Response to Covino and Moore Howard.

When reading Covino I thought it was weird that the expressivists and those who were against current-traditional rhetoric found “support in the stress on rhetorical invention voiced in a number of historicized approaches to pedagogy” (p. 37). I got a little mixed trying to understand if these authors were advocating for teaching the history of rhetoric or for applying old rhetoric methods in the classroom. I guess my lack of knowledge about rhetoric helped this. I got confused and did not understand if the author was analyzing how the concept of rhetoric was taught in composition classes or how, depending on how people interpreted the concept of rhetoric, composition classes were conceptualized. I liked how Covino related the disappearance of a rhetoric linked to contextual properties with the “rise of science” (p. 43). I don’t know much about the field but I liked Covino’s idea that current-traditional rhetoric is a parenthesis in the development of a field that has always conceptualized rhetoric in an expansive sense. Along with the author’s last sentence, it is my opinion that there is no good or bad rhetorical model but everything depends on how it is applied in the classroom.
Moore Howard’s (are both her last names?) text was really nice to read. In my practice (as much as I can) I like to apply collaborative pedagogy. Actually, I am thinking to apply this concept along with distributed cognitions to a paper that I am writing about the use of the discussion boards in language classes. I enjoyed reading the section where the author analyzes how collaborative learning interrogates how we conceptualize authorship, learning processes and the writing activity itself. I think that the concept of authorship at the same time is related with the capitalist mode of production and it is reflected in the concept of copyright. Knowledge as something that can be possessed is a modern conceptualization and it is consistent with the romantic and individualist notion of authorship. I did not understand completely the section “Writer/text collaboration” and I would love to go over this part in class.

Response to Wysocki

I like the way she organized her text and how she combined her personal experience when looking at the Peek ad and the theories to analyze it. I agree with the author that we need to be conscious that the ways we read and analyze visual texts nowadays are a result of our cultural history. Actually, science is a product of society so it will always be an account embedded in socio-historical and material conditions. I like the way she reflected how the mode of production of our historical era is reflected in the theoretical apparatuses that we use to analyze products of our culture. On the other hand, it was a little hard for me to understand how she tried to bring together the universal (in Kant’s aesthetics) to the particular when analyzing visual texts. I felt that not knowing much about Kant’s aesthetic theory I missed a great deal of what Wysocki was proposing. However, I was able to grasp and agree with the notion of beauty not as something that can be possessed but as something that we build in relation to others. I think this is also consistent with our historical era and the emergence of postmodernism. I related the universal of beauty expressed in Kant’s aesthetic with the monolithic discourses that Lyotard states the modern era brought. On the other hand, I related the concept of beauty as something that is built in “the interaction between two beings” (p. 169) with the multiplicity of discourses that the postmodern era claim and with the falling or inexistence of fundamental truths.
I think the activities proposed by Wysocki are really good. I picture students being really engaged with the activities. On the other hand, I do not know if I could implement these activities right away, since I lack computer skills and basic vocabulary to talk about visual work. Nevertheless, I especially liked activity number 6 since the students are producing or re-designing a real web page and I think that there is nothing better that propose to students compose texts that will be actually published and will impact a real audience (one that it is beyond the classroom walls). In addition, students have the opportunity to analyze professors’ web pages, which I also consider academic texts. One last thing that I think it is really good about this assignment is that students can have the opportunity to relate to faculty in a different way and seriously take and practice the role of designer and teacher. At the same time, I was thinking about how many constraints we can find in the classroom if our students do not know how to build web pages. I think this is a kind of literacy that should be taught at the university. And I should learn it!
On the other hand, reading Josh's blog, his last words are still kind of bouncing in my head... maybe lady visual composition should fight for have her own classes... something to think about.

Response to Sirc

OK, let’s collect my thoughts while reading this text:
First piece:
I could not understand the way he framed the only “historical box” (as Sirc calls them) that I knew little about (this is Benjamin). Sirc attaches to a Marxist philosopher a bourgeoisie conceptualization of the collector? Puzzled here.
“the student is a cyber-flâneur in the virtual urban”??? well, I guess it is a little different the way centuries ago the term “flâneur” was being conceptualized by these guys who were breaking their heads trying to break a romance conception of authorship and re-framing it in a heavily-political-embedded context. They were devoting their lives to this, not only going for credits. Puzzled here as well.
Authors and more authors quoting authors. Orphan page numbers between parentheses. Sirc text is a big box with mixed things. Puzzled again.
Sirc wants passion out of their students by following an artist way of living and conceptualizing art? By developing those skills? But the flâneur is immersed in experience, is an object of art, does not “acquire it”! Oh, and OK: they start the virtual urban tour in his website. Puzzled one more time.
Second piece:
Well, I guess I got the idea and foundation of the activities by reading them. But I would definitively invest more in the reflective commentary. I loved the idea of the teacher as a curator and the class as a museum, with its institutional frame. A couple of pieces of the puzzle matched!
And having finished the text, I will collect the pieces of my puzzled brain, hold hands with my Dionysian side, put myself in a box and go to bed.

Challenge:
Do you think the website foundmagazine.com would pass Sirc composition course with flying colors? Now: who would the grade belong to? Is collective composition part of the new technologies of composing?

Response to Selfe

I liked Selfe’s chapter. I think the activities she proposes are well designed and are consistent with what she proposes regarding implementing new media texts in the classroom. I think that it is true that teachers resist working with new media texts in part because of the lack of knowledge and analytical apparatuses. On the other hand, I also think that we must acknowledge that new media is just emerging and that especially in the academic environment, it has less status that printed media. We were discussing this in class a couple of weeks ago, when talking about getting published and how publishing in an online journal has less value than publishing in a printed journal. I was also thinking about how, for example, the journal “Computers and composition” is different online and in print. Why is this? Well, in my opinion this is due to the fact that the academic environment in general keeps on endorsing more printed media than online texts. This also influences what we teach. I think that in the educational field there is always a kind of anachronism with what is included in the curriculum and it takes some time for new knowledge to be included in the curriculum. I definitively agree that visual literacy should be taken more seriously in school settings given the prominent place that is gaining in our world. In this, I agree with the new London group and I advocate for “literacies” instead of “literacy” and for a definition of “composition” broader than the alphabetic one. On the other hand, I do feel that in many ways I am illiterate and I lack the analytical apparatus and knowledge to better understand the visual. I think that teachers exploring together with students these issues in the classroom could be a good start point. But on the other hand, I would also love to see that in teacher education this gains a more prominent place. This is: yeah, the ballerina shoes are cute but the rationale behind them is awesome! Why people keep on looking to the “cute”?

Response to Dietrich & Sommers

I think that Dietrich's piece shows that already in the 70s there were advocates to apply conferencing with students. While reading I found that I do not agree with the following paragraph: “The first benefit of this requirement [explanatory paragraph] is that it forces students to have a rhetorical strategy. Initially, I suspect, some students write their essays and then think of a strategy to fit”. (p. 195). First, I think that everybody has a rhetorical strategy in any kind of writing. In my opinion, the mere action of writing is already a rhetorical strategy. Now, if with “rhetorical strategy” she refers to a text that fits in traditional rhetoric characteristics, well, that’s a different story. In addition, I do not think that strategies are previous to the text or ex post facto. Process theory demonstrates that we elaborate our rhetorical strategies during the whole composing process, not only at the beginning and end of it. On the other hand, I liked the following quote: “It would be sadly ironic if a writing class led students to confine their writing to what is safe rather than give them a wider range of options” (p. 196). But again, I think this depends on how the teacher teaches the class and how writing tasks are proposed to the students. And sometimes even the best teachers’ intentions don’t guarantee that students will explore “a wide range of options” instead of just fulfilling assignments.
Regarding Sommers’ text: I loved how explicit he is, giving details such as “the memo questions can usually be placed on the same sheet as the essay assignment, making it easy for students to see the connections between the two writing tasks” (p. 176). I agree with the function he assigns to memos: guide teachers in what kind of feedback offer students and being a real reader and helping students to reflect on their composing processes. He proposes, similarly to Brannon and Knoblach, that teachers should give the benefit of the doubt to students. However, Sommers states that teachers should not try to be completely ignorant of audience and purpose since they need to play the role of editor or collaborator. I also liked the fact that Sommers proposes to change the questions in every writing memo students have to answer and he explains that this is because the memo has to be linked with the writing task. I enjoyed reading this text. I would love to apply this in the second language classroom to learn more about the composing process of my students.

Response to Probst & Beach

The flexibility that Beach proposes (p. 130) is necessary to have to perform self-assessment falls into the abysms of his own writing: a series of fixed steps to conferencing with students and to scaffold them. This is opposed to the idea of dialogue that the teacher-student conference, in my opinion, should have.
In addition, I thought the way of representing the assessing techniques that the author proposes is not too “happy”. He claims that “assessing is, furthermore, a recursive process” (p. 131). And I cannot see this recursive feature in the figure he presents. I guess that all the “I”es that I found in the text made it hard for me to believe that this guy would let a student talk more than 2 minutes in a conference. Hahaha!!!! And he “diagnoses” them! (p. 137).
On the other hand, I have to accept that I finished reading this text late tonight and according to transactional theory maybe my transaction is not the best ever.
And talking about Probst text: when I read Jensen and DiTiberio’s characterization of personality traits, I could not avoid thinking about my writing process and Liz’s writing process. When doing the transcription, I realized how different our processes were. And I guess I do not need to name who is in which dimension especially when referring to the extraversion-introversion one. I also related this text with my last blog, especially page 75, when he proposes that teachers should “abandon the illusory goal of objectivity”.
One last thing that I would like to add: any of you ever felt that “sense of completeness that successful writing yields? (p. 78)… not me… :(