DWRL Lesson Plans - Sound

Teaching Rhetorical Pathos through Playlists

Streusand — Fri, 07 Mar 2014 22:06:14 +0000

Author:

Image Credit:

Deb Streusand -- Screenshot of Spotify

Brief Assignment Overview:

A fun way to teach students the power of rhetorical pathos using multiple media. Students create Spotify playlists to accompany a short persuasive essay on a topic of their choice.

Type of Assignment:

In-class Exercise

Homework Assignment

Assignment Length:

One-Two Class Periods

Pedagogical Goals - Rhetoric:

Pathos

Media Requirements:

Adaptable For Use Without Classroom Technology

Required Materials:

Computers are required, but the lesson plan could be adapted for a non-computer classroom if students are able to bring in laptops.
Headphones are also required for the students to listen to the playlists.

Timeline for Optimal Use:

Mid-Semester

Full Assignment Description:

This lesson plan can be used to teach rhetorical pathos through the making of playlists. It was created for a computer-enabled classroom, but could also work for a conventional classroom if students were able to bring in laptops.

Students must first acquire accounts on Spotify.com, a free music streaming service. This can be done at the previous class meeting, or, with instructions, as part of homework.

To prepare for this class, students write short persuasive essays on a topic of their choice and create Spotify playlists to accompany them, with the purpose of inducing emotions that will help persuade the reader to agree with the writer of the essay.

In class, the students listen to the playlists. One could combine any activity that wasn't overly distracting with listening to the music. I let them listen while doing whatever they would typically do on the computer while they listen to music -- allowing Facebook, Twitter, etc. This activity provides a sort of neutral starting point for the students as the playlist works on them, while alleviating the boredom that might come with solely listening to the music. Next, the students read their partner's persuasive essay. They then write a brief response describing how the playlist made them feel and how the essay used those emotions to persuade them. They email this response to the partner and the professor.

For homework, the students revise their persuasive essays to incorporate more emotional language, playing on the same feelings as the playlist songs.

Students enjoy making and listening to the playlists, and they also absorb the idea of inducing emotion in an audience as a persuasive tactic.

Suggestions for Instructor Preparation:

Ahead of time:

Become familiar with Spotify, so as to be able to answer student questions about how to use it.

In the class before the pathos activity:

Allow students 5-10 minutes in class to acquire Spotify accounts, or in, a non-computer classroom where they will bring laptops the next time, send them home with instructions on how to do so.
Assign the following homework:

Write a one-page persuasive essay on a topic of your choice.
Make a fifteen-minute Spotify playlist intended to induce feelings that will make a partner agree with your opinion on the topic.

In class:

Allow students 15 minutes to listen to the Spotify playlists.
Allow students about 45 minutes to read and respond to their partner's essay.
Assign students to revise the essay for homework, using language that plays on the same emotions the partners mentioned as effective in their responses.

Instructions For Students:

Joining Spotify:

Go to https://www.spotify.com/us/signup/
Fill in the information to create a free account
Click on "Sign Up" at the bottom of the page.

Homework to prepare for this lesson:

Write a one-page persuasive essay on a topic of your choice.
Make a fifteen-minute Spotify playlist intended to induce feelings that will make a partner agree with your opinion on the topic. Think about things like the tempo of the music, the content of the lyrics, the instrumentation. How do you want the music to affect your partner?
Bring your headphones with you to class next time.
[Non-computer classroom] Bring your laptop with you to class next time.

In class:

Listen to your partner's Spotify playlist. During this time, you may do whatever you normally do on the computer whie listening to music.
After you are finished listening to the playlist, read your partner's essay. Think about how you felt listening to the playlist and consider how it affects the way you read the essay.
Write a response to your partner's essay, detailing how the playlist made you feel and how it affected your reading of the essay. Consider what emotions were or were not effective in persuading you. Give your partner feedback on this so that they know what emotions to use in revising the persuasive essay. This is not the place to critique their opinion; your job is to help them argue more effectively.

Homework:

Revise your persuasive essay to incorporate emotional language as part of your persuasive technique. Consider the feedback your partner gave you about the emotions your playlist evoked and how they did or did not help persuade your partner to agree with you.

Evaluation Suggestions:

I did not evaluate this assignment, because the grade percentages on my syllabus did not include points for in-class assignments or homework, but only major writing assignments. In a course where homework counted for points, I would probably give a completion grade and feedback on the revised essays.

Notes on Reception, Execution, etc.:

Students enjoyed making and listening to the playlists. They seemed to absorb the idea of using emotion to persuade, but sometimes struggled to incorporate the feelings evoked by the musical media into their text. If I were teaching this lesson again, I would spend part of the preceding lesson analyzing how one or two texts used pathos. That way, students could have a better understanding of how pathos operates in texts before trying to use it themselves.

Course Type:

Introductory Writing Course

Course Description:

Rhetoric & Writing is a course in argumentation that situates rhetoric as an art of civic discourse. It is designed to enhance students ability to analyze the various positions held in any public debate and to advocate their own positions effectively. Students' work in this course will help them advance the critical writing and reading skills they will need to succeed in courses for their majors and university degrees.

Tags:

Logically Looking for the Perfect Beat

Cowan — Fri, 07 Mar 2014 19:41:36 +0000

Author:

Jake Cowan

Image Credit:

Puding Jahodovy

Brief Assignment Overview:

In this assignment, students learn to identify the objective musical elements that make up their favorite songs — and then become personal Pandoras for their peers.

Type of Assignment:

In-class Exercise

Assignment Length:

Single Class Period

Pedagogical Goals - Rhetoric:

Audience

Enthymemes

Logos

Pedagogical Goals - Digital Literacy:

Audio

Collaboration

Media Requirements:

Technology-Based Classroom (computers for each student)

Required Materials:

Instructors should ask each student to bring a pair of headphones or earbuds to class in order to listen to music without disturbing their neighbors. Each student should also come to class with a favorite piece of music already in mind.

Timeline for Optimal Use:

Useful Anytime

Full Assignment Description:

For most students, music is a major part of daily life: They listen to it in the car, when they do homework, as they walk to class (but hopefully not during). Very few students, however, actually play music, and very rarely do students consider why they might prefer one song over another. This exercise aims to help students articulate their preferences a little more clearly by encouraging students to think about a favorite song in terms of its objective qualities and the ways in which those components create an underlying logical structure. Additionally, this will help illustrate for students how the rhetorical term logos does not merely point to stastistics or facts, but refers to the ways in which those individual elements tie together to create a line of reasoning.

As a way of introduction, I like to show my students this video from TIME Magazine, which discusses how Pandora — the music streaming website — selects new songs for users to listen to. Later on in the project, students will be asked to act like mini-Pandoras for their classmates, so the video should help them to start thinking along those lines early. Once they have a picture of the overall exercise, I provide my students with general and simple definitions of the most basic components of any piece of music: Instrumentation, tempo, timbre, tone and form; we then discuss how those elements join together in particular ways to establish a genre. It's instructive to note that many styles of music share qualities — heavy metal and reggae, for example, both tend to have songs written in the sonata form (AABA) and played by simple rock instrumentation (guitar, bass, drumset, vocal) — but it's how those elements are strung together that define a song's genre.

Once the basic definitions are out of the way, the students should keep those terms in mind and note those elements as they listen to an example piece of music selected by the instructor. In my own classes, and based on my own preferences, I like to play upbeat dance music like "Treasure" by Bruno Mars — students have most likely heard the song before, and can generally think of a number of similar post-disco songs right off the bat. But the key is for the instructor to pick a piece that he or she really does enjoy, and one that is not too esoteric, in order for students then to be able to suggest other similar songs. As outlined in the Instructions for Students subsection, the individual objective elements should be identified as the students listen to the music; they can then offer their own ideas on what pieces might be a close match.

Having thus provided an example as a class, the instructor should then partner up the students and have the pairs each take to individual computers. Again, as outlined in the Instructions for Students subsection, each student will tell his or her partner of a favorite song, and then help them locate a version online. Repeating the same sort of exercise as they did with the instructor, the students will identify the objective components that make up the genre of their partner's song, and then suggest what they think is a similar song (and, again, locating a version online for their partner to hear). When all the pairings have finished the exercise, the instructor should ask them to share the results of the exercise — what song their partner gave them; what song they suggested in return and why; whether the partner liked the new song — with the rest of the class.

Suggestions for Instructor Preparation:

Before class, instructors should select their example carefully. There is often a generational divide between the instructor and her students, so they may not know many of the same songs. The instructor should thus try to play a more contemporary artist, and one that is relatively generic, in order to make the example easier to understand. Furthermore, having similar songs already in mind would help illustrate the ideas and stoke discussion. When I have done this exercise, I have played "Treasure" by Bruno Mars for my students, comparing the style and instrumentation to "Baby I'm Yours" by Breakbot (as well as this mashup by The White Panda).

Instructions For Students:

Whenever listening to a piece of music during this exercise — whether it's one that the instructor is playing, or a song shared by their peers — students should write down the objective musical elements that they hear. These include, but are not necessarily limited to:

Instrumentation (e.g., acoustic guitar, synthesizer, female lead vocals, drumset)
Song form (e.g., Verse-Chorus-Verse-Chorus-Bridge-Chorus)
Tempo and time signature
Timbre and tone (i.e., does it sound distorted and angry? slow and low?)
Finally: What genre do these elements suggest?

In the second half of class, the students will break into pairs. Each one will tell his or her partner one of their favorite pieces of music, and help the partner to locate a version to listen to on YouTube or Spotify (or possibly using their own iPod). After listening to the partner's piece of music once or twice and writing down the above components, each student should try to think of other songs they have heard before that have similar qualities. The students will then suggest those new comparable songs to their partners, assisting them in finding a version on YouTube or Spotify. Once they are both finished and have listened to the suggestions, the students should discuss with one another what they liked (and what they might not have liked) about the second songs, then share those results with the class.

Evaluation Suggestions:

This assignment is ungraded — all that matters is participation.

Notes on Reception, Execution, etc.:

Students have generally enjoyed this exercise, and are better prepared for later lessons on syllogisms, enthymemes and fallacies. Furthermore, once they have finished the assignment, I have noticed a few students logging on to Facebook to friend their partners, which helps to build a healthy class atmosphere for the rest of the semester.

Course Type:

Introductory Writing Course

Tags:

Using Music To Teach Sound Citation

Cowan — Mon, 28 Oct 2013 18:40:09 +0000

Author:

Jake Cowan

Image Credit:

Dave Hogan/Hulton Archive

Brief Assignment Overview:

During a discussion of proper citation guidelines, I play for my class a collection of rather infamous examples of musical plagiarism, illustrating for the students the nuances of knowing when to attribute to a source and when not.

Type of Assignment:

In-class Exercise

Assignment Length:

Single Class Period

Pedagogical Goals - Rhetoric:

Commonplaces

Pedagogical Goals - Literature:

Historical Context

Pedagogical Goals - Writing:

Citation

Plagiarism

Pedagogical Goals - Digital Literacy:

Media Requirements:

Media Console/Projector

Required Materials:

A set of speakers loud enough for the whole class to hear the examples easily and a device for playing music. Options for the latter include: a CD; a personal iPod; a list of YouTube videos; a Spotify playlist; a flash drive with individual files.

Timeline for Optimal Use:

Early in the Semester

Full Assignment Description:

While most students can tell you that plagiarism is wrong, few can tell you what it is. Ask them in class for examples and invariably they will tell you that “submitting someone else’s work as your own” is plagiarism. Instances more nuanced, and so more likely, rarely if ever get attention. Yet certainly college students have been taught the subject before in high school, and so would usually find a lesson on intellectual property theft dry, boring and repetitive. By presenting my students with new, engaging examples from a medium — popular music — from their daily lives, some of the more troublesome and subtle patterns can be addressed without sacrificing their attention.

The pieces I have used in class are organized to indicate varying levels of artistic culpability, intent and innocence regarding artistic theft; I begin with the most clear cut cuts — songs that lost a plagiarism lawsuit — then move into less obvious territory. The songs most helpful to my students, with relevant links and the concepts they mean to exemplify, are as follows:

• Queen & David Bowie, “Under Pressure” vs. Vanilla Ice, “Ice Ice Baby”

My first example highlights explicit, premeditated, egregious plagiarism. While sampling was (and remains) a common practice in hip-hop, what makes Vanilla Ice stand out from, say, MC Hammer’s use of Rick James, is how Ice failed (and even denied) crediting Queen/Bowie. (This clip really drives the point home: http://youtu.be/1s0hEi8zhmg?t=1m40s)

• George Harrison, “My Sweet Lord” vs. The Chiffons, “He’s So Fine”

In contrast to the previous pair, this example spotlights — in the words of the infamous court case — “subconscious plagiarism”; namely, how Harrison (an artist at the peak of his career) accidentally copied a much older song. While most students likely will not blatantly steal from another author, this reference shows that intent or even awareness does not always matter.

• Willie Dixon, “Hoochie Coochie Man” (performed by Muddy Waters) vs. Bo Diddley, “I’m A Man”

This case, on the other hand, calls attention to what I call “conventional knowledge”: elements of a genre that are so widespread and frequent that any attribution would be distracting and ridiculous. In terms of the blues, that would involve a riff like both Diddley and Dixon use; within US political discourse, it would be “conventional knowledge” that Republicans are conservative, needing no extra citation.

• Marvin Gaye, “Got To Give It Up (Part 1)” vs. Robin Thicke, “Blurred Lines”

Probably the illustration that gets the most engaged reaction from students, these songs, much like the previous example, show how pathos and logos (the dance-party feeling and the instrumentation, respectively) can be shared while the individuality remains intact.

• The Rolling Stones, “Lady Jane” vs. Neil Young, “Borrowed Tune”

What might have been the most flagrant case of theft is here spared of any charge of plagiarism not only because Young gave songwriting credit to Jagger/Richards, but because within the lyrics themselves, Young acknowledges that he is “singing a borrowed tune / [he] stole from the Rolling Stones.” If timed well, students can get a real kick out of this example.

Suggestions for Instructor Preparation:

Formulate a list of examples, noting specifically what sections of each track you want to play. For instance, you may only want to play the second and third verses of Neil Young’s “Borrowed Tune” (as mentioned above), in which case you’ll want to start the track around the 1:20 mark. A certain familiarity with music theory, in order to communicate exactly how the pieces are similar, might also be helpful for some instructors. Furthermore, knowing the history behind whatever examples you choose — such as whether or not a lawsuit was brought against an artist, and if so, who won — is highly illustrative; asking students whether or not they think George Harrison, for instance, lost his case also improves engagement.

Instructions For Students:

As with any class that primarily involves media examples, students should pay close attention to the music, taking note of whatever objective elements they hear. These could include: genre, instruments, speed, lyrics, time or key signature, etc. All of these elements play into what makes a record unique or derivative.

Evaluation Suggestions:

As an in-class group assignment, I graded my students on participation.

Notes on Reception, Execution, etc.:

Typically, students enjoy breaks from the routine of reading, and can become very engaged when the material under observation is something that is a part of their daily life, like pop music is. Generally speaking, they are often surprised by the outcomes of certain cases (like the George Harrison or Robin Thicke instances above), which broadens their understanding of exactly what counts as theft and what may not. As it is, few of my students who have participated in this lesson have had any issue with properly citing their sources.

Course Type:

Introductory Writing Course

Tags: