The question I often find myself facing when grading papers is how much to say. in "Teachers' Rhetorical Comments on Student Papers," one of the things Robert Connors and Andrea Lunsford discuss is the amount of margin notes and end comments that teachers' make on their students' papers. In general, it seems they found that most margin notes are just one or a couple of words. And short comments of 10 words or less are far more prevalent than lengthy comments of 100 words or more. I've never actually gone through the trouble of counting the number of words in my comments, but I'm certain they consist of considerably more than 10 words. In fact, I think Connors and Lunsford would probably be impressed by the amount of (hopefully useful) commentary that I give students. But I've found that this sort of heightened scrutiny can be time consuming for the teacher and overwhelming for the student, and I wonder if I might be better served by limiting the amount of commentary I make.
Often I wonder if I'm doing my students a disservice by spending too much time analyzing every rhetorical (and often mechanical) aspect of their papers. First, from a practical standpoint I find myself spending far too long on each individual paper, to the point that it always takes me no less than ten days to grade the entire stack of my student papers, and that's devoting at least two or three hours a day to grading. I wonder if my end notes are too long. Last semester we were advised to limit the amount of writing we did at the end of the paper, but I always find that I want to address every aspect of the paper that I think students could focus on in their improvements. Partly this is a defense mechanism, what Connors and Lunsford would describe as justifying my grade, but also it's because I find it difficult to simply focus a student's attention on the one or two aspects of their paper that need the most work, which I think might be a more beneficial way of addressing what needs work in a paper.
In addition, I find myself concerned that in giving students the amount of feedback that I do I may be overwhelming them. Generally I address several recurring rhetorical issues in any given paper, sometimes as many as half a dozen, and I often wonder if it might be better to focus in on one or two aspects of the paper that could be improved. After all, a student can't be expected to reach perfection even necessarily over the course of one semester, and when presented with several issues all of which the student will feel compelled to focus on in the next paper, it may create a sense of paralysis, in which the student is focusing so hard on the issues I addressed in their previous paper that they can't even get any thoughts down on paper. This concern of mine does not arise arbitrarily; I mention it because it's a concern that I've experienced in my own academic courses.
So while Connors and Lunsford seem slightly complimentary of those teachers who make numerous lengthy margin notes and end comments, I wonder if we might be better served to err on the side of specificity when picking and choosing which aspects of any given paper are most problematic and should be focus on with greatest detail.
Sunday, February 15, 2009
Sunday, February 8, 2009
The Trouble with Textbooks. Or, Why Kathleen E. Welch is My New Favorite Person
As both a student and a teacher, I've had a love hate relationship with textbooks. In the past, as a student, I encountered teachers who relied to heavily on textbooks that had little to say or said it poorly (or both). As a teacher, I find that I have a difficult time balancing just how much or how little to use the textbook in my classroom. Kathleen Welch's assertion that the textbook often serves more as a tool for the teacher than for the student seems to fit my experiences in the composition classroom.
As a beginning composition teacher, I found myself relying too heavily on the textbooks, trying to go through every section of every chapter, even reading lengthy passages, essentially spending class time doing what students were supposed to do for homework. When this method predictably failed - students (and teacher) becoming bored and listless - I course corrected too far in the other direction, relying so little on the textbook that the students began to wonder what the purpose of even reading it was if we weren't going to go over anything in it. Through trial and error, I've learned that the information in the textbook is useless to the students unless they see it in practice alongside the discussion. And I think I've reached a comfortable balance regarding how much time to spend on the text, with the focus of each class being on student writing informed by what they've read.
One part of Welch's text that I found interesting was the discussion of excerpts. It seems to me - and maybe I'm just misinterpreting Welch's meaning here - that the Norton Field Guide is very much guilty of decontextualizing many of the excerpts it uses. I understand that there are the introductory and conclusion blurbs before and after the texts pointing out where they came from and what their purpose was. But often they seem to do a poor job of illustrating the actual "how" of how a text is written. For instance, in the "Analyzing a Text" chapter, Bullock excerpts a portion of William Safire's study of the Gettysburg Address to illustrate context and pattern analysis. It's a great example, and I was able to make use of it. But what might have been more useful, and based on her article I think Welsh would agree, is a step by step illustration of how a student writer creates a similar study. This is where I think Ballenger's book is, in many ways, a preferable text for the composition classroom. My students and I were able to examine the student texts included in The Curious Writer and find examples of what they did wrong and what they did right.
In any case, it's not the job of the textbook to teach, and if we rely on it as such, then we are doing ourselves and our students a disservice. The textbook is a tool, but the actual act of teaching has to be a hands on collaboration between student and teacher. And as Welsh asserts, a classroom in which student writing becomes the primary text is often more effective than a classroom that centers on a set of guidelines taught out of a textbook.
As a beginning composition teacher, I found myself relying too heavily on the textbooks, trying to go through every section of every chapter, even reading lengthy passages, essentially spending class time doing what students were supposed to do for homework. When this method predictably failed - students (and teacher) becoming bored and listless - I course corrected too far in the other direction, relying so little on the textbook that the students began to wonder what the purpose of even reading it was if we weren't going to go over anything in it. Through trial and error, I've learned that the information in the textbook is useless to the students unless they see it in practice alongside the discussion. And I think I've reached a comfortable balance regarding how much time to spend on the text, with the focus of each class being on student writing informed by what they've read.
One part of Welch's text that I found interesting was the discussion of excerpts. It seems to me - and maybe I'm just misinterpreting Welch's meaning here - that the Norton Field Guide is very much guilty of decontextualizing many of the excerpts it uses. I understand that there are the introductory and conclusion blurbs before and after the texts pointing out where they came from and what their purpose was. But often they seem to do a poor job of illustrating the actual "how" of how a text is written. For instance, in the "Analyzing a Text" chapter, Bullock excerpts a portion of William Safire's study of the Gettysburg Address to illustrate context and pattern analysis. It's a great example, and I was able to make use of it. But what might have been more useful, and based on her article I think Welsh would agree, is a step by step illustration of how a student writer creates a similar study. This is where I think Ballenger's book is, in many ways, a preferable text for the composition classroom. My students and I were able to examine the student texts included in The Curious Writer and find examples of what they did wrong and what they did right.
In any case, it's not the job of the textbook to teach, and if we rely on it as such, then we are doing ourselves and our students a disservice. The textbook is a tool, but the actual act of teaching has to be a hands on collaboration between student and teacher. And as Welsh asserts, a classroom in which student writing becomes the primary text is often more effective than a classroom that centers on a set of guidelines taught out of a textbook.
Sunday, February 1, 2009
Static vs. Dynamic: A Response to Amy J. Devitt's "Generalizing About Genre"
In "Generalizing About Genre," Amy J. Devitt presents a traditional and a "new" conception of genre. She characterizes the conventional form of genre as "trivial," as "a classification system deriving from literary criticism that names types of texts according to their forms" (573-574). Her new conception of genre argues that genres arise in response to "situations that writers encounter repeatedly" (576). In other words, rather than a writer being forced to shoehorn his or her text into the form of a specific genre, the form is defined by the needs of the authors who choose (or find it necessary) to write in that genre. In effect, "writers [...] construct situation by constructing genre" (578). Devitt further points out that, this being the case, genres are subject to change as context changes, context including everything from surrounding environments, potential readers, previous texts, and societal pressures, among other things.
Devitt's new conception of genre seems to be more of a reversal than a complete reimagining of what genre means. In effect, she's flipped the traditional understanding of how genre and writer interact - writer must conform to genre's formal standards - by suggesting that the community of writers create a genre's formal standards based on the purposes they need that genre to serve. I don't know that such a reversal is as radical as Devitt seems to think it is. In fact, I think it's sort of understood by most experienced writers that the standards of any given genre were developed for pragmatic purposes at some point in the past. What is interesting about Devitt's reimagining of genre is the concept that these standards can be modified due to societal changes or the needs of readers or writers. In general, we (and our students) think of genres as a collection of static rather than dynamic standards, a set of rules that we must follow regardless of context.
In class, I stress to my students that while each genre has its own set of standards, these are always open to modification should the need arise to do so. For instance, while it is commonly taught that academic research papers should be strictly objective - even our Norton Field Guide stresses this belief - I would argue that complete objectivity is not only impossible, but also undesired. A student's biases will creep into the paper anyway, so if the opportunity arises, why should we not encourage them to put those biases to constructive uses that will support the thesis of their paper? Along similar lines, while first person is often discouraged in academic writing, I encourage my students to use it when it is appropriate. I would much rather see a student write "I would argue..." than "some would argue..." The "some" in the second clause is an abstract and unidentifiable term. Who are these "some" and why should I care what they argue? The student, on the other hand, I can assume to be somewhat knowledgeable on the subject about which they're writing, and so their argument will carry more weight than that of an abstract "some."
I've always thought of genres as a set of guidelines that are designed to be broken in creative ways rather than as a rigid set of rules that must be followed. That being the case, I found Devitt's new conception of genre not to be a radical reimagining, but nonetheless an informative reversal of traditional thinking on the subject.
Devitt's new conception of genre seems to be more of a reversal than a complete reimagining of what genre means. In effect, she's flipped the traditional understanding of how genre and writer interact - writer must conform to genre's formal standards - by suggesting that the community of writers create a genre's formal standards based on the purposes they need that genre to serve. I don't know that such a reversal is as radical as Devitt seems to think it is. In fact, I think it's sort of understood by most experienced writers that the standards of any given genre were developed for pragmatic purposes at some point in the past. What is interesting about Devitt's reimagining of genre is the concept that these standards can be modified due to societal changes or the needs of readers or writers. In general, we (and our students) think of genres as a collection of static rather than dynamic standards, a set of rules that we must follow regardless of context.
In class, I stress to my students that while each genre has its own set of standards, these are always open to modification should the need arise to do so. For instance, while it is commonly taught that academic research papers should be strictly objective - even our Norton Field Guide stresses this belief - I would argue that complete objectivity is not only impossible, but also undesired. A student's biases will creep into the paper anyway, so if the opportunity arises, why should we not encourage them to put those biases to constructive uses that will support the thesis of their paper? Along similar lines, while first person is often discouraged in academic writing, I encourage my students to use it when it is appropriate. I would much rather see a student write "I would argue..." than "some would argue..." The "some" in the second clause is an abstract and unidentifiable term. Who are these "some" and why should I care what they argue? The student, on the other hand, I can assume to be somewhat knowledgeable on the subject about which they're writing, and so their argument will carry more weight than that of an abstract "some."
I've always thought of genres as a set of guidelines that are designed to be broken in creative ways rather than as a rigid set of rules that must be followed. That being the case, I found Devitt's new conception of genre not to be a radical reimagining, but nonetheless an informative reversal of traditional thinking on the subject.
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