Today’s guest blogger is Jeanne Bohannon (see end of post for bio).   A thread came across the WPA listserv last week that reminded me of a post I wrote a couple of years ago (Multimodal Mondays: No Fear Gramm(r) and Students' Top 5 Lists for Rhetorical Growth), which described a low stakes grammar assignment using Andrea's Writer's Help diagnostics and her Top 20 Student Grammar Mistakes. I have used Writer's Help to create individualized exercises for upper-division writing majors as well as to measure rhetorical growth with first-year writers. In my classes we call it “No Fear Gramm(r),” deciding to intentionally misspell/(re)spell the word in order to indicate the no fear aspect of the label. As students increasingly ask for prescriptive grammar help in their writing courses while simultaneously seeking assistance in applying those conventions across digital writing genres, I have found the below series of tasks beneficial for both generating conversation and demonstrating the transformative uses of digital grammar. Context No Fear Gramm(r) is a low-stakes opportunity to use traditional diagnostic tools to create dialogic growth and community. In a class of eight professional writing majors, students not only take the diagnostic, but they then share their top five grammar issues with each other in a discussion forum, responding to coursemates and finding commonalities among everyone’s usage mistakes. Assignment Students take a Grammar Diagnostic from Writer's Help 2.0 for Lunsford Handbooks. I don’t assign points to this assignment, but I talk with students on the first and second days of class about how we will use the results as departure points for the entire semester to grow specific qualities of our grammar usage. Although I don’t use the Gradebook option, Writer's Help does have one, so you can assign and grade the Diagnostic as well as the accompanying grammar exercises. Measurable Learning Objectives Examine results of a grammar diagnostic for areas of improvement Compare diagnostic results to others’ in an open discussion forum Synthesize content-meaning through dialogic writing and shared semantics Background Reading for Students and Instructors Acts of reading and viewing visual texts are ongoing processes for attaining learning goals in dialogic, digital writing assignments. Below, I have listed a few foundational texts. You will no doubt have your own to enrich this list. Writer's Help 2.0 for Lunsford Handbooks: “Diagnostics” The St. Martin’s Handbook: “The Top Twenty” The Everyday Writer: Ch. 1, “The Top Twenty: A Quick Guide to Troubleshooting Your Writing” Writing in Action: Ch. 1, “The Top Twenty: A Quick Guide to Troubleshooting Your Writing” EasyWriter: “The Top Twenty”   Before Class: Student and Instructor Preparation My students and I run this writing assignment during the first week of the semester as a low-stakes icebreaker and departure point for semester-long evaluation. To prepare, I embed the Writer's Help link in our class LMS as a Newsfeed item; I also email students before the first day of class with the same link and an explanation of what we are going to do.   In Class and/or Out Students begin by posting and discussing their perceived Top 5 grammar issues in our course LMS. They then join our Writer's Help course and take the Diagnostic Pre-test. You can either have students complete the diagnostic in-class if you teach in a writing lab or have them complete the assignment on their own. I have tried both and have found better results when students work on this assignment outside of class. Since this assignment is low-stakes, I really only care about their authentic participation, however I can elicit it. After students receive their results (immediate), they write up a comparison of their top five grammar issues versus their perceived ones, then post them, along with a reflection, in our online discussion forum. They interact with classmates in the forum, seeking out connections and discussing why these issues exist. We re/group in our face-to-face class the next week and examine interesting conclusions together. Students keep their Top Fives at-hand as they work through informal and formal writing opportunities during the semester. They also take a post-test diagnostic at the end of the semester to measure their growth in their Top 5 errors.   Anecdotal Results This semester I have thirty students (two are non-native speakers), and the results showed many commonalities. The Top Five below represents elements of grammar reported by all students, in order of descending occurrence. Comma Usage Semicolons/apostrophes Pronouns Specific uses of Punctuation Sentence Structure/verbs Interestingly, #3 (pronouns) was the #1 mistake in 2015, when I last measured these grammar elements for this blog. Comma usage shows up #1 this time, and was missing in 2015 altogether. Students still report issues with verbs, semicolons, and specific uses of punctuation.   Do Students Appreciate It as Much as I Do? Every student I surveyed in an IRB-approved assessment of this assignment series reported that they learned more about their own specific grammar concerns by taking the diagnostic pre-test.  Accordingly, all of them thought their syntax-level grammar improved on the post-tests because they knew their specific concerns up-front.   Students further narrated their thoughts regarding the grammar diagnostic: "The Grammar Diagnostics helped me better understand where my grammatical problems lay. For the most part, everything made sense in understanding why a convention that I used was incorrect and what the better one was, but some of the questions in the diagnostic seemed a little questionable. The only other thing about the Diagnostic that I didn't like so much was that it was multiple choice driven, which does not reflect the actual grammatical process of writing a research paper or other scholarly activity."   "My only concern is that I wish it included a longer pool of observation in the questions. For instance, I don't think that three questions concerning comma usage is enough evidence to prove if I am skilled or not at using them. Also, there should be extensive explanation of 'why' I answered a question wrong and what would be the correct answer and 'why' that answer would be correct. I just wish it had deeper explanations attached to each wrong answer."   "I feel they help to identify errors I've made a habit of using/not using."   "I think the Grammar Diagnostics is a great tool and should be introduced earlier in a college course. There are so many grammar 'rules' you should have learned in high school, but never do." My Reflection For me, low-stakes writing means “no worry” opportunities, where students can write and discuss their rhetorical concerns openly, without fear of grading or making mistakes. This assignment is multimodal because students use real-time ed-tech to see a snapshot of their grammar issues and then participate in digital forums to connect with other students about the same concerns. “No Fear Gramm(r)” counts for me, in terms of multimodal composition, because it encourages students to reflect on their own writing practices and become active participants in community-driven, digital conversations about writing. Try the assignment and let me know what you think!   Do you have an idea for a Multimodal Mondays activity or post? Contact Leah Rang for a chance to be featured on Andrea's blog.   Jeanne Law Bohannon is an Assistant Professor of English in the College of Humanities and Social Sciences at Kennesaw State University. She believes in creating democratic learning spaces, where students become stakeholders in their own rhetorical growth though authentic engagement in class communities. Her research interests include evaluating digital literacies and critical engagement pedagogies; performing feminist rhetorical recoveries; and growing informed and empowered student scholars. Reach Jeanne at: jeanne_bohannon@kennesaw.edu and www.rhetoricmatters.org ... View more

Recently at a reading, writer Ira Sukrungruang asked the audience: Wouldn’t it be nice to start every day with a poem?   Yes, I thought, and realized I should be reading more in general—a poem, a story, or an essay every morning; that there are so many classic titles and contemporary writers alike I need to re-read, and to teach my students.   Here are some recommendations—of new works as well as classics—that should be read, revisited, and taught now. “Girl ” by Alexander Chee   In this essay first published in Guernica and reprinted in the Best American Essays 2016, Alexander Chee explores the power of makeup, his early fascination with it, and how wearing a mask can sometimes help you find yourself. Diving into his background, readers see that his investigation of self intersects with what it means to be a man, a woman, Asian American, and white, or “passing.”   “This beauty when I put on drag then,” Chee writes, “it is made up of these talisman of power, a balancing act of the self-hatreds of at least two cultures, an act I’ve engaged in my whole life, here on the fulcrum I make of my face. That night I find I want this beauty to last because it seems more powerful than any beauty I’ve had before. Being pretty like this is stronger than any drug I’ve tried.”   He continues.   “This power I feel tonight, I understand now—this is what it means when we say ‘queen.’”   Alexander Chee is a contemporary fiction writer and poet who spent his growing up in South Korea, Kauai, Truk, Guam, and Maine before attending the Iowa Writers’ Workshop.     Fahrenheit 451: The Authorized Adaptation by Ray Bradbury and Tim Hamilton   Many high school students are tasked with reading Ray Bradbury’s classic Fahrenheit 451 as part of their curriculum—a book about a 1953 dystopian future where books are banned and burned, where literature, where knowledge, is considered dangerous—but fewer people have read this stunning adaptation.   In this classic book turned graphic novel, thanks to the collaboration of Bradbury and Tim Hamilton, readers not only get to see Guy Montag’s destruction of beloved books in huge splash pages of orange and red fiery blooms (“Monday burn Millay, Wednesday Whitman, Friday Faulkner, burn ‘em to ashes then burn the ashes.”), but they are given a new introduction from Bradbury in which he writes:   “Finally, may I suggest that anyone reading this introduction should take the time to name the one book that he or she would most want to memorize and protect from any censors or ‘firemen.’ And not only name the book, but give the reasons why they would wish to memorize it and why it would be a valuable asset to be recited and remembered in the future.” “Letter from a Region in My Mind” by James Baldwin   James Baldwin was a classic essayist in the nonfiction canon who wrote about the complexities of race, sexuality, and class in America.   In “Letter from a Region in My Mind” from The New Yorker’s November 17, 1962 issue, he writes:   “When I was ten, and didn’t look, certainly, any older, two policemen amused themselves with me by frisking me, making comic (and terrifying) speculations concerning my ancestry and probable sexual prowess, and, for good measure, leaving me flat on my back in one of Harlem’s empty lots. Just before and then during the Second World War, many of my friends fled into the service, all to be changed there, and rarely for the better, many to be ruined, and many to die. Others fled to other states and cities—that is, to other ghettos. Some went on wine or whiskey or the needle, and are still on it. And others, like me, fled into the church.”   Baldwin writes vividly, conveying what it was like grow up in Harlem as a young black boy watching his peers change before him, watching how he, himself, changed too.   Important to note is that before his death in 1987, Baldwin was at work on a book titled Remember This House, which sought to memorialize the deaths of three of his close friends, Medgar Evers, Malcom X, and Martin Luther King Jr. The manuscript was only thirty pages long at the time of his death, and has now become the inspiration for filmmaker Raoul Peck’s documentary I am Not Your Negro, currently out in theaters. The documentary features interviews with Baldwin and Samuel L. Jackson’s narration of Baldwin’s notes: “In America, I was free only in battle.” “Despite My Efforts Even My Prayers Have Turned into Threats” and “Calling a Wolf a Wolf (Inpatient)” by Kaveh Akbar   In “Despite My Efforts Even My Prayers Have Turned into Threats,” the epistolary poem published in POETRY in November 2016, Kaveh Akbar writes to God:   “Will his goodness roll over to my tab and if yes, how soon?…”   In “Calling a Wolf a Wolf (Inpatient)” published in issue 17 of The Adroit Journal, Akbar writes: Akbar is quickly becoming a favorite contemporary with his wild images and sharp colloquialisms, and he’s being noted, also, for his stewardship of introducing new poets from the seven countries recently affected by Trump’s travel ban, some of whom include Khaled Mattawa (Libya), Ladan Osman (Somalia), Safia Elhillo (Sudan), and Majid Naficy (Iran).   Born in Tehran, Akbar has said “there is a part of Iran that is hardwired in me,” and this is evident in his rich poems that sprawl open on the page.     “How to Be a Real Indian” and “Fibonacci” by Kenzie Allen   “The first time someone asks you how Indian you are, lie.” Kenzie Allen writes in her poem, “How to Be a Real Indian” published in Narrative.   She continues:   Say you dream in Oneida at night, show-and-tell them rose rock and kachina, give them exactly what they ask for…”   In “Fibonacci,” she delivers cold and blunt lines:   “Remember when I loved you so much I would break things? I don’t love you like that anymore so you don’t need to call the cops…”   Kenzie Allen is a poet, editor, and literary activist completing her PhD in English and Creative Writing at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee as an Advanced Opportunity Fellow and Chancellor’s Award recipient, and a Teaching Assistant in American Indian Studies.     MAUS I, My Father Bleeds History by Art Spiegelman   Art Spiegelman delivers one of the most powerful graphic novels with MAUS I: My Father Bleeds History.   Spiegelman’s MAUS is a metanarrative that follows two storylines: one that investigates the relationship between Spiegelman and his father, Vladek, as he visits frequently for interviews and one that follows Vladek’s incredible story of surviving the Holocaust where, in this story, Jews are portrayed as mice and Germans as cats.   Readers can relate to the familial bonds and habits between parent and child and are shown a chilling inside story of what it was like to be a survivor of one of the most traumatic genocides the world has ever seen.   This account is an incredibly important and necessary story that depicts the unbelievable events of the Holocaust from a survivor’s perspective.     “Ordinary Girls” by Jaquira Díaz   In this Best American 2016 essay first published by the Kenyon Review, Jaquira Díaz writes of what it was like to grow up as a teenage girl in Miami Beach, Florida:   “We started talking about dying long before the first woman jumped. What our parents would do once we were gone. What Mr. Nuñez, the assistant principal at Nautilus Middle School, would say about us on the morning announcements, how many of our friends would cry right there on the spot. The songs they would dedicate to us on Power 96 so that all of Miami Beach could mourn us—Boyz II Men’s “It’s So Hard to Say Goodbye to Yesterday,” D.R.S.’s “Gangsta Lean.” Who would go to our funerals—boys who’d broken our hearts, boys whose hearts we’d broken.”   It’s her early meditation on death, on being young in dangerous situations, that makes her essay so compelling.   “Some girls took sleeping pills and then called 911, or slit their wrists the wrong way and waited to be found in the bathtub. But we didn’t want to be like those ordinary girls. We wanted to be throttled, mangled, thrown. We wanted the violence. We wanted something we could never come back from.”   Jaquira Díaz was born in Puerto Rico, raised in Miami Beach, and is the Kenyon Review fellow in Prose for the 2016-2018 year. She is undoubtedly one of the most influential voices molding the nonfiction landscape today.     While the list could go on and on, this is a useful starter pack for what to read and teach now—a brief list, at least, with which to start our mornings, and, possibly, on which to base our classes. ... View more

One of my former colleagues was angered recently when NBC Nightly News on March 1st announced its story about President Trump’s speech to the joint houses of Congress with a banner that read, “Rhetoric & Reality.” His response on Facebook: “No no no! I can’t stand this Platonic framing anymore. Rhetoric and Reality are not opposed! Rhetoric and reality are on the same side, and lying and falsehood are on the other!  Even a basic understanding of rhetoric could have saved our country from so much turmoil. However, when those on the side of lying and falsehood understand the power of rhetoric better than the average voter, rhetoric does become the enemy of reality and truth. The fact that the average voter was often getting his or her “news” via relatively new social media led to a victory of false rhetoric over the truth of the sort that has happened in the past only when other would-be dictators realized that shaking people’s faith in standard news media gave them the power to make people believe anything.   During the election, all of us saw things that we wanted to believe. Many of us did what has to be done when a claim is put forward: we looked to see what evidence there was behind that claim and what warrants it was based on. We looked at the source and the reliability of that source. Hopefully, we did this before we hit “share.” Politicians and supporters on all sides of the issues seem to understand the willingness of the American populace to hit “share” without questioning the source or the validity of the argument far better than most of us, even those of us educated in the field of rhetoric.   What does it take to shatter that belief in a single source of “truth”? The immediate future of our country depends on our ability to find an answer to that question. Those who believe that their single source of information are not willing to hear the arguments on the other side. They may be truly ignorant, but many of them are also willing know-nothings. Their faith in their “truth” is reinforced by one good speech that stays on track and sounds presidential. They can see and hear the support for the claims they want to believe, but opposing arguments are seen as only sour grapes because the other candidate didn’t win. One of the most frightening responses is the attempt, through bizarre unconstitutional legislation, to silence opposing voices. If they feel that campaign promises are being kept, they close their eyes to the effects of carrying out those promises. Three sources of hope: we can hope that some eyes will be opened to the truth when promises kept start to negatively impact those who wanted to believe in those promises—when the absence of illegal workers starts to affect agricultural businesses, when families lose their health care, when the next would-be shooter is able to buy a gun because there is no legal reason he can’t, in spite of his mental illness. We can hope that some eyes will be opened to the truth when promises are not kept —when the next terrorist is homegrown and not stopped by new immigration laws, when new pipelines are not built using American steel, when jobs are not saved. We can hope that truth will win out when there are indisputable facts proving collusion with our enemies, indisputable facts proving that power in our country can be bought and sold, indisputable facts proving that the American public has been lied to. True, those most willing to accept false reasoning have not yet been swayed by facts. The tipping point will come when enough of those in power and enough of those who hold the power of the vote over them listen to the voice of reason, listen to rhetoric in its finest form, and stand up for it. https://www.flickr.com/photos/tyrian123/1563378956/in/photostream/ Credit: View from the press seats by JoshBerglund19 on Flickr, used under a CC 2.0 License        ... View more

I’m a bit behind on my journal reading, but I finally got around to the December 2016 issue of CCC. It’s a good issue—with Joyce Carter’s powerful 2016 CCCC Chair’s address on “Making, Disrupting, Innovating”—but one article especially stood out to me: Jerry Won Lee and Christopher Jenks’s “Doing Translingual Dispositions.” This essay builds on Horner, Lu, Royster, and Trimbur’s “Language Difference in Writing: Toward a Translingual Approach” (College English, 2011, 303-21), which defines translingual disposition as one distinguished by “a general openness toward language and language differences.” Lee and Jenks go on to say This disposition allows individuals to move beyond preconceived, limited notions of standardness and correctness, and it therefore facilitates interactions involving different Englishes. Considering the historical marginalization of ‘nonstandard’ varieties and dialects of English in various social and institutional contexts, translingual dispositions are essential for all users of English in a globalized society, regardless of whether they are ‘native’ or ‘nonnative’ speakers of English. (319) I see the lively conversation around translingualism as one very positive outgrowth of the work done forty-five years ago by the group of scholars working on "Students’ Right to Their Own Language," first as a resolution and later as an NCTE publication, with full documentation. It’s worth remembering this resolution, voted on in 1972: We affirm the students' right to their own patterns and varieties of language -- the dialects of their nurture or whatever dialects in which they find their own identity and style. Language scholars long ago denied that the myth of a standard American dialect has any validity. The claim that any one dialect is unacceptable amounts to an attempt of one social group to exert its dominance over another. Such a claim leads to false advice for speakers and writers, and immoral advice for humans. A nation proud of its diverse heritage and its cultural and racial variety will preserve its heritage of dialects. We affirm strongly that teachers must have the experiences and training that will enable them to respect diversity and uphold the right of students to their own language. The last sentence in the resolution touches on what I have always thought of as “attitude,” that is, the attitude of teachers of English toward varieties of English as well as toward other languages. Often it’s easier to pass a resolution (though this one was vehemently oppose d by some members at the time) than it is to change attitudes. And in spite of this resolution and the research and scholarship that supported it, attitudes changed slowly: teachers of writing could and did talk the talk but didn’t yet come close to walking the walk. But we kept working at it: I can remember taking a cold, hard look at my syllabi, at the readings I chose, at my assignments, and noting the many many ways that attitudes regarding “proper” English were there inscribed. So I kept trying to make what I felt were my attitudes toward language variety (all upbeat and favorable) show forth more clearly in my classroom. And roughly twenty years ago, I wrote a new chapter for one of my reference books, on “Varieties of Language,” the first such chapter to appear in a composition handbook and one that argued for the validity of all varieties of English and of all languages.   So I’ve been thinking about these issues for most of my professional life, and I am encouraged by recent developments to recognize and nurture “translingual dispositions.” What I especially like about Lee and Jenks’s essay is that they see clearly that our field hasn’t yet worked out a strong pedagogy for teaching translingual dispositions, much less for teaching what Suresh Canagarajah and others call code meshing. But they persist in paving the way for such a pedagogy, showing that “even students who can be considered monolingual in the most traditional sense of the term have the capacities to develop translingual competence and do translingual disposition” by sharing research that demonstrates some students beginning to make the move toward such new dispositions.   Lee and Jenks are also clear-sighted about the role that teachers of writing must play in developing such dispositions: it won’t be enough for us to embrace this concept intellectually. Rather, as their title suggests, we have to DO translingual dispositions. I’d say that nearly fifty years on from the Students’ Right resolution, it’s time we take that step. And thanks to Lee and Jenks for moving us in the right direction. Credit: Pixaby Image 705667 by wilhei, used under a CC0 Public Domain License ... View more

One common response to the semiotic study of such popular media as film, television, and music is that "it's only entertainment."  If you use popular culture as a thematic topic in your composition classes, then you may have encountered something of the sort, which is why the general introduction to Signs of Life in the USA carefully describes the historical process by which America became an "entertainment culture," and why that means that entertainment in America is always meaningful.   And if anyone still wants to object that entertainment is only entertainment, I give you the 2017 Oscar Awards ceremony.   No, I'm not referring to the mistaken best-picture-announcement-heard-round- the-world (how could they have just stood around waiting for the poor producers of La La Land to complete their victory speeches before breaking in with the correct envelope?!); I'm referring to the expectation that, like the Golden Globes, the ceremony was going to be another skirmish in the ongoing war between Hollywood and Donald Trump.  And that expectation, largely due to the opening monologue by Jimmy Kimmel, was not disappointed.   With Kimmel openly taunting the president (indeed, daring him to live-tweet the event), one doesn't need to go through every joke to get the point.  Which is, that with Saturday Night Live taking the lead with regularly scheduled take-downs (and enjoying a "ratings roll" ever since the election), and major awards ceremonies becoming platforms for presidential critique, the entertainment industry is emerging as the foremost institution of political opposition in the country.  I don't think that I am exaggerating: how often do we hear anything like it from the opposition party in the Senate and the House?   But if the entertainment industry has successfully taken up the cudgels against the Trump administration, will that action be successful itself?  Here's where things get tricky.  There is a lyric from a Tom Lehrer tune spoofing the folk-song-led 1960s protest movement called "The Folk Song Army," which goes like this:   Remember the war against Franco? That's the kind where each of us belongs. Though he may have won all the battles, We had all the good songs.   There is no question that the entertainment industry has all of the good jokes (and speeches) when it comes to the anti-Trump resistance, but given that Trump's support comes from people who view Hollywood as a lot of out-of-touch elites, these jokes may only prompt them to dig in their heels (or "double down," as everyone seems to insist on saying these days) when it comes to their support for the president.  Indeed, a Washington Post report suggests that just this is happening, as 53% of those polled in a recent NBC News-Wall Street Journal national poll believe that "[T]he news media and other elites are exaggerating the problems with the Trump administration."   And "other elites," in American discourse, always include Hollywood.   Still, there is also the fact that entertainment is what Americans heed.  Donald Trump himself (as one of the new selections for the upcoming 9th edition of Signs of Life in the USA points out) used reality television as a springboard to the White House.  So perhaps the entertainment industry may indeed prove to be the most effective warrior in the anti-Trump opposition.    This takes us back to our original premise: in America, entertainment matters.  A lot.  And that's why we teach popular cultural semiotics.   ... View more

I suppose many of us are grappling with the significant changes to MLA citation in the organization’s eighth handbook.  I know I am.   Change happens, particularly as our technologies of publication continue to evolve rapidly in a digital age.  That’s one of the reasons that increasingly I don’t teach the mechanics of citation per se, but instead a meta approach to citing sources.  I tell my students that there are only 4 things they need to know about citation.           It exists. The most critical thing to know about citation is that it exists. That means that writers are responsible for acknowledging there sources.         If it’s not absolutely right, it’s wrong. Every little bit of a citation is critical, since these systems are designed to accurately document sources used. Getting citations perfectly correct is essential to the integrity of the work.        Know what you’re citing. I spend time talking about the kinds of sources that could be cited, as students often don’t know the differences between an anthology, an edited collection, a book, a journal article, a website, and more. Before any source can be cited, it’s important to know the kind of source it is.         Know how to find the answer. This step is crucial since it encourages a kind of meta-literacy. Citation systems change all the time, so making sure students learn the eighth edition MLA formatting is of limited use.  What’s more, only a fraction of the students in my courses will move into disciplines that use MLA.  It’s not at all important that they master the intricacies of MLA, but it is assuredly important that they master sets of tools that will help them find the correct answer.  In class, we discuss the range of tools they might use: a good handbook, a reliable web resource (including ones provided by our school’s library), and a spectrum of software tools that will help them construct a citation.   Encouraging citation literacy is my solution to the ever-changing nature of all citation systems.  I know that, personally, I often have to research and review how to do citations of even the most basic sources.  I share the strategies I use in the hopes that students will adopt similar ones. ... View more

This great assignment from Jennifer Parrott at Clayton State University connects critically literary skills with the social media that surrounds us.  For more great digital assignments for your literature classroom, see Tim Hetland's complete resource here. Writing on the Wall: Using Facebook's Timeline for Literary Analysis ... View more

I’m returning to the past—for this semester at least. Years ago now, as the First-Year Writing Program at NC State was in the midst of transitioning from a civic argument (first course) and study of literature approach (second course) to a WID-based model of writing instruction, our faculty grappled with ways to incorporate writing from a range of disciplinary communities into our courses, especially the second course. One of the ideas that emerged during that period of experimentation was to frame students’ experiences of literary texts with disciplinary arguments. We employed arguments from other disciplines, generally in the form of scholarly journal articles or book chapters, as lenses through which students could experience literary texts. This, we reasoned, was at least a way to have students engaged with writing from other disciplines in what was otherwise a course in the study of literature. Baby steps. The instructional approach of our writing program eventually underwent an entire overhaul, but I’ve maintained a unit on reading and writing in the humanities in my WID-based course. I’ve also held fast to the expectation that this unit would introduce students to the basics of knowledge construction in the fields of the humanities, emphasizing the value of close reading and interpretation as integral elements to meaning-making in the humanities. To that end, one of the major projects I routinely have students respond to asks them to construct an interpretation of an artistic text, generally a literary one. An Insider’s Guide to Academic Writing provides substantial support for such a project; Chapter 6 guides students through the process of crafting an interpretation of an artistic text while attending closely to rhetorical features conventionally associated with this frequently assigned genre. To offer my students opportunities to engage with and study more routinely writing that occurs in other disciplinary domains, I’m mixing things up this semester and returning to the past. Though I’m maintaining the expectation that students will compose an interpretation of an artistic text (Assignment Framing Interpretations of Artistic Texts)  as a major project in the unit, this time around I’m asking students to frame their interpretations with other disciplinary arguments, as we did years ago at my institution. This approach is explored in detail in Arguing through Literature (2004), by Judith Ferster, a former Director of our First-Year Writing Program. Here’s my plan to support this old/new approach to teaching the interpretation of an artistic text. I’m putting together some small readings clusters, or themed subunits. In each cluster, we’ll read two to three selected literary texts (though one or more of these could easily be substituted with other kinds of artistic texts). These artistic texts will be paired with a disciplinary text (scholarly journal article or book chapter) that, as a model for application, we can use to frame our exploration of the artistic texts themselves. Here’s a brief example of what one of these subunits looks like:    Reading Cluster A: War and Militarism Disciplinary Frame Eibl-eibesfeldt, Irenäus. “Warfare, Man’s Indoctrinability, and   Group Selection.” Ethos: International Journal of Behavioural   Biology, vol. 60, no. 3, 1982, pp. 177-198. doi: 10.1111/j.1439-   0310.1982.tb01079.x Artistic Text Tim O’Brien, “The Things They Carried” Artistic Text Luigi Pirandello, “War” Artistic Text Ernest Hemingway, “Soldier’s Home”   Based on my past experiences, students’ success with this approach depends a lot on guided practice. Such practice begins by helping them read, grapple with, and understand the disciplinary frame. Once they have a solid grasp of the frame, then they are typically able to read the artistic text through the lens of the disciplinary frame with success. Although I provide examples of frame texts, and we practice the application of disciplinary frames to their interpretation of various literary texts in my reading clusters, my students will ultimately find their own frame text and create an original interpretation of their chosen artistic text in light of their understanding of the disciplinary argument. I see a number of advantages to returning to this approach from my past. First, it provides another opportunity for students to interact with authentic disciplinary arguments, potentially from a wide range of academic fields. Secondly, this approach fosters originality in students’ interpretations. Since students must locate their own disciplinary frames, their interpretations are necessarily original. Most likely, no one else has ever before applied the same frame to their target artistic text. Additionally, there’s a flexibility that allows space for students’ own areas of interest to guide their interpretations; as a result, the students themselves may be more invested in the project overall. I’d be interested to hear what you think of this approach. Are your students writing interpretations of artistic texts? What challenges do you/they face? What do you think of using disciplinary arguments as interpretive frame texts? ... View more

Like many of you, I've been thinking a lot lately about how best to work with students in a "post-fact" world. We all understand the problem--students being inundated with misinformation, falsehoods, outright lies, "alternative facts," and, of course, genuine news and factual statements. But how to tell one from another? Recent research by the Pew Foundation and others suggests that, in fact, such acts of careful discrimination between fact and fiction are quite difficult, to say the very least.   In my own work on argument, I have long stressed the crucial importance of listening (many thanks to Krista Ratcliffe’s work) and of fully acknowledging those with whom you are arguing. I stress rhetorical listening—that is, listening from the other person’s point of view, listening with as open a mind as possible, and trying to truly hear what the other person is saying. Today, these abilities seem not simply important but the very sine qua non of conversation that can move forward, rather than stalling in a dead heat of rancor and anger.   I’ve also been collecting ideas from others, and it's been encouraging to hear so many teachers of writing sharing their strategies and assignments. We are a group grounded in action, not just talk.   As usual, I get a lot of inspiration from postings to the WPA list and often I’m struck by the humorous approach to argument I find there: it’s often a very useful strategy. Recently I read a post from Mark Marino the description of his assignment(s) on writing “fake news,” a term much in the news today. As Mark puts it, he takes a “slightly unorthodox” approach in a three-week course called “How to Write and Read Fake News: Journalism in the Age of Trump”: As a college composition instructor (at USC), I've been fascinated/infuriated/provoked by both the circulation of fake news (the non-satirical kind) and the weaponization of the term "fake news" by the President largely to delegitimize the professional press as a form of censorship/censorship. This course marks my attempt to respond.   Although the course was satirical in tone and highly performative in delivery, the course had a real reading list, lessons, and assignments. You can find Mark’s syllabus (he calls it a “sillybus”) online. Mark also wrote an explanation of the project at Slingshot.   I especially enjoyed hearing about student response and about the kinds of topics they chose to write “fake news” about, and I enjoyed the light touch, the smile just-barely there. And I was very impressed with the students’ ability to analyze their own “fakes” and Mark’s attempts to move that analytic ability onto other “fakes” on the Web.   So that’s one posting that caught my eye in the last couple of weeks. For another—as Monty Python used to say—“now for something completely different.” I wonder if you have read about or seen Daryl Davis, the African American musician who has made it his practice to meet and befriend members of the Ku Klux Klan and who wrote about it in Klan-destine Relationships: A Black Man’s Odyssey in the KKK. I first ran across a mention of Davis on PBS and was thunderstruck at the very idea: as a child born and raised in the deeply segregated south, I had a recurring nightmare about the KKK throughout my childhood and youth. While I never saw anyone in robes or hoods, so powerful and frightening were the images that I woke screaming at the dream of those hoods and torches. Could I, I wonder, meet and talk in a friendly way with a member?   After watching the film on Davis, called Accidental Courtesy: Daryl Davis and Race in America, perhaps I could—because Davis is the very embodiment of what Krista Ratcliffe calls rhetorical listening. He meets and befriends members of the KKK; he invites them to his home; he sits and listens, saying “I did not respect what he said, but I respects his right to say it.” And sometimes (in fact, to hear him tell it, fairly often) it works: the two very unlike people become friends, and in some cases the KKK member renounces his or her dedication to a “race war.” Here are a couple of tips from Davis, from a posting by Conor Friedersdorf (he’s a conservative editorialist) for The Atlantic, that reverberate strongly with me:   Please do… “Look for commonalities. You can find something in five minutes—even with your worst enemy. And build on those. Say I don’t like you because you’re white and I’m black. You disgust me. . . . And so our contention is based upon our races. But you’re like ‘how do you feel about all these drugs on the street, and all these meth labs that are popping up?’ And I say, I think the law needs to crack down on things that people can get addicted to very easily and it's destroying our society. So you say, ‘Well yeah, I agree 100 percent.’ You might even tell me your son started dabbling in drugs. They don't discriminate. So now I see that you want what I want, that drugs are affecting your family the same way they affect my family, so now we're in agreement. So let's focus on that. As we focus more and more and find more things in common, things we have in contrast, such as skin color, matter less and less.” Please don’t: “. . . become condescending. Don’t become insulting. You’re going to hear things that you don’t like. You’re going to hear things you know are absolutely wrong. . . . You will also hear things that are opinions put out as facts. ‘There are more black people on welfare than white people.’ Well, that’s not true. And you should counter that and correct that. But don't do it in a manner that is insulting or condescending because you know they're wrong, and you're going to beat them over the head for being wrong. Show them the data, or tell them you'll get it, or if they really believe it, say, I know you're wrong, but if you think you're right then bring me the data.”   On the PBS page for Accidental Courtesy, readers are asked “Do you think Daryl's strategy of befriending KKK members to change the way they view people of color is the right approach?" Here are two of many responses:   Timothy Zaal Work Related It is imperative! As a former racist myself, had I not had the opportunity to step out of my comfort zone/isolated social network, those who I dehumanized through fear & Far Right propaganda, would have remained less than human & worthy of extinction. However, I was shown compassion by my perceived enemy. I would not have successfully disengaged from the far right & lived to tell about it without exposure beyond my social network. Respect = Change  T. Zaal Yassir I think Daryl sees the humanity in all people including those with reprehensible racist beliefs. His willingness to engage with the 'other' shows that through dialogue, and mutual respect, people can change. He shows that when we dehumanize those that dehumanize us we are all diminished. In the polarized political climate we live in, this offers a glimmer of hope, because neither retreating to our corners nor lashing out in anger, is an option anymore. While the discussion between Daryl and BLM leaders seems to expose a rift in approaches, differences based in personal life experiences and philosophies, this is nothing new in any civil rights movement; and this was just one 'made for camera' moment that is not a definitive statement on where things stand. I get where the BLM leaders are coming from and I get what Daryl is trying to do. I believe the movement to reform or diminish white supremacy will take a multitude of approaches and requires people of all ethnicities, including white people, to work together- and we make to stop making each other wrong.   The film Accidental Courtesy is widely available online. I can imagine watching either all or part of it with students and then asking them to respond to that same question. Doing so might take us a long way toward getting over the need to “make each other wrong.” Listen. And listen hard. And listen again.   Credit: Pixaby Image 1903774 by pixel2013, used under a CC0 Public Domain License ... View more

I have been writing about implementing a writing-about-writing (WAW) approach to first-year composition in a community college. In the last post, Writing about Writing in the Community College: Workshop Assignments, I described a sequence of “workshop assignments” designed to encourage careful reading and synthesis of sources. I’d like to share two examples of workshop texts written by my students (with their permission). The following unedited paragraph was composed by a student from West Africa.  For the assignment, I asked students to craft a definition of academic discourse—or to argue whether or not it is really a “thing” that we can define. We can state that academic discourse is not just “a thing,” it is “many things.” Even if Downs and Wardle say that there isn’t an universal academic discourse, this doesn’t mean that there is no academic discourse. I think, there is many academic discourses. Each discourse is represented by a discipline, which has specific rules. For example, biologists will name each living organisms with two words, whose the first represent the genus of that organism, and the second the specie. However, those academic discourse share some common principles; For example, abstract, introduction, conclusion are some common concepts in all those disciplines, and basically have the same meaning; Work cited list is also a common concept between them, but with some differences depending on which type (APA, MLA etc) each discipline is using. Students in their daily routine have to experience those writing rules which sometimes look similar, but must of the time, students have to remind theirself in which discipline they are writing, and adjust their brain to follow the particular rule of that discipline; In the end, as K. R. think in her Workshop, student’s papers have to meet certain standard to be accepted by their teachers (Workshop 2, paragraph 2). I think, those standards which teachers are expecting their students to meet are what define each academic discourse. I suspect a few fellow teachers might be looking for a red pen to correct the obvious language issues that this student faces. However, I am more interested here in what he accomplishes in this one paragraph: he makes a claim about academic discourse, connects that claim to the article by Douglas Downs and Elizabeth Wardle, provides an example from his own experience in the sciences, and finally draws a conclusion that incorporates a comment from his classmate (K.R.). He is building skills that will carry into his next major assignment—the construction of a literature review for his research project on West African pidgins. Another student, also with a non-English background, at first accepted the common view of an academic discourse which underlies all college reading and writing assignments. She assumed that students who are in college must be using this basic “academic discourse” in order to function with any measure of success. The following unedited paragraph is expansion and revision of her original piece: Previously, I explained that in my opinion academic discourse is this unique knowledge that students take from college, like learning to read critically, understand complex concepts and incorporating these ideas in their own writing. But after reading the article, “Writing from Sources, Writing from Sentence” by Rebecca Moore Howard, Tricia Serviss, and Tanya K. Rodrigue, I look at academic discourse differently. The findings from their research are showing that students are using mostly patchwriting, paraphrasing, summarizing, and one ‘good’ sentence to build their papers rather than understanding the whole concept of their source (188). In other words, their findings are setting up a counter argument with what I said previously, about academic discourse. Moreover, according to Dr. Howard’s data, students are not only using most of their information from sources, but they are using most of their information from the first pages, which is showing that student don’t read their sources, and therefor they don’t get the whole concept their source. Overall, I think that Howard, Serviss, and Rodrigue findings are showing that most of the students are not interested in their reading and writing classes, and they learn how to be crafty in order to pass their classes not to learn something that they can use later in life. Again, if we look past the language issues, we see the student’s critical thinking: she revisited her original conclusion by considering an additional article (along with some data from a PowerPoint which Rebecca Moore Howard shared at a workshop at my college a few years ago). The cynicism implied in her conclusion here is probably not warranted, but I suspect her position will be refined further as she continues to read and conduct her own research for the class project.  These pieces are not polished or perfect, but they suggest an authentic engagement in conversations about writing. The paragraphs illustrate key points from Downs and Wardle’s seminal article on writing about writing, “Teaching about Writing, Righting Misconceptions: (Re)envisioning ‘First-Year Composition’ as ‘Introduction to Writing Studies’”: students in a WAW course may “produce imperfect work,” given the time constraints of the course (575). But at the same time, these students’ close reading abilities, confidence, awareness of writing contexts, and understanding of the conversational nature of academic research have increased, similar to the benefits highlighted by Downs and Wardle (572-573). I am looking forward to their independent research projects. Want to offer feedback, comments, and suggestions on this post? Join the Macmillan Community to get involved (it’s free, quick, and easy)! ... View more

Part of my work as Associate Dean for the college involves overseeing Student Academic Services, our advising office.  I meet regularly with Laura Mooney, the Director, to discuss issues and plan new initiatives.  Lately, we’ve been thinking about grit. Grit is an emerging approach to predicting and promoting student retention and success, and given that retention is a key metric in our state’s performance funding model, we’re very interested in exploring strategies that help our students stay in school and succeed.   “Grit” is defined in this context as “perseverance and passion for long term goals.”  Essentially, it’s a stick-to-it-ness that enables some students to push through challenges towards success. On the advising side, Laura is training her team to identify and recognize grit in students while also encourage that quality in her advising team, but I have started wondering how this same concept might be applied to the writing classroom.   Certainly, in my experience, grit is needed.  Across my teaching career I’ve found that the primary reason I fail students is because they stop showing up to class.  The challenge has always been figuring out what to do about that since reaching them after they have disappeared is a challenge in itself (they don’t tend to be super responsive to emails once they’ve made the decision to disappear).  I can’t say if students leave my classroom because the work is too challenging or too boring or if there are simply serious life issues that prevent them from achieving academic success.  But perhaps if I can find ways to promote grit from day one I might prevent some of these problems before they start.   I imagine I would start by discussing the concept from the first day and I might even try a grit assessment.  Then I would help them situate the work of the first year writing class in the context of goals that matter to them, helping them understand how success in the class will help them move towards their goals.  I might try early interventions the moment I see someone discouraged, interventions designed to promote greater tenacity.  And I would acknowledge and reward perseverance in the course. There are some additional recommendations in a draft report from the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Educational Technology.   Have any of you tried tracking and nurturing grit in your classes? I’d be curious to hear what’s worked and what hasn’t. ... View more

There’s a lot of news out there now about fake news.  I think the topic offers a wonderful opportunity for the writing classroom, particular for any class that involves research.  Not only can students learn how to do rigorous research, but they also can learn how to spot a fake story on Facebook or Twitter.   I would probably start such an activity by bringing in some fake news posts.  BuzzFeed has a nice collection, or you might also try the archive at Snopes.  As a class, students can analyze these stories and look for clues that indicate they’re fake.  FactCheck.org has a great article on how to spot fake news and NPR has a good introduction to the topic as well.   The class as a whole can develop a guide for finding fake news and then students can bring in other examples, explaining how they used the guide to locate the fake articles.  As they move into research, the class can invert the fake news guide to create a guide for finding solid and reliable sources.   Given the suspected impact those fake news stories had in recent events, I think this is a great exercise and a great way to think about research.  Hope you give it a try. ... View more

Roy Stamper's handout for Writing in the Humanities: Close Reading and Interpretation of an Artistic Text. See https://community.macmillan.com/community/the-english-community/bedford-bits/blog/2017/03/03/returning-to-the-past-approaching-literature-through-the-disciplines  ... View more

In Alice in Wonderland, Alice and Humpty Dumpty have a conversation about words:  “’When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, `it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.’ `The question is,’ said Alice, `whether you can make words mean so many different things.’ `The question is,’ said Humpty Dumpty, `which is to be master – – that’s all.’” Danielle Kurtzleben recently wrote an excellent article for NPR about how President Trump has mastered the term “fake news,” making it mean what he wants it to mean, and thus demonstrating his disturbing power. Trump has changed the meaning of the term from even a few months ago, when it still meant news that was presented as truth but that was false. Now when Trump uses the term, he is referring to any unfavorable news coverage. Kurtzleben writes, “The ability to reshape language—even a little—is an awesome power to have. According to language experts on both sides of the aisle, the rebranding of fake news could be a genuine threat to democracy.”   Could something seemingly so simple actually pose a threat to democracy? After all, can’t people see through what Trump is doing? Therein lies the rub. Trump has tweeted the term “fake news” fifteen times in February and used it seven times in his February 16 th news conference. In one tweet he stated that “any negative polls are fake news.”  Kurtzleben quotes Berkeley linguist George Lakoff, who explains, ”A fake does not have the primary function, but is intended to deceive you into thinking that it does have that function, and hence to serve the secondary function. A fake gun won’t shoot, but if you are deceived into thinking it is real, it can intimidate you.”  Kurtzleben adds, “By Lakoff’s logic, putting most modifiers in front of the word news—good, bad, unbiased, liberal, conservative—still implies that the news is still somehow news. It is in some way tied to that main purpose, of being tethered to reality, with the intention of informing the public.” Trump’s use of the word “fake” means something different. It  implies that “the story is intended to serve something other than the public good, and that the author intended to falsify the story.” When people believe that—as some Trump supporters apparently do—the function of truth in a democracy is undermined. If people are convinced that the news media are not to be believed, how do you make them see the truth? Trump has proved himself a master at making his supporters believe that what he says is the truth, and facts be damned. Kellyanne Conway was ridiculed for coining the phrase “alternative facts,” but so far Trump has succeeded in building a campaign and now a presidency on just such alternative facts. It is amazing to notice how many headlines from a variety of news sources openly refer to Trump’s lies. It was noteworthy recently when he did tell the truth about the crime rate in Chicago. After his February 16 th news conference, even commentators on Trump-friendly Fox News were dumbfounded by what they had heard. When will people who believe Trump when he says not to believe the media see the truth? Perhaps only when what he says is contradicted by what they see in their own lives. It may not matter, to them, that Trump misrepresented how his number of electoral votes compares to the number gained by other recent presidents. It may not matter how he ranked in his college class. It may not matter that he referred to a terrorist attack in Sweden that never happened. After all, ICE is rounding up illegal aliens and trying, against the opinion of the courts, to block terrorists from entering the country. He is purging key federal departments of those who ran them under Obama. He is reversing policies set by Obama and making America great again. Kurtzleben cites George Saunders and his theory that America is now divided between LeftLand and RightLand. The fact that different Americans can see the Trump presidency so differently reinforces Saunders’s contention that these two countries within a country “draw upon non-intersecting data sets and access entirely different mythological systems.” In fact, they inhabit increasingly different realities.   Credit: Fake News AVI by Nikko on Flickr, used under a CC 2.0 license ... View more

This blog was originally posted on November 6, 2014.   I can still remember where I was when I opened my copy of College Composition and Communication (the May 1977 issue) and turned to Janet Emig’s “Writing as a Mode of Learning.” I had recently submitted my dissertation and was in that grad student’s limbo, waking every morning with the panicky thought that “I’ve GOT to finish my dissertation” only to realize that I had, indeed, done so, and preparing to move from the university that had been my home for five years to a new and scary “first Ph.D. job” in Vancouver, Canada. I was sitting on the floor in my tiny bedroom in Columbus, Ohio, where I had written a lot of the dissertation, and I’d taken a break from sorting through stacks of sources and files to read the new CCC.   I read Emig’s article straight through twice before putting it down. I knew her work, of course, and respected it (and her) enormously, but I knew when I read this essay that I was learning to think in a new way about writing. Indeed, at that time, Emig taught many of us to think about writing in a new way.   I am still grateful for all of Emig’s work, and particularly for this piece, so I recently went back to take another look at it. It is much as I remember: clear, straightforward, bold in its claims, scrupulous in its presentation of evidence in support of those claims. And while Emig is careful not to essentialize either writing OR speaking, she is very clear on the differences between them and on the importance of teachers of writing recognizing those differences. Here are the ones she outlined almost forty years ago:         (1) Writing is learned behavior; talking is natural, even irrepressible, behavior.       (2) Writing then is an artificial process; talking is not.       (3) Writing is a technological device, not the wheel, but early enough to qualify as primary technology; talking is organic,             natural, earlier.       (4) Most writing is slower than most talking.       (5) Writing is stark, barren, even naked as a medium; talking is rich, luxuriant, inherently redundant.       (6) Talk leans on the environment; writing must provide its own context.       (7) With writing, the audience is usually absent; with talking, the listener is usually present.       (8) Writing usually results in a visible graphic product; talking usually does not.       (9) Perhaps because there is a product involved, writing tends to be a more responsible and committed act than talking.       (10) It can even be said that throughout history, an aura, an ambience, a mystique has usually encircled the written             word; the spoken word has for the most part proved ephemeral and treated mundanely.       (11) Because writing is often our representation of the world made visible, embodying both process and product, writing             is more readily a form and source of learning than talking. Janet Emig, “Writing as a Mode of Learning,” CCC 28.2 (1977): 122-28.   In the full article, Emig nuances many of these points, but what interests me today in re-reading her work is how changes in technology and especially the rise of “new” media practically beg for us to reconsider these distinctions. While I could talk about each one of the distinctions Emig raises, I’ll concentrate here on four of them: 5, 7, 8, and 9.   “Writing is stark, barren, even naked as a medium; talking is rich, luxuriant, inherently redundant” gives me special pause. Today, with so much multimodal writing that is full of sound, still and moving images, color (and more), the medium of writing seems far from stark or barren—and so more rich and luxuriant than it was in 1977. Talk still seems to me to have those qualities along with inherent redundancy. But writing today is also redundant: we have only to think of retweets to see just how much so.   “With writing, the audience is usually absent; with talking, the listener is usually present.” This is a distinction Walter Ong makes as well, but today I would say—yes and no. Audiences for writing are virtually present and often immediately so, while with talking an audience can be as present as the person next to you, or as distant as listeners to radio or a podcast. In fact, the whole concept of audience is in flux today, as we try to think not only of the “audience addressed” and “audience invoked” that Lisa Ede and I described decades ago, but of the vast unknown audiences that may receive our messages and the ways we can best conceptualize and understand them. Audiences today, it seems, are both present and absent.   “Writing usually results in a visible graphic product; talking usually does not” likewise raises a number of questions. Writing online certainly results in a visible product, but it is digital, not graphic; talking, on the other hand, is often made visible through transcripts or text that accompanies the talk.   “Perhaps because there is a product involved, writing tends to be a more responsible and committed act than talking” strikes me as perhaps the most problematic of the points Emig makes. As noted above, talking now often results in “products” and would therefore seem to have the same opportunity to be “responsible and committed.” But writing—especially on social media sites and other online discourses but also in a lot of print journalism—now seems decidedly irresponsible. You may have heard the story earlier this year about a California teacher who caused an uproar for remarks she made about students on Twitter (“I already wanna stab some kids” for example), remarks she claims were not meant seriously at all. Is it because they are “visible” that she has been taken to task for them? Would it have made a difference if she had voiced the remarks in public? Are these remarks “written” or “spoken”?   Re-reading Emig’s seminal article raises these and other questions for teachers of writing today, questions that many are attempting to answer (see, e.g., Cindy Selfe’s wonderful essay on aurality and the need for attention to it—“The Movement of Air, the Breath of Meaning: Aurality and Multimodal Composing” in the CCC June 2009). As always, I want to engage students in discussing and debating these questions. So I’m planning to ask students I regularly correspond with to write to me about their current understandings of the differences, and similarities, between speaking and writing. I wish others would do the same, so we could compare notes.   Credit: Pixaby Image 620817 by FirmBee, used under a CC0 Public Domain License ... View more