When I saw the title of Laura Micciche’s article, “Making a Case for Rhetorical Grammar,” I thought, Finally! Someone’s going to justify my crazy urge to freeze the class and address the grave abuses of commas and apostrophes I’ve been seeing! The hanging participles! The run-ons, oh my! And though I really knew Micciche had no intention of serving my neurotic teaching impulses, for at least the first three pages of the reading, I blissfully disregarded the pairing of “grammar” with “rhetoric,” and all its implications for an instruction of grammar that is not so Strunk and White, and waited for my moment to arrive.
Of course, it never did. Of course, Micciche never said, “Doing an intensive 50-minute formal grammar workshop is a totally effective way of spending your instruction time.” Because, of course, it’s not.
Formal grammar instruction is, as our second reading by Bawarshi and Reiff, “Rhetorical Genre Studies Approaches to Teaching Writing,” illuminates, an instruction in which the end is only a “low road transfer” (190), the best case scenario being an automatic but empty understanding of why commas cannot join two independent clauses but semi-colons can, or how to correctly employ parallelism. What we must strive for is the “high road transfer,” which “depends on the deliberate, mindful abstraction of skill or knowledge from one context for application to another” (190). The emphasis is mine; while Bawarshi and Reiff go on to focus on genre rather than grammar instruction, I would like to pay particular attention to these ideas of deliberateness and mindfulness as important connectors for the ideas in both of these articles, as well as the exercises presented by Kolln in “The Writer’s Voice.”
When I finally came to terms with Micciche’s proposal that we do not actually teach formal grammar in the classroom (So long, lecture on appositives! So long!), but rather a rhetoric of grammar, I began to realize that what she was suggesting we strive towards as instructors was much less daunting and far more exciting and effective than the grammar workshop. We must teach purposefulness – the fact that writers do certain things for certain effects – a concept that our students are in dire need of learning, coming from a high school writing atmosphere of formulas and state-mandated results. My students have absolutely no idea that their writing has consequences (with the exception, perhaps, of the social consequences of a snarky Facebook wall post); moreover, they have no idea that good writers, writers they admire, think very hard about the consequences of every aspect of their writing, from punctuation to content. That, essentially, it doesn’t just pour out of them in the form my students see on the page.
Traditional grammar instruction does not teach consequences (though there are certainly consequences to teaching it). However, instruction of the kinds proposed in our readings – Micciche’s commonplace books, Bawarshi and Reif’s heuristics for genre analysis and Kolln’s group discussions on voice – demand that students become deeply involved with the writing in front of them, to “dig around in the writing of others and really think about what makes it tick” (Micciche 728), as well as its cultural, social and political implications. Students then exercise their discoveries and analyses in their own writing – a practice I am so love with that I can’t wait to introduce it to my classroom.
With each inquiry project unit, much of my instruction focuses on one or two examples of the genre at hand, and through that unit, we examine those examples in ways that reflect my students’ progression in writing in this genre. For example, in the first week of the personal academic argument unit, we read an excerpt from Rick Bass’s The Ninemile Wolves and discussed the purpose of writing the piece, where we could see argument and research forming and how the “I” worked; toward the end of the unit, we then discussed this piece in terms of style and voice. I see now that I was only halfway there; not once did I talk about the purposefulness or the consequences of Bass’s content and style, and ultimately, I think my students were unable to connect what Rick Bass was doing to what they might do in their own essays. What I intend to do with our reading for the Life Place Essay unit, then, is put them on a course to analyzing the purposeful moves Didion, Silko, McLean, etc. make in their writing, to treat punctuation and genre as tactics and strategies, and give them opportunities to experiment with the consequences of their own writing.
Noel, What Didion piece are you using? The Writing Reflection?
ReplyDeleteYou've got me inspired to add it in as well. I've been reading this book, "Grammar to Enrich and Enhance Writing" by Constance Weaver, she's got 12 principles of teaching grammar. Number one being that "Teaching grammar divorced from writing doesn't strengthen writing and therefore wastes time." Which, as your urge to point out the "trends" you are seeing in your student's writing indicates, seems unnatural. But I found the alternatives to be exciting as well. We can use our texts as working models to rhetorically place the grammar being used. And it can fit in with the recursive learning process that Ballenger stresses is integral to the writing process,
I'm learning that grammar can be taught throughout the whole process. It sounds like to me that examining the rhetorical moves of another author will work great during the invention process to mimic the grammar used through sentence imitation and expansion. Whereas punctuation and grammar usage maybe better taught during the editing stage.
So yeah, great point! Just add grammar as another thing to think about when choosing readings during the invention phase.
Noel, I would love to know which Silko reading you are planning on using in your class.
ReplyDeleteI agree with the last line of your post that with our students we should "give them opportunities to experiment with the consequences of their own writing." Writing may be done as an individual, but that doesn't mean that it should not be seen as a social activity. For the very reason that our writing enters the social sphere, we need to be aware of the impact our words have. I have been trying to stress in my class that, especially with the op-ed essay, we need to be clear with our intentions and our reasoning behind it. I agree that it is important for our students to see their writing as a series of rhetorical choices that is impacted by grammar. That is why, as Joel points out, "grammar can be taught throughout the whole process" and the benefit of this approach is avoiding turning grammar into what Micciche calls "a mind-numbing pedagogical task that offends our rhetorical sensibilities" (716).
I think Noel's approach of introducing these ideas by exploring the rhetorical and grammatical choices other authors make works for several reasons. I like how she can use the examples as a way to get her students to see ways in which other writers approach content in relation to form. This can help illustrate that by acknowledging these devices the writer can strengthen and inform their own writing. What this approach does is show how grammar and rhetorical decisions work on a practical level, rather than focusing on correcting grammatical errors without discussing how they impact the paper as a whole.
Yes, yes, and yes! I strongly agree with you, Noel, that we need to teach purposefulness to our students and that striving for purposeful writing includes seamless and intentional grammar use (concepts we’ve been itching to address all along!). While I agree with your notion that most students probably don’t realize that writers they admire consider the consequences of the various aspects of their writing, I feel that even if students did realize this, they wouldn’t be able to empathize. “Purposeful writing” to most of my students means writing to finish the assignment and getting a decent grade- this is the purpose. Luckily, the Op-Ed genre has provided the perfect opportunity to highlight the role of the rhetorical situation (especially audience, since they will be submitting their letters to a newspaper or magazine) and make it feel real. With this assignment I get the feeling students are recognizing that choices they make in their use of rhetoric will shape the way they come across to their audience.
ReplyDeleteLike Brittany, I appreciated the activities proposed in the Barwashi and Reiff article aimed at helping students gain meta-genre awareness. I wonder, though, if it wouldn’t make more sense to weave the transversal concept of genre awareness other lessons (as many of us have already done) rather than dedicate an entire lesson to the topic.
Joel & Michelle: I am using Didion's "Notes from a Native Daughter," and I am still deciding between Silko's "Language and Literature from a Pueblo Indian Perspective" and "Landscape, History and the Pueblo Imagination." I need to read them more thoroughly and decide which would better pertain to the unit.
ReplyDeleteNoel
ReplyDeleteI constantly struggle as well with elucidating the idea in my class that "writers do certain things for certain effects." I feel that students believe that most prolific writing comes onto the page crystalline and free of error from some prodigal, sublime force that has them thinking they never once have to engage in the actual "process" of writing. Even Luke Skywalker had to go through the motions before he became a jedi (lamest reference ever and I don't even watch Star Wars so I don't know why I chose that analogy), and thus I can't see why some of my students are so impatient with taking the necessary steps that will help them improve. They fail to realize that all good writers consider the consequences of what they write, and that writing is an actual "process," where we're not just blowing smoke out of our...I wont ramble on about that, but you get the point.
I feel the more genres we bring to their disposal (poetry, prose, short stories, verse novels, meta-modern vernacular, hip-hop, etc...) the more they can "dig around in the writing of others and really think about what makes it tick" (Micciche 728), but we have to give them content they will "want" to draw blood from.
To add on, I think your reading choices for the life place essay (Didion, Silko, McLean) are awesome.
ReplyDeleteNoel,
ReplyDeleteI wholeheartedly agree with the need to teach purposefulness and consequences, and I think you put your finger on several ways that many of us have not and could be applying Micciche and Bawarshi and Reiff's insight into our classrooms, because of (or in addition to) what you pointed out as some basic grammatical and mechanical issues. And I have to second everyone else's excitement about the readings you are mulling over for class, another opportunity to look closely at the genre, its goals, strategies, and purposes, but also its inner workings...an opportunity for modeling effective grammar and mechanics.
I think Bawarshi and Reiff's extension of understanding genre to public public contexts as a useful pedagogical tool that might be worth incorporating into our classes somehow, to give "students opportunities to analyze and critique public genres" (206). Let us not forget to connect them to a broader context, a world that they may encounter as they enter their own careers and experiences as members of communities, and show them the tools that we are covering now are widely applicable.