List 5 terms you don't quite know yet how to define from our final keywords list.

A huge thank you to Leah and Aubrey and whoever else was involved with that crowd-sourced document.

I'm still having some trouble defining the following terms:

1. deconstruction -- I think this is being used differently in composition than it is in literature, maybe.  In the notes, someone has written "Derrida - valuing differences and addressing social constructs."  In literature, I understand deconstructionism to mean analysis to tease out ways in which the text contradicts itself.  So this is slightly different here.
2. expressive discourse - I understand expressive writing and I understand discourse.  Not positive how they fit together.
3. genre theory -- I know that we're focusing on the academic essay as a genre here, and that there are many other genres available to us in composition, but I'm not sure of the theoretical underpinnings.
4. pentad -- I understand this is a visual representation of Burke's dramatism.  But, as I understand it, it seems little more than a relic.
5. Several authors here:  Joseph Harris, Lester Faigley, etc.  

I am simply amazed by the work done in the keyword document and I hope to contribute. 

Assignment using collaboration and / or technology

What is one assignment you will include in your syllabus assignment that uses collaboration and/or technology and/or other things Yancey, Selfe, Breuch, Bruffee, or Shaughnessey have discussed?

So I've been thinking about how to incorporate writing across the curriculum in a highly standardized first year composition course.  I very much value the assignments we do in FYC -- even when they aren't working as well as I think they could -- because I value the type of writing these assignments are designed to foster and refine: academic discourse.  I also think there's a value in this type of writing despite the student's major; writing is required in every discipline in the university.  So how to incorporate writing across the curriculum here, and how to include collaboration and technology?

I think I'd like my students to do a reflective, investigative essay on the type of writing they will be expected to do in an academic version of their field  (I mean that an engineer in the academy will write quite differently than an engineer in industry).  I would start by pairing (or grouping; the groups don't necessarily have to have two members) students with similar majors.  Then I would ask each student to locate a scholarly article that would be similar to one they could see themselves writing.  To do this, I would ask them to first think about the type of job they would most like to have after graduation: a sculptor, a librarian, or a dentist, for example.  I would then ask them to search for an article written by the academic equivalent of the position, and print the article and bring it to class.  I would spend a class period asking students to take apart these articles, to see the moving parts and how they are working, and then I'd ask the student to write a page or two about what they discovered.  Then I'd ask them to meet with their partner(s), and to try to find links, similarities, or differences in structure and / or style.  I would then ask each group to present their findings to the rest of the class, either with Prezi or Powerpoint.

By doing this assignment, the student would gain firsthand knowledge of scholarly work being done in his / her field, content that has not been dumbed down or otherwise adapted for the first year composition student, and a clear awareness of article structure in the field.  While this assignment would not ask the student to write a similar article, I think that this exposure would be extremely valuable.  It reminds me of the metaphor of listening to the conversation before speaking.

Actually, as I'm sketching this assignment out in my head, it occurs to me that it follows a pretty similar structure to the extended analysis we did in 5060.  

Appreciating Peter Elbow

Engage in discussion about something that captured your attention over the past few weeks in the course. Relate it back to specific class discussions, readings, and your grading/teaching when possible.

I've had a difficult time articulating why I think it's important in a FYC classroom to spend some time on grammar, style, and mechanics, but when I read Peter Elbow's "Inviting the Mother Tongue," I suddenly understood why I valued these things when teaching.  Elbow does a fantastic job acknowledging the importance of safety for the mother tongue, and arguing that an instructor should show respect to students' original dialect.  In addition, he does this without downplaying the importance of standard written English, which he argues is the "written language of power and prestige."  This philosophy seems to me to have it both ways: to acknowledge that what we come in to the classroom already knowing is valuable and rich beyond measure, but that we still have work to do with regards to written language.  

I also appreciate his discussion about SWE being nobody's first language, and I think this is a valuable point to make to students: you are not somehow wrong for not intuiting SWE.  Nobody does.  We all have to learn it, including your instructors.  

I think, in addition, this perspective allows an instructor to foster a safe classroom space, one where many dialects are welcomed, but still to do the job of improving a student's academic writing.  His answer as to how to accomplish this job is also valuable, I think: to have students figure out how and where to get help, and to focus on copy-editing as a sort of translation process.  

To me, this has been the single most practical reading for classroom implementation so far, and I've already put into practice some of his suggestions.  

Responding to Leah Helig's Presentation on 9/28

On Monday, Leah Helig presented an overview of the first year writing program at the University of Wisconsin Eau Claire, and since then, I've been thinking about a couple of the ways the university implements its program.

One thing I cannot help but think, and I may be just stating the completely obvious, is that most universities have a writing requirement and many have first year writing programs and writing centers.  It seems a truth universally acknowledged that students need to be able to write, and need instruction in that regard.  Why, then, the incredible differences from program to program?  Even when I've taught a class that is considered to be standardized (1301) in two different institutions, the difference in curriculum, assignments, and general course expectations are profound.  We all agree that writing is an important course for incoming students to take, and that the skills taught in this class are necessary, but nobody can quite agree on what those skills should be.  Even when skills seem to overlap (for example, the rhetorical analysis of "Lost in America" versus a close reading of "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been"), the outcomes have not been, in my experience, the same.

With this in mind, I followed Leah's presentation with interest, as Wisconsin Eau Claire has yet another model of teaching composition.  But their model seems to me to be set up for student success (and I'm not saying this as a contrast; I think most FYW programs I've been part of have been and are to some degree successful).  If you were to ask me (and probably many other instructors) what's missing in FYW as we've experienced it, I imagine that many of us would answer that there's not enough time, and that the classes are too large (interesting to me that these both have to do with time; the problem with a large class size is that the instructor's attentions are overly diffused).  Wisconsin Eau Claire addresses these issues with smaller class sizes and a 5 hour course requirement.  So students are a) getting more of the instructor's attention and b) getting more time in class.

And with what is this extra time being filled?  More reading on the front end, which seems to me to be an absolute luxury as a teacher, and yet totally appropriate to what we are trying to accomplish.  I really like the metaphor of listening to the conversation before you step in to say something, and I think it's absolutely something that adds value to these classes.  If you think of first year composition as a course that allows you to practice entering the conversation in your academic discipline (which is obviously what I think FYC is, in its ideal incarnation), this extra step seems crucial.  At TTU, we get to this step a bit later, in 1302 with the lit review requirement, and I can't yet comment on this aspect here.  (In addition, at TTU, we have a six hour course requirement, but it's spread over two semesters.)

Finally, I'd like to note the empirical evidence Leah presented for this model's success.  I have only superficially addressed this presentation; Leah presented much more specific information.  However, the materials provided on the website indicate that somehow we have a class required of most entering students, that this class provides them with a useful set of skills, and that this class was not so onerous or tedious that students leave never wanting to set foot in an English classroom again.