1. In
defining a rhetorical situation Bitzer talks about proper and
improper constraints. Any thoughts on what he means by this? And how
does an improper constraint effect the rhetorical response that a
rhetorical situation demands?
2. Yancey
talks about how we need to alter the solitary nature of classroom
writing, perhaps abandoning altogether the “single path from the
student to the teacher.” I think the way students are given grades
from one teacher for a project hinders this. If process and product
are moving more toward collaboration shouldn't the grading process
move with them? How can peer review become a more substantial aspect
of evaluating student's work for credit?
Hi Jessie! In response to your second question...I thought about the fact of how our education system works as well, and was wondering the same thing. I mentioned in class once how, as far as grading goes, there are ways we could demonstrate a commitment to process at least, by putting something in our rubrics regarding the revision that was done (e.g. comparing a student's perhaps weak draft to his much stronger final version of a paper, even if it is not as high quality as another student's). As far as peer review goes, it's hard to say, especially because for some students (myself included), peer review could be a very irritating thing on which to be evaluated, especially if it is not a big part of their composing process, at least in the way that it is represented on a rubric, for example. But one idea, at least evaluation-wise, is to have some part of the grade for a paper come from the students demonstrating that they have engaged in collaboration in some way. Maybe they could write up a half-page explaining how they used collaboration (whether just discussing topics with other students, going to the writing center at some point, etc.) in their process and what their experience was with it? I don't know if that would work. But I think outside of evaluation it is still possible for us to encourage a wider audience base for students--even if we had an assignment involve students actually using their social media accounts and posting for the audience associated with those (although I don't know how this would look, because students might not be keen to do this).
ReplyDeleteJessie,
ReplyDeleteI had a fiction technique professor in undergrad who graded a student's process based on how many substantial changes they made to their creative piece after peer revision. This might be a way to incorporate a grading scale based on student collaboration in our own ENC2135 classes as well. Or, maybe we can have our students write short, one paragraph to one page reflections on how they changed their papers after peer revision or in what ways and why they chose to keep certain aspects of their papers the same. Just a thought.
- Emily