DWRL Lesson Plans - Style

Homework Assignment

Assignment Length:

Adaptable For Use Without Classroom Technology

Pedagogical Goals - Rhetoric:

Pedagogical Goals - Literature:

Pedagogical Goals - Writing:

Pedagogical Goals - Digital Literacy:

Multimedia

Remix

Media Requirements:

Timeline for Optimal Use:

Full Assignment Description:

This assignment is meant to be a fun activity that allows students to exercise their creative muscles, while simultaneously demonstrating the possibilities of revising style for different audiences. The lesson plan in adopted from Raymond Queneau's Exercises in Style (first published in English 1958). In this book, Queneau writes a single (2 page) short story, in which a narrator sees an argument on a bus, and then later recognizes one of the men on the street due to his strange hat. Queaneu then rewrites the story 99 different ways--for example, he rewrites the book as a sonnet, in slang, using exclamation points in every sentence, and even grouping words by the number of letters they contain.

I use this assignment immediately after students submit the first draft of their second essay, giving students the opportunity to either complete it in class, or work on it for credit over the next week. Students select what they believe to be their weakest paragraph from the essay they just submitted. How they evaluate the term "weakest" is up to them--all I ask is that it is a paragraph that they would genuinely like to rework and to which they would like to pay closer attention. After having students answer questions about why they would like to revise that paragraph, I turn them loose on revisions. Typically I provide a copy of Exercises in Style for reference, but some sample exercises I suggest are:

Translate the paragraph to another language, and then back to English (either on your own or through Google Translate)
Rewrite the paragraph as a tweet with 140 character limit (include mentions and hashtags if possible)
Create lists of parts of speech, and place each word under the correct category
Record yourself reading the paragraph outloud, and set it to music or remix it
Rewrite the paragraph as an internet meme

After rewriting the paragraph five times, students are asked to respond to a few questions reflecting on the process, before revising the paragraph for the next draft. The reflective questions ask them to consider their own writing voices and styles. The assignment is graded as complete/incomplete--students that actively participate in the assignment and satisfactorily meet the requirements get credit for attending class, those that do not meet the requirements are marked absent for the day.

Suggestions for Instructor Preparation:

I suggest skimming Exercises in Style in order to familiarize yourself with some potential options with students. PDFs of the first few story permutations are easily found through Google, and most University libraries should have a copy (the most recent edition is published by New Directions, and translated by Barbara Wright). Creating your own list of suggested processes is useful as well--students might be paralyzed by the "anything goes" aspect of the assignment, and creating a list of suggestions helps them get started.

Instructions For Students:

Reflect carefully on the essay that you just submitted, and choose the paragraph that you believe was the weakest in the essay. In a few sentences, describe the specific reasons you felt this paragraph needed improvement. Did it not have enough quotes? Too many quotes? Was it too long or short? Did it feel repetitive? Out of place in the essay? Did you just plain run out of time to revise it?

Experiment with your paragraph by rewriting it five times in entirely different styles. You might choose a model for your style (a favorite book, movie, song, etc.). Rewrite it as a poem. As a speech. Or you might choose a constraint a la Raymond Queneau's Exercises in Style. This is your chance to be creative and stretch your wings. The sky is the limit on this assignment.

Once you have rewritten the paragraph in five different ways, reread them all. Which was your favorite, and why? Was it just the style that made the paragraph your favorite? Or did you substantively change your paragraph's content as well? Now, answer the hardest question of all: Why don't you always write in this style? Is it the demands of the formal academic context? Or had you just not considered it at all? Do you think this style can be assimilated to your own voice when writing papers?

Now that you've had a little fun, and really atomized how the paragraph is put together, revise it in a way that you would like it to appear in your revised. And remember: sometimes the only way to improve a draft is by playing around and experimenting with it.

In order to be considered complete, the following must be submitted in a single document:

The original paragraph from your essay
A reflection on why or how it needs improvement (minimum 1 paragraph)
FIVE rewrites, with an indication of the rewrite's style
A reflection on the experiment process, answering the questions in the third paragraph of the assignment instructions
A fully revised paragraph for the next essay

If you rewrite a paragraph in a non-text format, include links to the material, or email it to me separately.

Evaluation Suggestions:

The key to this assignment is effort, so I suggest a simple complete/incomplete grading rubric. Numerical or letter grades might discourage students' creativity or invention--the use of which are not always highlighted in introductory composition classrooms, but which are critical for high levels of writing.

Notes on Reception, Execution, etc.:

This was an especially successful assignment in my class. Students responded positively, and they especially enjoyed the ability to follow their own interests. Some asked me about whether or not they could use curse words--I encouraged it as long as it was relevant to the style of their rewrite. The assignment was completed by all students within a 75 minute class period (with computers available in the room).

Additional Resources:

The Wikipedia article on Exercises in Style, which includes a list of all styles used in the book.

Course Type:

Advanced Writing Course

Tags:

Using Comment Walls to Practice Rebuttal

Sloan — Fri, 18 Apr 2014 16:11:14 +0000

Author:

Casey Sloan

Image Credit:

Pixabay

Brief Assignment Overview:

This assignment asks students to think through the rhetorical practice of contributing to a discussion on a website's comment wall. After finding a video on YouTube, a blog entry, or an opinion article on an online news source, students will read through the comments section, locate effective and ineffective comments, and ultimately draft a possible contribution to the wall based on their understanding of any manifested disagreements. This exercise will highlight the importance of refutation, concession and rebuttal.

Type of Assignment:

Homework Assignment

Assignment Length:

Pedagogical Goals - Rhetoric:

Rebuttal

Stasis

Adaptable For Use Without Classroom Technology

Pedagogical Goals - Literature:

Pedagogical Goals - Writing:

Pedagogical Goals - Digital Literacy:

Social Media

Media Requirements:

Timeline for Optimal Use:

Late in the Semester

Full Assignment Description:

Students will be asked to think critically about ways to effectively make an argument in a small amount of space, the "venue" of forum comment walls, the genre of the comment post, and the importance of fair, balanced rebuttals. This exercise also helps students understand the impace that rhetorical skills can have in real-world situation. Students will find an online argument that takes a position in their controversy (YouTube videos work well here), read through the comments section, identify a disagreement, evaluate various users' use of rebuttal, and, ultimately, insert theirown opinion. This assignment works in-class for rooms with computers with internet access. It can also be assigned as homework.

Before this lesson, define refutation, concession, and rebuttal for your students. Ask students to surf the web (a simple Google search worked well for my class) for a position within their controversy. Ask them to examine the argument, then read through the comments section. Ask them to find some examples of effective and ineffective responses to the argument. Ask them to think about why particular comments are convincing and why others are not. Are some responses simply offensive? Do they give faulty evidence? Do they give a fair summary of the argument or misrepresent it?

After your students have looking through the comment walls, have them report to the class or to small groups on their findings. The ensuing discussion should solidify the importance of a fair summary, concession, and refutation.

Ultimately, ask them to write less than 100 words offering a rebuttal to either the argument or to a comment they found particularly intriguing. Instruct them to focus on fairly representing their opponent's position and finding common ground before persuasively using refutation.

Suggestions for Instructor Preparation:

This assignment requires computers with internet access. Decide beforehand whether this assignment will be performed in-class or as homework.

Instructions For Students:

Before this assignment, students should be introduced to the concepts of refutation, concession, and rebuttal. This is a great way to emphasize the importance of brief, fair summaries and of finding common ground, or points of stasis, with opposing positions.

1) Locate an argument online that participates in your controversy. Try using some key words in the Google search engine. Make sure the blog post, opinion news article, YouTube video, etc. has a comments section that you can access. Read through the argument, then read through the comments wall. What do people disagree with in the article? Where are commenters disagreeing with each other?

2) Pick two comments that you think are particularly effective in convincing the reader. Pick two that are particularly ineffective. How do these comments differ from each other? Which comments fairly represent the main argument? Which comments use concession? Which comments use refutation? How does each comment go about rebutting the main argument (or another comment)? Do any of the comments make faulty claims?

3) Write up your own comment that will contribute to the conversation on this forum. It must rebut either the main argument or another comment on the wall. Your rebuttal must be less than 100 words, offer a fair summary of your oppositon's position, and offer some point of concession.

Course Type:

Adaptable For Use Without Classroom Technology

Course Description:

I used this lession in an introductory rhetoric course.

Tags:

Ethos and Online Dating 2.0 - Incorporating Visuals

Cate Blouke — Fri, 21 Mar 2014 15:54:10 +0000

Author:

Cate Blouke

Image Credit:

Image from The Dating Game scene in Mallrats. Found on The Baltimore Chop website.

Brief Assignment Overview:

A remix of a previous lesson plan, this exercise asks students to analyze the ethos of an online dating profile and then pair it with an appropriate image - drawing on the relationship between written and visual rhetoric.

Type of Assignment:

Assignment Length:

Pedagogical Goals - Rhetoric:

Pedagogical Goals - Writing:

Pedagogical Goals - Digital Literacy:

Social Media

Additional Pedagogical Goals:

This works as a great introduction to the concepts of ethos, audience, and/or visual rhetoric.

Media Requirements:

Media Console/Projector

Technology-Based Classroom (computers for each student)

Required Materials:

In theory, you could do this assignment without classroom technology, though an internet connection and projector would be ideal.

Timeline for Optimal Use:

Useful Anytime

Early in the Semester

#A - twocentsworth. "Studious." Flickr.com. 3 June 2008.

Full Assignment Description:

This is an update on a previous lesson plan: Teaching Ethos Using Online Dating Profiles, which relies strictly on textual analysis. As I explain in that plan, "Perhaps more so than any other piece of writing, and even more so than my students' facebook pages, the self-summaries presented in online dating profiles are fundamentally arguments of ethos. Regardless of specific rhetorical aim (a casual hook up, a future spouse, or something in between), at heart, each of these texts is saying to readers, 'this is who I am, accept me.' So they seemed like a great source text to get my students really thinking about how and why they evaluate people: what sort of snap judgements they make, how they read into things without even realizing it."

In this version (re-designed for my Introduction to Visual Rhetoric course this semester), I ask students to draw connections between written ethos/self-presentation and pieces of visual rhetoric. I offer them a written profile alongside a series of pictures of eligible "bachelors" to choose from. They then had to make the case for why they thought a particular image fit the written profile.

For this specific class, we had just begun a unit on style, and my students had been reading excerpts from Barry Brummett's A Rhetoric of Style and Stuart Ewan's All Consuming Images. Our discussion, therefore, focused a lot on the stylistic choices in the images and how those might be read as reflections of particular values indicated in the written profile. While those readings and that framework aren't necessary for this exercise, they did help to get my students grounded in the way they read people's visual style. Without this kind of foregrounding, you may end up having to do a fair bit of extra wrangling to get students to articulate why they draw the conclusions they do (i.e. how they connect mustaches with driving a Vespa). But that can be a great discussion - forcing them to confront/explain the assumptions they make.

Suggestions for Instructor Preparation:

I spent a fair bit of time compiling a set of "bachelor" photos from creative commons liscenced images that I found on the web, rather than using people's actual OKCupid profile pictures. I'd recommend just using the ones I've put together (see below), though you're welcome to make your own. The idea of using actual images from OKCupid profiles didn't sit well with me, even if they are publicly available. It seems like an invasion of privacy (in a way), or at least a kind of appropriation that I'm not comfortable with. The written profile I excerpted was previously a public page but has since been taken down/made private - which means if you have students do this as a homework assignment or on computers, they can't just google some key phrases to find the actual profile (one of the downfalls of the previous lesson plan).

I tried to compile a diversity of styles that nevertheless might fit with the written profile, as well as some that I thought clearly didn't fit. However, I was surprised by my students' responses. There were multiple votes for five of the seven images - a much wider range than I anticipated.

Instructions For Students:

In our introduction to the concept of style, we also talked about the idea of "ethos" - the character, or sense of authority, that one presents to the world, either through writing (as you may have addressed in previous rhetoric courses) or (for our purposes) through style.

This unit is all about thinking through the assumptions we make about, or (more kindly) ways in which we read, both the styles of others and our own styles. What we think of a particular style or clothing item isn't necessarily the same as how others view it.

There is, perhaps, no clearer instance of an argument based on character (and style) than online dating profiles. Each person's profile essentially makes the argument that "you should date me because of who I am." These arguments are paired with a selection of images, presumably chosen to cast the author in his or her most favorable light. On the free online dating site OkCupid, users combine images of themselves with written self-summaries in order to convince potential matches to give them a chance.

For this exercise, read over the written dating profile below, and then review the potential images. Your task will be to pair the written profile with one of the possible images. We'll assume that all elements of the image were carefully crafted/selected for this particular purpose/venue.

Questions to consider in making your choice: What kind of person does this profile describe? What does he value/care about? Which image do you think best reflects those values or that style?

Write a few sentences explaining your choice. Be sure to offer evidence for your analysis. Why does this image/person seem most fitting to you? What kinds of things about the man's style do you infer from the image? How, specifically, does that connect with the written description? You might also include your rationale for eliminating other potential options.

Keep in mind that you want to think about the "big picture" of this profile. While one or two aspects of the written part might point toward a particular image, is that image wholly congruent with the rest of the profile?

The Written Profile:

I have a yearning to explore different territory. To frolic in a refreshing mist atop the Yellow Mountains of Mainland China. To play with other great musicians. To watch shows in the opera house of Lyon, with an intermission of French kids break dancing outside the hall. To cook my own recipe in a Paul Bocuse culinary. These are things that most of my homies won't touch. Lest we forget, I am an abnormal guy; and I am looking for an extraordinary girl.

I want a girl who can be fun and adventurous. The kind of girl who isn't too afraid to suddenly break out of a three-day isolation and take a road trip across the country on a 1987 Vespa which I am convinced can take at least another hundred thousand miles.

Interestingly, my most passionate relationships involved completely contradictory personalities. Speaking of character--unfortunately, not all of us can be satisfied with pixellated photos and interview format autobiographies. Call me old-school, but coffee and a heated intellectual conversation beats the hell out of a 9 day back and forth email chat marathon. If you want to get to know me, call me. Tell me about yourself. Talk to me about politics. What is really important to you? I never get tired of meeting new and inherently good people.

The Potential Bachelors:

Bachelors.jpg

Image Credits:

#B - Mosborne01. "Ashs-student-playing-guitar." Wikimedia Commons. 1 July 2010.

#C - torbakhopper. "Cool Dude." Wikimedia Commons. 10 Nov 2011.

#D - Chris Hunkeler. "Running with Music." Flickr.com. 5 May 2013.

#E - siuhonglo. "Singapore Flyer." Flickr.com. Aug 27 2011.

#F - connerdowney. "7 - Meditation." Flickr.com. 08 Jan 2009.

#G - sadly, I have lost the citation information for this one. I know it was CC licensed, though. I will post citation if I can find it again.

Evaluation Suggestions:

This was in in-class exercise, so it wasn't evaluated.

Notes on Reception, Execution, etc.:

My students really enjoyed the exercise, and I was surprised by the arguments they made for one image over another. It fostered a lively conversation about stereotypes and assumptions (particularly the way they read the image of bachelor #C).

Course Type:

http://poetry.rapgenius.com/F-scott-fitzgerald-the-great-gatsby-chapter-...

Course Description:

RHE 315 - Introduction to Visual Rhetoric

With the rise of new media and network television, Americans are exposed to thousands upon thousands of images on a daily basis. From our facebook streams to our television viewing choices to our personal email accounts, we are bombarded with images: of celebrities, of politicians, of consumer goods, of natural disasters, of… cats. And we must filter through it all in order to make sense of our world.

In this course we will explore the ways in which images can be read, analyzed, constructed, and manipulated. We will interrogate how images inform our reading of historical and political events, of personal identity, of public and private spaces. We will think through issues of self-presentation: how our stylistic choices convey messages to the world around us, and how we interpret the choices of others. We will look at the spaces we frequent and consider the rhetorical effects of everything from the architecture to the furniture to lighting. In short, we will investigate how the visual (non-linguistic, non-textual) world conveys its messages.

Tags:

Rap Genius Close Reading Exercise

Uzendoski — Sat, 28 Sep 2013 21:52:58 +0000

Author:

Andrew Uzendoski

Image Credit:

2013 Genius Media Group

Brief Assignment Overview:

This close reading assignment uses “Rap Genius”, an Internet annotation website, to connect each student with multiple audiences while also creating a forum where the entire class can pool their knowledge together in order to better analyze and understand the work of a specific author.

Type of Assignment:

Class Discussion

Assignment Length:

One-Two Class Periods

Pedagogical Goals - Rhetoric:

Pedagogical Goals - Literature:

Pedagogical Goals - Writing:

Annotation

Technology-Based Classroom (computers for each student)

Word Choice

Pedagogical Goals - Digital Literacy:

Web Design

Media Requirements:

Required Materials:

A computer for each small group, ideally for each student in the group. A media consolae/projeftor for the small groups to present their completed annotation project.

Timeline for Optimal Use:

Full Assignment Description:

In this assignment, students practice their close reading skills in small groups of three or four students. Each group is given a different poem or a short story by the same author. While discussing the text together, they must identify and analyze important passages or lines. After their discussion, they will annotate a copy of their text—a copy which has previously been posted by the teacher on the Rap Genius website—using the analysis they produced in their small group.

When each group has completed their annotation of their text, the class will reconvene as a whole to share their close readings. Each group shares their analysis of the text using their annotated copy on the Rap Genius website. After each group’s presentation, there should be an opportunity for anyone in the class to add an annotation to the poem or short story. Because the same author wrote each text analyzed by the small groups, the students should better be able to use their knowledge of the author’s style, biography or evolution as a writer to expand on the original analysis of the poem or short story.

This assignment provides the students with multiple audiences—the individual members of their small group, the class at large, and the Rap Genius online community. It also encourages the students to learn from each other. The exercise offers multiple points where class participation shapes the analysis of the text, and the diverse readings of different texts by the same author are able to inform each group’s close analysis as well as the larger appreciation of the author’s body of work.

Suggestions for Instructor Preparation:

This assignment works best after the fundamentals of close reading have been established in the class. Ideally, the teacher will have first modeled the close reading of a passage from a poem or short story, as then lead a collaborative close reading with the class of another text. Once the teacher is confidant the class can lead their own close readings, he or she can use this assignment as a platform for allowing the students to execute a close reading without the direct guidance of a teacher.

Please note that this assignment requires the instructor to upload each text that the students will analyze to Rap Genius prior to the closer reading exercise. It is easy to post a text; there are detailed instructions on the website and it requires you to paste a copy of the text onto the website. (And if there are any questions, do not hesitate in asking Jeremy Dean, the head of “Education Genius Department” for Rap Genius and a University of Texas alum! His contact info is Jeremy@rapgenius.com)

Instructions For Students:

1. Each group of students (3-4) will be handed a different text, either a poem or short story, written by the same author. (Note: This can either be done at the beginning of class if it is a short text, or before the beginning of class if it is a longer text.)

2. Each group will discuss the text and identify important passages (Usually 6 – 8).

3. Each group will then analyze these passages, providing insight on the style, historical context or thematic value of the passage. Each analysis should be 1 – 4 sentences long. This analysis can either be done on paper or on a computer, but if it is done on a computer it will be easier for the students to copy the analysis and paste it in their annotation.

4. Each student will make an account on Rap Genius (rapgenius.com), which will allow them to annotate texts on the website. An email, a username and a password are all that are needed for an account.

5. Each group will then find their text on the Rap Genius database.

6. Once the text is found, they should add their analysis of each passage as online annotations to the text

a. To add an annotation:

i. Highlight the passage you wish to annotate

ii. An option “Annotate” will appear. Click this button.

iii. Add analysis to the text box.

7. When the group's annotations are complete, all of the small groups should reconvene as a whole class.

8. Each group can now present their analysis of their text, going through each annotation and explaining the importance of each passage.

a. For example:

i. How does each of their annotations analyze the author’s use of rhetorical style?

ii. What are the central symbols or themes present in the selected passage?

iii. What historical context did the group add in their annotation to help the reader better understand the passage?

iv. What biographical details from the Author’s life or career might help deepen our understanding of the passage?

9. After each group finishes the presentation of their analysis, allows other students in the class the opportunity to amend or add to any of the annotations.

Evaluation Suggestions:

This exercise is perhaps best assessed as component of the student’s participation grade. A specific number of annotations should be required form each group (6-8 usually works well). Their presentations should also be clear.

However, the Rap Genius annotation platform could be used in a version of this assignment that is completed by each individual student, and not as a small group exercise. Or the teacher could add an annotation component to a student’s essay on the close reading of a passage; the student could have to submit both a short essay and export a certain number of annotations from his essay onto the Rap Genius website.

Notes on Reception, Execution, etc.:

Students generally reacted well to this assignment, especially to the fact that their final analysis was posted on Rap Genius, available to anyone on the Internet. It was also a good way to incorporate the computer classroom into a English literature class. Furthermore, some students continued to annotate other texts on the Rap Genius website after the exercise was completed, as Rap Genius is continuing to expand their inclusion of literary texts. A few students were especially interested in annotating texts from the extensive list of Rap, Indie Rock and Pop songs on the website.

Course Type:

Advanced Writing Course

Course Description:

This assignment is designed for an English Literature course with access to a computer lab. It has been used effectively in Ethnic American literature classes, where it is important to consider both literary style and historical context when close reading passages. The assignment is also good for analyzing poems that are influenced by historical events, where the students can identify in selected passages how authors directly engage political and cultural touchstones from their respective eras. The exercise is also designed for class with 25 or less students.

Tags:

Color-coding Revision - Visualizing the Process

Cate Blouke — Mon, 02 Jul 2012 18:46:38 +0000

Author:

Cate Blouke

Image Credit:

"Big Cup'O Crayons" via haydnseek's Flikr stream

Brief Assignment Overview:

Following a detailed set of instructions, students use crayons (or other multi-colored writing utensils) to visually distinguish between certain elements of their papers. The result is a colorful paper that visually demarcates areas of text that may require revision.

Type of Assignment:

Assignment Length:

Pedagogical Goals - Rhetoric:

Arrangement

Delivery

No Classroom Technology Required

Pedagogical Goals - Literature:

Textual Analysis

Word Choice

Pedagogical Goals - Writing:

Pedagogical Goals - Digital Literacy:

Multimodal

Visualization

Additional Pedagogical Goals:

Revision

Organization/Arrangement

Delivery

Media Requirements:

Required Materials:

*Having attempted this exercise on computers, I highly recommend a low-tech approach. Using hard copies and forcing students to interact with the material pages themselves both allows for more freedom in marking up the papers and helps the visualization process. Additionally, my students loved playing with crayons.

So, all you will need are:

hard copies of the papers to be revised
crayons, highlighters, or variously colored pens

Timeline for Optimal Use:

Useful Anytime

Early in the Semester

Technology-Based Classroom (computers for each student)

Full Assignment Description:

Students are asked to peer review each other's papers using crayons (my personal favorite tool) or other colorful writing utensils. Using three differently colored crayons, they look for very specific aspects of the paper to underline, circle, or cross-out. The particular parts of the paper they should attend to are easily adaptable to an instructor's needs and the common issues arising in a given class. The important thing is that students mark up the papers with different colors and different types of annotation.

This workshop is incredibly helpful to students who are more visually-oriented learners. It is also an extremely helpful editing process for students to practice. By giving them extremely detailed instructions and asking them to pay close attention to more minute aspects of their peers' papers, they often leave the workshop feeling more attuned to these issues in their own papers.

Suggestions for Instructor Preparation:

Adapt the workshop instructions to your own needs. This is particularly helpful once you've already seen the students' writing and can gauge the issues that need addressing. For example, in my rhetoric/composition class, I find that students often rely too heavily on quotations in their first papers (which involve a lot fo summary), so I have them underline all of the quotations. This makes it immediately clear to most of the students just how much of their paper is quoted and how much is their own writing. On the other hand, in my literature class my students might not be providing enough evidence from the text, so underlining quotations have the inverse effect of highlighting a paucity of quotation.

My own teacherly pet-peeve is vague pronouns and distant referents, so this usually turns up regardless of the course I'm teaching. But as you'll see in the instructions below, it's fairly easy to tweak the worksheet to fit your needs.

Other than that, make sure to tell students to bring a hard copy of their papers. It's also important to provide writing utensils in a variety of colors (at least three per student). I tend to bring a giant box of crayons to class - both because crayons are less expensive than colored pencils or other options, and because my students get a kick out of playing with crayons in a college classroom.

Instructions For Students:

(You will probably want to re-format this before giving it to students, but for accessibility reasons, I am not retaining the original Word document's formatting)

This exercise is designed to help with the revision process by making certain aspects of your papers stand out visually. For those of you that are visual learners this might be really useful in that it literally highlights the way you use language. For others of you this might just be an easy in-class exercise where you get to play with crayons.

1. Select three different colored crayons. This will work best if they are distinctly different colors.

2. Assign each color a function by creating a color key here:

a. PRONOUNS ___________________

b. TOPIC SENTENCES ______________

c. QUOTATIONS __________________

3. As you read through the paper,

a. With the color assigned to pronouns,

i. Circle every: THEY, THEIR, THOSE, THESE, THIS, IT, ITS,

ii. Cross out any: I, YOU, YOUR, WE, OUR, US, (and any contractions you come across ‘cause they shouldn’t be there either)

b. With the color assigned to topic sentences, underline the first sentence of every paragraph

c. With the color assigned to quotations, underline every quote you come across (make a second line if quotes are used in the fist sentence)

4. Once you have worked through the entire paper, go back through it a second time. Do the following exercises with a pen or pencil.

a. For every pronoun you circled, identify the referent (i.e. who is the “they,” what is the “this” or “it”), and write your answers on the line below each pronoun.

b. Read through each paragraph again, and in the margin write a few words identifying the subject of the paragraph. Does the content match the topic sentence? If not, make a single, neat X across the entire paragraph.

c. For each quotation, assess whether the quote is one of the following and label each quote accordingly:

i. Rhetorically effective (i.e. uses powerful/evocative language) [RE]

ii. Highly specific (statistics or technical language) [HS]

iii. Could probably be paraphrased or seems unnecessary [PARA]

Evaluation Suggestions:

As it's purely for the students' benefit, this assignment is not graded. I simply use this as an in-class exercise and send them home with their marked-up papers.

Notes on Reception, Execution, etc.:

My students generally really enjoy this exercise - in part because I have them playing with crayons in a college classroom. What I have found is that the actual process of doing the workshop is more helpful than the feedback they receive - so, in doing this to someone else's paper, it helps them to notice the trend in their own papers. The exercise can be adapted to any number of common problems, these are just three things that my students tend to consistently have issues with in the first paper (no matter how much we've gone over these things in class).

I do think it's important to use hard copies of their papers. I've tried this in a computer-classroom, and using highlighting in Word just doesn't have the same impact. It also makes it more difficult to visualize all together and doesn't have the same tactile effect.

Course Description:

This exercise will work in any course requiring writing and revision. I've used it in both rhetoric and literature classes, but it was originally designed for an introductory rhetoric class.

Rhetoric 306 is a course designed to introduce students to the principles of rhetoric, responsible civil discourse, and college writing. Students are asked to select a contemporary controversy to explore through research, rhetorical analysis, and ultimately to advocate their own position.

Tags:

Revision

Peer Review

Editing

Visual Representation

Oral History Group Podcasting Assignment

Anonymous — Mon, 11 Jun 2012 16:41:56 +0000

Author:

Amanda Moulder

Image Credit:

"Microphones"via Sue Langford's Flikr stream

Brief Assignment Overview:

Students conduct oral history interviews, write papers narrating the interviews, and then work in groups to create a multi-segment “radio show."

Type of Assignment:

Major Course Project

Assignment Length:

Multiple Class Periods

Pedagogical Goals - Rhetoric:

Pedagogical Goals - Writing:

Organization

Synthesis

Pedagogical Goals - Digital Literacy:

Additional Pedagogical Goals:

Invention, style, multimodal composition, digital literacy.

Media Requirements:

Required Materials:

A way to record digital audio files for each student in the class

GarageBand software

Access to “This American Life” and “RadioLab” podcasts to discuss with your students as sample “papers”

Timeline for Optimal Use:

Late in the Semester

Full Assignment Description:

Students do oral history interviews, write papers narrating the interviews, and then work in groups to create a multi-segment “radio show."

Students must work together to discover the best possible way of combining their individual papers into a podcast. They must also learn to use GarageBand. Finally, recording their papers gets students to think about concerns such as word choice, syntax, and overall style.

Suggestions for Instructor Preparation:

Familiarity with the rechnology and podcasting genre will help. See "Instructions for Students" below for detailed explanation of how the assignment was implemented.

Instructions For Students:

STEP ONE - Writing Assignment Description:

Paper III Assignment Sheet: Analyzing Culture/Oral History. (1500-1750 words)

This assignment requires you go out into the world and find a story worth recording. It’s a difficult task, really. Your first step is to conduct oral history research and make a record of interviews you conduct. You need to listen closely to how individuals process and frame their beliefs and/or respond to what you ask. You will nee to determine the overall purpose of your essay and make the stakes of the essay clear. Why is this story worth telling? To do this you will place the interviewees’ experiences and/or perspective within a larger historical, social, or political context OR you use the interviewees’ experiences and/or perspectives to make an argument about a larger historical or social context.

Prior to this assignment, we will read Paul Thompson, “The Voice of the Past: Oral History,” The Voice of the Past: Oral History (1988) and Hugo Slim and Paul Thompson, with Olivia Bennett and Nigel Cross, “Ways of Listening,” Listening for Change: Oral History and Development (1993). We will also have an expert in oral history research come in to talk about how to conduct interviews.

Although this particular assignment is a 6-8 page paper, it will also require that you record and save the interview(s) you conduct as mp3 files because you will use sound bytes from these interviews in your Unit IV podcast assignment.

STEP TWO - In-class Exercise:

Student “speed-dated” their papers. I put them into groups of three and they talked about how their papers were related for seven minutes. After 7 minutes, the groups rotated so that each students was in a new group. We repeated this exercise as many times as class time would allow, so that by the end of class, each student had an idea of who they might want to work with for the podcast assignment.

STEP THREE - Paper revisions:

I wanted my students to think about sentence structure in their revisions. I spent one class day talking about the following grammatical forms that their papers used and we talked about how they might revise their papers at the sentence-level. The following sentences were some of the examples that I used in class (the first two are adapted from in-class exercises that Patricia Roberts-Miller has done in her own classes):

Passive Voice, Nominalization, and Verb Choice:

Hubert was bitten by Chester. (The agent is the predicate). Biting happened between Chester and Hubert.

It seems as though the writer does not know which dog bit the other. So, she turns the verb into a noun through the process that grammarians call nominalization. This happens to your sentence when you really don’t know the agent.

Biting happened on the part of Chester toward the dog of Hubert.

The writer of this sentence knows the agent of the action, but doesn’t show the action in a concrete way, which makes the sentence unclear. If you are Chester’s attorney, this is your sentence, but it’s not rhetorically effective if you want your audience to understand what happened.

Using Punctuation Rhetorically

The family held a reunion on the Fourth of July, and everyone had a great time. vs. The family held a reunion on the Fourth of July; everyone had a great time.

Both sentences are grammatically correct according to standard rules, but the semicolon produces a tighter connection and give emphasis to the second clause.

My favorite activities are skiing, playing golf, and bowling; unfortunately, they cost more than my budget can stand. vs. Unfortunately, my favorite activities—skiing, playing golf, and bowling—cost more than my budget can stand.

The second sentence is tighter, and the dash acts as an attention-getter. It tells the reader: “Pay attention. This is important!”

STEP FOUR - Podcast Assignment:

(45-60 minutes total)

For this assignment, you will work with two or three of your classmates to create a podcast in the style of the radio shows (“This American Life” and “RadioLab”) we have listened to this semester. Initially, you will work as a group to discuss the pieces you wrote during the semester, decide on a target audience (or audiences) for your podcast, play with how to frame one piece per group member together in a cohesive way, and create a schedule and series of task assignments for group members.

Your next step will be to revise (dramatically) your chosen piece of writing so that it more clearly reflects the theme or idea that your group has chosen to explore in the podcast and the target audience for the podcast.

Then, your group will write a title for your podcast, a short introduction to your show, short transitions between the pieces in the show, and a conclusion to your show. You will be allowed some class time for the planning, but should use this time to create a schedule of deadlines for these parts of the assignment and divide up the labor evenly between group members.

You will use personal audio recorders and the GarageBand software in the DWRL lab to record and edit these audio stories. The podcasts will incorporate sound bytes from interview. You may want to include other sound effects that add depth, dimension, affect, or comic relief to your stories.

Evaluation Suggestions:

Rubric for Paper 3 (I had the students read “The Transom Review” and they created this rubric based on that reading):

The story you tell must:

Give background, as well as consider carefully where to start and how to give background.
Make clear the stakes of the story.
Either build up central conflict so that the point of the story is apparent, or directly state the point.
Strike a balance between the big ideas (reporting) and the personal narrative (interview, quotes)

Students will get two grades for the podcast, one for their individual contribution and the quality of their revision, and a group grade for the overall cohesiveness of the podcast, the quality of the transitions, and how well it addresses the target audience they selected.

Additional Resources:

Ira Glass' "The Transom Review"

The DWRL's Guide for Podcasting in Pedagogy written by Kevin Bourque

Course Type:

Advanced Writing Course

Course Description:

This assignment was implemented in an intermediate rhetoric and composition course.

Tags:

Teaching Orwell's Six Points of Style with CritiqueIt

gertken — Sun, 22 Apr 2012 16:36:03 +0000

Author:

Matt Gertken

Image Credit:

The Last Man in Europe – A Portrait of George Orwell

Brief Assignment Overview:

Students read Orwell's "Politics and the English Language," discuss it in class, and then demonstrate their understanding of Orwell's chief style points through an activity using CritiqueIt, a tool for collaborative composition and peer review.

Type of Assignment:

Class Discussion

Assignment Length:

Pedagogical Goals - Rhetoric:

Pedagogical Goals - Literature:

Pedagogical Goals - Writing:

Pre-Writing

Technology-Based Classroom (computers for each student)

Pedagogical Goals - Digital Literacy:

Software

Additional Pedagogical Goals:

This assignment introduces students to a few handy rules about writing style from a highly credible source, while also giving them a text that will call their attention to the long-standing philosophical problem of how to address the variety of misuses of language and rhetoric. Students will (1) become aware of common stylistic pitfalls (2) learn how to avoid them or correct them, and when to tolerate them (3) attune themselves to concrete instances of how one can use language to disguise meaning or deceive others, rather than to clarify meaning and inform others.

Media Requirements:

Required Materials:

Students can access Orwell's widely-reproduced essay online, or they can find it at the library. To use CritiqueIt, they should go to the CritiqueIt website and set up an account.

Timeline for Optimal Use:

Useful Anytime

Full Assignment Description:

I assigned a classic text, but I did not throw students all the way back to the Gorgias. (Next time!) Instead, I gave them Orwell's "Politics and the English Language." Some readers may expect an explanation of this choice, which I will give in a future Blogging Pedagogy post.

Here's how the day should go:

Students read the essay as homework. When they arrive at class, hold a discussion.

First, define and discuss Orwell's chief terms, like dying metaphors, mixed metaphors, operators or verbal false limbs, pretentious diction, and jargon. Discuss concreteness and abstractness, cliches, and the overall message of avoiding "ready-made phrases" and automatic writing. Discuss Orwell's insistence on usefulness as the measure of good style, and his rejection of attempts to save archaisms or more firmly entrench a standard codified English.

Second, discuss the political aims of Orwell's essay. Address Orwell's equation of political writing with bad writing. Discuss the notion of the "party line." Discuss the use of high-sounding, dramatic phrases, the use of euphemisms for actions and events that involve human suffering and death. Discuss Orwell's claim that fuzzy writing can encourage fuzzy thought, just as much as the latter produces the former. And lastly, discuss Orwell's final dictum, "Political language -- and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists -- is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind."

After this robust discussion, students log onto their computers, and onto their CritiqueIt accounts. They seek an opinion/editorial article published in the news that day, or the transcript of a speech or a press release, on a topic of interest. They paste the text of the article into a Word document and upload it to the Document space in CritiqueIt. Within the program, they transfer the Document to the Group space for peer review, which is necessary to enter into critiquing mode. Then, using the editing tools in the program, they critique their articles (and other students' articles), indicating places where Orwell's six rules of advice apply to improve the article's style:

Never use a metaphor, simile or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
Never use a long word where a short one will do.
If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
Never use the passive where you can use the active.
Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.

Afterward, hold a concluding discussion, especially with the chance to answer questions that students raise about ambiguities that arise, how to apply these style lessons in their own writing, and what kinds of exceptions to note.

Suggestions for Instructor Preparation:

This assignment is most helpful for students in the first third of the course, preferably after students have completed a few writing assignments and had the chance to attempt an initial adjustment to the teacher's higher expectations, yet while students still have time to improve their writing and overall performance in the course.

The teacher needs to read the Orwell essay closely, and familiarize him or herself with the major criticisms of it. The teacher must also learn how to use CritiqueIt, which I find a bit glitchy and counter-intuitive at times, though still generally a user-friendly software. The teacher will need to create a Group for the class, and invite each of the students to join the Group by entering their emails into the system. The teacher should plan to guide students through the process of setting up their CritiqueIt account and making sure they can upload documents to the Document space provided.

The teacher can motivate students to study the essay seriously by threatening to hold a quiz on the day the assignment is due -- this remains an effectual way to motivate students.

Instructions For Students:

Students should come to class having read the essay thoroughly, at least twice through. They should already know to use the dictionary to look up unfamiliar terms, but the teacher can remind them of this. Students should have the expectation that they will take a short-answer quiz on the essay when they arrive at class, so that they read it closely and study it intently. Students can learn how to use CritiqueIt software in class under teacher supervision.

Evaluation Suggestions:

This assignment was not graded.

Notes on Reception, Execution, etc.:

Students responded enthusiastically to the Orwell essay. One student said she did not care for this kind of writing, i.e. "literary analysis" or "style" guides, but students otherwise responded well. To improve the assignment, I would spend more time preparing the students to use the CritiqueIt software. It is not self-explanatory, especially the text-editing or "critique" mode. Also, glitches can be a serious problem. If a student used bold or italics to highlight a passage, no peer reviewer can comment on that passage with the CritiqueIt editing tools (the company says it is addressing this glitch, but it caused a fair amount of annoyance for this exercise).

In fact, the entire assignment could be accomplished with Google Docs, and more conveniently. Nevertheless, CritiqueIt has value as a peer review device, and for that reason it was good to give students a chance to learn how to use it.

Course Type: