1. Dirk's article discusses both the discussion of genre as both types as well as extending that discussion towards the understanding of genre as a socially constructed fluid and flexible concept. As far as the classroom is concerned, how might we negotiate this understanding to our students? Does the understanding of genre fall along a continuum or is the concept of a continuum somehow too restrictive for the student?
2. Shipka's article was probably one of my favorite articles so far! (This is not important to my question, but I just wanted to throw it out there). Multimodality meets most of our students where they live today and moves away from overly prescriptive composing so students have the opportunity to negotiate rhetorical choices. Where do you foresee student push-back or frustrations with this and how might they be alleviated?
I found Shipka's article very thought-provoking as well! My own big concern with student frustrations is simply how time- and energy-consuming the process would be to make such projects. Even in Shipka's examples with Karen and Mike, I got a strong sense that doing their OED projects was a stressful, frustrating, and draining experience. I think it's important for students to go through the difficulties of learning to take initiative for their own ideas and processes; at the same time, our class is not the only thing in the students' lives. Even as we get enthusiastic about these sorts of projects, which I do think can be more rewarding for the students as well (the end products were so impressive), I would want to be careful not to overload the students with too much at once. And I think I would only have one or two projects that are this open-ended; after all, we also need to prepare students for expectations in other classrooms and even to work towards goals that others set (e.g. future boss).
ReplyDeleteAlso, I think there is a disadvantage for students who, for example, don't have a car and might not be able to access the materials they need.
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