Formalist Boxes

So I want to address "From Formalism to Inquiry" first because I thought it was a little less out of the box (pun intended) than the box article.

First of all I kinda liked the rhet comp/lit analysis hybridity that is going on the article. Who would have thought that Antigone had so much to teach us about the fallacies of argument. That said, it took James Kastely a long time to get to the meat of his argument there towards the end. I really like the idea of reorienting students to focus on entering into a conversation by trying to understand different perspectives on a idea rather than immediately leaping to persuasion/domination. I think this especially makes sense because it is practically impossible for a student to fully understand let alone create a truly believable argument about a subject their first semester of college. Heck, it is still hard for me to know when I fully understand every facet of a conversation happening in my field about a text, and I do this for a career. That is why I am really warming up to the exploratory essay, because it forces the students to recognize their limits and instead simply seek comprehension. In the end though I am concerned that learning how to argue is still something to be expected out of most students in college, and it is thus something we are responsible for addressing. It seems though that the more time I spend in this class, the more this concept of the composition course as preparation for the rest of college composition seems to be absurd and impossible. I think I will still have a lot of argumentative essays at the end of the semester, but this article does encourage me to begin thinking about creating realistic and approachable writing scenarios with goals they can truly accomplish. Not to toot my own horn, but I think I have already started applying this in my classroom by having my students write papers based on a book that no one has written about besides reviews. This means that it takes very little but textual analysis and good ideas in order to discover and articulate an idea based on the text and be authoritative as a result. Maybe I am off the mark though.

Now that that is out of the way, lets talk "Box-Logic." What the heck is going on this article? Seriously, this one was blowing my mind. Does Geoffrey Sirc want students to create abstract representational art instead of the essay? I am not directly opposed to such an idea (well, maybe I am) but I was a little bewildered by his approach. It seems like a create approach to cultural studies mixed with phenomenology: analyzing unconventional texts and trying to get at the personal and cultural implications of a text. I liked the idea of infusing "play" into the classroom, as well as the idea of thinking of the computer screen as a empty box awaiting an infusion of objects in order to create meaning, but it was difficult to see how a teacher could base a class on this idea, or how it would be pedagogically sound. Instead I could see these ideas as simply ways at showing invention, organization arrangement and so on. I will say though that while I still don't completely see the real-world application it was a fascinating article and I loved how he manipulated his text creating interesting arrangements and unconventional, almost poetic word pictures. I guess maybe this was what he was trying to demonstrate, that the essay could be art. At the end of the day though I am still concerned about that traditional issue, how much of this class is preparatory and how much of it can stray outside of real-world applications (what are our students paying for when they sign up for this course)? Fantastic essay though and a blast to read. Would love to see other people's thoughts.

Reading and Listening as important as Writing

Reading, and Listening as important as Writing

I get Janet Emig's emphasis on the value of writing as a learning tool.  I have found that if I don't take notes on a subject, I am less likely to remember the information.  However, I don't know if I agree that one doesn't also learn from talking.  A healthy debate of ideas is an excellent tool to cement information and to work out divergent points of view.  The problem is we are such a visual society, I we have not put much emphasis on developing our listening skills.  I have found if my students don't have a written reference for assignments, they don't remember what to do when I tell them.  They simply are not listening closely enough and they don't usually take notes.  I am also concerned however that there reading skills are also underdeveloped.  As teachers we must take a holistic approach and use listening, reading and writing as teaching methods.

What about visual communication?

Emig’s essay was particularly interesting to me because, in researching my exploratory paper, I’ve just come out of reading a ton of information about the over-emphasis on writing in the composition classroom. Other forms of literacy, like oral, visual and aural literacy, have been relegated to a secondary, inferior role, and some of the articles I read argued that they should be recognized as complex forms of communication in their own right rather than just marginal methods that are attendant to writing. Emig is correct in that writing is unique, but with technology use growing exponentially every year, our students’ lives are saturated with digital media and electronic images. With this, my research argues, comes a pressing need to teach them how to interpret and understand all these images, as well as engage in visual rhetoric themselves.

There have been several questions raised against this, primarily: Is a composition classroom really the place to teach this kind of literacy? I’m not sure if I know the answer to that yet, but I do realize that the nature communication is changing rapidly due to technology. I agree with Emig in that writing is unique and that, in a general sense, it facilitates learning better than oral or aural communication, partly because of its permanence. However, isn’t it possible that visual composition can be just as complex and just as engaging as written composition? It’s interesting to me that Emig consistently uses the term “graphic”—though by this she means symbols, and by this she means letters.  I think it’s also telling that this essay was written in the late ‘70s, prior to the boom of computer technology, and long before the average teacher had access to such technology for the benefit of her classroom. Emig mentions offhandedly that students "are not permitted by most curricula" (122) to engage in visual forms of composition (like "painting") but I wonder if she would make the same arguments nowadays when every student has easy access to Photoshop, InDesign and other software on many college campuses.

Just some thoughts. I don’t really disagree with Emig—as a writer, I don’t think I can. But I’m just bringing in some points from my research that might be opposed to what she’s saying.

Writing to learn and learning to write

Teaching to write has made me more self-conscious of my writing than I ever was in high school or as an undergrad.  I actually always considered myself a good writer until I got to graduate school.  What really struck me about Emig's piece, and everyone's posts thus far, is the idea that more weight and significance seems to be given to written language than to spoken language.  While I can see where this  would elicit arguments and frustration, I can also really see myself buying in to this concept...at least in practice.  I definitely do not agonize over comments I make in class or even preparations for my own class meetings in the same way I agonize over seminar papers and comments on students' drafts (I know, I know, I probably spend too much time grading/commenting, but I can't help it).

I also thought about the ways my students shy away from writing practices in favor of speaking practices: even when we're actually talking about writing.  At the moment they are working on argument analyses and I've been spending class time working with them on analyzing different texts (a magazine ad, a tv commercial, a song, an article) to give them practice with the concept since many of my past students struggled with the difference between an analysis and a summary.  But instead of wanting to verbally work through what they will need to do in their papers, my students wanted to spend the majority of time arguing with the article or talking about the ad/song in a very different way.  They didn't want to apply writing techniques to the class conversation, they just wanted to have a conversation.  

I'm not sure if there's a solution to this problem I'm having, both with my students and myself.  It seems as if Emig doesn't really see the value-difference (if it does in fact exist) as a problem.  And now I find myself agonizing over attempting a conclusion to an informal blog post!  Writing!  It's too much pressure!

Writing As A Mode of Learning (And Time and Learning) response

I took issue with the idea in this article that whereas writing is considered to be a learned behavior, talking is not, instead to be considered natural. How is the act of speaking, language, not considering to be a learned behavior?

What I did find interesting was the concept that writing is self-rhythmed. “One writes best as one learns best, at one’s own pace (126). I thought this was something I should stress in my own classroom. Students naturally want to compare their own abilities and progress with other fellow peers, and I think the danger in doing that is to then possibly feel inadequate when/if they realize that their own level is not equal to someone else’s. The idea for them should be to focus on their own process, their own learning, and attaining their own individualistic goals.

I was curious about the article mentioned by Benjamin Bloom called “Time and Learning” and so I read a little bit of it as well. In the article, he expresses the idea that “all learning, whether done in school or elsewhere, requires time,” and that “time is limited by the length of life, and this imposes a real limitation on what can be learned. Time for school learning is even more limited by the resources available for it, by the ways in which these resources are made available for it, by the ways in which these resources are made available to particular segments of the population, and by the ways in which schools and individuals use the time available to them” (682). I think it’s important to think about this in teaching our own classes. As teachers, we’re limited in what we can do, and we’re limited in the time we’re given, so ultimately it’s okay if all the goals we’re hoping for aren’t attained in one class. What’s important is that students progress in their own way.   

"Writing"? As a Mode of Learning

When I first encountered Janet Emig's "Writing as a Mode of Learning" a few years ago in my previous teaching writing course, her emphasis on the differences between the spoken and written word reminded me of Walter J. Ong's work on orality and literacy. Re-reading the article again today, I am struck by the kairos of this topic in the late 1970s and early 1980s. By 1977 when Emig published this piece, Ong had already published The Presence of the Word: Some Prolegomena for Cultural and Religious History (1967), which is his first major work that deals with the significant (and complex) shift in consciousness that occurs between a primarily oral and a primarily literate culture. However, most scholars know Ong's work from his much more concise 1982 book Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word (if you have not read it -- you should).  In a few brief chapters, Ong traces the history of language from the spoken to the chirographic and also the major shift that occurs as a result of the printing press. Ong also looks forward to new technologies that will again transform writing into something new and continues to explore what is often referred to as "secondary orality" in some of his later works as well. Yet Emig is interested in the question of the difference between spoken and written language in learning for more ppedagogical purposes. And unlike Ong, Emig's project is clearly to establish and defend the value of writing as heuristic.

She accomplishes this by first outlining the distinctions between writing and "all other verbal languaging processes -- listening, reading, and especially talking" (122). Some of her distinctions seem too essentialized or even outdated for a contemporary reader, but her overall point is still valid. In addition to successful learning being "engaged, committed, and personal" (126), Emig summarizes John Dewey and Jean Piaget to emphasize that learning requires "re-inforcement and feedback" (124). There are three ways in which this is accomplished: 1. learning by doing 2. learning through depiction 3. learning by restatement in words (124). Emig's point is that writing actually incorporates all three of these activities: "If the most efficacious learning occurs when learning is re-inforced, then writing through its inherent re-inforcing cycle involving hand, eye, and brain marks a uniquely powerful multi-representational mode for learning" (124-125). Though this notion of multiple ways of re-inforcement and feedback is interesting, it still seems to only scratch the surface of how we actually learn (but, let's not forget this is 1977). 

Thus, I am mostly interested in Emig's discussion of speed -- writing is much slower than talking-- as well as the "epigenetic" nature of writing which allows us to visibly see the evolution of thought and even our revisions of this thought. Of course, some of the discussion of revision in writing is complicated by Word Processing, which allows me to delete words and phrases immediately rather than forcing me to cross them out as I would if I were hand-writing something. But still, the recursive nature of writing that happens in an arguably isolated space that is more outside of the immediate conversation than a verbal exchange is something to consider. Ong addresses this in multiple ways but perhaps most famously when he states that a writer's audience is always a fiction. I feel like a lot of composition theory in the past forty years has attempted to rectify this problem --- by encouraging an increase in class discussion in small groups, by having students perform writing in specific rhetorical situations in which they can receive immediate feedback, and by including more presentations, debates, and dialogues as a way to produce and deliver "texts." Yet, the problem of audience seems to always remain. I think this is partially because we do not consciously think of our audience in our daily verbal (or written) interactions. One assumes it is intuitive to most students that you do not say the same thing in front of your parents that you might in front of your best friend. But having to consciously think of audience even in an oral presentation is a stretch, which makes the next step to audience in writing even more complex. 

I am also struck by the way that multimodal composition changes the three re-inforcement and feedback elements that Emig uses as support of her argument that writing is heuristic. When we start defining "writing" in a myriad of ways, how does this effect our definition of learning (and vice versa). Finally, I am struck by Emig's final sentence in this article: "Yet I hope that the essay will start a crucial line of inquiry; for unless the losses to learners of not writing are compellingly described and substantiated by experimental and speculative research, writing itself as a central academic process may not long endure" (127). The notion that "writing" (however we might define that and for whatever purpose we think is best) is in fact an essential element of education and skill to possess for a variety of reasons is now possibly stronger than ever. Yet, precisely because of advances in technology and what we might (in a very basic way) think of as "secondary orality" produced by radio, television, videos, soundclips, etc., the definition of and the process of "writing" is now incredibly murky. Is creating a persuasive "text" through visual images just as efficacious in learning as traditional writing?

Writing It Is!

     In the essay "Writing as a Mode for Learning," Janet Emig emphasizes the importance of writing as a unique language process that provides a "unique" mode of learning that is hard to replicate. I think this essay, in addition to being succinct (which I loved), systematically reflects on the differences between writing as a mode of learning and talking as a mode for learning. She does not completely discredit talking, but according to Janet Emig, "there  are  hazards,  conceptually  and  pedagogically,  in  creating too complete  an analogy  between  talking and writing,  in blurring the  very real differences  between  the  two." I think this is a fair claim. I have this experience time and again in my English 1000 classes where students want to just talk about topics instead of writing their thoughts out. For them, it is the same thing, especially because they are either feeling too tired or too lazy to actually do the writing. But I emphatically stress the importance of writing every time. And usually when the students are able to use this "free writing" in their drafting process, they too understand the significance of it.
     Also, because  writing  is  often  our representation  of  the  world  made  visible,  embodying  both  process  and product,  writing  is  more  readily  a form  and  source  of  learning  than talking. The availability of the written word when it comes to reviewing and revising thoughts helps makes it a much more process-oriented task than talking. The essay makes this quite clear. I think the summary in the form of the chart really brings out the essence of Emig's essay. It is amazing to see the correspondence between the benefits of writing, and how it parallels techniques that enhance learning

Revising Revision

In trying to wrap my mind around this weeks learning, I find myself thinking more of my own writing process than my students. Is always interesting to remember that I am basically qualified to teach this class on composition because it is assumed that I am a somewhat decent (dare I say talented) writer. I guess it should come as no surprise then that when I read an article like Janet Emig's that I think of how my own writing reflects her findings. I particularly liked the section that discussed writing as a form of learning that offers immediate and instantaneous feedback. When I think of my own revision process, I often imagine it beginning immediate after the first sentence is on the page. I often spend a significant portion of time wrestling with those first few sentences, sometimes even writing two or three opening paragraphs before settling on one that satisfies my needs. If only I could do the same thing when I speak. For example it would be wonderful when my wife walks in from a day at work that I would be able to revise my first words to her:

Draft 1: "Hold on one second, have to finish this 100 page reading then I will catch up with you. See you in about 2 hours."

Draft 2: "Hey honey, hope you had a good day, my one also... good. Can you check on the laundry?"

Draft 3: "Hey darling, you beautiful, why don't you toss your things down and we can catch up on our days together."

If only talking was like writing. A man can dream I guess.

Getting back to the article, I think it is important to make our students (and ourselves) recognize that writing is a unique opportunity to try something, fail, and then make immediate changes to improve it. Too often in my own writing, and even more frequently with my students writing, I treat each sentence as sacred and refuse to touch it unless someone points out a flaw in it. What is fantastic about writing is how it can be refined and polished up until the point of submission, and often even past that point. Writing alone is completely malleable, and unlike speaking, what is written can often be unwritten just as easily, at least until it is published (and who says in today's digital age even that is untouchable).

I am actually in the process of trying to reinforce the notion of revision to my students as they work on narrowing down to a research question for their exploratory essay. Up until today they were under the impression they would hand in their question today and that after that point they would be locked in, but instead I had them get together with their peers and revise their questions (leading many of them to completely change their questions) based off of the class discussion. They will be showing me Wednesday both the original draft and the revised draft in order to demonstrate that they understand that revision is a continuous and often revolutionary process. Hopefully I too can remember that writing is unique in the way that I am always able to get feedback on what has been written, and that I should look at each sentence as a opportunity to make a better one.

The Shy Kid

This reading brought back a lot of memories for me about my own literacy narrative, so to speak. Just the categories of Reading, Writing, Listening, and Speaking took me back to my years and years of Spanish classes and how, all through junior high and high school, we would get grades for each section. Reading and Writing weren't hard for me, but I struggled more with Speaking and Listening--especially Listening (those CDs! someone was always on their way to the biblioteca). I think that's because I am very much a visual learner, and even when someone is talking and I'm really focusing on what they're saying, I oftentimes will see their words written out in my own head.

I also thought about how speaking--in English--in school took much longer for me to learn than reading and writing. Hard to believe it now--since I have an opinion about everything and never shut up--but I used to be very shy until about halfway through high school. I was "that kid" who got phone calls home because I sometimes just flat-out refused to participate in group activities because I didn't want to talk to other people. Learning to talk was a real process for me, one that took years. Additionally, because I was an avid reader, my family had running jokes about words that I would pronounce wrong because I had never heard them spoken, only seen them on the page ("Colonel," for example).

With that said, I have to disagree somewhat with Emig's stance that talking comes more naturally than writing, takes less time, and is more instinctual to our genetic makeup. While I wholeheartedly agree that "A silent classroom or one filled only with the teacher's voice is anathema to learning," I still must beg the question--what about our shy students? More specifically, what about the ones who are talented and enthusiastic writers, yet aren't confident enough to speak up in class? There's a difference between being sleepy and/or lazy and being shy. This is why I think having both a Participation grade and Peer Review (tough love) as well as creating a welcoming, inclusive classroom environment are so important. As teachers, we must be insightful and observant enough to find our students who, contrary to the article, take a longer time to learn how to talk in a classroom. One way I try to help those students out is by rarely ever having a "blind discussion"--i.e., just asking a question out of nowhere. Instead, we almost always free-write about a topic beforehand, watch a clip or video (and even then, we usually write after that, too) or bring in something to talk about for homework. This weekend, for instance, they are preparing discussion questions after watching the film Winter's Bone in class, and I expect everyone to participate come Monday. Thus, while I agree with Emig that writing is a "unique mode of learning," I feel like speaking is as well, and we teachers must be in tune to the challenges of both for our students.

The Purple Rose of Kairos

I'm tempted to have this post be only pun's on the word kairos. Like, really, really tempted.

We could label writing on kairos "kairotica."



The first day of class I showed my students this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DRBW8eJGTVs It's really funny. I then say something about how I won't presume that they'll remember everything I teach them in this class. But, if this were a five-minute university, the one thing I'd want them to remember is that good communication involves the right words at the right time to the right people at the right place. Or, if I'm feeling less verbose, I'll just boil it down to "Always be aware of the rhetorical situation." Basically, it's kairos, but without me having to explain Greek to them and act like I understand it.

Today I had students generate potential questions for their exploratory paper. The poorest questions were extremely vague "Is illegal downloading bad?" The better ones addressed the question in terms of something concrete and current: "Should that poor single mother really get fined that much money for downloading a few Lincoln Park songs? Indeed, shouldn't Lincoln Park pay her for illegally downloading their songs? Can't she counter-sue?" Thus, I really appreciated the discussion on page 58 about general and specific issues. The focus on specific questions ensconced in a kairotic moment helps direct the student's research towards current ideas and modes of thought.

I've considered teaching all this during the third paper unit, but now I'm considering touching upon bits here and there in terms of helping them critically consider sources.

Also, I have a fun lesson plan for teaching the stases which involves me wearing a cool-biker leather jacket.

Anyone else have any fun kairos puns?

Kairos and Stases

I found the article “Kairos and the Rhetorical Situation: Seizing the Moment” to be one of the most useful articles we've received so far in this class, particularly because of the questions raised by Kairos. I'm thinking of using them as my own discussion questions for my classes, probably when we start the third unit that covers the argumentative paper. Some of these were ones I hadn't thought of before—“Have recent events made the issue urgent right now, or do I need to show its urgncy or make it relevant to the present?” and “What venues give voices to which sides of the issues? Does one group or another seem to be in a better position—a better place—from which to argue? Why?” (43) I'm not sure yet how I'd frame the class (or classes) around the questions. Maybe I could present an argument and then have a group discussion where we talk about these questions altogether? Small groups over their own argument topics? I might even just give them the article to read and then we have a class discussion over it, but I feel like it might take two class periods to decompress it and talk about the main points and I don't know if I'll have enough time in the syllabus to do it. Maybe. Again, I'm not sure exactly how/what I'm going to do, but using the questions is something I'm contemplating.

I also really liked the exercises provided at the end of the article. My class is already doing parts of the things mentions already since they're in the exploratory part of their papers, but I do think the visual map mentioned for the different arguments would be helpful to get them to do, and I really like how one of the exercises is to think about a moment where the writer/speaker “changed the subject” and digressed to a different issue. I think that's an important skill to get students to learn when looking at argumentative texts.

The second article was also helpful but my one concern is figuring out a way to unpack the material so that my students would understand. I enjoyed the section that puts the stases into an example and providing a detailed explanation of the steps involved to formulating your own argumentative paper. Again, I might use this article in my class as well. Right now I'm just trying to figure out a way to incorporate the concepts into something more accessible to my students.

Greek sounds smart!

I read the articles for this week and realized that I already taught the concepts of "kairos" and "stasis " in my writing classes, without actually calling them "kairos" and "stasis." I find that the readings for this week could not have come at a better time, as I am discussing the meaning of Rhetoric in my classes this week in preparing them for their exploratory paper.  Crowley and Hawkee's emphasis on the concepts of "kairos" and "stasis" will, I think, aid my students in exploring their topics by giving them a prism to look at their sources in a more efficient way rather than just looking at them to come up with the right answers. This way they can see the sources as a "set of different political pressures, personal investments and values all of which produce arguments about an issue" (51). 

My students are exploring social issues for the exploratory paper, and the complexity of the issues makes it even more important for them to understand the situations surrounding any argument that they evaluate. Also, the next chapter by Crowley and Hawkee emphasize the importance of "stasis:" the concept of asking important questions that help determine where it is that the disagreement between themselves and their audience begins, in addition to questions about context and significance. I am discussing the concepts of "ethos" and "pathos" with my students this week, and we will be going over "logos" next week, and I think I am going to use "kairos" and "stasis" as a way to explore the concept of logos, to show them the connection between logos, kairos and stasis, and their overall connection to ethos and pathos. Now if I can only come up with a lesson plan to explain these concepts to my students in a way that piques their interest!

Crowley, Hawhee and Argumentative Theory -- Trifecta Awesome!

I was really pleased with this reading, particularly because I've tried to teach classical argument before, and these universal (even though they're Greek) concepts are EXACTLY the kind of thing students need to know. I had so many instances of students arguing in a vacuum, arguing on assumptions, or providing evidence against an argument that was not their actual claim. Always the same issues too -- death penalty, 2nd Amendment rights, texting and driving, smoking bans, and abortion, abortion, abortion. And rarely a new or creative argument.

If I ever go back to teaching an argument-based research class, I would have to employ this material in some way for the students' benefit. As Janessa said, the first chapter about kairos conjoins perfectly with the chapter about stasis. You start out with your issue, asking yourself questions about its context and significance. Who is going to find this information compelling? Is there a way you can reach an audience that maybe doesn't agree with you? I can even connect this up to my lessons regarding the argumentative strategies of ethos, pathos and logos, which I always put in the context of the rhetorical triangle (more Greek terms, btw!): How are you going to establish your credibility as an author (ethos)? How are you going to make your audience feel like your claim has something to do with them (pathos)? How are you going to represent your claim logically and honestly (logos)?

For students, it's important that they see their subject matter as part of a tenuous web that is connected to many different factors rather than a straight path that leads to a finish line. The discussion of kairos can lead them directly into the discussion of stasis, and here they can better realize that in argument they are required to understand their opponent's position and figure out how to place their claim in relation to it.

For example, I had a student who wrote a paper with the following claim: "Liberals are morons because they're going against our 2nd Amendment rights by trying to take our guns away." In the paper itself, the student argued primarily that right to bear arms is protected by the Constitution, and and that owning guns is important for our individual protection. It was very difficult for me to fully communicate the many, many problems about this claim and how disconnected it was from the evidence cited within the body of the paper. If I'd had access to Crowley and Hawhee, I might have done a better job of explaining myself.

So, the opponent's argument in stasis would be this: Liberals are not morons because they're going against our 2nd Amendment rights by trying to take our guns away. Which is really far off track from the left's ACTUAL claims regarding gun control. I kept pushing the student to investigate the other side of the argument, but I didn't make clear enough to him that the basic assumptions of the claim needed to be dealt with first. Are liberals trying to take "our" guns away? Who are these "liberals"? Who is "our" referring to? Does the 2nd Amendment actually guarantee the right for individuals to have guns, and if so, any kind of gun? And are there circumstances in which gun ownership should be restricted or not allowed at all? Why are you making this argument now? Are there particular laws being discussed in congress that you see as a threat to gun ownership?

Asking questions like these helps to reveal a necessary nuance in student arguments -- and it helps them to think in ways they've never been required to think before.

Kairos in the Classroom: Dwelling in Time, Space, and Environment

Sharon Crowley and Debra Hawhee’s “Kairos and the Rhetorical Situation: Seizing the Moment” is a wonderful reminder of a concept that has significantly shaped the way I view rhetoric and its prevalence in the world.  As Crowley and Hawhee suggest, the Greek concept of kairos – “opportunity”—or, most simply, the right thing at the right time, describes the situatedness of rhetoric. The authors explain that kairos is a “multidimensional and flexible term” that “suggests a notion of space and/or time” (37). The emphasis on spatial time is a way to understand the rhetorical situation as something which cannot be objectively viewed but is rather lived in (around and through). We cannot just invent kairos, this “certain kind of time,” but rather must recognize the opportunity that exists in any given moment, in any given space.  This ultimate immersion provides a very different view of invention from what I, and probably a lot of (at least undergraduate) students typically imagine when teachers tell us to “go find an interesting topic and write about it.” Because absolutes are so much easier to comprehend and hold on to than the notion of invention, enmeshment (a term Thomas Rickert and other rhetoricians use to describe the radically dispersed nature of subjectivity in the rhetorical situation), and the complex relationality of the rhetorical situation, my meager attempts to explain kairos (not that I used that word) to my students have so far failed. This is perhaps because students seem to be primarily interested in The Facts. If we just have The Facts, then a paper will be logically supported and people will somehow magically be persuaded. As Crowley and Hawhee again emphasize in Chapter 2, however, a rhetorician’s job is not to find the quickest way from Point A problem to Point B solution but rather to allow the meshwork of our rhetorical situations to lead us to the right questions at the right moment (or so it seems to me). They write, “A rhetor attuned to kairos should consider a particular issue as a set of different political pressures, personal investments, and values all of which produce different arguments about an issue. These diverging values and different levels of investment connect to other issues as well, producing a weblike relationship with links to other, different, new but definitely related rhetorical situations” (51).

After teaching for a few weeks now, I realize that it is this “weblike relationship” that is the hardest part of rhetoric to communicate to students. Weblike relationships are fragile and cannot be quickly untangled into a straight string of communication between the writer and the audience or the writer and the problem. Weblike relationships (including the ones being established in the classroom) have to be dwelled among. I bring in the world “dwelling” to this discussion because Crowley and Hawhee’s chapter on kairos reminded me of my favorite anthropologist, Tim Ingold. In The Perception of the Environment: Essays on Livelihood, Dwelling and Skill, Ingold understands the world through dynamic interactions rather than discrete phenomena, people groups, or skills that can be studied scientifically from an objective perspective. Talking about the concepts of temporality and historicity (which he maintains merge in something he calls a “taskscape”), Ingold writes, “The notion that we can stand aside and observe the passage of time is founded upon an illusion of disembodiment. This passage is, indeed, none other than our own journey through the taskscape in the business of dwelling” (196). I think Ingold’s notion of dwelling in the taskscape gets very much to the heart of what an exploratory essay project  does. Exploratory essays force you to go trod through the steps and the questions of an issue in a kind of rhetorical landscape rather than skip from one point to the next.

This is why I feel that Crowley and Hawhee’s pairing of kairos to stasis theory in chapter 3 is perfect way to help students systematically experience and thereby better understand a concept that is somewhat difficult for our analytical, Western culture to grasp. As they state, “Students who want a systematic way of asking questions about rhetorical situations can use stasis theory. This means of invention provides rhetors with a set of questions that, when asked systematically, can help them to determine just where it is that the disagreement between themselves and their audience begins” (53). The heuristic that they outline provides a wonderfully concrete and practical way of understanding a key component of what academians (and politicians and lawyers and etc.) mean when we talk about “entering the conversation.” How do you enter the conversation? First, you have to understand what is actually being said and what type of question actually needs to be asked (in any given situation in any given time).

 Personally, I have never tried to systematically bring an issue to stasis and then proceed to run it through the four questions that Crowley and Hawhee outline: 1. Conjecture 2. Definition 3. Quality and 4.Policy. Yet, once I read their examples, I felt like categorizing questions in this way really did illuminate the dimensions of an issue or problem and the motivations for presenting such issues in a particular way at a particular time.  I would love to introduce this kind of strategy to students in order to encourage them to develop a deeper understanding of rhetorical situation and kairos (and ultimately to understand how to get to the heart of statements, questions, and issues), but I have two primary concerns. The first is that since I am relatively unfamiliar with the specifics of stasis theory myself, it would be difficult for me to teach these strategies to students in an effective way. The second is that, as Crowley and Hawhee point out, students might be tempted rush to use stasis theory for every issue they encounter and attempt to “mechanically” apply these questions in ways that do not appreciate the “situatedness of rhetoric.” The authors state, “The issues or problems it [stasis theory] turns up will differ from situation to situation, so any rhetor who uses it must be alert to all the possibilities it raises in any case” (75). Do others have more experience in teaching formal elements of ancient rhetoric to students? Are there strategies or texts that seem to work better than others? Is this the type of conversation that has to start on the first day of class and continue to the end? And finally, how would students respond to reading Crowley and Hawhee’s text (or something similar) as opposed to staying with the more basic Allyn & Bacon chapter on “Writing a Classical Argument” (Chapter 13)?

Theoretical Versus Practical Questions

      You can always count on Cicero and other Greek philosophers to have the big ideas.  Once I got past the "Greek" there was a lot of relevant material in both Chapters.  Guess they had a lot of Kairos.  They certainly helped me with getting inside of my own exploratory process.  So much so, I shared the reading with students, expecting that some of them would also benefit from reading, "Stasis Theory: Asking the Right Questions."  My exploratory question is asking, "Is there a right way to teach English Comp?"  The light bulb went on when I read the following passage:

      Ancient rhetoricians divided questions into two kinds: theoretical and practical.  Some questions concern what people should do (action); but these are always related to questions about why people should do something (theory.)  Ding, ding, ding.  My question is a theoretical question but overriding the theoretical question, is a practical one: What is the right way to teach English Comp?

     I experienced even more clarity when reading the section on general and specific questions:

    Is there a right way to teach English Comp?
    What is the right way to teach English Comp?
    How do I teach English Comp?  (This really is my concern.)

    I also need to define what "right" means.. ....Well that's enough for now. Any more and I'd be writing my exploratory paper.   I'm thinking and this reading like most of them has stimulated my thinking gene.

    I am excited to see how many of my students will use to read the Chapter.  Some of it gets a little too "Greek."  But when you can get outside of the "academic rhetoric"  there are some useful questions worth asking.

Down the Rabbit Hole of Questions

Like Drew, I felt that this reading selection complemented the ABGW well and provided a smart, practical outline for the main terms and ideas of the discourse and rhetoric of argumentation. I especially appreciated the use of real-life examples; I tire quickly when a concept is strictly theoretical and has no direct approach to actual situations.

A passage that I found to be particularly useful was "Another important consideration for a kairotic stance involves the specific arguments that are currently circulating about a particular issue" (49). Along with the list of pertinent questions on the following page ("Which arguments receive more attention? Who is making these arguments? Which arguments receive less questions? Who is making these arguments?") this consideration relates directly to the exploratory essay assignment that I just assigned last week. Instead of asking students to simply find sources and regurgitate the facts about a given topic, I am requiring them to join the conversation about whatever issue they choose to question--to enter the on-going dialogue of "specific questions that are currently circulating about a particular issue."

That being said, I have taught a basic, no-frills research paper fifteen times so far in freshman comp, and every single time I have struggled. This paper has been sink-or-swim for most students, and I always dread those six weeks in the semester. Now I realize that perhaps I was just approaching it all wrong. With this current assignment does ask students to conduct research (I am specifically requiring at least six credible library sources) its entire goal is to begin with a question and then ask more questions from there without a definite answer or solution. Specifically, I am having my students choose a TV show that they wouldn't mind watching at least three episodes of, and then framing a question that relates directly to contemporary society that is generated from the show. Thus, they will be exploring this particular issue, not the show. The show is used only in the invention stage. We did a trial run with an episode of Modern Family last Friday, and it went pretty well. So, for once, I am genuinely looking forward to seeing what my students will come up with from this assignment, and not preparing for the chaos and confusion that usually ensues.

Busting Out the Greek!

Uh oh, we are busting out the Greek... Crowley and Hawhee just took it up to the next level.

As I move my students toward selecting a research questions and beginning their exploration of their research topic, thinking about the kairos of their topic is becoming very important, particularly for my unique class.

Confession time, I have joined the covert band of rebels that use literature in the composition classroom. To make my students lives more difficult (and hopefully to enrich their lives as well) I am making them pull their research topic out of the work we are reading in class. As a side-effect, my students are predictably freaking out about how they are supposed to select something that they can research out of a fictional text. “The world of the novel is not real, and nobody has written on it before, so how am I supposed to do a research paper on it,” my students cry out to me in class. It is in the midst of these protestations that I might be able to direct them towards finding the “kairos” in the text, or the pockets of text that are relevant either to the student or the world the student inhabits.

Relevancy, that is the word that I associate to kairos, and it is word that needs to be applicable to my student’s papers and consequently to the text that we are reading out of. That is why I really appreciated the list of questions on page 43 that force the students to recognize the kairos of an argument, which should help them decide whether or not the argument is worth pursuing or not. Overall I found the text pretty useful and a nice supplement to the information in the A&B Guide.

In the stasis theory section, I could see the clear relationship between it and the exploratory essay. In essence, we are forcing our students to slow down and engage with their subject slowly by spending time getting to know the conversation around the subject without charging in with a thesis, blindly hacking away at whatever counterarguments arise. I also liked the section about dividing up arguments between the theoretical and the practical. This is a division that I might share with my students, because I think some of them will want to focus on more practical issues like human rights and political issues, while other might approach their topics from a more theoretical perspective such as engaging in a historical or literary approach. I am always looking for ways for students to incorporate their own knowledge base into their assignments, be it their major or simply their interests, and I think this devision may help with that. When it came to the final four questions of conjecture, definition, quality and policy I was not sure about where I might incorporate this into my own classroom. Perhaps it is because right now I am focused on invention, and these questions seemed aimed at polishing the topic proposed in the exploratory essay into a feasible research project. Maybe these types of questions may be best incorporated into my feedback to the students on their exploratory drafts? I am not sure yet, but what i do know is that Crowley and Hawhee gave me a lot to chew on as I move into the research process with my students.

Self-empowerment: the ability to assess and evaluate one's on work - what a promising idea

As I was reviewing my students' first drafts, I was horrified by scribble.  How do I really teach them to write better.  I discovered that better meant: more concise, direct statements in plain speak.  Of course I also looked for proper etiquette but didn't really know how to help them get there.  Sometimes, I even re-wrote sentences.  But I also found that there was more than one way to "fix" sentences, paragraphs, etc., and that there was not enough room on the page to show them their options.  I got very excited when I read Asao Inoue's paper, "Community-Based Assessments."  The lst year writing student could definitely benefit from learning how to assess their own writing.  Inoue's system seems time-consuming.  In the simplest terms; however, I would like to guide my students in developing a rubric and to use that rubric to assess and evaluate each other's work.

All of my students said they appreciated and valued the peer review process.  There guidelines were simple:  Use a "G" to indicate what worked and "?" if you had a question.  They then had to formulate the question or explain why they were confused.  Even the best writers said they benefited from this feedback.

I was not satisfied however with my written feedback on their papers and would like to find a more effective system: one that builds skills and the ability to self-assess.  I am not concerned with the grading for their papers because I gave them all the same score which was based on the completion of the assignment and not the quality of the writing.

Elbow's enhancement to Inoue's approach by using multiple rubrics is more complicated and time-consuming then Inoue's method.   I agree with his position that the "corporate" rubric is more about convention than value and what is valued may not be shared by all.  I don't see instituting multiple rubrics but will look for ways to accommodate differences.  I like the idea of creating groups with different rubrics that reflect similar values.

I also like Elbow's ideas on grading contracts.  I've already noticed that the final grade does not necessarily reflect the quality of the student's writing.  The grades reflects a composite of several requirements:  completing assignments on time, the ability to repeat essential information that I think is valuable, participating in class, etc.  These behaviors are also important to their success.  There are problems even with just grading them on the quality of their writing.  To do this, I would want to have an assessment of where they started and base the grade on how much they have improved.

REFINANCE YOUR HOME!!!!

Great, now that I've got everyone's attention...

Developing a rubric is something I haven't encountered before. The comp program at my last school was organized in such a way that we were given rubrics (or, more accurately, descriptions of an "A" paper, "B" paper, and so on) which aligned with the four major papers we assigned. As a graduate student, it freed us of the burden to create our own rubric, but left us without much experience as to how to properly construct one.

For the first Formal Assignment, I created a rubric similar to the one I was familiar with. I tried to make my expectations clear, while still allowing room for flexibility. I emphasized things we went over in class (awareness of the rhetorical situation, personal voice, engaging narrative, etc.).

I wonder if grading rubrics are more for the students than for the instructors (Elbow seems to suggest that with his "B" rubric, though I'm not confident enough to adopt his model). At this point I can read a student's paper and determine rather quickly a rough grade estimate. Assigning a grade is almost instinctual, at this point. If anything, the rubric helps me justify the grade I've given, allows the student to look over their paper and see how it holds up, and not leave mail bombs outside my home.

I am thinking about breaking the rubric up a bit and assigning points for certain sections, partly because I'm hoping it will lessen the end-comments load. It seems that for half of the papers require the same feedback, and I always feel inefficient repeating myself at the end of each paper.

Skeptical and Hopeful?

Like Anne, I’m both impressed by and unsure of the grading philosophies discussed in these readings – it makes me feel tired just thinking about the kind of derision you’d get from non-humanities folks in regard to this kind of strategy, and all the pigheaded traditionalists you’d have to sing and dance for getting these plans to become the norm. However, the simple truth of the matter is this: evaluating writing is its own animal, and, as beginning teachers, what better time than now to start considering different methods of evaluation? And even if we can’t implement these ideas immediately, what with all the university red tape, we can keep them in our back pocket for the future, when we (hopefully) have more clout. In the wake of No Child Left Behind and other bastions of standardized testing, students come to us seeming less skilled in the language arts than ever (or maybe that’s just the curmudgeon in me). Who’s going to make these changes if not new teachers like us?

My one practical concern is how the students are going to deal with this. Something about Inoue’s rubric-making activities seemed a bit rose colored. Students come to us ingrained with the letter grading practices from high school and earlier. There is already a kind of perception of English classes as being tedious, feminizing, and impractical. A student once asked me: if there’s no definite answer, what’s the point? So. How will we deal with students who resist the idea of self-evaluation and community-oriented assessment, or who refuse to take the class seriously? I really think these kinds of problems go deeper than just academics, and we’re going to have to really get our hands dirty if we want to change everybody’s opinion about evaluating the language arts.

Still, I am interested in experimenting with rubric-making activities, maybe in a more guided way than Inoue describes. I think the students at Mizzou would be able to come up with something thoughtful based on what they were assigned to read in the Ally & Bacon -- but I still worry about the kind of resistance I might meet. A number of my students are convinced that they are terrible writers; they want me to tell them "how to write."