Additions or suggestions? Please e-mail Tom Peele

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Online scholarly journals such as Kairos and those listed at RhetComp.com

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In our discussion on using literature in the composition classroom, we didn’t specify the term “literature.” Many of the comments and suggested practices pertain to essays but would connect to short stories, poetry, non-fiction, magazine articles, plays, and other literary forms. As we began, we noted how many students have read very little and lack techniques for analysis or reflection beyond a superficial level. This shouldn’t keep us, however, from assigning challenging literature. We did agree students react most favorably when the instructor is excited about the assigned reading; students react negatively if their reading is never acknowledged or becomes too burdensome to be thoroughly discussed in the classroom or addressed through writing. Several methods of reacting to literature, either to promote further writing and/or to give credit for completion of the reading follow these initial comments. The key seemed to be the enthusiasm and willingness of the instructor in making the literature accessible and useful to the
student writer.

In the brief time together, few could recall titles that had flopped in the classroom. We began a brief list of favorable titles and hope this list could grow perhaps with COMPTALK along with how the readings might be accessed.
 

Following are the titles shared today.

The Best American Essays series;
portions of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
Allegory of the Cave
Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris
“Under the Influence” by Scott Russell Sanders
“Elephant” by Raymond Carver
“I Stand Here Ironing” by Tillie Olsen
The Courage of Turtles by Edward Hoagland
“Attic of the Brain” by Lewis Thomas
Neidy Messer suggests the anthology Ways of Making Literature Matter
John Updike's "A&P"
"Phenomenal Women" by Maya Angelou
"Dulce et Decorum Est" by Wilfred Owens
The White Pine Review, the BSU freshman anthology

Fair Use Guidelines

The linked page provides substantial information on fair use policies. Please review these guidelines before posting material on your Blackboard site. Also, if you have articles scanned by the library, they will check to make sure you are not breaking copyright laws.

 
Suggestions for Using Literature in the Composition Classroom

1. Set up small groups for discussion rather than the entire class as students are more comfortable and willing to take part. Give the groups specific direction letting them know what they are to accomplish or consider. Bring these smaller groups together to summarize what has been discussed with the entire class.
 

2. Some instructors use a class notebook or journal for recording responses, questions, summaries. Model the approach you want as a result of using these tools. The double-entry journal is popular as a way of promoting more
reflective and analytical thinking about the literature.

3. Use the overhead with a copy of a reading to point out what is important or interesting to consider. Don’t expect the students to notice what you think is significant, useful, or meaningful.
 

4. Make clear your expectations, but don’t necessarily expect all students to connect with a reading.
 

5. Using index cards. Have students complete an index card for an assigned reading. The card can hold a variety of information with changes through the semester—a concisely written thesis for the reading, a list of questions arising from reading, the most interesting sentence, sentences with strong imagery, a list of themes, a summary revealing the hierarchy of ideas. Cards can be quickly checked for completion of the assignment and could form the basis for the follow-up class discussion.

6. If you teach in a computer lab, have students sign into their individual Blackboard sites and go to the Discussion Board. Without a lab, the Blackboard discussion can take place away from the classroom and occur over a period of two or three days. Begin the conversation about reading by offering two or three questions or quotations to which students respond. Students are asked to answer the question, offer a comment, or add additional questions during the session. The instructor can follow along and add comments or wait until the entire session is over to go back and follow up or analyze the direction of the discussion. In using the technique, students become engaged and need little monitoring or additional input.

7. Suggestion from Donald Murray, The Composition Instructor’s Survival Guide: Cut down on your own reading time without reducing that required of students. Assign “students to find a non-fiction author who appeals to them. Have them “read extensively from the author’s work, then do a number of different assignments on the author, including bringing a piece of the author’s work for all to read and discuss.” The student writer is to become an expert on their chosen writer.

 
8. ”Capturing Reactions on the Fly”, an adaptation from Peter Elbow and Pat Belanoff in Being a Writer, a Community of Writers: Elbow uses the poem “Song” by W.H. Auden as a basis for this exercise; the technique, however, would work well with essays or short stories. Divide the work into four of five sections. After reading each section, have students freewrite for five minutes, recording what is happening in their own mind at the end of each section. Write down reactions, interpretations, questions. If the reader is confused, this is stated along with an attempt to explain the confusion. Continue in like manner with the remaining sections. Elbow stresses the importance of going back and reading the entire selection a second time and recording final reactions. These quick writes are then shared with others in small groups to attempt to see the reading through the eyes of others. Then have students write down
reactions to these other points of view.

9. All of these methods can be used as the invention step for longer analytical, reflective, or expository essay writing.
 

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Our table discussed the problems and challenges of teaching grammar in the composition classroom. We agreed that most instructors don't want to teach grammar, and most students don't want to have to learn it, yet we expect correct grammar and evaluate our students, at least in some part, on their mastery of conventional English grammar. So we brainstormed and shared different ways to help our students gain the ability to clothe their ideas in language that will allow them to communicate in the ways they want to.

We first talked about ways to incorporate regular grammar discussions into our classrooms. I have experimented with having students give 5 minute grammar/punctuation presentations at the beginning of each class, but while that seems to help the student presenting, it has proved less than effective in teaching the skill to the rest of the class. So we came up with several other ideas, most notably Julia Geist Drew's practice of writing a Sentence of the Day up on the board and letting the students discuss its effectiveness. We thought that such sentences would be most effective if pulled from the readings assigned for that class period or from recent student writing.

In discussing this idea, we wondered how best to "sell" our students on the need for "proper English." We discussed the ways that a facility with the range of conventions in English usage offers people options in their writing, rather than confining them to only one tone or style of writing. In much the same way that vocabulary allows for a richness of expression, a knowledge of the possibilities of grammar and punctuation allow writers of English greater flexibility in communicating ideas.

One resource we found that we under-utilize in our classrooms is the pocket handbook, which many of us require our students to buy and usefor MLA documentation, but don't use as a grammar/punctuation resource. We thought of sending students home with the assignment to find 4 things in the handbook that they hadn't known before and/or creating a sort of scavenger hunt through the book to familarize the class with the resources it offers.

We also focused much of our discussion on making students personally responsible for their progress. One suggestion was to point out one problem or pattern of errors in each draft and have students keep a log of the issues they are working on. Then, if that problem improves in successive drafts, students could receive extra points or an improved
grade. Another approach would be to have students keep a tally sheet of their most common errors and then conduct editing workshops centered around different issues (sentence structure, punctuation, passive voice,
etc.).

We agreed that we want our focus in teaching grammar to be on encouraging clarity and communication, not on overemphasizing the surface level of student writing. So we decided that holding separate workshops for large-scale revision of ideas and for surface-level editing might help students see the difference between the various levels of revision.
 

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Here is a summary (plus some extra tips) of our discussion about the group commonly known as "ESL students" at the August luncheon.


We can divide up the topics into 3 categories: challenges/questions, suggestions, and ways that the Writing Program, including Gail Shuck's presence as Coordinator of English Language Support Programs, can support teachers as we navigate these challenges.

1. Challenges

- A note about terminology: I tend to go back and forth between “nonnative English speakers” and “multilingual students” and “second language writers/learners” as terms for members of the group we’re trying to refer to, (occasionally “ESL students,” too. Problem: most “ESL students” often don’t think of themselves as “ESL,” but rather as students, friends, children of someone, parents of someone, employees, neighbors, etc. At the very least, a term for a human being is good to have in there. That’s why I avoid “ESLs” or “ELLs” as terms. The humanness kind of disappears from an acronym). OK, so that’s issue #1. The rest (probably) won’t be as long.

- Making multilingual students feel included, esp. in peer interactions

- Students having trouble understanding terms like “narrative,” “argument,” even “story.”

- How to be fair in grading. Does having identical standards for everyone constitute fairness? (Gail's simple answer: no. Let’s talk more, if you like, about why I say that.)

- Should we say, “Hey, you’re a nonnative speaker of English, aren’t you? Well, here’s the number for free tutoring”? Again, simple answer: no. But you CAN say to the whole class, “If any of you has any concerns about this class, I’d be happy to talk with you.” You can also say to a particular student, “Even though your English is great, I did find a couple of phrases in your paper that make me think you speak another language, too. Tell me a bit about your background.” Show that you value that experience. No need to send them for tutoring. You can just tell them that if they feel they need any extra help, they can ask you. Then later, you can broach the tutoring issue if you or the student has real concerns.

- Making yourself slow down, and knowing which words, phrases, discourse markers, etc., might require more time for students to process

- Understanding what they’re trying to say (and getting your native-speaking students to be more patient)

- How appropriate is the notion of “voice” when dealing with students who don’t have a variety of linguistic choices to choose from?

- Cultural differences (e.g., “What do you mean, ‘state my opinion’? How can I have an opinion when these published authors know more than I do?”)

- What is our responsibility? That is, how do we balance valuing the cultural ways of writing these students may bring with them with preparing them for different U.S. academic rhetorics?

- To what extent does genre/context/audience determine what kind of standards we use and approaches we take for addressing grammar concerns? If someone is creating a live Web page, they may want it to be absolutely perfect...whatever that means.

2. Suggestions for addressing some of these:

- Have conversations with the whole class about grading rubrics. They can see how you plan to balance rhetorical/revision concerns with grammatical ones. You can also talk with them about what kinds of help are appropriate. No need to target the multilingual students in particular in those discussions.

- As the teacher, look at multilingual students’ improvement in relation to where they started. That, IGail thinks, should be part of anyone’s rubric.

- Similarly, offer guidance for the whole class on how to run a good peer workshop. I like to do “fishbowl” workshops (thanks, Steph!), where a small group and I have a workshop at the front of the class so that everyone can watch us. We talk afterward about what seemed particularly useful or what might be less helpful.

- Use the board frequently (not for everything you say, obviously) as a way of slowing down. Talk while you write, and nonnative speakers will have time to process what you’re writing/saying. (Same goes for quickly flashing a text-heavy transparency up on the overhead.) Use more pauses.

- Do your best to patiently ask questions so a student can make herself understood. It’s OK to remind the whole class that everyone speaks and writes differently, so patience is key. And tell them that after a while, it gets easier to understand accents. That goes for these weird, U.S., native-speaker, young-adult accents, too.

- Use small groups a lot! In a whole-class discussion, second language learners are not only less likely to say anything, but they may not be able to follow the back-and-forth, colloquialism-heavy interactions.

- Review discussions on the board: “So I noticed about 5 main points coming out of that discussion*[write ‘em up there].”

- Keep in mind that not all students have a detailed, articulatable (?) knowledge of their native culture. Don’t assume a student from Afghanistan can tell you much about Afghanistan, since he or she may have left there at age 10 and lived in Pakistan for 3 years and Iran for 2 before coming here. So asking about “any other culture or language you’re familiar with” is more inclusive, and even includes the U.S.-born, native English speakers who may have spent years living somewhere else.

- Give each student a chance to be an expert. Nonnative English speakers are not just experts on being multilingual and living in more than one country (most of them), but some of them are also experts on grammar (they'll teach the rest of your class to find the subjects, verbs, relative clauses, etc.)! And leaving native-speaker linguistic knowledge aside, many are far better writers than your average 18-year-old U.S-born student is.

- Any accommodation you make for a nonnative English speaker in your class will also help other students: students with disabilities, students who didn't happen to be listening, students who need visual support for spoken-language processing, students anxious about coming (back) to college, etc.

3. Types of support

- Tutoring: 426-4212 (Julie Geist Drew, Coordinator)
- The Writing Center, but please remember that the consultants aren’t editors, whether the client is a native speaker or not
- Readings, esp. P. K. Matsuda et al.’s Second Language Writing in the Composition Classroom (Heidi and Gail each have a copy), and I. Leki’s Understanding ESL Writers (the library has a copy).
- Faculty development workshopsin development for spring
- well...Gail (she said, humbly)
- The Writing Program  Web site: Let me know what you’d like to see there.
 

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