and Instructors   The St. Martin’s Handbook: Ch. 4, “Revising, Editing and Reflecting”; Ch. 6 “Working with Others” The Everyday Writer (also available with Exercises😞 Ch. 4, “Reviewing, Revising, Editing”; Ch. 1i, “Collaborating” EasyWriter (also available with Exercises😞 Ch. 7, “Reviewing, Revising, Editing”   The Assignment Below are some strategies and activities that promote group cohesion and productive digital collaboration for multimodal classrooms. Team Organization: Each team creates a Google Drive space for team organization, workshop feedback, and collaborative writing. Part of their work as writers is learning how to communicate, organize, and write in these , collaborative spaces. Students are responsible for attending and participating in all team meetings, managing the team communication, and evaluating their group members’ team participation and contributions. This sets them up nicely for professional, collaborative contexts that they will experience in the future. As the teacher, I can easily review their progress and accomplishments through shared folders and organized team space. Minutes – Team History and Resolution: Each team is required to record the happenings during their meetings with  minutes. This teaches them how to record discussions, shape action items, and share their accomplishments with others. They learn to compose professional communication artifacts and about the importance of curating written documentation for historical accuracy. Doing this during the meeting (on a Google doc) provides an open space for members to refer back to in order to complete tasks, manage deadlines, and build community.   Establishing Group Cohesion through Visual Identity: At the beginning of the term, students create a collaborative slideshow for their team files. Each student posts an individual picture (that represents their identity) and a short profile to introduce themselves. They also include contact information for their records to promote communication. I also ask students use Team Selfies. This started by accident but led to some interesting discoveries. I was at a professional conference and had my students working in their content design teams while I was out of town. I got the idea to have them text me a group selfie while they were meeting. At first, it was a way of confirming students were meeting but it morphed into an important multimodal component in establishing group cohesion. I now have them take one each time they are meeting and incorporate it into their minutes or revision logs. Team Selfies create group identity and cohesion. Digital Revision Logs for Peer Response: Students meet together outside of class as a team for peer response sessions on their digital projects. Teams create a Google doc for each session that includes an image of their meeting (all attending members) and a list of suggestions for each review. Team members are prepared to offer lists of strengths along with revision suggestions. These Digital Revision Logs create a reference document that demonstrates participation in the process. After the meetings, each student refers back to the document, makes revisions, and then records their changes as a follow-up. This process of articulation reveals their writing choices and helps teachers see changes in their digital texts (since digital drafts are replaced upon revision). Team Evaluation: Having these documents and organizational spaces helps teachers evaluate collaborative work. So much of the valuable work happens when we are not around to view it. I have students evaluate each other’s performance two times during the semester with a team evaluation rubric and collaborative process reflections. I also use visual process reflections (described in detail in Multimodal Mondays: Digital Collaboration: Infographics as Process Reflections) where students visually represent their team’s processes and collaborative models. This level of accountability keeps students motivated along the way and helps them realize they are responsible for active participation and leadership roles. Reflection This activity helps students take responsibility for their work and teaches them how to value the processes and tools that make up team organization. As a student, Tiffany Davis states, “The Content Design Teams help me get a more well-rounded feel for my creative articles. My team members help encourage and inspire me to become a better writer with their feedback and suggestions. Overall, I am thoroughly enjoying this process and workshop atmosphere.” Today, more than ever, students work in  collaborative environments through remote access and teams that operate without physical presence. Our expectations for clear communication and cohesive teams will lead students to more productive collaborative work. Students will encounter many future academic and professional contexts that demand this knowledge and use of these digital skills. ... View more

Kim Haimes-Korn‌'s Team Evaluation Rubric. See Multimodal Mondays: Content Design Teams for Digital Collaboration.  ... View more

Our students generally don’t remember a time when there were no twenty-four-hour news networks. They don’t remember when the news consisted of thirty minutes of local evening news and then thirty of national news on each of three networks, followed by a late-night update at ten or eleven. And it really was news because that short time period didn’t allow time for commentary, and at that point we still thought the news should be factual reporting. A short segment of opinion was clearly designated as such. The “news” changed in 1980 when CNN was founded as a twenty-four-hour all-news network. You can’t spend twenty-four hours a day reporting only the facts, so the majority of what is aired now is one opinion after another, with networks sometimes having a clear bias. So, we and our students hear almost non-stop argument when we tune in to the news channels. The Internet added a whole new outlet for opinion, and we learned during the 2016 presidential election how willing the public was to take as fact what was actually opinion or intentionally distorted news. All I have to do to find a string of arguments, good and bad, is to read through any day’s feed on social media. There are far too many people out there who have far too much time to create the day’s memes or to ferret out just the right slant on anyone’s reasoning to arouse anger or laughter. Here is a sampling of arguments ripe for discussion in a writing class. Some of these will hang around for a while. Most, however, will be replaced quickly by others. Any week’s news has its offerings. Susan Collins’ husband is a lobbyist for Russian interests. The Republican Party is a wholly owned subsidiary of Russia. Brett Kavanaugh and Merrick Garland voted the same 93 per cent of the time. When asked how sure she was if Kavanaugh was the person who sexually assaulted her, Christine Blasey Ford answered 100%! She also passed a lie detector test and requested an FBI investigation! I’m worried today for our young men. Obama admitted to drinking whole six-packs by himself in college and to smoking weed. Why is that okay and what Kavanaugh did isn’t? We got that test alert from Trump on our phones and then there were dozens of people who found their Facebook accounts hacked. There must be a connection. “Texas Police Seize Yard Sign Depicting GOP Elephant Trunk Up Woman’s Skirt, Deem It ‘Pornography.’” (Headline) In Illinois, none of the ads for Republicans identify them as Republican candidates. Wonder what they could possibly be afraid of. “If the accuser has brought false charges you must impose on the accuser the sentence intended for the other person. In this way, you will purge such evil from among you. Then the rest of the people will hear about it and be afraid to do such an evil thing.” (Deuteronomy 19: 18-20) “During Kavanaugh-Ford hearing, calls to sexual assault hotline spiked by 201 percent.” (Headline) “This message is for Dr. Ford. You put yourself through so much and I want you to know it wasn’t in vain. You started a movement and we’ll see it through. If they won’t listen to our voices, they’ll listen to our vote.” (Ellen DeGeneres) Image Source: “lisa and cheryl argue it out” by Amanda Wood on Flickr 10/1/05 via Creative Commons BY-ND 2.0 License ... View more

I’ve had a chance during the last month to visit several college campuses and I have come away so impressed with what’s going on across the country in terms of innovative writing pedagogy. Certainly that was the case last week when I visited my old alma mater, Ohio State, for an alumnae board meeting and had the chance to visit with Scott DeWitt, who heads up the Digital Media and Composition Program there (and has served as vice chair for Rhetoric, Composition, and Literacy as well as the DMAC Institute that brings students and scholars from around the country to Columbus every summer to learn how to use media most effectively in the teaching of writing and speaking). I got to hear about a new course Scott has developed, one that features internships that call for digital media applications. In the course he is teaching now, he has four teams working on projects: one focused on undergraduate students and their experiential stories; one focused on faculty, who tell stories about their fascinations and obsessions; one that produces podcasts intended for faculty, staff, and students; and one that focuses on alumnae. Called “Mapping Alums,” this project records alumnae telling stories of their time as students and embeds these stories on an interactive object map. I think there are 20 students in the class, which personally seems a little too big to me—15 would be more manageable—but Scott is managing it with his usual enthusiasm and absolute dedication to student-initiated learning. In addition to this exciting project, Scott has an idea for “storytelling for engineers,” which would aim to show engineers how much they need to rely on narrative to get their points across: sounds like another winner to me! These projects are all taking place at the initiative of the Rhetoric, Composition, and Literacy faculty, but they are doing so within the Department of English at Ohio State. More than almost any English department I’ve visited in the last several years, Ohio State’s is determined to reverse the enrollment decline by offering courses like the one Scott is teaching, courses that put students in the driver’s seat and support them as they take powerful messages out into the world. The Narrative and Medicine project (spearheaded by James Phelan) is another such effort, as is a new program that combines English and Math. If English departments are going to prosper, these are exactly the kinds of projects they need to undertake, ones that take advantage of the “participatory turn” in learning and that focus on what students can achieve, especially when working collaboratively. Before I left, I got to visit the graduate “Lunsford lounge” (I spoke with one grad student who says she spends hours there every day since it is a quiet place to work away from her two teenage kids!) and saw the redesigned English office. I well remember entering that office 46 years ago when I began my PhD journey at Ohio State. For 45 of those years it has looked exactly the same, but no more! What a spruce up it has undergone, as these photos show. I’d love to hear about innovative new curricular projects – and see photos of redesigned spaces. Please send! Image credit: Andrea Lunsford ... View more

A Discussion with Ashanka Kumari, University of Louisville, in Preparation for the Watson Conference Community is a fraught term in our field. It is used for all manner of purposes. We speak of our classrooms as communities, attempt to foster inclusive communal practices in our graduate programs, and establish equitable community partnerships. It is less clear, however, that we enable either our undergraduate or graduate students to possess the skills required to actually build communities – the nuts and bolts of organizing strategies and practices that turn community from a noun to an existing space.   At least, this is what I have learned through my discussions with Ashanka Kumari, a doctoral student at University of Louisville and an Assistant Director of the Thomas R. Watson Conference, which will be held this October. Our conversation began when I came to campus to share a draft of my Watson essay, then extended into my revision of that essay, and eventually resulted in multi-authored piece. The talk itself initially focused on my efforts to build Syrians for Truth and Justice (STJ), a human rights documentation center based in Istanbul. (Bassam Alahmad, Director of STJ is also an author in the piece.) STJ stood as an example of the conference theme of what it meant to engage in “producing truth.” In our discussion, Ashanka highlighted how graduate education often did not provide the requisite skills for such community building – whether something large, like STJ, or small, like a community gathering. The assumption of graduate education seemed to be that everyone would end up working in the academy as a researcher, teacher, or both. She noted that for first-generation students like ourselves, with few safety nets, such an assumption could be alienating – what if no academic job was found? Why not, we came to ask, imagine graduate education as preparing students to engage in the meaning of “community” through a multiplicity of skills, through a multiplicity of career paths? In several weeks, Ashanka and I will present our essay, which includes just a small audio segment of our extended discussion. My sense, however, is that this discussion with Ashanka not only enunciates a new way to imagine graduate education, but also a nuanced way to imagine the students in our seminars as possessing a diversity of heritages and ambitions. It is a conversation that points to what a “community-based” graduate education might require. For that reason, in a blog focused on the intersection of community and the academy, I am happy to provide the full discussion here with a transcript of the discussion here. Finally, if you are at the Watson talk or joining us virtually on Twitter (#WatsCon18) at 10:30 AM EST on Saturday, October 27, I hope you will come to our session and share your thoughts on how graduate education can be infused with “community-building” strategies/skills that are useful not only in our “field” but in the neighborhoods in which it exists. ... View more

  I continue to think about the ways I can use my rhetoric and writing class as a space where my students can develop the skills they need to be civically engaged and connect what they think and write to equity and social justice. I have never felt more of a sense of urgency than this past week, although Howard Zinn’s words remind me that the Supreme Court has never taken as its mission the need to “defend the rights of poor people, women, people of color, dissenters of all kinds. Those rights only come alive when citizens organize, protest, demonstrate, strike, boycott, rebel, and violate the law in order to uphold justice.” His words also remind me that I can help to inspire students to translate what they know into action they can take as activists.   Can writing be a civic action? Linda Friedrich, Director of Research and Evaluation at the National Writing Project, offers a resounding “Yes!” And she goes on to identify six ways that writing fosters civic engagement:   Raising Awareness Establishing Public Voices Articulating Writers’ Concerns, Hopes, and Dreams Advocating Civic Engagement or Action Arguing a Position Based on Reasoning and Evidence Mobilizing for Dialogue and Action   I would add that as teachers of writing we can provide spaces for critical reflection so that our students think about the values that influence decisions, policies, and actions, what they value, and to defend what they think is socially just. Second we can provide spaces for critical questioning about how justice plays out in their own lives. And third, as I have explained in a previous blog, students need to practice democracy in contexts that matter.   Of these core ideas for civic writing that I have briefly outlined, I think critical questioning has been overlooked in teaching civic writing. As April Lidinsky and I point out in our book, From Inquiry to Academic Writing, critical questioning is closely tied to reflection: What do I think is important? What keeps me up at night? What am I curious about? What’s at stake? Formulating a critical question is also tied to identifying an issue, a fundamental tension between two ideas that on their own might seem viable. We promote the idea of helping students formulate issue-based questions by capturing the relational nature of the world before us.   So for example, one could argue that economic development might mean displacing people from the neighborhoods where they live. But such a decision exists in tension with the real world consequences of disrupting the very fabric of communities that individuals rely on for emotional, social, and economic well-being. So one could ask: how is it possible to develop a neighborhood or community in ways that make it economically sound while protecting the interests of people who live in that community? Asking a question guides inquiry, prompts students to think about an issue in complex ways that resist easy answers, requires deliberation, and can mobilize dialogue and action.   I am reminded of the need to listen to students when I ask them to tell me what matters to them. Although they have their own experiences and frames of reference that can limit how they see the world, my own frames can also prevent me from fully understanding the value of the questions they are asking. We can gain a great deal from seeing the world from perspectives that we may not readily adopt.   In her book, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants, Robin Wall Kimmerer recounts a time when her adviser in college asked her why she wanted to study Botany. She answered that she was curious about why two plants, purple asters and goldenrods, grew together. Her professor did not think this was a particularly good question because Kimmerer focused on the beauty of the purple and golden colors animating each other in a reciprocal relationship. For her professor, her attraction to the combination of colors was not very scientific. But what he overlooked and what Kimmerer eventually learned was that bees are also attracted to this color combination, causing both plants to receive more pollination from bees than if they grew separately. Thus, what seemed like Kimmerer’s unscientific observation could actually have been the basis of a hypothesis that she (and her adviser) could have tested. I take from her writings the need to listen to our students’ ways of seeing and naming the world. By listening, we can support their acts of critically questioning the world around them and affirm the values they embrace.   As you help your students formulate an issue-based question, you might have them follow this five-step process that April Lidinsky and I describe in our book: Explain the topic (e.g., the causes or consequences of what interests you) Detail the reasons why you are interested in the topic Explain what is at issue – what is open to dispute for you and others interested in the issue Describe for whom this issue might be significant or important Formulate an issue-based question (acknowledge audience by writing down what readers may know about the issue, why they might be interested, and what you want them to think about or do)   An issue-based question should be specific enough to guide inquiry into what others have written and help students accomplish the following: Clarify what students know about the issue and what they still need to know Guide their inquiry with a clear focus, so that they can answer their question with a sense of purpose Develop an argument, rather than simply collecting information by asking “how,” “why,” “should” or the “extent to which something is true or not” Determine what resources students have, so that they can ask a question that they will be able answer with the resources available to them (i.e., the available research that can reasonably support their claims)   Through developing their own issue-based questions, hopefully students will bring their own unique values and viewpoints to their civic writing.   Image Credit: Purple Asters by Nicholas A. Tonelli, used under a CC0 Creative Commons License ... View more

This week's featured guest blogger is Joseph Couch‌, Professor at Montgomery College. Teaching drama may pose the most difficult challenge of the literary genres for instructors.  Plays have speakers like poems, plots like fiction, and scenes like films, but without the benefit of stanzas, narrators, and shots to help guide readers. While plays from the Renaissance and earlier often have prologues to help set initial scenes and introduce characters, readers are largely left on their own to navigate the worlds of plays and the characters that inhabit them.  One of the puzzling facts about plays for students new to them is that they are written from the point of view of the stage rather than of the audience. As a result, trying to visualize character movement through dry stage directions like “walks up stage” can be quite difficult when a reader does not know which direction is “up.” While following the movement and action of characters on, say, an Absurdist stage that simply contains two characters, a tree, and a stump may not pose a particularly difficult challenge, most plays ask quite a bit more of readers. As even an experienced play reader will admit, keeping track of the placement of scenery and props, as well as characters and their movements, on a busy stage, not to mention a stage with scene changes, all while trying to read the dialogue can be a daunting task.   To help students visualize stage space, I often use a small group activity early in the semester or drama unit.  It will require some willingness on at least one student per group to do some drawing, although not anything fancy, and students do not seem to mind a little shared artistic responsibility.  For materials, each group only needs a piece of paper and a pencil (obviously easier to erase than pen).     Assign the specific scene/set for the groups, generally after some warm-up about the play or even after the play has been discussed if issues with reading stage space arise. Have students sort out who is doing the close reading of the setting and character movements and who is handling the drawing before pencil gets to paper. As is the case with much small-group work, the delegation of roles will be the key to success. Equally important will be the need for students to be open to the interpretations of others to make this a group effort. Once the basic set design is drawn with props, an instructor can ask to have each group show their work. It might be a good idea to make sure every group is on the right track before moving on to the last step. Where are the characters? Now that the groups have drawn a set for a particular scene, have the groups do some blocking of the characters during a key passage. Simple diagrams or stick figures should do just fine. You can also have them use arrows or another indicator of characters’ movement in the scene. Interpretations may vary, and they can also be included in the drawing up to a point. A picture full arrows and lines would probably defeat the purpose of visualizing the stage. Variations could be using space on the board if the room and class size can accommodate it, and, time and tech permitting, students could use a free drawing program like SVG Edit  that works right in a browser with no need to download software. How many sets the students draw depends on the complexity of the play’s staging, as well as how much difficulty students in a class are having with navigating dramatic texts. As a result, all the groups could work on the same set if it is complex or challenging, or each group could work on an individual set for plays with multiple locations. Classes can also revisit this exercise during work on an individual play for reminders and clarification and/or use the exercise for each play covered. In addition, having students map out the stage space can also be the springboard for student interpretations of setting and directions. How far up is “up”? The answer is up to students’ productions of plays taking place in their own minds, a realization that can be a rewarding teaching and learning experience.              ... View more

With the appearance of Michael Moore's latest foray into the arena of American conflict and controversy, Farenheit ll/9, I find myself contemplating the significance of the documentary form itself in contemporary American culture. And as is always the case in the conduct of a semiotic cultural analysis, my aim is not to form a partisan opinion but, rather, to find a signification, something that may not be obvious at an initial glance but may well be hiding in plain sight. So here goes.   To begin with, we need to construct a historicized system in which today's popular documentaries can be situated, and I can think of no better place to begin than with Edward R. Murrow's legendary exposé of America's migrant labor morass, Harvest of Shame. First broadcast on CBS in 1960 immediately after Thanksgiving, Harvest of Shame joined such classic works of muck-raking journalism as the photographs of Dorothea Lange and Jacob Riis, and the writing of Upton Sinclair, in revealing to the American middle and upper classes what was really going on behind the scenes of the pleasant panoramas of the American dream.   Michael Moore's work fits into this tradition, but with some significant differences, differences that will be important to my interpretation to follow. These lie in the way that Moore openly presents himself as a participant not only in his muck-raking documentaries but in the political controversies that he courts as well. Very much an in-your-face documentarian, Moore presents a striking contrast to Ken Burns, who must be ranked as America's currently most popular (not to mention prolific) documentary filmmaker, in large part due to his propensity to smooth over the rough edges of American cultural conflict in his attempts to appeal to everyone (who else but Burns, for example, would have included footage of historian Shelby Foote describing Abraham Lincoln and Nathan Bedford Forrest together as the two "geniuses" that the Civil War produced?).   But Michael Moore's "shockumentary" style looks like something out of the Hallmark Channel compared to Sacha Baron Cohen's "mockumentaries." Having laid low for a few years (to lull his intended victims into a false sense of security?), Cohen is back with his Showtime series, Who Is America? A weird amalgamation of Candid Camera, reality television, and, well, "Weird Al" Yankovic, Who Is America? managed to snag a cross section of American political celebrity—from Sarah Palin and Roy Moore to Bernie Sanders and Barney Frank—in his take-no-prisoners approach to political satire in the guise of documentary-style programming (see Laura Bradley's "Sacha Baron Cohen’s Victims: All the People Who Fell for His New Prank Show" in Vanity Fair for a complete rundown of Cohen's hapless marks).   Now, aside from my rather unsemiotic curiosity about how such a list of prominent people—who must surely have personal staffs employed precisely to keep their employers insulated from such things—got so taken in by Cohen, I find a number of signifiers at work here. The first might be called "Poe's Law Comes to Comedy." Poe's Law is a label for the ambiguity that surrounds so much of the content on the Internet due to the general weirdness of what people say there. "Does he really mean that, or is he pulling my leg?" pretty much sums up the situation, and it helps explain how Cohen got such current and former politicians as Representative Joe Wilson of South Carolina and ex-Senator Trent Lott to endorse a fake PSA for a "Kinderguardians" program designed to put guns in the hands of little children—Lott, for example, is quoted as saying, "It’s something that we should think about America, about putting guns in the hands of law-abiding citizens . . . whether they be teachers, or whether they actually be talented children or highly trained pre-schoolers.” I will leave it to my readers to deduce just which organization Cohen was targeting here.   Beyond the Poe's Law signification, I find myself especially struck by the distinct trajectory here that runs from Murrow to Cohen, the stunning difference. The best way to put it is that Murrow found nothing funny in what he wanted to expose in Harvest of Shame, and had no intention of entertaining anyone. Moore, for his part, has been quite open about his opinion that even documentaries with serious purposes should be entertaining. But Cohen is basically all about entertainment. What he does is make people look stupid for other people to laugh at with extreme derision. The approach is not unlike that of Jersey Shore and My Sweet Sixteen, video train wrecks whose purpose is to make their audiences feel superior to the people on the shows. Satire, with its ancient office of encouraging good behavior by ridiculing bad, thus becomes sheer snark.   And here the system opens out to a much larger system in America today, one in which all codes of civility (and "civility," remember, is rooted in the Latin "civitas": a society of shared citizenry) are falling before the imperatives of the profit motive. Snark sells: it's no accident that Who Is America? is a comedy series on Showtime. In such a system politics is repackaged as entertainment, and derision takes the place of anything like an authentic debate. And that just may well be the answer to the question of "Who Is America?" these days. ... View more

I’ve written several times over the last year or so about the importance of style, which Richard Lanham argues is the most important canon of rhetoric today—in a “fluff” economy when what can get and hold attention in the midst of an absolute onslaught of information is what stands out and whose style says “listen to me” loud and clear. Style has certainly been on my mind this last week or so as we’ve witnessed two very different styles at work in the Senate Judiciary Committee’s hearings. Christine Blasey Ford, who has said Judge Kavanaugh assaulted her when they were in high school, presented a straightforward, understated style that came across to many as genuine and credible. Brett Kavanaugh seemed to be adopting Trump’s style of in-your-face, aggressive push-back that at times bordered on rudeness. Republican senators echoed the same style, most notably in Lindsey Graham’s shouting, name-calling, finger-pointing style. Across the aisle, Kamala Harris walked out at one point, using silence to “voice” her disagreement, while Patrick Leahy hammered away at the nominee, using repetition to drive home his points. Very different styles at work. Which were effective, and which were not? I think it’s worth asking students to consider these questions, especially in a time of such extreme division. What styles do they find most compelling? Which ones offend them or are off-putting, and why? Was Oscar Wilde right in declaring that “one’s style is one’s signature”? Such a discussion might be even more productive if students first wrote a paragraph or two reflecting on their own style: what words would they choose? How would they describe their style in terms of clothing? In terms of music, or sports, or film? Perhaps more to the point, what style would they like to project? How would they like others to describe their style—as writers and speakers, as members of a group or groups, and so on? Finally, they might well take a look at a piece of writing they are particularly proud of and look closely at its style: how well does that style match with what they wrote earlier about their own styles? Image Credit: Pixabay Image 13863 by PublicDomainPictures, 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. This summer, teaching a hybrid literature and composition class, I developed a lesson in carpe diem poetry that was close to pedagogical perfection. Because it worked (and because not everything does), I share it with you. The lesson incorporates poetry and song lyrics and requires students to read, watch, listen, and write. The first part of the lesson presents a definition of carpe diem along with a clip from the film Dead Poets Society. Mr. Keating (Robin Williams) shows his students pictures of long-dead students and advises his own students to “Seize the day, boys . . . make your lives extraordinary.”  After viewing the introductory film clip, students move to two classic carpe diem poems: Andrew Marvell’s “To His Coy Mistress” and Robert Herrick’s “To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time.” I ask students to look at the formal structure of the speaker’s argument in Marvell’s poem and to contrast the formal structure with the intimate nature of the poem, in which the speaker argues that a specific “coy mistress” should make love to him. I also point out the more general, advice-giving nature of Herrick’s poem, in which the speaker cautions young women (“virgins”) to marry before they are past their expiration date. Next, students listen to four contemporary songs and decide which two are carpe diem songs. I specify that a carpe diem song (1) alludes to the idea that life is short, and (2) names a specific thing that should be done because life is short. The songs students choose should contain both elements. For the lesson, I chose songs I had heard in Zumba class or on Sirius XM’s Chill radio during my morning commute.  I had planned to link to music videos on YouTube, but on one video, I was stopped by a “potentially offensive” YouTube warning. Mindful of my still-in-high-school dual enrollment students, I decided that I would link the audio version of that song and let students find the video themselves if they wished.  Another dilemma arose when I discovered that the song that had given me the idea for the lesson had no clean version available. I took the problem to my students and asked them if profanity in music offended them. They reacted just as I might have if an adult had asked my teenage self if I was offended by Mick Jagger’s onstage gyrations.  I included the song, prefaced with a warning that I had not been able to find a clean version. I then asked myself if this issue was the same as that of the video with the YouTube warning and decided that it was not. Some of the works of literature assigned in class also contain profanity, so these lyrics add no new element. I have listed and linked my song choices below, but the assignment is endlessly adaptable to your own musical tastes and preferences.  “Bad, Bad News” by Leon Bridges, a song about seizing the opportunity to make “a good, good thing out of bad, bad news.” “Give Me Everything” by Pitbull featuring Ne-Yo, Afrojack, and Nayer, a song that riffs on the theme of Marvell’s “To His Coy Mistress.” This is the song with the YouTube community warning; judge for yourself.  “Havana” by Camila Cabello featuring Young Thug, a song about a heart divided, chosen because of its wildly entertaining video. “Dead Soon” by Autograf, featuring Lils and Bonsai Mammal, a song that justifies seizing the moment with the lyric “If we don’t see another light / Then at least we had tonight.” My students responded well to this assignment; all accurately identified the carpe diem lyrics (songs 2 and 4). When I asked myself if a 100 percent success rate meant the exercise was too easy, my answer was “not in this case.” Carpe diem is a fairly easy concept to grasp, recognize, and remember.  What really sold me on the assignment was not the success rate, but the ease with which students quoted song lyrics. My students find it challenging to make a point about literature and support that point with a concise quotation from the text itself. But doing the exact same thing with song lyrics seemed to be easy for them, perhaps because song lyrics are woven through their lives in a way that literature is not.  This accidental discovery suggests that one good way of helping students understand how to integrate quotations into their papers is to let them start with song lyrics. While I should probably seize the day and get to work on that, it’s a task for another day. ... View more

Much published work on transfer tells us that students must practice reflection to develop metacognitive awareness and encourage application of knowledge and concepts from one context to another (see Writing Across Contexts: Transfer, Composition, and Sites of Writing, by Yancey, Robertson, and Taczak for an overview). To emphasize reflection in my courses, I’ve usually focused on assignments with a reflection component—journals, process narratives, or discussion board posts. But I was challenged this week to consider weaving reflective practice throughout writing (and also integrated reading and writing, or IRW) courses—using conversations, feedback, classroom tools. I suspect, in fact, that this weaving process establishes reflection as a part of the fabric of the course itself, not just a decorative embellishment.    For example, I use Google Docs for drafting work in my courses; I invite students to respond to my comments, to draft their own comments and tag me in them for additional feedback. We also use the platform for peer-based discussion and collaborative writing. But does this particular writing tool promote reflection? I am not sure I have exploited the possibilities very well. I have had students use the record of comments for a reflective assignment, but I am wondering how I might build an on-going reflective process with Google Docs – not just an after-the-fact review. For example, questions such as the following might encourage reflective practice—and transfer—during drafting and revision:   Why did you make this statement here? Were you applying something you learned in a previous writing course? What makes this context a little different? How does this observation from your classmate support or complicate what you’ve learned about __________? Look back at the comments from the last paper. Is there something there that might help you solve this writing problem? You’ve tagged me in three questions related to ______________. Why do you think _______________ is a challenge for you in this paper? How does the context of this assignment differ from the last one, in which __________ didn’t seem to be an issue for you? You have said here that this section “doesn’t feel right.” What have you done in the past when you’ve had that sensation? You’ve pointed out a problem with this sentence. Can you describe that problem in general terms? Have you seen it before in your paper?   In a sense, these comments turn the drafting process into an exercise in critical reading. When I assign readings, I ask students to make connections between texts and other texts or between texts and their prior experiences. Similarly, these questions invite students to zoom in to focus on particulars of their developing text and also to zoom out to see their work as it connects to a broader picture.   The advantages of Google Docs for file sharing, keeping a record of comments, and working collaboratively are many. But like all technologies that involve targeted feedback—whether online or on paper—students risk seeing problems and solutions only in terms of the specific context. If they do generalize, they may assert “rules” that cannot and should not be applied broadly (as indicated in some of the Bad Ideas About Writing | Open Access Textbooks | WVU Libraries). Reflective connections during all phases of the writing process might help students avoid the perils of two pervasive writing myths: assignments within and across courses are unrelated, and there is a single form of writing appropriate to all academic writing contexts.   I’ve also been exploring one other means for weaving reflection into my classes. After we have completed a significant writing project, I’ve asked students to complete an anonymous survey, usually using an online tool such as Google Forms. I craft just one or two questions, such as these:   Did your experience writing this paper confirm, contradict, expand, complicate, or confuse what you’ve learned in previous writing experiences? (Check all that apply). Can you give me one example that illustrates your answer? What is the biggest writing problem you encountered in this project? Had you ever encountered it before? What made it different this time? What is one thing you wish you had known before tackling this project? What is one question you wish you had asked before starting this project? Did you have an “aha” moment in this project? What led to it? Did you get the feedback you needed to complete the project successfully? If not, why not?   I don’t ask all the questions each time, and in an IRW course, I can adapt them to address the reading process as well as writing. These anonymous questions allow students to vent frustrations, especially in a course that often asks them to approach writing with different strategies than those used in high school. But the questions may also promote reflection: students consider projects in context and in the arc of their overall writing experience. But perhaps more importantly, their responses become a source for my own reflection about teaching: how did this class respond differently than previous classes? What did I do that helped or hindered their learning? How can I change that?   Finally, I am learning to share some of my reflective process with them: if I make changes or reconsider my language use based on their collective comments, I tell them about such changes. I want to model reflection as well as provide ample opportunities for practice.    How are you building reflection into your FYC, basic writing, and IRW classrooms?  ... View more

This week I am sharing the third writing assignment in the series of assignments I designed for my technical writing course. The series focuses on tasks related to a fictional business incubator, the Ut Prosim Incubator. In this week’s assignment (which is a revision of an activity I shared in the past), the fictional companies students have been working with are participating in a STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) education initiative. At this point in the course, students have established a company and given it an identity by designing visual and writing guidelines for the ways that their companies use the different kinds of correspondence. This week’s assignment asks students to turn to a short document that focuses directly on a technical task, describing an object, mechanism, or process for an audience of middle- and high-school students. 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 the class textbook Technical Communication by Mike Markel & Selber and Stuart Selber. Technical Description Assignment Background You will write a technical description related to your field (such as of a tool that is typically used or a process that is part of your industry). The description will be part of a diversity initiative to interest local students in STEM careers (STEM = Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math). The description will relate to a task that local middle and high school students will complete as they shadow someone in your company. You will also write the user document that students will use in the diversity initiative described above. You will provide step-by-step details on how to complete a simple and appropriate task that will help local students learn more about what someone in your career does. The Scenario Note: We will use this scenario for two projects: Technical Descriptions (this week) and User Documents (next week). This week, you received the following memo, explaining your responsibilities for the Incubator’s annual Try-It-Out Day:  Ut Prosim Incubator    1872 Inventors Way, Blacksburg, Virginia 24060      Interoffice Memo   To: All Incubator Companies From: Traci Gardner, Ut Prosim Director Subject: Preparing for Try-It-Out Day Date: September 10, 2018   On Try-It-Out Day, students from Montgomery, Giles, Pulaski, and Floyd Counties will spend most of the day working one-on-one with employees from every company in the Incubator to learn about what careers in STEM involve. We will match students with the company that fits their interests, and then you will determine the employees who will work with those students. What Happens on Try-It-Out Day? Try-It-Out Day will take place on Wednesday, September 26, from 8AM to 4PM. Students will arrive at the Incubator at 8AM and spend the entire day with their assigned company, following this general schedule: Time Activity 8:00 AM Welcome assembly for all students and company representatives 8:30 AM Students tour their assigned company, learning about what the company does and how it works 9:00 AM Students pair off with employees, who tell the students about their specific careers 10:00 AM Refreshments in the Incubator Atrium 10:30 AM Students learn to complete an activity that their employee-hosts do in the normal course of work 12:30 PM Lunch in the Incubator Cafeteria 1:30 PM STEM Challenge (a competition, students and employees collaborate in teams based on the schools students attend) 3:30 PM Refreshments in the Incubator Atrium and Closing Comments 4:00 PM Students board buses to return home What Do You Need to Do to Prepare? From 10:30 to 12:30, employees from your company will teach students about some activities that they do in the normal course of their work. To prepare for this portion of the day, please choose a specific activity that students can safely complete in 15–30 minutes. Ideally, choose an activity that students can complete more than once, such as examining and sorting specimens as shown in the image above. Once you have chosen an activity, create two documents that students can take home and share when they return to their schools: A technical description of an object, mechanism, or process that relates to the activity students will complete. A user document that includes instructions the student can follow to complete the activity. Any Questions? If you need any help with this project, please let me know or contact my assistant, Leslie Crow <lcrow@utprosimincubator.org>. You can also talk with Incubator members who participated in the event last year. 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: Decide on the focus for your two projects (this week’s Technical Description and next week’s User Document). Your focus will be to talk about a simple task that someone in your career field would complete. As you decide on your focus, think about activities that will meet these goals: give the students an idea of what someone in your career does. excite the students about the prospects of a career like yours. Try to limit yourself to topics with which you have some expertise (or at least some experience). Since middle and high school students will be following the instructions, choose something that they could believably complete and that will not place them in a dangerous situation. Step 2: Analyze the audiences for your two projects. You will write a technical description and user document that middle and high school students can use as they complete an activity on Try-It-Out Day. Use the information from Markel & Selber, Chapter 5 to decide how the characteristics of the audiences will influence your writing. Consider the questions in Figure 5.2: Audience Profile Sheet and/or the Writer’s Checklist at the end of the chapter to guide your analysis. Step 3: Examine the information about technical descriptions in Markel & Selber. The textbook provides step-by-step details on how to write a technical description. Follow the textbook as you work on your project. In particular, be sure that you do the following: Incorporate definitions for unfamiliar terms and ideas, following the “GUIDELINES: Writing Effective Sentence Definitions” (on page 539 of Markel & Selber) and the related information in the textbook. Use the questions in “TABLE 20.1: Questions To Answer in Introducing a Description” (on page 550 of Markel & Selber) to gather the relevant details for your description. Follow the “GUIDELINES: Providing Appropriate Detail in Descriptions” (on page 551 of Markel & Selber) to ensure you include the proper level of specific information. Explore the examples in Markel & Selber to see some of the options for layout and formatting: Figure 20.4: Inside Asimo Figure 20.5: How Our Solar Electric System Works Figure 20.6: Drivetrains Figure 20.8: Turning Biomass into Fuel Step 4: Write the technical description for students. Compose your description, as requested in The Scenario above, with all the details you have gathered and created. Review the assessment guidelines below to ensure you have met all the requirements for the description. 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 5: Check your draft against the Writer’s Checklist. Be sure that you include the required features for technical description. Review your project, using the Writer's Checklist for Chapter 20 (on page 576 of Markel & Selber) and the Assessment Criteria below. Step 6: 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 7: Submit your draft to your Writing Group in Canvas. Post a rough draft of your technical description to your Writing Group in Canvas in the 09/13 Draft Feedback Discussion in Canvas. Additional instructions are in the Discussion. Post a draft of your technical description by September 13. If you are late submitting a draft, your group may not have time to provide feedback. Step 8: Provide feedback to your Writing Group in Canvas. Provide feedback to the members of your writing group in the 09/13 Draft Feedback Discussion in Canvas, by September 17 (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 9: 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 10: Include a polished version of your project in Project Portfolio 1, due October 1. Have your Technical Description Project finished and ready for submission in your Project Portfolio 1, which is due Monday, October 1. The grace period for Project Portfolio 1 ends at 11:59PM on Thursday, October 4. 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 a Description of an Object or Mechanism Your project should meet the following criteria for effective technical descriptions, based on the checklist at the end of Chapter 20 of Markel & Selber: Indicates the nature and scope of the technical description clearly. Opens with an introduction that explains these major components: what the item is. how it functions. what it looks like. what its parts are. Includes a graphic in the introduction that identifies the principal parts. Uses an appropriate organizational principle. Includes a graphic for each of the major components. Summarizes the major points in the part-by-part description in the conclusion. Includes (if appropriate) a description of the item performing its function. For a Description of a Process Your project should meet the following criteria for effective technical descriptions, based on the checklist at the end of Chapter 20 of Markel & Selber: Indicates the nature and scope of the technical description clearly. Opens with an introduction that explains the following: what the process is. how it functions. where and when it takes place. who or what performs it. how it works. what its principal steps are. Includes a graphic in the introduction that identifies the principal steps. Discusses the steps in chronological order or some other logical sequence). Makes the causal relationships among the steps clear. Includes graphics for each of the principal steps. Summarizes the major points in the step-by-step description in the conclusion. Discusses, if appropriate, the importance or implications of the process.   Image Credit from Memo: RDECOM Scientist and Engineers bring their special skills and enthusiasm to STEM Night at Fallston Middle School by U.S. Army RDECOM on Flickr, used under a CC-BY 2.0 license   In addition to this assignment, I shared information on readability statistics with students. While I believe such statistics have definite limitations, tools such as the Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level help students determine if they are writing too far above or too far below their audiences’ comprehension level. The second part of this assignment focuses on writing the instructions that the middle and high school students will follow on Try-It-Out Day. I’ll share that activity next week. Until then, if you have any questions or comments about the assignment, please leave me a comment below. I’d love to hear from you.     Photo credit: U.S. Air Force photo/Senior Airman Ethan Morgan, from “Summer hire program offers students multiple benefits” on the Royal Air Force Mildenhall website, used under public domain. ... View more

A recent discussion of the Writing Program Administrators listserv asks the questions, “How many of us have asked students their voter registration status?” Respondents submitted practices based on their varying perspectives and teaching locations. Some respondents offer their students extra credit opportunities to register to vote. Others bring registration forms to class or show voter registration websites. Additional respondents believed that offering extra credit was coercive, while others stated that extra credit for registering to vote would not be equitably available to all students because of immigration status or status in the criminal justice system, and still others suggested alternative extra credit options, noting that voter education plays a vital role in rhetorical education.   Here is my experience. Many years ago, in the months leading up to a presidential primary, I brought to class a stack of voter registration forms procured from a table in the lobby of our classroom building. I presented the cards in what felt like a neutral, non-partisan manner, discussing the history of voting rights, the importance of voting no matter one’s political affiliation, and so on.   My students listened patiently. A few students politely pocketed the cards. But by far, the majority of students in the class said: “Dr. Bernstein, I am not a US citizen.”   In that moment, I experienced a sense of humility that I have carried with me to this day. That moment is held with other sacred memories of voting-- and not voting: accompanying my mother into the voting booth as a preschooler and watching her flip the little levers of the old-fashioned voting machine; registering to vote for the first time at eighteen; voting for president for the first time absentee as a first-year college student far from home (and watching the debates for that election on television at night in the student union).   Yet the memory of my students, disenfranchised even as they paid taxes, troubles me still. As recently as 2016, some of us in the county where I was living-- myself and my colleagues included-- were denied the right to vote in the presidential primary because our voter registrations were misfiled as “independent,” rather than with a specific political party needed to vote in that state’s closed primary system. At the same time, in that same county, other citizens found themselves waiting to vote for many hours. The county government had drastically reduced the number of polling places. Poor communities of color were especially hard hit with the reduction of polling places.   All of these experiences have helped me to consider the necessity, and the difficulty, of addressing the intersections of political and rhetorical education in the classroom. Given the speed with which events cycle in and out of the news, my inclination is to return to my training in close reading gleaned from rhetorical history and comparative literature, and to share practices of textual explication with students. We first apply these practices to Civil Rights Movement readings, and texts that are densely packed, such as speeches by James Baldwin, or Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Then I invite students to apply those same practices of persuasion and analysis to their own writing.   Currently in my classes, students are nearing the completion of their first writing projects, a culmination of a series of assignments that have unfolded over the last six weeks. The process looks something like this:   Reading: Read not only for main idea and supporting evidence, but also at the sentence level and for word choice and repetition.   Writing: Write the body paragraphs first, and summarize the text, not only in terms of thesis and support, but again, for how the text is constructed, and the role of construction in effective persuasion of the reader.   Revising: Divide long paragraphs into shorter ones, and make sure that each new paragraph has an introductory and concluding sentence to help with transitions between them, adding additional citations from the text as needed for evidence.   Reframing: Add an introduction that dives directly into the main idea of your own essay. Offer a conclusion that presents the main idea as powerfully as possible, so that the reader is persuaded to accept, or at least to consider, the significance of the main idea.   These steps then become the grading criteria for the essay.   In fast-paced times, this work can feel slow, difficult, and painstaking. Yet the aim of this work is that students will learn not only to analyze dense material through reading and writing, but also that, through reading and writing, they will learn to explore the possibilities of imagining in challenging historical moments, with Baldwin or King and others a more hopeful and productive future. ... View more

David Leonhardt, opinion writer for the New York Times, recently wrote an editorial entitled “The Supreme Court Is Coming Apart.” That’s a claim, or the thesis for an argument. The more precise and less colloquial claim that Leonhardt goes on to support effectively is that “over the long term, the court risks a crisis of legitimacy.” Leonhardt offers two reasons for this potential crisis: the partisanship of the court and the radicalness of the Republicans on the court. Whether you agree with Leonhardt or not, it is possible to look at his argument as argument and to look at the wider range of arguments about the court that have become increasingly heated in recent years. There are factual claims about the court that are easy to support. If you look at the voting margins by which each court nominee has been confirmed, for example, it is easy to see that there was a time when a nominee of either political party was elected by a near-unanimous vote of the Senate. A well-qualified candidate appealed to both parties. Votes have increasingly come to be divided along party lines. That’s the sort of claim that can easily be verified. What about this part of Leonhardt’s argument: “There are no more Republican moderates. With Anthony Kennedy gone, every Republican justice is on the far end of the spectrum — among the most conservative since World War II”? That would certainly take more proof than a tallying of votes for confirmation, but an analysis of the voting record of Republican justices could be made in support of Leonhardt’s statement. The assumption is that the confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh would tighten Republican control over every decision of the Supreme Court. Three days of questioning by the Senate did little to confirm or refute that assumption. Kavanaugh for the most part declined to take a stand on specific real cases but also declined to predict how he would vote on hypothetical ones. He essentially spent much of his testimony saying, “I can’t answer that.” The assumption, whether fair or not, is that he would vote as a conservative Republican. The problem, of course, is that our Founding Fathers did not plan for Supreme Court justices to vote along party lines. Making their appointments for life was seen as a way to avoid such partisanship. That clearly is not working. So what of claims of policy and the Supreme Court? Should the number of justices be increased, which would enable a Democratic-majority Congress, should one be elected, to even the playing field? That again advances partisanship, even though it lets Democrats “get even” for the Republicans’ blocking of President Obama’s pick for the Supreme Court. Is there any way to recapture the idealism behind the creation of the court? The Founding Fathers were prescient enough to build in a federal balance of powers. They built in compromises between slave and free states that still affect our government. They created a constitution that has had relatively few amendments considering how long ago it was written. What they couldn’t foresee was the America of 2018.   Image Source: “Supreme Court” by angela n. on Flickr 5/3/17 via Creative Commons 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.   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 Commas Commas: Oxford, Appositive, Nonrestrictive [6:46] Serial Comma [6:12] Where Do I Use Commas? [7:16] When to Use a Comma before Because [2:57] When to Use a Comma with Too [4:01]   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: Ask students to listen to the podcast "Commas: Oxford, Appositive, Nonrestrictive" 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 a topic different from reading about it? How is it the same? How do the host's tone and voice impact the listener's experience? What does the host do to connect with the listener? What new information did the student learn about commas? Can they pinpoint any element of the podcast that helped them remember this new information?   Assignment B: Ask students to listen to more than one podcast about commas, such as "Commas: Oxford, Appositive, Nonrestrictive" and "Serial Comma." 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 content overlap, and if so, where? What is different about the coverage of commas 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?   Do you have other suggestions for using podcasts in lessons? Let us know what they are in the comments! Credit: Pixabay Image 2426854 by geralt, used under a CC0 Creative Commons License ... View more