The "Wikipedia" article gives reason to why it is important to have a sound pedagogy of teaching rhetoric reading at the WRIT 101 level. Research is taking place increasingly outside of academically mediated environments. Students need these skills early on to perform sound scholarship. I look back at my education and see that I was doing academic research before I even knew what a Rhetorical analysis really was. I agree with Jenny when she says we should acknowledge the process that wikipedia plays a part in and work with it, not against it.
I like the definition of a Rhetorician, that Brent puts forth, as one who "discovers" the kind of speech that matches the situation. This implies that one who practices rhetoric let's the situation dictate the rhetorical analysis and the language that is used with it. This is important because a skilled Rhetorician can use rhetorical analysis as a powerful tool to shred apart arguments. We've all seen this on Mass Media panel discussions where the analysis often goes beyond the argument and into the realm of a personal attack.
English Departments are full of people with acute rhetorical skills (Grad Students, TAs, Professors and Department Chairs included). But in Brent's definition, does this mean they are all good Rhetoricians? We've all seen scholars armed with a sound theory and some sharp individual rhetoric pick apart a text. Maybe we have all learned from these powerful displays of individual rhetoric, but when Brent says that "Reading Rhetorically is an act of invention through dialogue", I think he means invention and rhetoric born out of a public discourse. not an individual speaking to audience who may or may not understand.
Its unfortunate that up the higher academic ladder you go, the more disconnected rhetoric there seems to be.
English departments are so fragmented now with individual specialists within already specialized departments. All of whom have a highly advanced form of individual rhetoric. I've been in upper division English classes where unless you have taken the same classes, read the same books, or even been a part of the same conversations, you are left out of the conversation. I absolutely agree with Brent when he says that if "discourse has not the power to connect, persuasion can have no meaning."
As a teacher of the WRIT101 class, I am happy that I have the opportunity to introduce the art of Rhetoric to burgeoning collegiate writers. I think this portfolio writing we are teaching with an emphasis on reflection is a model where "Reading Rhetorically" becomes an act of "Invention". I think reflection is a dialogue where rhetorical choices can be explored and shared with the audience. This is what I think Brent means when he says "Invention is a social act." Not only should we teach students individual rhetorical skills that will help them sort our the research they found out there on the web. We should also teach them to develop a rhetoric that seeks to make connections and engage in public dialogue, not in a individualized discourse.
Rhetoric is a powerful tool for developing a "world view" but It does no good if we can't communicate it effectively. I just think that by a student learning rhetorical skills early in their collegiate career, it can only enhance the learning process. What this article is telling me is that a more well rounded definition need to be taught. Quite frankly, I've seen students drop classes and even switch majors because of bad Rhetoricians that overlook using rhetoric for social invention in lieu of a more individualistic misuse.
Joel
Joel, I agree wholly with the idea that "invention is a social act." What Brent makes clear is that no idea exists in isolation from all the rest. That is to say that there is and since the development of language, always has been a conversation of sorts aimed at developing knowledge. Rhetorical reading is but a "communal medium in which thought grows" (Brent, Ch1,p.5). What I find to be interesting in all this is that knowledge then becomes something that is very fluid in nature. What is considered knowledge is always reliant on what information has come to the forefront through community interaction. This interaction, this discourse, as mentioned by Brent, ought to be regarded "not as an isolated event, but rather a constant potentiality that is occasionally evidenced in speech or writing"(Ch1, p10). The question then is how to make students realize how they are already involved in this public dialogue.
ReplyDeleteI think Matalene offers some advice as far as drawing students into the conversation. She criticizes those pedagogies that focus on an argument only approach. She says of a student, "Instead of requiring her to sound like a talking head, we should empower her as a writer" (185). To Matalene, and I think she is correct, personal experience becomes critical to helping students realize that they are already a part of this dialogue. Their experiences are real and the only means by which their engagement will become so is by making it apparent that they do have valuable contributions to make. Let us all remember that we too are involved in this larger conversation... We are and always have been.. Let us wake from our slumbers and become further aware of this ongoing discourse.
Joel
ReplyDeleteI agree with the idea that "invention and rhetoric are born out of a public discourse," and thus as teachers we have to employ rhetoric as a tool for students to overcome the dichotomy of higher education: the goal of making the strange familiar. As Brent states that if "discourse has not the power to connect, persuasion can have no meaning," one can see the logic behind an assertion postulated by Purdy that Wikipedia, employing his approach, can be good for you.
I connected personally with the idea that you sought to explore what I feel is a key flaw in education and the employment of pedagogy in the sense that the higher you go up the academic ladder, "the more disconnected rhetoric seems to be." Disciplines and studies bathed in abstraction and verboseness influence or somehow persuade students and teachers to feel that the rhetoric they employ must mirror the intangibility of the content they treat on, which in turn deteriorates the idea that rhetoric should develop a "world view," being nothing is communicated comprehensibly.
Joel,
ReplyDeleteVery astute commentary on these articles, especially considering the technological mishap you faced. I especially like your observation that “research is taking place increasingly outside of academically mediated environments.” The idea that our students can be performing tasks related to research and rhetoric in non-academic realms is key for us to grasp. For all we know, outside of our classroom students could be entering into discussions or debates websites such as Wikipedia, in comments sections on news sites, on forums dedicated to their hobbies, or even in notes or comments or status updates on Facebook. Since we (and Ballenger) are constantly asking them to examine their own research, reading, and writing habits, it’s only fair that we’re aware of them as well. With this awareness we can tap in to the systems they’re familiar with and use them as models for writing, as Purdy suggests we do with Wikipedia. (Of course, Purdy’s method only works when the system is an appropriate recursive model—I’m not saying that we can transfer our student’s skills at facebooking to college-level composition…if only! What a fun lesson plan that would be.)
I’m also interested in your assertion that the structure of Writ 101 introduces “reading rhetorically” as an act of invention. I can definitely see this concept at play in my own course. We spent last week focused on conducting research in the lab (Monday), evaluating and synthesizing sources (Wednesday), and integrating sources into papers through quoting, paraphrasing, and summarizing (Friday). Throughout the week I emphasized research and reading as rhetorical tasks by having students critically examine the sources they selected for their projects (I’m sure Brent would pat me on the back for using some of his methods from the “How To Teach” section of Ch. 5). I also emphasized the recursive nature of research by having students reflect on what they’d learned from their research thus far and what they would need to revisit as they went to compose a draft of the PAA. The project narrative took the recursive and reflective elements a step further by having the students write at length about their evolving thoughts on the research topic. These activities, especially the project narrative, really do seem like acts of invention to me—though research is an important step in the PAA simply because they need to engage in academic sources to fulfill the course requirement, the very engagement with those sources helps the students gain insight into what their topic will be and how they’ll shape their paper. And again, the recursive nature of research and writing reveals itself to me!
Joel and Jimmy
ReplyDeleteI agree with your comments on the disempowering and isolating role that rhetoric can play in the upper echelons of academia. Perhaps this is because, as Robert J. Conner suggests, academics are uncomfortable with personal communication styles and information. Matalene quotes him as writing "For many teachers, literature and literary analysis provided a way out of the world of personal writing that made them uncomfortable." Perhaps teachers fear that and invitation to write personally would snowball into a messy, emotional process of self-reflection that they themselves are unprepared to undertake. In this tendency they may be taking a more scientific approach to teaching – dealing purely in impersonal, objective-sounding language and arguments. Matalene and Brent both do a great job of inserting the student back into education – by encouraging teachers to empower students to take an active role in learning. Apart from the personal academic essay, what other ways can teachers encourage student involvement and investment? How can teachers effectively invite personal experience and knowledge into the classroom?
Hi Joel,
ReplyDeleteI also lament the fact that some students believe that they have to be masters of rhetorical devices to the point that they succumb to the idea that they do not possess the knowledge to continue. I was disheartened to see a bright student drop the class over the fear of “not being ready” to engage in a writing class. This to me is a symptom of a bigger problem. Brent points out that “to delay immersing students in research until their repertoire is formed is to deny them access to one of the most important processes that form it.” (Brent Ch.5) What I wish I could have successfully explained to that student is that we don’t expect our students to learn only by example, but they must also be willing to make a few mistakes as a way to incorporate other peoples knowledge with their own experiences. I was surprised that professor David Wells would think that “[It’s] outrageous to demand that a typical freshman originate a feasible thesis.” (Brent Ch.5) This kind of thinking only hinders our abilities to help our students learn by practice because they feel like they lack the authority to write. Isn’t this the process we, as TA’s going to Grad school and teaching for the first time, are going through right now? We too, are learning the skills necessary to teach while simultaneously using those techniques in our classrooms. It would be preposterous to expect us to be expert teachers on our first try. It’s realistic to instead acknowledge the fact that we are growing as individuals while working together as a community of new TA’s.
This is why I appreciated Carolyn Matalene’s point that the problem is “teaching books and emphasizing writing based on information rather than experience tends to be the fashion in many composition courses especially in large programs.” (Matalene P.181) I feel like a part of my job in the classroom is to encourage my students to keep trying when they get discouraged, or to even validate them as writers. A question I have heard a few times, and have said in the past, is “Am I doing this right?” Matalene gives a few examples from her classroom of her students awkwardly trying to navigate research writing while incorporating their own experiences into it. I think this works well as tool to show them that they can integrate themselves into the assignment because this is about being apart of the process and not just an being observer.
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ReplyDeleteBrittany, I had a great example of Rhetorical Invention the other day with a Paraprashing exercise. I gave each student a page of famous quotes and they picked one or two and use their own words explained what the quote meant. This is a type of Rhetorical skill that a lot of people have, writers and non writers alike. I had some of the students that never willingly share their writing share on this one. I probably had 15 people share what they wrote for the fastwrite which was double what I normally get. It surprised some of the more reluctant writers to see that they have more writing skills than they thought they did. But it is born out of the invention of rhetorically reading someone else's words and putting it into their own.
ReplyDeleteI went one to use this as a way into in text quotations and MLA citations, but I think the writing it produced class wide was some of the best yet.
Thinking further about how rhetoric can cause disconnection, I like the idea Brent quotes from Burke where discourse is an unending conversation in a parlor you've come late into and so have to piece together what the conversation is about (Chpt 1). I think the higher echelons of academia can create more disconnection through rhetoric, but I think it is also rational to believe WRIT 101 students sometimes feel disconnected through our rhetoric. The difficulty students have had with understanding the personal voice in the PAA is evidence of this. At times I'm sure our students often think they've walked into a conversation and are now trying to piece together what composition is all about. How often does our discourse fail to have the power to connect? So to think further about Laurel's question of ways to encourage students' investment and involvement, I think Joel raises a great point of using rhetoric and invention as a public discourse, not "an individual speaking to an audience who may or may not understand." So when the students freewrite, I freewrite with them. What are other ways you are trying to assure that you aren't losing students by failing to connect through discourse?
ReplyDelete