Planning a Composition

I just attended the exhibit, "Marian Greenwood in Tennessee" at the UT Downtown Gallery. The centerpiece is the mural, "History of Tennessee" (1955).

"The History of Tennessee," hanging at the UT Downtown Gallery
Aren't these colors fabulous? Oil on linen. 

The mural itself is an impressive achievement. What really fascinated me, though, was the amount of planning Greenwood put into the painting. The exhibit displayed many of her sketches, some in charcoal, some pencil, some colored, etc. She re-worked the composition and the colors. Some things she knew from the start, like that in the center would be a couple square dancing. At one point she considered having Native Americans at each side (there aren't any in the final version). The center woman's dress might have ended up being much duller, according to one drawing.

I wish this exhibit would stay open during the semester so that writing students could attend and think about the importance of planning and why one might not choose to run with the first idea one has. With painting, little revision is possible and so planning becomes all the more important. But even in writing, the more work we spend planning, the less we have to revise.

Here are some of Greenwood's sketches:

"Why can't students today write?"

This is a question I'm often asked when people find out I teach Composition (right after 'oops, I'd better be careful what I say!'). What's wrong with our students today, they wonder. Why can't they learn basic spelling and grammar? Why can't they write?

I'm not sure exactly what measure people use to judge students' writing. Perhaps they're listening to the news and all the test results. I'm pretty sure they aren't looking at the writing.

 From what I've seen, students' grammar is no worse than the average. The same person who asks me 'why can't students write?' has probably misplaced an apostrophe and used quotation marks for "emphasis." There are errors, but most of my students at a large state school can identify them once they're pointed out. Their proofreading skills aren't well-developed, and it's possible that composing ephemeral messages on a computer screen has contributed to that lack. Proofreading is largely a question of paying attention to detail, which requires caring. If writing comes and goes, why proofread?

 But writing is more than grammar. It's an ability to express ideas in such a way that others can grasp them. First-year college students struggle with this--all of them. That's because their ideas are becoming more sophisticated and they don't yet have the tools to express them. As they try to build more complex sentences and deploy new vocabulary, it's natural that they will fail sometimes. This is utterly normal. 

For evidence, I share with you an article by Rebecca Osborn published in College English. She writes of faculty who wish there weren't any freshmen and sympathetically states, "There is often reason enough for the protest that freshmen are immature, confused, and occasionally downright stupid." She adds, "If our students are not supremely gifted, if their educational background is faulty, if they are not widely read, they are, nevertheless, alert young people who have, for the most part, absorbed as much as they were given to absorb." The year? 1949. Folks, in 1949 teachers thought college freshmen could be immature, confused, stupid, and unprepared.

 I'm reminded of an apocryphal quote attributed to Socrates on "the youth of today." There's also this quote:

"The world is passing through troublous times. The young people of today think of nothing but themselves. They have no reverence for parents or old age. They are impatient of all restraint. They talk as if they knew everything, and what passes for wisdom with us is foolishness with them. As for the girls, they are forward, immodest and unladylike in speech, behavior and dress."

That's from a sermon supposedly preached by Peter the Hermit in A.D. 1274. What I am suggesting is that all this talk of students not being able to write is cranky-old-teacher thinking. Let's focus instead on what our students need to take them to the next level.

Quintessentially Cranky.

Learning to Ask Deep Questions

It's hard to exaggerate the importance to education of asking good questions. To interrogate an idea, a dataset, or the basis of theorems, is to become intellectually active.

In the past, I have required students to bring one discussion question on a pre-assigned day. I've also required all students in a course to bring a question on the same day. I've met with limited success. Often the questions they bring are comprehension questions rather than discussion questions. I explain that a discussion question is one without one obviously correct answer, one we can debate. I even give an example of both types of questions. Yet, they don't ask the questions I want, the deep questions.

I read an article last fall that suggested having students ask a question on the exam and explain why that was a good question. I tried it in my British literature class, but the results weren't great. I hadn't prepared them enough, given them enough practice with asking questions.

One thing I must do is to teach students about different kinds of questions. I especially want students to learn to ask questions of interpretation, of assumption, of implication, of point of view, of relevance, of accuracy, of precision, of consistency, and of logic. I want them to use questions to probe and explore. I can do this by having students formulate questions in small groups during class or by preparing them in advance. But probably the most important way to teach asking questions is to model them. 

Modeling is the recommendation of Faculty Focus's "The Art of Asking Questions," by Maryellen Weimar. Specifically, she recommends:

• Prepare questions.
• Play with the questions. 
• Preserve good questions. 
• Ask questions that you don't know the answer to.
• Ask questions you can't answer. 
• Don't ask open-ended questions when you know the answer you're looking for. 

I do prepare questions in advance, but most of them are comprehension. I often ask open-ended questions when I know the answer I'm looking for. It's hard when it's a question without one answer, but I can predict their arguments from years of experience. I preserve questions in my lesson plans, and I often ask questions I don't know the answer to or that I can't answer. 

The area I plan to immediately address is playing with the questions.  Too often, when a question is asked, someone will give a pat answer, the quick answer, without exploring it (always an extravert). To include more members of the class and to encourage thoughtful answers, I can put the questions on the board or PowerPoint and ask them to write them in their notes. It can be a question addressed at the end of the class session or asked over several sessions until the best answer is found. This will also create unity in the course.

What techniques do you use to get students asking meaningful questions? 

Pro-religion or Anti-gay? Rhetorical differences in reporting.

Fellow blogger Bellatricksy alerted me to this, and I'm saving it for the next time I teach rhetoric. I captured these images within minutes of each other (26 Feb 2014) and both are reporting on the same veto of the same Arizona bill.

"Arizona Religious Bill Is Vetoed," The Wall Street Journal

"Brewer vetoes bill denying service to gays," The Washington Post

How can we ever agree in this country if we aren't even arguing about the same things?

Lecturing as a Rich Medium

Source:
"In praise of the university lecture and its place in academic scholarship"

In the first unit of my Business Writing class, we discuss the advantages of different communication media, classifying them as lean or rich. A lean medium communicates in one direction, in the simplest way, and is impersonal. A rich medium allows for audience feedback, uses multiple informational cues (such as body language, tone of voice, charts, etc), and is more personal. Face-to-face is the richest medium for communication.

My pedagogy discussion group has been discussing the pros and cons of lecturing. Some people claim it's outdated and boring, that students can get the same information from the web. It's true that some days, it seems like I might as well record what I'm doing. By the third time I give a lecture in a day, I've started running on auto-pilot. Those are the days that I wonder about the usefulness of lecturing.

Then I remember that I'm not being fair to myself. Although I'm performing the same lecture, the audience feedback is slightly different every time. Even if it isn't different, the idea that I could possibly respond to student feedback changes the dynamic.

I just recorded a lecture for tomorrow's class (I'm sick and staying home). I managed to trim a 20-minute explanation of blogging down to 12 minutes by cutting the time for pages to load and some extraneous comments. Watching this lesson, it occurs to me that some students will need to watch it twice. And then they may still be confused. This isn't because of a problem with the lesson, but rather that I'm not there to respond to their questions as they occur.

During my lectures, I watch my students carefully. I watch their body language. How much are they understanding? Where is there a problem? When I see consternation wrinkling someone's brow, I find another way to restate my message. When I see hesitation, I'll ask if an idea is clear and perhaps give a sample application.

This richness is difficult to replicate in an online learning environment. My lectures usually include active learning moments, such as pair-and-share or applications of an idea, but they also involve frequent moments where I check in with my students. Perhaps, then, the lecture isn't on its way out. We're just changing our understanding of it.

Does hand-writing their notes help students learn better?

At today's Pedagogy Discussion Group (hosted by the TennTLC), amid the discussion of testing as a learning activity, someone brought up the claim that hand-writing one's notes aids in memory retention. I have found this personally to be true. When I studied for tests, I hand-wrote my notes. I made copies of notes by hand. I created a huge chalkboard in my head and imagined myself carving formulae into it with a glowing gold pen. When it came time to take the test, I knew where on the board to "look." I could remember writing out the poems and definitions. I could mentally envision my writing and the papers. I always thought that the benefit was primarily spatial or visual. But the very act of hand-writing may be responsible.

A study by Jean-Luc Velay at the University of Versailles found "that different parts of the brain are activated when we read letters we have learned by handwriting" (Science Daily). In an article co-written with Velay (discussed in the same Science Daily article), the University of Stavenger's Anne Mangen suggests that something is lost when students type instead of hand-write. However, the full connections between sensory motor skills and cognition are not yet understood.

Many of my students type their notes during class. There's good reason: typing is faster, and many of them can't write legibly in cursive. The notes can be saved to the cloud and opened on a variety of devices, making studying much more convenient. I've been encouraging this practice because of the convenience and the environmental benefits of the "paperless classroom." But have I been doing them a disservice?

Instructions Activity for Technical Writing Class

The “you” attitude is an essential element in writing definitions, descriptions, and instructions. The writer must guess what information the audience already has and balance that against what is needed to accomplish the document’s purpose. Although writing instructions is the most advanced of these tasks, there is a secret weapon: usability testing. In this exercise, students write a set of instructions then exchange them with another group for testing.

1. Examine the contents of the bag given to you. Spend approximately 10 minutes designing a structure of 20-40 pieces. Give this structure a name and take a picture of it.
2. Write verbal instructions so that someone else can copy your design. Use words only, no graphics.
3. Review your instructions according to the checklist in Markel, pp. 388-89.
4. Dismantle your creation. Trade instructions and materials with another group.
5. Each group recreates the original structure. Compare the finished project to the picture.
6. Compare notes with the other group. Where were you confused? Was any information extraneous?
7. Revise your instructions, then post them to the Discussion Board along with the picture, if possible.

 

From this activity, students said they learned that what's clear to one person is confusing to another; to watch for ambiguity; and to take nothing for granted.