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Am I an Expressivist?
7 Feb 2010 at 3:58pm
Posted by Clancy
I've always thought that no, I'm really not an expressivist. I'm much more interested in assigning research-based argument writing in my classes than I am in assigning personal narratives or personal essays. That being said, it isn't as though those genres are mutually exclusive, obviously. Here's where I stand now:
In my own experience having written a whole lot of different texts for academic audiences, the response to what I write is overwhelmingly more positive when I make it personal and accessible -- chatty, even -- than when I write a paper that more closely resembles the IMRAD tone and structure. I've also noticed that for academic lectures, not just ones I've given but ones I've attended, audience response is much more positive when a speaker tells stories along with presenting information and argument.
Everybody wants edutainment. They may deny it, but that is, in fact, exactly what they want, I used to think, with a bit of annoyance. But now I've come to the more charitable view that everybody wants to be delighted while they are instructed.
I believe that expressive touches (anecdotes, first person, reflective personal response to the subject matter) usually enrich the experience of both writing and reading academic discourse.
For teaching, then, that means I want students to feel personally invested in the subject matter of their essays, even though I am requiring them to write arguments supported by evidence from scholarly or high-popular sources in which they must also engage with opposing arguments. I encourage stories of personal encounters with the topic, in the introduction or wherever the student deems appropriate. Conclusions can be reflections on the process of reading a variety of perspectives on the topic and of writing the paper.
So, am I an expressivist?
Thoughts on Basic (and Not-So-Basic) Writing
26 Jan 2010 at 11:43pm
Posted by Clancy
So far in my graduate course this semester, among other readings, I've assigned Mina Shaughnessy's introduction to Errors and Expectations, an excerpt from Robert Connors' Composition-Rhetoric: Backgrounds, Theory, and Pedagogy, an excerpt from Ken Macrorie's Telling Writing, and David Bartholomae's "Inventing the University." These four I mention are really forming a constellation in my mind about teaching academic writing to beginners, especially the place of grammar, that dude who just will not leave the party.
For one thing -- as I'm pleased the students in class picked up on -- when most people say "grammar," they don't mean only grammar. It's a shorthand, umbrella term for a lot of organizational, rhetorical, and stylistic conventions that the user of the term "grammar" doesn't know how to articulate. Every time I read Bartholomae's essay (PDF), I'm re-impressed with how well he describes and demystifies the gestures and postures in academic writing.
I'm interested in looking at these readings with the question in mind of how basic writing should be taught. The approaches in the article I linked here are categorized well, but I have been thinking of two basic categories:
1. The Sequential Method
This approach has the goal of getting rid of sentence-level errors in grammar, spelling, and punctuation (GSP). When the writing is clearer in this regard, the instruction can then proceed to issues of genre, argument, etc. Proponents, at least the ones I've talked to, sometimes make the "you have to learn to crawl before you can learn to walk" comparison, which, by the way, isn't true for babies. Writing assignments may be sentences or paragraphs as well as essays; there's a pretty well-established collection of "paragraphs and essays" writing textbooks, many with GSP worksheets and exercises, tailored for this approach.
2. The Tandem Method
This approach, which seems to be favored in the scholarship I've read, calls for students to learn GSP and conventions of academic writing concurrently, so students would learn about making claims with reasons supported by credible evidence, analyzing audience, academic genres like annotated bibliographies, etc.* while learning GSP, but only the GSP the specific student needs to learn. The student may have subject-verb agreement mastered, so no sense spending time on that, but still need help in semicolon usage, for instance.
*OK, so maybe not a lot of Basic Writing teachers are assigning full-on annotated bibliographies. But still, the tandem method does have students focus on content and organization of whole essays from the beginning of the course.
I have more to say on this topic, but right now I'd rather go to sleep. I'm interested in exploring the possible advantages of each of the two methods. So far I have, for the sequential method: maybe the students whose GSP is improved after a course taught this way (and the research suggests there aren't many of those) are in a better position because some of the teachers they'll have in the future will be more positively predisposed toward them, more willing to believe that these students have intelligence and are not lost causes, and more willing to make the effort to teach the argument, analytical skills, genre conventions, and so forth.
Macrorie Concept Map
20 Jan 2010 at 11:23pm
Posted by Clancy
This afternoon in my composition pedagogy course, we talked about Ken Macrorie's Telling Writing -- the excerpt from the Norton Book of Composition Studies, anyway. We also talked about the article by Peter Elbow in the same anthology. As I was preparing for class, I thought it would be fun to make a diagram of Macrorie's idea of "Engfish," the unfortunate result of a lot of schooling in writing, next to his definition of "good writing." I plan to say more about expressivism, the approach to teaching writing that Macrorie and Elbow are often associated with, in a near-future post. But for now, the concept map:
Narrowing Research Paper Topics
15 Jan 2010 at 12:47pm
Posted by Clancy
I want to start off by stating my awareness of Sharon Crowley's position in "The Evolution of Current-Traditional Rhetoric" that narrowing down an essay topic is an overly simple, current-traditional approach to invention. I concede that she has a good point and that just "narrowing down" without a specific rhetorical purpose for doing so is problematic. However, it is practical and expedient to have good strategies for focusing during the research and writing process, and years of experience...
Resolutions
3 Jan 2010 at 8:32pm
Posted by Clancy
Resolutions for 2010:
1. Post to the blog at least twice a week.
2. Do some research-related writing, and reading, EVERY day if AT ALL possible. There will definitely be some days in 2010 that I'm, you know, in the hospital or otherwise out of commission.
3. Starting as soon as I've completely recovered from the birth, get back into a regular exercise routine: about three times a week.
CCCC-IP Annual Article: Two Competing Copyright Curricula
3 Jan 2010 at 1:36pm
Posted by Clancy
I'm excited about this year's CCCC-IP Annual. We're looking at having at least six articles in the 2009 publication, which will be my third as editor. I plan on getting my article for it finished in the next week or two. Usually the articles cover the developments in copyright and intellectual property law over the past year; this year will be no different except for a couple of reviews of books that were published in the latter half of 2008 that I decided to make exceptions for.
But for my a...
Christmas Menu
24 Dec 2009 at 10:07pm
Posted by Clancy
Tomorrow we're planning on eating the following:
turkey, which is brining overnight
mashed potatoes with roasted garlic, olive oil, butter, salt, pepper, and rosemary (cooked this evening ahead of time)
carrot soufflé, which I prepped tonight and will bake tomorrow
chicken and sausage gumbo with rice, which Jonathan made yesterday
fried okra (using okra left over after making the gumbo)
collards
and for dessert, three kinds of cookies:
lactation cookies, not because I need the milk supply yet...
Clancy Ratliff's Opinion About What Makes a Good Teaching Portfolio
22 Dec 2009 at 1:58pm
Posted by Clancy
The following remarks constitute my personal opinion about what a teaching portfolio, a.k.a. ?evidence of excellence in teaching,? should look like and contain. Not everyone may agree with me, but I have seen a lot of teaching portfolios, not only in my training of new teachers as part of my role as Director of First-Year Writing, but also as the chair of a hiring committee.
Questions to Answer
A reader should have the answers to these three basic questions after reading your teaching portfo...
Bullets!
20 Dec 2009 at 1:39pm
Posted by Clancy
I really will be rebooting the blog soon. It will be a New Year's resolution; I've had a lot of success with those in the past.
Today at church, one of Henry's Sunday School teachers told me that during their little birthday party (for Jesus), they'd given the children gingerbread cookies. Henry took his over to the nativity scene and put it in the manger. I relay this anecdote simply because it is SUCH a Henry thing to do. He is ALWAYS stashing food in little cups and boxes, even shoes. It's...
Inscriptions on Desks
14 Oct 2009 at 1:41pm
Posted by Clancy
I've been doing a lot of class observations lately in fulfillment of my role as Director of First-Year Writing. As I sit in the back of the classroom for these observations, I decided to collect the epigrammatic statements that students write on the backs of desk chairs (line breaks in original):
I hate school
Gun Town
Ballin'
K?is theSHIT!
Fuckthisclass
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