Online Teaching on the Brain

I ran out of journals that I had brought home with me, but after a quick jaunt to campus today, I’m back in business.  I’m going to get right to it since there’s still a ton of work to do for my online class, and since I’ve got online classes on the brain, here’s another article to add to that stack:

Stine, Linda. “Basically Unheard: Developmental Writers and the Conversation on Online Learning.”

TETYC 38.2 (2010): 132-148. Print.

This is a timely article because there have been recent talks in our department about whether or not Basic Writing should be offered online.  Most people tend to immediately shake their head—BW students need a lot of one-on-one attention, and they already have a lot of obstacles working against them.  And, BW students tend to not be as tech savvy, so tossing them into a fully online course seems like a cruel trick.  Even though the majority of our faculty are leery about having online BW classes, there does seem to be a need (or rather a desire) from students, and some faculty support that—if students want to sign up for an online class, they should have the option.  My interest in both teaching online and teaching basic writing has left me puzzled; I can’t say whether or not it’s a good idea.  I see technology being the biggest barrier (as it is for most online students) and motivation as the next biggest (as it often is for BW students—mostly traditionally aged ones).

Stine brings up a solid point early on in her article—there isn’t all that much scholarship or discussion out there about this issue.  The little there is, she notes, doesn’t seem to describe her students who are mostly non-traditional.  She pulls scholarship from Adult Learning Theory and Online Learning Theory to come to some basic concerns about how and why adult learners (who are basic writers) would benefit and/or falter in an online environment.  Some of the usual suspects she mentions are technology issues, academic skill level issues, and issues in persistence.  She also describes, though, the affective dimension of learning, which would of course come back to the discussion of community.  Stine writes, “Establishing this sense of community when students are interacting from different locations and at different times is perhaps the online basic writing teacher’s most important, and most difficult, task” (138).  This is not a new sentiment when it comes to teaching writing—online or face-to-face.  What I’ve yet to really hear much about, on the other hand, is how to go about establishing this community.  At Computers and Writing, Jill and I went to one presentation that focused on the necessity of community, and they described a graduate-level, synchronous class—these students would be highly motivated, might likely already know each other from their program, and were meeting synchronously.  Like Stine, I felt that scenario did not represent our students (let alone BW ones). 

I really want to dig further into the idea of building community in online classes, but I doubt it’s something I’ll accomplish before I start teaching next week.  Also, my pessimistic self already doubts the possibility of developing a strong community in five weeks anyhow (online or face-to-face). 

Before I forget to mention, though, I do think I’m leaning towards thinking that offering online BW classes is not a good idea.  Stine mentioned something I hadn’t yet considered:

In the online environment, students encounter added opportunity for error.  Even speaking becomes a high-risk situation when it occurs online in the form of writing, with the ever-present possibility of being silenced by equipment failure or by misunderstanding resulting from feedback both delayed and limited by the constraints of the written word. (139)

That makes total sense—where would the low-risk situations be in an online class for developmental writers?  Good, good question.  Ultimately, I think even though students may want to take this class online, it’s not likely the best way to actually suit their needs.  As the Stones would say:

You can't always get what you want 

But if you try sometimes you might find

you get what you need

Song stuck in your head now?  Mine too. 

Okay, that’s enough for tonight!  More tomorrow…

mk

Vets...just in time for Memorial Day

May 29, 2011

I made it back from the coast last night, and while my brain and nerves are telling me I should be working on planning my upcoming online class, I am here ready to read and write about another article.  Even though I know I should be working on other things, I’m secretly—and not so secretly—glad that this project is itching my brain.  I think it has taken hold.  So, here it is folks:

Article 6:

Leonhardy, Galen. “Transformations: Working with Veterans in the Composition Classroom.” TETYC 36.4

(2009): 339-52.

I was pleased to find this article today because I’ve been interested in working with vets for a few years now.  I encountered my first vet student my second semester teaching, and he scared the hell out of me.  He came to me after our first class meeting to inform me that he had anger and authority issues and had a hard time controlling his temper in heated discussions.  He wanted to know if we would be having heated discussions in my class.  I honestly couldn’t answer—I didn’t know…I hadn’t ever taught the class before.  He certainly had authority issues, as he warned me, but the issues weren’t directed at me, but rather at some other unseen figure.  This guy unnerved me for several reasons.  First, our initial meeting gave me the willies.  Second, he referred to himself in the third person, AND by his last name (and, his last name was really, really funny, but he had no humor about it).  Third, he wore a trench coat.  Fourth, he came to class early every day and sat in the hall.  My office was near our classroom, so I saw him there every morning, but he never made eye contact with me outside of class.  We worked pretty closely over the course of the semester, and the semester ended peacefully: his writing improved; his anxiety seemed lessened; and, we went our separate ways—I haven’t seen him since.  This first experience left me unhinged a bit—would working with vets always be this unsettling?  The answer, of course, was no, and the remainder of my interactions with vet students have been remarkable.  (I have a vet that was in my E90 class two years ago, and he still visits me once a week.  I even keep a bag of doggie treats in my desk drawer for his service dog.  It’s a highlight of my week every time he comes by!)

Leonhardy confirmed for me some things I already believed—vets are students like any other; they bring their life experiences with them.  Leonhardy reminds us that vets aren’t the ones to bring traumatic experiences with them to our classes. 

Leonhardy is able to offer a fairly unique experience for his students—he is a vet himself and is able to share narratives with them.  Like many instructors at Leonhardy’s institution, I find myself asking, “How can I best work with vets?”  Leonhardy offers a couple tips to folks like me:

1.       “Good pedagogy in the compositionclassroom is good pedagogy for all students” (344).  He also suggests leading by example; instructors could/should complete assignments alongside their students and share their work.

2.       Instructors should have empathy (345).  (This seems to line up with “good pedagogy is good pedagogy,” no?)

Ultimately, Leonhardy seems to suggest that we treat vets like any other students, and I agree with that.  Good pedagogy is good pedagogy for all is a philosophy I have always subscribed to, and my basic writing students appreciate that, acknowledging in my evaluations that I don’t talk down to them.  The advice I always give folks who are teaching basic writing for the first time is this: treat them with respect, and treat them as individuals. That’s it, and it goes a long way. 

After reading Leonhardy’s article, I am questioning whether or not I provide enough opportunities for my students to do personal writing.  I moved away from personal essays early on, trying to focus on “academic writing.”  Leohardy argues that instructors should use assignments to help vets (and all students) move from the personal to the public, starting with freewriting and narratives and eventually moving on to research-based writing.  I have been long thinking about trying to find ways to encourage my students to incorporate themselves back into their writing, and I’ll really be focusing on that in 201 in the fall.  I suppose it all comes down to teaching students to be able to examine the rhetorical situation, so they can determine when it is and when it is not appropriate to bring themselves into the writing. 

Okay, I’m going to try and cut it short today—I really need to start working on my online class! 

More tomorrow,

mk

Countdown to My First Online Class

Still here from the Oregon coast, and I’m happily returning to my blogging duties as the beach here is more fog and rocks than sun and sand.  I must admit that I’m feeling incredibly guilty and somewhat nervous on vacation right now since I’m supposed to begin teaching my very first online class here in a little over a week (and, it’s a five-week summer class, which has never been taught before at our university—so I suppose that’s adding to my twitchiness about the subject).  On the trip over I managed to sketch out a rough plan of due dates and assignments, so I do feel fairly confident now that I can actually cover the material I had hoped to.  But, I’m still left with the task of building my online classroom.  The article that came my way today, I suppose, was either meant to alleviate or possibly aggravate my concerns about this upcoming class.  Someone sure is screwing with me…, so, here it is folks:

Article 5:

Darrington, Anjanette. “Six Lessons in e-Learning: Strategies and Support for Teachers New to Online Environments.” TETYC 35.4 (2008): 416-421. Print.

The title says it all: Darrington offers six pointers of things she learned after teaching her online class for the first time.  This isn’t the first article like this that I’ve read—it seems that after teaching online for the first time, it’s common for teachers to want or need to share their experiences as to make the first experience of others less painful (a running narrative, really, in the field of Online Writing Instruction).  In fact, my team (Jen, Steph, and Jill) and I just returned from the Computers and Writing Conference, and we presented about our online writing instruction training program that we developed through a SBOE Technology Incentive Grant, and the program was designed to better prepare new and experienced online writing instructors (that goes above and beyond the training provided by the university).  I was very fortunate to be a member of this team with Jen, Steph, and Jill because they did in fact have many years of experience teaching online.  I, in fact, have none.  I became a member of our team in an earlier iteration of our grant plan, which eventually shifted over time, leaving the duties I was originally planned for irrelevant.  I stayed on the team, though, as the “technology person” (which, by the way, is absurd in about a hundred different ways as I find myself frequently shaking my fist at my computer, swearing at it for its misgivings).  Anyhow, I stayed on the team, and we just wrapped up our year-long training program.  And, now I’m planning to teach my first online class, and even with all of the training I’ve had (and provided) and with the support I have (which many online teachers, I’ve come to find out, have little to none), I’m still incredibly nervous.

Darrington’s six pointers didn’t offer any new bits of wisdom for me because of this recent year-long experience I’ve had, but I’ll lay them out here for you here just in case:

1.       Students aren’t as tech savvy as some people think.  (I already know this of course, but the one thing I’ve learned about teaching online is that students sign up for these classes for a zillion reasons, and one of these reasons is that they lead hectic, complicated lives—they don’t often even consider the technological requirements necessary for taking an online class.)

2.       Teachers have to work harder at building community. (This has been of recent discussion between me and my grant team, so I’ll come back to it below.)

3.       Teaching online takes more time.  (I’ll also discuss this below.)

4.       J doesn’t replace real smiles.  (True-ish.  In our training program we’ve spent a great deal of time training our participants on how to create an online presence, so that our students can recognize that we are living, breathing human beings—something we do take for granted in our f2f classes.  Better technology and web applications that have come out since this article was written can make a huge difference.)

5.       Student satisfaction is key.  (Is this really a point that is specific to online learning?  I don’t think so.)

6.       Because teaching online takes more time (as Darrington claims earlier), contingent faculty are more vulnerable to exploitation because even though it takes more time, they are not paid more.   (I’ll come back to this below, as well.)

Back to the issue of community, we’ve talked about this a lot because it was much discussed at the conference we just returned from.  Writing instructors tend to emphasize the necessity of community, and I’m one of them.  My go-to line is, “If they won’t talk to each other about the movie they saw over the weekend, they sure as hell won’t talk to each other about their essays.”  I spend a great deal of time in many of my classes to actively build community, particularly in English 90 because I often get to work with the same students for 101 and 102 as well, so they need to know me and each other really well.  The time I spend is super valuable, and by the time 101 begins, they are comfortable with each other and me, and it pays off in really big ways.  After the conference, I posed a question to my team:  “how much community does an online student need?”  After all, they’re not in the class to discover their latest and greatest BFF; in fact, their hectic lives probably couldn’t even accommodate another obligation such as that.  The reality is, the majority of our online students are there to complete their core credits (as I’m only addressing the classes that I’ll be teaching—first-year writing classes), and being that my upcoming summer class is only five-weeks long, I’m assuming my students are trying to complete these core credits as fast as they can.  I know that a certain amount of community is necessary, and we discussed how to accomplish this in our training program, but we also decided this is one area that we can improve on, as instructors and as trainers.  I’ll keep thinking on it…

Another point that needs a bit of discussion is that Darrington states that online teaching takes more time.  This is a tricky subject.  Teaching online for the first time takes a considerable amount of time, no doubt, but so does any class that you’re teaching for the first time.  The first time I taught English 303: The Theory and Practice of Tutoring Writing, I poured myself into that task (and, this was one of the last tasks that I really tackled—see my first post for more info).  I’m teaching 303 again in the fall, and it won’t take a fraction of the time I spent the first round.  That’s just how it goes.  I do think teaching online takes a different kind of time.  There is definitely more front loading, and it is a really bad idea to try and build a class one day at a time (which many people are able to do well f2f).  The more you teach online, the better you get at it—the better you get at it, the less time it’ll take.  We recommend that our students block out time for their online classes, just as they would their f2f classes.  Online learning cannot happen on coffee breaks at work.  I would argue the same goes for teaching these classes.

Last point: adjuncts are exploited.  That’s not new, now is it?  I will say that online teaching does align nicely in some ways for contingent folks—the flexibility of online teaching is quite appealing.  I’ve thought a lot over the past year about the differences between being a full-time, benefit-earning member of the department versus being an adjunct.  Being full-time is wonderful, and I am thankful every day for my job—it really is the best job in the world.  But it does come at a cost.  More stress, more meetings, more responsibilities, more meetings, more, more, more (and definitely more meetings).  I don’t mean to romanticize the life of an adjunct—it’s just different.  I suppose it’s kind of like being a hobo teacher, riding the rails from class to class, or school to school—not tied down.  Online teaching is just another rail to jump on.  Of course these hobo teachers have to pay a price, too—like frostbite and scurvy. 

Ultimately, teaching online can take as much or as little time as someone wants to devote—no different than a face-to-face class. 

Enough for now—I better go spend some time planning my class instead of whining about it.  More tomorrow!

mk

Cage Fight: Research Writing v. Creative Writing

Greetings from the Oregon coast!  I’m here on a fairly impromptu vacation, and I’ve decided to not wimp out my first week into this project.  For today’s article, I’ve returned to TETYC, hoping for a brief article that I can respond briefly to. Here it is, folks, a la article roulette:

Article 4:

Blue, Tim. “A Creative Approach to the Research Paper: Combining Creative Writing with Academic Research.” TETYC 34.2 (2006):  179-84. Print.

As usual, I was drawn to this article because of the title—I have long looked for ways to make academic research writing more interesting for students to write (and for me to read, of course).  Blue’s article offers a detailed explanation of one assignment he’s used, what he calls a “creative research story,” in which students are asked to imitate a fiction story after researching the author.  Blue uses this assignment with his basic composition students (though it’s not clear to me whether or not this class would be equivalent to our English 90: Developmental Writing or English 101: Introduction to College Writing course—I suspect it’s more of an E101 class because of the emphasis on research, but that’s just a hunch).

As I was cruising along through this reading, my gut reaction was to dislike Blue’s assignment, or I at least had the sense that I would not assign it in any of my classes.  This is not because Blue has his students imitate a published writer’s style and story—I believe imitation can be an effective way for students to learn new moves, and I frequently pull from They Say, I Say, which offers templates for students to borrow, and these templates show students the writer-ly moves that can help them agree and counter other people’s ideas, and students love being shown how to write this way (which of course brings me back to Devan’s article from yesterday where the students asked why they hadn’t previously been taught to write that way—the want explicit instruction: osmosis doesn’t always work). 

By the end of the article I was able to solidify to major premises of Blue’s assignment and approach that I strongly disagree with.  (And, for the record, I much prefer to play the “believing game” over the “doubting game,” but I just couldn’t get myself there with this article.) The first element I disagreed with is the way Blue instructs his students about the endings of their stories.  He explains:

I insist that students have a clear idea of how to end their stories. To convey the importance of knowing this from the beginning, I ask them how they are able to get driving directions off the Internet . . . what do they need to know, in other words? Of course, the answer is that they have to know where they are going before they can know how to get there. I had one student this year, long before I assigned this project, say to me, “Mr. Blue, it seems like these authors start out with an ending in mind and then write the rest of the story leading up to it.” “Bingo!” I replied. (182)

               

First, from a fiction-writing standpoint, Blue is instructing his students to work from a plot-driven perspective as opposed to a character-driven one.  I’m not a fiction teacher or writer, but that just seems like bad advice (though, I’ll be sure to double-check with fiction-writing friends).  From an academic-writing perspective, this is surely bad advice.  To me, this is the equivalent of saying to a student, “Okay, decide what you believe on a topic, THEN go to the library or online to research it, so you can find some research to support what you already think.”  Yuck.  I ask: Where’s the inquiry?  Where’s the discovery?  Where’s the surprise that occurs when students get to figure out what they think as opposed to merely confirming their already-held beliefs?  Yuck.  The greatest teachable moments that have happened in my research-based assignments are when students come to me to ask if it’s okay to change their opinion.  “YES,” I say. “YES, YES, YES.”  And it happens more often than I would have expected because even though I ask students to try to not have an opinion to begin with, they often do—but, then they change their minds.  Awesome. 

The second element I disagree with is also a bit philosophical when it comes to teaching research-based writing—Blue has seemingly separated the research from the writing.  Let me explain: the students’ major project is the fiction story, but the research they do is then compiled into a smaller, separate piece (which seems more like a reflection about the process of writing the fiction piece).  Here’s how Blue describes it:

I ask them to go back to their research (now that they know their story’s plot more clearly) and write a short paper discussing how they will take what they have learned from the process they have undergone to tell their particular story. This step provides the chance to cover any elements of research paper writing that have been missed by the initial research and writing. It reinforces the selection and integration of quotations, in-text citations, works cited pages, and so on, allowing them to focus on how the research is related to their own creative stories. In this piece, students must cite multiple scholarly articles as well as the two stories they have now read. Also, as it is more traditional, this step gives students a chance to learn appropriate documentation and provides teachers with an opportunity to discuss plagiarism issues. (184)

Wow, he’s clearly done his research-instruction duty then: quotes, citations, works cited pages, and plagiarism!  All in one short piece—not incorporated into the larger piece at all.  And maybe this does work for him and his students as an introduction to research, but there’s a larger issue here.  Blue describes the creative writing aspect of the project: “While the creative writing can present difficulty for some students, it should be the enjoyable part, the icing on the cake of the deep thinking they have done” (183).  He later concludes the article with an aside: “One way or another, this assignment will have pushed them in ways both academic and creative (I don’t mean to imply that the two are entirely distinct!) […]” (184).  So, he says he doesn’t mean to separate the two, BUT he does.  He clearly separates the fun (creative writing) from the work (the research), which does imply that academic writing is separate from creative writing.  This, of course, brings about the theoretical question, “What constitutes “creative” writing?”  I would argue that good research-based writing is creative, full of life and voice and interest and intrigue—the same as fiction, poetry, or creative nonfiction.  Whether Blue realizes it or not, he has set up a dichotomy here—academic versus creative writing—not broken one down.  In our department, Steph Cox teaches an assignment she calls “historical fiction” (which might have originally been a Devan assignment, if I recall), and this assignment weds creative and academic writing well, and students love it. 

Well, I don’t think I’ll be borrowing any of Blue’s ideas for any of my classes, but thinking about his work has helped me solidify what I believe to be important (or not) in teaching research-based writing.  And, while I meant to keep this short, I’ve rambled for far too long (as usual). 

Alright, I might go take a look at the beach now.  More tomorrow!

mk 

Article of Destiny...

After two articles that I specifically chose from College English, I decided that today’s installment should come about via article roulette, as originally intended.  So, for this round I decided to pull a random journal off the shelf, and I opted to go for a little TETYC this time. TETYC may very well be my favorite journal—I appreciate the practical, and often immediate, application it offers my teaching.  So, I went to the shelf and grabbed a journal.  I skimmed the titles and laughed at loud (and loudly at that) at what was within.  So, here it is folks:

Article 3:

Cook, Devan. “Revising Editing.” TETYC 29.2 (2001): 155-61.Print.

I, of course, appreciated the luck of selecting Devan’s article off a shelf of well over a hundred journals, but it became quite clear to me why I had to read this particular article right now.  Kismet, fate, or just dumb luck paid off!  Here’s the context as to why I needed this article right now: this fall I’ll be teaching English 201: Nonfiction Writing for the first time, and I have spent a great deal of time over the past few weeks trying to pinpoint the purpose of this class (and the obvious question is, “why plan your summer class that starts in a little over a week when you can obsess over the class you’ll be teaching in the fall?”). E201 has garnered a bit of attention lately—I’m not the only one who isn’t quite sure how this class functions in the grand scheme of the curriculum.  After reviewing the outcomes for the course, my question has been, “how is this class different from 102?”  Based on the outcomes, there are two differences I can tell:

1.       We’re supposed to teach a formal argument model. (I do teach argument in 102, but not a formal model.)

2.       There’s a greater emphasis on style. (In 102 we get so focused on teaching the basics of conducting and writing about research that there’s often little room for discussing the flare of how to go about it with style.)

I am probably the most excited about the opportunity to really focus on style in 201, but this has left me with the question about exactly how to go about doing it.  How would I fold that in with everything else we’d do in class?  Would there be “style days” (and, would I require students to where their most stylish outfits on these days—best shoes or hat winning a prize)?  I’ve been digging through style manuals (as I mentioned in my last post) and have to find the answer about how to teach style.  Enter: Devan’s awesome article.

Devan describes how she goes about teaching editing AS revision, as opposed to being two separate activities.  She highlights a few awesome texts early on: Dawkins’ “Teaching Punctuation as a Rhetorical Tool” (awesome article that Devan assigned to us in our grad class on grammar), Kolln’s Rhetorical Grammar (super awesome book that I’ve read at least seven times—by necessity because the awesomeness was too much to gather on one, two, or six reads), and the Hoffmans’ Adios, Strunk and White (which definitely solidified for me that I MUST read this book!).  After a little theoretical grounding, Devan digs into the practical application of this information—her attempt at teaching editing as revision in one of her FYW classes. 

What I appreciate most about Devan’s approach to this (and everything, really) is that she selected a few key bits to focus on: she wanted her students to learn to use the semicolon, colon, dash, and dash skewer.  This seems super manageable to me, and I have a similar approach in my teaching.  Here are the three grammatical bits I teach in all of my comp classes

1.       Independent clause (the basis for everything else I teach when it comes to grammar)

2.       Coordinating conjunctions (FANBOYS—holler!)

3.       Conjunctive adverbs

Devan required her students to go to the library to read random periodicals and analyze their styles.  After this activity, her students asked a damned good question: “If people write this way every day, why didn’t someone teach us how?” (156)  I often ask myself that same question, wishing someone would have taught me how to write before I made it to grad school. I thank God every day I had the teachers I did in grad school, or I still might not know how to write.  (Related tangent: I learned how to really use a dash in Devan’s class, and it freed my writing.  I remember saying as much to Devan in class once, and she said that made sense—she couldn’t picture me not using dashes since I spoke in dashes.)  Back to the students’ question, I’ve often wondered the same thing, but decided that many teachers expect students to absorb style through reading a lot, and I do think that works to some extent, but a conscious teaching of style would sure work a hell of a lot better. 

Devan created an assignment (which she also provided in the article—another reason why I love TETYC) in which she required students to revise their punctuation for rhetorical effect.  She later reflects: “Being asked to make purposeful punctuation choices introduced purpose as a viable personal concept to some students for the first time; before, their purpose for writing may have been limited to the fact that it was required” (157-58).  Some students resist this, of course, because it’s hard (which makes it even more necessary for a style guide to be interesting and perhaps even entertaining at times—like a spoonful of sugar). 

I am excited to use this assignment in 201 in the fall.  It clearly answers my question: no, you do not need to have “style days”—divorcing style for content is antithetical to good writing (and good writing instruction, at that).  I still hope to find a way to require all of my students to wear their most awesome shoes on the same day, though.

Off for now,

mk

The Unabomber and Me?

A couple of weeks back I got to chatting with Sara and Joshua Seely at the big retirement shindig for our department.  The conversation eventually got around to birthdays, and it turned out that Joshua shared his birthday with my oldest niece, Morgan—May 18^th.  I of course made the comment that it was clear that awesome people are born on that day, and Joshua then proceeded to rattle off a few famous names that shared the day as well (Tina Fey is the one I remember).  My birthday was coming up (and has since passed), and I admit that I was curious about with whom I shared my birthday.  Wikipedia comes quite in handy for such deep questions.  A quick search led me to a list of births and deaths on my birthday—May 22.  I scrolled through the list not really recognizing any names that seemed worthy to drop into conversations at social gatherings.  That was, of course, until I came to one name: Theodore Kaczynski—the Unabomber.  I paused, not sure how to feel about such a fact. 

So…how does this piece of trivia fit into the mission of this blog?  Well, as I sifted through Devan’s journals, one title beyond “Rhetoric and Bullshit” stood out to me in a recent issue of College English: “The Unabomber’s Strunk and White.”  So, to celebrate my 30^th birthday, I read this article about the Unabomber’s copy of The Elements of Style on the plane ride home from the Computers and Writing conference (which very well might be the nerdiest and most awesome conference hosted by our field).  Being that’s how I spent my 30^th birthday, I think the only thing missing from my nerd repertoire is a tattoo of a Tolkien quote somewhere on my body.  So here’s it is, folks:

Article 2:

Prendergast, Catherine.  “The Fighting Style: The Unabomber’s Strunk and White.” College English 72.1 (2009) 10-28. Print.

The title, of course, caught my attention in light of the recent discovery of my weak link to the Unabomber.  But beyond that, I’ve also been thinking of issues of style recently.  In the fall I’ll be teaching English 201: Nonfiction Writing for the first time, and one of the features that makes this course different from English 102 is the greater emphasis on style.  I’ve dug through many style manuals over the past few years, but I’ve never spent much time with Strunk and White (though before reading this article, I probably wouldn’t have mentioned that for fear of having my Comp/Rhet card taken away). 

The connection between Strunk and White and the Unabomber is this: after his shack in the woods was raided by the FBI, they discovered a well-used copy of this style manual.  Prendergast then goes on to provide a historical accounting of how The Elements of Style came to be (and this was interesting information to me, as I did not know that White came on board many years later to revise Stunk’s work).  After reading through the historical accounting of this manual and its use by the Kaczynski, one thing became quite clear: White and the Unabomber are both assholes.  They seem to both use language as way of berating people and declaring their intellectual superiority (or so they perceive). 

This all brings me back to the larger discussion of style and grammar.  I have yet to find a grammar book that I totally love.  The book I’ve read the most and tend to agree with the most is Kolln’s Rhetorical Grammar.  Her discussion of grammar as another rhetorical tool in a writer’s tool belt was revelatory for me, and I have often used that metaphor in teaching and consulting with writers. Students respond well to the idea that grammar is often a set of choices rather than a steadfast list of rules that no one understands (other than crazy assholes like the Unabomber).  I also enjoy reading Truss’s Eats, Shoots & Leaves, and Prendergast mentions this book as one that follows Strunk and White’s “warlike, exhortative style” (13), and while I do recall that Truss made a strong stand against the misuse of apostrophes, I don’t think she was as big of an asshole as Strunk and White.  I remember thinking that she backed off considerably from her strong stance and seemed to be having some fun (which would have completely stroked out Strunk and White).  In grad school I took a class on the theory and practice of teaching grammar (from Devan, no less!), and we sifted through many books about grammar.  I found myself often dissatisfied, particularly by books that seemed to make a strong stance in their titles.  Grammar Alive!, I remember thinking, should have been titled Grammar…Alive?.  Another grammar book we read was Breaking the Rules, and it rarely seemed to actually call for breaking the rules.  Ugh.  Would somebody please write a style guide that is interesting, often entertaining, and perhaps even user/student-friendly?

So…my search for a non-asshole style/grammar guide continues.  Devan uses Adios, Strunk and White, and while I haven’t read it yet, the title is catchy in light of my new knowledge about The Elements of Style—I say adios, indeed.  I plan on checking it out soon, and I hope the authors don’t disappoint. 

More tomorrow!

mk

Maiden Post (including some thoughts on "Rhetoric and Bullshit")

Hello, all.

I was recently handed down a collection of scholarly journals about composition studies by Devan Cook, a teacher and mentor of mine who retired (a bitter, bittersweet gift!). I was unbelievably humbled by this gift and promised that I would cherish them—this blog is an attempt to honor that promise.

This blog is really an excuse to assuage some of my current fears.  Because I am no longer taking classes, I fear my brain is going mushy, growing more and more waterlogged by my day-to-day duties as a teacher and Writing Center AD.  And since I’ve completed my program, I haven’t had much of a chance to write, and I fear that writing may very well be a skill that might get rusty.  And, worst yet, I fear my voice—the writer’s voice I toiled to develop—might dry up as a side effect of teacher/administrator burnout.  Ultimately, though, this blog is chance for me to do something I haven’t done in a while—to commit to something, to really tackle a project—for myself.  And while this is a project I am undertaking for selfish reasons, I hope it serves another purpose, as a "thank you" to all of my teachers from grad school who have inspired me to want to keep learning, even long after our classes ended.  (Too mushy?  Okay, enough of that…)

So, here’s my plan: I hope to read and write about an article from one of these journals every day.  (Okay, I fully intend on reading and writing nearly every day, or hopefully some days, or perhaps just as often as I can.)  Some days this blog will be my excuse to read an article that’s been on my to-do list for some time.  Other days I intend on playing article roulette, selecting an article to read by randomly pulling a journal off of my shelf.  I can’t say as of yet what the responses will look like, what exactly their purpose will be, or how they might shift over time.  I might just end up posting pictures of my dogs.

Well, here it is folks, my maiden post…

Enjoy or ignore!

Best,

mk

Article 1:

Fredal, James. “Rhetoric and Bullshit.” College English 73.3 (2011): 243-259.  Print.

For those who know me, this choice for a first article to read for my new blog will probably seem quite obvious: “Rhetoric and Bullshit” certainly caught my eye as I skimmed through my newly acquired journals, as I’m sure it caught yours.  It should also be of no surprise that my favorite Hemingway quote is, “The most essential gift for a good writer is a built-in, shock-proof, shit detector.”  I would argue that that this kind of shit-detector is absolutely a crucial tool for any composition instructor.  (And this is not to say that students go out of their way to bullshit us—though some do—but I find it’s more common that students are bullshitting themselves through their essays, and we must be able to identify their bullshit so that we may help them to better understand how to avoid it themselves.) 

I have also grown increasingly interested in rhetoric over the past year since Clyde has been around.  Rhetoric, of course, has garnered a bad rap—that rhetoric is really just bullshit (and, to some extent, I can see where that perception comes from).  Fredal relies on the previous work of Harry Frankfurt to start fleshing out the definition of bullshit.  Frankfurt says that bullshit is “what results when speakers conceal from their audience a lack of concern for the truth” (qtd. In Fredal 244).   Fredal doesn’t fully agree with all of Frankfurt’s assertions, however, because there are many factors to consider when considering a writer or speaker’s intention regarding the truth.  At one point during my reading of this article I began to question Fredal’s own intention.  Here’s the beginning of a sentence that left me wondering:

“Like bullshitter bullshit, bullshit bullshit focuses on one important element of the bullshit phenomenon…” (249).

Was Fredal bullshitting us in this article???  I ultimately decided not because of Fredal’s final point of defining the difference between rhetoric and bullshit:

If bullshit is one-sided discourse, and arises in encounters characterized by the perception of arrogance and insult, then rhetoric must be defined as discourse that affords due regard to all participants in an encounter and all perspectives in a dialogue or discourse, particularly the non-dominant positions most likely to go unheard. […] Rhetoric ought to be defined with reference to the affordance of due attention and regard to all participants in an encounter, all perspectives in an exchange, all side of an issue. (257)

Fredal clarifies for me that rhetoric is not just about the “art or science of persuasive discourse” (256), which was my previous understanding.  I like this new definition, I suppose, because it will help me better explain the purpose of argument to my students, who often think that argument is about picking a fight as opposed to recognizing and contemplating all sides of an issue (and even acknowledging where the opposing side has a good point).

Final thoughts about rhetoric and bullshit: Fredal’s discussion definitely encourages me to continue exploring rhetoric.  I have always considered myself a natural rhetorician because of my ability to size up people and situations and adapt accordingly, and now I’d like to be more conscientious about it.  At the same time, I also recognize that being a rhetorician can only get you so far.  There are times in life when you need to be a bullshitter.  (Small talk with strangers and family members is a bullshitting strategy I could improve on!)

As I was wrapping up this first post, I was flipping through the TV channels. I chuckled to myself as I came across the season premiere of “The Bachelorette”.  Speaking of bullshit and the lack of concern for the truth…!

More tomorrow (and I hope it's not bullshit...)

mk