DWRL Lesson Plans - Clarity

Teaching Orwell's Six Points of Style with CritiqueIt

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

Author:

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:

Single Class Period

Pedagogical Goals - Rhetoric:

Pedagogical Goals - Literature:

Pedagogical Goals - Writing:

Pre-Writing

Style

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:

Technology-Based Classroom (computers for each student)

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:

Introductory Writing Course

Course Description:

RHE 306 – Rhetoric & Writing is a course in argumentation that situates rhetoric as an art of civic discourse. It is designed to enhance your ability to analyze the various positions held in any public debate and to advocate your own position effectively. Your work in this course will help you advance the critical writing and reading skills you will need to succeed in courses for your major and university degree.

Tags:

Visualizing Word Choice with Lexipedia

gianfagna — Fri, 17 Feb 2012 17:10:08 +0000

Author:

Megan Varelmann Gianfagna

Image Credit:

Screen shot of Lexipedia entry for "choice"

Brief Assignment Overview:

This assignment focuses on using a visual thesaurus to illustrate the nuanced relationships among words that the list form of the traditional thesaurus glosses over. It asks students to use Lexipedia to evaluate the word choices they’ve made in their essays and to revise for more precise rhetorical effect.

Type of Assignment:

Class Discussion

In-class Exercise

Assignment Length:

Partial Class Period

Pedagogical Goals - Rhetoric:

Style

Topoi

Pedagogical Goals - Literature:

Word Choice

Pedagogical Goals - Writing:

Pedagogical Goals - Digital Literacy:

Visualization

Additional Pedagogical Goals:

The primary goal of the exercise is to help students revise their essays at the word level to more precisely communicate their ideas. It suggests to them that while a thesaurus can help get them thinking, not all words listed as synonyms convey the same meaning. It asks them to think critically about the reference materials they use and about how careless word choice can affect their authorial ethos.

Media Requirements:

Adaptable For Use Without Classroom Technology

Media Console/Projector

Technology-Based Classroom (computers for each student)

Required Materials:

Internet-connected computers are necessary for students to look up words drawn from their own essays. However, the instructor could select a few examples and present them to students either with one media console or in handout form and ask them to do the revision portion of the exercise outside of class.

Timeline for Optimal Use:

Useful Anytime

Full Assignment Description:

This in-class assignment is part of a larger clarifying writing workshop I do with students to help them revise their essays. I have used it with mapping essays, rhetorical analysis essays, and proposal essays but imagine it can be applied to a wide range of assignments. I begin the activity in class with a discussion based on a few examples of “synonyms” from a particular thesaurus entry. I ask students to think about the different connotations each word has and how they might change the meaning of a sentence. Then I ask students to pair up and answer questions about another word and the synonyms the traditional thesaurus offers for it. We discuss how the list form the thesaurus offers implies that synonyms are equivalent in meaning. Then I show them the visual thesaurus Lexipedia, ask them to look up the same word, and have them discuss how the representations of its relationship to the other words in the entry differs from the traditional thesaurus. Finally, I ask them to turn to their essay drafts to identify words that aren’t appropriate and/or that aren’t pulling their rhetorical weight and revise accordingly.

Suggestions for Instructor Preparation:

The Lexipedia site is a simple interface, and students and instructors will likely get comfortable using it in just a few minutes. Prior to class, the instructor might just familiarize him/herself with the color code for parts of speech and word relationships as well as the distinction the site makes between “fuzzynyms” and synonyms. Instructors might identify a few commonly misused words in the students’ drafts and use those examples when demonstrating the difference between the traditional and the visual thesaurus. Also, if the instructor wants students to begin revising in class, s/he will need to arrange for students to bring an electronic or hard copy of their essays.

Instructions For Students:

Step 1

As a class, let’s discuss the following examples of synonyms. Specifically, what do each of these “synonyms” uniquely contribute to the sentence?

Ex. 1: I’m going home. vs. I’m going to the house.  

Ex. 2: He acts cocky. vs. He acts confident.   

What different connotations does each word in these “synonym” sets have?

Ex. 3: Slender/skinny/scrawny

Ex. 4: Careful/stingy/thrifty

Step 2

With a partner, look up one of the following words in the dictionary: friend, snub or suggest. Then choose three synonyms and list the associations you have with each one. How do they compare? What are differences in meaning you can find (even tiny ones)? Write 3 sentences using at least one of the words in each.

Step 3

Now look up the same word in Lexipedia. Based on the entry it provides, what do you make of the relationship among your word and the synonyms you examined in Step 2? Think about the distance shown between words as well as the way they are grouped and the way they are color-coded. Does Lexipedia show words that the traditional thesaurus didn’t? Does it leave out words the traditional thesaurus included?

Step 4

Look at your essay and mark words that you aren’t sure express your ideas as well as they could. What does the word you choose in revision need to express differently? Use the visual thesaurus to see if you can find a more suitable word.

Evaluation Suggestions:

I use the Learning Record, so I provide feedback but not grades on student work. I gauge student success with this activity (and with the larger clarifying writing workshop) by the improvement their subsequent drafts show.

Notes on Reception, Execution, etc.:

This activity gets mentioned often both in student Learning Records and in course evaluations as something that was effective in helping them become more aware of their diction. They report that they enjoy discussing their relationship with the thesaurus (most commonly one built on frequent and hurried interactions) and using the visual thesaurus to explore relationships among words.

Course Type:

Intermediate Writing Course

Introductory Writing Course

Course Description:

RHE 309K – Rhetoric of Going Viral examines how events, stories and bits of culture are born, spread and reimagined online. We think and write critically about what makes these visual, verbal, and aural texts popular, what makes them persuasive, and how their purpose and message change as they move across media and venue. As we call into question traditional notions of authorship, audience, and argument through ongoing research of popular and scholarly sources, we examine a range of digital texts—from Facebook posts to blogs, YouTube videos to online news articles. As we examine these digital phenomena, we identify patterns of movement, rhetorical structures and stakeholders that help us better navigate the vast world in which we create and consume digital arguments.

Tags: