Grammar in the Classroom

As someone who enjoys learning grammar, I found the readings for this week particularly interesting.  I spent my undergraduate career studying grammar intensive languages like Latin (a language that insists upon and continually examines its own grammar) and Ancient Greek (an exceedingly frustrating language that seems to break its own rules more often that it follows them). In light of this experience with the grammar systems of other languages, I agree completely with Micciche that it is entirely senseless and almost silly to think that grammar doesn’t generate or alter meaning and that it therefore should not occupy a privileged place in the composition classroom.

I thought that Micciche’s definition of rhetorical grammar as distinct from the prescriptivists’ slavish obedience to the rules purely for the sake of the rules and the descriptivists’ insistence that usage alone should govern the rule made sense for the unique environment of the composition classroom. I think that spending at least a week considering how grammatical choices create meaning would be quite useful for students.  I understand the ability to make informed grammatical choice as an element of rhetorical flexibility, and therefore, the goals of the composition class.  I found Williams’ discussion of the ‘phenomenology of error’ similarly interesting, and the article makes a solid case against the relevance of prescriptive grammar in the composition classroom.  It seems his discussion of the often arbitrary nature of grammar rules reinforces Micciche’s argument for the use of a rhetorical, rather than either a prescriptive or a descriptive approach to grammar for beginning composition students.

Country Grammar

"Thinking of language as correct or incorrect distorts it into an objective medium consisting of ahistorical rules and truths, obscuring the living quality of language," (Micciche 724). I should teach that idea to my students. I should also remind myself of that from time to time.

Practical application that I've been craving: enter The Orwell. George Orwell's essay, "Politics and the English Language," is one of the most astute essays I've ever read. Although its first few pages are rather dull, Orwell's discussion of word choices and their social and political implications still feels fresh some sixty years after he wrote it. I've thought about how I could incorporate this essay into teaching freshmen composition before, but I somehow hadn't thought about it as a way to teach grammar (rhetorical or otherwise). Micciche's idea for using this essay struck a chord with me:

Now, in a new progressive turn, I know how to utilize the words of our forefathers to educate and inspire the youth of today to become the informed and active citizens of tomorrow!

(Get it? Get it?! Exclamation points courtesy of Upton Sinclair.)

This could even be - dare I say - fun for the students. I can envision teaching this to students and having an in-class assignment where we make grammatical choices that, say, blatantly manipulate  people's emotions or cover up flaws in an argument. I like the idea of teaching rhetorical grammar and the power of words in a way that darkly embraces the absurdity behind lots of political speech.  Perhaps I could also utilize some variation on the idea of the commonplace books.

I wonder if Orwell and Upton Sinclair ever had a conversation about rhetorical grammar. I bet it would have come to blows. I mean blows!!!

Descriptive Linguistics

Since Micciche seems to be covered, I will take up Williams. Williams is the first real example of descriptive linguistics, as I understand it via DFW, outside of its rather paradoxically proscriptive spawn "political correctness." Overall, I am impressed that he presents a plausible model for mapping our observance and violations proscriptive usage rules. However, I don't really know how to use his advice in grading other to be more systematic in noticing what I notice. I also am not sure of what to do with the implications of Chomsky's non-rhetorical sentence, or even what those implications are. Basically, language is one of those big big things like space that I will only get with several different kinds of examples and a fair amount of guidance and pointing at the limits of our understanding.

However, I think I have used one thing that Williams suggests in teaching situation before. He says that we shouldn't take everything we find in grammar books as God's word. In undergraduate, I co-taught a course with a teacher who was often unfairly called a Grammar-Nazi. One of the reasons for this ahistorical hyperbole was her instance on teaching grammar in a writing course. (Facist! I know.) We took turns turns leading a short five minute section of every class where we took on a grammar rule that the class seemed to be struggling with. But, I was weary about teaching the students from the holy scripture without doing some exegesis of my own. A couple times, I would teach the grammar rules and then refute it or call it into question based on historical research or contradictions of other good usage rules. I don't know if I convinced my co-teacher with any of my arguments, but she always allowed me to present my evidence (provided that I ran it by her first). I think we should read and interpret the scriptures of lexicographers as well as Nature's Book of Language  (other texts) and not necessarily surrender the privilege of being an experts on usage. That being said, I am not no expert and there are probably many errors in this post. Who wants to spend the time becoming an expert lexicographer?

I would like to question, following Wallace, whether the tone of the usage dictionaries that Williams chooses is most objectionable to him. I mean, he chooses all proscriptive grammarian and no liberal texts like Webster's which he may or may not have found equally objectionable. Self-identifying SNOOT, Wallace reviews Garner's A Dictionary of Modern American Usage and claims that his use of rhetoric smooths the waters between these camps and is less galling to the ears of modern writers because he gains our trust by acting reasonable instead of calling people names. Judging by the fact that Williams opens with comments about the tone of these books it would seem to have some relevance. Does Williams just not want to be talked down to, or does his model that more or less facilitates much more rapid changes in good English usage have some utility for the writer as well as rigor for the scholar?

Are We Hang up on the Wrong Thing?

I’d say the most common request I receive in the Writing Center is to proofread for grammar and spelling.  Of course after explaining that I can not do this, we procede to go over the student’s paper anyway where we usually find larger concerns dealing with thesis, organzation, and conclusion among others.  The point is, students seem so hung up on making sure lower order concerns like gramar are correct that they are seemingly unaware of the larger order concerns that should take president. 

In her article “The Phenomenology of Error”, Joseph Williams argues this point, claiming that universities, publishers, and composition society as a whole are too hung up on gramtical perfection and we’re mssing the bigger picture.  Worse yet, this structure is training students to focus on grammar in lue of larger content issues.  He wrote, “When we read for typos, letters constitute the field of attention; content becomes virtually inaccessible.  When we read for content, [typos]… for the most part—recede from consciousness,” (154).  This is how we’ve been trained at the Writing Center and until we stop seeing higher order continent issues all together, I think this is the right way to tackle writing.  When that day comes, I’ll happy to proofread for grammar… well, maybe not completely happy…  I tell tudees that the most important thing is their ideas and conveying those ideas.  grammar and spelling only concern me when they impede those things.  As Williams sites in his nitty-gritty appraisal of White and Orwell’s works, no one searches (or should search} for grammatical mistakes when trying to divine meaning from their works. 

However, there is a whole land of gray between overvaluing grammar and undervaluing it.  Therefore, I can’t completely disagree with Micciche’s points either.  Without some basis of grammar there ceases to be language and no ideas are being conveyed.  Still I agree with Williams that if forced to choose between whether grammar is overvalued or undervalued today, I’m going with overvalued, thus making Williams point the president to follow—don’t forget to vote tomorrow!

Practical Use

            I didn’t agree with everything Micciche said. I had trouble swallowing “theoretical writing creates a ‘disturbing sense of disorientation,’ a point that nicely describes the way grammar and content work together in theoretical writing to disturb settled or ‘natural’ ways of thinking” (722). This seemed to be very wide sweeping and didn’t include the many examples of bumbling, rambling, abstruse, and poor prose that theorists produce that disturb us but not in a productive way.*
            But while I disagreed with a few things, I was struck by her idea for the commonplace book. In designing the assignment we are turning in tomorrow, I had thought of something similar: students were to take a chunk of well written text, copy it for a few sentences, then begin to write on their own. The goal was to have them get into the crafted sentences of professionals and then take over with their own voice. I scraped it since it seemed difficult to justify and poorly planned out. But here, Micciche has a very similar idea in her commonplace book. I love that students have to hand write these sentences down and that they also have to reflect on them. Students are active readers and writers in this activity. I think it can also encourage the students to include writing in their own fields and begin to understand how to construct a proper sentence for a lab report or marketing plan—or whatever it is that non-humanities folks do.
_____________________________________________________________________
* Here’s a clunker:
            “The visual is essentially pornographic, which is to say that it has its end in rapt, mindless fascination; thinking about its attributes becomes an adjunct to that, if it is unwilling to betray its object; while the most austere films necessarily draw their energy from the attempt to repress their own excess (rather than from the thankless effort to discipline the viewer).”
            That’s courtesy of Fredric Jameson in his 1992 Signatures of the Visible. It actually won the “First Prize in the Worlds Worst Writing Contest” in 1997. Despite this claptrap, Jameson can actually be a good writer. It is a shame he “wrote” the monster you see above.

A Little Appreciation for Grammar's Long-Awaited Champion

Micciche's call for "a discourse that takes seriously the connection between writing and thinking, the interwoven relationship between what we say and how we say it" rang true for me.  Anyone who has worked in the Writing Center can attest that it's difficult to talk about meaning with a student who is hung up on grammar.  "No, I just want this paper checked over," they'll say, and they feel more comfortable when we question their periods and commas than when we engage critically with their overarching ideas.  This is because they are comfortable with the idea that they don't understand the nuts and bolts of grammar.  When it comes to their words, however, and more significantly to their meaning, they often think that, so long as they've got their ideas somewhere on the paper, they've done the best they can do.  They don't understand that the way an idea is laid out can often be more important than the content of the idea itself in getting a message across to a reader.

What I liked most about this article is the way Micciche sees a shortcoming in her students' grasp of grammar and doesn't immediately place blame on high schools for not equipping students with basic language skills.  Neither does she find herself overwhelmed with the thought of teaching grammar to her students.  Rather, she sees not only a responsibility but a bright opportunity for teaching her students that grammar is not about abiding by confusing and restrictive rules, but rather about arming yourself with different rhetorical possibilities in order to better solidify and articulate an argument.  By linking what is being said with the way it is being said, Micciche’s proposed method will not only strengthen students’ abilities to express themselves and their own ideas more effectively, but also their aptitude for analyzing the rhetorical choices authors of other texts have used.

Their, They're, and There

Grammar, in my opinion, is one of the most difficult issues to address during a tutoring session.  I am constantly questioning my decision to address a grammatical error - is it really impeding my understanding of the sentence?  Is it an error that the student repeats throughout the paper?  Grammar errors used to be my pet peeve - I couldn't stand when others didn't "get" the grammar rules that were drilled into my head in middle school.  Needless to say, I've had to let go of this anger towards grammar mistakes since I began tutoring.

My relationship with grammar had already been uneasy before I started at the Writing Center, however.  It all started when I found out that the designation of "its" as a possessive instead of "it's" was an arbitrary decision made by some editor that stuck.  That was probably the first time that I realized that grammar rules are quite often arbitrary and probably shouldn't be considered strictly.  Williams, I think, illustrates this point perfectly with his examples of authors violating the same rules they are trying to explain.

Even so, I also found myself agreeing with many of Micciche's points.  Even though many of the rules are arbitrary, we have to follow the most basic ones in order to adopt an "academic" voice and want others to take our written work seriously.  Grammar can be rhetorical - why else do we use dashes and commas in our writing?  Tone is not only established by word choice - grammar plays a huge part, too. I think examining grammar rhetorically is a great teaching tool - even if we can't agree on all of the grammar rules, our students should at least be able to follow the most basic ones (it is a part of understanding, too).  Even if it is not our central focus, grammar needs to be a part of the conversation, and Micciche provides an interesting way to discuss it with our students.

Correction: There is no error.

Caveat Lector:
I don't want to be the grumpy person who can't accept a new idea. I am weary of posting contrarian posts but it just simply cannot be helped. What I read is ill-informed, however well-intentioned.

“Can grammar knowledge be conceived as extending the work of cultural critique?” (718).

I wonder why this question needs to be asked. Let’s get meta-rhetorical for a moment and consider what audience this is directed towards. Obviously it is to persuade cultural critics of some form or another. Who are these folks? Well, aside from this, Micciche describes a central error that I come across all too often:

“Another argument contends that if students can't articulate their ideas in a comprehensible form, correct grammar does nothing to improve their writing” (720).

Micciche knows (as I sigh with relief) there is no correct grammar. It’s made-up. Any time I see the term “correct” I simply am at a loss. Who decides? There are rules of effective use and legibility but “correct?”

Micciche elaborates what I myself would like to say to anyone who is a corrector: “Rhetorical grammar instruction, in contrast, emphasizes grammar as a tool for articulating and expressing relationships among ideas” (720). However on the next page she cites her Quintillian example about the cultural values (or lack thereof) implicit of his use of the terms “boys.” I do not see this as “grammatical” so much as “lexical.” She wrongly concludes that “it's possible to see how the intimate study of language it encourages has enormous potential for studying language as central to constructions of identity and culture” (Ibid.). This “intimate” study is not about grammatical structure but about lexical choices. She errors further by citing Kolln, saying that “Rhetorical grammar enables such readings because it is ‘gram-mar in the service of rhetoric:' which means that grammar is never divorced from ideological functions’” (Ibid.). There is no statement I could disagree more with. Linguistics has shown, exhaustively and extensively—I cannot stress this enough for anyone reading this and please, for the love of language and life itself, go tell it on the mountain—that grammar is cognitive, context-free, universal. Ideology has nothing to do with grammar. Perhaps, what Micciche is writing about is not grammar in the linguistic sense, but in the very pedantic sense she is trying to swerve away from.

Read this as Micciche quotes Elizabeth Bruss:

"In reading theory, one often notes where the energy of the writing seems to have been expended in lush diction or well-turned phrases, in the juxtaposition between sentences or organization of larger episodes. From this, one receives a first (if not always a lasting) impression of the power or delicacy of mind that informs the theory" (qtd. In 722).

This is the problem with Literary Study. Why is she reading theory like this? Because certain theories are self-referential? Some are, but no. Obviously she isn’t recommending actually understanding the theory but appreciating it like a poem. The story and poem lover in me asks: Why not read a poem?! Many theorists think they are poets, or more-than-poets. They aren’t… at least not in the good sense. Notice the almost worshipful tone. It almost reads: “Bow down to the theorist cause he (yes He) juggles words. Don’t worry your pretty little head with getting the actual ideas. Just stand in awe of the beauty of his text.”

Citing bell hooks shows the inversion of the problem, not the solution:

"the incorrect usage of words" expressed "a spirit of rebellion that claimed language as a site of resis-tance" (hooks, qtd. In 723).

The problem is this: because there is no “correct” usage there is no “incorrect usage.” What hooks imagines as subversive should never have been subversive. Language is internal, context-indifferent, cognitive. If we eliminate the idea—the binary—of incorrect vs. correct real work can finally get done. 

As Micciche herself notes, we need to begin teaching students to see “how [language] is crafted and directed rather than as simply "correct" or "incorrect:” Thinking of language as correct or incorrect distorts it into an objective medium consisting of ahistorical rules and truths, obscuring the living quality of language” (724). And, as a writing teacher, I itch upon reading “language” twice in this last sentence. Just sayin’…

What is the context of this famous sentence below?

Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.

It makes no rhetorical sense, but is grammatically “correct.” Conclusion: Grammar isn’t rhetorical.

Here we are now; entertain them?

I have really mixed feelings toward the Wysocki and Selfe readings. I find Wysocki’s framework and idea of materiality really useful. She sort of blew my mind when she writes about how different material technologies affect the ways we think – I will never look at straight lines (or grocery shelves) in the same way.

            Briefly, my perspective is that students should learn new media literacy. But let me play the Luddite’s advocate. I agree with Wysocki when she writes that “it is impossible to pretend that the lives of the people coming to school have not been shaped by texts that don’t look like or function like academic essays,” but I don’t think the answer (as if there could be a definitive one) to how much composition teachers should engage those outside influences is clear. I certainly see value in students evaluating their “particular locations in time and place” and how they are shaped by them, but I also see value in making the composition classroom a space that attempts to be out of the soul-sucking throes of advertising and pop culture for a whole three hours per week. If we acknowledge that advertising and media bombardment have a gigantic and sometimes detrimental affect on society, is the solution really to supplant textual forms of learning with yet more exposure to new media? Again, I agree that new media literacy is important, but I wonder if this would be more appropriate in, say, a communications, sociology or women’s and gender studies classroom. Of course, Wysocki and Selfe aren’t just talking about advertising (although that is what I’ve mostly seen of “new media” assignments in the Writing Center) – art, photography, political websites, etc. are also part of this nonbook package, and switching up the medium can be worthwhile. Still, I feel this pressure to not just engage, but entertain students along with educating them, and I think that’s an unfair expectation of instructors. If they want to be entertained, there is entertainment aplenty outside of the classroom. Isn’t part of our role to offer them something they can’t get off YouTube?

Visual Literacy in the Composition Class

Selfe’s article provided a refreshingly specific guide to incorporating visual literacy into the composition classroom.  I found the article’s justification for this incorporation as increasingly relevant and necessary – given the current cultural turn toward the visual – to be quite sensible and convincing. I was particularly glad that the article acknowledged and accounted for the composition instructor’s potential lack of experience or familiarity with the programs typically used to compose visual texts. My knee-jerk reaction to any suggestion of an activity requiring computer or technological literacy has typically been one of innate aversion due to an embarassing technological incompetence. However, I think I could guide students through the visual essay/argument assignment (which I found most pertinent to my teaching goals), provided I had ample time to prepare.

Wysocki’s article, on the other hand, I found decidedly less useful. The beginning discussion of the need to recognize the materiality of texts in a variety of formats was interesting and convincing, but the assignments the article designed didn’t seem entirely practical for a freshman composition setting. I think I would find it very difficult to make my students take the assignments seriously. I can’t imagine asking them to take out crayons and not feeling a bit silly myself, so I can only presume that they would feel the same. I also feel that, although it’s perfectly valuable to encourage students to think differently about text and writing in different formats, it would make more sense to me, as a potential instructor, to do so while still creating assignments that are more practical and skill-based. The assignments in the Selfe article seemed to fit better into this category and my teaching goals.   

Teacher's Expectations and Reflecting

I think Selfe is absolutely right when she writes, “By continuing a single-minded focus on alphabetic literacy—and failing to give adequate attention to visual literacy…we not only unnecessarily limit the scope of composition studies, both intellectually and practically.” From there she quotes Sean Williams, “[I]f composition’s role is to help students acquire skills to lead a critically engaged life—that is to identify problems, to solve them, and to communicate with others about them—then we need to expand our view of writing instruction to include the diverse media forms that actually represent and shape the discursive reality of our students.” At the elementary school I worked at last year, students were given freedom to create a project around building size and measurements. Their goals were to find the area inside of a famous building and to create a “report” of their work back to the class. The teacher made it clear to the students (and to me) that they were free to compose the report in any way they would like. After weeks of hard work, the students had finished and each of them had turned in an essay for their report. When I asked the students why they hadn’t composed a powerpoint, a smart board presentation, or any type of visual aid, they stared at me as if the essay were the only option. And although the teacher had stressed how flexible the final report could be, it was obvious that she hadn’t given them tools to create an academic visual composition. I agree with Jeremy that the professionals that encourage visual literacy rarely have a substantial background in visual composition. How can a teacher expect a student to compose a visual essay if the teacher has no idea what s/he are looking for?

Selfe’s Review and Reflection sheets promote a closer gap between the writer/composer and the reader/audience, which is a goal I would like to incorporate into my future class. Not only do the sheets create a community that holds itself accountable for its work, but it also allows students to give feedback on their work. Presumably, once outside the college walls, these students won’t have people to read their work—whatever that work will be. It’s great to take advantage of various forms of peer review while we can.

Balancing Literacies

I'm interested in Selfe's concept of "visual literacy," but most of all, I'm interested in learning more about the balance we should strike between the alphabetic and the visual.  If Selfe visualizes that classes teaching only alphabetic literacy are quickly becoming obsolete, then does that leave any room for it in the classroom today?  If Selfe envisions a world in which composition teachers make room for both alphabetic and visual literacies, then slowly weans away the alphabetic because it's increasingly out of vogue, surely that will become a self-fulfilling prophecy (as it likely already is): the less alphabetic literacy is taught and internalized among students, the less successfully it will be used out in the real world.

After all, didn't we read all about how high schools are increasingly inadequate in teaching alphabetic literacy skills to their students, so more and more these remedial skillsets are falling on universities to teach?  To me, since I certainly can't yell at the high schools and tell them to shape up, I've taken this as a call to arms.  These students will come to my class with precious little previous experience, and I will want to give them at least the most basic means of expressing themselves in words.  I'm not sure if this is a shortcoming of mine, but I can't picture a society (outside of, perhaps, dystopian ones like from Wall-E or Idiocracy) where we express ourselves solely in visuals.

I think, ultimately, I'm questioning Selfe's prognosis that a class emphasizing alphabetic literacy would truly become "obsolete."  I'm all for incorporating visual literacy in the classroom.  I was convinced by Selfe's talk about the importance of visuals in today's culture, and I don't doubt that my students will have even better, more creative ideas about how to do this than I do myself.  I am growing a little weary, however, of the sensed need for iconoclasm in the world of composition; just because you advocate incorporating a new system, that doesn't automatically indicate that there are no salvagable concepts in the old.  If Selfe really wants to argue that the tenets of alphabetic literacy are "obsolete" in meeting the needs of expression, then why would she have expressed herself so alphabetically?  Clearly there is still some value in it, and I, for one, hope to give my students at least the foundation of alphabetic literacy that Cynthia Selfe and I (and the rest of you) received.

Dickens thought pictures were cool...

Like Ryan, I am all for incorporating media in the classroom - I believe that embracing these visual tools invites students to become more engaged and interested in the material presented.  My own alternate assignment draws upon Selfe's "Visual Essay," and while I am not wholly sure whether or not it will be successful as a teaching tool, I am willing to try these kinds of alternate assignments that incorporate mediums of expression other than straight text.  I must say that I was bothered throughout my entire reading, however, by Wysocki's term "new media texts" and her further explanation of it.

Wysocki describes "new media texts" as "those that have been made by composers who are aware of the range of materialities of texts and who then highlight the materiality...Such composers design texts that make as overtly visible as possible the values they embody."  She goes on to describe this as a new and innovative idea.    Wysocki does not make a distinction whether these are texts with "new media" or "new texts" that incorporate media.  Either way, her explanation of the term seems to ignore a rich past of texts (none of which are considered "childish," like the children's books that she uses as an example of texts that incorporate pictures) that include "media."  What about Dickens' numerous novels that include drawings of specific scenes in the text?  Or the travel guides of the 18th and early 19th century that included pictures of certain key places in the route, so that travelers would know which important places to stop and look at?  We could go back even further and talk about the illuminated manuscripts that were so popular during the Middle Ages and even the Renaissance.  It is not a "new" idea to incorporate photos or other visual elements in texts, visual elements that mean something and are supposed to be read with the texts.  While this may (or may not, as I don't know too much about this) be absent from what is considered "academic" writing, it has certainly not be absent from these other, important writings in history.  And, we must remember that Wysocki does not limit her explanation to purely academic writing - she talks about novels, too.

While I found some of the assignment outlines helpful for information on how to incorporate media into writing assignments, it is hard for me to get past the fact that no one mentions this tradition of texts that incorporate media.  If Wysocki had done so, then she could have made the distinction between this tradition and the "new media texts" - which would in turn have helped my own understanding of her argument.  Even if academia is resistant to the incorporation of media into texts, we just can't say that writers have not effectively done so in the past.

From Our Mutual Friend, Charles Dickens
http://charlesdickenspage.com/characters/harmon_boffins_wilfer-stone.gif

Fear of the Unknown

The other day I tried to create a blog. On Blogger, they have templates that makes set up easy, or so I thought. As I cycled through the drop down menu and the virtual paint swatches, I began to overreact. I started to wonder what the colors I was choosing were saying about me. I started to feel like the template was limiting my creativity because I wanted one line of text to go underneath another and it was not working out. After first backscaping to the custom mode and then going back to template after I realized that the customization was just a more confusing version of the template, I compromised my vision. It wasn't what I wanted, but it was functional. Then, I saw an option to add a picture at the top, so I selected a picture and dropped it into the upload box, and walla...the picture ate my whole header. According to Wysocki, my blog would not qualify as a "new media text" because I failed to grasp "the range of materialities of texts and...highlight the materiality." I don't know if I want to call my blog "old media" because I think Wysocki definition of new media is actually the definition of self-reflexive media which is not limited to post-modernity or even modernity and is probably simply a characteristic of writing (and other stuff) that can be played up or down. So, if it is a characteristic of writing why don't I oppose Wysocki's definition as just overwritten nonsense? Because Wysocki's new media requires awareness out of its composers. In other words, though my half finished blog clearly points at its own materiality, because I naively thought that my vision could be imaged on the screen without having learned about my medium, I am not one of the composers of which the editor speaks.

Questions: How much do you need to know? Is this blog post new-media in a way that my blog was not?

Anxiety about the learning curve that new technologies will present me and my students makes me have second thoughts about my idea for the multi-modal project. I am inspired by several educators who I think are creating "new media texts." Popular Youtubers like Vihart and Ze Frank are using the new thingness of online video to create fascinating educational content at the same time that educational TV seems to be really focusing there efforts on making fun of Southerns and other country Others. I would like my students to work together to create an online video that tropes off of these videos, but I really have no idea how to do this myself. Part of me wants to try and learn together, and the other part of me knows that there is a good chance that people are just going to get frustrated and I will fall flat on my face. What do you nu-meteors think? Can you teach new-media if your not a new-media expert?

Heads in the Sand

Prior to this program, I spent the past two years employed by Saint Louis University’s Department of Communication.  My primary responsibility was to instruct students in Final Cut Pro, iMovie, Sountrack Pro—you know communication technology, or in Selfe’s case, visual literacy.  This was a job because the existing Communication—I’ll say it again in case you missed it—Communication faculty didn’t want to learn it themselves.  The thought was that though this was useful information for students to learn, certain faculty members who had spent so long not knowing this stuff—ardent “book readers” and not the Kindle kind either—they shouldn’t be bothered to learn it now.  Though I am thankful that their apathy provided me with a paying job and health insurance, I don’t think Selfe would be all too keen with their pedagogical philosophy of avoiding visual literacy largely because of its inconvenience. 

Perhaps it’s unfair to characterize SLU’s entire department as ostriches with their heads in the sand—it was only the ones without tenure.  Faculty without tenure either knew these systems or worked to learn them, employing them with their students, trying innovative projects out much to their students’ delight.  However, once a professor received tenure at SLU, he had no incentive to change his ways.  If he had been straight theory, no tech all his career, he wasn’t changing it now for anyone.  Even if it made him a dinosaur, he was a dinosaur with tenure.  I think many, if not all, of Selfe’s assignments would be worthwhile to employing within a Communication department.   However, many of these tenured professors who refuse to adopt new theories or technology will retire soon and will be replaced by professors who at least understand this technology, if not ones who understand and it desire to continue learning.  I don’t know how indicative this is of most colleges or just SLU, so if it’s just SLU, shh!  That might be a secret and maybe I shouldn’t have told it. 

In her article “Toward New Media Texts: Taking up the Challenges of Visual Literacy” Selfe encourages teachers to employ a combination of alphabetical and visual literacy to ease the transition to teaching visual literacy, or even using these assignments to learn the technology themselves, “co-learning” them along with their students.  I don’t see many tenure track professors going out on a limb to do that.  They’d have to admit to their students that they didn’t know the material.   Visual essay and Visual argument could work because it only partially relies on technology, and uneasy faculty could assign poster board and photograph material without much effort of their parts.  Stuff like designing a webpage is way out for them.  But past this I think you’d be pushing it for any professor who has no incentive to change. 

As far as incorporating these practices/ assignments into English 1000, because that’s the first thing we think of anytime we read a pedagogy article, I think some aspects could be shared.  I love the idea of using film analysis.  If the point of the class is to teach students how to write then there is an obvious benefit from having them write about things they’re interested in.  I’m not suggesting that all movies are better than books, or visa-versa for that matter, but when considering 18-yr-old freshman, I think they’re more inclined to watch a movie than read a book—just a generality, I know, but an apt one I think. 

But as far as having them design web pages and employing other forms of multi-media, I’m voting no.  If English 1000 were a film theory course or even a literature seminar, then I’d be all for it.  I’d probably enjoy grading “papers” more.  But as this is a composition course, then the one and most crucial requirement is that they write, a lot.  It’s been said to death how it’s impossible to truly teach composition in a semester, so I can’t imagine a way to squeeze in web design workshops.