Bringing Sexy Back: Addressing Grammar, Style, & Genre in Writ 101

"...teaching student grammar skills is rarely associated with the political programs that characterize our disciplinary rhetoric and is seldom linked with rhetorical education or the practice of cultural critique. Grammar instruction, in short, is decidedly not sexy but school-marmish, not empowering but disempowering, not rhetorical but decontextualized, not progressive but remedial” (Micciche 718).

Why, yes, I combined Justin Timberlake lyrics with a quote from Micciche’s article in christening my post—after all, this is a blog, and didn’t we all agree that the genre calls for eye-catching titles? While I’m at it, I might as well throw in an image, since the blog genre also often calls for visuals to supplement the text:

I’m sure Bawarshi and Reiff would praise my genre dedication: their article “Rhetorical Genre Studies: Approaches to Teaching Writing” advocates the exploration and production of texts from multiple genres. They also assert that students should not just be able to recognize “typified rhetorical features” of different genres, but that they should have a “meta-genre awareness,” a sense of how skills cultivated and applied in each genre can be translated into other writing contexts (Bawarshi and Reiff 189, 192). Developing meta-genre awareness in our students should be a key goal for us as Writ 101 instructors, since, as as Laurel hints at in her post title, many of our students might be asking themselves the dreaded “How will this apply to my major?” question. We obviously don’t want our students to see Writ 101 as a pointless class; helping our students gain meta-genre awareness is one way to combat negative, defeatist attitudes.

So the concept is clear and the outcome is desirable—but after reading the first three pages of Bawarshi and Reiff’s rhetorical genre manifesto, I found myself questioning the application. How do we move the concept to the classroom and effectively foster the development of our students’ meta-genre awareness? Luckily for me, Bawarshi and Reiff spend the rest of the article introducing exercises designed to help students analyze, critique, produce, and contextualize various genres. From exploring the rhetorical patterns of multiple genres (194) and critiquing the syllabus (198) to inventing genre “mini-manuals” (201) and completing “genre ethnographies” on professors or other students (203), the authors provide a multitude of activities that could easily be adapted for my own classroom. And looking back, I realize that I have already planted the seeds of meta-genre awareness in my students by embedding reflection in my introduction of each new unit; as we began the Op-Ed, I asked what skills we’d developed in the first two units would be applied to their Op-Eds. To my fellow TAs: in what ways have you already or do you plan on developing genre awareness in your students? Did a particular exercise from Bawarshi and Reiff speak to you?

Just as I struggled with knowing how to show my students the cross-genre transferability of their skills, I’ve also had trouble situating grammar and style in my pedagogy. In 540 we've talked extensively about prioritizing higher-order concerns over their lower-order counterparts—and grammar is a concern that inevitably takes a back seat to more pressing issues with meaning and content. But what Micciche’s article taught me is that I’ve been seeing grammar as the overbearing school marm, not the sexy, transformative, rhetorically-driven force it could (and should, in our classrooms) be. As Micciche shows, when grammar is considered in terms of its rhetorical impact on a text, it’s not a “lower-order concern.” In fact, as Noel points out in her post, fully understanding how grammatical choices affect meaning in a text is actually a “high road transfer” that requires critical, reflective, and abstract thinking—skills that we all want our students to master. And evaluating grammar in terms of its rhetorical effect also shows our students that language has an “aliveness,” a “changing, transforming capacity” (724). Texts aren’t static; good writing isn’t magically placed in a writer’s head and translated to the page. There are specific choices one can make to produce powerful, engaging writing—choices in tone, diction, point of view, and metadiscourse, as Kolln enumerates in her chapter from The Curious Writer. By introducing our students to these choices, showing them how to recognize their effects, and giving them chances to experiment with them through invention and mimicry, we help them recognize that grammar isn't just a set of "repetitive drills and worksheets," a catalog of do's and do-not-ever's: it's a creative, intentional process that they are capable of participating in.

I know that I plan to have my students read Kolln's chapter, then address and engage the content through group discussion and in-class activities adapted from her text—but I’m interested in where you all plan on embedding instruction on rhetorical grammar. Will you try to disperse it throughout the semester during the spring term? Will you save it for the portfolio unit, despite Micicche's warning that "when we reserve grammar-talk for the end of the drafting stage...we miss opportunities to discuss with students how the particulars of language use show us something about the way we figure relationships [sic] among people, ideas, and texts" (721)? Was anyone, like me, drawn to Micciche's idea of the “commonplace book”—in which students record, analyze, and emulate resonant, grammatically-and-rhetorically effective passages—but unsure of how to adapt it? (Perhaps it could work in the Life Place unit, since a bibliography or research log won’t be used—and having my students explore and experiment with their diction and tone seems very genre-appropriate for the personal essay). Is anyone reevaluating workshop plans to introduce rhetorical grammar? (I might have students pick one strong sentence from their partner’s draft and analyze how the grammar affects the content, then pick a “weak” sentence and rewrite it with rhetorical grammar in mind, similar to the activity Micciche introduces on 722). I’d love to swap ideas and strategies on how to bring sexy (grammar) back.