Not the Beginning of the End (End of the Beginning of 5060)

What is/are the most significant thing/s that you learned which you plan to use in some way in the future? That is probably the toughest question that I’ve been asked for this whole semester. That’s probably because it’s so hard for me to narrow things down.

            It’s so tempting to say everything, so I won’t say everything. Instead, I’ll just take a cue from Jessica and mention that the teaching philosophy assignment was a good experience for me. Teaching is a job that any English major will have to do regardless of what you want to do with that degree. It seems that you have to teach if you’re in graduate school, if I may paraphrase the final rule of Fight Club. So the exploration of pedagogies in an effort to create your own pedagogy was something that I ended up finding beneficial in the long run.

            With the teaching philosophy, I was able to set up what kinds of pedagogy traits were helpful to me. I had never really heard of a philosophy of teaching before taking this class, which was why I chose that option for the extended analysis. Learning to write a philosophy of teaching felt like this essential skill if I was going to keep remaining an English major. The whole concept felt daunting at first, but I think that I was able to get a good grip on teaching philosophies in general. Looking at Dr. Rice’s philosophy was a good enough primer that helped me develop my philosophy of teaching in a way that looked next to professional.

            The reason that I chose a philosophy of teaching for this blog post was because I signed up for a part-time teaching thing when I applied for the English program here. I am on a tentative list, last time I checked, so hopefully that won’t change for the worse any time soon. From what I’ve learned in this class, a teaching philosophy is an important tool to have when applying to be a teacher. Since I’ve done the project, I’ve managed to learn about the usefulness in finding out what kinds of college programs support the type of teaching philosophy that I have. Apparently, teaching philosophies are Darwinian in concept, since they are supposed to adapt to the environments that they are sent to. If I get a teaching job here, I’ll at least have a headstart with the required teaching philosophy. I won’t even have to write it from scratch. I’ll only revise the one I did for this class. That, or leave it alone. Or find a college composition program where my philosophy fits. My choices are kind of limitless in that regard. But I should still keep my fingers crossed in case I tempt the almighty gods of fate (whatever those are). In closing, this first semester and this class in general gave me good enough baby steps to get through the hectic world of graduate school, so it does feel refreshing to have a philosophy of teaching finished.

More Thoughts on Expressive and Collaborative Writing In First-Year Composition Classes

 The private vision of the writer, as James A. Berlin called it in his article "Contemporary Composition: The Major Pedagogical Theories", should at least be encouraged more in first-year writing because of its overall importance in any field of writing. There still must be some subjective opinion hid into even the most objective literature reviews, which makes the composition itself seem less like vomited jargon on a page and more like a cohesive text that the composition writer can in fact write for himself or herself. Vomited jargon on a piece of paper, as I have colorfully put it, looks intellectual but does not really read that well with the teacher or any peer reviewers. Vomited jargon on a piece of paper, as I have colorfully put it, looks intellectual but does not really read that well with the teacher or any peer reviewers. The vomited jargon will be written semi-consciously to make the analysis of text sound at least important, with words grabbed from a thesaurus, while limiting any outer collaboration with a teacher, fellow students, or any form of audience who will read that given material. Meanwhile, a more cohesive text becomes more readable to teachers and peers alike, giving the thesis or argument more room for evaluation.
    So when the writer in question can learn to have an expressive writing voice, collaborative expressive writing at its best possible form can give him or her a better understanding of how their audience can be their fellow students as well as their teachers. Even though a writer’s piece is his or her own work, he or she must become aware of the audience who will read the text that he or she has prepared. The individual audience for a first draft will be the ones who will ultimately tell the writer what the paper’s strengths and weaknesses are so far, and how the writer can amend the weaknesses. In this way and many other ways, the audience (being, of course, fellow students and the teacher) can help the writer generate and evaluate a critical or creative paper. Secondly, considering individual audience members are also essential for a writer to know how his or her paper must be written. In a way, the writers who undergo this practice can be seen to collaborate themselves with the audience by “diving into” their classroom peers’ critiques as well as the teacher’s critiques. If a writer is writing a journal article for scholars, the paper must be in a professional and formal tone to appeal to and collaborate with the scholars and readers of that journal. If the article is for a newspaper or general audiences, the paper can have an informal tone to figuratively collaborate the more casual reader in producing a voice that can make sense to about anyone. However, the writer cannot develop an expressive voice for a general article and a completely different expressive voice for a scholarly journal article. As far as expressive writing is concerned, a writer’s voice is unique to the writer and should not be divided into two half-voices (one professional and the other casual). Dividing a writer’s voice into two different voices would make each voice sound half as effective. Only a strong and unique writing voice can be able to effectively carry an argument, which could be further established by a specially collaborative-expressive type of composition class.

Essay Topic- Expressive Collaboration in First-Year Composition

 I underlined my thesis for the argument, which is sort of cobbled together from my blog's arguments on expressive writing. Don't worry, most of the recycled concepts are about a third of the paper right now, and are going to be revised greatly. 2/3 of the essay are basically expansions and additions to some of the ideas that I pushed forward for most of the semester and in my writing philosophy.

First-year writing is one of the most polarizing English subjects for students everywhere: Either you hate it or you love it. That, or you need it for a credit fulfillment of some sort. The freshman English classes that I have mainly experienced, however, tend to be more of an assembly line series of classes where assistant teachers just go around and give people this distant sort of teaching advice that does not really give the teacher a chance to really connect with the students’ writing in any way. A common trend also boils down where students are taught basic essay and rhetoric principles without understanding how they apply to the type of writing that students want to do, which to me doesn’t make the students any closer to mastering rhetoric or any part of their writing in general. In fact, I would go so far as to say that the bare bones process of most FYC classes instead makes them mechanically write down important sounding essays that they think that teachers and scholars will want to read or to hear. There needs to be more of a collaborative relationship where the teacher can teach students to expressively use rhetoric and essay writing while also learning something from the students. I am not saying that first-year composition should have more teachers be softer with their students and be more maternal towards them. I am instead arguing that Freshman English classes would greatly improve if the teaching of expressive writing through collaborative methods were more widely expanded in the scholarly world of rhetoric. That way, composition students could rely less on sounding important and just write the kind of composed arguments that said students, their peers, and their teachers would all want to read. All the while, students could maintain a persuasive professionalism due to the established collaborative and expressive respect between teachers and students.
    I understand that some first-year writing courses adopt a sort of collaborative or Socratic method of teaching. Indiana University Bloomington’s first-year writing program includes a good example of post-process writing where the student’s voice as a writer is emphasized. Yet many freshman composition courses, like the ones I took when I was enrolled in Texas Tech in 2010, tend to have a part-time instructor who give basic lessons on composition while groups of graduate students grade papers submitted online. While basic lessons on composition do usually open students’ eyes to the concepts and procedures of composition writing in general, they don’t really encourage students to develop a unique writing voice that can appeal to masses beyond the classroom. By collaborating with a student or diving in to understand a student, even a part-time instructor can get better work out of students by meeting with them to discuss strengths and weaknesses of each student’s writing style. Each student has a strong suit related to general writing that he or she should learn along with the teacher, which I feel can be best strengthened with the collaborative-expressive writing process that I have coined and invented for the sake of my argument. For the remainder of the article, ergo, I will further discuss how my invented process can tie with improving audience understanding and writing voices. During this discussion, I will try to take into consideration the benefits that expressive writing has over any other established process theories of writing, including post-process writing. I will subsequently discuss how teachers can establish consensus with general groups of composition students and their growing underlives and vice versa, while taking note of writings by scholars like Mina Shaugnessy.

The Stylish Stylistic Stylings of Style (Learning Objectives)

    If I ever had to answer what learning objectives in this class would ever be helpful in my future career and my life as a whole, it would probably be either the stylistic information presentation objective. That last thing sounds very robotic, so I'll just sum them up as knowledge of style. I feel that any kind of style applies to any sort of work. You need an effective writing style to carry your literary structure, you need an effective teaching style to carry the structures of your class, and you need to at least have a tighter composition style when it comes to writing for any style that you need to write down. Research papers, blog posts like this one, informal presentations, formal presentations, and so on; It doesn't matter what format those are in as long as you have a nice style to wrap things up and tie them in a bow. I'm already showing an odd style by using a hyperbole in that last sentence, so that just goes to show anyone how effective a writing style can grab people's attention and keep your college students from thinking about lunch and naked versions of their opposite sex (I must be equal opportunity).
    Stylistic presentation is essential to me because it keeps a speaker or writer from rambling on and on and on and on and on and on and on until eternity. If you keep rambling, you don't hook and reel your audience in, and then barely anyone ends up listening to or reading you. Stylistic presentation, if done right, helps you collaborate with other people and gives your argument a better focus than it originally did when you were just rambling on and on. That sort of presentation also helps you experiment a bit and see what you're doing well and what you're doing wrong. Style in any type of field, especially collaboration with others, helps you appeal to the logos, ethos, and pathos of your audience, resulting in a more effective presentation of any form under the sun without sounding too rambly or too mechanical. Stylistic presentation is essential to any teacher or creative writer because you need to appeal in some way to an audience. It doesn't matter which audience, as long as your stylistic presentation gains any audience's undivided attention. By learning stylistic presentation under formal or informal procedures, I've gained a better understanding on how style affects my research papers and my weird scribblings of fiction in general. This class that I've been taking for about three months now has sort of showed me that every essay, PowerPoint presentation, or podcast has this solid structure to it that knowledge of style can mold into a more understandable procedure with a better appeal. Stylistic presentation, overall, is awareness of how to appeal or to collaborate with an audience in general while knowing exactly when to begin and when to end your argument. If there's a better learning objective to this class that appeals to creative and critical writing, then I'm pretty sure someone will comment about it.

When A Syllabus of Failure Has Failed

Identify where you think students may fail in an assignment in your syllabus, and how you will use that as a teachable moment by design. 

Nobody likes to admit where a student could botch up an assignment in a flawless or next to flawless syllabus, but there are chances where one assignment can rise above the others and be completely horrible to students who work on it for the first time. The assignment that I think that most students would struggle with the most is the Rhetorical Analysis, for a number of reasons. One reason being that students wouldn't be able to tell what an example of a good rhetorical argument is in any form of media. They'd probably be too fixated on another assignment in the class, or another class in general. They could pick any number of rhetorical arguments from a TV news show or a video game or any work of fiction without understanding what they're trying to find, meaning that my assignment as it stands has no real scope to it. A student could try to pass off Bill Pullman's speech from the movie "Independence Day" (you know, the one where he's saying "We will not go quietly into that good night" and so on) and try to over-read a rabble-rousing speech from a fictional movie, and not understanding what the rhetoric in relation to such an argument is. I'd make that more of a teaching moment by giving students more of an idea of the fundamentals of rhetoric, as well as giving an assortment of questions that give a sort of criteria for rhetoric, i.e. a couple of guidelines on how to detect any sort of rhetorical argument in any speeches or presentations. So in effect, I would be teaching these students to know where to find hidden forms of rhetorical argument, giving them a better understanding of the different types of rhetoric that we have in the world. By instructing them thoroughly with this checklist that tests if something you read or hear is any kind of rhetorical argument, students can have a better understanding on how to approach the assignment and rhetorical arguments in general.

Students also might fail to keep up with the assignment or even fail to actually put effort into the assignment, due to the really late deadline at May 2nd. I can make something like that equally as teachable as the instructions on different types of rhetoric by having them work on it for most of the semester and setting up times that they can see me in my office and discuss their progress on the assignment in general. I can set up some kind of due date for a rough draft of the analysis early on the semester, just to give students ideas on what to use and to get them thinking about the assignment in general. The rough draft would generally get a good grade, while having lots of criticism on how to handle the assignment. The sort of thing that I'd be teaching them would more or less be a lesson in planning out an assignment in advance, while giving a clearer understanding on how to handle the complex idea of a rhetorical analysis. The rhetorical analysis, while 10% of the final grade, is necessary for giving students a better idea of the different aspects of rhetoric, but hard to nail on someone's first try. So special countermeasures like due dates for rough drafts and teaching rhetorical qualifications are more than necessary in helping to turn around students' failures to understand the assignment at hand.

Live From Blogspot: It's the Top Five Words I Want To Know More About!

5. Making of Knowledge/Knowledge
4. Empowerment
3. Freshmen Textbooks
2. Modes of Discourse

AND THE NUMBER ONE WORD I WANT TO KNOW MORE ABOUT IS.....
1. Invention in classical literature.

Blog Talk: In Which I Discuss How Blog Assignments Like This Can Bring Up Sprinkles of Post-Process Theory and "Diving In" Into Everyday Generalized First Year Writing (Wanted: One Shorter and Snappier Blog Title)

One big assignment that I’ve considered including in my syllabus carried the post-process thinking of Breuch’s article as well as Selfe’s idea on mapping through technology for discursive purposes. The assignment, which would be 10% of the final grade so as not to overshadow the brief assignments and essay writing of a composition course at Tech, would involve the same type of blog-writing that we’ve been doing for this whole semester. Only instead of having students make their own blogs, I would have them comment on their choices in a selection of 5-7 arguments and topics that I’d post on my blog each week. I got the idea from a government class that I took during my senior year of high school, where the instructor would set up a blog with different current events, and each week we as students would have to comment on at least one of the current events. Adapting such a weekly exercise meant for a political science class into the structure a First-Year Writing class would be less of a stretch than it sounds. I could upload articles on the craft of writing or articles on composition writing like the ones we’ve read all semester long, and then have students give 300-500 word comments on what they think of the argument or how the articles could be applied to their own experiences with composition writing. Also, unlike the more structured brief assignment writing expected from RaiderWriter people, the blog comments would allow students to write in any subjective or objective form that they feel comfortable in writing. The goal of this assignment would be to dive into student opinions on composition writing, as well as get to know the students and their writing styles that go beyond the more generalized process-theory style writing.

            Of course, I would discourage them from typing in text speech or emoticons, since I’d state as a restriction to “be legible” with the comments. At the same time, I’d encourage multinational students to write in a language they are comfortable with while still helping them with making their English translations have the same voice as their more comfortable native writings. But that last part is still a work-in-progress, and I’d be welcome to any ideas on how Selfe’s interface mapping can be applied to multinational students. All that aside, the blogging exercise that I’ve cannibalized from similar weekly blog assignments works best for balancing more modern post-process theory ideas with the generalized writing process that’s been applied to our first-year writing classes now. The blog process that we’ve been doing all semester long, for instance, helps give us a gateway to express our own opinions without really being restricted to process theory techniques. The blog exercise in my syllabus likewise gives my theoretical composition students an opportunity to think outside the box, which can help them establish a definitive writing style without reliance on things like Engfish. That way, students can experience post-process ideas that can be used in developing effective compositions while still following Tech's First Year Writing program's generalized writing process in some form.

The Four Stages of Pedagogy and Symbiosis: Why The Heck Are These Two Connected?

I think that Mina Shaughnessy’s ideas about the four stages of the teacher’s emotional development were one aspect of our class that I really noticed in relation to the teaching philosophy that I invented, as well as the andragogy and pedagogy lectures I learned for this course. My interest in teaching has gotten in this class to the point where I’ve been completely interested in any other interpretation of the way that a teacher emotionally engages his or her students. I never really knew a professor who just viewed a student the way that a doctor views a patient, as Shaughnessy mentioned in her opening paragraph, but I can probably infer that there have been professors who thought that way, there are professors who think that way, and there always will be professors who will think that way. Therefore, the four stages on guarding the tower, converting the natives, sounding the depths, and diving in strike some interest in how a teacher sees his or her students. The idea of a teacher diving into being a student of these students after a long period of time really seems off, but after our discussions of using pedagogy to reach students at a personal level, I feel like students do end up teaching their own teacher about how to discipline, how to teach, and so on and so forth. First, we guard them from outside resources, then we convert them to our rhetoric, then we dive in to know them on a personal level, and we finally learn new disciplines based around those new students who end up teaching us how to be better teachers.

            I think that teaching a class and pedagogy in general is a symbiotic relationship at its best and a learning experience for the teacher at its worst. At its best, a teacher teaches to a level that appeals to and engages students, which teaches you what you want to know about them and about how to teach a class. Student responses can be constructive criticism, yet they shouldn’t make you bow down to their needs in any sense of the word. You still have to be disciplinary as a teacher, and that means guarding students from distractions and other perceptions. Thus, filling their heads with new information and outlooks on learning material, be it compositions or creative writing or even mycology, becomes easier now that there aren’t any outside distractions like Facebook to interfere. I use Facebook as an example in an iffy sense, since we have mentioned that most classrooms don’t allow electronics. All the same, a symbiotic relationship between teacher and student can come from even flunking a student, instead of flunking an entire class, on one assignment early on. By flunking that student in a required ENGL 1300 course, you can rope him or her into at least taking the subject seriously and learning from his or her mistakes. So if done right, we could have a scenario where everybody wins. If pedagogy or andragogy is done wrong, on the other hand, someone still wins by learning: the teacher. Adjusting to screwing up with pedagogy is not an easy pill to swallow in any of its myriad forms, but it should teach the teacher how not to handle or reach a class in a very firsthand experience. As long as one or two factors gains knowledge from the process in any way, the practitioner of pedagogy still stays on the right track regarding becoming a better teacher of students.

Critique on Extended Analysis by Rachel De Leon, Colleen Harrison, Mary White, and Jill Elberson Murphy

 http://www.faculty.english.ttu.edu/rice/5060/plagiarism-podcast.mp3

I wasn't expecting a podcast, since the version of the analysis you all chose said to do a video about plagiarism. But I liked how the four of you managed to each have your own discussions of types of plagiarism well within 15-20 minutes, which kept the whole podcast going at a huge pace. There was no snazzy intro or any incidental music or audio editing, but only a round table of you four talking about types of plagiarism and how to avoid them. The fact that you just jumped into the subject material showed me how well you could start the discussion without really digressing beforehand. The audio quality also had a low resolution to it, but it still sounded fine to me. In my opinion, the subject material of a podcast really matters more than enhanced editing software or NPR-style interludes. The project had a bluntness to it that worked in favor of its argument, despite some awkward beats that don't really detract too much from the whole production. The podcast was well constructed with each argument too, because it felt like each one of you could give an argument without stepping on someone's toes. The topic of plagiarism, especially the non-intentional plagiarism you talked about in the beginning, is a deep and complex one. I could understand why paraphrasing something could cause some form of plagiarism, especially when all that student does is copy a quote and use a thesaurus to replace some words with different-sounding words. Yet that's not just plagiarism to me, but laziness too. All plagiarism could come from some sort of laziness stemming from not wanting to put effort into a project and instead copying other papers without looking at what those papers are talking about.

            The points you brought up on plagiarism, and ways to handle them, helped your podcast appeal to a broad audience because you all used personal experiences as students that student listeners could relate to. If any of you were to play this podcast to a class of students, then they would eventually hear these learning experiences and come to an understanding with either of you. If Mary played this podcast for her class and they got to the beginning where she talks about getting marks for not citing a paraphrase before going to college, they’d not only learn about how paraphrasing without citations is plagiarism, but they’d learn that Mary has been through the same road that they have been in. By talking about personal experiences and opinions with plagiarism, the podcast gains the ethos needed for a project that's meant to get a complex topic like plagiarism across to students. The discussions explaining how derivative works like fan fiction can avoid plagiarism if they do not follow the story down to the smallest detail and create an alternate universe or story informed me of an aspect of plagiarism vs. inspiration that I had little to no awareness. The discussion of how parody is legal instead of satire due to its following of the source material without raising satirical points even opened my eyes to how parody gets away with copying the material when something like "The Wind Done Gone" is a more serious novel that got in trouble for using Margaret Mitchell's characters without the estate's permission. The dense research on different types of plagiarism helped this podcast's credibility the most as a result of these discussions of how fan fiction and parody can fit with plagiarism. Your displays of knowledge on the topic further supported your chemistry and presentation within this podcast, making the whole thing a balanced and enjoyable listen.

What's Andagogy Got to Do With It?

Andragogy is technically defined as adult education, so one might think of a night school of sorts for adults. However, the idea of andragogy could be extended to a college course. We may refer to teaching college students as pedagogy, but the truth is these college students are all technically adults and will wanted to be treated as such. The best way, then, to treat college students as adults would be to think of a first-year writing pedagogy as an andragogy of sorts. Teaching college may be considered pedagogy, but pedagogy is just the manner of teaching in general. So in relation to contact zones, andragogy is more of a narrower focus on a broad subject like pedagogy. The perception of teaching a first-year composition course as a andragogy gives you a better view on how to handle your college class instead of just using pedagogy as this general class that will no doubt feel bland to the college student. You have to give your pedagogy a type of brand, or else you’ll risk making your teaching not really matter to any of these 18 and up learners who feel almost above the bland pedagogy they view as being the same level as high school. Besides, using andragogy to these college students, some of which will probably be 30 and older, so they in particular mind being treated like any child learner under a vague pedagogy. Treating your first-year writing class like a andragogy, then, will develop this relationship between you the teacher and your first-year students that as a more solid center than a broad and vague pedagogy ever would.

            Sommers’s article on the revision strategies of student writers and experienced adult writers raises an important reason for why treating your first-year writing pedagogy like an andragogy will have a more lasting effect on your students in the long run. In the end, you want any student writers to become experienced adult writers at the end of the class. By teaching them nothing but basic readings and brief assignments from a website, you aren’t really helping them with their writing experience so much as regurgitating the same pedagogical practices in the students’ mouths in a matter not unlike a bird feeding her babies. The student writers that Sommers interviewed for her article basically view their writing as more of an assignment, taking out words and replacing them with what they call better words or words that are like another well-known writer’s words. Compare those ideas to those of the experienced writers that Sommers covered, where they consider rewriting and revising not as taking out and replacing words but instead as re-writing ways of conveying their arguments, thinking about what and how they’ve written those concepts, and deconstructing the ideas as they appear in their essays. A type of andragogy, then, would be to teach these students to view their papers in the same fashion that an experienced adult writer in the field. If a student uses this one source that he or she thinks would spice up his or her paper, he or she needs to learn from the composition course how he or she can reconstruct the paper around this source while considering how the source relates to the base argument instead of cramming the source into her basic paper. The main reason why andragogy is important for first-year composition students is because students need to not have their work treated as student works but as the works of experienced adult writers. If we drill into their heads to be experienced writers who constantly evaluate their works, then students will eventually become the experienced adult writers mentioned by Sommers instead of her definition of student writers.

My Philosophy of Writing (As of This Week)

I have little to no first-hand experience in teaching writing, but I have managed to gain years of second-hand experience from viewing my writing teachers in classes throughout the years. If I have learned anything about being an English teacher from paying attention to such teachers myself, it is that teaching composition means to encourage students to convey more from a composition than a desire to get an A+. Creative and critical writing should bring into the forefront a clear concept of critical thinking, while still molding that comprehension of critical thinking with your opinions and arguments to form a unique writing style that sets you apart from other writers. By comprehension of critical thinking, I mean that all creative and critical writers alike should become aware of the basics of rhetoric. Said basics certainly include logos, ethos, and pathos; when writing creative or critical works, a writer needs to have those three things to keep all members of an audience swayed by the strange bugs you’ve placed on your paper. That process takes two kinds of subjective voices to see eye to eye on a topic, for writing must be between a writer’s voice and each of the audience’s voices. As it stands now, my whole philosophy on writing revolves around that whole wordy concept. But that whole wordy and winding concept can still be whittled down into three brief ideas:

1. A writer should learn to meet and adapt to the needs of individual listeners and readers.

2. Writing is a gift that all people have, and it should boil down to a writer’s subjective voice.

3. At the same time, writing is based on dialectic interaction, or the social interaction between the material and the individual audience members, by way of style, arrangement, and connection.

            I believe that as writers, all of my students must learn to adapt to the needs and opinions of individual listeners and readers. Even though a writer’s piece is his or her own work, he or she must become aware of the audience who will read the text that he or she has prepared. The individual audience for a first draft will be the ones who will ultimately tell the writer what the paper’s strengths and weaknesses are so far, and how the writer can amend the weaknesses. In this way and many other ways, the audience can help the writer generate and evaluate a critical or creative paper. Secondly, considering individual audience members are also essential for a writer to know how his or her paper must be written. If a writer is writing a journal article for scholars, the paper must be in a professional and formal tone to appeal to the scholars and readers of that journal. If the article is for a newspaper or general audiences, the paper can have an informal tone to interest the more casual reader.

            Despite this mindset of adapting to readers’ needs, students should also never lose sight of the fact that writing is a gift all people have and should boil down to an individual subjective voice. It is one thing to appeal to the audience who read your writing, but a distinct voice needs to arise from your writing style over a period of time. Such a voice must sound natural and unforced, as if you are comfortable with the material that you write about. The idea of expressionism that I believe in means I believe in having a stronger connection with a certain audience or group of students. James A. Berlin writes on expressionism in his article “Contemporary Composition,” saying that “theories rely on classroom procedures that encourage the writer to interact in dialogue with the...class. The purpose is to get rid of what is untrue to the private vision of the writer” (Berlin 561). To have a natural subjective voice that can appeal to audiences in its own way, a writer must not be afraid to open up and express him or herself. Because if that writer still hides or disguises his or her true subjective voice, no real progress can be made towards a writer’s subjective voice to prepare that writer’s material for its interactions with individual audience members.

            The final point that should be brought up ties the initial two together, bringing up the idea advocated by Mike Rose that writing is based on the social interaction between the material and the different readers by way of style, arrangement, and connection. From the writer’s writing the words of his or her argument on some paper to the reader’s thoughts on reading those words, a written paper is a long-distance communication with a writer and his or her entire vast audience of unknowns. The style and arrangement, no matter how structured, must connect with the varied audience well enough for that audience to respond. This connective mindset must be distinguished more than most cognitive theories, according to Rose, because “Human cognition-even at its most stymied, bungled moments-is rich and varied” (Rose 359). No two readers or writers will be ever the same in regards to their cognition, so the written material’s style, arrangement, and connection each need to have a dialectic hook that connects the writer’s voice with the audience’s voices regardless of the half-bungled variable known as a social interaction between two human beings.

            In the end, the three most important things to keep in mind when students write include the writer’s voice, the audience’s voices, and the interactions developed between the two. I feel that such things will be able to give any class an understanding of the importance of writing rhetoric, and how rhetoric is applicable to critical and creative writing alike. The connections between differing voices caused by different kinds of written rhetoric shows how inclusive writing can be if it is used properly. In each and every way, teachers must try to teach the importance of alternating opinions to their classes or any attempts at teaching learning any type of writing will fall flat.

Budding Philosophy Ideas and Vague Assignment Concepts

My teaching philosophy is still something that I’m working on, but I’m pretty sure that it would have something to do with how writing can deliver an individual voice while still appealing to different audiences. In that respect, the philosophy I could develop is a cross between both cognitive and expressionistic writing theories, while taking some influence from Mike Rose’s teaching philosophy regarding acknowledging individual members of your audience. It’s still a work-in-progress, but I still feel that I have a good start.

            As for assignments for my hypothetical class and syllabus, I have some interesting ideas that can at least inspire students to write rhetoric in a way that gives them a powerful voice while teaching them to appeal to audiences on a more personal level. For my English 1301 class, I had this one assignment where we were supposed to summarize a movie without using the title. I think that assignment would be interesting for a class to use if I were to tweak it up by having the student summarize movies of their choice in a way that convinces people who haven’t seen it or who don’t want to see it to go see it. The movie summary couldn’t use names of people, places, or things in the movie, and it would have to be in an objective and professional tone that would make audience member who didn’t like one aspect they saw with a movie to give it another chance. For example: One student could write an essay meant for people who hate science fiction movies that summarizes “Star Wars” by summarizing aspects of the movie that a science fiction hating audience would probably enjoy. The exercise would revolve around teaching the class how to persuade their audience in general and how to adapt to a reader’s needs or likes and dislikes.

            I also think that I would give assignments that gave students the chance to know each other and for them to know me, just to give students an idea about whom the individual members of an audience for a college essay are. Examples of which would include an assignment where a student talks with two other students in order for them to understand each other’s identities, interests, and studies. That way, the potential audience of the class could have a chance to connect better than they would in a huge lecture-based class. That connection would help improve peer reviews on a more personal level as well.

            Another type of assignment would be related to expressive writing, meaning that I would issue out assignments that strengthened a writer’s subjective voice as well as his or her objective voice. An example of this type of assignment, which Meghan brought up on her blog, revolves around having student write one paragraph based on an article in his or her own writing style and then writing the paragraph again in what they think is a professional style full of big words and such. My objective would be for students to learn through this assignment would be that a college student’s idea of an objective and verbose essay does not carry an argument as well as the essay in that student’s own words. The goal that would at least be acknowledged through that assignment is the goal to achieve an individual argumentative voice that blends a comfortable writing style with a professional structure that appeals to more than teachers. My teaching philosophy still needs work, as do these assignment ideas. But I feel that I have more of a solid grounding with those two things after writing this blog post than I ever did in the past.

THE MOST DANGEROUS PART TO TEACH IN TEACHING WRITING...From the Point of View of Someone Who Never Taught Writing a Day in His Life (5060)

Fair warning: I have no experience of being a teacher, let alone a composition teacher or a first-year writing teacher. So I am almost tempted to write down "Everything about teaching writing is difficult, and I don't know anything about ways of teaching composition!" But I'm a 23-year old graduate student above that mindset, so I'll give a more satisfying answer based on the articles I read for this class and my experiences with composition and English teachers. 

Let me be perfectly clear: teaching composition and rhetoric seems like a huge chore in the long run. You’re just in front of students to talk about a subject, trying to get them interested in that topic. You’re not really a student anymore, so you can’t appeal to this one instructor. Instead, you have to appeal and get your message across to all these different students. Some of them are English majors and are possibly interested in the subject material so they can move on to further English courses, while others are miscellaneous majors and just want to get that one or two credits in first-year writing so they can move on to dessert. The concept of addressing a divided audience springs up what I think could be the most essential part of teaching writing: Making the ideas of rhetoric, composition, and writing understandable and engaging to each diverse part of an audience. To put it bluntly: the most difficult part to teach in the teaching of writing is being completely able to know each member of the audience.

            Understanding your audience is so important and so difficult in at least teaching writing, or anything else in particular. By teaching a mass audience, you’re prone to generally reinforcing yourself with information you understand. But with a composition course, you have to know every member of the audience so that you can develop a better connection and understanding between you the teacher and the students who are sitting in front of your pedestal. What’s more, you have to teach them how to acknowledge their own audiences. Because student writing at first tries to appeal to the teacher or themselves, yet they need to have the argument appeal to all parts of the party. A student may try to write an argument that incorporates aspects of logos, ethos, and pathos; but such an argument tries to spice itself up with pseudo-intellectualism, giant words, and dry articles that the student can’t really understand. Basically, that argument is just trying to appeal to a professor for an A+ rather than to all diverse sections of the potential audience.

            The second graph on the concept of audience that Ede and Lunsford illustrate in their article actually brings up an important factor that first-year composition students need to understand. That factor consists of the many layers that exist in even the simplest essay’s audience. The way I would teach my supposed class about the addressed and invoked audiences would be to show this graph, so that students can at least have some awareness of all past, present, and future versions of the audience that they should be writing arguments to. I would also make sure to teach students to acknowledge and analyze all differing opinions to their arguments, without calling those opinions stupid or mocking them. It’s really easy to gloss over research that counters your argument to make your opinion sound better, but you have to keep in mind that some readers actually agree with the other opinions and will put down the essay now that they see that your argument is biased. Teaching the addressing and invocation of the audience is hard when your own audience is obsessed more with grades than with conveying a well-balanced argument. But by showing them the many aspects of an audience and stressing to the class to write with other audiences in mind by acknowledging different counter-arguments, I’m sure that students can begin to have a budding idea regarding how to effectively convince different audiences at any time or place.

Rhetoric, Its Origins, and What I Expect to Do With It (For ENGL 5060)

What is rhetoric and why do I need to learn it? I didn’t exactly know the answer that question when I first started my English B.A. program, only really knowing that rhetoric was a derivation of rhetorical question. When learning about rhetoric when taking the First-Year Writing Program at Tech, I figured that rhetoric would mean an argument laid across when writing a paper or giving a speech. But after looking up rhetoric in a dictionary, I see that Webster or some facsimile describes rhetoric as “the art of speaking or writing effectively.” That definition sounds more apt than my broad guess at rhetoric's meaning, because the definition implies that rhetoric means writing a well-supported argument instead of just writing an argument or claim. Anyone can write down a simple opinion like “Climate change is real,” but that’s not necessarily rhetoric because said opinion does not explain why climate change is real to its perceived audience nor does it illustrate such a point with examples. If you can show your audience that the scribbled yammering that is your paper has solid evidence and can be relied on as something more than face value, then odds are good that your scribbled yammering can be identified as “rhetoric.”

            Of course, there can’t be a reasonable comprehension of rhetoric without knowing its history and the various people who helped shape the rhetoric of today. These various people are the philosophers of ancient Greece, including Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. Such venerable Greek rhetoric like Plato’s dialogues and Aristotle’s Politics resonate with scholars and readers to this day. In addition to types of teaching that foster discussions among students being labeled as Socratic in reference to Socrates' leveled critical debates with colleagues, the Western world struggles between following Plato's philosophy of finding enlightenment through spiritualism and following Aristotle's philosophy of finding enlightenment through materialism. <http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/tip-sheet/article/60264-5-reasons-why-plato-and-aristotle-still-matter-today.html> Such proof confirms that the ancient Sophist musings are still the most influential works of rhetoric out there. Later writers like John Milton, Stanley Fish, and Friedrich Nietzsche also have their own resonant shaping of rhetoric; in fact, all literature from Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn to Upton Sinclair's The Jungle can be argued to be rhetoric, since they contain messages that effectively reach audiences in one way or another.

            That being said, I suppose that I want to use this class’s content to delve deeper into how I can establish my creative writing and my formal writing into reachable rhetoric that effectively gains solid reactions from audiences. I’d like to learn what the strengths of my rhetoric are, as well as my rhetoric’s weaknesses by following the guidelines that I gain from this class and its assignments. Most importantly, I would like to use this course to learn the ropes as it were of being a teacher. When signing up for graduate school, I notified that I was interested in the Part-Time Instructor program, despite having little to no teaching experience. So I’d like to at least learn about the essential guidelines in terms of teaching an English course or composition course before I become a P.T.I. Other than that, I'm casually optimistic that this course will help me out with my career in writing and in rhetoric.