Composition Pedagogy Discussion

• Assignment Requirements
1. Choose an article to report within your assigned pedagogy
2. Give a brief definition of the approach
3. Summarize/give an overview of the approach
4. An example assignment using the approach. This could be you own or an already existing assignment.
• "'LITCOMP' Some Rhetoric Addressed to Cryptorhetoricians about a Rhetorical Solution to a Rhetorical Problem," Wayne C. Booth (Ch 4 from Composition & Literature: Bridging the Gap by Winifred Bryan Horner
• It is harder to develop and teach a course that teaches both "comp" and "lit."
• Best hope: developing a challenging course for the most challenging student -- freshmen.
• Teaching lit and not comp does three things: (1) it cheats administration who hired you to teach comp, (2) it attracts the least interesting students, (3) it deprives the instructor of intellectual reward.
• Teaching literature is more highly valued than teaching beginning students to read and write.
• What society needs is not what English departments want to provide.
• Regularly held belief: To depart literature to graduate teaching (of composition) is failure.
• A critical view: English departments should teach the citizenry to read, think, and write instead of what it does -- teaches the elite to write about literature.
• Corporations are setting up "English" courses to teach employees how to speak and write.
• Graduates have been cheated. They have been taught in major fields that do not require writing. They have been taught to think like an economist, like a chemist, like a mathematician, etc.
• Booth argues graduates would not be able to write their congressman or a school superintendent.
• A BA graduate should be able to read, think, and write. Booth argues they cannot.
• Booth calls students the first generation of TV parents. He says half the population has English as a second language -- not because the first is Spanish, but because instead of reading this generation's parents watched TV.
• A liberal education is still valuable, but the need is greater for service courses, teaching the "less-than-basics."
• Booth proposes a curriculum with seven points:
• Point 1: Every student should be writing several papers per month for several years.
• Point 2: Students must become interested in material that seems too difficult but is not too difficult.
• Point 3: Students receive frequent critical responses from people they respect.
• Point 4: Instructors teach a small number of courses.
• Point 5: Students should address each other.
• Point 6: Teachers in all subjects need to have taken writing instruction. Teachers in all subjects must demand their students are literate.
• Point 7: Literature must be considered broadly. What students read should resemble what they are asked to write.
• We have an unlimited need to shape reality with words.
• Examples of authors creating their reality of themselves with their words:
• Ted Kenney's speech at the 1980 DNC built the appeal of his character without mentioning his past.
• Socrates building his character in The Apology (by Plato).
• Robert Browning's poems
• Jane Austen's characters in Persuasion
• Benjamin Franklin and Poor Richard
• T.S. Eliot and Prufrock
• All of these examples demonstrate teaching writing and teaching literature are the same.
• Understanding characters is the same as how to develop our own voice in writing.
• Without this connection, students don't have a good answer of what they will do with their English degree.
• Students should try out voices and receive criticism about whether they hit the right tone.
• Each paper should focus on the voice of who they are trying to be.
• If the voice is intending to be a bright college student impressing their instructor, they should think about how you do that and what the pitfalls might betray their intention.
• If the voice is writing as your natural self, the student should be prepared to accept criticism about how that self seems when written down.
• Students should reach each other's work, not just the professor.
• Students should make copies of their papers so their classmate's can read and get feedback on their voice. Do they sound bullying, pedantic, ignorant, dull, or sycophantic? These discussions might hurt feelings, but they will survive.
• Students will find trying out voice fun. They will care about their writing and care about succeeding.
• One danger is overenthusiasm with trying to mimic anyone.
• This pursuit allows the student to be more sincere. It allows a black student to use street language (quoting Booth!).
• A student may create six or eight voices of their own by the end of the course.