Class this far has been really surprising. I took this class last semester and had to drop it after a week because there was a time conflict with work...but it's a good thing b/c it was super lame (compared to now). I am glad that I am in it this semester because we have taken very different approaches to language and composition. This class has helped me to view language and rhetoric in a more positive light. I know that it's getting me somewhere because after class I am always thinking about cannibals or feral children or I'm analyzing how language is persuasion. It is kind of ridiculous, but I feel like that is the approach that needs to be taken with students b/c so much stuff is thrown in their face that whenever they leave school they don't really process that information. If topics were discussed that related more to their lives and caught their attention then it would be beneficial--I think the feralchildren.com would be a good site for students to check out, because it would show the importance that language has, but I don't know the rules about teaching cannibalism....
I am skeptical about having students relate to the material I am teaching BIG time, it's not really anything about composition, just in general. I really think that the approaches that we have been taking in class will help in the classroom setting, but I think that as soon as students are forced to work on things like the TAKS test, etc. then they will again view composition with a negative attitude.
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You are right to be skeptical. The most frustrating thing in the world for me as a composition teacher is that something so fundamentally cool (i.e. language, persuasion, and rhetoric) is cast into something negative when students have to study for a TAKS test or a grammar quiz. I think the challenge will be, as we progress into the semester, trying to figure out how to balance teaching writing as cool and still meeting the state-sanctioned tests that make it uncool. Thoughts on how that might work?
ReplyDeleteMeredith, I totally agree with what you are saying about actually grasping the material that is being discussed in class. I kind of wrote the same thing in my blog too. Discussing material that actually interests the students and affects them in every day life is what actually gets us to understand and learn the subject at hand. I hope to be able to do this as well in my high school class someday and share the same fear that studying for the TAKS and all the book work that goes along with that will turn the students away from wanting to learn about composition.
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