Paul,
I use the text with readings and supplement it with Cohen's "50 Essays."
It's worth noting that they include a Tannen essay on "surviving the
Argument Culture" in the second edition.
All important issues are dialogic, and much depends on whether that
dialogue is collegial and gracious. (If we can understand dialogue as
more than two. We need a term for multilogic.)
It's interesting that in the Graham and Perrin metaresearch study on
effective interventions, summary is highest on the list. Students need
to be critical readers, and as part of that they need to pay attention
to how good writing is organized.
I can take an anthology of good (award winning) writing and find only
a small percentage of argument. Most good writing is not argument.
Even when it is persuasive, it's more likely to offer a perspective
than it is to act as if it's a final statement.
Most serious scholarship starts with a review of the literature. We
have to be able to explain how we are contributing to an ongoing
enterprise.
Again, I think our task is to find subjects that our students know more
about than we do. I think even Basic writing has to start with the
premise that writing matters. You can't teach writing by remediating
deficiencies. You teach it by building competence. No one sits down to
write correct sentences or correct paragraphs. Neither sentences nor
paragraphs have any value outside of a text. Once you begin
constructing a text, it makes sense to explore various ways in which it
might be portioned out.
I say this after decades on the front lines, working with very needy
students in a highly successful program.
Craig
Herb & Geoff,
>
> I think that one of the advantages of the They Say/I Say text is that it
> opens
> an opportunity to have students investigate issues before they take a
> position.
> Of course, all that depends upon how we actually use the text in the
> classroom.
> I like your idea of having the students explain the history of an argument
> or
> issue and not express an opinion. Craig's mantra (on another recent
> e-mail) is
> profoundly logical. However, it seems to me that eventually, they need to
> examine the arguments & histories of issues and think about/examine where
> they
> stand. Hopefully, they will think before they leap.
>
> Question for those of you who use the text: Do you use the basic text only
> or
> the text that includes readings on various issues?
>
> Paul D.
> "If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an
> improbable
> fiction" (_Twelfth Night_ 3.4.127-128).
>
>
>
>
>
> ________________________________
> From: Geoffrey Layton <[log in to unmask]>
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Sent: Mon, August 8, 2011 4:57:24 PM
> Subject: Re: Holding their interest
>
>
> Herb -
>
> Your comments are not at all tangential. They get straight to the heart
> of what
> I consider to be an essential debate about the role of argument in the
> freshman
> comp (or any comp) classroom - the "great arguments" - abortion,
> evolution, gay
> marriage, gun control, wars in every age and era (but particularly Iraq,
> Afghanistan and Vietnam along with Palistine and the entire Middle
> East), torture - all of these and more are indeed, what evoke (and
> provoke!) student interest. But they are also what cause chaos in the
> classroom
> (or, as you mention, the dinner table).
>
>
> The only way I've been able to deal with this problem - allowing students
> full
> participation in debating these issues (in the context of their writing
> assignments and class discussion) while keeping the lid on the chaos - is
> to
> follow the path that Stanley Fish lays out in his excellent book "Save
> the World
> on Your Own Time." His injunction is quite simple - nobody, including the
> teacher, can take a personal position. The pedagogy is designed to show
> students
> how people argue and why the arguments are effective, not taking a
> position and
> defending it.
>
> In practical terms, the phrase I've found that pays is one that I picked
> up from
> Ralph Cintron, a remarkable rhetorician at UIC - "What must be in place
> for . .
> . ?" So applied to the issue of evolution, the question becomes "What
> must be in
> place for someone to reject evolution?" Put this way, I think that putting
> the
> people who reject evolution as simple-minded Bible-thumpers or emotionally
> dependent children is a bit too severe as this devolves into ad hominem
> reasoning.
>
>
> Geoff Layton
>
>
>
> ________________________________
> Date: Mon, 8 Aug 2011 16:37:09 -0400
> From: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: Holding their interest
> To: [log in to unmask]
>
>
> Thanks to all of you for one of the most interesting and thoughtfully
> argued
> threads we’ve had in a while.
>
> I have a question that may be tangential to this topic, or at least a
> narrower
> focus. I should say first that while I have taught both ESL writing and
> Freshman writing, I am not a writing teacher, and threads like this always
> leave
> me with a lot of respect for those who perform these tasks and perform
> them
> well.
>
> When I’ve taught writing, I’ve often been encouraged to avoid topics
> like
> abortion and creationism vs. evolution because it’s so difficult for
> student
> writers to separate themselves from the issues and from the social
> consequences
> of taking a position. As an example of this, I had dinner with my oldest
> son
> last night, and we got to talking about a good friend of his at work.
> She is
> well educated, well read, and has thoughtful views on a lot of topics.
> Evolution came up recently in one of their conversations, and her response
> was,
> “Oh, I don’t believe in evolution. The evidence for it is not very
> strong.” My
> son was surprised at her reaction. She comes from a Southern Baptist
> background
> but is no longer connected to that or any other denomination, so her
> reasons for
> rejecting evolution, and she confirms this, are not religious. I
> suggested to
> him that perhaps the reason for her position was a matter of social
> identity.
> Her family and the community she grew up in are devout and accept the
> biblical
> creation story literally. Rejecting evolution is a matter of family
> identity.
> She can become a backslid Baptist, and that’s lamentable, but for her to
> accept
> evolution would be to reject her family.
>
> In a case like this, a position on evolution or creation or abortion is
> not an
> intellectual stance; it’s a matter of cultural and social identity, and
> that
> makes it very hard to think critically about it. I’ve found in UG
> classes where
> we deal with dialectology the notion “social class” sometimes gets
> rejected out
> of hand as Marxist, and no amount of discussion will shake that
> position. This
> is also one of those defining stances.
>
> Is a writing class the place to get students to question such elements of
> their
> identity and look at themselves more critically? How does one go about
> this?
>
> Herb
>
> From:Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
> [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Geoffrey Layton
> Sent: Monday, August 08, 2011 1:14 PM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: Holding their interest
>
> Seth -
>
> Thanks for the reference. This thread fits with a project on academic
> discourse
> that I'm trying to develop. Perhaps one characteristic that Graff proposes
> that might be different from the Rogerian model is his insistence that
> - after
> all the listening and understanding - writers/academics must finally take
> a
> position that differs from that of their interlocutors/respondents. For
> example,
> in his book "Clueless in Academe," he offers significant criticism of
> Deborah
> Tannen and the views she expresses in her book, "The Argument Culture:
> Moving
> from Debate to Dialogue." As he puts it, "Perhaps the most telling
> refutation of
> Tannen's thesis is the confrontational quality of the book itself. . .
> Tannen
> enacts the behavior she objects to" (89). Similarly in "They Say," Graff
> advances a method that will enhance the ability of students to argue, not
> diminish it. His "listening and understanding" component, as I understand
> it, is
> presented not as a way to be non-confrontational but rather as a means to
> make
> sure that the resulting argument is telling and effective, much the same
> way
> that he demonstrates his understanding of Tannen's position in order
> to methodically destroy it.
>
>
> To return to the theme of the thread - "Holding their interest" - perhaps
> this
> discussion will help hold student interest by showing them that in order
> to develop a powerful argument for their position, they must first
> thoroughly
> understand the point of view of the person with whom they disagree - and,
> more
> interestingly, in order to have something interesting to say, they must
> find an
> area where they do disagree.
>
>
> Geoff Layton
>
>> Date: Mon, 8 Aug 2011 11:41:33 -0500
>> From: [log in to unmask]
>> Subject: Re: Holding their interest
>> To: [log in to unmask]
>>
>> Geoff--
>>
>> What you describe here sounds a lot like a Rogerian argument, in which
>> the
>>author (A) first explains the position he or she is opposed to (B),
>> without
>>criticism of any sort; the author (A) simply shows that they understand
>> position
>>(B). Then the author (A) offers non-pejorative critique of position (B):
>> 'I see
>>a problem/weakness/issue in position (B) that you (person who holds
>> position
>>[B]) have not addressed.' Then the author (A) offers elements of their
>> own
>>position on the issue that (A) thinks will help strengthen the opposing
>> position
>>(B). Based on the work of psychologist Carl Rogers, this type of argument
>> is a
>>mainstay of mediation: it shows that you are actually listening to the
>> 'other,'
>>treating their point of view as valid and thoughtful; and it presents
>> your own
>>argument not as antagonistic, but as potentially useful in helping the
>>opposition achieve a more effective result (and one that both sides can
>> possible
>>agree to as a fair compromise). The only argumentative writing textbook I
>> know
>>of that has a whole Rogerian assignment is Nancy Wood's Essentials of
>> Argument.
>>
>> I have a copy of They Say/I Say on my shelf--now I'll have to look at
>> it!
>>Thanks!
>>
>> Seth
>>
>> Dr. Seth Katz
>> Assistant Professor
>> Department of English
>> Bradley University
>>
>> ________________________________
>>
>> From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar on behalf of Geoffrey
> Layton
>> Sent: Sun 8/7/2011 10:13 PM
>> To: [log in to unmask]
>> Subject: Re: Holding their interest
>>
>>
>> Paul,
>>
>> I think the most valuable part of the T/I Say is the "They say" portion
>> because
>>students must be able to identify what they're responding to - and why.
>> In other
>>words, they have to ask (and answer) the question what is it about the
>> text that
>>makes it interesting. I've had a lot of luck teaching "commonplaces" in
>> the
>>context of the following template, "Most (many, the author, my parents,
>> etc)
>>seem to think X (the "commonplace"), but a closer look reveals Y. It's
>> important
>>to recognize that Y is (just as important, preferable, superior to,
>> different
>>from, etc) X because . . ."
>>
>>
>> Geoff Layton
>>
>>
>> ________________________________
>>
>> Date: Sun, 7 Aug 2011 16:46:38 -0700
>> From: [log in to unmask]
>> Subject: Re: Holding To join or leave this LISTSERV list, please visit
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