Teachers's Working Schedule, so far as it goes...
Working Schedule: Foundations of Verbal Communication I & II, 2006-07
Fall 2006: FVC 101
September
(Note to instructors: M/W classes begin wk 1 on 6 ix 06, and the academic week is W/M, not M/W, until the time of Thanksgiving Break. This is a pain in the ass, but it is the way the schedule works. Lobby for a later start to the semester by one week and a full week Thanksgiving break to remove this onus, which does not effect T/Th and W/F)
You may want to assign the oral presentations for October as soon as you have a stable roster; see below (under "October", of all things).
wk 1: 5 ix 06 Tu Introductions
Six Questions: Have students write out on one side of an index card three questions they would use in "interviewing" fellow students in an introductory setting; have them label these "student"; on the other side of the same card, have them write out three questions they would use in "interviewing" an instructor in the same context; have them label these "instructor". Collect and shuffle the cards, and use the questions to interview students later in the session; have students ask other students’s questions of me. Briefly discuss the differences between the two sets of questions. This is an ice-breaker for the course, but also an introduction to the differences between oral and written communication, the rhetorical situation as applied to different audiences, interviewing format, and the need for good handwriting as well as good projection and enunciation.
Blog Introduction or Pen Pal Letter and Obituary: Have students write an informal self-introduction. Then, have them write an obituary for themselves – as though they died today (i.e. this is to be factual, not a fantasy of a rich life as the next Dali, dying sometime in the 22nd century); this is to be formal. Collect both exercises for your own information (make copies and return the originals). This exercise should go together with "Six Questions"; it helps students to focus on how they wish to present themselves, and illustrates the distinction between informal and formal writing, so well as they can make that distinction at this point.
Distribute and have students read (aloud) the course syllabus.
Assignment for next class session: read Faigley 2-6; Tolkien 100-120 ("Leaf by Niggle"; for comparison with Balzac’s "Unknown Masterpiece").
7 ix 06 Th Introductions, continued; the rhetorical situation; the three purposes for verbal communication identified in Faigley (20,21): continue to interview students using the exercises from last class. Discuss the rhetorical situation, presenting the rhetorical triangle and the terms pathos, ethos, and logos (Faigley presents them in this order, but hardly uses them after the first chapter. If you are happy with the Greek terms and will use them consistently afterwards, use them in class; if they are uncomfortable to you, I think I would just skip them entirely and use English circumlocutions). Discuss the three purposes for verbal communication identified in Faigley (20,21), and ask the students to identify which of these they may have used thus far in the course – and whether the syllabus represents anything different. (Probably, the students’s presentations have been only reflective [their questions and pen-pal letters or blog introductions] or informative [answers and obituaries]; they may argue that these are persuasive; ask them to show in what way this is so. The syllabus is certainly informative, but perhaps also persuasive.)
Assignment for next class session: Faigley 7-21.
wk 2: 12 ix 06 Tu: Words, Images, and Graphics; Marking Texts
Handout on marking texts (underlining, preparing marginal notes, etc.); sample text marking
Assignment for next class session: Faigley 22-36; Orwell, "Why" 1-10.
14 ix 06 Th: Discuss whether Orwell’s essay "Why I Write" could be presented non-verbally. Reflective writing exercise: Compose a short essay responding to the questions: Why do you engage in the artistic work you do? In what way is your motivation for your artwork like Orwell’s motivation to write? When your work is not the best, why do you think that is?
Instruct students in the art of composing an essay from questions without merely answering the questions. The questions should be restated and included in the response, so that anyone reading the essay knows what is happening in the essay.
Collect the essays and make two copies of each for future use.
As an instructor, you may wish to look at chapter 8 in Faigley. My experience of working with this chapter last year was a living Hell which I do not wish to repeat, but it seems to me that there may be some redeeming material here. If you had a different experience, perhaps you can share that with me and give me some pointers. Reflective writing is supposed to be a major element of our curriculum; "reflective writing" is a hot buzz-phrase with MSCHE, and so we should try to make some accommodation to it. I’m surprised how on the one hand students are very happy to provide autobiography at the wrong times and how on the other they resist thinking about themselves and recording that experience. Perhaps it’s too much like therapy.
Assignment for next class session: Tolkien 100-120 ("Leaf by Niggle"; for comparison with Balzac’s "Unknown Masterpiece".
wk 3: 19 ix 06 Tu: Writing Essay Examinations; Planning and Drafting; Comparative essay on "The Unknown Masterpiece" and "Leaf by Niggle"
The students have now written several short pieces. Now it is time to consider the frequent role of writing in college: essay examinations. Review Faigley 827-831 in class; have students read sections out loud and discuss. This also brings students to physically open to the back of the book; point out the glossary, the index, and the section on grammar, as well as the revision guide and "list of common errors" in the flyleaf. Have students dog-ear or otherwise mark the sections for frequent use.
In his chapter on "Planning and Drafting" (38-62), Faigley presents similar information: in "establishing goals" he talks about key words in assignments, and how those key words may be used to define topics.
Note how Tolkien presents his topics, but not his conclusions or "theses" about fiction on page 33.
Define topic versus thesis; discuss ways of developing a topic, and how to develop a thesis from the topic.
This differs from year to year and some section to section, but some students have difficulty in generating topics. My own theory is that once one has a topic and knows something about it, the creation of a thesis and of a workable outline from the same is a fairly mechanical matter.
As an exercise in the learning just presented, take an established topic – a comparison of "The Unknown Masterpiece" and "Leaf by Niggle" and generate a series of sub-topics which can be further predicated to create theses.
Use "The Unknown Masterpiece" and "Leaf By Niggle" as the basis for a comparison ("compare and contrast" – although technically contrast is a kind of comparison) essay which can then be taken through the stages of structuring and revision.
Schedule about half of the class session for drafting of a brief essay comparing these short stories.
Assignment for next class session: Faigley 38-62; Tolkien 33 (as example of topic and thesis).
Like most of the assignments in the first half of this course, the readings assigned here have already been examined in class; asking the students to read them afterward allows them to find more detail than was experienced in the initial presentation. It is also useful to assign material which will be discussed before the discussion, and you will see below that I do this as well.
21 ix 06 Th Composing Paragraphs: Examples from Orwell’s "The Lion and the Unicorn" and "Politics and the English Language".
Assignment for students: Faigley enumerates seven types of paragraphs; you will prepare a brief oral presentation on one type of paragraph (as assigned) and also compose an example of the paragraph style as part of the larger essay on Balzac and Tolkien. These will be presented in class next time.
Faigley enumerates seven types of paragraphs; assign one type to each of the students and have them each prepare notes for a brief oral presentation on the type of paragraph and also compose an example of the paragraph style as part of the larger essay on Balzac and Tolkien. These will be presented in class next time. Have rubrics ready to assess the oral presentations! Collect the paragraphs and copy for the files. Have students work in small groups to rewrite the paragraphs using the strategies from 75-85.
Assignment for next class session: Faigley 63-86.
wk 4: 26 ix Tu Continue to work on redrafting the comparative essay using Faigley’s instructions (75-93). Submit reworked draft.
Assignment for next class session: Faigley 87-92.
Of course, the first part of the class session will be spent on the oral presentations of paragraph styles. That should take about forty minutes all told. Beyond that, this class period and the next are essentially student work days during the class session. I am available to assist, but fundamentally students should be working on their own. I would suggest reviewing the instructions in Faigley and preparing a rubric from them, so that the students have a kind of checklist for their work. This is crude and mechanical, but there is a technical side to writing which shouldn’t be denied.
Speaking of the technical side of writing, one of the curious features of the student course evaluations every semester is the set of four questions at the bottom of the evaluation dealing with, amongst other matters, critical thinking and development of technical capacity. Since, as we know, many of our students perceive the College as a trade school, their notion of "technical" is often limited to their major field of study. By using the term "technical" here, and by using it frequently to refer to operations within verbal communications, it is just possible that we will start to have more useful scoring in the year-end reviews, rather than the mark of "not applicable" for "helped me to improve my technical capacities" for a course in study skills, listening, speaking, reading, and writing!
28 ix 06 Th Reviewing other students’s work (using Faigley 93-102). Submit drafts with comments.
Assignment for next class session: Faigley 93-102.
Here again, I think a translation of the three-part process advocated by Faigley on pages 93-102 into a rubric or check-list students can use in preparing their reviews would speed the process along. Distribute copies of students’s work collected after the last session, or make copies for distribution at the beginning of this class period. If you have the unhappy situation of an odd number of students, do the review yourself for one of the students, and make two copies of one students’s work to be reviewed to give to the "odd" student. I hope that last is clear.
The essays reviewed have already been graded as draft revisions; what is to be assessed of the material submitted today is not the student writers’s work, but the student reviewers’s. This must be evaluated quickly so that the reviewed essays may be returned to the writers for further revision.
October
Beginning the 10th of October, we will experience a series of oral presentations on material from Faigley 514-578. Assignments are to be made in the first week of October. Each student will be responsible for the material in one section in Faigley; the presentations will be scored on the basic of informational accuracy, clarity of organization, projection and enunciation, and so on. I distribute rubrics for the presentations when I make the assignments.
The sections I have in mind for oral presentation are as follows:
1. Write with power: Action words; verbs; name agents – Faigley 514-522.
2. Write with power: Vary your sentences; project personality – 522-525.
3. Write concisely: Eliminate unnecessary words; reduce wordy phrases – 526-531.
4. Write concisely: simplify tangled sentences – 532-534.
5. Write with emphasis: Manage emphasis in sentence; forge links across sentences – 535-540.
6. Write with emphasis: Use parallel structure with parallel ideas; use parallels in lists; use parallels in paragraphs – 541-545.
7. Find the right words: Recognize varieties of English; be aware of levels of formality – 546-553.
8. Find the right words: Be aware of denotation & connotation; use specific language; use effective figurative language – 553-563.
9. Write to be inclusive: Be aware of stereotypes; be inclusive about gender, race, ethnicity, & other differences – 564-572.
10. Write for diverse audiences: Understand English as a global language; respect differences in language and culture – 573-577.
11. Write for diverse audiences – Use accessible language – 577-578.
This only gives 11 students oral presentations, without repetition. Repetition would not necessarily be bad, but I want to keep the presentations moderately fresh, so here are some other presentations that I would be inclined to make at some point but students could do.
1. Subject-verb agreement: Faigley 615-629.
2. Fragments, run-ons, and comma-splices: 602-614.
3. Quotation marks: 737-746.
4. Punctuation other than quotation marks: 747-760.
5. Capitalization and italics: 774-781.
6. Abbreviations, acronyms, and numbers: 783-790.
These, of course, will take some time to present each day – perhaps ten minutes. I suggest not more than two a day, although you will have to consider how to fit them all into the schedule. Generally speaking, such presentations are not much longer than three minutes – they might go as long as five. You will need to be familiar with the material presented yourself to assess the substantive content, but probably a half sheet of notes would cover what is needed – or you could refer to the text. What I would like the students to do is to go beyond the words of the textbook, to grasp the concepts for themselves, and to present them cogently and clearly. I am concerned not only that the students presenting have an experience of public speaking and the rest of the students have an experience of listening, but that the material from the text is presented without me being the lecturer.
wk 5: 3 x 06 Tu: Critical Reading and Viewing; Fallacies
Assignment for next class session: Faigley 104-116; Orwell, "Why" 102-120; Using the reviews of your work, prepare a final draft of your essay comparing the Balzac and Tolkien short stories.
Hopefully, you will have evaluated (graded) the material submitted the last class session, and can return it – in this session, examine the problems of faulty thinking and consider how examples thereof may be corrected.
Faigley gives a fine introduction to fallacies; I have also prepared handouts on fallacies which I would be willing to share if I can locate them. Irving Copi’s Logic (or in later editions Introduction to Logic; also his Informal Logic) provides an excellent resource for the study of fallacies; I have several editions in the Liberal Arts office. The specialists on the business of fallacies are logicians, and one should not hesitate to turn to textbooks on logic for information about fallacies. However, one caveat: like any specialists, logicians have made the study of the specialty so detailed as to be daunting to the uninitiated. What one must look for are the broad classes of fallacies, rather than the particular varieties. But do cover all the basic classes. Orwell’s analysis of writing faults in "Politics and the English Language" is brilliant; notably, it parallels the analysis of Strunk and White in Elements of Style.
5 x 06 Th: submit final draft of comparative essay; Analysis:
Questions for rhetorical analysis applied to Orwell, "Why I Write" and "Politics and the English Language".
The questions here alluded to are on 119-120 of Faigley. This is an excellent opportunity to discuss the distinction between an historical understanding of rhetorical analysis and a "reader-response" approach. For example, to answer the second batch of questions, "Who is the audience?" the respondent must have some notion of the social and political context of England in the 1930s or ‘40s. But the audience (readers) of Orwell’s writing are also American recent high-school graduates in 2006: what is their experience of reading Orwell. Do not allow the students to concentrate only on their own experience, however. They will do that anyway. Try to get them to think about what is required to understand Orwell in context, that is, in his own historical present. Don’t just hand them the answer (i.e. no need for a period-long lecture on the details of the decline of the Empire under George VI); have them consider how the answer may be constructed – facilitate their own research. This may be excruciating painful for all involved, but so be it.
Assignment for next class session: Faigley 117-132.
wk 6: 10 x 06 Tu: Close Reading of a Text: Tolkien’s "On Fairy-Stories"; How to create study guides; Listen, prepare notes on talks.
Assignment for next class session: Tolkien 33-57 (OFS, sections 1 and 2).
I will be using the first two sections of Tolkien’s seminal essay as the illustrative matter of a talk on note-taking, marking of texts, and the creation of study guides. Many students have commented on the difficulty of reading this essay (originally a lecture); some of the difficulty is the language, some is the subject matter, some is the structure, and some is the original intended audience (specialists in folk-literary studies in the 1930s in the UK), to which the contemporary American college student has little connection. I think the essay is so important to an understanding of art and language in general, of the role of imagination in art, and of the characteristic literary form of the 20th century (science fiction), that I am retaining the essay as part of the course over and against frequent and loud student protest, but I am taking away the onus of students interpreting it completely on their own. I am, instead, explaining the text while also demonstrating appropriate ("proper") marking of texts and construction of study guides.
The business of creation of study guides is a special fascination of mine. I could say that I am a specialist on the creation of study guides, although I would not claim to be an "expert" in the matter. Still, I have made quite a few. My approach as an instructor is slightly different than that which a student should take. I will present the theory and practice in a separate posting on this blog.
Taking notes of a lecture or talk is another matter of serious importance. I think very few people have training in the business, but I am convinced that there is great profit in having such training part of our foundational program. I will, again, outline my thoughts in another posting.
I will be requiring students to present their notes to me for comment and evaluation; Pawel Kozielski also requires his students to turn in their notebooks once or twice a semester. What we should plan on doing is removing some of this burden from subject-instructors, teaching and enforcing the method in foundations, and thus increasing the accuracy and clarity of notes in the subject-courses.
12 x 06 Th: Close Reading of a Text: The Value and Function of Fiction; Listen, prepare notes on talks.
Assignment for next class session: Tolkien 57-75 (OFS, sections 3 and 4).
Tolkien’s essay is specifically about "fairy-stories", but in a broader sense his argument is applicable to fiction in general, and indeed to art as a whole. He is particularly concerned with the value and function of imaginative ("fantasy") writing. It is unfortunate that the label "fantasy" has been taken up to describe a certain, limited genre of fiction, and it does not help students’s comprehension of Tolkien’s critical thesis that Tolkien is viewed – quite correctly – as the prime mover of the contemporary "fantasy" literature scene. Students who object to Tolkien (and to "fantasy") on the grounds of their current popularity miss the significance of Tolkien’s presentation to interpretation of literature as a whole, and, again, to the entirety of artistic enterprise. Using the middle two sections of Tolkien’s essay as the ground, I further the demonstration of study guide preparation while unravelling some of the intricacies of Tolkien’s argument.
wk 7: 17 x 06 Tu: Close Reading of a Text: Benefits of Art; Listen, prepare notes on talks.
Assignment for next class session: Tolkien 75-90 (OFS, sections 5 and 6).
If I had more time, or were a bit more organized with the time I have, I might very well have included R G Collingwood’s masterful monograph The Principles of Art (Clarendon [Oxford UP] 1938; reprinted occasionally but currently o.o.p.) as a course text. Collingwood argues that pure art or art-in-itself is a simple (or mere) expression of self, without any other motive, and the interpretation of art-in-itself must therefore relate to an understanding of the self of the artist. Tolkien’s argument about art concentrates on the use or benefit of art. Tolkien and Collingwood were colleagues; Collingwood acknowledges Tolkien first in a list of "four special debts" in the preface to The Oxford History of England: Roman Britain and the English Settlements (1936). I wonder whether they ever discussed their disparate theories of art.
19 x 06 Th: Close Reading of a Text: Authorship and Imagination of Secondary Worlds; Listen, prepare notes on talks. Submit study guide on "On Fairy Stories" for review.
Assignment for next class session: LeGuin xi, 3-5, 263-304.
At this point in the course, I take the basic thesis of Tolkien’s "On Fairy-Stories" and apply it to an interpretation of Ursula K. LeGuin’s Always Coming Home. Eventually, I also apply it to Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-four: A Novel. One of the primary concerns is with the purpose and persona of the author in writing, and with the degree of alteration of the primary world in inventing the secondary world of the fiction. These concerns can also be related back to some of the discussion which should have occurred within the first week of class regarding the relationship between the author and the audience and degrees of formality (e.g. the difference between questions asked of a fellow-student and questions asked of an instructor). Although it is important always to bring in new material and not to "flog a dead horse", it is also essential to reinforce major ideas presented earlier and to build upon them when moving into a new unit. Here I am making a link to a concept which I plan to advance considerably in the Spring semester: the invention of imaginary worlds, together with the field of research as an outlet of imagination rather than of regurgitation.
The passages from LeGuin to be examined here are in two parts: first, some introductory material presenting the (important, but not always grasped) idea that the "people in this book might be going to have lived a long, long time from now in Northern California", and the difficulties of implementing that idea in writing; second, a series of "autobiographies" by those possible future persons, of varying ages and experiences. In examining these texts, I ask students to consider the verisimilitude of LeGuin’s writing. Tolkien argues that the best fantasy is based most realistically on the primary world, or is the most coherent in its invention, grounded in known laws of "our world of reality". I ask the students whether LeGuin has achieved the status of "the best fantasy" (she has).
wk 8: 24 x 06 Tu: Close Reading of a Text: Fictional and Factual Autobiography: discuss; prepare notes on discussion.
Assignment for next class session: Douglass chapters 1-8.
Now we turn to a work of non-fiction which some students find as distant and "fantastic" as LeGuin’s science fiction: Frederick Douglass’s Narrative. The discussion I ask students to begin with is concerned with what kinds of differences they would expect to find between non-fiction (factual) autobiography and fictional autobiography. What is the role of the writer as "I"? Can we trust the writer, or is all writing, even writing about the self, necessarily a fiction – that is, a kind of lie? By extension here, the nature of language as an instrument of lying can be exposed. How can verbal communication be made truthful?
Remind the students that a quiz on Douglass’s Narrative is coming up, and suggest to them that they should be making a study guide following the system presented earlier in the course.
26 x 06 Th: Truth, Lies, Politics, and Verbal Communication
Assignment for next class session: Douglass chapters 9-11, Appendix; A Parody.
Now that the students have read Douglass’s Narrative we can discuss the content. I like to uplift several major points: the role of reading and writing in Douglass’s liberation (I construe it as being a major theme of the work, and it is a link between that work and Orwell’s and LeGuin’s pieces); the purpose of Douglass’s writing; the audience of Douglass’s work; and the logos or factual and substantial content of Douglass’s work.
wk 9: 31 x 06 Tu: Quiz on Douglass’s Narrative. The link between imagination, art, and sub-creation: Douglass and Orwell.
Assignment for next class session: Orwell NEF 1-42.
Having read Douglass’s account of a "factual" slave, we will begin reading a fictional account of a slave – Winston Smith.
November
2 xi 06 Th: Close Reading of Nineteen Eighty-Four
Assignment for next class session: Orwell NEF 42-92.
wk 10: 7 xi 06 Tu: Close Reading of Nineteen Eighty-Four
Assignment for next class session: review "One" in NEF and prepare study guide.
9 xi 06 Th: Quiz on first section of Nineteen Eighty-Four
Assignment for next class session: Orwell NEF 93-141.
wk 11: 14 xi 06 Tu Close Reading of Nineteen Eighty-Four
Assignment for next class session: Orwell NEF 141-200.
16 xi 06 Th Close Reading of Nineteen Eighty-Four
Assignment for next class session: Orwell NEF 201-279.
wk 12: no classes, Thanksgiving Break (21 and 23 xi 06)
wk 13: 28 xi 06 Tu Quiz on Nineteen Eighty-Four. Writing an effective Rhetorical Analysis: Topic and thesis construction.
Back to this business of topic and thesis construction. Direct the student again to Faigley 117-132.
30 xi 06 Th Writing an effective rhetorical analysis: outlining
(Note to instructors: 20 xi 06 M is a teaching day, and makes up for the Labor Day late start; see above)
December
wk 14: 5 xii 06 Tu Writing an effective rhetorical analysis: drafting
7 xii 06 Th Writing an effective rhetorical analysis: revision
wk 15: 12 xii 06 Tu Writing and effective rhetorical analysis: final polish
14 xii 06 Th: Rhetorical analysis due at beginning of class session.
(Note to instructors: Last day of classes for the semester is 15 xii 06 F; grades are due 2 business days ("48 hrs") after the last class session; grades for classes ending 13 xii 06 W are therefore due 15 xii 06 F at 9:45 a.m. (if morning sessions) or 18 xii 06 M at 9 a.m. (if evening session); for classes ending 14 xii 06 Th, grades are due 18 xii 06 M at 9 a.m. (morning or evening sessions); for classes ending 15 xii 06 Fr, grades are due 19 xii 06 Tu at 9:45 a.m. (if morning session) or 20 xii 06 W at 9 a.m. (if evening session). If you can turn in your grades earlier than the times listed above, the Registrar will be very pleased; do not turn in grades later than the times listed above without prior discussion with the Registrar and the Chair of the Department at peril of your faculty appointment.)
Fall 2006: FVC 101
September
(Note to instructors: M/W classes begin wk 1 on 6 ix 06, and the academic week is W/M, not M/W, until the time of Thanksgiving Break. This is a pain in the ass, but it is the way the schedule works. Lobby for a later start to the semester by one week and a full week Thanksgiving break to remove this onus, which does not effect T/Th and W/F)
You may want to assign the oral presentations for October as soon as you have a stable roster; see below (under "October", of all things).
wk 1: 5 ix 06 Tu Introductions
Six Questions: Have students write out on one side of an index card three questions they would use in "interviewing" fellow students in an introductory setting; have them label these "student"; on the other side of the same card, have them write out three questions they would use in "interviewing" an instructor in the same context; have them label these "instructor". Collect and shuffle the cards, and use the questions to interview students later in the session; have students ask other students’s questions of me. Briefly discuss the differences between the two sets of questions. This is an ice-breaker for the course, but also an introduction to the differences between oral and written communication, the rhetorical situation as applied to different audiences, interviewing format, and the need for good handwriting as well as good projection and enunciation.
Blog Introduction or Pen Pal Letter and Obituary: Have students write an informal self-introduction. Then, have them write an obituary for themselves – as though they died today (i.e. this is to be factual, not a fantasy of a rich life as the next Dali, dying sometime in the 22nd century); this is to be formal. Collect both exercises for your own information (make copies and return the originals). This exercise should go together with "Six Questions"; it helps students to focus on how they wish to present themselves, and illustrates the distinction between informal and formal writing, so well as they can make that distinction at this point.
Distribute and have students read (aloud) the course syllabus.
Assignment for next class session: read Faigley 2-6; Tolkien 100-120 ("Leaf by Niggle"; for comparison with Balzac’s "Unknown Masterpiece").
7 ix 06 Th Introductions, continued; the rhetorical situation; the three purposes for verbal communication identified in Faigley (20,21): continue to interview students using the exercises from last class. Discuss the rhetorical situation, presenting the rhetorical triangle and the terms pathos, ethos, and logos (Faigley presents them in this order, but hardly uses them after the first chapter. If you are happy with the Greek terms and will use them consistently afterwards, use them in class; if they are uncomfortable to you, I think I would just skip them entirely and use English circumlocutions). Discuss the three purposes for verbal communication identified in Faigley (20,21), and ask the students to identify which of these they may have used thus far in the course – and whether the syllabus represents anything different. (Probably, the students’s presentations have been only reflective [their questions and pen-pal letters or blog introductions] or informative [answers and obituaries]; they may argue that these are persuasive; ask them to show in what way this is so. The syllabus is certainly informative, but perhaps also persuasive.)
Assignment for next class session: Faigley 7-21.
wk 2: 12 ix 06 Tu: Words, Images, and Graphics; Marking Texts
Handout on marking texts (underlining, preparing marginal notes, etc.); sample text marking
Assignment for next class session: Faigley 22-36; Orwell, "Why" 1-10.
14 ix 06 Th: Discuss whether Orwell’s essay "Why I Write" could be presented non-verbally. Reflective writing exercise: Compose a short essay responding to the questions: Why do you engage in the artistic work you do? In what way is your motivation for your artwork like Orwell’s motivation to write? When your work is not the best, why do you think that is?
Instruct students in the art of composing an essay from questions without merely answering the questions. The questions should be restated and included in the response, so that anyone reading the essay knows what is happening in the essay.
Collect the essays and make two copies of each for future use.
As an instructor, you may wish to look at chapter 8 in Faigley. My experience of working with this chapter last year was a living Hell which I do not wish to repeat, but it seems to me that there may be some redeeming material here. If you had a different experience, perhaps you can share that with me and give me some pointers. Reflective writing is supposed to be a major element of our curriculum; "reflective writing" is a hot buzz-phrase with MSCHE, and so we should try to make some accommodation to it. I’m surprised how on the one hand students are very happy to provide autobiography at the wrong times and how on the other they resist thinking about themselves and recording that experience. Perhaps it’s too much like therapy.
Assignment for next class session: Tolkien 100-120 ("Leaf by Niggle"; for comparison with Balzac’s "Unknown Masterpiece".
wk 3: 19 ix 06 Tu: Writing Essay Examinations; Planning and Drafting; Comparative essay on "The Unknown Masterpiece" and "Leaf by Niggle"
The students have now written several short pieces. Now it is time to consider the frequent role of writing in college: essay examinations. Review Faigley 827-831 in class; have students read sections out loud and discuss. This also brings students to physically open to the back of the book; point out the glossary, the index, and the section on grammar, as well as the revision guide and "list of common errors" in the flyleaf. Have students dog-ear or otherwise mark the sections for frequent use.
In his chapter on "Planning and Drafting" (38-62), Faigley presents similar information: in "establishing goals" he talks about key words in assignments, and how those key words may be used to define topics.
Note how Tolkien presents his topics, but not his conclusions or "theses" about fiction on page 33.
Define topic versus thesis; discuss ways of developing a topic, and how to develop a thesis from the topic.
This differs from year to year and some section to section, but some students have difficulty in generating topics. My own theory is that once one has a topic and knows something about it, the creation of a thesis and of a workable outline from the same is a fairly mechanical matter.
As an exercise in the learning just presented, take an established topic – a comparison of "The Unknown Masterpiece" and "Leaf by Niggle" and generate a series of sub-topics which can be further predicated to create theses.
Use "The Unknown Masterpiece" and "Leaf By Niggle" as the basis for a comparison ("compare and contrast" – although technically contrast is a kind of comparison) essay which can then be taken through the stages of structuring and revision.
Schedule about half of the class session for drafting of a brief essay comparing these short stories.
Assignment for next class session: Faigley 38-62; Tolkien 33 (as example of topic and thesis).
Like most of the assignments in the first half of this course, the readings assigned here have already been examined in class; asking the students to read them afterward allows them to find more detail than was experienced in the initial presentation. It is also useful to assign material which will be discussed before the discussion, and you will see below that I do this as well.
21 ix 06 Th Composing Paragraphs: Examples from Orwell’s "The Lion and the Unicorn" and "Politics and the English Language".
Assignment for students: Faigley enumerates seven types of paragraphs; you will prepare a brief oral presentation on one type of paragraph (as assigned) and also compose an example of the paragraph style as part of the larger essay on Balzac and Tolkien. These will be presented in class next time.
Faigley enumerates seven types of paragraphs; assign one type to each of the students and have them each prepare notes for a brief oral presentation on the type of paragraph and also compose an example of the paragraph style as part of the larger essay on Balzac and Tolkien. These will be presented in class next time. Have rubrics ready to assess the oral presentations! Collect the paragraphs and copy for the files. Have students work in small groups to rewrite the paragraphs using the strategies from 75-85.
Assignment for next class session: Faigley 63-86.
wk 4: 26 ix Tu Continue to work on redrafting the comparative essay using Faigley’s instructions (75-93). Submit reworked draft.
Assignment for next class session: Faigley 87-92.
Of course, the first part of the class session will be spent on the oral presentations of paragraph styles. That should take about forty minutes all told. Beyond that, this class period and the next are essentially student work days during the class session. I am available to assist, but fundamentally students should be working on their own. I would suggest reviewing the instructions in Faigley and preparing a rubric from them, so that the students have a kind of checklist for their work. This is crude and mechanical, but there is a technical side to writing which shouldn’t be denied.
Speaking of the technical side of writing, one of the curious features of the student course evaluations every semester is the set of four questions at the bottom of the evaluation dealing with, amongst other matters, critical thinking and development of technical capacity. Since, as we know, many of our students perceive the College as a trade school, their notion of "technical" is often limited to their major field of study. By using the term "technical" here, and by using it frequently to refer to operations within verbal communications, it is just possible that we will start to have more useful scoring in the year-end reviews, rather than the mark of "not applicable" for "helped me to improve my technical capacities" for a course in study skills, listening, speaking, reading, and writing!
28 ix 06 Th Reviewing other students’s work (using Faigley 93-102). Submit drafts with comments.
Assignment for next class session: Faigley 93-102.
Here again, I think a translation of the three-part process advocated by Faigley on pages 93-102 into a rubric or check-list students can use in preparing their reviews would speed the process along. Distribute copies of students’s work collected after the last session, or make copies for distribution at the beginning of this class period. If you have the unhappy situation of an odd number of students, do the review yourself for one of the students, and make two copies of one students’s work to be reviewed to give to the "odd" student. I hope that last is clear.
The essays reviewed have already been graded as draft revisions; what is to be assessed of the material submitted today is not the student writers’s work, but the student reviewers’s. This must be evaluated quickly so that the reviewed essays may be returned to the writers for further revision.
October
Beginning the 10th of October, we will experience a series of oral presentations on material from Faigley 514-578. Assignments are to be made in the first week of October. Each student will be responsible for the material in one section in Faigley; the presentations will be scored on the basic of informational accuracy, clarity of organization, projection and enunciation, and so on. I distribute rubrics for the presentations when I make the assignments.
The sections I have in mind for oral presentation are as follows:
1. Write with power: Action words; verbs; name agents – Faigley 514-522.
2. Write with power: Vary your sentences; project personality – 522-525.
3. Write concisely: Eliminate unnecessary words; reduce wordy phrases – 526-531.
4. Write concisely: simplify tangled sentences – 532-534.
5. Write with emphasis: Manage emphasis in sentence; forge links across sentences – 535-540.
6. Write with emphasis: Use parallel structure with parallel ideas; use parallels in lists; use parallels in paragraphs – 541-545.
7. Find the right words: Recognize varieties of English; be aware of levels of formality – 546-553.
8. Find the right words: Be aware of denotation & connotation; use specific language; use effective figurative language – 553-563.
9. Write to be inclusive: Be aware of stereotypes; be inclusive about gender, race, ethnicity, & other differences – 564-572.
10. Write for diverse audiences: Understand English as a global language; respect differences in language and culture – 573-577.
11. Write for diverse audiences – Use accessible language – 577-578.
This only gives 11 students oral presentations, without repetition. Repetition would not necessarily be bad, but I want to keep the presentations moderately fresh, so here are some other presentations that I would be inclined to make at some point but students could do.
1. Subject-verb agreement: Faigley 615-629.
2. Fragments, run-ons, and comma-splices: 602-614.
3. Quotation marks: 737-746.
4. Punctuation other than quotation marks: 747-760.
5. Capitalization and italics: 774-781.
6. Abbreviations, acronyms, and numbers: 783-790.
These, of course, will take some time to present each day – perhaps ten minutes. I suggest not more than two a day, although you will have to consider how to fit them all into the schedule. Generally speaking, such presentations are not much longer than three minutes – they might go as long as five. You will need to be familiar with the material presented yourself to assess the substantive content, but probably a half sheet of notes would cover what is needed – or you could refer to the text. What I would like the students to do is to go beyond the words of the textbook, to grasp the concepts for themselves, and to present them cogently and clearly. I am concerned not only that the students presenting have an experience of public speaking and the rest of the students have an experience of listening, but that the material from the text is presented without me being the lecturer.
wk 5: 3 x 06 Tu: Critical Reading and Viewing; Fallacies
Assignment for next class session: Faigley 104-116; Orwell, "Why" 102-120; Using the reviews of your work, prepare a final draft of your essay comparing the Balzac and Tolkien short stories.
Hopefully, you will have evaluated (graded) the material submitted the last class session, and can return it – in this session, examine the problems of faulty thinking and consider how examples thereof may be corrected.
Faigley gives a fine introduction to fallacies; I have also prepared handouts on fallacies which I would be willing to share if I can locate them. Irving Copi’s Logic (or in later editions Introduction to Logic; also his Informal Logic) provides an excellent resource for the study of fallacies; I have several editions in the Liberal Arts office. The specialists on the business of fallacies are logicians, and one should not hesitate to turn to textbooks on logic for information about fallacies. However, one caveat: like any specialists, logicians have made the study of the specialty so detailed as to be daunting to the uninitiated. What one must look for are the broad classes of fallacies, rather than the particular varieties. But do cover all the basic classes. Orwell’s analysis of writing faults in "Politics and the English Language" is brilliant; notably, it parallels the analysis of Strunk and White in Elements of Style.
5 x 06 Th: submit final draft of comparative essay; Analysis:
Questions for rhetorical analysis applied to Orwell, "Why I Write" and "Politics and the English Language".
The questions here alluded to are on 119-120 of Faigley. This is an excellent opportunity to discuss the distinction between an historical understanding of rhetorical analysis and a "reader-response" approach. For example, to answer the second batch of questions, "Who is the audience?" the respondent must have some notion of the social and political context of England in the 1930s or ‘40s. But the audience (readers) of Orwell’s writing are also American recent high-school graduates in 2006: what is their experience of reading Orwell. Do not allow the students to concentrate only on their own experience, however. They will do that anyway. Try to get them to think about what is required to understand Orwell in context, that is, in his own historical present. Don’t just hand them the answer (i.e. no need for a period-long lecture on the details of the decline of the Empire under George VI); have them consider how the answer may be constructed – facilitate their own research. This may be excruciating painful for all involved, but so be it.
Assignment for next class session: Faigley 117-132.
wk 6: 10 x 06 Tu: Close Reading of a Text: Tolkien’s "On Fairy-Stories"; How to create study guides; Listen, prepare notes on talks.
Assignment for next class session: Tolkien 33-57 (OFS, sections 1 and 2).
I will be using the first two sections of Tolkien’s seminal essay as the illustrative matter of a talk on note-taking, marking of texts, and the creation of study guides. Many students have commented on the difficulty of reading this essay (originally a lecture); some of the difficulty is the language, some is the subject matter, some is the structure, and some is the original intended audience (specialists in folk-literary studies in the 1930s in the UK), to which the contemporary American college student has little connection. I think the essay is so important to an understanding of art and language in general, of the role of imagination in art, and of the characteristic literary form of the 20th century (science fiction), that I am retaining the essay as part of the course over and against frequent and loud student protest, but I am taking away the onus of students interpreting it completely on their own. I am, instead, explaining the text while also demonstrating appropriate ("proper") marking of texts and construction of study guides.
The business of creation of study guides is a special fascination of mine. I could say that I am a specialist on the creation of study guides, although I would not claim to be an "expert" in the matter. Still, I have made quite a few. My approach as an instructor is slightly different than that which a student should take. I will present the theory and practice in a separate posting on this blog.
Taking notes of a lecture or talk is another matter of serious importance. I think very few people have training in the business, but I am convinced that there is great profit in having such training part of our foundational program. I will, again, outline my thoughts in another posting.
I will be requiring students to present their notes to me for comment and evaluation; Pawel Kozielski also requires his students to turn in their notebooks once or twice a semester. What we should plan on doing is removing some of this burden from subject-instructors, teaching and enforcing the method in foundations, and thus increasing the accuracy and clarity of notes in the subject-courses.
12 x 06 Th: Close Reading of a Text: The Value and Function of Fiction; Listen, prepare notes on talks.
Assignment for next class session: Tolkien 57-75 (OFS, sections 3 and 4).
Tolkien’s essay is specifically about "fairy-stories", but in a broader sense his argument is applicable to fiction in general, and indeed to art as a whole. He is particularly concerned with the value and function of imaginative ("fantasy") writing. It is unfortunate that the label "fantasy" has been taken up to describe a certain, limited genre of fiction, and it does not help students’s comprehension of Tolkien’s critical thesis that Tolkien is viewed – quite correctly – as the prime mover of the contemporary "fantasy" literature scene. Students who object to Tolkien (and to "fantasy") on the grounds of their current popularity miss the significance of Tolkien’s presentation to interpretation of literature as a whole, and, again, to the entirety of artistic enterprise. Using the middle two sections of Tolkien’s essay as the ground, I further the demonstration of study guide preparation while unravelling some of the intricacies of Tolkien’s argument.
wk 7: 17 x 06 Tu: Close Reading of a Text: Benefits of Art; Listen, prepare notes on talks.
Assignment for next class session: Tolkien 75-90 (OFS, sections 5 and 6).
If I had more time, or were a bit more organized with the time I have, I might very well have included R G Collingwood’s masterful monograph The Principles of Art (Clarendon [Oxford UP] 1938; reprinted occasionally but currently o.o.p.) as a course text. Collingwood argues that pure art or art-in-itself is a simple (or mere) expression of self, without any other motive, and the interpretation of art-in-itself must therefore relate to an understanding of the self of the artist. Tolkien’s argument about art concentrates on the use or benefit of art. Tolkien and Collingwood were colleagues; Collingwood acknowledges Tolkien first in a list of "four special debts" in the preface to The Oxford History of England: Roman Britain and the English Settlements (1936). I wonder whether they ever discussed their disparate theories of art.
19 x 06 Th: Close Reading of a Text: Authorship and Imagination of Secondary Worlds; Listen, prepare notes on talks. Submit study guide on "On Fairy Stories" for review.
Assignment for next class session: LeGuin xi, 3-5, 263-304.
At this point in the course, I take the basic thesis of Tolkien’s "On Fairy-Stories" and apply it to an interpretation of Ursula K. LeGuin’s Always Coming Home. Eventually, I also apply it to Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-four: A Novel. One of the primary concerns is with the purpose and persona of the author in writing, and with the degree of alteration of the primary world in inventing the secondary world of the fiction. These concerns can also be related back to some of the discussion which should have occurred within the first week of class regarding the relationship between the author and the audience and degrees of formality (e.g. the difference between questions asked of a fellow-student and questions asked of an instructor). Although it is important always to bring in new material and not to "flog a dead horse", it is also essential to reinforce major ideas presented earlier and to build upon them when moving into a new unit. Here I am making a link to a concept which I plan to advance considerably in the Spring semester: the invention of imaginary worlds, together with the field of research as an outlet of imagination rather than of regurgitation.
The passages from LeGuin to be examined here are in two parts: first, some introductory material presenting the (important, but not always grasped) idea that the "people in this book might be going to have lived a long, long time from now in Northern California", and the difficulties of implementing that idea in writing; second, a series of "autobiographies" by those possible future persons, of varying ages and experiences. In examining these texts, I ask students to consider the verisimilitude of LeGuin’s writing. Tolkien argues that the best fantasy is based most realistically on the primary world, or is the most coherent in its invention, grounded in known laws of "our world of reality". I ask the students whether LeGuin has achieved the status of "the best fantasy" (she has).
wk 8: 24 x 06 Tu: Close Reading of a Text: Fictional and Factual Autobiography: discuss; prepare notes on discussion.
Assignment for next class session: Douglass chapters 1-8.
Now we turn to a work of non-fiction which some students find as distant and "fantastic" as LeGuin’s science fiction: Frederick Douglass’s Narrative. The discussion I ask students to begin with is concerned with what kinds of differences they would expect to find between non-fiction (factual) autobiography and fictional autobiography. What is the role of the writer as "I"? Can we trust the writer, or is all writing, even writing about the self, necessarily a fiction – that is, a kind of lie? By extension here, the nature of language as an instrument of lying can be exposed. How can verbal communication be made truthful?
Remind the students that a quiz on Douglass’s Narrative is coming up, and suggest to them that they should be making a study guide following the system presented earlier in the course.
26 x 06 Th: Truth, Lies, Politics, and Verbal Communication
Assignment for next class session: Douglass chapters 9-11, Appendix; A Parody.
Now that the students have read Douglass’s Narrative we can discuss the content. I like to uplift several major points: the role of reading and writing in Douglass’s liberation (I construe it as being a major theme of the work, and it is a link between that work and Orwell’s and LeGuin’s pieces); the purpose of Douglass’s writing; the audience of Douglass’s work; and the logos or factual and substantial content of Douglass’s work.
wk 9: 31 x 06 Tu: Quiz on Douglass’s Narrative. The link between imagination, art, and sub-creation: Douglass and Orwell.
Assignment for next class session: Orwell NEF 1-42.
Having read Douglass’s account of a "factual" slave, we will begin reading a fictional account of a slave – Winston Smith.
November
2 xi 06 Th: Close Reading of Nineteen Eighty-Four
Assignment for next class session: Orwell NEF 42-92.
wk 10: 7 xi 06 Tu: Close Reading of Nineteen Eighty-Four
Assignment for next class session: review "One" in NEF and prepare study guide.
9 xi 06 Th: Quiz on first section of Nineteen Eighty-Four
Assignment for next class session: Orwell NEF 93-141.
wk 11: 14 xi 06 Tu Close Reading of Nineteen Eighty-Four
Assignment for next class session: Orwell NEF 141-200.
16 xi 06 Th Close Reading of Nineteen Eighty-Four
Assignment for next class session: Orwell NEF 201-279.
wk 12: no classes, Thanksgiving Break (21 and 23 xi 06)
wk 13: 28 xi 06 Tu Quiz on Nineteen Eighty-Four. Writing an effective Rhetorical Analysis: Topic and thesis construction.
Back to this business of topic and thesis construction. Direct the student again to Faigley 117-132.
30 xi 06 Th Writing an effective rhetorical analysis: outlining
(Note to instructors: 20 xi 06 M is a teaching day, and makes up for the Labor Day late start; see above)
December
wk 14: 5 xii 06 Tu Writing an effective rhetorical analysis: drafting
7 xii 06 Th Writing an effective rhetorical analysis: revision
wk 15: 12 xii 06 Tu Writing and effective rhetorical analysis: final polish
14 xii 06 Th: Rhetorical analysis due at beginning of class session.
(Note to instructors: Last day of classes for the semester is 15 xii 06 F; grades are due 2 business days ("48 hrs") after the last class session; grades for classes ending 13 xii 06 W are therefore due 15 xii 06 F at 9:45 a.m. (if morning sessions) or 18 xii 06 M at 9 a.m. (if evening session); for classes ending 14 xii 06 Th, grades are due 18 xii 06 M at 9 a.m. (morning or evening sessions); for classes ending 15 xii 06 Fr, grades are due 19 xii 06 Tu at 9:45 a.m. (if morning session) or 20 xii 06 W at 9 a.m. (if evening session). If you can turn in your grades earlier than the times listed above, the Registrar will be very pleased; do not turn in grades later than the times listed above without prior discussion with the Registrar and the Chair of the Department at peril of your faculty appointment.)
posted by M E Achtermann at 11:20 PM
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