Geoff,
I suspect your question is a decade or two away from having a good methodology and content that are based on the study of discourse. Douglas Biber, in several books and a lot of articles, investigates how different genres use different grammatical features and constructions. I don't know if anyone has made a serious attempt to base a grammar pedagogy on his sort of analysis and his findings, but it strikes me as one of those areas where a team of writing teachers and linguists could make some interesting progress.
Herb
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Geoffrey Layton
Sent: Monday, August 08, 2011 8:35 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Losing their interest?
This has been a great discussion - but there's one little thing missing - GRAMMAR! My guess is that as soon as Mike Rose's "Goddess Grammatica" pokes her head in the classroom door (I always picture her as Elmira Gulch/Wicked Witch of the West/Dorothy Hamilton in Oz), all of the "children" (don't all students turn into fearful little children at the thought of having to deal with grammar?) run away terrified. How do we bring grammar into this discussion without "losing them"?
Geoff Layton
________________________________
Date: Mon, 8 Aug 2011 17:10:16 -0700
From: [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Holding their interest
To: [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>
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]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Holding their interest
To: [log in to unmask]<mailto:[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
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