In Response to Shipka's Toward a Composition Made Whole

In Toward a Composition Made Whole Jody Shipka shows that she not only does some cool things in the composition classroom, but also that she has a clearly defined and well-developed pedagogy. I find her assignments fascinating, but her idea of a FYC classroom is far from mine (which will be discussed later).

First, a writing classroom and a composition classroom should be defined separately. I taught Rhetoric and Writing at OU, and here I teach Intro to College Writing. A simple analysis would suggest that the titles reveal what the focus of these courses probably is. Perhaps an Intro to Composition course is more suited to include non-traditional ways of composing. Such semantics are relevant when you consider the values and goals of a writing program and what that means for the inclusion of non-alphabetic texts in a curriculum.

Shipka expands the idea of composition to include materiality, technology, and methodology, but still seems to be favoring a specific type of composition. She quotes and agrees with George and Trimbur (1999) who say that “writing, like other types of composition (musical, graphic, handicraft, engineering design) is an act of labor that quite literally fashions the world” (29). I therefore question why she chooses to favor only some types of composition. We don’t teach music composition because there is a department for that. We don’t teach engineering design because there is a department for that. So what is it about the type of compositions that she argues for that makes them belong in an English classroom? Is it just using the same skill set as speech and writing (a rhetorical skill set)? 

In a writing class, I believe the focus should be on writing, not necessarily composing. I still value a process approach to writing, but the end product should have some weight as well. Being an effective communicator doesn’t often afford multiple chances (drafts). So I think practicing writing is key in order to become better at it, meaning there must be a lot of it assigned in a classroom.

I truly think that part of my job is to prepare students to write in college. This does not mean 101/102 are service courses for the rest of the university, but rather they teach types of writing that can transfer. I was never taught how to write a research paper in my composition course, and it wasn’t until my senior year that a generous professor sat down with me and explained a few methods of arguing. I sometimes think about the level of work I could have been doing if those methods had come earlier.

While that is partially how I see a writing class, a composition class could be broadened to include some of Shipka’s ideas. She states, “I also believe that frameworks that provide students with opportunities to move between—while reflecting upon—the affordances and constraints associated with different representational systems and ways of knowing may better prepare students for the variety of intellectual and interpersonal tasks and activities they will likely encounter in other classes, in extracurricular spaces, as well as in their future professions” (107).

The practice of looking for and analyzing choices being made in any work is valuable, and I agree that it can prepare students for tasks outside of academia and for their jobs. But I disagree with what she says right before this, in which she states that students who “are encouraged to make informed rhetorically based uses of sounds, video, still images, animation, textures, scents, and so on…” may be able to understand better how written language is functioning. Scents? I have a hard time seeing how the rhetorically based use of a scent can seamlessly transfer to both analyzing and writing texts.

What I would love Shipka to discuss is how these skills are actually brought back to analyze just writing—and I do separate writing as a different type of composing—rather than just focusing on design, visuals, and performing. (Writing to me will always firstly mean words. A lot of writing is done with words. Most university writing is done with words. And if Shipka wants to call me closed-minded because I think that then so be it.) I would argue that looking at the choices a writer is making with only words is more difficult than in a non-alphabetic text. Even harder is learning how to integrate what you observe into your own writing. And that’s why I wouldn’t devote an entire semester of classes solely to Shipka’s kind of composing.

Obviously Shipka has put in a lot of time, effort, and experimentation to develop her pedagogy. So I worry that teachers forced to teach something they aren’t quite sure of or simply don’t believe in would be unfair to the students. Perhaps teachers should be required to experiment every now and then with this kind of assignment, but they should never have to integrate it into their classes. Shipka quotes Clyde Dow, who says teachers in our field tend to trust what has been tested and proved when instead we should be saying, “ ‘Let’s try it, and test it’ “ (25). If teachers are experimenting or trying non-alphabetic projects in their classrooms, not only will they gain experience (and therefore probably comfort) but they will also see the values and pitfalls, allowing them to adopt and create their own pedagogies on the topic.

And perhaps that is one thing that really turns me off about this book: it seems as if everything is perfect in her classrooms and that all of her students are thoughtful, hard-working, and end up with something brilliant. Where are the students that refuse to learn anything and push back? Or the students that are unwilling to take risks? Or the assignment that went horribly wrong?

Lastly, I have no qualms about this kind of work not being rigorous enough for academic work. My own experience with these kinds of projects helps me understand that they sometimes take much more planning, time, creativity, and vision than when creating an alphabetic text. It is the transfer of these skills to writing that I am not thoroughly convinced by, and perhaps if Shipka had also focused on the improvement in writing that occurred with her students—rather than just the amount of writing they did—I would feel more inclined to support her idea of a “composition made whole.”

Project Update

I'm still working out what my project will specifically be about. The research I've found so far isn't really answering the questions that are driving my project:  

Are internet users hyperaware of who their audiences are? How do they know to say different things in different spaces? Or why do they not know? Related, how are internet users approaching or reading their audiences? 
How do authors of websites attempt to control their audience, both through writing and design?

Part of the problem is I'm not sure what to search for. A lot of the research I found with a basic search (audience, internet, and writing; online audience and composition, etc.) looked at blogs, the writer-reader relationship, ESL/at-risk/non-traditional students and the internet, and how business write on the internet. 

Maybe I should narrow my questions and focus on one specific site? I'm open for suggestions. 


For my multimodal project I would like to create a screen capture of a user (me) moving from site to site with a voice-over (my voice) explaining the actions and analyzing what authors of sites and users of sites are doing to control and be aware of the audience.

Relations of Writing, Publishing, and Technologies

One of my research interests is how we are changing the way we write because of our use of new technologies. Usually people agree and say, “Yes, we must be changing our writing.” But I struggle with studying, observing, and articulating how it is changing.

My master’s project developed out of a quarter-long study in my first-year Writing & Rhetoric class. I developed and taught a Twitter-themed course as a way to see how students were writing in that online space. I was inspired by the research being done by other scholars that I heard about at conferences which involved Facebook and texting in the classroom. What I would argue after this study is that the kind of “play” with language that happens on Twitter is actually semi-sophisticated rhetorical decision making. Whether users realize it or not doesn’t matter as much to me—just because they cannot articulate why they make writing choices doesn’t mean they don’t know how to make writing choices.

This is the kind of research that fascinates me. However, I worry that the overwhelming conversation about technology and its effects is causing me to withdraw my curiosity. More and more I wonder how to approach writing in online spaces if I don’t narrow my focus. And then, what good does it bring to a conversation that is, like I said before, already overwhelming?

I do think that most computer technologies require writing and reading of some sort. Writing and technologies are intertwined, and some researchers and scholars already have attempted to explain how users know how to write in these spaces. (Our readings from this week fit into this: Crystal in Txtng and indicated by the various research on CACD referred to by Warschauer.) But as fast as technology changes, I wonder if we can ever fully understand how we adapt just as quickly.

The aforementioned master’s project took the form of a webtext. I wanted to reach a broader audience, so I wrote my findings in two ways: like a scholarly research article and like a blog. Thus, the website I created allowed both for a formal (linear) reading and for a dialogical reading of the text where the two voices could mix depending on a reader’s navigation. My project needs work, including a lot of design work. But that’s not the reason I stopped thinking about publishing it. 

Very often (maybe twice?) have I been assigned a webtext to read for class, like something found on Kairos. And when we did discuss these in class, there was much grumbling about what the text couldn’t do or didn’t do and why we couldn’t really talk about it in the same way as print texts because it was hard to reference and return to certain points. So why would I want to publish a text this way if it’s not valued by those in my field or those in English departments?

That last bit is meant to be controversial. But it is certainly an argument that I would make judging by the amount of print texts we read in classes and because other scholars seem to recognize it too. Collin Brooke in the first chapter of Lingua Fracta discusses an email-exchange-turned-article that appeared in Kairos in 1999. Brooke mentions there has been a movement to include technological work as the kind of publications needed for tenure or promotions. But he ultimately argues that this article “is not really the kind of work that is recognized by our institutions” (4). This presents a problem for both teachers and grad students. Would a webtext I authored hold as much value as a print publication on my CV?

Cynthia Selfe in “The Movement of Air, the Breath of Meaning: Aurality and Multimodal Composing,” references her use of a print journal to publish: "The irony of making an argument about aurality in print is not lost on me, nor, I suspect, will it be on most other readers of this article. Indeed, it is very much the point of what I try to say in the following pages" (619). When we talked about this article in class, a student was really irked about this irony. But I kept trying to get across that maybe an argument for change isn’t effective unless you address your audience in the old, comfortable way. And I guarantee more comp/rhet scholars and teachers read CCC than Kairos.

Even if I wanted to add a video or audio component to a text it’d be complicated. Selfe invites readers to look at links she includes with her piece, but how many readers make that effort? (I would! Academic rigor!) Or I could consider an online journal to publish my work, but it might not be taken as seriously. A professor once told me, “Computers andComposition Online is a good place for grad students to try to publish.” True or not, that statement assures me that there are various values and levels of prestige that come with choices made for publications.

So my argument here is obviously that our field values certain things, and when we write to publish, we have to decide whether or not to adopt these values. While some voices seem to be effectively suggesting change with this idea, it is a slow process that might be holding back the scholarship of our field. We can talk about technology all we want, but until we practice what we’re preaching, people in our field will remain in different camps with different values regarding our own writing with technology. 

Works Cited

Brooke, Collin Gifford. Lingua Fracta: Towards a Rhetoric of New Media. Cresskill, NJ: Hampton, 2009. Print.

Selfe, Cynthia L. "The Movement of Air, the Breath of Meaning: Aurality and Multimodal Composing." CCC 60.4 (2009): 616-63. Print.
 

Questions for 10/17 Class Discussion

I’m particularly interested in the way Collin Brooke suggests meaning making is changing because of internet practices. He references Scott Lloyd DeWitt’s concept of reading as an “Impulsive Model” which reflects the fast-paced surfing internet users might do. Brooke further links this to Dewitt’s idea of “cognitive fabric” which is the weaving together various texts of information to create a pattern. Brooke relates it to memory, or his term persistence, and argues that these patterns are a way to outline or shape a set of texts: “Persistence as a memory practice is the ability to build and maintain patterns, although those patterns may be tentative and ultimately fade into the background” (157).

Could this be a new way to learn? Should we incorporate this kind of meaning-making and the retaining of information through patterns into the writing classroom? If so, how do we incorporate this new type of learning?  (I think about 102 more since it has a greater amount of texts that must be read for research purposes.)

Another concept found in Brooke’s text is “containerism” (93-7). Brooke suggsts we should break free from the sequentiality of traditional texts. He quotes David Kolb who suggests forms to do this (tangles, sieves, split/joints…whatever those are) that are “patterns that demonstrate a variety of rhetorical effects that are possible if we think beyond the container model” (96). My concern is how we would go about teaching these patterns if we were assigning a multimodal project. At what point does pattern (arrangement) become less about logic and more about design? How can we make that distinction?

Unrelated to Brooke, I am lost as to what constitutes a network according to Galloway and Thacker (who never seem to define it?). I don’t understand how a network is different/similar to community.

Baym frames community with five parts: space, practice, shared resources and support, shared identities, and interpersonal relationships (74-90). She then discusses networked individualism, “in which each person sits at the center of his or her own personal community” (90). How can her concepts be compared and contrasted with Galloway and Thacker?

Project Idea

I’m interested in looking how people are changing their writing in relation to online audiences in social spaces. I want to particularly focus on how rhetorical awareness of audience could be changing. Here are questions I want to explore:

·      Are internet users hyperaware of who their audiences are? How do they know to say different things in different spaces? Or why do they not know?

·      Related, how are internet users approaching or reading their audience?

·      Are users writing for “lurkers”? Or does the concept of “lurkers” alter what is written in some spaces?

·      Do users imagine their audience or do they alter what they say as a precaution?

·      How is audience controlled? How is it uncontrollable?

·      How do users write when we can’t control or aren’t sure of these audiences?

The tie to pedagogy is a bit shaky. Obviously audience is a rhetorical concept we teach, but how is that audience different from the online concept of audience? Why is it sometimes easier to decipher who the online audience consists of rather than in print readings? Can the skill of writing for a particular online audience transfer into the classroom? Should it also transfer in how we approach audience in our field? (If you read my blog post before this, my answer would be yes.)

This idea stems from my obsession with online social habits. I really wonder if people’s writing habits are changing in online spaces, and if so, how. And if they are changing, how should we approach the teaching of writing? The second reason I came to this topic was because I say different things in different spaces. Facebook is personal to me (college friends, professors, family) while Twitter is somewhat personal, but also includes a lot of strangers (because I decide who can follow me.) Am I reading that audience? Yes, but then how do I know how to do that?) Somewhat, because I control it? Not at all, because they are strangers?

What Teaching Writing Means to Me

Today one of my students called me a “teacher.” Not a GTA and not a professor, but a teacher. It gave me that clichéd warm, fuzzy feeling people sometimes get when they realize they’ve done a good deed. It made me understand that what is important to me is how much students are learning about writing and communicating.

My definition of writing includes communicating ideas effectively with the written word. Writing, to be effective, is when someone understands how to transfer thoughts and ideas into coherent words that can communicate clearly. My definition allows “effectively” to be interchangeable with “rhetorically.” I think awareness of the canons (particularly audience and delivery) and the incorporation of Aristotle’s modes of persuasion (logos, ethos, pathos) are a way to approach most writing situations in order to be effective.

My responsibility for teaching writing is therefore a consequential one. I feel that students must be prepared for university writing, as well as social and professional writing. UWM is different than my first experience teaching where students took a first-year rhetoric and composition course but would not take other courses that focused on that until junior year. Here students have two courses to help prepare them. Because my 101 courses cannot focus on one particular type of writing (i.e. how will you write for your various occupation?), my goal is to teach rhetorical awareness and rhetorical analysis as something that can be used in any situation. If students are educated and aware of how others are communicating with them, they can join in the conversation and avoid become passive agents.

I want students to be able to call on this skill to approach any type of communication whether verbal, visual, or written.

So it would be incorrect of me to say I only teach writing; my practices reveal that I attempt to teach students how to communicate effectively while focusing on their writing as practice.

My place in the university is to educate the next generation to be functional citizens that matter by teaching them to communicate in a common form. Despite society’s growing digital reliance, writing is still everywhere. To write effectively means that they can exchange ideas and opinions, they can create change, and if they decide to, they can choose not to stand out.

This responsibility forces me to question my actions continuously (which is a good thing.) What if I am teaching students incorrectly or poorly preparing them? What if I am not communicating effectively with them? What if my bias or influence is negatively affecting their thinking and growing? The anecdote about my student from this morning reveals that I enjoy teaching because it is doing some sort of good; I’m not just a cog in the machine but am hopefully making a positive difference in a few lives. And the impact of a teacher is unmeasured—that influence can affect self-worth, determine success in some contexts, and can invite new or different ways of thinking that encourage intellectual growth. But my questions above reiterate how careful I (and others) must be when choosing how we will make this difference in our students’ lives.

One way I choose to make this difference is by attempting to change my pedagogy as their lives outside of academia change in regards to technology. If they know how to rhetorically communicate, they should be able to adapt to the writing spaces/situations that new technologies create. This is a distinction for me: I will teach them a set of skills that can hopefully transfer to writing on/with these technologies, but I will not teach them how to use these technologies.

My responsibility, therefore, has become quite complicated. The composing process has surely changed. For example, computers allow for words to be recorded faster in response to the bombardment of thoughts, and audio technologies can translate verbal sounds into written words. The internet has also changed the concept of audience; audience awareness isn’t always possible when you compose on the web. Similarly, communication has become instantaneous (texting, emails) and the written word can have a longer life (stored in several places without making physical copies, not as easily damaged as paper, harder to completely lose data than a piece of paper). I’m not sure how these characteristics are or could be changing writing, and that’s why the majority of my research interests are about these concepts. If they are changing writing, I must learn how so I can adapt my pedagogies to reflect my students’ needs.

I also need to be aware of these changes in communication in order to teach in a way that invites students to write naturally. While writing for particular genres might be difficult for them at the university, I never want the act of writing to be unfamiliar.

As a teacher (not a GTA or a professor), I have the responsibility to be aware of how my students and colleagues are using language and then them make students aware of how they can be more effective when communicating in these ways. In order to do this, I must remain current with research, practices, and technologies. If this is not done, I am neglecting the responsibilities that I took on by accepting this job.

Reflection

This post was supposed to aim to include our class readings and discussions. But I am not exactly certain how most of our readings tie into my ideas. Certainly when I read Benjamin, my focus is more on understanding than how it could relate to my teaching. Often I don’t theoretically think about my practices, which something I’m working (struggling) to improve.

There are two texts that I want to closer examine in relation to my ideas of what a classroom should consist of:

Baym’s Personal Connections in the Digital Age was interesting to me because it discussed how these online spaces could be affecting the way people approach writing. She complicated my ideas by bringing in identity and community to the writing process. It makes me question if teaching rhetorical concepts is enough for students to communicate effectively in communities they are unfamiliar with and enough for them to recognize how the identity they are creating might be communicating more than they are aware of.

Brooke’s Lingua Fracta was fascinating to me because it had a rhetorical focus to how teachers should approach writing in digital spaces. I am most interested in the ideas of persistence as a new way of learning and also how delivery can incorporate appearance. If I choose to buy into what Brooke is saying, it would force me to rethink the details and examples I use in class to teach the canons. (It makes me wonder why the two canons most often neglected in the composition classroom are the two that I also think need to be revived. And my final project idea involves a rethinking of audience in online spaces. So I already want to rethink more than half of the canons.)

What is very apparent to me is that while I’m aware of my responsibility as a writing teacher, I am not yet aware of how to incorporate these new ideas into my pedagogies. So, in response to my final line above: I need to develop an understanding much more quickly or I risk neglecting the responsibilities I have placed on myself.

Academic Thinking

I'm thinking well academically in class when:

* others can build off of what I say and I join the "conversation"

* when others comment, reference, or add on to whatever I said and they have clearly grasped my point or argument; likewise, when I can understand what others are saying/writing and can critically think about it as well as form my own opinions about it. (PDFs are more beneficial for me to read than print copies because of the dictionary application and the ability to quickly google something. This is part of how I view academic rigor--doing as much as you can to learn as much as you can.)

* I can build connections in the conversation on the topic, both with our readings and other scholarship

* I can build connections to my pedagogical methods and beliefs

* I can build connections outside of academia, perhaps what I'll tentatively call "real-world" application


All of the above are productive because they are ways to engage and learn, which is partly what I'm here for. Most of this is the result of thinking and then wallowing in those thoughts.


I'm thinking well academically with my writing when:

* I practice what I preach and write the same way my students are encouraged to write

* I know I'm adhering to the discourse by use of words, sentence structure, and how the argument is presented

* I make sure to ask myself "why?" to the point where I feel that no gaps are left and attempt to make the same connections as stated above

* my point or argument is easy to make—if it is easier to write it is most likely what I truly think; when it is difficult to word, it is because I am still grappling with the idea

* I come back to my writing and it sounds good—not only because it is coherent and clear but also because it sounds familiar, like something someone else in academia could have written


Often these happen when I immerse myself with a topic. To be comfortable writing, I have to write everything in one sitting, a habit that will have to change in a few years. This helps me focus. Would it be melodramatic to say I need to "become" the text?


Reflection:
What is not productive to my thinking is when I become meta and question if everything needs to be defined. (Example: do I need to tell you what critical thinking means to me? Should I define academic first?) Sometimes this is done to the point where what was originally intended to be said doesn't make sense anymore. Perhaps this is rigorous, but it is certainly not productive for my thinking. Hopefully with time and practice I will be able to understand my audience and what they both need and expect.