I started thinking about the different ideas and concepts from this class that have stuck with me. I’m not sure yet what I’ll be doing for the multimodal project, but it’s good to have an idea of what content I may include in the project.

Take aways from the class:

• “Composition” is more than just writing, but most composition courses do not treat it as being anything more than writing.
  • Composition should be thought of as ways of creating meaning, which is why multimodality is important. Modes outside of writing can play a big role in communicating meaning.
• There isn’t one “correct” way to write
  • Writing differs depending on the context and goals of a specific task. So it’s weird to teach composition like we are preparing people “to write.” “Writing” isn’t a general skill that you are either good at or not good at. You could be good at writing within a specific discipline, but not good at writing within another discipline.
  • It’s like activity theory and the ball analogy—just because you know one sport that requires the use of a ball doesn’t mean you are a master of all things ball-related. The same is true for writing.
• It is harmful to restrict students to a certain formula or style of writing
  • 5 paragraph essay: Schaffer Method
• Teacher’s should be conscious of the effects there feedback has on student writing and students’ confidence and motivation to continue writing.
  • Writing feedback should provoke thoughtful change, not admonish students for mechanical errors.
  • Process of writing should be highlighted over product of writing
  • Feedback should be specific and avoid generalizations. It should also be task specific; a comment shouldn’t be something that could be taken from any piece of writing and just as easily applied to another. For example, “elaborate” isn’t very helpful if that’s all an instructor writes.
• Giving students control over a rhetorical situation is one of the goals/purposes of multimodal composition.

For the most part, English composition classes and particularly first year composition classes focus on communicating with written language. Not only is the focus of this written language typically restricted in the style and tone (i.e. “academic writing:) students are expected to produce, but students are restricted to using a single mode: written communication. These self-imposed limits are ridiculous if you think of composition as a means to create meaning and communicate this meaning. Outside of a classroom, writing often does not occur in isolation, but within a combination of other modalities of communication. Without these additional modalities (image, sounds, videos, etc.) writing fails to fulfill its full communicative purpose. Writing is only part of the meaning making process and if used in isolation writing will only communicate part of the intended message. For example, written news articles often appear in conjunction with images or videos. These images or videos are necessary to deliver the a full view of the authors’ intended message.

In order to create more complete compositions, Shipka suggests using a multimodal approach to composition. Shipka points to “the complex delivery systems in which writing circulates” as a reason to use a multimodal approach.

However, Shipka argues for more than simply allowing students to use multiple modalities in composition. Our goal should be to lead students to “a greater awareness of the ways systems of delivery, reception, and circulation shape (and take shape from) the means and modes of production.” Shipka continues to say students should be given “the opportunity to begin structuring the occasions for, as well as the reception and delivery of, the work they produce.” Basically, a multimodal approach gives students a greater responsibility for constructing the rhetorical situation in which they are operating. This means students not only create their own piece of composition, but they also account for the environment from which the audience receives the composition and the manner in which the composition is delivered to the audience. This type of composition requires a more complete understanding and use of a complex rhetorical situation.

Of course, there are challenges associated with using this kind of multimodal approach. Primarily, it is difficult to assess simply because there isn’t very much literature surrounding such methods or a consensus on how to effectively teach or assess multimodal projects. However, this would be the case for any new pedagogical approach or method. The literature on the subject is limited because the use of a multimodal approach is limited. If a multimodal approach becomes more common, then an understanding of how to teach and assess it will also grow with time. At the moment, it might be a challenge and a journey into unchartered territory, but the only way to change this is by more frequent and widespread use of multimodality in composition courses. Everything was unchartered territory at some point in time.

 

I really enjoyed David Russell’s writing on Activity Theory, well everything except that it was over 30 pages. The readings in this class have been difficult and I have occasionally struggled with completely understanding the message the authors are trying to get across and I think even misinterpreting their content at times. So this article served as a sort of revelation for me because it seemed very clear and this also has helped me gain a better understanding of previous readings (I think).

Anyway, the ball analogy was a simple and effective way of illustrating a very important point about how writing is taught in our educational system.

Russell explains that there are a huge variety of games that can be played with a ball, but each game has its own specific rules, equipment (tools), and skills necessary for that particular game. Even though there are so many games that use a ball, Russell points out, “there is no autonomous, generalizable skill called ball-using or ball-handling that can be learned and then applied to all ball games” (Russell, p. 9). The same is true for writing, there are countless styles and contexts in which writing is used, but just like the ball game analogy, there is no generalizable skill that can make you proficient with all different types of writing.

I have been working in the ESL center and the myth of “general writing skills,” or students either being “good writers” or “poor writers” has been exposed quickly. The ESL center offers assistance to international and second language students for any kind of language skills, whether it is speaking, writing, reading, or listening. But, students tend to come in for writing assignments. So far I have helped students write a business memo, research essays on topics such as “big data” (data pulled from internet sources like social media for marketing or behavioral research), a master’s project, and also the more traditional five-paragraph essay assigned from an English class (not ENGL 130, but EFLN 170). All of these require different writing skills and approaches. A business memo has almost no resemblance to a five-paragraph essay. The variety of assignments brought into the ESL center can make the job pretty challenging. In a lot of way I am in the center as a tutor because I am viewed as having the general skill of writing, which we know is not really an accurate concept. As a result, I have to remind the students coming in for tutoring that I am not well versed in writing a business memo or a masters project (I did everything I could to avoid having to write a masters project or thesis). However, since the ESL center is for second language students, I can still edit grammatical mistakes or let them know if the writing seems clear to me as an objective reader who hasn’t been exposed to the material. Anything further than that is really beyond my scope because as I mentioned I do not know the specific style or idiosyncrasies of each writing genre.

It’s clear to me that students can’t learn “general writing” and the only way to learn certain genres is to be an active participant in that genre’s setting or community. When students present me a five-paragraph essay and ask, “is it right to do it this way, or is that wrong?” I try to explain to them that for this assignment you might be asked to do things a certain way, but there isn’t a “right” or “wrong” way to write. It depends on the teacher, the discipline, and the goal or objective you are trying to accomplish. I also tell them not to be surprised when they leave take other courses outside of composition when their new professor asks them to disregard what they previously learned or asks them to adapt their writing style. I tell them they way they are expected to write will be continuously changing based upon the situations in which they find themselves writing.

ENGL 431 Blog 3

By Russell Hare

I like to look at situated learning and legitimate peripheral participation as in terms of “communities of practice” and a “deepening process of participation” (Smith, 2003). Those two terms really sum up the heart of the message being communicated by Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger. Communities of practice are described by Wenger as:

“Communities of practice are formed by people who engage in a process of collective learning in a shared domain of human endeavour: a tribe learning to survive, a band of artists seeking new forms of expression, a group of engineers working on similar problems, a clique of pupils defining their identity in the school, a network of surgeons exploring novel techniques, a gathering of first-time managers helping each other cope. In a nutshell: Communities of practice are groups of people who share a concern or a passion for something they do and learn how to do it better as they interact regularly (Wenger circa 2007)” (Smith, 2003).

When I read this I immediately thought about my current M.A. program and how closely it resembles this description by Wenger. The program is definitely a case of collective learning and I think the relatively small number of people in the program at a given time enhances this feeling for me. Basically, over the past year and a half there has been about 15-20 of us (with a few leaving and a few entering each semester) that have met every week to talk about teaching English as a Second or Foreign Language. We talk about past teaching or learning experiences and share ideas about what we think would be good teaching methods. What really stands out to me is how ineffective this program would be if we didn’t meet regularly or studied the material in isolation. For each class there is usually one or two reading we go over that starts our discussions. However, with a room full of people with varying experiences, the discussions usually evolve to cover much more than specific topic presented in the reading. Often the points that would stick with me the most were ones that other students made, not just he argument of the author from our readings. I just think of how limited my perception and understanding of the concepts or issues raised in the readings would be if I weren’t involved in this community interaction if all I had done was read the material on my own and not been involved in these community discussions.

I am also currently taking a field experience class and of course this class, both of which put me in a situation where I can “deepen my process of participation.” In my field experience class, I am observing an EFLN 170 class. I will be involved in this class for the remainder of the semester. Right now I view myself as being a pretty peripheral figure in that classroom. I sit in on the classes and basically just observe the class and take some notes. I offer my advice or input occasionally when I feel it will be helpful, but at the moment the instructor doesn’t expect me to be too involved in running the class. However, as the semester goes on I will become increasingly more involved. Soon I will be helping the instructor explain concepts and assisting in carrying out group activities within the class. Towards the end of the semester, I will have two class periods where I create and implement lesson plans on my own, which is a good example of becoming increasingly involved.

431 Blog 2

By Russell Hare

David Bartholomae describes the challenges of engaging in university or college writing. There seems to be an unrealistic expectation of students writing with “authority” in the style of an expert well before they have the knowledge to be experts. However, the feature of Bartholomae’s “Inventing the University” that caught my attention was the distinction between basic and advanced writers.

He speaks of the difference between a student being considered a “basic writer” or “advanced writer” according to university placement tests. A writer that may make some grammatical mistakes, but engages in more complex, detail-oriented writing, is more likely to get high scores in university writing placement assessments, which means the institution views these students as more adequately prepared to engage in university level writing. A “basic writer” may address the writing prompt and have no sentence level errors, but there writing is more succinct and does not contain much elaboration on the prompt. Here is a quote that illustrate his point:

 

“From this point of view, the student who wrote about constructing the clay model of the earth is better prepared for his education than the student who wrote about playing football in white shoes, even though the “White Shoes” paper was relatively error-free and the “Clay Model” paper was not. It will be hard to pry the writer of the “White Shoes” paper loose from the tidy, pat discourse that allows him to dispose of the question of creativity in such a quick and efficient manner” (Bartholomae, p.20).

 

For the most part, Bartholomae seems to advocate writers that challenge themselves by implementing complex prose over a conservative writer that seeks to avoid grammatical, sentence level mistakes. Bartholomae states that we should encourage this more complex writing style and that sentence level errors are not the unitary indicator of a student’s writing proficiency.

I agree with Bartholomae in some regards. In order to improve, writers must challenge themselves and take some risks. Being overly self-conscious of grammatical mistakes could ultimately hinder students’ writing development. And writing instructors should encourage some degree of experimentation by not putting too much emphasis on grammar or strictly enforcing a basic essay outline (Intro paragraph, Body 1, Body 2, etc. & Conclusion). However, I think the context in which a student is writing is very important when it comes to which writing approach (complex vs. conservative) should be encouraged and expected. In the contexts of writing composition courses (the context Bartholomae is dealing with) or creative writing, I absolutely agree with fostering a more complex and elegant writing style.

The problem is that a large amount of writing that occurs in the world takes place outside of the context of composition or creative writing classes. For instance, when making an argument for a political science or history class, it can be very beneficial to have a clear, efficient writing style that gets straight to the point and does not have many sentence level grammatical errors. I imagine the same would be true of a science class. So my main disagreement is that Bartholomae uses terms like “basic writer” and “advanced writer” when he should be saying “basic English Composition Writer” or “Advanced English Composition Writer” because some of the “basic writings” in his piece could serve some students extremely well in other fields. Also, out of incoming freshmen students, the majority will spend their college years writing in a field outside of English composition and their clear, succinct writing, which contains few sentence level errors can serve them well. I wouldn’t want to convince students that clear and succinct, even if it is boring and lacks poetic grace, is inferior writing while complex (and sometimes convoluted) writing is superior. In general, neither of the two styles is inferior or superior; it’s just that one style may be more appropriate in a certain context.