The idea behind this was to create a sort of ethos family tree that would represent the devices related to ethos. It is in response to the semester-long troubled understanding of how devices go into making a rhetorical appeal that I encounter with many students. Dr. Rice recommended making the explanation more concise and font size larger, as well as representing the Ethos bubble at the top of the tree with a different shape to represent that it is the appeal instead of one of the devices. I am working on these changes, but am having trouble replicating the color and transparency of the graphic, even though I am using the same settings. Any additional suggestion would be greatly appreciated!

Culture and Process in the Classroom

This is a post that has more questions than answers- questions raised from our Thursday discussion with the Chinese educators. What does the structure of our freshman writing curriculum communicate about our cultural values? The Chinese writing classroom centers around learning to write and communicate well through a contextual understanding of the culture whose language they write in. I think that this principle is missing in many ways from our freshman classes. We want them to write professionally without properly initiating them into the world of professional communication. We deduct points for cliche phrases and informal writing by simply saying that its not professional. This may not get them any closer to understanding what exactly professional language is and why they need to develop this type of writing as a separate language set. Would it be helpful to explain to them the culture of professional writing? We try to teach them the large concept of audience, but when we are their audience, how do we make this a concept that extends outside of the classroom and into the larger world of writing they will encounter?  

Our curriculum also values technology. Online interface replaces some of the face time with the teacher in the classroom. I was interested in the fact that the Chinese composition classes meet four days of the week. Which brings me to another question- what does our format communicate about writing as a process? Several of our assignments represent writing as process, but does the classroom format undermine this value? It seems that more frequent meetings communicate learning as a community process that involves the teacher and the students cooperatively. In terms of developing a post-process way of looking at composition, it seems that more time in the classroom would foster the opportunity to approach the process of writing from multiple directions. In our program, the idea of process becomes an individual student burden. Ultimately the responsibility falls on the student, but does the online mechanization of process favor some students over others? Could the same written product be constructed through other approaches? Ultimately no matter how much we try to include process and post-process writing approaches, we are looking for a specific product. I think we need to more carefully define what this product is for students and help them to understand the academic culture that requires this specific product.    

Writing Commentary as Conversation

This week I was most interested in Haswell’s idea that responding to student writing can be a conversation. In the Raiderwriter system, my students tend to separate grading from instruction and think because I don’t grade all of their papers I can’t help them interpret commentary on their writing. Despite encouraging my students to visit me in office hours if they need further explanation, they do not see grading as a potential conversation with me. However, with more effort on my part, this does not have to be the case. To make grading more of a conversation in my classroom next semester I plan to use class discussion and the class blog as spaces to continue the conversation about grading. By reviewing student work throughout the semester to find common problems specific to the class, I could create a focused discussion on writing improvement. This extended conversation would start in the classroom with review and continue through the blog. On the blog site I could post resources not only for common grammatical problems, but issues of genre, discourse, and critical thinking that are not represented in the 20 most common list.  Students can refer back to the blog resources as they write and revise their work on a central site specific to their class. Furthering the conversation, I could assign groups to present to the class on some of the common issues in order to encourage students to take ownership of resources that will help them improve their writing.

It follows Haswell’s idea of economy by creating a way to reproduce the value of individual conferencing without the extended time it would take to meet with students individually. Though many of the same issues would probably crop up every semester, the idea of the continuous conversation about writing problems developed over the semester and in direct response to students’ actual work may add investment for students to understand writing commentary. This would develop writing as a process and community discourse. This method offers a shift from dictating a fixed value on a returned document to a multi-directional conversation about improvement and encourages students to see the value of a returned assignment as not just a grade, but as a roadmap for better writing.