Thesis Intro:

Well, this is what I have been building up to, providing a wider readership for my Masters thesis. As one of my more colorful friends might say, "It is time to go or go home" --a tired little simile, but appropriate enough. I have to let this little paper sink or swim. That said, here is the second or third draft (nothing is ever really finished) of the introduction to my thesis. Forgive me if the formatting is off but it is too long to do anything except cut and paste right now. Constructive criticism [or ranting and raving for that matter (it is still a free country)] is welcomed.

Changing Basis for and Existing Debate

It should come as no big surprise to hear that the world is changing. Historians will happily tell you that no period of history has been devoid of change and there is no need to sweat it. History has naturally moved from "revolution" to revolution," be it agricultural, industrial, or what have you. However, the changes effecting the world today in what may be termed the Information and Communication Age are having some very far-reaching effects and changing the world at a very swift pace. This change has largely to do with Internet, communication, and media technologies and the ease with which finance and information are moved between groups and individuals. Of course the result is a whole new set of cultural, social, and economic standards that shape our public and private lives (The New London Group 10). Naturally, these changing social, cultural, and economic impacts must affect a change in the education system at many levels--the goals of education must naturally change as social, cultural, and economic realities change if Academia is expected to produce scholars capable of fully comprehending and participating in the act of making meaning in an age of multimedia.
The multiple medias and language systems to which students are exposed everyday though print, visual, and digital mediums are all important to the concept of literacy in this day and age. The New London Group, a devoted group of communication and language scholars, has coined the term "multiliteracies" to describe the literacy of finding and creating meaning in "the multiplicity of communications channels and media," especially in the context of "increasing salience of cultural and linguistic diversity" (Cope and Kalantzis 5). They recognize the complex interrelatedness between verbal, visual, and audile texts and globally connected diversity. The New London Group continues to pursue multiliteracies studies towards the end of creating composition pedagogies that produce students capable of "see[ing] themselves as active participants in social change; as learners …who can be active designers – makers – of social futures" (Cope and Kalantzis 7). Such a mission statement highlights not only the far-reaching influences of composition education with regard to social, economic, and cultural realities, but also the high degree to which identity is tied to these studies of literacy and technology. At the university, media and information technology permeate all departments; however, the introductory composition course may well be the field effected most by the changing world, as it prepares students to understand how meaning is constructed in multiple texts. Therefore, this multimodal literacy must be integrated into the composition course, which must function as a study of how meaning is created, not just a study of writing.
However, this proves to be a very sophisticated set of ideas to both teach and learn, and it may unsettle some educators. Gunther Kress touches on this sentiment in his article "Multimodality":
…the linguist and the applied linguist(the language teacher, let us say) would maintain that their business was language, after all, and these other things were someone else’s to look after.
It is time to unsettle this commonsense notion. It is now impossible to make sense of texts, even of their linguistic parts alone, without having a clear idea of what these other features might be contributing to the meaning of the text. In fact, it is now no longer possible to understand language and its uses without understanding the effect of all modes of communication that are copresent in any text. (337)
Kress’s observations are true of language in any age, but it is the saturation of multiple medias in our daily lives that makes it all the more important for composition studies to address the way that this media effects meaning.
Although "Introduction to Composition Studies" may well be regarded as the class that prepares most students for both an academic career with meaningful connection to social, cultural, and economic realities, it is certainly not regarded the same way by all educators and theorists. It is a field of continued debate with regard to ideas of proper scope and procedure. This makes it both an ideal arena in which to affect change, as well as an area of stubborn adhesion to traditional ideas. There is a constant debate that may be somewhat oversimplified as a struggle between traditional practices and contemporary theories. Changing composition to meet the needs of Information and Communication Age students feeds into this existing dilemma—for some as an additional source of distress, widening the rift between accepted traditional conventions, and for others as further proof of the need to reform pedagogical practices.
Allan Luke makes note of this as a natural social/historical phenomenon in the introduction to Literacy in the Information Age: "With 19th and 20th century industrialization and urbanization, people faced new economies, new cultures, and new life pathways. In response, they sought simple truths, literal readings, and new moral and epistemological anchors, often in the form of millenarian religions" (viii). Luke likens this to the new social, cultural, and economic realities of the Information and Communication age: "heterogeneous student bodies," "new public pedagogies of mass media and mass culture," and "new life pathways to and from communities to school to work and back, linked closely to volatile employment markets" (viii). These current social, cultural, and economic realities subsequently fuel the same concern Luke highlights in the example of 19th and 20th century revolutions, identifying a sentiment that views the growing importance of digital technologies, specifically among the younger generations, as a troubling departure from traditional foundations of education. This line of thinking therefore calls for a return to a "’back to basics’ [pedagogy] of phonics, moral education, and so forth (Luke viii). This existing debate has been argued back and forth for some time now with limited reconciliation: Tired issues such as pitting the "back to basics" movement against viewing grammar as lower-level thinking continue to divide scholars. Such a divide stands as a monument to stubbornness on the part of some educators, each side unwilling to concede much to the other. One is tied up entirely in the "new theory" and the other in structured practice. Neither can truly stand apart on its own, which raises another feature of the debate that relates to pedagogical reform: theory and practice. The essentials of this debate have to do with student performance versus student understanding, as these do not necessarily go hand in hand without the right pedagogical guidance. It is a balance of the two that produces a better student, and striking this balance can be achieved through a reconsideration of traditional material with respect to the changing social, cultural, and economic climates of the age.
However, on the surface, one must admit that a pedagogy of multiliteracies certainly seems to lack the simplicity of teaching grammar and mechanics with the "back to basics" approach, but there is no need for a radical restructuring of the classroom. It is more a matter of shifting the perspective of existing methods and assignments to pay more consideration to real life contexts. It is simply a matter of being candid with the student and asking him or her to consider the context of the surround "real world." This can be achieved through employing a process pedagogy and approaching things like grammar and mechanics from a rhetorical standpoint. Additionally, traditional literary analysis assignments can be supplemented with analyses of more contemporary texts or medias, and naturally, connections between analysis of the traditional and the contemporary can be encouraged. Adjusting composition studies to meet the changing needs of the students of the Information and Communication Age must be considered a realistic priority if students are expected to be able to truly make and comprehend meaning in the wider spectrum of "texts" and if we ever expect to reconcile some of the debates in the field of composition studies.

Works Cited
U.S. Census Bureau. "Computer and Internet Use in the United States: 2003." U.S. Census Bureau. 8 May 2007. <>.
Cope, Bill and Mary Kalantzis. "Multiliteracies: The Beginnings of an Idea." Multiliteracies: Literacy Learning and the Design of Social Futures. Eds. Bill Cope and Mary Kalantzis. New York: Routledge, 2000. 3-8.
Crowely, Sharon. "The Emergence of Process Pedagogy." Composition in the University: Historical and Polemical Essays. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1998. 187-214.
Kress, Gunther. Literacy in the New Media Age. New York: Routledge, 2003.
---. "Multimodality: Challenges to Thinking About Language." TESOL Quarterly. 38.2 (2000): 337-340. Jstor. Rhorbach Lib., Kutztown U. 10 Mar. 2007. .
Luke, Allan. Foreword to Literacy in the Information Age: Inquiries into Meaning Making with New Technologies. Ed. Bertram C. Bruce. Newark: International Reading Assoc., 2003. viii-xi.
Micciche, Laura R. "Making a Case for Rhetorical Grammar." CCC. (2004) 55.4: 716-737.
New London Group. "A Pedagogy of Multiliteracies: Designing Social Futures." Multiliteracies: Literacy Learning and the Design of Social Futures. eds. Bill Cope and Mary Kalantzis. New York: Routledge, 2000. 9-37.
Schuster, Charlse I. "Theory and Practice." An Introduction to Composition Stduies.

Back In Town and The Personal Essay

Sorry for the absence of new posts. Those of you that know me understand my family obligations; however, we have good news for a change and I can redevote my time to further discussion.

What interests me now if looking at the overall scope of the Intro to Composition course and how the elements figure together. Specifically, I am thinking about the end of the semester. We are not necessarily talking about a "capstone" assignment, but I am interested in what we leave the students with come finals. This issue is of particular interest to me with respect to the personal essay. An upcoming paper from Dr. Janice Chernekoff on the personal essay disputes the idea that such an assignment should come first-thing in a Composition course. Having heard some of her ideas and corresponding ideas from other professors on the matter, I am intrigued to start a dialogue on the issue.

From my experience in informally listening to instructors' philosophies on the matter I get a sense of two basic arguments. One argument goes like this: "A student cannot be expected to write about anything but him or herself at the beginning of his or her college career. The student does not yet really know enough about anything else to write well on the matter. Moreover, this allows the student a certain level of comfort by making his or her first assignment about something he or she should already have an advanced understanding of." The second argument challenges this last statement: "Does the student really know about his or herself to write something meaningful."

This second argument seems to realize the great potential of writing about self and coming to far-reaching conclusions. In this line of reasoning, the student looks at his or herself last with a refined sense of making meaning. In a casual interview with Dr. Dan Featherston on the benefits of the rhetorical analysis of print advertisement assignment, Dr. F. told me that his believes it is important for his students to start with such an assignment so that they can learn to look outward first and assess the rhetorical meanings in culture and society. The student can then take these understandings and apply them to his or herself for the personal essay, making for a much more meaningful exploration of the self within the context of cultural, social, and economic rhetorics.

I have had the opportunity to have just such an experience in Dr. Chernekoff's ENU course, "Teaching Writing." To close the semester we worked on writing an auto autoethnography, a piece of writing that examines your own history of literacy. It is by no means the easy reflection piece on personal history that some might envision the personal narrative to be. It is hard work, especially when you have been given the basis to make meaningful and socially-connected observations because of the work down throughout the semester to that point and an instructor who will not accept the mediocre. I hated working on that paper; however, by the time I was done, I realized that it may very well be the most valuable thing I have ever written. Especially because I am a part of the world of Composition and Literacy, I learned valuable lessons about myself and how i fit into such a complex world of multiple contexts. But this isn't about me.

The question I have now, is how does this experience translate to the Intro to Composition course. Having spoke with Dr. Chernekoff on the matter, and thinking over my own struggles, I realize that such an assignment is a little beyond the expectations of Freshman's Comp. In fact, it may be a surefire way to make students hate writing, a consequence that must be considered when structuring a class How do you challenge them without alienating them because writing is undeniably personal and therefore makes the critiqued writer very vulnerable.

The questions has to do with the scope of the assignment. What parameters do we assign to the essay to guide our student writers? The parameters can come from the previous classwork, as Dr. Featherston suggests by looking at the rhetorical analysis of a print ad as being training to look outward before looking inward. One assignment I found to be of value and which falls in line with some of the New London Group's explorations, is an assignment I ran into in the Writing Center that came Dr. Heather Thomas. The assignment is to write a "media autobiography." The assignment asks the student to write about the importance of either specific music or television/film media in his or her life. The writer must look at his identity as an individual and as a part of a group (generally in the context of highschool and/or college society) with respect to his or her media consumption. Typical subjects look at subculture groups as defined through music and media. I find the basic idea of this assigment to be quite sound, and the question I pose to end this post, is what assignments others feel fulfill this role, or what modifications can be made to the media autobiography to increase or refocus its effectiveness.

Also, to return to my original considerations, what should these Comp. courses work towards as a final result. I like the idea of focusing in on self in relation to cultural and social contexts, but what are the other options? The portfolio, for example can accomplish something similar, but it is more focused on the overall idea of a writing process and a review of one's own process or processes. Perhaps the portfolio, a gathering of multiple drafts of the same assignment and journal entries, in conjuntion with a short reflection on the act of writing and an assesment of the developement of those multiple drafts, something similar to what I have seen with Prof. Amy Lynch-Binek, is an option worthy of consideration. In any case, I turn it over to your thoughts, reader.

"Actually People"

"Actually people" are those people who interrupt your conversations to correct you on obscure or relatively unimportant details. They always begin their contradictions with "Actually..." For example.

Barbara: Well, I don't know what her problem is. She really treats him badly--Like for instance, when it comes to cleaning the house on weekends. She does nothing to help him. It's like she is the freakin' Queen of France or something and he's her footman. You know what I mean?
Mike: Yeah. I totally get you.
Asshole: Actually, a footman is someone who acts more like a butler. It would probably be maids who did the cleaning. A footman would be someone who like, waited on the Queen, bringing her food or preparing for guests.

As you can see by this exchange, the point is not about France, or who was cleaning the damn castle, or the correct terms for servants in the French feudal system. No one here cares who the Queen of France was at the time or what exactly a footman does with himself all day. The point is that a mutual friend is being treated poorly by his wife, girlfriend, or fiance'. Whether or not Barbara uses the historically correct nouns is immaterial. The "actually person" is just trying to look smart and draw attention to himself because at heart he is a selfish bastard who could care less about his friends' problems.
When you meet an "actually person," you will see the signs in just a few short minutes of talking to that person. Usually this involves lots of discussions about amazing things this person has done and how these things are always one degree better than anything you have done--ie. If you were in England for 4 months, he was there for a year, and so on. If you observe these ego centric tendencies, get as far away from that person as possible. In addition to the growing annoyance of pointless one-upmanship, they will eventually take any opportunity to draw attention to themselves and lamely make you look foolish. If this should happen, you might find yourself unable to suppress your desire to immediately punch that person in the face or knee them in the groin when applicable. This can lead to further problems, especially if you are in a public place like a lunchroom, office, or friend's funeral.
Know the signs, and play it safe.

How Much Structure?

Today I am thinking about structure.
Specifically, I am thinking about structuring a classroom and lesson plans and my interactions with students: Here is the problem. The theories of Composition I am currently following grow out of a post structuralist idea of Composition; yet undeniably, formal education must be tightly structured to some degree.
Let's put it this way. If I generalize the structuralist "old school" of Composition pedagogy as the "back-to-basics" approach, you can expect a classroom that focuses on grammar rules as being solid inviolable truths. This is the system I was taught as a part-time college student at PSU Berks in 1999. I learned about different writing products--different kinds of writing that were separate and unequal. There was "academic writing," "creative writing," "persuasive writing," or "business writing." Each had a different hierarchical value, and each could be exemplified by a singular product. These modes never crossed paths. Rules about modes of expression in each medium were clear and solid (if a bit arbitrary at times): "You never use a contraction in an academic paper." It never occurred to me to ask why?
Now I subscribe to a belief that writing should be taught as a process that does not follow a singular linear structure with arbitrary rules. However, I am still stuck with the need to build a lesson plan that conveys this without leaving students lost in a directionless fog or producing writing that fails to communicate with its readers. In my own work with students at the Writing Center, I often make a partial return to the strictures of Intro. to Comp. Some assignments have a definite audience with definite expectations, that are best met with specific choices about grammar and voice. For example, one can't expect a Media and Communications scholar to clearly comprehend a discussion of the social implications of, say, the increased output of teenage television dramas about spoiled rich kids in the same voice I use to talk to my friends at the bar about the new Family Guy:

Mike: You see last night's episode?
Behn: Yeah. those guys are freakin' hilarious
Mike: I love how they don't get up their own ass with trying to make a moral, ya know. It's just random fun.
Behn: Yeah.
Mike: It's like those "'actually' people:" Actually...
Behn: Yeah, they're always raining one someone's parade because they gotta look smart.

Behn and I just conveyed what could be liberally considered as a perfectly valid, socially-relevant critical analysis of the show , including a consideration of the social phenomenon we have privately named "'actually' people." (see the post Actually People) However, a paper written in this style would most likely fail to impress a professor and would not exhibit an understanding of how to effectively convey intended ideas through writing, so there must be some standards to apply to the task at hand in order to provide guidance.
It is fairly easy in the Writing Center to work without a rigid structure. I get a sense of the assignment and the individual writer and suggest that thewriter, for example, might try to move away from using verbal constructs that draw their meaning from audible inflection and think about more specific terms to engage in an analysis. Conversely, I might also suggest a student distance themselves from what we know as the traditional "academic voice," as it is something that is generally quite foreign to the way real people talk to one another regularly and can therefore lead to some long and confusing sentences where a multitude of ideas are expressed simultaneously and incompletely. (What an ironically long sentence) In this case, I ask that the writer first explain to me verbally, in their own words, what they are attempting to convey. Then we use that language to make clearer the words on the page, creating a a hybrid of sorts. As I said--fairly simple.
In you average Intro to Comp. classroom, however, it is considerably harder, as we are talking about dealing with thirty students at once. The classroom practice has to give them a fairly good understanding of expectations. Furthermore, they should be aware of the justifications for these expectations if we expect to create thinking learners. However, a teacher cannot just go out and play it by ear. Neither can the teacher spend the entire semester moving from individual to individual. How then does she or he create a lesson plan for a particular assignment that provides a structure that can stand up to critical questioning?
To clarify, students must learn that writing is not about idealized products that can be judged by constants. Each act of writing is a socially-situated act of making meaning. Therefore, unless students are forced to all write on the exact same topic from the exact same point of view, and subsequently manage to do the impossible and forget their own identities, each written piece would have to be judged by a different standard. More precisely, there is no structure to judge or assess any piece at all. This brings us around to Stanley Fish and community interpretations. An interesting study, but one whose line of thinking has an endless capacity to destabilize meaning and could very well leave us in that foggy area without a compass.
In any case, what I am left with are thoughts about how to facilitate discussions around multiple grammars for multiple purposes without creating the impression that there are distinct differences in modes of writing relating to writing as a product. Meanwhile, I need to prepare students to meet some of the expectations of writing in Academia and beyond. What is really required is the poets sensability of "negative capability," which was concieved of by John Keats. Essentially, it is the ability to exist within an enigma without needing to reach for explanations or absolutes. Here is the first step to a dynamic structure.
Back in the realm of practical application, I believe I am starting to see some of the structure take shape in The New London Group's concept of Design elements, but I'll not venture to wrestle with that just now. Rather, I will close this meditation, as it is already quite lengthy.
At this point I'd love some input from whoever is reading. (Boy, I hope someone is reading) As you can see, I have alot more thinking to do to begin to iron this out.

Free Write--Introductory Ideas: Academia and Beyond

My interest in composition has its origin in my interest in my own individual future. That is, this project stems from a need and desire to make meaning of my own pedagogical philosophies with the mind that I intend to spend my life teaching writing as both a source of income, as well as a means to do something meaningful and important with my life: coaching young college students in a field of critical inquiry and meaning-making. More simply stated: I have a desire to help students fulfill their potential as creators and consumers of meaning in Academia and beyond. The following is a study of preexisting debate on the future of literacy pedagogy, which questions how the world has changed in light of technological advances and constantly colliding cultures, and observations I have personally made of current teaching practices aimed at building my own lesson plans for the Introduction to Composition classroom. That makes this a far from ambitious project in the big picture, but a necessary one for me, and one that hopfully others can use to fuel their own debates between theory and practice.
What I am seeing take shape from my research puts a large focus on the New London group, as they seem to be a well-organized group asking all the right questions. Thus, my project takes shape around their ideas in many ways. Conceptually, the paper I am creating starts with the ideas coming out of poststructuralism and follows those ideas into the New London Group. After exploring their theories, my study follows the most recent debates and ideas in the field through recent discussions in Computers and Composition and professional blogs. The study concludes with my own observations and assesments of assignments and syllabi from Composition courses I have observed in my time at the Kutztown University Writing Center. Ultimately, I hope to be able to suggest a set of lesson plans for my own Composition courses.
To give an example of what I am talking about--I have observed quite a few students working on an assignment that calls for them to analyze and assess the rhetoric of magazine advertisements for various popular products. The students must interpret textual and visual rhetoric in these ads and discuss the implications of this rhetoric in a social context. This relates to the New Lond Group's ideas on the Design elements of linguistic, visual, spatial, and gestural design. Students are therefore challenged with digesting multimodal media and using critical thinking skills to assess the negative or positive social implications. Of course, students must then interpret their findings for the reading audience of thier paper, honing their own meaning-making skills. This takes students a step beyond what could be considered traditional analysis of pure text. This is not to say that textual analysis is outdated--far from it. These same courses that call for analysis of multimodal design elements also include straight-up literary analysis. If anything, working on multimodal analysis helps students to look that much deeper into textual analysis and take it beyond words on a page, perhaps creating an ability to read the social contexts of writers whom might otherwise be though of as simply "dead writers that write good old stories."

The Virgin Blogger: Wanderers in the Land of Vagueness

I suppose this is long overdue for several reasons. The most literal is that I should have started this blog about a week ago after I met with my thesis advisor Kevin Mahoney. In a broader sense, however, I really should have tried to get in on the ground floor on these things. That is, I have had an interest in the future of literacy and technology for a few years now, and yet I have never actually set foot in the realm of technology and literacy. I suppose I talked big, but I had no show to back it up. That said, this is my first post in a series designed to do several things. First and foremost, it is a blog that will help me grow accustomed to the blog medium. Second, it will provide the good Dr. M. a way to keep tabs on me and my thought process. Third, it may generate some discussion on the subjects of Composition at the University and Multiliteracies, as well as the thesis process, among any foolish enough to set foot in this dark corner of the Internet.
Let me sum up my attitudes and ideas as they stand prior to the bulk of my research being completed. I have been interested in teaching Composition at the University since I started back to school for my M.A. in English at Kutztown University of Pennsylvania in 2005. There I took a course entitled "Teaching Writing." This, coupled with my experience working at the University Writing Center (UWC), generated an interest in the power and potential of awakening literacy skills in students. What came out of these studies and my time spent at the UWC working with individual writers was an understanding that adaptability was the key element to successful teaching moments. As an individual tutor at the UWC, this adaptability is fairly easy: I have one student, with one assignment, in one class. Looking ahead to the prospect of managing several Freshman's Comp. classrooms, I realize that a more organized course of theory and practice is necessary to my teaching methods and curriculum. All that said, I am focusing my attention on an area where the most revolutionary changes are taking place in media practices--the area that is affecting what it means to be literate in the information age. I am examining digital media and rhetoric and its relationship with the student writer and his or her future as a critical thinker.
As I do not know from experience who does read these kind of things (blogs), I fear I may have already created what makes for some very dry, generalized, and uninteresting reading for the average wanderer amidst the land of blogs, especially because I do not yet have the research and fully-formed ideas at this point to write something so stunningly articulate as to attract the professional crowd. That said, here is a mediocre, right-wing, language-themed joke to round out this preliminary post and make your careful reading worthwhile:


"An officer in the U.S. Naval reserve was attending a conference that included admirals from both the U.S. Navy and the French Navy. At a cocktail reception, he found himself in a small group that included personnel from both navies.
The French admiral started complaining that whereas Europeans learned many languages, Americans learned only English. He then asked: 'Why is it that we have to speak English in these conferences rather than you speak French?'
Without hesitating, the American Admiral replied: 'Maybe it's because the Brits, Canadians, Aussies and Americans arranged it so you would not have to speak German.'
The group became silent."

Wow, what a lousy joke! Nothing is better than a joke that ends in silence on both the characters' and audience's part. Thank you basicjokes.com!