#comp theory

Though this should be a reading response to focus on the articles, I would like to gear my discussion toward the DALN responses and the question on if the samples we collected were effective in telling their story explaining why or why not. To be honest, I’m mainly doing this because I ran out of room on my one page and wanted to continue writing on my four literacy narratives. The four narratives I picked out, I gathered from searching Young Adult literature in the search engine, or the variations of the key term like YA novels or YA. The four I picked out came in different formats: one was a stream of consciousness essay, one was a comic with several pages, and the last two were video interviews.

Of the four, I found the first piece (the essay) to be less effective at telling a compelling story when compared to the comic/video. Considering most classes require a literacy narrative in first/second year writing classes, I found it interesting that the written format that is commonly assigned, at least the one I typically see coming through the Writing Studio, was the least efficient. The content was engaging because the writer, Peter Shirts, explained that he established literacy as being able to out read his brother; which he accomplished by reading The Hobbit in third grade. Performing that act made him appear more literate in his eyes and his parent’s eyes (according to him that is).

Shirts’ need to appear “literate” shows up again in the videos by Cawp and Appel where they both discussed they wanted to read “high-brow” books. Appel started to read Jane Eyre because her friend was reading it but found that she had trouble with the language, and Cawp identified herself as an “English major snob” when it came to books and refused to read Harry Potter until she found a need for it which led her to fall in love with the story. Shirt’s discussion of his friend aversion of YA literature to “nature writings” or something that is true, and not being able to comprehend why someone would not enjoy this genre of literature is the weakest part of his narrative. Earlier in his text, which again is a stream of consciousness as shown with his sporadic examples, explains that he also found its previous reading interests to be undesirable. So, his supposed inability to understand why others would also be put off by it is weak at best.  

Analyzing my four literacy narratives as effective, ineffective, and why helped me focus on what the author is trying to do as opposed to just taking what they say/write/draw as gospel. Sure, everyone can have their ideas on literacy, but are they utilizing their form of communication effectively?  I’m about to start asking questions so I will move down to my questions section.

My list of literacy narratives:

Peter Shirts essay “Reading from Kid to Adult and Back Again.”

Connor Kilbarger comic “The Language of Paper.”

Kim Cawp casual video “Harry Potter is a Bridge.”

Erica Appel interview video “Writing Teenage Stories.”

Questions:

As we can see in my list, different people communicate differently. How can we help students learn to take control over their means of communication?

How did looking at the effectiveness of the literacy narratives affect your response to them?

What are some literacy narratives that you didn’t find compelling? Why did you not find them effective?

For the Crowley reading, I flipped the requirements for the reading response upside down and started with the keywords which I identified as devolution, proposition, definition, and theme. Her key terms, outside of “devolution” that is, stem from her surplus of evidence from previous writers of rhetoric and composition on the concept of invention. Crowley’s evidence takes shape as overlapping quotes and selections from outside authors such as Alexander Bain, John Franklin Genung, H.N. Day, and George Champbell. Admittedly, I have never read any of these authors or have only done so in passing, so her citations and connections between “first-generation” and “second generation” thinkers in Rhetoric and Composition are very appealing. However, all of this evidence limits her argument for me. My problem is that I’m not hearing enough of her voice in her discussion. Every paragraph has an “in (insert gendered-singular-pronoun here) work (insert title here) (insert author name here)” sentence or a “so-and-so, too, includes (insert concept here).” Crowley has more evidence than her voice for my taste. Only after peeling back the evidence was I able to come up with her argument, which is invention plays a more important role in rhetoric and composition than the previous purveyors have implied (Norton 343).  Her "rant" at the end brought back the term "devolution" as opposed to "evolution" since she takes issue with how flippant rhetoricians have been with the concept causing it to revert from progression to the regression of invention.

     Shaughnessy’s essay, or opening for a self-help book for first-year writing teachers, argues that her work will help professors who are dealing with the unwanted task of teaching college students who do not appear to belong there. The evidence she provides is her coding of four thousand essays, which will provide a semi-cohesive trail/map for teachers to follow along with tips on dealing with basic writing (BW) classes (Norton 389). Her argument is limited in two ways. One, Shaughnessy doesn’t display any outside resources outside of her work, which is the exact opposite of my issue with Crowley's work. I only have Shaughnessy's word that her work is building off of others and that her work is the best. Two, though it sounds like her work is coming from a "good" place, I can’t tell if her “helpfulness” is purposefully condescending, or if she honestly believes she is helping others, but she only sounds condescending. Though I enjoy her straightforward style of writing, I feel that she is missing evidence that she didn’t makeup herself and the tone of the article can be misconstrued if she has a preference of sounding condescending or not. Shaughnessy’s keywords focus around adoption, pioneering, and basic writing, Her terms focus on working towards a common goal and taking on great challenges, but it’s this “pioneering” language that makes me weary if she is being facetious or not. I want to believe her because she addresses the concept of error; however, why would professors need a book to help teach basic writing if we don’t help them with their writing errors at some point?

Two more questions:

We should always have outside sources to support our arguments; however, when and/or how do we decide too many voices are taking over our argument? Still being new to this, I’m also tempted to drown my work with as much support as possible, but that takes away my voice from my argument. As both experienced and student writers, where do you draw the line?

Thomas R. Lounsbury, Robert J. Conners, and David R. Russell provide detailed accounts on their arguments over an issue that many students would not believe arguable.  Since there is a lot of material to cover, I’m going to jump right in with Lounsbury.  His essay, Compulsory Composition in Colleges, argues the uselessness of first-year writing classes and the current method of “producing great writers to order” is not working (Lounsbury 866). Lounsbury explains that we cannot produce great writers, especially by forcing entry college students to study a subject they don’t find interesting. Conner’s argument focused on showing the history of composition, and how Lounsbury’s argument on the uselessness of freshmen comp was not the popular opinion of the academic community (Conner 51).  Conner cited other professors who were compelled by Lounsbury’s remarks to talk to their freshmen classes; who explained, that their horizons had broadened by taking the class even though they didn’t want to at first. Conner explains that most professors have moved from repeating mechanic rules to writing to utilize that space to teach “English for life skills.”

Lounsbury is compelling in a stark way. One of his arguments, well a quotation from Francis Bacon, which reinforced Lounsbury’s previous argument, reminded me of Quintilian’s pedagogy to teach children to understand argument and logic as soon as possible (Lounsbury 880). Lounsbury main argument is that freshmen composition should be elementary practice instead of university practice. Students should already know their literacy before they arrive at college, an argument that I’ve heard a few times. Moving to Conner’s argument that teachers have moved to using first year writing to do more than repeat mechanics, is a silver lining to Lounsbury’s dark (though however funny) cloud. I appreciate Conner’s understanding that first-year composition changes as cultural changes and how it helps students learn skills they need for any part of their life. Sure, students don’t want to take this class, but they most likely need the skills from the class.

*Side note, dueling essays are the best. However since I have trampled the 400-word limit, I’ll stop here and move to questions even though Rusell's sassy illustrations of abolitionists is fantastic.*

Questions:

How does the class feel when Lounsbury calls his side of the FYW argument as “right-thinking”? 

What would the first literacy exam look like? Conner explains it lead to the first literacy crisis, so I wonder how it looked or what questions could have been on it to would have students fail so badly.

Starting with chapter two, “Talking about Literacy,” Barton unpacks how literacy is discussed and, by taking into account our previous class, how simple yet complicated literacy can be. In his unpacking, Barton deconstructs how we explain our ideas of literacy in metaphors, how these metaphors do not transcend language barriers, how literacy is best understood in a social context, and how the metaphor we assign literacy interrelates with society. As noted in chapter two, further along in chapter five, “Literacy Embedded in Language,” Barton builds from the ground up using different terminology to explain studying literacy. In my mind, I have painted chapter two as the foundation in chapter five as the building materials to understand literacy. Barton goes on to explain that to building materials for understanding literacy can only be used to understand the social context of those materials.

Moving from overview to argument presentation in the two chapters, let me say that I found Barton’s explanation of the word “literate” stemming from the word “illiterate” compelling. Though the chapter has a round-about demeanor, Barton clearly links metaphors to how we communicate both the vague notion of and the large principle of literacy. In his self-described “constructivist” chapter five, Barton explains how we use language and literacy differently in difference situations. Our change in register from one discourse to another, typically quick and easy transitions from one to the next, shows the intertextuality of literacy within a social construct and what we deem “texts.”

I appreciate how Barton started with deconstructing the idea literacy before constructing new ideas with it. Considering how I started this class is defining literacy as “hard” and a “complex mess,”  I find it better to start with a blank slate and build from there. Moving from the metaphors we use to describe/discuss literacy to exploring how society affects how we view and interact with literacy is a long twisted highway that only makes sense once the ideas are broken down first.

Questions:

I’m still trying to wrap my mind around the notion of a world of “illiterate” before “literate.” Are there more words outside of illiterate/literate or disabled/abled that illustrate the word with the prefix is the “unmarked” word? 

In what other ways can we understand literacy outside of social practices/contexts?

For last class I defined literacy as follows:

http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=601FC994BDD963E4

You are now taking a course that I am paying for >:|