This week’s articles -- Miller’s “Genre as Social Action,” Hyland’s “Stance and Engagement” and “Research Article Introductions” by Swales and Najjar -- serve to brew up thoughts about the upcoming project as well as to make me reconsider the relationship of the teacher to the students she teaches. Tonight, it’s mostly the latter.
OK, I lied. “Genre as Social Action” didn’t move me in the same way as the other articles. Miller’s piece, from what I make of it, attempts to do for genre what Bitzer’s piece did for rhetoric as a whole, namely, to redefine the taxonomical boundaries. While I see the significance of both articles (I think), I’m afraid I lack passion for them.
Hyland, Swales and Najjar discuss rhetorical devices and moves that academic writers employ to persuade readers, and I can’t help wondering why so few college professors use these same techniques in their classrooms; certainly, I plan to. Of course, this might just be my highly subjective take on the college experience, but I doubt it. I’ve taught adult ed and substituted K-12, so I know the formal approach those teachers typically take toward lesson planning, not just for its own sake, either, but to “hook” students to ensure they “get it.” In college, by contrast, the unspoken assumption seems to be that that sort of appeal equals treating college students like children. Another assumption is that college students connect as well as K-12 students or better to the curriculum, in spite of the paucity of persuasive techniques in lesson planning. Yet dropout rates at American campuses might indicate a gap that needs to be filled, to borrow a bit of research paper terminology. I’m not talking about luring students in with cupcakes and stickers. I’m just suggesting that so many of the techniques scholars use to appeal to their academic peers in their writing might be apropos to the college classroom; it might improve lessons and the learning experience. In fact, as expensive as college is these days, it’s rather ironic that treat strangers better than their own pupils.
Hyland notes that writers consciously work to engage their audience through 1) “acknowledgment of the need to . . . meet readers’ expectations” and 2) rhetorically pulling the readers “into the discourse at critical points” (182). All too often in my college experience, class opens with the teacher saying something like, “So . . . we were in Chapter 5. By today you’ve read up to Chapter 10. (sigh) Let’s begin.” With just a bit more effort, a real sense of continuity could be established, connecting not just the chapters, but the ideas and spirit within them.
In a similar way, the Swales-Najjar article reminds us how the introduction lays out a problem or “gap” and points to a solution. This is the academic equivalent of a Sherlock Holmes story, in a sense, a mystery that the whole audience wants to solve. Of course, not every class can be presented in such an attractive, all-inclusive manner. But, when possible, students might have the immediate benefit of applying what they’re learning, which, especially college lectures I’ve had, can hardly pretend to do. To the credit of SFSU English courses I’ve had and the professors who teach them, a practical, hands-on atmosphere is created by giving students plenty of opportunities to work it out for themselves in small group discussions.
Perhaps it’s the juxtaposition of reading these materials while I’m taking English 726 and TAing for a CMS class that’s pushing me to re-think how we appeal to students rhetorically. TAing is a surprisingly powerful experience, I’m finding. I taught for a number of years and learned a great deal. Now I’m an observer-reporter-participant, and it’s forcing me to examine so many of my habits that I couldn’t really see when I was busy teaching -- some that need to stay, some that need to change.
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