The pedagogy of teaching a first-year
composition (FYC) course has revealed itself to be far more complex and varied
than I expected when I entered this course. The necessity for taking the
course, I was told, was to become familiar with the goals of the course and the
outcomes expected by the university's English Department - how complicated
could that be? Wasn't it essentially a matter of teaching students the
skills, the "nuts and bolts," of writing a basic all-purpose
college composition, a framework they could fill in with the specifics of
whatever course they were taking? Showing them how it would differ from the
high school papers they were already used to writing? I was very quickly
disabused of this notion as it became clear that moving from point A to point B
in the classroom was not straightforward as I had assumed.
Through class
discussions and readings, I gained many important insights regarding my own
preconceived notions, ways I could improve on my previous teaching methods and
approaches, (especially in the area of grading and evaluation), and most
importantly, ideas about how to creatively address the challenges of teaching
FYC in the spring. From this work, focusing on my own reading and the review of
the articles posted by my peer group, three threshold concepts have emerged as
governing principles for how I will approach the development of my syllabus and
teaching strategy.
Threshold
Concepts:
1)
Traditional approaches to teaching first year composition (FYC) would
greatly benefit from expanding the traditional limited focus on narrow rhetorical
discourse to include creative writing and more diverse forms of communication.
Both
Nishat and Christopher discuss creative writing as an aspect of composition in
reference to Hesse's article, "The Place of Creative Writing in
Composition Studies," although they take slightly differing
perspectives on Hesse's proposal that the two be united in writing programs; Nishat agrees,
Christopher raises methodological and other problems. Nishat amplifies his
discussion by focusing on Hesse's point that "engaging in higher critical thinkings of
writing is important, and that people studying the pedagogy understand that composition studies and the learning of
its teachings refers to the whole of
the studies." The result can be, and I have heard of this happening, major
splits between creative writing programs and composition programs, which is to
the benefit of no one. Another article that touches on the idea of creative
writing is by David Hanauer, who discusses the ability to measure voice in
poetry written by ESL students. (Hanauer) While this article was also relevant
and supportive of my second threshold concept of the importance of helping
students develop their voice through their writing, it is also a demonstration
of the value of how different genres of creative writing can be sued in the
classroom to facilitate teaching. Christopher uses an article, "Mocking
Discourse: Parody as Pedagogy," (Seitz} as the basis for describing an
assignment he would use in his FYC class as a " fun way to engage students, wreak some havoc, and show
language's ideological foundations." It can involve rewriting fairy tales,
or any other piece of writing, for that matter, with samples provided by the
instructor. This is a great example of how a non-traditional form of writing
can be used in the classroom to help what I call deconceptualize what a writer
is for students who have built up barriers and preconceived notions of their
own about what FYC is all about. These articles, in
combination with the articles I discussed in my own blog (Janks, Lim, Spade)
provided the foundation out of which my first threshold concept emerged.
2) it is critical that FYC courses
recognize that diversity and “multiculturalism” extend far beyond simply having
students of different races and ethnicities in the classroom, and that
instructors must proactively work to make their classrooms safe spaces for all
students to express themselves.
Many of my
classmates blogged on articles related to what emerged as my second threshold
concept, which I believe speaks its relevance and persistence as an issue of
concern to those entering the classroom for the first time especially. Maddie
(Madeline), for example, blogged on three different articles that addressed ESL
students and how they are treated in the classroom. Silva, in “On the
Ethical Treatment of ESL Writers,” describes a four point "code of
ethics" for working with ESL students that he developed based on research
he conducted using journal articles. Land
and Whitley discuss discrimination against ESL students and their
disadvantage in standard written English (SWE) composition. This is based on
what Land and Whitley call "the singular rhetorical convention accepted in
U.S. academia" as opposed to "differing ESL rhetorical conventions
that inexperienced composition teacher’s (sic) might read and analyze as having
poorly constructed and unorganized arguments." In Maddie's third article,
“Should We Invite Students to Write in Home Languages? Complicating the Yes/No
Debate” by Bean et al., she discusses the questions raised in this articles about the
highly-relevant and interesting debate over how to teach students who may
speak (and write) in AAVE or are ESL students who may also not speak
standardized English yet. Maddie reports that "As
a rule, the authors decided that it was paramount to create a “safe place”
for this style of writing in Composition classrooms, and the article provides
examples and when and how." (emphasis added) Christopher blogged on an
article that informed one of the writing assignments on my syllabus, J. Buzard’s” On
Auto-Ethnographic Authority." Although Buzard appears to argue against the
use of the auto-ethnography in the composition classroom, Christopher found it
"a useful tool." I believe that a modified version, the first part of
it, which is writing the personal history, can be a wonderful exercise for the
free write early in the semester, and found this article very useful
myself.
These blogs from my fellow students
showed how problems and the approaches to resolving them in different contexts
are relevant to my interests and have broad application. They contributed to
enlarging the scope of understanding how to implement the challenges of my
second threshold concept.
3) Writing can no longer be seen
or taught as only an individual activity isolated from the society in which it
exists. In the age of digital communication, writing has become more of a
social act than ever before.
Given space considerations, my final
summary is of an article in Casey's blog which was of particular interest to
this concept. "After Incarceration and Adult Learning: A Collaborative
Inquiry and
Writing Project," by J. Schwartz,
reports on the experience of "a group of three black, male students [who
found] and publish[ed] counter-stories of the black male experience
returning to learning after incarceration." This article is an excellent
example of the intensely collaborative nature a writing (and publishing)
project can be.
Works
Cited
Bean, Janet, et al. “Should We Invite
Students to Write in Home Languages? Complicating the
Yes/No Debate.” Second-Language Writing in the Composition
Classroom, edited by Paul Kei
Matsuda, et al, Bedford/ St. Martin’s, 2006, pp. 225-239.
Buzard, J. "On
Auto-Ethnographic Authority." The Yale Journal of Criticism 16.1
(2003): 61-91.
Project MUSE. Web. December 21,
2016
Hanauer, David I.
"Measuring Voice in Poetry Written by Second Language
Learners." Sage 32.1
(2015): 66-86. 23 Dec. 2014
Hesse, Douglas.
"The Place of Creative Writing in Composition Studies." College
Composition and
Communication 62.1 (2010): 31-52. Web.
Janks, Hilary. The discipline and craft of academic writing: building writing capacity in institutions
of higher education. 2012. Reading & Writing. 3(1). Art
#25.
Land, Robert E.,
and Catherine Whitley. “Evaluating Second-Language Essays in Regular
Composition Classes: Toward a Pluralistic U.S. Rhetoric.” Second-Language
Writing in the
Composition Classroom, edited by Paul Kei Matsuda, et al, Bedford/ St.
Martin’s, 2006, pp.
324-332.
Lim, Shirley
Geok-lin. Lore. Practice, and Social Identity in Creative Writing Pedagogy.
(2010).
.
Pedagogy: Critical Approaches to Teaching Literature, Language, Composition,
and Culture.
10(1). 79-93.
Schwartz,
J. (2015). After Incarceration and Adult Learning: A Collaborative Inquiry
and
Writing Project. Adult Learning, 26(2), 51-58.
Seitz,
D. "Mocking Discourse: Parody as Pedagogy." Pedagogy 11.2
(2011): 371-394. Project
MUSE.
Silva, Tony. “On
the Ethical Treatment of ESL Writers.” Second-Language Writing in the
Composition Classroom, edited by Paul Kei Matsuda, et al, Bedford/ St.
Martin’s, 2006, pp.
154-157.
Spade, Dean. Some
Very Basic Tips for Making Higher Education More Accessible to Trans
Students and Rethinking How We Talk about Gendered Bodies. (2011). Radical
Teacher. 92,
57-62.
.
