I am attaching my final paper if any of you would like to see it or to use any examples for your composition classes. 

I hope you all have a great Christmas and, most of all, a relaxing break! 

final-paper.doc

            In spite of these restrictions, I am attempting to revise my teaching philosophy to incorporate more multimodal experimentation.  I am particularly impressed with Jody Shipka and the examples of some methods she uses in her classroom.  The OED is exercise is something I would like to explore.  I have decided that I must be ultra-creative in order to balance the expectations of my course requirements and implementing multimodal composition.  It is a goal I am excited to pursue. 

      I explain that the most essential component of a descriptive essay is using descriptions based on the five senses (i.e. sound, smell, touch, taste, sight).

      First, I tell the students that they must trust me because they will have to close their eyes for most of the presentation.

      I also explain that they have been relying on sight to write most of their rhetorical papers.  Now, they must use detailed descriptions for the reader to smell, feel, taste, hear, and see what they are writing about.

      The number one rule is the student cannot guess what it is.  They must describe the object using only the senses.

      Step 1: (sound) I ask the students to close their eyes, and I turn on a cued-up DVD that has no dialogue but a lot of action sounds (suspenseful music, running, heavy, breathing)

After I stop the movie, we go around the room and describe how each felt.  In other words, what type of memories or emotions did the sounds bring out.

      Step 2: (smell) The students close their eyes again.  As I rest my hand on the students shoulder, the student knows that there is something in front of his or her nose.  After smelling the bottle of spice (cloves), the student describes the feelings or memories using the senses.

At intervals, I ask the other students who have not smelled the spice if they can imagine what their classmates are smelling. 

I usually have them go around again smelling another spice like sage.  I use these two scents because they are closely related to emotional holidays.

      Step 3:  (touch) The students are asked to reach into a bag to feel an object and describe it using adjectives that do not say what it is but what it is like.  I used to use a sample square from an Intelibed store, but I lost it.  I now use a squishy ball with spikes.  The idea is to choose something that is unfamiliar.

      Step 4:  (taste) Once again, the students must close their eyes.  They hold out their hands and I ask them to unwrap the object (candy) and put it in their mouths.  We go around the class describing the taste and sensation.  I use Starburst or Mike & Ikes or something with a variety so one might taste a sour lemon or a sweet cherry.  It adds variation.

      Step 5:  (sight)  I ask each student to close his or her eyes and think of a rose.  Each student describes his or her own rose.  Ideally, the students will all describe a different rose.  If the class is large, I will just ask by a show of hands how many had a red rose, a yellow rose, a pink rose, etc.  I also ask if the rose is large or small or if it is smooth or thorny. 

      The idea is to get used to interpreting what others are sensing so that they can incorporate the use of description or word pictures in their writing in order to convey meaning and communicate to be understood.

      Then, they are asked to brainstorm, outline, draft, and revise a descriptive essay based on the following topics:

1.  A favorite restaurant

2.  The ideal teacher

3.  Life on a college campus or dorm

4.  The best or worst place to work 5.  A foreign country  

This journal addresses many of my own concerns as an instructor of basic writing.  It reminds me of when I was a young mother, and I sought out parenting magazines to help me have confidence in my decisions and to understand where I still need to grow.

In particular, there is a passage in the article “Student Reflection and Critical Thinking:  A Rhetorical Analysis of 88 Portfolio Cover Letters” which helped me look at how I have my students construct reflective writing:

“Reflective writing seems to be an accepted disciplinary way of encouraging critical thinking in basic writers and indeed in all first-year composition students.  If students look back on their work reflectively and attempt to see what they have learned from the writing process, this information can be vital to improving their skills as writers and thinkers.  “Becoming aware of your thought processes,” according to Swartz and Perkins, is the first step toward achieving metacognition or thinking about thinking (quoted in Barell) 258.  Reflective writing also encourages students to highlight the reasons behind their choices and to describe how those choices affected their writing.”                             Laurel L. Bower

After reading this, I acknowledged the effectiveness and power of reflection for a student.  The article also cites the drawbacks from a reflective letter in that a letter does not comprehensively address a reflection student’s experiences.  This outcome from the study affirmed my belief in a reflective essay as opposed to a letter.

The beginning of the article “Linguistic Cultural Capital and Basic Writers,” the author Charlotte Brammer compares the protagonist, Jay Gatsby, in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby to basic writing students.  Jay Gatsby, in spite of his acquired wealth, existed on the periphery of society.  Basic writing students of exist on the periphery of the society of writers.  This comparison illuminated the shortcomings of being a basic writer and the outsiderness of this group. I feel much more empathy for the students since reading this article. 

On the other hand, some articles focused on ESL basic writers, and I don’t have too much to do with ESL students generally.  Perhaps there are about 2-4 in each class I teach.  I tended to overlook those articles, except for the article, “The Power of Academic Learning Communities” by Rebecca Williams Mlynarczk and Marcia Babbitt.  They focus particularly on a Student-Centered pedagogy, which, I believe would be very effective for the few ESL students that I have.  I realize I need to do more to incorporate their learning perspectives and styles into my teaching program.

Passions, Pedagogies, and 21st Century Technology, Ed. Gail E. Hawisher and Cynthia L. Selfe 

These two books have similarities when it comes to technology and technology pedagogy.  However, Multiliteracies deals more with the change and development of pedagogies.  The first couple of chapters were a bit disconcerting in that they seemed to say that change is good and what was done in the past is now inadequate.  For example, The New London Group records this statement:  “key terms and interests of various postmodern and critical discourses focusing on liberation, the destruction of hierarchies, and the honouring of diversity…” (11).  It translates into “the new way is freedom and inclusion; the old way of structure must be destroyed”.  This stance has some positive twists of logic, but it doesn’t consider that too much freedom and no standards create chaos. 

Writing for understanding and communicating effectively have a basis in commonality.  This commonality is founded in grammar, syntax, and other rules.  Rules are intended to be liberating, not constricting.  For example, punctuating so the reader can understand what has been written is considerate and thoughtful.  The reader doesn’t have to translate what has been said or search for abstract meaning or intention of the writer. 

Through the Designs of Meaning, the reader can use knowledge to build more knowledge.  Granted, people from different cultures have different Available Designs, but in order to communicate effectively, the Designing stage should provide methods of inclusion.  The Redesigned should be something that can be shared and understood in a community.  

Gunther Kress, in both Passions (ch. 4) and Multiliteracies(chs. 7 & 9), that senses can “from the beginning, guarantees the multimodality of our semiotic world” (184).  In other words, an individual’s senses, and further, his or her background(socially and psychologically) contributes to the interpretations of input.   It is through representation and communication that external interprecations are effected.  Nevertheless, the closer people can come to common definitions, common rules and expectations, and collaborative meaning, the greater chance of success with understanding.  Kress says, “So the various modes brought together in the multimodal system of language are generally speaking highly elaborated, in syntax, in lexis, and phonology…that is, the system of objects integrally involved with social practices…” (191). 

Both books attempt to identify new methods and technologies, deconstruct them so as to reconstruct them into observing the changes and how these changes affect communication, and put these complex changes into context.

The majority of my class is basic grammar and sentence construction.  The beginning of the course is focused mainly on Process Pedagogy and Basic Writing Pedagogy.  We start with practice paragraphs wherein the students create a body paragraph on a rhetorical topic.  The process is followed closely in each practice paragraph: brainstorming, outline, draft, revision.  In addition, we concentrate on word choice and standard English syntax. 

Throughout the class we also use Collaborative Pedagogy and Technical Pedagogy.  The students are able to access WebCT on the internet.  Before they write a practice paragraph, the must first read an article on a similar topic and respond to prompts in discussion groups in WebCT.  Through the prompts and responses, they are able to gather brainstorming ideas and reflect on the topics each week.  They also post their reflections for the week in their journals, which are also located in WebCT.  However, these are private, and only the student and instructor are able to access individual journals.

 Finally, once the students understand the concepts of paragraph construction, they are ready to begin essays.  Each essay is based on a type of rhetorical mode.  Thus, we also incorporate the Rhetorical Pedagogy.  These essays are constructed in a standard five paragraph format.

It is my plan to begin using a Visual Pedagogy in the future because I am being persuaded that this could be a helpful teaching method for the level of students that I teach.

In spite of all the relatively new pedagogical methods being introduced, I strongly believe that students must begin with the basics of writing (the old fashioned way).  I will leave it to the English 1010 instructors to use unproven but engaging methods of composition.

 In general, this book covers several points of view about the pros and cons of technology in writing.  There are some valid perspectives in spite of the outdatedness of some of the articles.  It provides an interesting insight into the fears and/or concerns of educators at the time it was published (1999). 

Specifically, “Access” by Charles Moran is a bit unfair.  In spite of all of the data and facts provided, there has been a change since the time this article was written.  Although there are still many students who may not own a computer, many libraries and schools are keeping up with the race for techology to be up-to-date and available for student use.  Thus, taking into consideration that this article is outdated, it contains some valid points about the transition in technology.

Chapter 5, “Petals on a Wet Black Bough,”  is formatted in a way that catches a reader’s attention.  However, I am rather old fashioned when it comes to reading articles.  Perhaps it is because this artile reads like a zine that I don’t take it too seriously.  In other words, the article loses some credibility in that it is not as “professional” as expected.  The content, however, is thought provoking.

“From Pencils to Pixels” is particularly interesting to me because I enjoy learning the history of something, whether it is a theory or product, and how it progresses mophologically.  The article provides a perspective of writing that is innovative.  One would hardly consider a pencil to be cutting edge or controversial, but Baron points out how pencils did, indeed, shake up the writing world.  In this light, computer and technology must be considered equally controversial as a new medium. 

In addition to the articles referenced above, the other authors allow technology to be considered as a unique pedagogy when critics would say that technology is no more than a tool.  Admittedly, there are valid points on both sides of the argument.  The authors of “Passions”, Hawisher adn Selfe, have compiled some compelling rhetorical positions on pedagogy and technology. 

This textbook should be categorized as (comprehensively) Rhetorical Pedagogy.  It is an impressive compilation of various forms of argumentation.  This textbook would be a very effective tool if one were teaching a class on Rhetoric.  It is exhaustive in that it covers every angle of argumentation from humor and visual to unethical fallacies and documentation of facts. 

Published in College Composition and Communication.  May 1993, Vol. 44, No. 2.

Stephen A. Bernhardt proposes that electronic media exploits the dimensions writing.  He says that on-screen text tends to be:

• Situationally Embedded – (Text is bound up within the context of the action.)
• Interactive – (Text invites the reader to actively engage, both physically and mentally, with it.)
• Functionally Mapped – (Text displays are cues to the readers.)
• Modulars – (Text is contained in blocks or chunks.)
• Navigable – (Text supports reader movement across large pools of information.)
• Spacious – (Text is unconstrained by physicality.)
• Graphically Rich – (Text integrates graphic display to facilitate interaction.)
• Customizable and Publishable – (Text is fluid, changing, and dynamic.)

 Readers are really using text rather than reading text insomuch that they can seek and maneuver the information to conform to their needs. 
Reading becomes more functional and interactive through electronic media.  For example, hot links provide the ability to multitask learning in non-linear ways.  Bernhardt points out, “Through two-dimensional, screens offer the compelling illusion of depth” in a layering effect (163). Ultimately, the written text and electronic media will form a “cross-breeding” or interrelation of information. Moreover, the possibilities evident through the use of electronic media produce a non-static environment that can take reading and writing to levels that paper text cannot.