Teacher response is, undoubtedly, a primary source of stress for me when I’m grading papers. Obviously, I want to encourage my students, because I recognize the immense stress that graded papers bring them. Getting a paper back is horrifying, is something that students dread. In many ways, it’s very similar to the way that Christians view the Second Coming. It’ll be great, if you’ve been good, but, judging from past experience, maybe you haven’t been as good as you’d have liked to have been, so it might be really, really bad and/or hot.
NOTE: Please do not think that I’m comparing myself with deity. Such is not my intent. Rather, I simply mean to illustrate the intensity of emotion that surrounds receiving a graded paper.
Thus, I try to take it seriously, and I appreciate articles like this that give varying theories about how to write student comments. Firstly, I am appalled by the mean-spirited and downright nasty comments that the author selected from his primary sources. Again, the student ego is a fragile and delicate thing, something that must not be crushed. The students, even as seniors, are just beginning their collective journey into adulthood and education. A nasty comment could derail them. Perhaps we say, in our supposed wisdom, that we want to derail them, to crush their ego or arrogance and “wake them up” to their situation of poor grammatical awareness. I disagree. There are better ways to do it. Properly done, a students’ ego can be used to motivate them.
Thus, the question remains: How do we motivate students with proper comments? I’m a proponent of being short. Of course, I realize that the authors may disagree with me. Also, the authors and I may disagree over what, exactly, constitutes “short.” They state, “A teacher with too many students, too many papers to grade, can pay only small attention to each one, and small attention indeed is what many of these papers got. A quarter of them had no personal comments at all, a third of them had no real rhetorical responses, and only 5% of them had lengthy, engaged comments of more than 100 words” (214). This attitude stands in stark contrast to the instructions which a friend of mine received; she was told to keep comments quick and to-the-point. Frankly, I think that the authors may be expecting a bit much—I doubt that students pay attention to comments over one hundred words (at least at first glance; if encouraged, the students may finally read the entire comment paragraph). While I certainly don’t believe in skimping on comments, I worry about overloading students; I also worry about practical issues, such as my time. Writing that much would take a long time. I hope this doesn’t make me seem lazy.
The authors are absolutely correct when they admonish us to “determin[e] those genres and tropes of response we tend to privilege [that] perhaps we can begin to learn how our students ‘read’ these teacherly tropes, which seem so obvious and helpful to us but may not be so easily deciphered by those still striving to enter the community we take for granted” (219). What comments do students look for when scanning our response paragraph? What words stand out to them? Maybe it is some misguided sense of making these “tropes” stand out that drives teachers to make mean-spirited comments. Again, I hope to find polite—yet effective—comments that students will respond to. I’m open to suggestions.
Monday, February 16, 2009
Monday, February 9, 2009
On Textbooks, Profits, and Raw Utter Unadulterated Massive Blasted Idiocy
So the title's a little bombastic. Hmm.
Man, did this reading resonate with me. It’s instructions were clear, and the instructions were noteworthy. Indeed, allow me to create a parallel with a more domestic situation in order to illustrate, what I feel, is the author’s message: Imagine, for a moment, a kid who’s taking the piano. He’s actually pretty good—he plays Beethoven, Mozart, the big guys. However, the songs that his piano teacher assigns him are seemingly random, without order or reason; sure, the songs get more difficult as time goes by, but, due to a lack of context, he often wonders why he has to play “Funereal Dirge No. 666” by some unknown composer out of a Soviet-bloc nation. (Not, of course, that he has anything against Soviet-bloc nations, of course, but the music can be, on occasion, uh, bleak.) Bored out of his mind, he finally abandons the piano for the guitar, for he wants to rock the proverbial house. He is happy.
However, what happens then? He progresses into guitar study and finds—could it be?—the context for his piano instruction? Syncopation, pentatonic scales—all this draws upon his piano training, and—in a flurry, it happens—he understands. It all makes sense. If only he could have understood the context of what his teachers had been trying to teach him with the Slavic death marches, if only he could’ve known that the piano was really helping him, if only!
As I am prone to do, I exaggerate somewhat in this—uh, fictional—story. (Yep. Totally false. Yessir.) However, I think it demonstrates our author’s point, which is that many of today’s student-age learners, be them piano students or composition students, are, sadly, not given much instruction in theory, in context. Thus, when evaluating textbooks, we must pay attention to whether the textbooks have any particular aim in their instruction—that is, whether their pedagogical choices are motivated by theory or whether they simply flail about, teaching whatever the author feels is needed in his/her judgment. As the author here states, “The problem with the partial canons and the modes is that they do not have any aim. They are cut off from meaning because they are cut off from pointing forward to any life outside the text. They point back only to themselves and so implode meaninglessly” (Welch 275). In other words, instruction for the sake of instruction is no instruction at all.
The flip-side of this idea, though, is encouraging: If students can be taught the context of what we’re teaching, the why-and-wherefore of the homework that we assign, perhaps they will be more eager to do it. Perhaps not, of course—when I (I mean, our hypothetical student) was taking piano, some of the songs that I was assigned to learn were so unbelievably boring that no amount of musical theory could ameliorate the situation. But the theory does help.
What is the solution? Should we create a textbook that is entirely devoted to theory? Should we have a textbook that features articles that students find enjoyable and/or “fun”? Welch’s article advocates that:
Whatever the solution, something needs to be done, ‘cause I’ve seen my fair share of composition textbooks, and they are almost universally boring. (The book we had last semester was okay. The articles really got the students’ hackles up.) (I like hackles.)
Man, did this reading resonate with me. It’s instructions were clear, and the instructions were noteworthy. Indeed, allow me to create a parallel with a more domestic situation in order to illustrate, what I feel, is the author’s message: Imagine, for a moment, a kid who’s taking the piano. He’s actually pretty good—he plays Beethoven, Mozart, the big guys. However, the songs that his piano teacher assigns him are seemingly random, without order or reason; sure, the songs get more difficult as time goes by, but, due to a lack of context, he often wonders why he has to play “Funereal Dirge No. 666” by some unknown composer out of a Soviet-bloc nation. (Not, of course, that he has anything against Soviet-bloc nations, of course, but the music can be, on occasion, uh, bleak.) Bored out of his mind, he finally abandons the piano for the guitar, for he wants to rock the proverbial house. He is happy.
However, what happens then? He progresses into guitar study and finds—could it be?—the context for his piano instruction? Syncopation, pentatonic scales—all this draws upon his piano training, and—in a flurry, it happens—he understands. It all makes sense. If only he could have understood the context of what his teachers had been trying to teach him with the Slavic death marches, if only he could’ve known that the piano was really helping him, if only!
As I am prone to do, I exaggerate somewhat in this—uh, fictional—story. (Yep. Totally false. Yessir.) However, I think it demonstrates our author’s point, which is that many of today’s student-age learners, be them piano students or composition students, are, sadly, not given much instruction in theory, in context. Thus, when evaluating textbooks, we must pay attention to whether the textbooks have any particular aim in their instruction—that is, whether their pedagogical choices are motivated by theory or whether they simply flail about, teaching whatever the author feels is needed in his/her judgment. As the author here states, “The problem with the partial canons and the modes is that they do not have any aim. They are cut off from meaning because they are cut off from pointing forward to any life outside the text. They point back only to themselves and so implode meaninglessly” (Welch 275). In other words, instruction for the sake of instruction is no instruction at all.
The flip-side of this idea, though, is encouraging: If students can be taught the context of what we’re teaching, the why-and-wherefore of the homework that we assign, perhaps they will be more eager to do it. Perhaps not, of course—when I (I mean, our hypothetical student) was taking piano, some of the songs that I was assigned to learn were so unbelievably boring that no amount of musical theory could ameliorate the situation. But the theory does help.
What is the solution? Should we create a textbook that is entirely devoted to theory? Should we have a textbook that features articles that students find enjoyable and/or “fun”? Welch’s article advocates that:
[r]ules for dominant-culture English can be relegated to a pamphlet that not only instructs students in the conventions of this dialect but that explains the implications of power, authority, and social mobility that go with mastery of his dialect.
We must begin with these changes in current textbooks. Their currently enormously persuasive effect, in their large numbers if from nothing else, is to show writing students that language is banal, boring, and not central to anyone’s life. (279)
Whatever the solution, something needs to be done, ‘cause I’ve seen my fair share of composition textbooks, and they are almost universally boring. (The book we had last semester was okay. The articles really got the students’ hackles up.) (I like hackles.)
Monday, February 2, 2009
Blog Response #2: Genre. Bent.
The question of genre is one that has intrigued—plagued, really—me for quite some time now, ever since I took a class whose purpose was to define form. Basically, we had to see where the line between fiction and poetry lay; it was a difficult class, one that many people were quick to label as “experimental” (my, I’m using lots of buzzwords here, ain’t I?), but it wasn’t, really—it was just a question of exploring genre. Indeed, the very first essay we had to write in that class (and one that I really didn’t do very well on) was that question which Amy J. Devitt is trying to answer—what is genre?
It was hard precisely because of the problem that Devitt probes—so often, we define genre by the end form of a piece of writing, when what we should be examining is the situation and/or motivation for creating that very piece. It can be difficult for students, and I can really relate to students who struggle to understand an assignment’s particular generic “space.” (Another buzzword. Man, I’m on a roll today.) For example, when I was in that class about form, four other people in the class—there were only six of us, including the professor—were poets. There was one other fiction writer and, admittedly, poetry serves as a better jumping-off point when discussing form, since that’s one definition of poetry, a definition that we could banter about: writing with form.
When I was asked to write stuff that was more poetry than fiction, I balked. I certainly wanted to, because I loved much of the stuff that we were discussing in class, like prose poetry, that bent the rules. I wanted to try, to excel—such was my mindset. However, I was grasping for an anchor, something that would help me understand this new exigence that confronted me. I really relate to what Devitt says:
“Since the genre constructs the situation, students will not be able to respond appropriately to assigned situations unless they know the appropriate genre. What we often diagnose as ignorance of a situation or inability to imagine themselves in another situation may in fact be ignorance of a genre or inability to write a genre they have not sufficiently read: they may feel great love but be unable to write a love sonnet.”
How do we, as instructors, help students overcome this problem? Honestly, I’m at a bit of a loss. Aside from simply having the students read, read, read and write, write, write, I don’t really see any way. Perhaps that’s the unspoken message in Devitt’s article: we must really put the students to work. I’m down.
It was hard precisely because of the problem that Devitt probes—so often, we define genre by the end form of a piece of writing, when what we should be examining is the situation and/or motivation for creating that very piece. It can be difficult for students, and I can really relate to students who struggle to understand an assignment’s particular generic “space.” (Another buzzword. Man, I’m on a roll today.) For example, when I was in that class about form, four other people in the class—there were only six of us, including the professor—were poets. There was one other fiction writer and, admittedly, poetry serves as a better jumping-off point when discussing form, since that’s one definition of poetry, a definition that we could banter about: writing with form.
When I was asked to write stuff that was more poetry than fiction, I balked. I certainly wanted to, because I loved much of the stuff that we were discussing in class, like prose poetry, that bent the rules. I wanted to try, to excel—such was my mindset. However, I was grasping for an anchor, something that would help me understand this new exigence that confronted me. I really relate to what Devitt says:
“Since the genre constructs the situation, students will not be able to respond appropriately to assigned situations unless they know the appropriate genre. What we often diagnose as ignorance of a situation or inability to imagine themselves in another situation may in fact be ignorance of a genre or inability to write a genre they have not sufficiently read: they may feel great love but be unable to write a love sonnet.”
How do we, as instructors, help students overcome this problem? Honestly, I’m at a bit of a loss. Aside from simply having the students read, read, read and write, write, write, I don’t really see any way. Perhaps that’s the unspoken message in Devitt’s article: we must really put the students to work. I’m down.
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