First Assignment

As you all will see on Thursday (since I decided to go ahead and volunteer for the lesson plan presentation), I plan to use a variety of the ideas in the Bean chapters we read. For one, I agree with the observations about the room and how where you sit/stand and where students are placed influences the discussion and interaction of the class. I never sit my students in rows because I feel it encourages some to "skate by" or "disappear" as they hide behind their peers. So, I will keep you all in the circle of course. I will use a combination of lecture and guiding questions to spark discussion because I feel that it is important for students to be a part of the class. I also like the idea of writing after the lesson to help solidify ideas or present questions about unclear material. I plan, tentatively, to use this idea as well. These ideas are not exactly new to me, but it is a good reinforcement of the techniques I am used to using, which gives me greater confidence in this transition to the college classroom.

Just to include a summary of the activity (I don't have the entire thing planned as of yet), I plan to write a statement on the board about artifacts and then conduct a brainstorming session considering what artifacts are and how language (written and oral) may fit in with the definition. Then I plan to lead a discussion of the various types of literature and media which affect "our" definition of America and the character of America and then do a bit of reflective writing. This is a very brief sketch as of now, but I would welcome any comments or suggestions or questions. Have a great week everyone!

The stases

Since reading Fahnestock and Secor’s article, I have been thinking a lot the stases.
In relation to English 1000, I think that the classical theory of the stases could help students develop an idea for a topic into an idea for a claim. By using the stases to ask good questions about a topic, as Fahnestock and Secor model (60), students could develop a better idea about why they are struggling to write the academic essay without a thesis.
Moreso, I think Fahnestock and Secor’s argument about arguments in literature and in science could come into play in the classroom. The authors point out that arguments in science are conducted in the lower stases and arguments in literature are conducted in the first stases (70). The discourse in each discipline has different values. As an English graduate student, I might be more inclined to encourage my students to write a paper that analyzes a complex problem, which is a paper that my discipline values, than a paper that provides a definite solution to that problem, which is a paper another discipline (in sciences, perhaps) might value. Yet, I think that most students will benefit more from writing a paper that forces them to take a side. I also think this paper is easier to write.

The Fear of Interpretation

In the writing center conference transcript that Bean provides in Chapter 2, I thought that the student's final response was particularly telling: "The reason why I'm undecided is because I couldn't create a strong enough argument for either side. There are too many holes in each side. If I were to pick one side, somebody could blow me out of the water" (19). This is a manifestation of what I've seen to be a more general theme. Yesterday I read a student paper in which the assignment involved "treating the Bible as literature" -- doing literary analysis on a "sacred text." The question of the assignment was whether or not God broke covenant with Abraham by asking him to sacrifice Isaac -- a question which requires a YES or NO and a supporting argument. The student managed in a 4 page paper to never answer the question. In fact, within the paper itself, I found the phrase "Any interpretation of the Bible is just that -- an interpretation." The underlying meaning of this disclaimer seems to be: "I have no faith in my ability to construct and defend an argument, so I am just going to summarize the plot." So the essay turned out to be a paraphrased version of the Abraham and Isaac story with a bit of emotive digression.

Bean's allusion to Perry's theory of educational "stages" seems relevant. Perry would contend that this student was stuck in one of the middle stages of development -- that of "multiplicity," in which he/she is conscious of opposing views but sees all views as "just interpretation." The student's essay reveals a tendency to cling to the text itself (plot summary) in order to be sure that he/she cannot be criticized (because no interpretation has been offered). This student was, in fact, frightened at the prospect of having to "make meanings and defend them" (19).

I think the assignment itself was effective because it forces a confrontation -- a YES or a NO. It also requires students to engage rationally/logically with an authoritative text. But the students' response to the assignment suggests to me that, perhaps, the difference between analysis and summary had not been stressed enough during class time. I plan to emphasize and re-emphasize this distinction on a regular basis. Hopefully, when paper time rolls around, my students will have a solid idea of what to avoid (plot summary) and what an essay should do (make a claim and support/defend it). In other words, I want to help them get past "multiplicity" as quickly and painlessly as possible.

The First Assignment as Metapedagogy

Writing one's own first assignment can be a humbling experience. Throughout the process, I've tried to keep in mind what pedagoigical value I hope to achieve in having students read what I've assigned and in having them write within certain given specifications. With these notions in mind, I've hit snags at pretty much every point in the process; and so I've second-guessed not only specific assignments and lesson plans, but also my overall approach/theme/syllabus. It's not so much that I'm concerned in the operational aspects of the syllabus--I think it's just fine--but in going through the process of writing the first assingment, I realize that I want it to do more. Or rather, I want it it to do different things. For example, I went in the opposite direction from most, it seems, and made my assignment way too broad in terms of the subject matter. I had given a choice of something like ten essays for students (or me) to choose from. As I was going through the essays, I saw in each of them something of value (of course) but, taken as a whole, they're not building up to want I to do with my class. So, in short, I've rewritten my first assignment and over the weekend I will be completely revising my syllabus (read: scrapping everything and completely starting over). I'm excited about it, though--this has really helped.

The first assignment

I was working upon my first assignment. I chose a general topic that could be interesting for students from different majors. However, it is not very easy for me to complete this task. The topic seems to be appropriate and gives possibilities for good argumentation. But I realize I am mostly used to topics on literature where mode of writing and argumentation is quite specific. So I think that we should not overload students with literary topics. Another correction to my assignment will be adding more topics for students to choose (I only had one).

Stasis Theory

After reading the two selections about Stasis Theory, I think students would be able to relate to it more than Aristotle or Toulmin. The idea of the questions and categories seems much simpler than trying to explain syllogisms and warrants. Plus, the example in the Fahnestock and Secor chapter of how magazine articles are set up using stasis questions makes the idea sound more contemporary and approachable.

However, the biggest eye-opener for me was in the second reading by Fulkerson. I agree that the ideas of induction and deduction are extremely confusing to instructors, let alone students. I think, though, the most enlightening point is that we use the wrong tools to teach students how to write arguments. The tools we use are meant for analysis. I really want to explore stasis theory more so I can incorporate the questioning techniques to help students develop a supportable, arguable thesis. Right now I don't have an exact idea about how to incorporate stasis theory other than teaching students to address those types of questions in order to explore topics.

Fulkstockerson

I frankly found the stasis chapters to be more difficult than Toulmin, though as with other chapters there are a number of useful gems to extract and hoard, thus creating an artifical scarcity (sorry, my imperialism class is spilling over). Fahnestock/Secor's discussion of stasis and audience (61) is interesting; another angle for talking about audience in general, which I'd like to find room for in my class plan...my favorite bit in Fahnestock/Secor was the discussion and results of the David Leverenz article from PMLA- pointing out that academic writing need not be reduced to binary opposition, arguing only for or against; as they quote Leverenz on Emerson, "not to take a stand within that paradoxical either-or but to see how his language resonates with the unresolved tensions of his life and time" (70). This is another one of my pet goals, getting students to strive for more complex and considered theses instead of simple, absolute, either-or debate (only a Sith deals in absolutes). The quality F/S ascribe to literary criticism, I think we can expand to all the writing we teach: "we can pose problems about literary works, uncover historical and biographical facts, sift evidence in the light of definitions, celebrate or question certain values. In doing so we come not to clear answers but to delight in the complexity of the process" (70).

Fulkerson's more direct focus on logic was more stultifying for me, though again I found some interesting stuff. _Writing Analytically_, which I'm reviewing, has a chapter on this inductive/deductive format, and I admit I never even considered whether this actually reflected classic logic's definition of these terms. At least that book doesn't fall all the way into the "complementary and exhaustive" trap (323); they also note that the forms can blend and produce several variations.

I most liked his STAR acronym: that examples used in evidence should be sufficient, typical, accurate, relevant. This is the sort of handy and readily understandable thing I can see undergraduates actually retaining. Also noteworthy was his assertion that "writing...almost always deals with contingent issues" (366) which I think another poster may have brought up. This goes back to the idea from Fahnestock/Secor of the complexity and qualifiers in most good (interesting?) arguments.

Synthesizing Bean with Fahnestock and Secor Through Bauman

First, I'd like to thank the many of you who have given me well-wishes and have offered to help--I really do appreciate it. Things are stabilizing for me and this post marks the beginning of a significant uptick in my participation on the blog, for better or worse.

So, one thing I considered after reading Fahnestock and Secor is how what they have to say about assumptions in argument can be related to what Bean had to say about writing across the disciplines and students' bifurcated view of writing. Bean describes this view in terms of the assumption made by many students that "a writing teacher has no business criticizing one's ideas ('This is a writing class!') just as a history or science or philosophy teacher has no business criticizing one's writing ('This is not a writing class!')" (16). Bean puts it nicely I think when he says that students often think of writing as "packaging," "Separated from the act of thinking and creating" and so "writing becomes merely a skill that can be learned through grammar drills and through the production of pointless essays that students do not want to write and that teachers do not want to read" (ibid). This initial discussion in the reading assignments out of Bean stuck with me, and as I was reading Fahnestock and Secor and thinking about how they also argue, in a way, that there are some similarities between disciplines in terms of how one writes (mirroring Bean's discussion of the writing-across-the-curriculum approach). Fahnestock and Secor locate such similiarties in their comparison of the use of stases in scientific and literary writing in terms of the *assumptions* writers in each discipline share. As Fahnestock and Secor assert, "argments within a discipline usually assume the vallue of addressing certain subjects in a certain stases. That is what it means to write within a discipline" (70). They then go on to outline how both writers in literary studies and in science assume that their audience shares certain values--"Arguments in literary criticism do not spend time convincing readers that the works of Spenser, Milton, Wordsworth, and Emerson are worth reexamining" just as "arguments in science usually bypass explicit justification of the stasis of and content of their approach... in either science or literary studies, anyone who addresses a discipline in ways it does not recognize in effect tries to change that discipline or splinters off into a new one" (ibid).

Resisting my (strong) urge to discuss Thomas Kuhn (who Fahnestock and Secor mention) here, I'll instead bring in something else which I was actually thinking about last week when Dr. Strickland brought up the work of George Lakoff (_Don't Think of an Elephant!: Know Your Values and Frame the Debate_ and _Metaphors We Live By_, which he co-authored with Mark Johnson--by the way, I also recommend _Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things: What Categories Reveal About the Mind). One key concept for Lakoff (along with conceptual metaphor and the embodied mind) is framing, as Dr. Strickland discussed. Discussing Lakoff's concept of framing brought to mind for me another concept of framing, that of Richard Bauman, and that's what came to mind again for me as I read Fahnestock and Secor. One of Bauman's key works is _The Verbal Art of Performance_ (the folklore folks will probably know this one--we use it in Anthro and Linguistics, too), and in it, he deals (as the title suggests) with the nature of verbal performance, but I think one can find it useful (or, alternately, completely tangential) to substitute *writing* for performance and that doing so could illuminate what they have to say about stases.

For Bauman, performance involves the performer, the audience and the setting (much like Fahnestock and Secor's discussion of writing and argument). The setting (or for writing, the nature of the publication, say--_Science_ vs. _PMLA_), of course, often cues an audience that what they are about to see/hear/read is going to be a certain kind of performance (or a cetain kind of writing). There is also an assumption of cultural comptencey on the part of the audience--they recognize certain cues which will foreground or call special attention to certain aspects of the performance. The performer/writer uses these cues--special codes, formulas, figarutive language and other stylistic devices, fluctations in voice, etc.--to create an interpretive frame for the audience/reader: "Performance sets up, or represents, an interpretative frame within which the messages being communicated are to be understood..." and "All framing, including performance, is accomplished through the employment of culturally conventionalized metacommunication." So the setting for a performance/reading cues the audience/reader, and the performer/writer sets up an interpretative frame for audience/reader using cultural conventions that *key* for them that what is to follow is a performance or writing within a certain genre or discipline. An audience at a comedy club, for example, is cued by the setting to know that the performance they are about to see will involve jokes, and the comedian will frame a joke using certain cultural conventions to cue the audience that what they are about hear is the beginning of a joke (or the punchline). Seinfeld, for example, is in/famous for starting his jokes/observations with "Did you ever notice..." or "What's the deal with...".

Framing arguments--both in the sense that Lakoff uses the term and the sense that Bauman uses it--can work in tandem, I feel, with the stases of arguments as Fahnestock and Secor outline them (facts, definitions, causes, values, proposals—or procedure or policy) to help lay the foundation for a writing-across-the-curriculum orientation.

Bean, Flower, and Elbow

I've thought of studying Rhet/comp, I don't think that I have a cool enough name for it... Not only is my last name not pronounceable, it is not a fun noun.

Anyway, I "liked" several of the things I read in Bean this week if, for no other reason, they helped me to justify my writing assignments, at least to myself. Ultimately, I want to teach students to think critically even more than I want to teach them to write. Bean explains that students should be asked "to consider multiple points of view, to confront clashing values, and to imagine, analyze, and evaluate alternative solutions to problems" (26). These were almost precisely the things I was targeting in my first paper assignment, which, incidentally, I am still struggling to write.

Partially related to this week's readings, I was reading Richard Light's book, Making the Most of College: Students Speak Their Minds, last night. Light (another great noun [/verb/adjective] surname) conducted hundreds of interviews with students over several years to draw conclusions primarily related to advising issues. He said that most of the students he interviewed about their writing said that they really needed writing instruction in their junior and senior years and that they could not understand the necessity of their composition classes as freshmen. The students said that only through needing to write better for a specific purpose were they interested in writing instruction. Explains a lot, doesn't it?

--Bri

Stasis as Hybrid

Fulkerson exploration of stasis theory as related to the teaching of composition was interesting and useful. Formal logic is better suited to examining things that might really have a conclusion, something like a math equation. In real practice, the things we discuss, whether in written or oral form, do not have precise answers or conclusions: “Writing, . .. always deals with contingent issues, issues in which the evidence will never entail the conclusions.”

The Toulmin Model, like formal logic, has its limitation with regard to usefulness in the teaching of composition. Fulkerson finds faults in the model’s for several reasons. First of all, the model maintains that arguments can be evaluated only with in “a discourse field according to the cannons of that field.” Given this situation, Fulkerson rules it out as being applicable in a freshman composition class, a class that is composed of students from different disciplines. Secondly, the Toulmin Model is a system designed for analyzing arguments “rather than a system for creating them.” Fulkerson thus recommends a third way of teaching argumentative writing skills – a kind of hybrid that comes out of traditional stasis theory with a little bit of Toulmin thrown in. He converts the six parts of the Toulmin Model into a useful heuristic we might do well to bring into the classroom. The heuristic guides the student through the process of creating and evaluating their arguments:
1. What is my claim?
2. What grounds do I have to support it?
3. What statement could warrant my move from the grounds to the claim?
4. How can I back up that warrant?
5. How much must I qualify my conclusion as contingent?
6. What counterarguments that would weaken my conclusion do I need to acknowledge?

What's so hard about the academic essay?

From reading chapter 2 of Engaging Ideas, I found it helpful that Bean identifies the reasons that students struggle so much to write the academic essay. For some, the misconception of how one writes a paper or why one writes a paper might cause problems. For others, the underdeveloped ability to think abstractly or to consider another person’s perspective—limiting their ability to write for an audience—might cause problems. I think it is relatively easy to correct students’ misconceptions about writing—the instructor can simply explain the goals of the assignment and describe the writing process. It is much more difficult to get some students to master complicated skills. I appreciate Bean’s list of what instructors can do to help their students think abstractly and consider their audience. Instructors can present writing as a process. I never fully considered the benefit of teaching a process model of writing before. From my tutoring experience in the writing lab, I get the sense that students aren’t accustomed to revising their papers. Most students I talk with seem to think that there is writing and editing with little work in between. So it’s no wonder that they find analytical writing so difficult—most scholars cannot write a successful analytical essay in one draft. Nor can students fully develop their ideas and adequately consider their audience and meet the other criteria of a well written essay in one draft. The best way for students to improve their ability to think on a deeper level is practice and, thankfully, the process model of writing provides that.

Creative Logic

Though I disagree with some of the philosophical underpinnings of the Fahnestock and Secor article, I found their treatment of the role of critical logic to be quite accurate. They assert, "As readers we push at arguments, testing the expressed and articulating the submerged assumptions of fact, definition, or value in order to accept or reject them. That is what it means to be sensitive to language in argument: to be aware of facts that are assumed significant, to notice definitions that might be slippery or inadequate, to pick out values that might be implicit in word choice and metaphor" (62). These "reading" skills are equally "writing" skills, since we are both the writers and readers of our own thoughts. Sensitivity to issues of word choice, definition, and figurative language are requisite, not only for critique, but also for composition (because composition is nothing if not continual self-critique). These are some of the reasons that I am unwilling to consider logic as somehow separate from the sphere of essay writing -- as if the two were separable.

Therefore, I hold to the notion that logic (in an abbreviated form) should be introduced in any class that claims to deal with "composition and exposition." Though it's alway possible that my theoretical conclusions will be falsified by my actual experience -- in which case it would be only logical to adjust them accordingly.

Mr. Bean

There was some great stuff, for me at least, in these chapters. I love the concept of brouillon as the stew of ideas that a paper grows out of. This matches my own process to an extent, in which by the end of my rough draft I've finally figured out what I'm writing about. I think getting students past the notion that they must produce a fully formed, complete-thesis paper on the first go, is paramount to getting them to arrive at their own process of revision. It should also get them past the idea of "writing as information, not argument or analysis." Analyzing sources without a firm thesis in mind (Keats' negative capability?) will probably lead to a more thoughtful, complex thesis in the end. I love his quote from Elbow: "meaning is not what you start out with but what you end up with." This is the idea I've emphasized as a tutor. Hence my liking for the ungraded exploratory writing- a pressure-free environment in which to practice revision, before they get to the high-pressure environment of 1st to 2nd submission.

I also enjoy Bean's exhortation to "create cognitive dissonance for students." College in many ways is one big four-year-long episode of cognitive dissonance, more so for some than others. Why not start them off right in English 1000? This goes back to my personal goal to get them to question their assumptions, think about controversial topics, and acquire a healthy skepticism for all received knowledge (except what they receive from me, of course).

Bean, Bean, the musical fruit

Been reading Bean.

So far the two most interesting or helpful things I've read are:

1) 60% of students prefer more structured, less open-ended assignments, whereas professors preferred (in their student days) more free-thinking assignments. Personally, I prefer a very structured, highly directed assignment, because if I get a better idea, I've mostly been allowed to go with it. I think it's really important to recognize that most of our students do NOT think the way we did as undergraduates. Just because "we" liked a particular assignment does not necessarily mean that it will work for our students. It was helpful to me that Bean articulated this clearly, because its easy to forget that we are not the norm. I'm going to try to keep this in mind when I teach.

2) The particular kind of writing that we will be teaching is valued by our particular culture, but is NOT valued by the majority of the world. I thought this was especially interesting. I think it's a problem. Problems are good, according to Bean, so I guess I should be less concerned. But I found the section (forgot my book at home--sorry for lack of specific references) on "diversity" very interesting, both because it gave me some insight on where Bean stands, but also because of the big paragraph quote about how people who are not part of the dominant culture value different kinds of writing, which may stand in direct opposition to standard American academic writing. That was really interesting. As an embryonic folklorist, I think this is something which is essential to consider. Culturally influenced writing styles, values, etc, are of great importance to groups of people. So how do we respect and value that and not try to bash people into boxes that are the wrong shape?

On using Stasis Theory

While I don't agree 100% with Fulkerson's article, he has made me reconsider the value of teaching logic in a composition course, and his suggestion of teaching Stasis Theory intrigues me enough that I want to check out some composition textbooks that suggest this approach (are the ones he mentioned in his article--Fahnestock's A Rhetoric of Argument and Beale's Real Writing-- still used, or are there other texts that have come along since which may be better?

There were a few points that Fulkerson made, while valid, seemed to sell the students short. When he talked about the treatment of material fallacies in comp-logic, he suggested that to focus on fallacies tells the student that as long as they avoid fallacies, they will have a good argument. I don't think students assume this at all, as long as the instructor makes clear that the goal of looking at logical fallacies is simply to make them aware that a logical fallacy can destroy their argument. A good instructor will spend relatively little time going over logical fallacies, and spend more time going over how to make a good argument. He is correct, however, when he says that logical fallacies are tricky to teach because the definitions given in most textbooks overlap. If you give the common exercise to students of looking at a list of ten logical fallacies and categorizing them, there are going to be many examples that will fit more than one definition. I always saw this as just proving that a statement which is logically invalid can fit more than one definition, and is therefore even more important to avoid.

I think that stasis theory can be very useful when looking at my first assignment, or any of my assignments for that matter. For example, my first essay involves looking at an article in the reader and analyzing the writer's argument and using that as a springboard to the student's own take on the topic. Whatever the topic is, they could begin with a definition question which looks at what the topic entails, which would lead to fact questions and ultimately evaluation. It seems questions on value could be particularly helpful in finding a thesis statement for a paper such as this one. If the student was asked to put aside the article for a second and just consider these stasis questions based on his/her own knowledge of the topic, it could help them to realize that the paper needs to be more than just a summary of the article they are reading.

Induction, deduction, and Toulmin

I appreciated Fulkerson's discussion of the uses (or lack thereof) of teaching either formal or informal logic in composition classes. I especially appreciated his point that "writing has little use for the certitudes of deductive reasoning" (326). I actually saw a student in the writing lab yesterday who used a syllogism in his paper! Overall, the paper was good, but it was actually weakened by his use of the syllogism. As Fulkerson says, "Logic and comp-logic are tools for criticizing arguments, not for generating them" (328). While they may, at times, be useful for helping our students to check whether their arguments are really valid, I think that they are limited in their usefulness for actually helping our students learn to write arguments.

I did think that he suggested a potential use of Toulmin that could be helpful in a composition classroom. On p. 332, he uses the Toulmin model to suggest 6 heuristic questions to evaluate their argument. In some ways, I think this could be used to help generate an argument. Often, it seems, students come into the writing lab without having decided an answer to the question "What is my claim?"--which is pretty essential! The other questions could likewise help the student to see what elements they may need to still develop in their papers. I'm still not sure about how useful this would be in English 1000, but I think it has some potential. What do you all think?

Fulkerson: how logic can (or cannot) help in writing

Fulkerson’s argument is quite persuasive in showing that technical logic is not connected directly to skills of writing essays. It was strange to learn that many composition books provide wrong conceptions of logic and erroneous examples. Also I had thought I would be able to distinguish induction and deduction before I read this piece, and now I am not sure about it.

The article helps me to shape my view of better ways of teaching composition. I was in doubt whether to teach technical logic to students or not, and I start to think it is better not to do it. Stasis theory is good to teach analytical thinking upon problems. It is not bad for students to know what “syllogism” is, but now I think it is better to put more emphasis on practical advice and avoid unnecessary terms.

I liked the passages about correcting ‘fallacies’: “Hasty generalization obviously pairs with generalization, poor analogy with analogy, authority with false authority” (330). Comments on students’ papers often seem to deal with exactly such fallacies. Maybe one of the in-class activities for students can be discussion about how to make analogies not poor and on what authorities to rely etc.

Stases in Composition

Our two readings for today did not convince me one way or another if stasis theory is the type of writing instruction I should use in my course next year. It could have been that I wasn't entirely sure of the definition when I first read the Fahnestock & Secor — I was thinking of the word in terms of "stagnation" or "stillness," but I'm pretty sure none of us want to teach our English 1000 students to remain static!

I think the primary disenchantment I found was on the second page of F & S's article. This is when they set up the example with the topic "food stamps." Now I'm usually a sucker for examples, particularly if I'm having some trouble grasping the abstract concept as I was with this reading. The authors pose these, among other questions: "'What brought them about or what is their history?' or 'What are their effects?'" They then go on to suggest "An attempt to provide a plausible answer to any of these questions gives the writer a thesis to support" (60). In the margin next to this I wrote: "If you're lucky."

The biggest problem I see with this example, and ultimately with stasis theory, is that any of these heuristic questions that arise during the invention process can result in (to use Bean's terms) "and then," "all about," or "data dump" writing. That is, the answer to the question "What is the history of food stamps?" is not necessarily going to be an argumentative statement.

This is not to say that I disagree with the premise of continually asking questions (of yourself or of your student) during the writing process. I think that's how I usually end up with my best ideas and support. I liked Fulkerson's idea of incorporating stasis theory and other theories — this seems like it would be a better way to reach more students. Honestly, I don't see how an instructor could get by without picking and choosing from different theories.

Writing concerns

I'm actually kind of concerned about writing this paper. As it is, I know that I've chosen a challenging assignment that I hope will help students to understand the significance of knowing all sides of an argument, to question and support their assumptions and beliefs, and to recognize the role audience plays in a paper.

However, my fear with writing this paper is not that I will not write it well, but rather that I will write it too well. My definitions of "good" writing have gotten more and more strict as my writing has gotten better (not a big shock, I'm sure). Part of what makes someone else's work "good" in my eyes is whether I can write it better (think of a better argument, phrase a sentence more eloquently, etc). I am afraid that if I write this paper, I will judge my students by comparing their papers to mine, rather than to the standards they should be expected to meet.

I know that I will have to get over this at some point, but I hope that this does not make it worse!

--Bri

my composition position

It seems as though a number of us here have been pondering how to start and where to go on our essay prompts, and I'm glad I'm not the only one. I was trying to tell myself that we might be a little "what do I do?" because we've gotten used to professors telling us "choose a topic" because we've all been in high-level courses for such a long time. I honestly don't remember the time when I had a required prompt that wasn't for a standardized test or scholarship essay, and those clearly don't count because they're often shorter.

Like Claire, I'm also wondering how much challenge I should bring to my class. Who says that these students will be willing to explore prejudice? And in a different sense of challenge, what level of knowledge should I take for granted? I saw a student in the WL today who did not seem capable of understanding the overlap between two terms s/he was using in a paper. S/he seemed frustrated with the instructor's assumption that the students would work hard outside the classroom. I was frustrated that I didn't get to write on such a compelling topic!

I think that's what's holding me up the most — there's so much I can say on my topic because it's something that interests me, and I'm not sure where to start. And I'm so stuck in extra-work-involved mode that 3-4 pages is just not enough. Does that mean my assignment needs to be more limited, or does it mean that I'm just a huge nerd?

On Informal Assignments

The chapters in Bean on informal assignments raised some interesting questions, especially Chapter 2 which seemed to downplay the effectiveness of thesis-driven writing, odd because that is what College Composition courses are all about. I think, of course, that he's not saying that the formal paper with a thesis is a bad thing. He seems to be saying that expecting freshman students to automatically adhere to a thesis-model is problematic, and that looking at other processes which involve writing that is more exploratory would be helpful to do before the demanding thesis-driven paper. Of course, when we're integrating this into our class, which is based upon the writing of at least 3 thesis-driven papers, we must keep in mind that the informal "exploratory" writing is intended to eventually help them to focus in on a more thesis-driven model. Chapter 3's cycle from Kolb seems like a good model to follow for the class. Starting them off with informal writing to explore the "chaos" of the topic, and then gradually taking this chaos into the more focused structure of a formal essay. I agree with this approach because the main problem I see with so many student essays at the writing lab is that they don't realize that they actually do have a decent thesis hiding in their essays, but because their first draft tends to be exploratory, they just haven't found the best way to structure an argument around the thesis. I also liked the idea on page 115 of using thesis-statement writing as an informal assignment.

paper writing

Like Rebecca, I'm having a kind of weird time writing my paper. I'm having trouble with my own assignment because I had not reached some fairly important conclusions (such as, how controversial do I want to make my class?) and I'm still not sure what I think. Since I've in large part ripped off this assignment from my own composition class many years ago I'm tempted to turn in the paper that I wrote for that class. I won't do that, of course, but it's hard for me to see beyond my first conception of this assignment.

One thing that would help me focus my assignments, I guess, would be to give the class a "theme." Jennifer and I were talking about this during last class and I'm not sure how it works. I thought that Jesse Adolph's class focus was very helpful and really challenged his students to think in different ways. It was easy to see his students advance in the complexity of their thoughts from the beginning of the semester to the end (at least from my perspective as a tutor in the WL). I would like to challenge my students, and I would like to give the class some kind of unifying theme. I'm just not sure how to start. And certainly some themes work better than others, judging by student reaction in the writing lab.

Back to the paper. On another level, of course, it's sort of easy to write this essay if I pretend that it's not my own assignment. It's kind of soothing in a way; after seeing lots of freshman papers every day in the writing lab I'm kind of jealous of their short papers and focused assignments. If I try to write it as myself as I was as an undergraduate I think it'll go pretty easily, though I may be embarrassed by the results. Who knows.

On a final note, I hope that we talk about the Elbow essay in class this week because I thought it raised some really important questions that I'd like to hear debated. I especially enjoyed his critique of agreement in grade norming.

Stasis theory and composition

In reading the articles on stasis theory this week, I was glad to see that stasis theory seems more practical to implement than either formal or informal logic. I especially appreciated Fahnestock and Secor's assertion that the stases "are like a generating machine or device for extrusion molding; a topic dropped in the top hopper comes out in questions and potential theses" (59-60). After reading this article, I looked back at my assignments, and realized that knowledge of the stases could be very useful for my students as they work on their third formal paper assignment. This assignment is the following:

Assignment #3
For this assignment, you may choose one of the two following options. Either way, your paper should be 6-7 pages long, and it must use at least 4 outside sources.

Option A: Choose a topic that you think is of great social/political importance in the United States at this time (possibilities include the Iraq War, immigration, same-sex marriage, etc.) Make a scholarly argument about what should be done about this issue.

Option B.
You have been chosen to advise a new presidential candidate, Samantha/Samuel “Sam” Smith, on an issue of vital importance in the next election. Write a letter telling the candidate what should be done about this issue and why. Remember, the reasons you give your candidate may not necessarily be the reasons you would use if you were only trying to figure out the best solution to the problem. The format for your paper should, in general, be the same as for an ordinary academic paper, but you may use first and second person, as you would in a letter. Do not forget to include a greeting and a closing.

For this assignment, the students could potentially use all of the stases: fact, definition, value, and procedure/policy. Say their topic was same-sex marriage. They could begin with definition questions: What is same-sex marriage? How is it different than civil unions? They could move on to questions of fact: Where is it legal? How long has it been legal? Value questions could include issues of whether the effects of legalizing/banning it are positive or negative. Finally, (and this is the heart of the essay), the question of policy: What should be done?

I could see teaching some elements of stasis theory to my students as they are beginning work on this assignment to be very productive, as it could help my students to look at various aspects of the issue. They may or may not address all of these issues in their paper, but I think that looking at them all could help. Perhaps short, ungraded (or minimally graded) writing assignments building up to the paper could look at individual stases (e.g., "This week we're looking at the stasis of definition. Do preliminary research on your topic, and write a short report defining your topic).

Drafting an EN1000 Paper

I decided to be a bit ambitious and begin drafting my paper on Friday morning. However, I learned that it is very difficult to begin an essay for which the assignment is still formulating in the brain. I feel that there is still much to be revised on my assignment sheet and rubric, which makes writing the draft very difficult. I know that is the point of the paper, of course, but I was still surprised at how many holes and uncertainties were present. I felt as if every thesis statement was generic or boring. Now I remember how freshmen feel (although I still feel this way for every seminar paper). However, I expected this assignment to be "easier" since the expectations are different, or are they? As an over-achiever, I have the same expectation for every assignment, and looking over my rubric again while thinking of unspoken assumptions I realized I assume all students should want to make the "A."

I guess what I still struggle with, even after teaching, is realizing that some students are perfectly happy with a "C" or even a "D" as long as they pass. I structure my assignments and rubrics around the hope of an "A" which makes me wonder if my wording is a bit harsh or advanced. Should a "C" sound like so much of a lesser paper. I know I don't feel as if I can write my own "A" paper with all of my other responsibilities, so should I really make it sound like the most important accomplishment on the rubric since the students also have many responsibilities? I assume students have a lot of time to work on a draft and understand some literary terms such as "transition" and "parallel structure." I think in my class I will first go over some important concepts so that students can easily decipher my expectations.

Grading rubrics

I was working upon grading rubrics for my first assignment. It does not seem to be very hard “in theory”. I realize that when you start using this frame to actual students’ writings it does not appear to be easy. Are students supposed to know our grading rubrics in detail or do we make them only for ourselves as instructors?

Maybe it makes sense to let students know general directions of our approach to grading and point out the most important things in their working with their drafts and final submissions. On the other hand, I prefer analytical grading but I am not sure if I would give students all numbers of points for each rubric because in this case students may concern too much on counting points instead of quality of ideas and arguments.

In Defense of Grading

I have to say I found the Elbow article a bit melodramatic. As one of those who has been "conditioned or even addicted to ranking over the years" (Elbow 6), I must say that I am rather skeptical of his overblown rhetoric. I have managed, despite the fierce cruelty and injustice of this "crude, oversimple way of representing judgment," to develop and succeed within the framework that it provides. I have neither compromised my own integrity for the sake of a grade nor suffered an ego crisis as the result of a sub-par "mark." And I have found that, despite the apparent inability of evaluators to agree upon the quality of a paper outside of small subsets, I have generally received "fair grades" by my own lights.

Despite some of the theoretical problems that attend the process of grading, I see no real reason that a "crude, black mark" is necessarily a bad thing -- so long as it is accompanied by the type of "evaluation" that Elbow emphasizes. Actually, and it feels strange to say this as one who is eminently unpractical, I think it is foolish to shield and protect students from "judgment" and "comparison." They will be both judged and compared -- particularly when they graduate and enter a world that is structured upon "pecking orders," and controlling hierarchies. Unpleasant as it may be to consider, this is the world in which we live. Do we really want to shelter students from something they will face in their professional lives? Might such protection not just make it more difficult to adjust later on?

Ultimately, I think one can grade "fairly" by the standards that he or she provides. The exercise we did for this week -- designing an evaluation rubric -- gives me confidence that we can arrive at fair grades by the criteria we provide. Whether or not these criteria will be adopted across the academic spectrum by all teachers is not my concern. I hope only to be fair by the standards that I establish. Hopefully, beyond all the logistical confusion, my classes will prove useful to students -- and not too traumatic.

On Elbow

Peter Elbow’s article “Ranking, Evaluating, and Liking” seems helpful. He presents his theory of evaluating students’ writing and suggests ways in which instructors can apply his ideas in the classroom.
His idea of liking students’ writing suggests a number of assumptions. Elbow assumes that some instructors do not like students’ writing (and perhaps, the students, as well). He attributes the attitude to these instructors’ dissatisfaction with their own writing; to their uncharitable feelings toward students’ supposed ignorance, arrogance, or foolishness; and to general fatigue from working under the pressure of having to teach college students to write effectively.
One way to lower the stress that can lead instructors to dislike students (according to Elbow) is to provide students with opportunities improve their skills—informal writing assignments for a small, encouraging audience—without having more papers to grade. I like this idea. I will probably use it in my classroom. Sometimes, I tell students who come to the writing lab that their English 1000 papers are low-stakes opportunities to solve problems by thinking critically—opportunities to develop those skills that they will need to be successful in the advanced courses in their majors and in their jobs. But most students, knowing they need to pass English 1000, do not think the stakes are too low (which is why some come to the writing lab so frustrated and nervous). So, to relieve some of the pressure on students (as well as instructors who want to see their students’ writing improve), instructors can lower the stakes further by assigning writing that will not be graded. And if students are required to present their work to an audience that seems to be a better motivation to get students to improve than a grade.

Ranking, evaluating, liking Elbow

I admit that back in high school when I used to get mailings from places like Stony Brook, where some or all of the courses did not have grades, I was a little freaked out, though strangely fascinated. What it seems to boil down to, though, is that either there are fewer grades (H, U, everyone else) or merely much wordier grades in the form of lengthy evaluations. I get his argument on the problem of ranking, but in the end, he's still ranking.

I do like some of his techniques- the analytic grid, for instance, a more formalized version of the comments I've given as a tutor. Imagine if you had a stamp made of the grid, and just stamped every paper!

I don't see why you can't have traditional ranking _and_ evaluation, especially if you follow Bean's advice and keep your comments focused on how to improve rather than simply enumerating problems. Language is motivation. This is where I wish I'd brought the Critical Theory reader so I could post Philip Sidney's comments on best teaching practices (through poetry, but still). Maybe later. Anyway, blending the two would seem to ameliorate the problems of ranking and give more concrete form to the evaluation.

My favorite part, as I think others have pointed out, is the non-evaluated writing, and I'll look for ways to use that sort of stress-free exercise in class. I'd guess many students don't spend much time thinking about assignments outside of class until it's too late, so this at least would get them thinking earlier.

Toulmin, once more

I'll weigh in on Toulmin, albeit almost belatedly. I don't want to just repeat things that have already been nicely by others, so I'll try to keep this from redundancy.

I appreciate what Leta and Jenn brought up--yes, Toulmin is really sensible, but is it too full of jargon for English 1K students? I think it's not an ideal primary text for beginning composition students. I'm not sure if I'd rather teach Aristotle than Toulmin, as Jenn said, but I think that I'd rather act as a filter for both of these scholars. I think rather than just handing this material to the students (either as homework reading or lecture notes), I'd rather take the basics from Aristotle and Toulmin, and try to give the students the concepts without the elevated words. If that makes sense.

Toulmin's diagrams were cool. Sometimes I have a hard time grasping visualized, abstract information, but I do like it when he gives actual examples in the diagrams. Words and pictures work better for me, and I think I'd like to offer my students as many ways to absorb material as I can.

Stygall’s approach to teaching argumentation

I found this piece of reading quite interesting. The author points out the conventions of academic discussion and writing: “a preference for the logical and the rational over the purely emotional and dramatic, a predilection over thorough analysis over the stereotype or hasty generalization, and the acknowledgement of the possibility of a number of points of view” (383). I remember that the latter one was not the easy point for me because in secondary school most things were given as right/wrong. It became more complicated at university level.

I think two-side discussion can be really organized in class. As in Stygall’s example, materials for a discussion can include few provoking issues. The important result of such a discussion can be the following: a) for some problems, the only one opinion can not be ultimate, and even sometimes both (or several) sides seem to be right; b) nevertheless, it is important to state your own opinion as well as defend it in order to find the decision.

Commenting on Drafts

As I was reading the chapter in Bean this week, it occurred to me that, during the course of my time at the writing lab, I have seen every single one of the teacher comments that were singled out as being counterproductive. From "Be more specific," to "Be more concise," to "Try harder," all of these cryptic marginalia look quite familiar. And, for the most parts, students tend to react to these types of comments in a manner similar to that described in Bean. In fact, I would venture to say that I have frequently spent large chunks of writing lab time trying to decipher and explain instructor-generated hieroglyphics to confused and frustrated students. Only in rare cases does a comment like "Be more concise" actually convey what is intended. More often, the student will shrug his or her shoulders and say something like, "I guess I'll just take that paragraph out."

I plan to apply what I've learned in the lab to my own method of drafting paper comments. As Spandel and Stiggins assert, "there's a trick to writing good positive comments. They must be truthful, and they must be very specific" (Bean 241). Truth is usually not the problem; specificity is what I most often find lacking in teacher comments. Today, for instance, I saw the comment "Be more specific" drifting without clear referent in the right hand margin. The student was justifiably perplexed. The comment more than likely referred to a single, overly general claim within the paragraph that was not supported by textual evidence. Instead of an ambiguous, "Be more specific," the instructor could have provided more detailed instructions. For instance, "Your claim regarding X is overly general. Find specific textual evidence to support the claim. This will bolster your argument."

Because I plan to assign 2 mandatory revisions that will require students to respond directly to my textual comments, I recognize that those comments need to be utterly clear and specific. A paper can sometimes benefit more from a few keen and clearly phrased questions than ten pages of scrawled abstractions. I hope to avoid the latter whenever possible.

Toulmin Time

I found myself thinking Toulmin was actually easier to follow than Aristotle's syllogisms. I liked the slow complication of the data-to-claim model; in this way students could gradually see just how complex their claims can be. Also I enjoyed the Stygall exercise, though that would require some work on the instructor's part to compare. One of my goals for teaching 1000 would be critical thinking, and many freshmen arrive with a considerable amount of unquestioned assumptions. Getting them to see just how many invisible warrants or non-existent backing exist in their own thinking would be a victory in itself (not to use the argument as war metaphor).

I was also encouraged by Stygall's example of the conservative student who was unwilling to use any social analysis until informal logic showed him how useful it could be. This is exactly the sort of Aha! moment, the movement towards "toleration" that would be my goal in teaching any course.

Commenting On Gail Stygall’s Paper/Multiple Perspectives

When I was first learning about the teaching of composition some years ago, I recall spending a good deal of time on rhetoric and its uses in argumentation. We didn’t deal at all with Toulmin or informal logic, but I recall learning about how writers need to be aware of how they are presenting themselves to the audience. More specifically, we were taught that writers need to present themselves as a fair-minded in order to be more effective in persuading others of their views. In order to achieve this representation of fair-mindedness, the student writer was encouraged to look at both sides of an argument – maybe even multiple sides. This then, was the rationale for looking at multiple perspectives while writing argumentatively.

I found Stygall’s discussion on the teaching of “ethics of argument” based on Toulmin’s model a more compelling, useful, and satisfying way to encourage student writers to acknowledge in their writing “the possibility of a number of points of view.” I like the way Stygall’s argument builds off of Toulmin’s, asking students to follow claims, warrants, and backings wherever they lead – even into other spheres (argumentative fields). I think this method of analysis of arguments will strengthen the students’ skill in analyses while helping them appreciate the real complexity of almost any argument. In the end, they will learn to dig deeper into arguments, learn to substantially appreciate other viewpoints, and write more persuasively. I hope.

Is Toulmin useful for freshmen?

While I think Toulmin does an excellent job breaking apart arguments, I have my doubts about how useful it would be to incorporate the jargon of 'data', 'warrant', 'qualifier', 'claim', and 'backing' into our English 1000 classes. I have the feeling that many of our students would be more confused than helped by this. Stygall's example of students learning to "see what data they were forced to reject when they selected one set of warrants over another" does seem like an effective use of Toulmin, but I wonder if it would not be possible to teach students the same skill without teaching them the technical jargon (386). Stygall also writes that "Comprehending and producing arguments in the real world has much to do with being able to envision underlying assumptions, the criterion Johnson calls 'supplying missing premises' [137], and little to do with mastering the given categorical syllogism" (379). I wonder if it is possible to teach students to look for the unspoken premises of an argument in a less complicated way.

Toulmin

Toulmins model of data, warrant, backing and claim is definitely logical and could be useful in appropriate settings, but I do not think that Eng 1000, or at least my sections will be one. His structure is commonsense, but I don’t think that a student in Eng 1000 will care for the jargon that also accompanies his model. I feel more comfortable taking my chances with Aristotle than with Toulmin.
I do not agree that “good” writing can be created as simple as he makes it seem. In accordance with Darren, good writing is not as simple A+B=C. In all actuality I don’t think that “good” writing can follow a set formula. If there is such a sufficient formula that does exist (beyond Toulmins), if a piece of writing should encompass all the variables mentioned in the formula does that automatically make it an “A” paper, does it automatically fulfill the professors expectations, etc? If it does how much of the student’s creative genius (as well as our own) have we just killed?

Remarks

Before I respond to the readings for this week, I must exclaim how much I enjoyed the Bean reading for this week. Though sometimes the text can seem a thin, and overtly obvious in its commentary, overall I find it to be rather helpful… It articulates and answers the smaller (though important) aspects I keep finding myself having questions about. Enough with my rambling…
As outlined in Chapter 14, HOC’s and LOC’s I think are aspects that should be discussed early (if not the first class) with students so everyone is on the same page. Detailing these aspects, whether verbally or on in the syllabus, decreases the room for misinterpretation. Honestly while reading this chapter it made the task of creating my grading criteria easier. His focus on positive commenting as opposed to having a more stringent tone when marking papers was refreshing. I always hated receiving papers that had little to no commentary on it because I felt that I was right where I began when submitting my early drafts. And finally, though grammatical errors can be annoying to read, and can sometimes distract you from grasping the main ideas; I do not plan to have a huge emphasis on this aspect because spell check, a dictionary, and their writer’s handbook can help them to resolve those issues. (Plus I’ve always been a horrible speller so I can feel their pain!)

On Toulin

Toulin's system of data, warrants, claims, etc. makes sense, and really doesn't seem that foreign, considering it truly is suggesting a logistical system, and one of the things we will want to teach our students to do is avoid logical fallacies. It doesn't seem to me that Toulin brings anything radical to the table, but it does seem that he takes Aristotelian argument and breaks it down into more complex parts. I think it would be work going over with students, perhaps in conjunction with a discussion of logical fallacies. It may even be a good thing to bring to their attention when discussing the nature of argument in general. The question seems to be whether they would get this anway, without having to be shown Toulin's model. In some ways, the model is common sense--"if this true, then this can be presumed to be true, unless this other thing is happening"--and it seems that any good argument is going to either work or fall apart based upon how well it holds together logically. I'm not sure a student needs to see Toulin's model to be able to recognize when an argument doesn't hold together logically, but it probably would hurt. I think another question is how cookie-cutter do we want the papers to be. If we break down the components too much, then a paper becomes a math problem or a science experiment (which, admittedly a good paper has characteristics of both) but good writing also has an organic quality which goes beyond A+B=C.

Revision

I've been trying to figure out how I want to structure my class in terms of revision. Bean suggests that we "allow rewrites after [we] return the 'finished' papers." The problem I could see with that is that many students may just accept a lower grade, rather than doing more work. I believe that my freshman comp teacher did something similar to this, but I believe we had a first draft (which was supposed to be a complete paper) due a couple of weeks before the 'finished' version. That way we got his comments and had a chance to revise before 'finishing' the paper. After turning in the finished version, we could still revise it one more time if we were not satisfied with our grade.
I like this system, but I also want to incorporate peer review. It seems to me to be rather pointless to have peer review of the first version of the paper if I will be commenting on that version as well, since my comments will be more useful than my students' comments (at least in terms of getting a good grade, since I'll be grading!). I've thought of having my students workshop a first draft of their paper about a week before the first version is submitted, and then having them revise this to turn in their 'finished' paper. Then they may still revise if they are not satisfied. But this seems like an awful lot of time on one paper. What do you all think? Is this excessive?
I'm also afraid that the first draft that they workshop will not be very complete, since they'll know they will be 'revising' it before turning it in. I plan to combat this by giving it a grade, although, of course, this grade will be based more on whether or not they actually appear to have put work into their draft than on the quality of that draft. I'm also afraid that I'll be burying myself under a huge pile of grading with this system. Any thoughts?

editing

While I was studying journalism, I worked as a newspaper copy editor for about a year. And I still have sharp eye for errors of grammar and style (what John Bean calls “low-order concerns”) in a piece of writing. Of course, good copy editors fix problems of organization and coherence and correct misinformation, as well. Copy editors, however, are not writing coaches.
Thankfully, my job as an English 1000 instructor does not consist of copy editing. I appreciate Bean for pointing this out. As I read chapter 14 of Bean’s book, I thought about how tedious it would be to copy edit 40 students’ papers. Yet, even though I don’t have to edit, I expect to find some aspects of writing comments on students’ papers arduous. I expect to find spelling, grammar, and style errors more annoying than some other instructors do. And I, like Bean, expect to have my own list of pet peeves for my students.
Nevertheless, based on Bean’s description of a writing coach, I think former copy editors bring applicable skills to the classroom, especially in terms of helping students edit their own work. I agree with Bean. If students learn grammar rules and the correct spelling of words, then they can improve their editing skills by finding and correcting their own mistakes. That’s how I learned to edit.
I plan to address grammar issues through comments on individual students’ papers. If the whole class seems to be struggling with a particular rule, I might consider reviewing that rule in class, giving the students an opportunity to ask questions.

Positive Reinforcement

I'm rather torn about positive vs. negative comments. As a student, I became accustomed to reading marginal notes that were few in number, brief and primarily negative (pointing out things that were wrong with grammar, punctuation, etc). The end comments, however, were almost always really positive and were occasionally as brief as, "great paper" or the like.

I had one professor, though, who always made it a point to show us what was good as well as bad. She would put checkmarks in the the margins (what I imagined to be like a nod) and write brief comments like, "nice point," etc. When she returned our papers, she explained that she obviously couldn't mark everything that went well, but that she tried to point out some of the things that struck her as she read the paper. Furthermore, she asked that we reread the entire paper so that we could get a feel for her comments in context. All in all, I thank her more than anyone else for helping me progress as a writer (I took 3 classes with her).

Yet, in spite of my benefit from positive comments, I'm not sure I agree with Bean's suggestion that we should "limit" our comments to discussing "two or three things." If the paper needs serious work on many things, do you think it is better to just say so? I mean, imagine if the student corrects those things and then expects to do really well, only to find out that there are another 5 or 6 things that you couldn't mention in your comments. While I recognize that there will be progress in that the student will have improved something, isn't that rather doing the student a disservice? Is it more discouraging to have negative comments fed to you little by little, every time you think you've fixed the problems or to know right off the bat what is wrong and be forced to do a lot of work at once? Is this the sort of case where we should just rip the band-aid off quickly, so to speak? Obviously there are clear things that will need to be tackled first before others can be addressed (HOCs vs LOCs) but isn't it encouraging mediocrity to only address a few of the problems at once without even mentioning the other problems that need to be fixed to make it a great paper?

Incidentally, I'm just trying to think through my own beliefs about this issue. I'm curious what you all think about this issue.

--Bri

Evaluation-Free Zones

I kind of took offense at Elbow's assertion that we should not just "rank" papers, but "evaluate" them. Isn't that the point? What good is a grade if it doesn't say why? I sort of see a "rank" as a freshman essay without an argument — there's no "why," so I don't care what the rest of it says. The "evaluation," then, would be the assertion that readers could reasonably disagree with — the marginal and final comments would be supporting evidence for the thesis "You deserve this grade because [x]."

On the other hand, I like Elbow's concept of "evaluation-free zones"...in theory. As last semester was my first semester in grad school, I was not used to having papers returned without a grade on them. By the halfway point of the semester, I was sort of wondering if I was doing too little work because I didn't have a letter or number to back up my performance. However, the comments I received on my returned drafts and short papers gave me a better sense of what I needed to revise. If I had a lot of negative comments but still had an A on the last page, I probably would not have made any revisions before I resubmitted the paper. Without the grade, I felt more compelled to make significant revisions. This is the kind of reaction I would like to effect in my students, but I'm not sure if I should expect them to be as dedicated to reading and writing as I am.

Still, I've been considering revising my rubric so that my students' in-class assignments and maybe some short papers will not be graded in the typical way, but rather commented upon and recorded as completed or not completed. Do any of you think that not grading short papers would discourage students from taking the work seriously? Would they just write a page of nonsense because they knew it "wasn't going to count"? Or do you think it would become a carrot-on-a-string for them to do their best? Or would it be a carrot-on-a-string that would frustrate them because they didn't know the corresponding number/letter grade?

Ancient Rhetoric vs. A Modern Approach

The chapters this week from Barnett really got me to thinking about the terminology we use when explaining the idea of an argument to students. As I read Toulmin's piece, I was struck by the use of legal jargon which does seem appropriate to argument; however, I am not sure such an approach would be any clearer to students than the Aristotle. I admit that Aristotle is very dense reading, but it can be effectively paraphrased without using a lot of the jargon. So, what Stygall mentions about how much more adaptable Toulmin's concept is in the classroom leaves me wondering as to what the "best" approach may be. I found both of the readings (Toulmin and Aristotle) to be a bit convoluted. Maybe it would be possible to explain the concepts of argument and logic without any of the jargon. Thoughts?

Thoughts on Elbow's Article

Elbow's article on "Ranking, Evaluating and Liking" was very perceptive regarding the process we should use to judge student writing. While it still leaves a few questions, I think his ideas have a great deal of merit. I think that, especially when we first start grading, ranking is the most comfortable option for us. I think when you're grading a set of papers, it's sometimes difficult to really know what the difference between an A and a B is until you start to compare one student's writing to another-- one paper will seem like it may be an A paper until you come upon a paper which clearly surpasses it, making you question if the first paper was really an A at all. I think the difference between the As and Bs is the most difficult to determine. I think the questions that Bean asks himself when grading are true (does it have a thesis, etc. if not then it is a C or lower)--deciding what gets a C or lower is easier to determine than what gets an A or B. Of course, that's where the process of evaluating comes in--establishing the criteria that makes it easier to determine the differences between A, B, C, D and F papers.

Elbow's proposition that we "like" our students and their work is a good suggestion, but problematic. First off, personal feelings regarding a person or their work are hard to create artificially-- there are always people who rub you the wrong way, and it seems difficult to make yourself like something that you clearly feel is unlikable. However, his suggestion that we look for the good qualities in anything is good advice, and may be an analytical way of overcoming our emotional responses. It also seems more constructive to say "here's what was good in your paper" and build on that, than just point out what is lacking.

However, what seems most problematic is that we HAVE to find enough wrong with a piece of writing so that we can meet the Eng 1000 requirement that says our class has to have a C+/B- average. This would suggest that we should do the reverse of "liking"-- that we should be on the lookout for things we don't like in the writing in order to fill our low-grade quota for the semester.

Commenting on Bean

The reading this week in Bean was practical and useful. Like other students, I appreciate what he had to say about being positive with feedback, but honest. I also think his suggestions about giving comments that lead towards revision were helpful, especially since we are all emphasizing revision. His comments on how easily comments can be misinterpreted was sobering.

Bean's "hierarchy of questions," the distinguishing between "high-order concerns" and "lower order concerns" also solid helpful advice.

One point that he doesn't emphasize greatly (but does mention), is his preference to allow students to find their own grammar errors through somthing like minimal marking. Perhaps this could have been emphasized more as it seems an important point that might get lost in the mix.

I was really encouraged by the focus on positive reinforcement in this week’s selection of Bean. While I don’t plan on sugarcoating the faults of a paper, I don’t want to overwhelm students with negative comments. We all know it’s important to point out mistakes and points for improvement, but a student often learns as much from what he/she does correctly as incorrectly. Bean’s framework of responding to rather than correcting papers was also heartening. It echoed the goals we have as Writing Lab tutors—to truly help and assist the student, rather than merely assigning a grade. I’ve never received extensive comments on a paper (well, until I received my first draft of seminar papers!), so Bean’s advice eased my fears of grading somewhat.

This approach to grading, one that looks for the “promise of a draft rather than its mistakes” (Bean 242) is something I’d like to discuss with my students. I think a discussion of my role as an instructor and writing guide might be a useful. It’s moving a little farther away from the intimidating, red pen aspect of teaching, which I think discourages students from approaching the instructor with problems, comments, or frustrations. Emphasizing this approach, moreover, might persuade students to try a bit harder and engage a little more with their work. I’ve seen many students in the Writing Lab who simply give up because they are irritated or stumped by a professor’s cryptic and sometimes bizarre comments. Most students simply do not respond well to abundant negativity, but some positive reinforcement might make the task seem more manageable.

Ranking and (not) evaluating

I found the Elbow article particularly interesting, with his separation of ranking, evaluating, and liking. I hadn't really separated ranking from evaluating before, and I think the separation is helpful.
That said, I'm a bit more of a proponent of ranking than Elbow is. I know that he's not arguing to get rid of ranking completely, and I do agree about the importance of evaluating, but, as an undergrad, a delay in knowing my ranking would have been (and, indeed was, in some cases) extremely bothersome to me. His idea of giving the students an estimate of their grade midway through the semester would have eased my anxiety a bit, but I still probably would not have appreciated the suspense for the first two months. His idea of giving 'H's and 'U's for particularly strong papers seems to some extent to also alleviate this, but, really, the only students who would not receive grades in that case would be those receiving Bs or Cs. This I could foresee as being problematic for students who know that they need to acheive a B average. They would know they weren't failing or getting an A, but they wouldn't know whether or not they were going to get the grade they needed. This could be particularly problematic if they did not receive any kind of grade before the drop date for the class. It seems to me that our system is so based on ranking that trying to cut down on the amount of ranking we do could have a negative effect, as long as the rest of the system remains unchanged.
I did, however, really like his suggestions for creating "evaluation-free zones." I would really like to incorporate in-class freewriting and quickwriting, some of which would be merely for the students' own personal use, and some of which would be shared with the class. It seems to me that the only way to write well is to write often, and setting aside some class time for this activity seems worthwhile. Sharing some of this writing with their classmates could also provide an incentive to really work at this writing, while removing the anxiety of knowing that it will be ranked.
I would be interested in hearing other people's impression of his ideas about ranking, as well as ideas of ways to incorporate "evaluation-free" writing.

Appropriate Comments

I found Bean Chapter 14 to be very helpful. Finding the most appropriate language to use when giving comments is tricky. When I've graded papers in the past, I would find myself crossing out notes I'd made on papers because I felt they were too negative, or written too hastily. I agree with Bean that using negative language will turn the students off, and keep them from applying themselves to the next paper. I think that, while sometimes when grading we can suspect that the student is being sarcastic or not taking the assignment seriously, we should not necessarily rush to such judgments, and, even if the student hasn't taken the assignment seriously, reacting negatively to it would only validate the student's stance--that the assignment wasn't worth his/her time to begin with, because the instructor is going to judge his/her paper harshly anyway.

Having said that, I do think there are times when fighting sarcasm with sarcasm can be appropriate to the situation, and used to voice the instructor's disappointment with the student's lack of interest. For example, I once taught a Theatre Appreciation class, and on one of the tests I had a short essay question: "Discuss ways in which Samuel Beckett's Happy Days is an absurdist work." I'd prepared the class for the question well in advance, making clear what I would expect them to be able to do on a test. One student, in response to this question, wrote something to the effect of "Happy Days is an absurdist work because the plot is absurd, the characters are absurd, the dialogue is absurd, the setting is absurd.." Obviously, the student had not paid attention to what I made clear in class, and had obviously not done the reading. And the sarcastic tone taken in his answer did, I will admit, anger me. I thought of the best response, and decided to just write "your answer is absurd" in the margin. I honestly don't think this response changed the way he approached the class. If anything, I'd called him on his disregard for the material, and he went on to take the next exam more seriously.

I think it depends on the situation, and on the student and how you think they will take the comment, and whether you feel that giving a sharper, perhaps negative, comment will give them the kick in the pants they need, or if it will just justify their apathetic approach to your class.

Commenting on Student Papers

After class on Thursday, I started thinking about not only grading criteria, but also about written comments on essays. What I said in class, I realize may have sounded harsh, but it is not something I would ever say to the student. I have found that negative criticism automatically turns them off; they no longer listen to any suggestion. That is why I found the chapter in Bean extremely helpful. I, too, believe it is best to start with the positives of the paper in the end summary because it boosts the student's confidence, which prepares him for the "bad" news. I also find that students take constructive criticism better if the positive is outlined first since they feel you are being open and objective instead of hateful and "out to get" them. Although I must admit that it is sometimes difficult to find a positive comment to make since I feel that the positive comments also need to be very direct and detailed (not vague) for them to make a real impression. Also, if you make positive comments throughout the margins, students will read all of the comments and not assume they can be ignored as negative.

With the grading rubric, I decided to change the original one I included with the assignment on the wiki because I feel that the B-C range should maybe be outlined first with the criteria for an "A" outlined separately so the students can see an "A" takes more than the minimal effort. I also feel that the first submission will be the hardest to grade after reading the example on Thursday. I failed it because I assumed it would have been a second submission, which would mean the organization should have been fixed. However, if it was a first submission, I too would praise the content of the ideas and let the student know that it needed a clear thesis and stronger organization.

My last idea about grading deals with marking mechanical errors. It does take so much time, but I developed a habit of marking every error because beginning students in high school need the guidance. I hope I can break the habit since I won't have as much time to grade. Any suggestions on how to tackle the mechanical issues of a paper. Bean was helpful but I feel an "x" still will take a lot of time on some papers.

Grammar vs. Style

After reading Bean's chapter on paper comments, and also having attended Ann Feldman's vision seminar for the CWP position, I'm growing wary (and weary, too) of correcting low-order concerns like grammar and rhetorical style issues like passive voice.

Feldman mentioned that her grad students at U.I.C. often have trouble explaining grammatical rules to their composition classes simply because they had never learned these rules. When I have international or ESL students in the writing lab, I can usually point out one or two places where they made a usage error — "do you mean any university or just one specific one?" for definite/indefinite articles, for example. I then will turn them loose to review the rest of the paper and see if they can find more of these errors. Of course, there are times I simply cannot explain a rule. I admit to the student that I don't know why our language works that way, and usually come up with an ineffective "that's just how it is."

I like Bean's suggestion just to make a mark next to a line with a grammatical error. I've also seen papers in the WL with numbers that correspond to a rule in a guidebook or sheet of common errors that an instructor has distributed. The student should be the one making these corrections — if a teacher corrects it for the student (because "that's just how it is"), there's not much learning going on. Bean also suggested maybe trying to explain a few common rules, but this can be difficult if you don't understand the rules yourself! I think this is what Feldman was gesturing towards during the part of her talk in which she mentioned grammar — you can spend an entire semester teaching grammatical rules, but that's not the goal of freshman comp.

Since we try to avoid grammar correction in the WL, I'm wondering what the best way to do it will be. How do the rest of you plan to tackle the issue? (Linguistics folks, I'm looking your way....)

Paper Comments

Court's post on the reading for this week got me thinking about Chapter 14 in Bean. I'm starting to realize now that grading and commenting on papers is a delicate dance, and not easy at all.

I saw a student yesterday in the writing lab; she was extremely anxious and on the verge of tears because of the instructor comments on the first draft of her paper. Frankly, I don't blame her. Not only were the comments few, incoherent, and illegible, but there was very little feedback that could be usefully applied to the paper. Also the instructor used the word "tautological," which I found somewhat self-indulgent and unnecessary. I spent at least half of the tutoring session calming the student down. She was on the verge of hysteria and needed all kinds of reassurance, encouagement, counseling, etc. Yes, the student's paper had major flaws, but it still had many good points (exquisite organization, in fact). If we as instructors are supposed to pinpoint the potential in a paper and encourage the student to run with it, then we ought to be telling students what, specifically, was good. I felt really conflicted after the tutoring session; I was very frustrated with the instructor, yet really pleased at how much good work the student accomplished in the session. It also made me late to 8010.

Anyway, I hope that I can internalize these really helpful ideas, so that I don't perpetrate the same silliness on my own students.

Blogging Bean

_Slate_ has a daily blog called "Blogging the Bible" that I enjoy despite my agnosticism--and I like the alliteratiion--so I'm co-opting it.

I'm interested in reading the works of the "numberous researchers [who] have refined or refocused Diederich's criteria and have developed successful strategies for training readers as evaluators" (256). I'm primarily interested in the implication that follows--seeing how "Many of these strategies have classroom applications also, for training students as evaluators of writing greatly improves their ability to give high-quality advice in peer review workshops" (ibid). Since I plan on giving peer review workshops a prominent role in my classes, I'm intrigued to follow-up on this point. I like how Bean concludes the chapter by asserting that "When students know an instructor's criteria for assigning grades--and when they have the opportunity to help one another apply these criteria to works in progress--the quality of their final products will improve gratifyingly. It is gratifying indeed to see how well many undergraduates can write when they are engaged in their porjects and follow the stages of the writing process through multiple drafts and peer reviews" (264). That the way I feel.

Back to page 256, Bean's point that while readers can been trained to use "uniform criteria" to evaluate student papers, "these criteria often vary from discipline to discipline (and from teacher to teacher)" reminds me of Gerald Graff's essay "Two Ships in the Night" which is all about this very topic. Graff points that in a humanities class, foundationalism is often verboten, whereas in a political science class foundationalism is often, well, foundational. It seems like a problem that will come up when thinking about teaching to write across the curriculum.

I found myself siding with the analytic model as I read Bean because (as I wrote to myself in the margin), it seems that not only does this approach convey "detailed information about the teacher's judgement of the essay" as Bean notes, but that information can tell studnets what their strengths and weaknesses are. But then I read Bri's post on the strength of the holistic approach and now I'm undecided. I think I'll shoot for some hybrid of the two.

As Katie pointed out, both Bean and Curzan & Damour stress that one should "read through a set of papers quickly before marking them and assigning grades, trying to get a feel for the range of responses and sizing up what the best papers are like (Bean 263) and that the correlation between readers increasess if readers read quickly, "trusting the reliabilty of their first impressions" as Bean puts it (259). Bean also cites E.M. White here, as he does in a couple of other places where I found myself noting things I thought were key. So I'm checking out both of the White works that Bean includes in his bibliography.

I found quite a few ideas from both Bean and Curzan & Damour to incorporate into my syllabus, like providing "samples of successful student papers from previous classes" (Bean 257)--which I think Andrew does in his syllabus--and then also just writing out what the specific grading criteria will be for each writing assignment. The analytic scale (primary trait method) example Bean includes on page 260 is a good example--but I *really* like the explanation he includes from Harry Shaw at Cornell (page 264). I think I want to do something more like this to actually hand to students with my syllabus.

Assigning Revisions

As Curzan and Damour assert, "Students can learn a great deal from revising their papers, and it can provide your comments on a paper with a direct and immediate purpose" (154). From my own experience as a student, I know this to be true. By responding to comments and questions posed by a teacher, students are forced to respond to a critical voice that is not their own. In the process, arguments become more self-conscious and directed. An essay that had initially been a monologue becomes a kind of invisible dialogue. If the student is forced to respond to a particular, clear challenge, the paper can only become stronger.

I plan (at this point) to assign 2 mandatory revisions during the course of the semester. However, I wonder what the most effective method of assigning revisions looks like? I feel that I need to come up with a list of revision criteria so that my expectations are clear. I suppose one of the crucial criteria will be that the revision must engage with the comments that I have made on the first draft of the essay. This would guarantee that the student was moving back and forth between the external, critical voice and his or her own reasoning process. This seems like it could be quite fruitful. I will continue to consider what my revision criteria will look like. I'm open to suggestions.

claim 2nd text

I'd like to claim the following text. I don't think it's already taken but haven't done an exhaustive search of all posts.
Ancient Rhetorics for Contemporary Students - Sharon Crowley and Debra Hawhee (Longman)

Persuasion

In honor of the Super Bowl this weekend, I chose a persuasive piece about the game written by Sports Illustrated columnist Paul Zimmerman.

His column is not organized like the papers English 1000 teach their students to write. Although his entire article supports his thesis (the Colts will beat the Bears on Sunday), he does not state his position until the end (probably to encourage readers to read all four paragraphs).

He begins with the most compelling evidence—the Colts run a no-huddle offense that wears down the opponent’s defense. Zimmerman returns to this point in the second paragraph, acknowledging a counter-argument—the Bills Super Bowl teams of the early 1990s used a similar tactic and lost the big game four consecutive years. This seems to suggest that running the no-huddle can cause more problems for the offense than for the defense. Zimmerman uses a quotation from a Colts offensive lineman, a denial that the Colts offensive players tire from the no-huddle offense—further strengthening his argument.

I think Zimmerman’s article is persuasive in part because of who he is. As Aristotle suggests in the “Rhetoric,” the reputation of the person speaking can affect how persuasive their augment is. Zimmerman spends hours watching and analyzing pro football. His reputation as a scholar of the game brings him credibility.

Defining Rhetoric / The Significance of the "Hearer"

I think the definition of Rhetoric as outlined in the reading is of great importance and of practical value. Rhetoric is so often misunderstood. Aristotle's definition here brings the power and significance of rhetoric back to place. With this definition one can emphasize to the students how a knowledge of rhetoric and logic can help them to write more focused and persuasive essays. Here, rhetoric is defined as the art of persuasion using the available means. "Available means" can be interpreted, I believe, as all available means. With this operataive definition instructors can help their students explore just how rich the field of available means is - the many forms/devices/tools they have at their disposal when trying to persuade others.

In addition to the richness of the definition, I find Aristotle’s emphasis on the audience to be of significance. In a sense, he seems to be saying that the “hearer” is the critical and focusing element in the persuasive event, if I can put it that way. I think this notion holds relevance in the writing of argumentative and persuasive essays. The writer much focus on the audience and develop the argument around the needs and concerns of the audience.

A textbook for review

I would like to take the textbook
Carol Canar The Confident Writer
(I think it is not from the list)

Persuasive texts and rhetoric online

I want to share some information. I was surfing the web in search for some good examples of persuasive texts and an interesting site popped up. It actually helped me with choosing the text. I am not sure whether any of you is acquainted with this site:
http://www.americanrhetoric.com/

It is a free online speech bank. There are such sections as Top 100 American Political Speeches of the 20th century, famous Movie Speeches. Most are both in text and media format. Far not all of them are of a persuasive kind, yet, in general, the site seems to represent the recent history of rhetoric fairly well. It also has materials on theory, including Aristotle.
I chose a political campaign speech from the movie “All The King’s Men” (1949). Because it is a movie i.e. a piece of fiction, it gives the persuasive political text in concentrated, exaggerated and probably even grotesque way. Yet there is a lot in it it analyze.

Comments on Grading

I found the practical suggestions in the readings on grading very useful. In particular, I thought the idea of reading through all of the essays before pacing a grade on any one of them to be helpful as it allows the instructor to get a better overall idea of quality essays and may help him/her to be more objective in the grading. In addition to this practical suggestion, I liked very much the Cornell University English professor Harry Shaw’s explanation of how he assigns letter grades. I thought that to be one of the clearest and simplest explanations I have ever seen.

Throughout the readings on grading there is an emphasis placed on expecting excellence from our students. I thought that to be a wonderfully sound theme. Students should be encouraged to strive for that and grading can play a significant role in encouraging that.

I have used criteria sheets in the past with students when I taught composition at another university. At that university, we shared the criteria (analytic and holistic) with the students regularly. It was our practice to allow the students themselves to have an opportunity to evaluate an essay and drafts of essays, sometimes their own or their peers’. I found this to be a useful exercise in helping to familiarizing students with the criteria and internalize it.

Catching Up

As some of you may know, I've had a rough start this semester and so--as some of you may have noticed--I wasn't able to get my earlier posts online. For my inaugural post, I'd like to say something about the discussion that was occuring earlier regarding politics in the classroom (race, gender, sexuality, class). I know I'm hopelessly behind the curve on this, but it's something that I feel very passionate about. One of the main reasons I decided to quit the program I was in and take up English studies is that I found that English departments usually housed the people I wanted to work with and the research and discussions in which I wanted to engage--not just poetry and prose, but all media (film, television, music, art--both high and low) as cultural artefacts; and the politics involved played a big part for me. I was reading Richard Ohmann's _English in America: A Radical View of the Profession_ and I was moved, almost as moved as I was when I first heard Dr. King speak or, alternately, when I first heard the Sex Pistols cover of The Stooges' "No Fun." I highly recommend Ohmann (and Gerald Graff's _Professing Literature: An Institutional History_, which I used for that timeline in 8005 last semester) to anyone interested in the matter of politics in the classroom. I felt a calling as I read it--this is what I wanted to do. I wanted to engage these debates--"teach the conflicts" as Gerald Graff puts it--and the English department certainly looked like the place to do it. Graff wrote the Foreword to _English In America_ and towards the beginning, he says the following:

"Ever since George Orwell… it has been commonplace of social criticism that whoever controls language controls the way we think and act. With the massive expansion of American democratic education in this century, school and college English teachers have considerable opportunity to shape the way young Americans talk, write, and think about the world. That is no doubt why the teaching of English and the humanities has become a major battleground in the recent war over culture.

In fact, the student movement of the sixties owed much of its inspiration to the widespread teaching of texts like 'Politics and the English Language' in the expanding freshman composition programs of postwar American college and universities. It was in freshman comp that a generation learned from Orwell, Thoreau, Baldwin, and other essayists to contemplate the gap between hypothetical American ideals of justice and equality and the observable realities of racism, exploitation and militarism."

This is what motivates me to *want* to teach composition--the control over language is already one of the main fronts of the culture wars and so, in my opinion, as teachers of English we're already enlisted. I want to engage these ideas, enter into a dialogue with my students and try to motivate them to think, read and write critically.