Recently, I visited a second-year writing class (Stanford’s Program in Writing and Rhetoric 2), where students were in a class on “A Rebel with a Cause” and, on this day, reading and analyzing Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s dissent in a case related to 4 th Amendment rights. The students were quick to note (and praise) Sotomayor’s writing: “Wow, I can actually understand what she is saying,” and “She is speaking directly and clearly to me, not just to legal experts,” and “I am so impressed with how she uses everyday analogies to help us understand her points,” and “At first I sided with the majority, but she was so clear and compelling that I changed my mind.” They noted, too, how skillfully Sotomayor built her credibility and ethos, through careful and consistent citations and through reminding the audience, subtly, that she has long personal experience in the area under consideration. This discussion led to further analysis of how clearly Sotomayor introduces her dissent, how she captures and holds attention and states her major points. Then the students were challenged to brainstorm the first 30 seconds of an orally presented research proposal (the research project will be the main work of the term, which is now in its second week). They had about eight minutes to do this task and went to work with a will, keyboarding and talking and jotting down notes seemingly all at once. When they were through, I expected the instructor to ask them to share with the rest of the class. Instead, she first pulled up a video of a graduate student’s introduction to a research proposal. The student clearly had a plan for research, but the delivery was rapid fire and hard to follow, so the class stopped to analyze this effort. After looking at what went not-so-well in the videoe presentation, the instructor sent students out of the classroom with their smart phones, asking each of them to record the draft 30-second introductions they had written. Nervous laughter. And then a lot of action. When they had their recordings, the instructor introduced them to the idea of an “earprompter,” something you may already be familiar with, but the students were not. Asking them to hook an earpiece up to their phones, she then directed them to present their introductions: they hear their own voices through the earpiece and repeat what they are hearing, with a couple of seconds delay. If you watch this YouTube video on how to “build” an earprompter, you’ll see that the person presents use of the earprompter as a way to avoid having to memorize or learn a presentation by heart. But that’s not how the instructor in this class used it. Rather, as the students experimented with their presentations aided by earprompters, they discovered that they were speaking much too quickly (or in one case much too slowly), that they were stumbling over words, cutting off phrases, and skimming over words that should be lingered over or emphasized. Their assignment: keep experimenting with their homemade earprompters, listening to themselves, practicing with one another, and working on their pace, modulation, and tone. The students seemed delighted with this new tool for improving presentations, and I’m invited back to see how it will work for them in a week or so. In the meantime, I’m doing some investigating of commercial earprompters—and I’d love to hear from anyone who is using these in their own classrooms. [Photo: Your gadgets by Serge Seva on Flickr] ... View more

In my last post, I talked about the oral workshop in the creative writing classroom, drawing from my conversations with my colleagues in creative writing here at FAU, Papatya Bucak and Becka McKay.  But both of them also use an out-of-class written critique to complement the oral workshop.  In this post, I want to share some insights about that element of peer critique in creative writing.   The first thing that strikes me about Becka and Papatya’s instructions on commenting is the level of personal investment, something I struggle to ignite in the FYC classroom (a topic that I will discuss in detail in the next post).  Given that struggle I took special note of the small ways in which both of them encourage students to care about each other’s writing.   For example, both Becka and Papatya ask students to sign their written comments, a practice I’ve never tried in the writing classroom and one that I think I will, as it makes the process more personal and conversational between the students.  Asking students to sign feels like a small move, but I am betting it will reap some interesting rewards in the FYC classroom, particularly in terms of investment when it comes to both writing and commenting on writing.   Another practice I noticed in the handouts they give students is a direct encouragement to students to not only do their best, but also to be their best.  In referencing commenting on manuscripts, Becka’s handout states: “I am always very disappointed when students do very little commenting on each other’s poems. Be the person who does better.”  Papatya’s handout does something similar: “Don’t be the person who hands the writer an unmarked manuscript.”  Implicit in these evocations to be better is not only an invitation to be the best student / person / commenter but an understanding that students can be the best student / person / commenter.  It’s an affirmation of the students’ potential that I think I might find useful in the FYC classroom.   Both also use what I might consider a “sandwich” type approach; I use something similar when I comment on papers and I often incorporate it into many of my peer revision worksheets.  This much, at least, we share across our disciplines.  The “sandwich” in their handouts consists of praise or neutral comments first then subjective comments second; my “sandwiches” are similar, consisting of praise and then critique and then a final slice of praise. Becka’s handout also makes clear why we use this order: “the neutral comments should come first and the criticism should come last—writers receive information better that way.”  Papatya adds a great insight that I think I will incorporate: “Since we are reading in-progress manuscripts, they should be treated as such—that means delicately and respectfully, but also critically.”   It’s wonderful to see these common elements of peer commenting across disciplines and also to see the small moves both of my colleagues make to remind students that they are capable of great commenting, and thus also expected to provide great commenting.  Both of them read student comments to hold them accountable and to offer feedback on commenting, a practice I often do as well.   I love one instruction that Becka included, which I will definitely steal: “It’s fun to read other people’s writing.  Don’t forget that.” Indeed.  I am delighted to remind students that even FYC can be fun.  And I shall duly so so.   In the next post, I will turn to some of the challenges I discussed with my colleagues but, in the meantime, if you have insights to share on what I’ve posted here, comment away! ... View more

Since students in my course are choosing their own projects, every student is on a different schedule at this point. Some are working toward the midterm. Some are working on the Genre Analysis Report. Some are working on open projects. Because they are all working at their own pace, it’s not possible to set up peer review activities for the projects. There’s no way to guess who will have a draft ready when. From this point on, then, I have asked students to work in online writing groups to share whatever they have and provide accountability for one another. To keep these groups organized, I set up a general schedule with expectations for each student to post several times in the course forums each week. In face-to-face classes, I ask students to create their own guidelines and schedules, but my experience with these online students is that they need more definite structures. Without spaced-out expectations to post and return to reply, they frequently wait too long to engage in conversations with their classmates. I set up the schedule below, but I did indicate that groups can adjust this schedule as necessary: By 11:59 PM on You should Wednesday Check the previous week’s discussion to make sure all questions have been answered. Post details in the current week’s discussion on where you are on your projects, even if you haven’t made much progress. See details below. Include any questions, challenges you need help with, or drafts that you have at that point. Friday Read and reply to the messages that have been posted. See details below. Add peer review comments on any drafts that have been posted. Make any requests for additional information (e.g., if a reply leaves you with a question), Monday Check out everything that has been posted. Add any additional replies or requests for more information.   Writing Group Wednesday Activities Here are some things you might share with one by Wednesday in your weekly discussion: Status/progress reports on what you are doing/have done since last Wednesday.  (Check Markel, Practical Strategies for Technical Communication, Chapter 12 for help with status and progress reports. Your updates can be informal.) Rough drafts of your projects. Revisions of your projects. Small chunks of your projects, if you want feedback on something very specific. Success stories. Challenges you encounter. Questions that you have about your projects.   Writing Group Friday Activities After sharing, you can reply by Friday with any of the following: Provide supportive feedback and advice, like that shown in the No One Writes Alone video. Work together to solve any challenges or answer any questions. Collaborate on projects (be sure to credit your helpers if someone provides significant input). Plan for future discussions.   Final Thoughts This week will be our first time to try out the writing groups. I'm excited about the possibilities for these groups. It's a strategy that I am looking forward to developing and using again next term. I will report on how it works. If you have any suggestions, please let me know. I can always use advice.    Credit: by Daria / epicantus, on Flickr, used under a CC-BY license ... View more

Can offensive language sabotage a whole election? It would be an understatement to say that language has played a critical role in the presidential campaign recently. Parents had to rethink letting their children watch the second presidential debate—educational value aside—because language that most parents never want their children to hear was at the heart of a controversy about whether a man who used such language is fit to be president. The candidates avoided using specific offensive words during the debate, but the conversation still had the potential to raise questions that parents would be uncomfortable discussing, and on CNN at least, a single offensive word was not bleeped out, and the audience heard it over and over and over throughout the day and night. It immediately became the basis of jokes, memes, and late-night monologues. Donald Trump dismissed the sexual language both on- and off-stage as mere “locker room banter.” Those who withdrew their support for his campaign saw it differently, calling it a verbal description of sexual assault. Anderson Cooper, one of the debate moderators, bluntly clarified what Trump had said on tape and what it meant: “You described kissing women without consent, grabbing their genitals. That is sexual assault. You bragged that you have sexually assaulted women. Do you understand that?” Two commentators on CNN later got into a heated argument when Trump spokeswoman Scottie Nell Hughes asked Republican spokeswoman Ana Navarro not to use Trump’s word because her young daughter was watching—this in spite of the fact that the tape of Trump using the word had been played repeatedly. A number of people on social media and elsewhere have pointed out that the one word that did not describe their reaction to the Trump tape was “surprise.” Trump has made a habit of using derogatory terms to describe women, immigrants, POWs, and racial and ethnic groups, and being the Republican nominee for president has not slowed him down much. His hours of “locker room banter” with Howard Stern took place over seventeen years. In response to the recently released tape, he presents himself as superior to Bill Clinton because where he only used words against women, Clinton acted. Hillary Clinton was guilty of using offensive language when she labeled half of Trump’s supporters a “basket of deplorables,” a phrase that has come back to haunt her over and over again. In the second debate, Trump attacked her for being unwilling to use the words “radical Islamic terrorists,” pointing out, “To solve a problem, you have to be able to state what the problem is or at least, say the name. She won’t say the name. . . . And before you solve it, you have to say the name.” There may have been more acrimonious presidential campaigns in the past, but there has never been one more carefully documented or one that has spawned so much discussion on social media. Words take on a life of their own as they get recorded and shared in ever-expanding ripples. The written and digitalized record of this campaign is not one that any of us as Americans can be proud of. Credit:  Stockicide, by stock78, on Flickr, used under a CC-BY 2.0 license ... View more

In the last post, I discussed our “Be Interested” assignment and I argued for the value of giving assignments titles. So, what comes after an assignment entitled, “Be Interested”? “Be Interesting!”   This particular sequence emerged in a class Ann and I were team-teaching to work out the ideas in Habits of the Creative Mind. We’ve both had the not uncommon experience of thinking things were going well in a writing class because of the quality and tone of the class discussions and then finding ourselves with a stack of boring papers written on auto-pilot. With this assignment, we hoped to accomplish two things:   To establish that you can’t be interesting, if you’re not yourself interested. To initiate a discussion of what “being interesting” looks like on the page.   Here’s the assignment:   Engaging with the sources you’ve found, use your writing to show your mind at work on the question, problem, or mystery that has emerged from your encounter with your sources. Begin with your interests and then be interesting: use your writing to create an experience for your readers that is designed to generate interest in what you’ve discovered. We invite you to use any of our common readings as a model of how to move from being interested in a given question to creating writing that makes that question interesting to others. This assignment generates in its wake further discussions about whether it really is possible to determine if a writer is interested or a work is interesting. And this is exactly as it should be: for our students to succeed in producing writing that is interesting to others, they need to spend time thinking in concrete terms about what interesting writing does.   An example will help to clarify what we value in interested and interesting student writing.   Let’s look at the first page of a breakthrough piece of writing by Donald, a sophomore communications major. Donald switched topics between the “Be Interested” and “Be Interesting” assignments because, in the act of completing the first assignment, he found that he wasn’t actually interested in what he had chosen to write about. (We view this as a way of successfully completing the first part of the project: creativity always proceeds via experimentation, and experimentation, by definition, always includes the possibility of failure.) Having pursued a dead end in the first assignment, in the “Be Interesting” assignment Donald turned to an experience that was haunting him.   I had just recently come back from what I was telling people was “the best experience of my life.” Over my winter break at Rutgers University, I decided to try something different and embarked on a ten-day trip sponsored by a Korean organization called the Good News Corps that eventually brought me to Monterrey, Mexico, where I participated in the IYF (International Youth Fellowship) English Camp. The camp aimed to teach English to Mexican students of all ages over the course of three days. The whole trip only cost $300.   The memories were still fresh in my mind: the laughing, the dancing, the singing, the half-dozen girls holding me crying, thanking me for coming. Except now all these warm fuzzy feelings were being replaced with something else, something much more unsettling. I was having trouble processing what I was reading on my computer screen.   It was an article about the trip that made the front page of nytimes.com, titled “Traveling to Teach English; Getting Sermons Instead.” [It was] sent to me by another student who went on the trip. The article details the account of two students who went home early in the trip while we were still in Dallas, Texas, for four days of “training” in preparation for teaching in Mexico. They felt they were victims of a scam, and were unhappy with how much of the camp centered on religion and the “Mind Lectures” of the program’s leader, Ock Soo Park. This wasn’t surprising, as I had met plenty of kids there who were upset for the same reasons, myself included, but most of us toughed it out for the sake of being able to go to Mexico. It was the comments section that was causing my state of disbelief.   “Evil. Creepy and Evil.” “Sounds an awful lot like the bad parts of Jonestown.” “While editorial concerns must have precluded Mr. Dwyer from calling a duck a duck, we all know these unwitting students got trapped in a recruitment session for a cult.” “Typical cult strategies.” “This sounds like the Moonie cult from years ago.” “This organization is essentially considered a cult in South Korea, known as ‘Saviorists.’”   And they went on.   “This can’t be right,” was all I could think. Different flashes of my trip started replaying in my head. The mass baptisms in the hotel pool. The two-hour mind lectures. The lack of sleep. My moment of revelation. Could it be true? Did I willingly drink the Kool-Aid? Did I become part of a cult recruitment session for ten days? When we have students read each other’s work (which is something we do constantly), we don’t ask them to say what they liked or didn’t like about what they’ve read. Rather, we ask them to use our rubrics to guide their assessment of the work the writer has done.   In this instance, they’d read Donald’s draft and considered the following questions: Does it ask a genuine question or pose a genuine problem? Does it work with thought-provoking sources? Does it show the writer’s mind at work making compelling connections and developing ideas, arguments, or thoughts that are new to the writer? Does it pursue complications (per perhaps by using words like but and or)? Is it presented and organized to engage smart, attentive readers? Does it make each word count?   Although we’ve only provided you with the first page of Donald’s essay, we think there’s enough in this sample to suggest that he is on his way to producing work that meets the criteria for being interesting, as we define the term.   The writer is trying to figure out whether he, an ordinary guy who is well grounded and content with his life, came close to getting caught in a cult. While Donald doesn’t present much research on this first page, you can definitely see his mind at work on a problem. He actively pursues complications in the shift he makes from his unsurprised response to the newspaper article to his shock at reading the readers’ comments. We don’t have enough to go on from this sample to say much about how he works with sources, and we can’t say that every last word counts, but there’s no doubt in our minds that Donald has done a great job of drawing readers into his predicament.   You can read the rest of Donald’s paper here. We’ll return to this paper in the next post. But if, in the meantime, to read Donald’s paper online, you’ll see that it has garnered over 50 extended comments from readers around the world. It is one of the most visited pages on text2cloud.com. Donald has cleared the bar for producing interesting writing: he has attracted readers who aren’t paid to read his work (like his teachers). Next up: How to evaluate whether a work is interesting or not. ... View more

One reason I started using writing-about-writing emerged in coordinating research instruction in my university’s library. Our assignments demanded that students locate and engage peer-reviewed journal articles as their main sources, but it wasn’t actually happening. Students would dutifully find the minimum number of scholarly sources and, as Rebecca Moore Howard and Sandra Jamieson’s Citation Project has demonstrated, paraphrase a sentence or two from the first couple pages. Then they would move on to the real sources on whatever Issue of Social Import they were writing on, Newsweek or Esquire or Billy Bob’s Emporium of Deeply Learned Opinions on Everything website.   Not only was it tough to get students to truly engage scholarly sources, students didn’t understand the nature of those sources. What is a scholarly article? Where does it come from? Why is it? And how come it’s not written in “normal” English?   The problem wasn’t even just that we and every other college composition program in the country was requiring students to do the kind of reading they least liked—pages after repetitive page of nothing but words. It was that we were failing at explaining the whole thing, the entire knowledge-making enterprise that leads to this mysterious thing called “scholarship.” Yet if you can’t understand this, you’ll have the wrong idea about what higher education is to begin with, and you certainly won’t attain the oft-stated FYC learning outcome of coming to understand academic argument as writers taking turns in ongoing conversation for the purpose of constructing new knowledge through cooperative argument.   I have only ever found one way of helping students grapple with this incredibly stubborn set of threshold concepts around the nature, origin, and function of scholarly texts: Hand them scholarly texts and explain the whole system. While learning the nature, origins, and function of scholarly texts in their comp courses, students discover How the people who write such texts tend to read (Scholarly writers, for example, tend to read “around” articles rather than straight through them.) Context is as important to meaning as the text itself. Professional readers know through experience, or to take specific steps to find out, where a piece appeared and thus who its intended readers/users are, what the writer’s motivations for creating the text were, and what gap (in the research) the piece fills, its exigence. A scholarly text really is a turn in an ongoing conversation (which they are aware of).   Understanding reading this way is hard for students in part because they lack the experience on which these kinds of readings strategies are intuitively based. Few scholars can actually articulate Swales’s CARS model of research article introductions, but most know it instinctively. We want writing students to know it explicitly in order to help make up for their inexperience.   Recognizing this need, in the 3 rd edition of Writing About Writing we’ve developed “assist tags” for some of the most difficult or essential readings. The tags help map for students moments in the texts those CARS and other moves in scholarly conversation are happening. Students see not only genre conventions being used at key moments in the piece, such as arguments being extended from previous conversation in the field, but also behaviors professionals might use such as looking ahead or returning to read later.   The more we can show students such genre and behavioral moves, the more success we’ll have with FYC’s mission of helping students engage with scholarly conversation.   Here’s a sneak peek at one of the genre assist tags, featured in Deborah Brandt’s “Sponsors of Literacy.” ... View more

I’ve been reading Xiaoye You’s Writing in the Devil’s Tongue: A History of English Composition in China and, as you might imagine, learning a lot in the process. In the past, I often taught a course on “The History of Writing,” but it focused primarily on Western systems of writing, since those were the ones I knew best. But during those years I did learn something about the origins of writing in different cultures: for example, whereas writing in ancient Greece was associated from very early on with practical matters of trade, early Chinese writing systems were importantly linked to rituals that led to the way (dao). My interest in feminism led me to Enheduanna, Sumerian high priestess who wrote in Cuneiform and whose texts in praise of the Goddess Inanna date to the 23 rd century BCE. And I was thrilled when I read Damian Baca’s Mestiz@ Scripts, which traces early pictographs back as far as 50,000 BCE, and when I learned more about the Mayan glyphs, the earliest (some say the only) writing system developed in pre-Columbian Mesoamerica. And now in You’s fascinating book, I am learning more about writing in ancient China and, later, in schools which required writing in English. You notes that learning to write in China came with “heavy ethical burdens.” Confucius stresses over and over again how “gentlemen” will develop through following traditional rituals that will “align them with symbolic act that reflect the true spirit of the Way” (18): as Confucius puts it, Let a man be first incited by the Songs, then given a firm footing by the study of ritual, and finally perfected by music” (Analects 134). Eventually, this educational plan was institutionalized in the Chinese Civil Service exams, which held sway from the early 7 th to the beginning of the 20 th century. The preparation and the exams themselves “instilled in students unique rhetorical sensibilities with a Confucian conscience,” according to You’s analysis (21). Reading You’s work and revisiting Baca’s has made me think a lot about how much, if anything, we teach our students about the history of our subject, writing, and especially about writing systems in other cultures and the values embedded in those systems. In our multiethnic, multilingual, multicultural country, even with its ongoing tolerance for “English only,” writing teachers can and should take the lead in making sure our students understand that writing itself is a serious subject of study, that writing systems differ dramatically and thus carry differing value structures, and that pluralistic approaches to and understandings of writing seem necessary in the 21 st century. [Image: Confucius Temple in Taipei by edwin.11 on Flickr] ... View more

In this series of posts I’m thinking about what teachers of writing can learn from the implementation of peer feedback practices in other disciplines and departments.  While my goal is to explore these practices broadly across the university, I’m going to start very close to home in our English department.  English at FAU encompasses literary study, creative writing, and rhetoric/composition. Our department is deeply collegial, with each of the areas respecting and supporting the others (I know, sadly, that cannot be said of all departments).  I was thus delighted to chat with two of our creative writing faculty, Papatya Bucak (who also blogs for Bedford) and Becka McKay, who is currently running our MFA program in creative writing.  Both are super colleagues—accomplished, smart, funny, and generous.  I sat with both of them to talk about how workshopping happens in the creative writing classroom and each also shared with me handouts about workshopping that they use in their own classrooms.  Based on all of that, I’ve made some observations I hope are worth sharing.    “I use it on all levels,” Papatya shared, referencing both undergrad and grad workshops, “because I think it works,” a sentiment that Becka echoed.  Though the shape of workshopping can vary across creative writing classes, one common element that struck me is that it tends to contain two components: a written one and an oral one.  That oral component (and its particular shape) feels somewhat unique to me.  When workshopping happens in class, all of the students comment on one author’s work; the author generally stays silent throughout.  Papatya’s gives her grad students a handout that explains: “the class covers strengths, intentions, and suggestions while you listen.  Writer has the option of asking questions or making comments at the end. Writer can interrupt discussion if they have an urgent question or believe some major misunderstanding is occurring.”   I’ve occasionally done something similar in my writing classroom, when working with a sample paper or when placing students into peer revision groups.  But when I use sample work I tend to do so anonymously and when students discuss their work in group, each author is usually getting comments from only the other two people in the group.  I’m starting to think about what it might mean to adopt this structure in the writing classroom.  It would not be without logistical challenges (both of them noted the smaller size of the creative writing workshop and Becka also observed that it’s easier when she is teaching poetry) but nevertheless I think it’s worth exploring a significant and sustained oral component for peer revision.   Having an oral workshop isn’t without challenges even for creative writers.  When I asked Becka what would make a workshop disastrous, she noted that “a workshop needs trust and respect so if students do anything to break that or are disrespectful, then it’s a disaster,” going on to say that breaking trust can take a few different forms, from students in the class not doing the work of careful reading and so having nothing to say, to attacking the writer instead of critiquing the writing, to the author displaying defensive body language.  Anything that threatens the “circle of trust,” as Becka named it, would in turn threaten the value of the workshop.   But when it works, the students in the class form a community that becomes very nurturing.  More than that.  Papatya noted that the goal of the workshop is to find your reader and that “having someone who’s a good reader of your work is a holy grail.”   Scaling this practice up to the writing classroom feels daunting even as I write this—but not impossible.  And that sense of community feels quite seductive.  If you’re thinking about exploring a sustained in-class, oral peer review for your students here are some tips I’ve cribbed from Paptya and Becka that you might want to adapt:            The oral component is accompanied by a written critique.  Since I usually have students do that writing during peer revision in class, incorporating an oral component means a written critique outside of class.  And while both noted that workshopping will work with only one of these components, both also regularly use both together.  (I’ll talk more about what that written component looks like in my next post.)          Both Paptya and Becka offer detailed guidelines for all components of workshopping, particularly for their undergrad students.  Otherwise, as Becka noted, it’s “the blind reading the blind.”  I imagine most of us scaffold written peer revision with some sort of handout or worksheet but you may want to do the same if you attempt an oral critique as well.            Even when everything works, students need a good model for what good writing should do.  Both Paptya and Becka noted that students are inclined to say “this is nice” because they genuinely believe the writing is.  Papatya commented that what students think good writing should do sometimes isn’t what Papatya thinks good writing should do.  Becka also commented that often students new to workshopping are too eager to praise and that she ends up having to walk them back from that.  Offering models of what good writing does is one way to counter this inclination.  I love the way Becka put it: “You would think they just want to be stroked and told what great writers they are, but once they read the stuff we give them and they see what great writing is and they know we can show them a path that gets them there, they want to learn how to do that.”   Maybe the oral workshop model is one way to get them there.   Next week, I’ll look at some of the unique elements of written workshop comments.  In the meantime, if you’ve ever used an oral workshop mode of peer review in your FYC classroom, please share your experiences with us.  How did it work logistically?  How did it work for students?  What might you change?   ... 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On the first day of every Introduction to Creative Writing class, I tell the students that for the course of the semester I want them to live like writers. It doesn’t matter, I say, if they want to be professional writers, or if they are taking the class for fun, or simply to fulfill a credit, I want them to live like writers. Then I make the requisite joke about how that does not mean staying up late with a glass of wine and a cigarette, nor does it mean attending bullfights, nor does it mean drugs. What it means, I tell them, is three things. Be observant Acknowledge complexity Pay attention to language                         I really believe those are three keys to strong writing. And I really believe those things don’t come to you when you sit down to write—you have to collect them as you go about your day.  But I’m also trying to get my intro students to write literary work—without telling them that they have to write literary work.  Because it’s writing literature—that which encourages reader and writer to engage with the world, not escape from it—that best serves my students as they strive to become better people (as we all strive, I think).             Becoming a better writer involves becoming a better person. I really believe that. Sometimes I say it. My graduate students, who all want to become professional writers, get a similar talk, phrased a little differently. Live in such a way that generates writing, I say. Live in a way that reminds you you’re a writer.             And what does living like a writer mean for me? I collect words, titles for stories to be named later, I collect sentence structures and rhythms and Mad-Lib-type endings to the phrase “_____ is the kind of person who ____.” I collect names to fill in that first blank. I have such a fondness for the names Fergus and Angus—haven’t found a place for them yet though.  I read so much that people who read a lot make fun of me. I make notes on who did what and how. I keep a list of favorite stories and novels in chronological order of my life. That is how I organize my life.  I live like a perpetual student. I research the sponge divers of Simi, the soft palate of the mouth, the flora and fauna of Southwestern Virginia, and the history of Armenia. I go to art museums and gardens and battlefields. I listen to live music, and live readings, and talks on who knows what. I ask everybody—everybody—have you read anything good lately? I kiss babies and hold hands; I hold babies and kiss hands. I drink coffee before writing but not before reading. I look for the second side, and the third, and the fourth. I acknowledge the complexities of life and still find most of life to be quite simple. I listen more than I talk, I throw away as much as I keep, I fail regularly, sometimes better, I quote Beckett, I quote Kafka, I quote Morrison, I take comfort where I find it, and I lie down on the floor a lot, sometimes to stretch my back and sometimes just because.             I don’t get paid very much.             But I wouldn’t want to live any other way.             I suppose I want my students to know that too. Sometimes I say it. Though not usually on the first day. ... View more

As I responded to students’ coursework proposals this week, I concluded that giving students more choice, as I explained in last week’s post, has led most of them to choose meaningful projects that connect directly to their career goals. Generally, it seems like a good assignment, but I have realized that I need to make some changes before I use it again. Add More Explanation and Examples In the original assignment, I included this explanation of the requirement for the proposals students were writing: Write a proposal that outlines the three major projects you will compose to complete the requirement for five major projects in this course. Beyond that statement, I added this basic advice: Think about your career goals and the kinds of writing that are critical to your future plans. If there are particular kinds of writing that you know will be important to your success, they may be your best choice(s) for the work you will complete. Students needed more information to understand their goal. Looking back now, I’m not surprised that about a third of them emailed, posted in the course forums, or came by during office hours to ask for more information on the assignment. If anything, I’m surprised that there weren’t more questions. Next time I will add more details and include some examples, like the computer science student example I included in last week’s post. Address Audience, Purpose, and Context I’m ashamed to admit that I hadn’t fully realized the rhetorical demands students would face when they worked to choose their own projects. The challenge became clear to me as I responded to students’ work. The strongest proposals were written by students who wanted to focus on real-world writing projects. These projects related to things students were already involved in, such as clubs, Greek organizations, internships, and philanthropy activities. These students had a clear sense of what they wanted to write, why they were going to write it, and who would read it when they were done. Additionally, they were engaged in the projects. They had a real reason to complete the work, beyond getting credit in a course. Students who struggled with their proposals had to determine not only the genres of writing to explore but also come up with their own audience and purpose for the activities. Their contexts were sometimes completely fictional. I read only a few such coursework proposals before I concluded that I hadn’t given students enough support for defining the rhetorical situations for their projects. Even if I encourage students to search out clients or engage in service-learning style activities, I am sure there will still be students who cannot find a real-world focus for their projects. I’m still trying to decide on the best way to deal with this challenge. I can certainly urge students to propose projects that connect to real situations, but there will always be students who will not have a way to connect concretely with their fields. I could offer a range of situations and clients for the tasks, but I want the activities to be students’ choices. I cannot possibly create an assignment for every possible kind of writing students might choose. I can and will spend time directly discussing concepts like audience, purpose, and context. Students could benefit from expanding the simple identification of audiences and purposes from their investigation of writing in their field. Asking students to create profiles for each category of audience (e.g., coworkers, managers, clients) should be a useful step between identifying general audiences in their field and proposing to write something for a specific audience of readers. I have more thinking to do obviously. I do like this assignment and the choice that it gives students as they learn about writing in their fields. My challenge at this point is determining how to give students the support and information that they need to do their best work as they make their choices. If you have a solution, please share it with me. I could use some help here.   Photo Credit: IMG_1760 (Sign seen in Santa Cruz) by Robert Couse-Baker, on Flickr, used under a CC-BY 2.0 license ... View more

Today's guest blogger is Kim Haimes-Korn‌. (See end of post for bio.) We often think about multimodality in terms of the end result – the products that students can produce through multimodal composition. But I have found interesting ways to use multimodal composition for invention as well. Images are great for brainstorming and getting students to see things in different ways than they have seen them before. For example, I often ask students to use key words to conduct image searches that expand their ideas on a subject or brainstorm on research projects.   Recently, I was teaching a unit on digital stories. (The full assignment is explained in detail in one of my earlier posts on Digital Storytelling where I provide the theoretical framework for the overall assignment.) In this post, however, I concentrate on a new, earlier step in this assignment that engages students in multimodality as part of the process. This early assignment gives students practice in composing through images and digital rhetoric and provides invention space where they can try out and select their best possible story ideas before fully engaging in the assignment. It is at this time that students are coming to understand the genre of the digital story and trying to figure out exactly what story they want to tell. Objectives To teach composing skills with images and the ways visual, rhetorical choices impact communicated meaning. To introduce invention strategies to engage students in a full range of composing processes. To practice skills such as selection, abstraction and summary. To understand audience awareness and engagement through peer response. Resources The Everyday Writer: Ch. 3: Rhetorical Situations, Ch. 4: Exploring Ideas, and Ch. 5e: A Storyboard 7 Elements in 4 Minutes – Paul Iwancio, YouTube, 2010 Seven Steps of Digital Storytelling – Joe Lambert Prezi, Center for Digital Storytelling, 2010 16+ Storyboard Templates – Sample Templates Assignment Steps Step 1: Have students read the resources on Digital Storytelling. Discuss purpose and which stories are worth telling and which stories they want to tell. I encourage them to look around their environment and lives to find stories. I offer the following prompts: think about things that you have noticed in your everyday life think about your own past and ideas that have stuck with you think about the ways people behave, think about your ideas and worldviews think about your relationships to others think about things that are confusing think about things that feel clear think about how things relate to other things think about people you know think about what you imagine think about what you know and believe let the stories find you Step 2: Next, students create a brainstorm list of at least 10 ideas for stories that incorporate the expectations discussed in the video: 7 Elements in 4 Minutes. I refer them to composing techniques to create 10 interesting, representative images that match their brainstorm list –each representing a different story idea. They don’t have to tell the whole story but should suggest something about its direction – a preview or peek into the idea or ideas. Step 3: Then, they choose their top 5 story/image/ideas to post on a gallery page to share with their classmates. They give each one a working title and a short paragraph -- that gives readers an idea of the story and possible perspectives. I have them include why they think this is a story that needs to be told and the point of view they are considering. Step 4: Students share story/images with classmates for peer response. Students use this session to talk with a potential audience about what might engage them and to select a story that their audience might want to hear. Audience members also pose questions that give authors opportunities to elaborate and expand their ideas in purposeful ways. I use Lambert’s first three points (the others come later) that encourage students to engage in 1) point of view, 2) dramatic question and 3) emotional content. Step 5: Once students choose story (with the help of their peers) they move to a storyboarding phase. I supply a blank storyboarding template that engages them in the planning and arranging their chosen story. Step 6: After students complete the full draft of the digital stories, they embed them in their blogs along with a purposeful context statement that includes links to their invention stories and storyboards Reflection When I first came up with this activity, I thought it would just act as an invention piece that might not be part of the project. In some ways, it turned out to be interesting in and of itself. Students liked the broad sweep that showed several stories, defining moments and ideas that were part of their identity and worldview. As I reviewed through them, I also found them engaging, and I realized that I would like to incorporate this as part of their final projects as well.  This gives their audience a sense of their processes should they follow the links and reveals an interesting series of story possibilities. In addition this activity teaches students how to use images to brainstorm and how to create representative images. It also teaches the valuable skills of summary, selection and abstraction. The peer response early on in the process allows authors to gage audience engagement before they enter the production phase of this multimodal project. This is just one of the many ways we might consider using multimodal composition as invention – for both process and product. Check out some student samples of this assignment: Madison’s Story Ideas Charlie’s Story Ideas Samantha’s Story Ideas Austin’s Story Ideas Cydney’s Story Ideas Guest blogger Kim Haimes-Korn is a Professor in the English Department at Kennesaw State University. Kim’s teaching philosophy encourages dynamic learning, 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. ... View more

Don’t be afraid.   These are the words I’ve been telling myself often this semester. You’d think after twenty years of teaching first-year writing I’d find a way to reduce my anxiety in and out of the classroom, but it still hits me every day. I envy teachers brimming with confidence and enthusiasm. I really do. I marvel at the layers of skill that my colleagues who teach have mastered. I think I’ve gotten okay. Maybe even pretty good. But there is still a deep and nearly omnipresent fear that every lesson plan, every classroom exchange, every attempt to motivate students toward authentic and original thought could go terribly wrong.   I’m beginning this semester with a literacy narrative, a genre I’ve come to appreciate fairly late in the game as first-year writing faculty. I guess I should nod in the context of this blog post to the fact that the literacy narrative is one of the projects we discuss in An Insider’s Guide to Academic Writing (p. 14). I can’t know how many of you have taught this genre, and that frustrates me, so I would just like to talk about how I’ve overcome my fears so far this semester teaching such a beautiful, delicate, vulnerability-inducing genre and how I think it contributes to shaping me as a teacher and the students who teach me every day.   The diversity of students I teach at the University of Arizona are unlike anywhere else I’ve taught: Navajo, Apache, Latino, Black, White, affluent, poor, middle class, West Coast, East Coast, Midwest, Southwest, Southeast, Northwest, International students.   Building relationships and trust in order to create a safe space wherein students can reflect on and articulate the experiences that shape their identities in front of total strangers who look only alike in age has proven awkward and at times shocking.   But reflect and articulate they have. Stories of abandonment. Stories of having a paper torn in half by a high school teacher and thrown in a trashcan. Stories of drive-by shootings and murder. Of parents and families on the brink of collapse. Drug addiction. Abuse. Neglect. Previous teachers who don’t really care seems to be a common theme in FYW literacy narratives.   It’s a lot to process.   There’s a tendency to see students as “students.” Like some generic group of automatons who write papers for us to grade and correct and believe we somehow improve with our degrees and experience and comments in the one-inch margins surrounding their text. But it’s too bureaucratic, if you see it that way.   Students learn best when the agency of knowledge comes from within. I’ve always mistrusted “authority” figures and mistrusted even more systems where authority is rigidly structured.   I suspect, if you’re reading this blog post, you likely believe that writing has the power to improve your life. In the classroom, this only works if students believe you care about them, are sensitive to their experiences and identities, and are willing to embrace the awkward, painful, and uncomfortable moments in a classroom with compassion, openness, professionalism, and enough humility to learn from the very people we are supposedly teaching.   I love the literacy narrative because it sets the stage for the rest of the semester. It reveals character and truth, and if done well, encourages students to be courageous, open, curious, willing to learn, motivated, reflective, metacognitive. It teaches them about who they are, why they are here, and how they can move optimally forward in a complicated world.   What follows is a set of activities I employ to teach the literacy narrative.   We begin the semester by talking about our student learning outcomes. I think it’s good practice that students know 1) we have goals for achievement in this class, 2) what those goals are, and 3) where they come from.   A table in the preface of An Insider’s Guide to Academic Writing illustrates how the book aligns with the WPA Outcomes Statement. The FYW course goals at the University of Arizona arise from the WPA Outcomes Statement and the Framework for Success, so I think it’s wise to acknowledge that with my students.   Activity 1 – Generating Ideas for a Literacy Narrative One process-oriented group activity I use in the class to connect our outcomes to the literacy narrative is cluster mapping.   Students select one of our four outcomes and put it in the center of the cluster map on the white board in our room. They branch out and make a list of subtopics that include activities, genres, processes, or past writing projects that may have contributed to their development with that outcome.   One of our course goals is the development of reflection and revision processes.     The point is to get them thinking about our goals and the kinds of writing they’ve done in the past in order to generate ideas for what they might write about in their literacy narratives.   Activity 2 – Analyzing Sample Literacy Narratives I usually follow this activity by introducing the project assignment sheet for the literacy narrative. I provide students with at least four samples of a literacy narrative. I prioritize developing group dynamics, and so one activity I’ll use is to ask students to read one of the sample literacy narratives, and then as a group they use a grading rubric to assess the sample. They have to negotiate the point values they would assign to all the criteria, and they present their sample literacy narrative and discuss how they graded it.   Activity 3 – Brainstorming and Drafting a Scene It’s at this point that I try to highlight the unique features of a literacy narrative and point out how different it is as a genre than a research paper or a thesis-driven argumentative paper. This semester I’ve asked students to develop three scenes using sensory detail that follow a narrative arc representing a beginning, middle, and end to their narratives. We spend a day brainstorming potential scenes from their past experiences as writers and students, and then I ask them to draft one scene using sensory detail.   I give them a prompt I call “When I walked into the room I saw ________” and I ask to make use of at least three different sensory descriptions (sight, sound, touch, smell, taste) in writing five to seven sentences that describe their scene.   Generally students love this kind of writing. It’s creative and reflective and often a new genre for them. That said, a good number of students fall back on summarizing too heavily, and so I’ll use the drafts (usually done in an online discussion board) to point out the differences between effective use of sensory detail and summarizing events.   Activity 4 – Developing Dialogue in a Literacy Narrative We spend a day on dialogue. I point out the unique features of dialogue attribution, paragraph breaks for each new speaker’s line, punctuation around dialogue, and stylistic nuances regarding effective dialogue.   I’ll ask students to draft a dialogue-rich continuation from the sensory detail scene they composed the previous day, and then I’ll ask them to act as directors and choose actors to perform their written dialogue. Some students love to act. Moreover they generally find it exciting to hear their dialogue come to life in a performance by their peers.   Activity 5 – Five Objects, Mood, and the Final Scene Near the end of the unit, I ask the students to brainstorm a list of potential final scenes with which they might conclude their literacy narratives. Once they have three to choose from, I ask them to select one. For that one scene, I ask them to write down the setting (time and location), characters featured in the scene, and the main idea or insight they want readers to understand about them by reading their literacy narratives.   We discuss these points. I offer feedback. Then I ask them to make a list of five objects that appear in the scene and to describe the mood they want to convey.   A student might write: library bookshelves, the table, my notebook, the clock on the wall, and flashcards. The student may write about the mood she wants to communicate. She may say she wants to convey the stress she felt or the anticipation of her final high school exam.   We discuss this stuff. I push them to explain how the mood of their final scene aligns with the main idea or insight they want readers to understand about them by reading their literacy narratives.   Then I ask them to write their final scenes using the setting, the characters, the five objects, and the mood they’re trying to convey. I would love to hear back from y’all on this one. What activities or strategies have you used to teach the literacy narrative? What has been most helpful in the classroom?   As always, please like and share this post, if you found it meaningful. Thanks so much, everybody! Peace. ... View more

The third batch of Exercise Central quizzes is now available in Composition digital products. This batch of 26 new quizzes once again expands on our existing coverage with 258 new questions on important topics in grammar, mechanics, and working with sources.   The new Exercise Central quizzes are available now in the following products: Writer’s Help 2.0, Hacker Version Writer’s Help 2.0, Lunsford Version LaunchPad Solo for Hacker Handbooks LaunchPad Solo for Lunsford Handbooks LaunchPad Solo for Readers and Writers LaunchPad for Axelrod/Cooper, The St. Martin’s Guide to Writing, 11th edition LaunchPad for Lunsford/Ruszkiewicz/Walters, Everything’s an Argument, 7th edition   All the quiz questions are in the new Question Picker, where you can find and assign pre-built quizzes by filtering for Exercise Central Quiz, Topic, or Subtopic. You can even mix-and-match questions and build your own custom quizzes to meet your students' needs.   If you're new to Exercise Central -- or if this is your first time using Exercise Central in LaunchPad or Writer's Help -- CLICK HERE to read Adam Whitehurst's detailed walkthrough on how to use and assign Exercise Central quizzes in your course.   If you're already using Exercise Central in any of the products listed above, you do NOT need to do anything in order to access and assign the new quiz questions. They have been automatically added to your course and are now fully assignable and customizable.   Here is the full list of quizzes now available in Exercise Central. Exercise Central Batch 1  Exercise Central Batch 2 Avoiding Comma Splices 1 (Easy)  Avoiding Misplaced and Dangling Modifiers 1 (Easy) Avoiding Comma Splices 2 (Easy)  Avoiding Wordy Language 1 (Easy) Avoiding Comma Splices 3 (Moderate)  Choosing Effective Topic Sentences 1 (Moderate) Avoiding Run-On Sentences 1 (Easy)  Choosing Effective Topic Sentences 2 (Moderate) Avoiding Sentence Fragments 1 (Moderate)  Choosing Topics for Writing Assignments 1 (Moderate) Avoiding Sexist Language 1 (Easy)  Formatting Titles 1 (Easy) Choosing the Right Words 1 (Easy)  Identifying Conjunctions 1 (Easy) Choosing the Right Words 2 (Easy)  Identifying Linking Verbs 1 (Easy) Citing Sources Using APA Style 1 (Moderate)  Identifying Linking Verbs 2 (Easy) Citing Sources Using MLA Style 1 (Moderate)  Identifying Patterns of Organization 1 (Moderate) Citing Sources Using MLA Style 2 (Moderate)  Identifying Prepositions 3 (Moderate) Coordinating Ideas with Semicolons 1 (Easy)  Identifying Primary Support and Supporting Details 1 (Moderate) Correcting Errors in Parallelism 1 (Easy)  Identifying Subjects and Objects of Prepositions 1 (Easy) Correcting Errors in Parallelism 2 (Easy)  Identifying Topic Sentences 1 (Moderate) Correcting Errors in Parallelism 3 (Moderate)  Identifying Types of Conjunctions 1 (Easy) Correcting Errors in Parallelism 4 (Moderate)  Identifying Types of Nouns 1 (Easy) Correcting Errors in Pronoun Reference 1 (Easy)  Identifying Types of Nouns 2 (Easy) Correcting Errors in Pronoun Reference 2 (Easy)  Identifying Types of Verbs 1 (Easy) Correcting Errors in Pronoun Reference 3 (Moderate)  Identifying Types of Verbs 2 (Easy) Correcting Errors in Subject-Verb Agreement 1 (Easy)  Making Verbs Agree with Indefinite Pronouns 1 (Easy) Correcting Errors in Subject-Verb Agreement 2 (Easy)  MLW Correcting Common Errors 1 (Easy) Correcting Errors in Subject-Verb Agreement 3 (Moderate)  MLW Using Count and Noncount Nouns 1 (Easy) Correcting Errors with Plural Nouns 1 (Easy)  MLW Using Prepositions 1 (Easy) Correcting Run-On Sentences 1 (Easy)  Punctuating Direct Quotations 1 (Easy) Correcting Run-On Sentences 2 (Easy)  Supporting Thesis Statements 1 (Easy) Correcting Run-On Sentences 3 (Moderate)  Understanding Audience 1 (Easy) Correcting Sentence Fragments 1 (Easy)  Understanding Main Ideas 1 (Easy) Correcting Sentence Fragments 2 (Easy)  Understanding Pronoun Case 1 (Easy) Correcting Sentence Fragments 3 (Moderate)  Understanding Purpose 1 (Easy) Correcting Sentence Fragments 4 (Moderate)  Understanding Purpose 2 (Easy) Correcting Shifts in Verb Tense 1 (Easy)  Understanding Subject-Verb Agreement with Compound Subjects  1 (Easy) Correcting Shifts in Verb Tense 2 (Easy)  Understanding Subject-Verb Agreement with Compound Subjects  2 (Easy) Correcting Shifts in Verb Tense 3 (Moderate)  Using Colons and Semicolons 1 (Easy) Correcting Shifts in Verb Tense 4 (Moderate)  Using Colons and Semicolons 2 (Moderate) Identifying Adjectives and Adverbs 1 (Easy)  Using Comparatives and Superlatives 1 (Easy) Identifying Adjectives and Adverbs 2 (Easy)  Using Comparatives and Superlatives 2 (Easy) Identifying Comma Splices 1 (Easy)  Using Prefixes and Suffixes 1 (Easy) Identifying Comma Splices 2 (Easy)  Using Prefixes and Suffixes 2 (Easy) Identifying Comma Splices 3 (Easy)  Using Prepositions 1 (Easy) Identifying Comma Splices 4 (Moderate)  Using Prepositions 2 (Easy) Identifying Comma Splices 5 (Moderate) Exercise Central Batch 3 - NEW Identifying Errors in Pronoun-Antecedent Agreement 1 (Easy) Changing from Passive to Active Voice 1 (Moderate) Identifying Errors in Pronoun-Antecedent Agreement 2 (Easy) Checking Agreement When the Verb Comes Before the Subject 1 (Moderate) Identifying Errors in Pronoun-Antecedent Agreement 3 (Moderate) Choosing Effective Research Strategies 1 (Moderate) Identifying Errors in Pronoun-Antecedent Agreement 4 (Moderate) Evaluating Sources Using APA Style 1 (Moderate) Identifying Errors in Subject-Verb Agreement 1 (Easy) Evaluating Sources Using MLA Style 1 (Moderate) Identifying Errors in Subject-Verb Agreement 2 (Easy) Identifying Errors in Pronoun-Antecedent Agreement 5 (Moderate) Identifying Prepositions 1 (Easy) Identifying Errors in Pronoun-Antecedent Agreement 6 (Moderate) Identifying Prepositions 2 (Moderate) MLW Using Articles 1 (Easy) Identifying Pronouns 1 (Easy) MLW Using Articles 2 (Easy) Identifying Pronouns 2 (Moderate) Understanding Subject-Verb Agreement in There Is, Was, Were Sentences 1 (Easy) Identifying Run-On Sentences 1 (Moderate) Understanding Subject-Verb Agreement in There Is, Was, Were Sentences 2 (Easy) Identifying Sentence Fragments 1 (Easy) Using Apostrophes to Show Possession 1 (Easy) Identifying Subjects 1 (Easy) Using Apostrophes to Show Possession 2 (Easy) Identifying Subjects 2 (Moderate) Using Apostrophes to Show Possession 3 (Moderate) Identifying Verb Tense 1 (Easy) Using Apostrophes to Show Possession 4 (Moderate) Identifying Verb Tense 2 (Easy) Using Appropriate Language 1 (Easy) Identifying Verb Tense 3 (Moderate) Using Articles 1 (Easy) Integrating Sources 1 (Moderate) Using Articles 2 (Easy) Integrating Sources 2 (Moderate) Using Comparatives and Superlatives 3 (Moderate) MLW Correcting Errors in Verb Phrases with Auxiliary Verbs 1 (Easy) Using Comparatives and Superlatives 4 (Moderate) MLW Correcting Errors in Verb Phrases with Auxiliary Verbs 2 (Easy) Using Definite and Indefinite Articles 1 (Easy) MLW Identifying Missing, Incorrect, or Extra Words 1 (Easy) Using Definite and Indefinite Articles 2 (Easy) MLW Using Irregular Verb Forms 1 (Easy) Using Prepositions after Adjectives and Verbs 1 (Easy) MLW Using Irregular Verb Forms 2 (Easy) Using Prepositions after Adjectives and Verbs 2 (Easy) Spelling the Right Words Correctly 1 (Easy) Using Subordination to Join Two Sentences 1 (Moderate) Spelling the Right Words Correctly 2 (Easy) Using Subordination to Join Two Sentences 2 (Moderate) Spelling the Right Words Correctly 3 (Moderate)   Using Active or Passive Voice 1 (Easy)   Using Active or Passive Voice 2 (Moderate)   Using Apostrophes 1 (Easy)   Using Apostrophes 2 (Easy)   Using Apostrophes 3 (Moderate)   Using Apostrophes 4 (Moderate)   Using Capitalization 1 (Easy)   Using Capitalization 2 (Easy)   Using Capitalization 3 (Moderate)   Using Commas 1 (Easy)   Using Commas 2 (Easy)   Using Commas 3 (Moderate)   Using Coordinating Conjunctions 1 (Easy)   Using Formal Language 1 (Easy)   Using Formal Language 2 (Easy)   Using Hyphens 1 (Easy)   Using Hyphens 2 (Moderate)   Using Italics in Titles 1 (Easy)   Using Subordinating Conjunctions 1 (Easy)   Using the Correct Forms of Be, Have, Do 1 (Easy)   Using the Correct Forms of Be, Have, Do 2 (Moderate)   Using Verb Forms 1 (Easy)   Using Verb Forms 2 (Moderate)   Using Verb Forms 3 (Moderate)   Using Verb Tenses 1 (Easy)   Using Verb Tenses 2 (Easy)   Using Verb Tenses 3 (Moderate)   ... 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I've been reading James Knowlson's big biography of Samuel Beckett, Damned to Fame—an experience that not only transports me back over forty years to the days when I was writing my undergraduate Honors Thesis in English on Beckett, but also sets me to contemplating again the relationship between "high" cultural creation, and "low," or popular, culture. While Beckett's incorporation of such popular cultural materials as vaudeville-style slapstick and Charlie Chaplin's tramp into Waiting for Godot undoubtedly helped to erode the traditional barriers between high and low culture, his own lifelong devotion to the highest of the elite arts (classical music and literature, philosophy, and fine art) also comes through very powerfully in the story of his life.  Though in rapid decline even within his lifetime, the "cultural capital" of high art still stood for something in Beckett's formative years in a way that is almost unimaginable in an era when the Oscar, Emmy, Grammy, and VMA awards (etc.) are effectively our society's supreme expressions of esthetic taste.  And this, paradoxically, is why the semiotic analysis of popular culture is itself an activity of high cultural importance; for if we are to come to an understanding of who and what we are as a society—which is one of the more profound aims of esthetic creation—we have to look at what really matters to us.  And for some time now, what really matters has been pop culture.   In saying this, I am going against the grain of such cultural theorists as Lucien Goldmann, who believed that social knowledge comes through the study of "high" cultural creation.  Perhaps that was once so; it certainly isn't the case today, however, when traditional high culture is on life support.  While there has never been a mass audience for the elite arts, what has changed has been the economic basis of esthetic creation: the centuries-long shift from a system of aristocratic patronage to one of commodity capitalism in a market economy. Chaucer, that is to say, paid the bills by living in the palace of John of Gaunt, and Michelangelo sought commissions from the Church.  Today, "high" art poets must seek out teaching positions to survive because poems have little commodity value, and painters hope for the kind of awards and critical reviews that will attract wealthy speculators to their work in a kind of fine art stock market.    An apprehension that the economics of artistic production was changing everything was behind the rise not only of Modernism, but of Romanticism as well, as artists began to feel alienated from their audiences—no longer coteries of patrons and friends, but a mass market of anonymous consumers—and so, in defiance, they turned away from seeking popularity to create generations of avant-garde art that only helped to reduce what audience for high art ever existed in the first place.  The result has the been the creation of what I have called a "museum culture," as high art has retreated to ever more beleaguered bastions of cultural preservation, while popular culture, with its seemingly limitless market potential, has flourished.  (I know, you may have attended the opera recently, or a symphonic performance, and that you may spend your free time rereading War and Peace, rather than The Arkham Asylum, but even so, you cannot have missed the signs that those are unusual choices today.)   Cultural semiotics doesn't complain about this shift in cultural tastes (history, after all is history); and it doesn't attempt to apply the critical standards of high art to works of mass culture.  Rather, taking as its basis the recognition that cultural production in a market environment will produce what the market desires, cultural semiotics analyzes that desire itself, seeking its significance.  For therein lies the consciousness of our society, the revelation, finally, of who and what we are. ... View more

Each fall, a week or so before classes start, the instructors in Stanford's Program in Writing and Rhetoric hold a retreat of sorts, during which they review the principles that guide the program’s theory and practice, give presentations on what they see as major concerns of the year, read and discuss articles pertinent to the program and its students, and enjoy one another’s company. It’s one of my favorite times of year. During this year’s sessions, the question with which I open this post came up. Actually, someone first asked “Is writing white?”—and some discussion focused on the nature of academic writing followed. Both are good questions. In many cultures, early writing systems were the province of a small group of elites; moreover, writing was a means of regulation used by those in power to control those who weren’t. This is an oversimplification, to be sure, but one that holds a good bit of truth, especially in the U.S. where it was a crime to teach slaves to write (and read) and where written laws served to disenfranchise millions. So in the sense that writing was aligned with power in this country, and power had a very white face, writing could be considered “white.” Ebony Coletu has written ( ! ) powerfully about what she terms “forms of submission,” demonstrating how the strictures of forms, such as those associated with welfare, led to submission to the system itself. In 1974 when the Conference on College Composition and Communication adopted the Students’ Right to Their Own Language resolution that later appeared in a pamphlet by that title and in a number of other publications, the organization recognized this long history—and the danger that such linguistic racism engendered and supported. The passage of that resolution marked an important milestone for me and many others in the profession. While I passionately wanted writing to serve as a means to empowerment, I saw more and more clearly how often it did not meet that goal, especially and often ironically in school settings. I read Elspeth Stuckey’s The Violence of Literacy and wept. But then I acted. I put my own assumptions under a microscope, and I asked that students come along with me. For decades, I taught a course called “The Language Wars,” or some similar title, in which we moved from learning about the struggle to establish the vernacular as “legitimate” in a number of other countries to the struggle to legitimate vernaculars in this country. We learned that the structures valued in academic discourse (the tight logic, distanced style, etc.) were not valued characteristics of other discourses. We read Michelle Cliff’s “If I Could Write This in Fire, I Would Write It in Fire” and understood why, after completing a Ph.D. in English literature, she felt she never wanted to write, ever, again. She had gotten sealed in the box of (white) academic writing, but she couldn’t live—or write—there anymore. Best of all, we identified and traced challenges to “white” academic writing, collecting and sharing our favorite examples (often, of course, by people of color and women) of writers offering exciting—thrilling, really!—ways of writing, from Tillie Olsen to Geneva Smitherman, Lee Tonouchi, and a host of others. It’s been a long time since that 1974 resolution, and over the decades I’ve taught The Language Wars, our field has become at least a little more inclusive, more open to challenges to such “white” writing, to the use of writing to regulate and control (think of all those exams, of all those college writing samples. . . .), and finally to the hegemony of English itself. Today, scholars are exploring the possibilities of translingual writing and approaches to writing, and they are leading the way in creating an academic discourse that includes and honors varieties of English as well as other languages. So over my 45 years in the field, I can see progress toward more pluralistic, inclusive norms for writing in the academy, helped along tremendously by the rise of social media and other electronic forms of communication. Adam Banks’s 2015 CCCC Chair’s address, originally performed in Tampa and subsequently published in CCC, is to my mind a brilliant example of powerful academic writing. And it is NOT white. [Photo: Ink and Quill by Denise Krebs on Flickr] ... View more