But what makes this group even more different is that this is the first group of 18 year old students I’ve had who have not decided to vote based on the candidate that their favorite parent is voting for. For some strange reason, I have 15 students just barely old enough to vote and they are doing the unthinkable. They are trying to decide who to vote for.  I discovered this the first week of class when they bombarded me with questions not relating to deadlines and grading scales, but how they could register to vote and whether they have to  claim the school or their home as their voting precinct. I was floored. I’ve never had a group even ask me about this. I gave them the best advice that I could and sent them on their way. I assumed the political activity in my class was over.

It wasn’t. The second week of classes, my students returned. Our topic of discussion for the day was Ronald Reagan’s speech at the Brandenburg Gate (the famous “Tear Down This Wall”) speech. I had asked them to read the text of the speech and watch a few minutes of Reagan delivering the speech. Yes, I teach composition. No, Reagan is not out of place in a composition class. His speech oozes rhetorical appeals. It is also a wonderful means of teaching students how the modes of writing are not only aspects to writing individual essays, but can be be incorporated into one complete essay. As we discussed the speech, I noticed that they had not only paid attention to what I asked of them, but they had opinions on the speech. Yes, this is odd for a group of freshmen during the second week of school.

After Reagan’s speech, we turned to an article on Hurricane Katrina and several of my students got into a mild debate about where the blame for the disaster relief debacle should fall. One student, a native of New Orleans, was placing the blame not on the President, but on New Orleans politicians. This is unheard of in my classes. As I broke up the debate (to keep it from getting too heated), one of my student’s asked if I had seen Obama’s speech the previous night and we chatted for a moment on the speech. Then, another student asked if I knew when McCain was speaking. We Googled it. I took a risky step (now with only a few minutes left in the class period) and asked if they had made a decision on their next president.

One replied

I haven’t made up my mind yet.

This was followed by another reply of:

I want to hear more about their stance on the issues

A third student replied:

I’m waiting for the debates.

I was dumbfounded. My experience with freshman voters involves voting for the person daddy or mommy tells them to vote for. I asked for a show of hands for those who watched Obama’s speech and half the class raised their hands. Many of the others had missed it because they were in class. There were only two who were not interested. So, I posted the link on our Blackboard site. I’ve also posted McCain’s speech.

Then I started thinking about four things:

1. Civic Engagement
2. Critical Thinking Skills
3. Improved Writing
4. Reinforcing the Modes of Discourse

Civic Engagement

Students who are interested in politics are a rare group. They have beliefs that they are ready to take into a voting booth. As teachers, we cannot just cast aside this decision. We cannot-and should not-make decisions for our students, but we can help them to make their own decisions by allowing them to talk about their beliefs in a classroom setting.

Critical Thinking Skills

I can capture the political enthusiasm my students have and push this into their class activities in a way that means I can help them improve their critical thinking skills. This is important in their future and plays a role in our country’s future as well.

Improved Writing

I can assign extra credit work related to the election that asks students to write on their views as civic minded individuals. Through these writings, students can address the issues that are important to them while simultaneously improving their writing skills.

Reinforcing Modes of Discourse

Too many students come into the college classroom prepared to write a narrative or an argument without realizing the depth that various modes can bring to their writing. I can ask my students to look at how McCain and Obama use the modes to create powerful speeches. This mimics what I asked them to look for in Reagan’s speech, but puts it in a context in which they have show an interest. A topic interesting to a student is always going to engage them in their learning more than a topic they care nothing about.

So I’ve thought about this and made a decision. I’m going to allow my students extra credit writing opportunities throughout the semester. These will be brief one or two page assignments based around information they need to learn this semester. But they will also be based around various aspects of the political campaign. I plan to start by asking them to use the modes of writing to look at the two acceptance speeches. But as the semester goes on, I’m going to expand these options. I want students to have the chance to not only interact with the campaign, but also with new technologies. So, along the way, I will provide them with the option to record rebuttal speeches and send to me. (If they permit me, I will upload these to the YouTube account). I will give them the chance to design a webpage for the candidate they choose or to design a webpage discussing the two candidates. (If the students will let me, I will upload these pages to my homepage and link there when I can).

So, for starters, I’m teaching them the literacy of YouTube. I’ve created a channel specific to our class and posted the link on the class Blackboard site. I’ve also posted their first extra credit opportunity as a bulletin on the channel. It’s a bit like a semester long virtual scavenger hunt.

We will see how the students take to it. Check back for updates.

I’m worried now for multiple reasons. I want to start with the testing itself. A few weeks ago I, along with my FYC colleagues, received an email saying that ACT representatives would be administering the CAAP (Collegiate Assessment of Academic Proficiency) to all of our FYC classes. I paid no notice because, since I teach Basic Writing, my students would not be tested. Now, over the past few weeks I’ve heard the horror stories of teachers waiting for the officials to show up for the class, having to reschedule class plans and just be generally annoyed with the entire process. I said nothing. I’m not an advocate of standardized testing in college (or anywhere else, really), but these were not my issues. Yet today, I got an email that seemed just a little bit ludicrous. Apparently, the tests were not only given to FYC students, but also to our senior class. The senior class, it seems, rebelled. So the school’s response is not to just shrug their shoulders and go on, but to bribe students who did not take the test in their classes. By bribe, I really mean bribe. They are willing to pay these students (via a raffle) to take the test. It seems they promised ACT that a specific number of seniors would take the test and they have to meet that quota. So now the students they are attracting are not necessarily made up of a true sampling of our senior class, but will be made up partially of those who are seeking a “reward” for some kind of participation. It seems to me that this will, ultimately, throw off our sample pool.

The reason this worries me is that since our state is considering mandatory assessment. I have a strange feeling that these “experimental” tests are to help decide if this issue should become a law in the state. This means that instead of seeing what our school is doing, they are seeing how far students who need an extra few dollars in their pocket can be assessed. This sample in no way will reflect the student body graduating this year and, therefore, we run the risk of having to cater to the content of mandatory testing because a few people wanted to earn some extra money.

Still, I have not answered the overlying question of why I am against mandatory testing. Well, that all goes back to my teaching experience. I teach in a college where students not only must have specific SAT scores (1000 on the verbal and math) or a 21 composite ACT score. Truthfully, I would have just squeaked into the school as a Freshman. But that score is only valid if the student has also passed the state exit exam. I took an assessment test at the end of my junior year in high school and I did fine. But it was not a mandatory test at that time. Now, with the mandatory assessment, teachers focus too much energy on preparing students to pass the test and too little on teaching them what they need to know. When I was in high school, the test was poo-pooed as just an “experiment” so our teachers did not focus on the content of the test as the basis for our class syllabus. Now, however I spend the first few weeks of FYC teaching students that the 5-paragraph essay is not a form carved in stone–a concept they generally don’t comprehend until midterms. In addition, I have to teach them that a thesis statement does not have to specifically include the topic statement and the statement of the three topics in their essay. I have students in my class who didn’t score well enough on the state test to be placed into traditional FYC classes, but are brilliant writers. They’re in my class because they can’t write a 5 paragraph essay. Sure, I have students who can’t write a paragraph, but the majority of these students are working with problems traditionally addressed in our regular FYC classes. They feel that they are “bad” writers because they couldn’t write the 5 paragraph essay. What makes them “bad” writers–and this is not just the Basic Writing students, but a majority of our incoming freshmen, is that they don’t know what a topic sentence is and they can’t identify a thesis statement in any form other than the one they were taught to write in high school. They don’t know what plagiarism is and they can’t use any style manual to cite a reference. They don’t know these things because they weren’t emphasized in high school–they weren’t on the state test.

Now I swore that I would not make this post a “back in my day” rant, but I know that my high school English teacher would never have let us out of her class if we didn’t know the basics to writing. The basics, in her mind, included a full understanding of MLA, topic sentences, complex thesis statements, and 7-15 paragraph essays. There are times in class when I’m thinking that I’m teaching things in class that I would expect students to have learned in high school. I can’t be mad at them for not knowing this class, and, to some extent I can’t be mad at the teachers who are doing what they are told to do–prepare the students for the test. But I’m worried. What I’m worried about is that we’re going to be sending students into the real world with too much attention on what needs to be learned to pass an assessment test and not what they need to know in the real world. In other words, I’m worried that some day, somewhere, an accountant will be teaching a new secretary that they do not use the five-paragraph format in the real world.

That is my worry. And if we keep bribing students to take an “experimental test” I fear that is where we will be in the next decade. If that happens, I may hang up my PowerPoints and handouts and run for office. This state could use a former teacher as a governor. Why not me? I will be able to write more than the five paragraph essay.

• grand style
  • smooth and ornate arrangements of impressive words
• middle style
  • lower yet not the lowest and most colloquial class of words
• plain style
  • brought down to the most current idiom of standard speech

Virtues of Speech

Correctness

• Quality of style by which one speaks or writes in a manner consistent with a given language’s norms

Clarity

• Clarity is measured in terms of how clear our speech seems to our audience or how well it appeals logically to the understanding (logos).

Evidence

• Evidence measures how well language reaches the emotions through vivid depiction. (pathos)

Decorum

A central rhetorical principle requiring one’s words and subject matter be aptly fit to each other, to the circumstances and occasion (kairos), the audience, and the speaker.
Ornateness

Ornateness aims at producing delight or admiration in the audience, and may thereby jeopardize clarity.

Like clarity, ornateness is a quality of both single words and groups of words, and some of the same choices that might threaten clarity may improve ornateness—for example, the use of old, coined, or metaphorical words.

Scope of the Lesson

Demonstrate to students how to write in each of the three styles. Demonstrate the nuances that vary between each of the styles and how to focus on the virtues of speech in each of these styles and how the virtues change for each of the styles.

This lesson should come early in the semester-either preparing students for their first essay or culminating in their first essay, depending on the class. This way, students become more aware of audience influence on style at a much earlier time than they often do.

Lesson Design

Lesson One-Writing in the Plain Style

• Students draft an email on why the cafeteria food needs to be improved.

• For this email they are told that they are writing this letter to a close friend attending another university.

Worthiness

Many students feel that writing is something they can’t do well. They see writing as a task to be completed within a classroom setting. To begin an assignment by going over all of the technical terms and then asking them to write while keeping all the rules and guidelines in mind can overwhelm students. Therefore, to open a class by asking them to write an email assuages some of their fear since they are already familiar with this medium of writing.

• Discuss the attributes of the plain style. Place the emphasis on the style being the one we use most often without thinking about it. The goal here is to prove to students that they can write in the plain style.

Worthiness

To discuss the attributes of the style after students have written an essay in that style allows them to see their writing as belonging to the style, instead of something they must work to create so that it fits the style. This way, students feel they have an advantage when working with styles; since they already use one of these styles, they feel more comfortable writing in the other styles.

• In class, examine a sample email for the virtues of style. As this email is discussed and color coded in the class exercise, answers to the questions would be discussed so that students have a better idea of how to look for these virtues in their own writing. During this time we would discuss why each of the selected passages are attributed to each virtue and how some, though they work in multiple places fit better into one specific virtue for a certain reason.

• • Correctness
    • How is this email a sample of how you write your friends on a regular basis?
    • What traits distinguish this email as one written to a friend?
    • Look closely at your arrangement, content and word choice
    • Mark these places by changing the font color to green
  • Clarity
    • How well will the recipient understand the reasons cafeteria food should be improved?
    • Will the recipient see the logic in your argument? How specifically will they see this?
    • • Mark these places by changing the font color to red
  • Evidence
    • What emotions are you appealing to in the email?
    • How have you conveyed this plea in your email?
    • • Mark these places by changing the font color to blue
  • Decorum
    • What words have you used that you would not use when speaking to a stranger?
    • What evidence is contained in your word choice that acknowledges you are writing to a friend?
    • How can we tell that this is a casual email sent to a friend?
    • • Mark these places by changing the font color to purple
  • Ornateness
    • Are you using clichés?
    • Do you use metaphors that only your friend will understand?
    • • Mark these places by changing the font color to pink

At this point, a sample email would likely look like this

Maria,
OMG! I just came back from the cafeteria and there was nothing to eat! They have hamburgers there that are greasier than Jack Walker’s hair was! The salad bar had the limpest, brownest lettuce I have ever seen. They definitely need to fix this food.
Seriously, I am paying so much for food that I don’t eat here. If I could save that money I could buy a new pair of shoes every month. But no, they have to make us get this retarded meal plan and we have to eat on campus whenever we’re hungry. Yuck! The apple I tried to eat actually had a worm in it! I have never eaten such crappy food. Can you imagine? How’s the food at A&M? Do you have good food? Maybe I should transfer in the spring.
Jackie

Worthiness
As with discussing the attributes to the plain style after asking students to create the email, discussing the virtues of the style after students have seen how these are already present in their own writing aids students in seeing what they already know about writing in the plain style. Words like decorum and ornateness can intimidate students when they are attached to somewhat ambiguous rules that students feel they don’t comprehend. Yet attaching these words and rules to tangible areas in a student’s writing helps them to understand the rules by making them more coherent to the student.

Homework Day One

Rewrite the email as a letter to the student body that will be published in the school newspaper.

Worthiness

Asking students to write to a community they belong to makes them consider their audience carefully while also helping them to continue to feel comfortable in their writing. Again, the audience provides little pressure and though students are aware how this fits in with the lesson, the familiar audience aids in continuing to take a good bit of the pressure off the writing anxiety.

Lesson Two–Middle Style

• Discuss the attributes of the middle style. Place the emphasis on this style being used occasionally in our life writing. This forum can allow students to come up with various ways they would use the middle style (i.e. emails to their parents, emails to professors to ask a question, letters to the newspaper). The goal here is to prove to students that they can write in the middle style just by paying some attention to the virtues of this style.

Worthiness

As with the discussion after the email on day one, this discussion serves as a means of proving to students that they are capable of writing in the middle style. This continues to build their confidence in their writing ability, which makes preparation for the final stage of this group of lessons more effective.

• In class we examine a student’s letter for the virtues of style. As this letter is discussed and students color code their own homework, answers to the same questions posed on the first assignment are reassessed. Questions would be discussed so that students have a better idea of how to look for these virtues in their own writing. During this time we would discuss why each of the selected passages are attributed to each virtue and how some, though they work in multiple places fit better into one specific virtue for a certain reason.

• Once the essay is color coded and the virtues have been reiterated, the remainder of the class period is spent discussing the differences in the two writing styles. During this session questions are directed to aid students in seeing the differences between the plain style and the medium style. This should aid in their comprehension of not only the two styles, but also how they vary their writing to fit each of these styles.
  • Correctness
    • How did you write the letter differently than the email?
    • What aspects of arrangement, content and word choice changed?
    • How did these aspects change?
    • What sets the letter apart, in general, from the email?
    • How did constructing the letter differ from constructing the email?
    • What traits distinguish this as the medium style?
    • Did you spell check this letter more?
    • Did you grammar check this letter?
  • Clarity
    • Did you add additional information that other students would relate to?
    • Did you add information that only your fellow students would comprehend?
  • Evidence
    • What emotions are you appealing to in the letter?
    • Have these emotions changed from those in the email?
    • Do you use different methods of pathos to create your appeals?
  • Decorum
    • What effect did the audience have on your word choice?
    • How did you choose specific words for this letter?
    • Why did you choose to use these words here but not in your email?
    • What evidence is contained in your word choice that acknowledges you are writing to the student body?
  • Ornateness
    • Do you use more educated metaphors?
    • Why did you choose to use the metaphors you used this time as opposed to those in your email?

Worthiness

With the discussion of variations of the virtues of style between the plain and medium style, students have the chance to begin making connections between audience and style that will apply to future writings. This discussion also aids students in inferring the specific rules that accompany the virtues of style.

Homework Day Two
Rewrite the letter. This time you will want to address the letter to the President of the college. Remember to follow the style virtues carefully.

Worthiness

This homework assignment, coupled with the subsequent lecture, demonstrates to students the need to write more eloquently for a more formal audience. Generally, students are asked to write essays with no guide as to the audience. Therefore, the students tend to write essays in the middle style and address these specifically to their instructors. Since they are familiar with this audience, they feel the middle style is appropriate. However, this assignment forces students to think about how they would write to a more sophisticated, unfamiliar audience. When discussed during the Lesson Three lecture, this allows for a further discussion of the grand style in a manner that students can relate to.

Lesson Three–Grand Style

• Discuss the attributes of the grand style. Place the emphasis on this style being used for all formal writing and make sure students understand that this style is the most difficult to write.

Worthiness

This forum can allow students to come up with various ways they would use the grand style so they have concrete audiences for each of the three styles. The goal here is to demonstrate to students that they need to be fully aware of how to write in the grand style so that they are prepared for the majority of their college career and their future in the workforce.

• In class we examine a different student’s letter for the virtues of style. As this letter is discussed and students color code their own homework, answers to the same questions posed on the first assignments are reassessed and students return to the comparison created in the previous class, only this time they compare the medium and grand styles.

Worthiness

As with the comparison between the plain and the medium style, this comparison allows students to see the nature of the differences while also demonstrating that as long as students take care in their writing, there is not much that differs between the medium and the grand style.

• Now that student have had a chance to look specifically at each of the styles and have been provided with a chance to write in each of the styles, they are more familiar with the audience’s impact on the style used. Now, in my opinion, is the best time to provide them with the more concrete rules for the lesson. The best way to do this, however is not to actually provide them with the rules for each style, but to create a chart that exemplifies this.

Worthiness

Asking students to aid in the creation of the chart allows for a chance to gauge the students’ individual knowledge of the rules. This also aids students in their own realization that they can distinguish between the three styles and that they do know the virtues that go along with these styles. Also, creating the chart in class, through the use of a Word table projected on an overhead allows students to see the chart being created and allows the instructor to post this chart to the course webpage once it has been completed. By waiting until the end of the unit to establish the rules for the styles, students have had a chance to become accustomed with writing in the styles without feeling overwhelmed by the rules associated with the style and, therefore, not creating assignments that will aid in their understanding of these styles.

Homework Day Three

Begin Revisions to your letters, making sure that both letters adhere specifically to the virtues of their specific style.

Worthiness

Asking students to revise the two letters while paying attention to the virtues should finally solidify any ambiguity between style differences. Additionally, this assignment asks students to look at the styles in relation to their virtues as they complete the revisions. Therefore, the specific virtues associated with each style are internalized as students continue to connect the virtues with traits of their own writing.

1. Rhetoric in secondary composition education
2. Rhetoric in post-secondary composition education

Within each of those divisions, I will focus on four specific points

1. Facets of rhetoric that should be taught (rhetorical concepts)
2. Why it would be taught at this level
3. Benefit to the student if this material was taught at this level
4. Benefit to society at large (why this matters to the “real world”)

Now on to the organized brainstorm

Rhetoric in secondary composition education

Facets of rhetoric that should be taught (rhetorical concepts)

Antiphon’s philosophy

Canons of Rhetoric

Six Parts of a Speech

kairos

Why it would be taught at this level

Antiphon’s philosophy: To teach Antiphon’s philosophy in secondary schools allows students to begin understanding why they are writing and how this will ultimately connect to their lives. This philosophy should not be taught only at the secondary level, but should continue to be stressed in the teachings of the post-secondary instruction. This can be done by asking students to write essays on real topics that apply to their daily lives and communities they are involved in. This way they can see how writing in their real life will always be important.

Canons of Rhetoric: To begin teaching the canons of rhetoric at the secondary level provides students a chance to begin learning how the writing process works. As with anything taught in schools, repetition would aid in retention and students would soon internalize this method as the “standard” for writing. Therefore, when they reach their college composition classes, they would be able to gain more important information since college instructors would not need to teach the canons in-depth, but would only need to review these and enforce this method in their own lesson plans.

Six Parts of a Speech: This should be taught at the secondary level in order to prevent students from entering college courses with the ability and mindset that a five-paragraph essay is the only way to create an essay. Using the parts of a speech/composition as the way to write allows students to maintain the structure of an outline, while teaching them something more useful than the five paragraph essay. I’m not asserting that the five-paragraph essay should be completely eliminated, but it should be taught alongside this method so that when students begin writing more complex material, they have a better structure.

kairos: Kairos should be taught at the secondary level as students are learning to write various types of essays. In today’s college classroom, students enter into an essay with the belief that they are writing to “their teacher” and that the end means for an essay is to “get a good grade.” By asking students to consider other audiences during their secondary education, they can begin to grasp this concept much earlier in their education and begin to internalize this for future use.

Benefit to the student if this material was taught at this level

To begin teaching the more general material at the secondary level means that college instruction is open to teach more information in the span of a semester. Since many students do not enter college knowing anything about these aspects of rhetoric, college composition instructors must devote a large portion of the first semester of composition to teaching this material. Therefore, the student spends more time learning material that could have been taught in their secondary classes instead of using this time to learn new information that would make them better, more focused writers. Additionally, since this material is only covered in two semesters at the most, there is little chance that students will actually retain and internalize this material.

Benefit to society at large (why this matters to the “real world”)

When secondary instructors begin teaching these general principles of rhetoric at a younger age, there is more time for students to internalize this material. Teaching these principles at the secondary level could, ultimately, allow for a revised composition curriculum in post-secondary education. This revised curriculum would allow instructors to focus on more specific material that becomes applicable when students enter their career fields. Potentially, students would learn general rhetorical concepts in their secondary classrooms, then spend a semester in post-secondary working with more specific principles. This would mean that composition programs could then create discipline specific classes for all areas of post-secondary instruction. This second semester composition class could be postponed until the student had decided upon a major and then base the instruction on writing for the career field (e.g. Business Writing, Composition for Nurses). This would allow students to enter the work force, if not their advanced major courses, with a basic knowledge of how to write for their discipline. Therefore, the work force would find new graduates who had a more in-depth knowledge of how to write for the discipline they were working in and companies would not have to spend additional resources teaching new employees what they should have learned in college.

Rhetoric in post-secondary composition education

Facets of rhetoric that should be taught (rhetorical concepts)

Three Types of Rhetoric

Syllogisms, Enthymemes and Logical Problems

Antiphon’s method of teaching

Plato’s Phaedrus

Corax’s Doctrine of General Probability

Why it would be taught at this level

Three Types of Rhetoric: This should be taught at the post-secondary level since in my mind, the material students are being taught at the secondary level prepares them to write in general. With the amount of rhetoric that should be taught at the secondary level there can be a more specific focus on teaching argumentation at the post-secondary level. Therefore, while students can be taught to research and argue a point, the specifics of argumentation should be saved for the post-secondary level so that students have mastered some of the more general rhetorical lessons (much as they would in the Greek and Roman periods) and can now move into the more specific aspects of writing and argumentation.

Syllogisms, Enthymemes and Logical Problems: At the current time, the logic that arguments need to follow tend to become a brief discussion of the fallacies students should avoid when they write. However, this alone is not enough and college composition instructors should focus also on teaching logic and logical styles when they teach fallacies. At the post-secondary level students are more prepared to comprehend these ideas. Also, since I feel teaching at the college level should turn more to argumentation and less to review of secondary school skills, teachers would have more time in classes to devote to these styles and methods.

Antiphon’s method of teaching: While this is not a style of rhetorical writing, it is a method that should be used in post-secondary education. In asking students to write an argument from both points of view aids in teaching them the necessity of counterarguments in their writing.

Plato’s Phaedrus: The point that Plato makes within the dialogue–that a good argument, regardless of the position it takes, can sway an argument would work well when taught in conjunction with argumentation units so that students could see the need to include both sides of the argument and the need for strong refutation in their writing. Also, Plato’s demonstration that rhetoric aids a person in comprehension as well as persuading his listeners. These are both skills that a writer needs to comprehend before they enter the “real world” but they are a bit too complex to be taught at the secondary level where students should be fine tuning their more general writing skills.

Corax’s Doctrine of General Probability: Once more, this is a method that needs to be taught with argumentation so that students understand more of the logic required within a paper as well as how they must support their side of the argument so that readers are accepting that as the proper side to take.

Benefit to the student if this material was taught at this level

By focusing post-secondary instruction on these more specific rhetorical concepts, students would have a chance to better their writing in areas more applicable to the workforce. The current layout of college composition has students working to write essays that range from personal narratives to expositions on random topics throughout the range of their entire first semester. Then, during the second semester, students begin to focus on argumentation. Therefore, for the student it seems that the entire first semester is nothing but a waste of time. If composition were redesigned so that college composition focused solely on writing argumentation and writing for an audience, students would have a chance to begin understanding how writing relates to their lives in general as well as to their chosen career. This, ultimately, would allow students the chance to take more interest in their courses since they would not be putting little effort into a “useless” course.

Benefit to society at large (why this matters to the “real world”)

When society begins to create better writers in school, they are creating better citizens. College graduates enter the workforce with a better idea of how to write. However, they also enter society with a better ability to comprehend and analyze important matters. Aristotle’s four advantages to studying rhetoric in a democratic society are still valid in our modern society. Aristotle posits that rhetoric teaches us how to:

1. perceive the difference between truth and falsehood
2. understand how people are moved to action
3. see both sides of an issue
4. defend ourselves against the arguments of others

When graduates enter society with these abilities, they are able to make better decisions throughout their lives. These students would have the ability to choose the better political or job candidate because they would have the ability to see through the pathos appeals in the speeches. They would be able to sway people to join a cause once they had analyzed it to determine that the cause was just and noble. Finally, they would have the background to see the weaknesses in arguments against themselves and protect themselves from slander or faulty arguments through refutation instead of through lawsuits.

Originally, the progymnasmata was used in Ancient Greece to imbue students with the knowledge they needed to become effective orators. It consisted of fourteen specific exercises:

1. fable
2. tale
3. saying
4. proverb
5. refutation
6. confirmation
7. commonplace
8. encomium
9. invective
10. comparison
11. characterization
12. description
13. thesis
14. law

Now, it is easy to see how these exercises build upon one another in difficulty, but they were designed to do much more than that. Students began with these exercises at home working with a private tutor (about the equivalent age of grammar school students) and worked with the exercises through their college years. But it’s much more difficult than it looks; students were not just told to write a fable and then left to write that (as some teachers tend to do in this day and age), but it was rather a process that built slowly to the student’s writing of fable.

First, the student was presented with the genre which had to then be named, defined and divided into subtypes by the student. This section of the assignment allowed students to gain a better grasp on the genre they were working with (such as fable).

Once the student had a grasp on the full span of this genre, they were provided with an “art” for invention of this genre to study. Much as today’s students are taught clustering, mapping and outlining, ancient scholars were taught ways to invent specifically for the genre they were working with.

Once students had a grasp on the genre and the invention, they were taught criteria for evaluating sample productions of the genre. Here, in my opinion, lies the beginning of the most important steps of the progymnasmata. Students need to comprehend the aspects of good writing in any genre, so for me, this is one of the most important steps in the process.

After teaching students how to analyze genre writing to determine good from bad examples, students were provided with a model from the genre they were working with.So, continuing with the fable genre, we could say that students were assigned a reading of one of Aesop’s fables. With this model, students studied the model through a variety of exercises including:

1. Reading
2. Paraphrasing
3. Transliteration (translating into a second language)
4. Memorization and recitation
5. Correction of the paraphrasing and recitation

Only once the students could prove their understanding of the model and demonstrate their ability to complete the exercises were the students allowed to delve into writing their own version of the genre.

So, the key to these exercises was not merely to have students write within the genre, but to have students pay close attention to the details and nuances of the genre so that each genre made a lasting impression on their rhetorical and oratory abilities.

Again, special thanks to the BYU Silva Rhetoricae and J. David Fleming’s “The Very Idea of a Progymnasmata”

J. David Fleming’s “The Very Idea of a Progymnasmata” (2003) argues that the issue with using this classical method of writing instruction in the modern composition classroom lies not in the antiquity of the concept, but rather in the failure of instructors to incorporate both the exercises and the idea behind the original progymnasmata. Fleming asserts this argument through a careful examination of the original types of exercises used by classic rhetoric teachers and the lengthy methods these teachers used to ensure that every student comprehended the methodology behind each exercise. Explaining that the progymnasmata originally spanned a student’s entire educational career, Fleming calls for a similar understanding within our academic institutions, postulating that the only way the progymnasmata can work in today’s educational hierarchy lies in beginning this form of drill writing at the grammar school level and teaching it continually through secondary and college classes. While Fleming addresses a large, diverse audience of composition instructors, his article seems more focused on explicating the change needed for the progymnasmata to work within today’s educational system to administrative personnel. Overall, Fleming intention is to advocate the use of the progymnasmata within composition classrooms while alerting instructors to the realization that the method cannot be taught just as assignments, but must also incorporate the complete idea behind the progymnasmata—that this method was intended to instill very specific habits in students that make them better writers and speakers.

Fleming’s article proved very timely for me; in the past week I have been contemplating using this method to teach a developmental English class this coming fall and had begun to research the method further only to discover that many scholars are completely against the use of the progymnasmata in any composition class. Therefore, reading Fleming’s argument made me more aware of both the reasons for this animosity as well as the method I would need to overcome this obstacle in my own classes. The article is designed for all scholars and teachers; Fleming sets the article up so that those unfamiliar with the individual exercises and steps within the progymnasmata can familiarize themselves before moving into the applications within modern composition scholarship. I also found this article extremely helpful in aiding my comprehension of not only the exercises involved in the progymnasmata, but also in fully understanding the structure and concept behind these ideas. Ultimately, I feel that this article works as a strong addition for experienced scholars of rhetoric, but also works as a strong foundation for those of us delving into new arenas in the teaching of composition–specifically more developmental classes. I say this having spent three years teaching First Year Composition and feeling comfortable in my teaching style yet at a complete loss as to the necessary components needed for a developmental level class. Having read and fully understood Fleming’s article, I feel that it has provided me with a strong foothold for beginning to teach at this level.

Each semester, I get students who run the gamut of writing ability. My job, therefore, is to make sure that I help them improve their writing as much as possible. To this end, I begin by adding comments on student papers that focus their revision and future writing on areas they need to improve upon. My comments largely focus on the methods and research they use for their invention as well as the arrangement of the material. This proves relatively easy and amazingly Greek on the majority of my students’ papers. However, from the semester’s beginnings, I have strong writers who have a better grasp on invention and arrangement and, therefore, do not need as much guidance as others. I spent the entire first semester of my teaching grappling with how to add additional comments to their papers that would aid their writing improvement. I felt at a loss for feedback; I had begun to master adding comments that helped students with invention and arrangement, but after that I was at a loss.

As the semester progressed, I began reading comments both my mentor and I had left on student papers during the semester we worked closely on grading together. Studying his comments, I found a trend that I began to utilize in my own work. His comments on better papers focused on specific aspects of the writing with minimal comments on invention and arrangement. Therefore, I began to follow suit.

By the beginning of my second semester of teaching, I had a strong grasp on my commenting style. With weaker writers, I continued to focus my comments on their invention and arrangement. However, I finally found a method of working on improving the writing of stronger writers; for their papers, I focused my comments more on their style and made minimal comments to their invention and arrangement. When I focused on their style, I worked to provide comments that would allow them to see other weaknesses in their writing. I would make notes on repetitive sentence structure so students could begin to pay attention to these in their writing. I would add comments to their verb choice so they could see areas of weakness in these and begin to use words that are more powerful. Specifically, I would ask them to look at revisions to their “to be” verbs; I would ask them to seek out stronger verbs or revise their sentence to eliminate these words. As the semester progressed, my strong writers became stronger and I was able to see an improvement in weaker writers as they progressed through the revisions that I had asked for.

What I did not realize during these semesters, and would not realize until I ventured into the study of rhetoric, was that the methods I had been taught were not only rhetorical teaching styles, but evolved much as ancient rhetoric had. While the Greeks had begun working with the canons and stressed the importance of invention and arrangement in their canons, the Romans found themselves under tyrannical emperors who limited the invention and arrangement. Therefore, the Second Sophistics began to focus more on the development of eloquent speech and taught their students the importance of sentence structure and word choice. As grammar became more prevalent in the world of Roman rhetoric, so it had become more prevalent in the areas I emphasized in my strong writers.

As I continue to study rhetoric, I contemplate what other rhetorical methods I use without realizing. For my classes, I have found that the emphasis on invention and arrangement in the comments placed on weaker writers and the emphasis on style with my stronger writers creates stronger writers regardless of their placement on the spectrum of writing. I realize that the Second Sophistics were working from a different angle, but their focus on eloquence in speech advanced our comprehension of the canon of style. With the emphasis in many rhetoric classes on classical rhetoric through St. Augustine, it seems that focus lies more on the early rhetors and the Second Sophistic remains underemphasized. However, if it were not for their focus on the grammar and eloquence of a speech, I would probably find myself at a loss in commenting on the writing of my stronger students.

John Logie’s “I Have No Predecessor to Guide Me” (2003) asserts that Quintilian, contrary to scholarly opinion, was indeed an author of original material and not just a compiler of previous scholarship. Reviewing the current scholarship regarding the question of whether Quintilian was merely a compiler of previous rhetorical material or an author in the Romantic definition, Logie then takes an in-depth look into the material contained in the first eleven books of the Institutio. Logie provides the reader with ample background to the debate before beginning his own analysis of Quintilian’s work and examining how Quintilian mimics the structure of Roman education as he lays out the structure in the first eleven books. Logie concludes the article by delving into book twelve where Quintilian adds his own contribution to the field, calling it a “composition made possible by the program of dutiful scholarship duly detailed and duly followed in the first eleven books” (372), thus allowing him to be considered an author, not a mere compiler. With his in-depth look at the debate in scholarship, that surrounds Quintilian’s and the inclusion of the quotations he studies, Logie addresses an audience comprised of anybody with interest in classical rhetoric or Quintilian himself. Logie’s purpose is apparent in his article; he wants scholars to look at Quintilian in a new light—an authorial light.

Logie’s article is intriguing and thought provoking. During my first reading of Quintilian, I too was thinking that his material seemed rather repetitive and did find myself wondering if there was any new material in his writing. However, reading Logie’s text provided me with insight into the method behind the arrangement. His assertion that Quintilian’s invention lies largely in the arrangement and that this hidden invention leads commentators to see Quintilian’s work as largely compilation helped me to see the work in a similar way. After reading this essay, I have come to appreciate the work of Quintilian; it’s now easier to see the synthesis of classical rhetoric and to read Quintilian as a compiler and author instead of as a repetitive oratory scholar.

In the Institutio oratoria, Quintilian lays out seven specific aspects of Roman rhetoric which build from simplest to more complex as the students progress with their education.Respectively, these aspects are: reading aloud, master’s detailed analysis of the text, memorization, paraphrasing, transliteration, recitation and correction. If I understand these steps appropriately, the reading and master’s analysis of the text were intended to introduce the student to the methods they would later use in their own oratory skills. From these steps, the memorization, paraphrasing, and transliteration of the models was designed to aid students in committing the speeches to memory in order for students to more fully understand how a good speech was composed. Therefore, the recitation and correction of the paraphrase aided students in fully understanding what the orator was doing and in further solidifying the model in their mind.

Having taught First Year Composition for several years, I have worked from model essays to teach my students how to write effective essays, but I have not done this using the methods emphasized in Roman rhetoric. When I provide students with sample essays, I have always assigned them as reading for homework. Then, once the students have had a day or two to read the articles, we discuss them as a class. This way, I have thought, my students have a chance to demonstrate their critical reading skills in class and further solidify their own understanding of the style that each mode of essay demands. As part of our class discussion, I have incorporated aspects of the paraphrasing, recitation and correction of the paraphrasing that the Romans regarded so highly in their education. I do this by asking students to help me outline the essay by providing paraphrases of the main points. As they provide these paraphrases, I outline them on the board so students can see the format the essay takes. Generally, students commit this outline to their notes, but that does not mean they do anything to commit this outline to memory. I have, to this point, felt that what I was providing them in the class would suffice for the creation of their own essay. However, after reviewing the Roman organization of the orator’s study, I think that I am, in fact, failing them early on.

I feel strongly that, instead of sending students home with this work the first day, I should turn this facet of my units into a two-day discussion of the model arguments. For the past few years, this has been a single, in-class assignment that focused ont he paraphrase, recitation and correction aspect of the model essays. However, I feel that if we spent a significant amount of time, during the first lesson for each unit, reading and analyzing the essay aloud students would learn more about the models I value highly. Instead of reading straight through the essay, I could have students begin reading one paragraph at a time and stop them at the end of the paragraph to work with the analysis of the model. With a basic analysis of the essay’s strengths, weaknesses and significant parts explained, students could be assigned the paraphrase of the essay. This reinforces the entire analysis once again, and requires students to continue further study of the model essays much as the Roman rhetoric instructors did. By asking students to create the paraphrases at home, it requires them each to look at the model and study it. Previously, students volunteered answers. However, to stick with the Roman model, I need to work to correct the paraphrases. Only by requiring the students to complete the paraphrases as homework would I have the chance to correct these in class as we create the group paraphrase on the board.

Having students actively participating in the reading and analysis during the first day of class, I feel that I will be changing my clas structure enough to benefit my students. Since I have been requiring students to complete the reading soley out of class and then completing the remainder of the steps within the classroom, I feel that I have not demanded an active reading of the entire text. However, by completing a full reading and analysis within the classroom, I can better serve the active reading that my students need to complete to begin a further study of a model text. I hope that by completing this active reading completely within the class period I will accomplish two things. First, I will teach my students the methods required to complete an active reading and that they will, by the end of the semester, take these skills with them into the remainder of their classes and into the real world. Second, I hope to aid students in retaining the key concepts to “good writing” so that as they continue to write for classes they can continue to work from the models they have begun to commit to memory and use these to aid in the creation of their own writing.

Repetition is the key to teaching. I learned this last year when I began to teach grammar to my students, but I never realized the importance of repetition to a model essay. Though I am continually having my students repeat things that I feel are important, I had not used a lot of repetitiion within the model essays and I feel that, to some extent, I have been failing my students. However, when the fall semester begins late next month, I will be expanding on my reading and writing curriculum to add the my newly discovered facet–repetition.

Bernard Jacob’s “What if Aristotle Took Sophist Seriously? New Readings in Aristotle’s Rhetoric” (1996) argues that the passages scholars often interpret as Aristotle’s scathing criticism of sophists in the first two chapters of the Rhetoric are, in fact, Aristotle’s ironic language. Jacob follows his assertion through two passages in the Rhetoric: Protagoras’ theory that weaker arguments can be made stronger through the fallacies included and the transition sentences between the first and second chapters. Jacob looks, in the first passage, at the reason that Aristotle chooses to reference Corax, Protagoras, Agathon and Socrates within the ninth topic of the first chapter. In the second passage, Jacob asserts that Aristotle’s “belittling of pre-Socratic authors” (244) is also laden with ironic intentions. The focus in the essay lies on these two specific passages and Jacob’s assertions require the careful study of only experienced scholars of rhetoric. Jacob directs his essay to the learned rhetoric scholar in order to accomplish his larger purpose with the essay, which he succinctly sums up in his introduction as a demand for scholars to “accept that Plato and Aristotle, at least some of the time, reflected an understanding and respect for the work of the sophists and rhetors” (237) so that there might be a more thorough understanding of their works.

Jacob’s article provides some interesting assertions in the relationship between Aristotle and his predecessors. To read Aristotle’s first chapters could put a new spin on the study of rhetoric in today’s educational programs as well as in the professional study of rhetoric. However, the points Jacob makes in his article seem somewhat vague and this, unfortunately, the new rhetorician must carve their way through the material in order to make sense of the article and the assertions become confusing and unclear. With a fuller understanding of Aristotle, the article could be quite an asset to an emerging scholar, but at this point in my studies I cannot be certain that the assertions made by Jacob can in any way be true, but I do have a path in which I could begin studying these texts more in-depth.