DWRL Lesson Plans - Jake Cowan

No Classroom Technology Required

Multimedia

Media Requirements:

Required Materials:

This plan lasts for multiple class periods and uses a number of different, though readily accessible, technologies. At different points, the students will need to: (1) Bring hardcopy versions of a paper they’ve written into class; (2) Have at-home access to virtual classroom technology like Canvas or Blackboard; (3) Have a set-up a personal account for a class-associated blog. While none of the particular lesson plans require classroom technology, students will need to have regular access to the Internet to fully participate.

Timeline for Optimal Use:

Mid-Semester

Full Assignment Description:

There are a lot of reasons that peer review can be helpful, for students and for their instructor both, not least of which is the way that peer review can shift responsibility for stronger, sharper writing from a vertical and hierarchical model to a more horizontal and democratic one. This set of assignments allows students to not only participate in and benefit from peer review exercises, but begin to think critically about the value and process of social revision while increasing their skill set with digital technology. What follows are instructions for peer review for three different papers, which could be written back-to-back or spread across an entire semester. By no means do the papers need to be of any particular genre (research, advocacy, etc.) or any specific length or even have any particular relationship to one another; rather, what matters for the purposes of this plan is that the writing would benefit from peer review, whether that be in terms of grammar or rhetoric or what have you.

The first peer review exercise is the most traditional: Students should bring in their finished papers the day the essays are due (or perhaps just before). In self-selected pairs or trios, students should pass the papers around, in the margins attempting to answer whatever specific goals the instructor might set, for brief face-to-face discussion at the end of class. These might include:

Correcting any/all mechanical errors
Summarizing the basic argument in 3–4 sentences
Noting the strongest/weakest passage and articulating why it is so strong/weak

In the second exercise, students will utilize the peer review functionality of some virtual classroom software — say, Canvas or Blackboard — to read through and comment on the papers of a couple of their classmates, this time grouped randomly. Such software offer a range of different markup tools, including line-by-line annotations and multicolor highlighters, that suggest a number of inventive possibilities: Perhaps all spelling errors can be highlighted blue and all run-ons red; or, if the students have completed a typical rhetorical analysis, whatever sections deal with pathos might be in green and those with ethos in yellow. The instructor might even encourage students to explore possibilities only afforded by digital technology, such as using reaction gifs at points in the marginalia.
For the final exercise, students will upload an abbreviated version of their paper to a class-associated blog; once every essay is online, students will leave their feedback as comments on (at least two) individual posts. To maintain anonymity while still being able to tell who is who, you might want to allow students to use their initials in place of their actual names — or have a little more fun with it and allow students to create their own username. Leaving specific feedback will no doubt be more difficult at this stage, so the comments will likely be general if left to their own impulses, but for the purposes of experimentation students might be encouraged to devise their own way to note particularly jarring typos or specific points of interest.

Once the whole set of exercises have been explored, the class should discuss the benefits and failures of each type of technology, in effect reviewing their own peer reviewing: Which did they find easiest to use? Which was most helpful?

Suggestions for Instructor Preparation:

Aside from carefully considering and directly stating the peer review goals for each assignment, instructors should themselves be able to help students should they have any questions on how to use the technology — and trust me, they will. Hence it is useful to spend some time in class walking through the functionality of a virtual classroom or how to post a paper directly to a blog. As such, the instructor should have the blog as ready as possible well before the time those papers will be due, so that students have an idea of how their work will look online.

Instructions For Students:

Peer review is most productive when students have explicit goals and questions to strive for and answer. What students should look for and comment on depends, of course, on the type of assignment and the person of the instructor; it might be interesting, however, if the same goals are set for each type of review, so that students have a fuller sense of how the differing technologies affect their ability to read and review, to comment and correct. They might note how the anonymity of a blog sometimes encourages less tactful criticism and fewer line edits — which raises the point that students, when doing peer review, should always be mindful of their classmates’ feelings and respectful of differing opinions or skill levels.

Evaluation Suggestions:

It can be somewhat of a headache to evaluate someone else ability to evaluate, so I would suggest grading on participation or including the peer review as part of a paper’s final grade.

Course Type:

Advanced Writing Course

Intermediate Writing Course

Course Description:

This assignment was originally designed for a class on the rhetoric of the digital divide, and the various peer reviews were spread across an entire semester.

Advertising Agency

Cowan — Mon, 29 Sep 2014 20:13:29 +0000

Author:

Image Credit:

Imaginary Forces

Brief Assignment Overview:

Help your students realize when they're being advertised to by helping them turn the tables on the Don Drapers of the Internet.

Type of Assignment:

Homework Assignment

Assignment Length:

One-Two Class Periods

Pedagogical Goals - Rhetoric:

Pedagogical Goals - Digital Literacy:

Adaptable For Use Without Classroom Technology

Open Access Software

Visualization

Media Requirements:

Required Materials:

As part of their preliminary research outside of the classroom, students doing this assignment will need to participate on at least one social media platform, such as Facebook or Twitter. While the actual assignment is designed so that every student has access to a computer in the classroom (laptops would suffice), it could easily be adapted to only use pen and paper.

Timeline for Optimal Use:

Mid-Semester

Full Assignment Description:

From the minute we wake up to when we fall asleep — and probably while we dream — we are the objects of advertisements. Even if we have long gone without a TV, we are advertised to constantly through the social networking sites we use daily. Ads are on our Facebook pages, in our Twitter feeds, alongside our Google searches — and not only are they impossible to escape, but they seem to hauntingly follow us around like the eyes of the Mona Lisa. In the era of big data, advertising agencies know just about everything there is to know about you: Your age, your gender, your relationship status, your likes and dislikes; and increasingly websites curate your experience based on those statistics. This assignment aims to help students recognize those rhetorical structures telling them to buy buy buy by helping them flip the tables and write their own ads.

This assignment consists of two parts:

A brief homework assignment to be completed the night before. In a one-page paper, students will need to make note of various personalized ads directed at/to them on either Facebook or Twitter. Each student must catalogue at least 4 of these, with at least one screenshot included in the text itself for clarity. The should summarize, in just a few words, what product each ad is for, the visual content of the advertisement, and the overall message. They should then try to identify trends between the ads and any rhetorical strategies these miniature texts might be employing to convince you to click on them. Finally, the students should spend a paragraph reflecting on what the ads suggest about the object's specific ethos, at least in the eyes of the companies mining your data and selecting these ads. Speculatively, what might someone assume about the viewer of these ads having never met him or her before? Who do these admen think the student really is? Are they right? What did they miss and what did they hit on the head?
An in-class exercise that utilizes classroom technology to create personalized ads. At the beginning of class, students should pair up and share their one-page papers, taking a few minutes to discuss the details of the ads, what they missed, and what their partner liked (or didn't) about these particular posts. After the brief one-on-one meeting, the students should again break up, moving to computers in order to create a new ad for their partner as would appear on a Facebook or Twitter page. The new ad should be highly visual, so the students should use a site like PicMonkey or Canva to design the perfect piece of content; should there be no computers or too few, pen and paper would be sufficient. Based on their discussions, each student should decide on what product their partner would likely want to buy, how it can be presented in order to make it more enticing, and which social media site it would make most sense to appear on. Once they are finished, the students should somehow share their work with their partners, discussing what they had in mind and why they made the choices they did; the partner should likewise talk about whether or not they find this particular ad engaging — if it were on Facebook, would they click 'Like'?

Suggestions for Instructor Preparation:

Other than preparing for the above, which would include familiarizing oneself with sites like Canva or PicMonkey, instructors should prepare a short introductory lecture on the rhetorical principles behind advertising campaigns. Rhetorical analyzing ads can be highly instructive, since their message always boils down to the same injunction: buy this product. Of course, there are a number of strategies that ads utilize to make that argument — humor, nostalgia, subconcious familiarity (i.e., Coke making ads so that people think of their product first to quench their thirst). A short video clip like this clip from Buzzfeed might help, or show a few famous ads and discuss those with your students.

Instructions For Students:

The closer that students pay attention to the ads that show up on their social networking sites, and the more they consider what might have prompted this particular content, the more interesting this assignment will be. Did she search for anything recently that would suggest she like watching horror movies? Did he click 'Like' on anything or follow anyone new that would suggest that he likes eating at Chili's? What ads do you like, and what about them makes those ads memorable? Additionally, when it comes to creating ads, students shouldn't worry about whether or not their partner needs an item — trust me, agencies don't worry about that at all — but how to make what you're selling appear indispensable and interesting. For additional and helpful reading, students might find this recent NYTimes article on Facebook ads worthwhile.

Evaluation Suggestions:

As with most in-class assignments, I pay attention more to participation than to the success of the assignment — whether or not someone would actually be convinced to buy a product based off of one of these ads shouldn't factor in to the grading rubric. Creativity and critical insight matter more than the productive part of the assignment.

Course Type:

Intermediate Writing Course

Course Description:

This assignment was originally designed for a class on the rhetoric of the digital divide, which included a unit on what has been called the "filter bubble."

Figuring Out Rhetorical Figures

Cowan — Thu, 17 Apr 2014 15:58:19 +0000

Author:

Image Credit:

Ed Stevenhagen

Brief Assignment Overview:

This assignment uses online resources (Wiktionary or Silva Rhetoricae) to introduce students first hand to different rhetorical figures.

Type of Assignment:

Assignment Length:

Single Class Period

Pedagogical Goals - Rhetoric:

Style

Pedagogical Goals - Literature:

Pedagogical Goals - Writing:

Style

Adaptable For Use Without Classroom Technology

Media Requirements:

Required Materials:

Preferrably a computer for each student group, although with sufficient instructor preparation, the exercise could be done with simply pen and paper, or even orally.

Timeline for Optimal Use:

Useful Anytime

Full Assignment Description:

There are hundreds of rhetorical figures, some not well distinguished from the rest, and each with an impossible to remember, overly technical name. Yet learning a range of figures is invaluable to eloquent, persuasive, and swift writing. Knowing how to "rhetoricize" — an example of anthimeria — a sentence helps to speed up the composition process, and produces far more articulate and convincing texts. This assignment gives students an introduction to some of the most useful figures without delving into a lecture format.

The first thing to do is break up students into groups of 2 or 3, sending each set to a computer. Throughout the exercise, they will utilize the resources of either Wiktionary or Silva Rhetoricae to look up the defintion and examples of each term. Once the students are settled, the instructor should give the class as a whole an example sentence to manipulate throughout the assignment with each of the rhetorical figures. In my own class, we have a running joke about my pompadour, so the sentence I have used is:

Jake has a big problem — he ran out of hair gel this morning, and so his pompadour has fallen flat.

Next, give each group a single rhetorical figure to look up. They should write down the definition, any examples the website gives, and then rewrite the example sentence employing the rhetorical figure. After a few minutes, the groups will turn around and present their work to the class as a whole, providing the definition of the term and their own example. Once the first round is finished, the instructor should give each group a new figure of speech, and the process should be repeated. In my own classes, I have always tried to give each group 4 different figures throughout the time period.

In previous classes, I have used the following list of schemes and tropes:

Schemes / Changes in Arrangement — alliteration; anastrophe; anaphora; asyndeton; chiasmus; epistrophe; isocolon; synonymia

Tropes / Changes in Meaning — antanaclasis; anthimeria; anthypophora; antonomasia; hyperbole; metaphor; proslepsis; synecdoche

So, for example, using proslepsis to rewrite the aforementioned example sentence, the students might produce something like: It would be as poor form as the shape of Jake's pomp to point out what a problem his running out of hair gel has become. Or, to use antonomasia: The Instructor has a big problem — he ran out of Dapper Dan's, and so his pompadour has fallen flat.

Suggestions for Instructor Preparation:

Before class, the instructor would need to both decide on a list of rhetorical figures for the students to look up and work with, as well as devise an example sentence to be manipulated. The flexibility of the latter is crucial, so the instructor should try to re-work the sentence on her own with each figure before class meets.

Instructions For Students:

Once you have accessed either Wiktionary or Silva Rhetoricae, simply look up each term that the instructor gives your group. Write down whatever definition the website gives, any examples, and then use the term to rewrite the example sentence. When finished, present your work to the class.

Evaluation Suggestions:

This is an ungraded assignment. All that matters is worthwhile and engaged participation. However, I do ask that all future papers after this exercise is finished consciously incorporate more rhetorical figures, which I do look for and grade accordingly.

Notes on Reception, Execution, etc.:

So long as the example sentence is in and of itself somewhat interesting, my students have always found this a fun and worthwhile exercise.

Course Type:

Tags:

Logically Looking for the Perfect Beat

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

Author:

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:

Assignment Length:

Single Class Period

Pedagogical Goals - Rhetoric:

Audience

Enthymemes

Logos

Pedagogical Goals - Digital Literacy:

Audio

Technology-Based Classroom (computers for each student)

Media Requirements:

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:

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Using Music To Teach Sound Citation

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

Author:

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:

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:

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Locating Bias Within A Dictionary

Cowan — Fri, 06 Sep 2013 06:33:54 +0000

Author:

Image Credit:

Sir Joshua Reynolds

Brief Assignment Overview:

In the course of discussing David Foster Wallace’s essay “Tense Present,” I asked my students to compare and contrast the entries for various questionable or controversial words — such as “irregardless” and “hopefully” — in a few competing online dictionaries.

Type of Assignment:

Class Discussion

Oxford English Dictionary (OED)

Assignment Length:

Partial Class Period

Pedagogical Goals - Rhetoric:

Ideology

Pedagogical Goals - Literature:

Pedagogical Goals - Writing:

Research

Pedagogical Goals - Digital Literacy:

Adaptable For Use Without Classroom Technology

Presentations

Additional Pedagogical Goals:

Critical Thinking & Controversy Mapping

Media Requirements:

Technology-Based Classroom (computers for each student)

Required Materials:

A classroom with a number of computers that have internet access for students to use in groups. An OED account, whether personal or provided by the university, would also be useful. If no computers are available, however, using traditional hardcopy dictionaries is always an option.

Timeline for Optimal Use:

Early in the Semester

Full Assignment Description:

From grade school on, students have been told by teachers to look up proper spellings and nuanced definitions in dictionaries. Rarely, if ever, have those students given a second thought to (or been told to question) which dictionary they picked off the shelf. The specific aim of this assignment is to help students locate bias, controversy, and differing positions in what ostensibly seems like a matter-of-fact, trustworthy source. More generally, I want my students to consider the complexity and importance of high-level writing beyond the level of content, at the simplest level of word choice.

To begin with, I introduce the “descriptivist” and “prescriptivist” dichotomy of lexicographical camps to my students, using the Wallace essay mentioned above to guide the discussion. Together we consider why language users — from lexicographers to future employers, their rhetoric professor and their peers — might have a stake in either side of the “usage wars.” Briefly, we walk through the history of the controversy, and list ways in which a student’s use of certain words, styles and spelling conventions might affect her personally. If any ESL or bilingual students are a part of the class, I ask them to compare and contrast the rules of English usage with those of, say, Spanish or German.

At the end of the discussion, I divide my students into small groups and assign them individual dictionaries to explore (see Instructions for Students below). At no point do I indicate which might be “descriptivist” and which could be considered “prescriptivist.” The students take about 10 minutes with their groups to research and then they relay the results to the rest of the class. Once a certain amount of factual information has been presented, I ask the students to make educated guesses as to the various ideologies and positions of their dictionaries.

Suggestions for Instructor Preparation:

Prior to class, I organized a list of controversial words that I thought would be illustrative, and researched their respective entries in each dictionary, taking note of what I wanted my students to look for when they were given the chance.

Instructions For Students:

Students should break apart into small groups, each with their own computer. Provide each group with the URL for a particular dictionary, such as:

American Heritage Dictionary
Merriam Webster
Oxford English Dictionary (an account will be needed for access)
Wiktionary

(If you are feeling adventurous and don’t mind rather vulgar language, Urban Dictionary makes for an interesting counterpart to the more traditional sites.)

Once the sites are loaded, each group should look up a short list of controversial words. In my class, we explored the entries for:

Irregardless
Literally
Hopefully
Infer

Using either a word processor or a pen and paper, the students take notes on different aspects of each entry, answering a few questions raised in our earlier discussion. These include:

Are there usage notes, and if so, what is the tone?
Which definitions are given priority as the primary?
How is the etymology of each word presented?

After about 10 minutes, the class will reconvene and discuss the findings with their peers. When each entry in turn has been considered, the students hypothesize which dictionaries might be traditionally labelled as “descriptivist” and which could be thought of as “prescriptivist.” Although the dictionaries claim a certain amount of objective authority, students should dig through the minor details to find where bias is buried.

Evaluation Suggestions:

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

Notes on Reception, Execution, etc.:

My students — a collection of freshmen and sophomores with non-writing majors — seemed surprised at the variety of dictionaries available, as well as the variance between each. None could name a particular one that they had used with any consistency in past assignments, nor had they considered that a dictionary could have bias. Interestingly, the user-generated entries on Urban Dictionary — which we had predicted to be the most permissive and forgiving of the choices — were in fact the harshest, strictest and most pejorative.

Course Type: