Another one from the papers-of-yore files. I wrote this one in spring 1998, the semester after I graduated. I ended up taking a year off between my B.A. and starting my M.A. program (fall of 1999), and I took three courses in spring 98 as a non-degree-seeking student in an attempt to stay sharp.

My assignment here was simply "write a paper about Kipling's prose." Before that, I had to write a paper about Thomas Babington Macaulay, which I don't have in electronic format. I don't know where the hard copy is either, actually. But yeah, Kipling's prose. I read SO MUCH Kipling for this paper, which is good, but the paper is pretty lousy. This is why broad topics aren't such a good idea. But the professor I had for this course was excellent -- one of my favorites -- and I think his goal for us here was breadth rather than depth.

Kipling

Tomorrow's not going to be a big culinary scene here. In fact, we dropped the ball when it came to turkey. We didn't find out where to get a fresh turkey, we didn't pre-order a Cajun deep-fried turkey from Popeye's, and we didn't get a frozen turkey four days ahead of time to let it thaw sufficiently in the refrigerator. (Side note: I wonder if whole turkeys will go on sale tomorrow?) We're just having the vegetables from our CSA box and a few other things. Here's the plan:

* Turkey breast roasted in white wine and herbs, bought today at the Fresh Market
* Dakota bread from Great Harvest Bread Company
* Sweet potato biscuits from the Fresh Market
* Cabbage cooked with bacon grease
* Green beans sauteed in olive oil with garlic
* Butternut squash, probably just roasted with some butter and maple syrup
* Deviled eggs
* Pickled okra
* Pickles
* Pomegranates
* Clementine oranges
* Store-bought lemon meringue pie (Fresh Market once again)

We have a few relish tray items, as you can see. One thing we're not doing is stuffed celery, though. This is a shame, as it's a Barton family tradition and I like it. I grew up with stuffed celery on every relish tray for every holiday meal. Jonathan doesn't like olives, though, and I didn't want to be stuck with a bunch of celery stuffing that I'm the only one eating.

I recently asked my mom how it came to be that we've always had stuffed celery. She said it went back to a double date she went on. The two guys were friends, and my mom and the other girl didn't know each other. It was a picnic date, and both girls brought food. This other girl brought stuffed celery, my mom liked it, and the rest is family history.

The new issue of Computers and Composition Online is out! I have an article in it titled Open Source and the Access Agenda. I'd love to know what you think; if you do a blog post on the article, please send me the link and I'll put it in this post. Or leave a comment under the Facebook-note (I have FB set to import my blog posts).

Below is a paper I wrote for an Advanced Composition course my senior year of college. It won the Phi Kappa Phi Student Scholars Forum Award at my university, and having just read it again after nearly 13 years, I guess it's an OK paper. "Short paragraphs much?" I want to ask my younger self.

welty

I manage to use both "objective correlative" and "negative capability," make a boatload of mentions of "society," use "ironically" when "coincidentally" is the correct word, avoid the first person entirely, and provide plenty of other groaners ("Awareness of a problem in society will hasten its solution. She is simply taking the first step toward a solution: she is 'defining the problem,' as the first step in the scientific method states.").

A couple of posts ago, I wrote about the pre-test I gave students in my English 101 class the first week of the semester. Two days ago I gave them the same survey and compared the results. As with the results I reported last time, I'm only recording a response for the open-ended questions if two or more students wrote it. Twenty-five students took the survey the first week, and 22 took it on November 16.

Apparently a couple of people decided a good argument doesn't need evidence? -- this was the joke when I presented these results in class today, anyway. I like that there were increases in "addresses opposing views" and "uses personal experience." I have been encouraging them to write about topics they are well qualified to write about, to use their personal authority. We've been talking about claims and reasons this semester, and we've done an evaluation argument (using criteria) and are working on a definition argument, which will also use criteria.

I'm not surprised to see the sameness here. The question lends itself to matters of technique, as does the next one.

I'm glad to see that they've relaxed about the "no new information" rule, which has always struck me as especially arbitrary.

Again, I'm liking that some of them are showing confidence in their own experience as a source of knowledge.

I wish more of them had written "talk to the teacher," but oh well. We've done some Toulmin schemas, which accounts for its appearance here.

I'm happy to see the increase in "show it to the teacher." I've commented on (required) rough drafts all semester, and they seem to find it helpful. I'm glad also to see the Writing Center listed.

As I've said, this was just an experiment. It's hard to say how many of the correct responses (for the pre- and the post-) were lucky guesses, but here are the results anyway. I'll be using some of the remaining class time this semester to reinforce ethos and logos, that's for sure.

Most people who are paying attention to the field of rhetoric and writing are aware that knowledge transfer is a highly fashionable research area right now and has been for a while. See this work by Kathleen Blake Yancey and colleagues and this work by Mary Jo Reiff and Jenn Fishman, for starters.

It's certainly an important topic; the consensus according to various universities' assessments and lore is that students do not take what we teach them in one class and apply it in the next class. I know that in my own interactions with students, when I've encouraged them to write a paper for my class about something they're doing in another class, they've balked immediately, as though it were out of the question, preposterous. It was as if they thought that was something only an overzealous nerd would do; doing that kind of integration and cross-boundary transfer would constitute an engagement that was too close, and the (socially, culturally?) appropriate thing to do is to keep one's mind at a tasteful distance from one's coursework. Or maybe they've thought it was cheating, somehow, to cross the boundaries. At any rate, there has always been strong resistance on students' part to that kind of encouragement from me. I see all this as a problem of a cultural cynicism of higher education and of anti-intellectualism, not a fault of students themselves.

So, transfer. I want them to do the transferring. I'm still tooling my assignments and course materials to try to get there, but one thing I'm trying this semester is a really simple "What I Hope Will Transfer" handout that I'll be giving them sometime between now and the last day of classes. Completely weak? Probably, but I will give it a shot and see how they respond.

On the first or second day of the semester, I gave my English 101 students a pre-test, or opening survey. I'm going to be giving them the same survey in about a week to see if their responses are any different. I plan to give them a summary of what they said (my compilation of their responses) for both surveys, but I reserve the right to change my mind. This is really for my personal use in developing my pedagogy.

What follows is the list of questions and my compilation of their answers. Twenty-five students took the survey, and I'm not writing down all the replies here, only the ones I saw in two or more of the surveys. The (sighs) are directed toward the obviously still heavily dominant 5PE formula in high school English classes, from the attention-grabber to the clincher.

1. What are some qualities of a good argument? List at least four.

17 said it has to be supported with evidence
12 said it addresses opposing views (this was a pleasant surprise)
8 said it has a strong position on the topic
5 said it uses personal experience
3 said it is well-researched
3 said "confidence" (spoken arguments, maybe?)
3 said it has a good introduction and conclusion
2 said it has a good tone

2. What do you know about writing an introduction for an essay?

17 said it must include a thesis statement (sigh)
11 said it has to say what the paper will be about
6 said it has to have an attention-grabber, or hook (sigh)
6 said it has to have topic sentences (for body paragraphs) (sigh)
4 said it has to have an overview or background on the topic
2 said it must be brief

3. What do you know about writing a conclusion of an essay?

23 said it should restate the thesis and main points of the essay (sigh)
5 said it should have a "clincher sentence" at the end (sigh)
3 said it must not bring up any new information or points (sigh)

4. How do you know if the evidence supporting an argument is valid or not?

6 said if the evidence is cited (not sure if "cited" here means simply that, or "it's cited, which enables you to evaluate the credibility and bias of the source)
5 gave answers suggesting that they use their own judgment
4 said if you research the topic
4 said if the sources are reliable and credible

5. What do you do if you're having a hard time getting started writing a paper for a class?

11 said brainstorm
8 said prewrite (some variation in phrasing but generally this activity)
4 said write an outline
4 said create a chart or concept map
3 said talk to the teacher
2 said read/research the topic
2 said listen to music
2 said have a conversation with someone about the topic

6. What do you do if you've written a paper for a class but aren't sure if it's good or not?

14 said get "someone" (unspecified) to read it and give feedback
6 said show it to the teacher
6 said take a break and then re-read it
4 said look at the rubric

Then I listed five rhetorical terms that I planned to talk about over the course of the semester and put a list of definitions beside them. I asked students to draw a line connecting the term to its definition.

Kairos: 8 right, 18 wrong

Pathos: 7 right, 18 wrong

Ethos: 4 right, 21 wrong

Enthymeme: 4 right, 21 wrong

Logos: 3 right, 22 wrong

Henry has a few cans of Play-Doh, but I haven't gotten it out for him to play with yet. The idea of "play dough" makes me nostalgic for a past that probably never was -- a mom baking bread and kneading dough, a child who wants to imitate her and to help, which Henry does, and it's painfully sweet, and so the mom tears off a piece of dough, real dough, for the child to play with. And now it comes in these plastic cans, and is brightly colored, and can be processed in plastic toy Play-Doh factories.

Ugh. What is wrong with me? Perhaps I need to take up bread-making.