Composition Concentration Take-Home Sample Question

Again--if you are in 658 and choose to ignore this due to the fact that I am exploring 612, you have probably already done so. If you have chosen to read on, you may find it to be an unfinished ramble. I plan on adding to it for the next couple of days when I get a few minutes here or there. I am just trying to work out my thoughts. Feel free to comment for whatever reason...

The question: "As the new writing program administrator at a community college, you have been asked to create a "new focus" or "updated face" for the writing program. Upon your arrival, you discover that the old program lacks coherence and the teachers, while dedicated, are largely teaching from untheorized pedagogies. Please write a comprehensive memo to your faculty that provides a theorized vision for the program. While you do not want to hinder the faculty's curricular and pedagogical freedom, you do want to make sure their efforts are consistent with the knowledge of the field. Thus, you should design your memo to provide both a compositionist education in a nutshell and a rationale for the program. In your memo, (a) discuss the social and ideological terrain of literacy generally; (b) indicate some pedagogical orientations to the teaching of writing that would be sound in light of contemporary theory, explaining why these are useful ways of approaching the teaching of writing; and (c) offer the faculty an overview of some best practices for the classroom."

The Dartmouth Conference brought profs of English from the UK and US together, where the US profs found that UK profs taught students to write for the purpose of situation, for reasons other thhan literary purposes, writing for other purposes and as "self discovery" (Villanueva 1). Writing as a process came from this conference. Teachers needed to get away from analyzing student work as if it were a piece of polished literature to analyze. The process(es) used in writing toward the finished product needed attention, and after the Dartmouth Conference, process gained that attention.

Post-process theory disputed process, that it was being taught as subject matter. That is--because teachers who were teaching process were often spending only a few sessions modeling "the writing process," it seemed that process was not being taught as an activity, but it was being taught more as a thing. What I would include in the memo would be that teachers should be sure to do more than model. Their teaching would be better served to include actual steps in the process, or processes. I say processes because there is not just one series of fixed procedures that occur in the same way in the same sequence every time. Teachers might be reminded that "the writing process" should not be taught as if it can't be modified by the student each time he/she writes. Some key figures to acknowledge are Donald Murray, Janet Emig, Ken Macrorie, and Peter Elbow.

Teachers are to be aware of the rhetorical triangle (ethos, pathos, and logos), but they should also make students aware of the context of their rhetoric.

Cognitive development and composition- Piaget...Moffett...Vygotsky. "language plays a crucial role in [Vygotsky's] developmental scheme" of cognitive development and therefore is important for composition (Villanueva 271). Vygotsky extends upon this role of language in congnitive development. To Vygotsky, "language is central [...] for our conceptions of reality" (Villanueva 271). It is here where Vygotsky's idea of internalizing speech begins to show importance, which will prove to be an important element of collaboration, where students wiill vocalize with peers what they want to say before writing it. But as far as the stages of cognitive development go, it seems that when students' writing was not developed to the expectations of teachers, "intellectial development in college, gain[ed] new attention" (Villanueva 272). Key figures in the study of basic writers: Mike Rose, Ann Berthogg, Mina Shaughnessy, and Batricia Bizzell. Shaughnessy, Flower and Hayes were also important figures for cognitive development. Bizzel even calls "the whole turn to cognition into questions" (Villanueva 272). What I think I'd pull from here for the memo is the internalization of speech, which is thought to make writing more natural. That is--if students can say what they want to write and close to how they want to write it, they will have better success in writing it. I'll need to refresh my memory on cognitive develoopment to see how I can use that in the memo.










Social construction--Kenneth Bruffee theorizes that if we learn collaboratively, we are able to learn more effeciently, if I may keep it simple. Greg Meyers and John Trimbur added that consensus can be problematic and that challenging the group might make for a richer product. Knowledge is thought to be socially constructed. Writing can be socially constructed. Certainly, I can suggest collaboration in composition classes (in the memo). Teachers might be advised to give their students an immediate audience, which is essential to caring about what they write. Although an immediate audience would be their peers, they should also imagine another audience for which their work should be aimed.

Because knowledge is socially constructed, voices have great power. Voices from "other" viewpoints, who have not been recognized in the past, have vocalized their PoVs. Women, for one, have banded together in many ways. They have voiced their story, or stories. Anzaldua writes Borderlands, which related to race, class, gender, and sexuality, voicing concerns for perhaps everyone who has been disowned or ignored traditionally. These "other" voices were able to express themselves, perhaps in part due to the "expressionist" movement (Macrorie, Murray, Elbow, and others). What I can take from this for the memo is that students should be allowed, or even expected, to exercise their inner voices in composition in their journeys in composing.

An actual memo would need quite a bit of revision, but this is a start.
I'll start over...

Dear Writing Program faculty,

As our campus is growing along with our student population, we must be sure we are well aware of the theory behind our methods of teaching. Literacy is complicated and our new students are more and more evident of that fact. We have a larger number of L2 students each year. Furthermore, it is known that L1s often benefit from the same methods. The "'California Pathways' second language proficiency descriptors of reading" gives a quick overview of the levels of L2 students, from "novice-low" to "distinguished" speakers (but this is applicable to L1 speakers as well). And so when brushing up on methods, it will be helpful in identifying the levels of the students. This will also come in handy for adjusting teaching strategies to particular students or classes, especially within the first week or two.

We need to be aware of the different best methods for our novice, intermediate, and advanced students. Novice students, for example, need prereading strategies in order to tap into their schemata that may help in comprehension of a reading. If this sounds like a hassle, the theoretical basis that knowledge is made socially will interest you. You might find the theoretical foundations of collaboration beneficial. Knowing how to utilize advanced students in pulling along the beginners is a godsend. As I am sure you all know, once a person has to teach something, it is then cemented in memory.

I'll try to get back to this later...

Collaboration

Excuse me while I type out loud about the 612 sample question of the comprehensive examination. feel free to add what you know or just ignore it altogether as it is not directly related to 658.

The sample 612 question--"Collaboration has long been a staple of composition teachers. However, as the scholarship shows, collaboration has been constructed in different was and or different purposes in relation to (a) particular historical needs and (b) particular theories of language. In a thoughtful, well-crafted essay, discuss how and why our understandings of collaboration have changed since "the social turn" in composition. What are some of the problems and possibilities that compositionists have explored in relation to these new articulations of collaboration and its functions? Your answer should attend to both historical and theoretical concerns as they relate to our understandings of language, knowledge, and meaning making, our evolving sense of the subject matter of composition, and the various student populations we see in our classrooms."

Bruffee adds to Kuhn and Rorty's thoughts of normal discourse. He uses Rorty's "conversation of mankind" and tells us in his essay Collaborative Learning and the "Conversation of Mankind, that "Collaborative learning began to interest American college teachers widely only in the 1980s" although collaboration had alread been proven successful in the medical field by the 1960s. MLJ Abercrombie found that "diagnosis [...] is better learned in small groups of students arriving at disgnoses collaboratively than in it is learned by students working individually" (416, 417).

Bruffee tells us that "the roots of collaborative learning" are found "in the nearly desperate response of harried colleges during the early 1970s to a pressing educational need" (417). Basically, Bruffee is saying that students were unprepared for college writing and, because the traditional methods did not work, there was a need for alternative methods of teaching writing/composition. Of course collaboration was not the first alternative method that was explored. Tutoring and counceling as well as other programs were tried but failed. The element of these programs that seemed to be missing was that there were not peers involved in them. because there was not the peer element, which turned out to be essential. According to Bruffee "students' work tended to improve when they got help from peers" (418). Peers evaluating each other and working together in small groups to make progress, a couple of methods of collaborative learning, were being explored with success. Their work improved when working with peers. Collaboration did not change what they learned but just added a social element to how they learned.

According to Bruffee in collaborative learning, the goal is for students to assist each other in entering a knowledge community (business, government, and the professions). Bruffee acknowledges the view that students helping other students enter a knowledge community when none of the students are members of the knowledge community to begin with might seem like "the blind leading the blind" (427). But he suggests they put their resources together. Combined, according to Bruffee, students should be able to complete the task assigned, one of the stepts that will lead toward them entering the knowledge community in their sights. This is what Richard Rorty calls "socially justifying belief" (426). If all of the members of the group can come together and agree, then they can justify their belief. It is not that they create truth but rather they become a part of the ongoing "conversation of mankind." Bruffee discusses Rorty's belief that in normal discourse "eveyone agrees on the 'set of conventions about what counts as relevant contribution, what counts as a question, what counts as having a good argument for that answer or a cood criticism of it'" (423). Bruffee says that when students pool their resources together, they will partake in the "normal discourse" that is needed to reach a consensus.

In Reality, Consensus, and Reform in the Rhetoric of Composition Teaching, Meyers criticizes the idea that a group will be educated enough to pull together enough knowledge for a single area of focus. He says that we should "realize that knowledge is not uniformly distributed in our society, and that it is not all of a piece" (452). This, to me, means that because each member of a group may be so extremely different that it could be that only one of the members will actually have a meaningful or helpful contribution for a given topic while the rest of the group will remain on the outskirts. And if all of these folks are individual members of different communities and placed into a group that is expected to agree, they will most likely not be able to agree without "one side losing something" (Meyers 452). In most every case, whoever of the group is in the least vocal will lose something, whether it is someone from the upper or lower class, a married or divorced man or woman, a homosexual or homophobic, a member of the dominant culture or a minority, and endlessly so on.

John Trimber, in his Consensus and Difference in Collaborative Learning, points out criticism that questions the expectation of consensus in collaborative learning. He points out that some of Bruffee's critics fear that "the use of consensus in collaborative learning is an inheretly dangerous and potentially totalitarian practice that stifles individual voice and creativity, suppresses differences, and enforces conformity" (461). This relates to Peter Elbow's emphasis of authentic voice. There seems to be a fear that if consensus is achieved, the authentic voices of the individuals within the group will not be heard. There is the fear that the individual will not be able to articulate the unique ideas and be forced to compromise, just as in a totalitarian state. To such critics Bruffee's "social constructionist pedagogy" gives the highest authority to consensus and, therefore, smothers individual thought. Trimbur argues against this fear and sees that collaborative learning "does not ingibit individuality [but] Rather it enables individuals to participate actively and meaningfully in group life" (463). It gives the group power through individuals as collaborative learning "can enable individuals to empower each other through social activity" (Trimbur 464). Trimbur discusses that to gain consensus it is necessary to have conflict. So the idea that not everyone will agree can be adventageous for the group. It seems that there is a place for abnormal discourse in working toward meaningful consensus. Because abnormal discourse consists of individuals straying from consensus, unique thought emerges. Without this sort of rebellion, no originality would come through in the group. According to Bruffee, Rorty discusses that if the authentic voice's contribution is "rational" rather than "losing [the] point," within the collaborative group, it is possible to come across as "revolutionary" (429).

Bruffee points out the possiblity of breakdown in peer tutoring. There may be problems if any one of the following is not in place: (1) the tutee needs "knowledge of the subject [and] assignment;" (2) the tutor should understand "the needs and feelings of peers and [know] the conventions of discourse and of standard written English;" and (3) the conversation between the tutor and tutee should be structured by the assignmnet and "the conventions of academic discourse and standard English" (425). Bruffee tells us that if these are not in place, the teacher is responsible to make the proper adjestments, "to help negotiate the rocks and shoals of social relations that may interfere with their getting on with their work together" (425).

It seems that nearly everything of concern in composition turns out to be a social artifact. Language, knowledge, reading, writing, conversation, thinking...so it follows that if we go about creating collaboratively, we will have an advantage. There is, however, a problem with collaboration if it is expected to be structured like normal discourse, that is without differences in the group. Even in a community, or a collaborative group, everyone is an individual, not just part of the group or community.

“Reflective thought,” according to Oakeshott and Vygotsky is public or social conversation internalized. We learn the skill of conversation by social exchange with others. Bruffee points out that according to Clifford Geertz, ‘“Human thought is consummately social”’ (420). Bruffee goes on, “because thought is internalized conversation, thought and conversation tend to work largely in the same way” (420). Bruffee says that we should teach students to say what they want to write because if they can say it, they will be more likely to be able to write it. However, that is not to say that students will be able to write what they are thinking or saying. According to Bruffee, writing is two steps removed from conversation and one step from thought. Nevertheless, the more students talk about what they want to write and then internalize those conversations about what they talk about, the more likely they will be able to articulate their thoughts into written words. Furthermore, the way they talk determines, according to Bruffee, the way they will write. So it goes to follow that teachers should guide them in how they talk about what they will write. In other words, we should help them talk about their topics so that they talk about them as close as possible to the way we would like them to write about their topics. Bruffee discusses what Richard Rorty calls “normal discourse” in order to discuss the kind of discourse people use in their everyday lives and that it “applies to conversation within a community of knowledgeable peers” (423). According to Rorty everyone agrees within the community. Bruffee says that a main goal of collaborative groups, the goal is for the members of the group to help each other enter a discourse community. Bruffee discusses the problems this raises. Bruffee says that at first glance, there are no experts. But because each member brings something different, collectively, they can help each other.

Bruffee discusses Thomas Kuhn’s idea that knowledge is a social artifact. In other words meaning is made socially. Interpretive communities make knowledge. Bruffee tells us that Rorty calls this a kind of meaning making a “socially justifying belief” (427). This knowledge evolves as the conversations evolve. That is, meaning is not static. That would be to say that social interaction is static. Like social interaction, knowledge involves negotiation. So collaborative learning models how knowledge is made, changes, and grows. According to Bruffee, “ the discourse involved in generating knowledge cannot be normal discourse, since normal discourse maintains knowledge […] It is […] abnormal discourse” (429). Consensus is lost. Abnormal discourse is like rebellious talk that winds up either losing the point because of its oddity or revolutionary as it gains support.

If as Trimbur believes, authority itself is a social artifact, giving students authority to collaborate and make meaning challenges the teacher’s authority. Teachers cannot give up authority altogether. It is their responsibility to induct others into knowledge communities at least in the school setting. Teachers must intervene when knowledge is not being reached, and if they don’t and meaning is not made, knowledge is not arrived at, the community dies, and the knowledge dies with it. The social construct of authority is necessary for a group to function. If there is conflict, that can help, but if the conflict turns into circular reasoning, nothing can be achieved. There must be a hierchy within the group so that collaborative negotiation does not "block communication and prohibit the development of consensus" (Trimbur 471).


Works Cited and Consulted--(excuse the form)

Bruffee, Kenneth. Collaborative Learning and the "Conversation of Mankind" (1984) from Victor Villaneuva's Crosstalk in Comp Theory (2003).

Meyers, Greg. Reality, Consensus, and Reform in the Rhetoric of Composition Teaching (1986) from Villanueva's Crosstalk... (2003).

Trimbur, John. Consensus and Difference in Collaborative Learning (1989) from Crosstalk... (2003)

Deconstructing Print and Tradition; Reconstruct with Visual Rhetoric and Other

I'm sure we all thought about the fact that print is quickly being ruptured and decentered as visual rhetoric is gaining superiority. It seems obvious to me that cultural studies will use the visual medium more and more as the seconds pass.

Visual Rhetoric Pedagogy

Visual rhetoric pedagogy has only begun to fight! Too bad my technology is so crappy that my computer won't let me put a video right here. (Imagine a video of a monkey in a space ship right here.)

Writing New Media

Wysocki’s “Opening New Media to Writing: openings and justifications”

The point Wysocki makes that “what we know about writing can usefully affect how we approach new media” makes me reflect on how theorists build off of the ideas of those who came before (5). That is—building from Piaget for theorizing how students learn is important. So building from our knowledge of writing and applying it toward an approach to media makes perfect sense. Wysocki’s reasoning that writing needs to find a home in new media is, of course, something that only some care to come to terms with. Writing “needs to find a home in new media” (this is me quoting myself paraphrasing Wysocki) is so important because, the way our culture is evolving, without doing so, writing may nearly die out of popular culture.

Wysocki constantly refers to change, or that media has changed the world, and that writing might as well change with it, I think implying that it will change or die. Kenneth Bruffee says something about needing teachers take on the responsibility of “inducting new members into the community [of knowledge]” in his essay Collaborative Learning and the “Conversation of Mankind.” “Without [them, Bruffee points out] the community will die when its current members die, and knowledge as assented to by that community will cease to exist” (431). If we adapt this statement to consider the current voices who support the use of writing in conjunction with new media, we can reasonably say that if they do not successfully pass the torch, then writing within new media will die. And if it dies there, a space where so many people spend their time instead of with more traditional forms of literature, then writing will be hanging on instead of thriving in a world wide web of great potential.

We know that we can make a difference, that truth is not static, and that we are not simply helpless and completely dependent on the machine of which we are afraid to rage against. Let us be a part of a new media revolution that includes writing within its construct, not a new media revolution that shuns it. If we become “situated people [and] make things happen,” we will have overcome the idea that so many have—that we only make a difference if the superstructure allows it (5)

I won’t say much about the exercises except that I am anxious to try some of them, even with high schoolers.

podcast

Neimeyer’s class…

In listening to Neimeyer’s first two classes online, I found that I would not want to be a part of an online class. On one hand it is can be convenient to take courses online. Moreover, I would not have wanted to be a part of the holding hands experiment, which was done to see how long it would take to transmit a signal from one person to ten people down the chain. So one advantage of being online is that a student could not contract an illness, other than addiction to the internet I suppose, through an online class. I have quite the fear of germs and would not want to hold hands with others on the first day of class.
On the other hand, it is not social enough. Or is it? With interaction such as blogging and any of the various ways to communicate online, there may be an argument for a strictly online class. But not having any physical communication with the teacher and classmates just seems so eerie to me, something an environment I would not care to live in. Even though I basically keep to myself and am not the most social individual in most classes, I fear what I would become if I never met my peers face to face. Of course Neimeyer’s class was not online, but, through getting the lesson as a podcast, I really felt the disconnection of not being there in person. I’m not the most social person, but the idea that knowledge is socially constructed really hit home with these lessons.

The audio effect of two speakers was more pleasant that only being able to hear just one, however. They, like music with multiple vocalists, were able to compliment each other.

The tidbit of information about being able to have babies online…Wow. I have heard of mail order brides but internet ordered babies!!! That is insane and really disgusts me. What kind of world would we be in if everyone ordered their babies over the internet, without having sensual intercourse with the mother? My guess it is one that does not want to mingle with the opposite sex. On second thought—no offense to my lovely wife, but my kids take so much of my time that my wife and I hardly have time for each other. So, there might be an argument for a single parent family with no ex involved. I can see it now, a computer telling the interested single parent to be, “Take me, I am yours,” yet I can’t see how to get the sperm into the parent at the other end. That has to be a joke…that you don’t need to at least go to a lab.

Visual Rhetoric in a Digital World

Now that I’ve read “Visualizing English: Recognizing the Hybrid Literacy of Visual and Verbal Authorship on the Web,” I’m left wondering if my blog’s title and purpose is interesting enough for anyone to pursue reading it, and more importantly interact with it. Should I have named it “globtacular” for it to be taken seriously? You, my fellow classmates, would all probably read it in either case, since it is one of Dr Rhodes’ expectations, yet I wonder if anyone else will stumble upon this glob by chance and make a contribution. My guess is that it won’t pop up on any search engines. (If you are not my classmate and have read this much, could you just say “It happened. This blog popped up on my search for something”?

If the right person does come across this thing, it might gain some interest I suppose if I take the time to make it of interest, to seduce like with word foreplay. Perhaps after I pass the comprehensive exam, I’ll take more time to nurture it, to grow with it. The idea of blogging suddenly has my interest.

Now back to the article. It points to the essential balance between words and images to have a good web page and more importantly, I think, is that the words and images should communicate, talk to each other; images should not simply “illustrate” the words, “but […] invoke the spirit of mutually illuminating dialogue” (32). It makes me think of the handouts I write, for my high school students, where I stick clip art on—the handouts, not the students. The clip art, I think, connects with the activity. They aren’t usually illustrations, but I never thought about using it, clip art, so that it would interact and talk to the words. I can see why that is desirable, of course, as I have done that. But could there not be an appropriate occasion for an image to merely illustrate the words on the page? Hmmm. I guess depending on the way you might look at it, even in children’s books, the images that illustrate the words on the page talk to the story. I’m beginning to think our author, Craig Stroupe, is wasting a lot of ink and, more importantly, energy. I’ve said this before about other great authors and later ate my words, so who knows. Nevertheless for now, I would hate to assume it must be so just because a great rhetorician says it is. If I do, once I do, another great rhetorician is bound to come along with what seems equally plausible. I’ve allowed that to happen to me as well. Is a sentence with an appositive phrases not as good as one without?

Stroupe makes use of Peter Elbow’s metaphor of cooking with complimentary or even conflicting words is nice. Certain words simmering and interacting making the result rich with flavor—what more to say? It seems that cooking with a combination of words and images is being used as support for Stroupe’s point, or perhaps Stroupe is building on Elbow’s idea—yes.

Elbow’s metaphor “Growing,” or “‘trying to help words grow,’ through a recursive and self-interrogational process” is puzzling (19). The way I see this is that growing must be similar to repetition, where one or more words are repeated as the ideas grow. If this is so, Elbow must be building on ancient rhetoric.

Welcome!

I am Marko.

Hmmmm...what you might want to know--I am an in the English Composition program with a composition concentration (is that not redundant?) and scheduled to take the comprehensive exam this Spring. I'm drinking an RC (that is about the extent of my acronym usage. My motto--absolutely no acronyms, AKA--ANA).

Briefly, my title, Marko's Glob, is not a typo. Marko's Glob is short for Marko's Globe. I thought about making it Marko's World, but I think Wayne's brother must have taken that user name.

The purpose of my glob is to think out the course readings.

I am not terribly comfortable with computer tech. I could not even get my picture to show up on my profile or wherever it goes on this blog. I am alright with MS word and MS pp but not much more. Blogging is certainly new to me. I text-msg a little. I use the net but usually from work. Unfortunately, the panoptic big brothers looking over my shoulder from somewhere within the system at my work have blocked all blog sites, so I'm stuck blogging from my home computer, which is no snail, no--it moves at about the speed of a glacier, a rate of approximately an inch every year, a description that is hardly hyperbolic and more like understamentoholic.

Thanks for checking out this space. I look forward to your comments.