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.