Showing papers on "College English published in 1994"

Community Service and Critical Teaching.

Abstract: 0 C* apitalism with a human face," said our new provost, Phil Friedman. This was the way he hoped the United States would model capitalism for the new democracies in eastern Europe. It was, therefore, a motto for what the students at Bentley College, a business school, should be learning. My English Department colleague Edward Zlotkowski challenged the provost to put a human face on the students' education by supporting a program that would make community service part of the curriculum. Friedman agreed and Zlotkowski took on the massive job of linking courses with community agencies. At first, the projects were simple: Students in writing courses visited soup kitchens and wrote up their experiences. Later, as the service-learning program developed, students in accounting classes helped revise the accounting procedures of non-profit community-service agencies and audited their books for free. Students in marketing and business communication designed advertising and public relations materials to improve the distribution of agencies' services. And the students in one freshman composition classmine-learned to be adult literacy tutors and went weekly to a shelter in Boston to offer their help. There are many obvious benefits, to students and to the agencies and individuals they serve, from service learning. Many students become eager volunteers after the ice is broken by class projects and they see where they can go, how they can help. A surprising number of the students in my class, for example, did some volunteer work in high school, but would not

Doctoral programs in rhetoric and composition: A catalog of the profession∗

Abstract: (1994). Doctoral programs in rhetoric and composition: A catalog of the profession. Rhetoric Review: Vol. 12, No. 2, pp. 240-389.

Composing English Studies: Towards a Social History of the Discipline.

Abstract: J t has become something of a commonplaceat least for those working in composition-to take note of the fact that Gerald Graff's institutional history, Professing Literature, excludes the contributions made by theorists, scholars, and teachers of composition to the discipline of English Studies. Graff openly acknowledges this limit to his work in his introduction, where he explains: I will deal only in passing with the teaching of composition, though the pioneer work of William Riley Parker, Wallace Douglas, and Richard Ohmann has shown that without that enterprise the teaching of literature could never have achieved its central status, and none of the issues I discuss would matter very much. (Professing 2) Cutting up the field of data, establishing a central concern, creating a marginal zone beyond which questions are not to be asked-such decisions, though never entirely innocent, are nevertheless a necessary and inevitable part of constituting a new area of study. In this instance, faced with the task of simultaneously organizing and containing the sprawling institutional history of English Studies, Graff has to draw the line somewhere-so he eliminates "that enterprise" whose laborers are, more often than not, graduate students, part-timers, adjunct professors, women. The rationale for this exclusion, presumably, is that, while the physical labor of those in composition provides the economic basis for the ongoing production of literary criticism, intellectual work in composition has not significantly contributed to those parts of English Studies' institutional history Richard E. Miller is an assistant professor of English at Rutgers University, and has published most recently in College Ernglish, where he considers the pedagogical challenges of responding to hate speech in the classroom. He offers a more detailed example of the kind of social history called for here in a forthcoming article in Cultural Studies, where he discusses the disjunction between the theory of cultural studies and its teaching practices.

Rhetoric and Hermeneutics: Composition, Invention, and Literature.

Abstract: Rhetoric and hermeneutics are clearly if variously related disciplines. They are historically related because they developed simultaneously in ancient Greece (Eden 60). They are professionally related in that many journals publish essays relevant to both disciplines (PMLA, College English, Quarterly Journal of Speech, Rhetoric Review, Critical Inquiry, Rhetorica, and the Journal of Advanced Composition, for example). They are pedagogically related because the burden for teaching both falls largely on English departments. And they are theoretically related because they are, or at least they are assumed to be, reverse sides of the same communication coin (Schleiermacher 74): one provides reading instruction while the other provides writing instruction. Despite (and because of) this clear relation between rhetoric and hermeneutics, composition and literature are generally disassociated. In the last fifteen years or so, a great many people have suggested various ways of integrating these two disciplines (for overviews and related arguments, see for example: Booth, Clifford and Schilb, Comprone, Hartman, Horner, Kaufer and Waller, Lanham, J. Hillis Miller, Susan Miller, Salvatori), and yet, as Patricia Sullivan observes, even at the graduate level "literature and composition are still represented as separate intellectual activities" (296). This disassociation is primarily caused by matters of "attitude and history" (Horner 8), and one of the longest standing, most divisive attitudes is the theory/practice dichotomy (Jarratt 94) which assumes that theory and prac tice operate in separate realms: the one of abstract, intellectual knowledge; the other of concrete human activity. While each may inform the other, they are distinct and essentially different. The distinction between theory and practice adumbrates the subjects of rhetoric and hermeneutics, reinforcing beliefs and attitudes about the relative function and value of literature and

English Placement Testing, Multiple Measures, and Disproportionate Impact: An Analysis of the Criterion- and Content-Related Validity Evidence for the Reading & Writing Placement Tests in the San Diego Community College District.

Abstract: As part of an effort to statistically validate the placement tests used in California's San Diego Community College District (SDCCD) a study was undertaken to review the criteriaand content-related validity of the Assessment and Placement Services (APS) reading and writing tests. Evidence of criteria and content validity was gathered from technical materials produced by the test publisher, which indicated that a wide range of test developers and evaluators have shown that the tests cover the desired domain of content and have produced reliable results, as well as local surveys of students and faculty conducted from 1991 to 1993. In addition, English course performance was analyzed for all students enrolling in fall 1994 who took the tests to determine correlations between test scores, student characteristics, and performance. This analysis found that the strongest predictors of English course performance were students' high school grade point average (GPA) and the combined APS reading and writing test score. Further, it was found that high school GPA was not highly correlated with test scores, while its inclusion with the scores in a predictor scale mitigated the effects of student ethnicity, gender, and age in explaining variance in students' final grades in English courses. As a result of the study, cut scores were developed for placement into college-level English. Data tables are appended. (HAA) *********************************************************************** Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document. ***********************************************************************

Constructing a doctoral program in rhetoric and composition

Abstract: (1994). Constructing a doctoral program in rhetoric and composition. Rhetoric Review: Vol. 12, No. 2, pp. 392-397.

Rhetoric, Cultural Studies, and the Future of Critical Theory: A Conversation with J. Hillis Miller.

Abstract: Who better to discuss the future of literary studies and of the English department itself than J. Hillis Miller, past president of the Modern Lan guage Association, former department chair at Yale and Johns Hopkins, and distinguished literary critic for four decades? Generally, Miller seems pleased with the radical changes the English department is undergoing and is "optimistic" about the directions in which it is evolving. He applauds the increased attention to multiculturalism, cultural studies, critical theory, and rhetoric and composition; such disciplinary forces have had a positive effect on the field. He predicts the English department will continue to undergo substantial change because "within about five years forty percent of the senior faculty will retire and an entirely new set of people will be in charge, with all the power and responsibility to make changes." Because this wave of new faculty will have been trained with a sensitivity to and understanding of "these new interests," even the powerful conservative right will be unable to halt the inexorable tide of change. The challenge for this new generation, says Miller in the interview that follows, will be "to figure out how to deal with the possibilities of change in a responsible way." Miller identifies cultural studies as the future of English studies: "That's obviously where we're going." He perceives the current preoccupation with cultural studies as an attempt among young faculty "to make what they do have some importance in our society," and he finds this concern "quite natural" in that those now ascending to power in English departments were the first to be "brought up on the mass media." Miller has "certain anxieties" about these developments, however, saying that such interdisciplinarity necessitates "responsible" academic preparation, be it the mastery of appro priate languages or other cross-disciplinary skills, and arguing that we need to establish the kinds of procedures that will "allow people doing cultural studies to do what they want to do in a responsible way." Miller has much to say about the influence of various critical movements on English studies. Acknowledging the great debt English studies has to feminist theory, Miller points to the fact that most doctoral exams in English

Ritually Enacting the Reading Experience: A Dramatic Way to Teach Literature -

Abstract: The two of us, teachers of literature and religious studies at the college level, have begun to engage students in ritual enactment of reading. We do so, first, to help students bring their individual experiences with literary texts into a communal forum and, second, to enable students to construct collective readings of these texts. Our work resembles that of Vivian Paley (1981) and Dorothy Heathcote (1991), who have engaged younger students in what Heathcote calls "educational drama," in order to help students work out and reflect upon their relationships in the world. We began our work with "ritual drama" because more conventional teaching methods appeared unable to engage our students in textual interpretation as deeply as we wanted. As a college-level English teacher, Robin observed how the individualist ethos dominant in the United States seemed to inhibit the collaborative making of meaning. He sensed that students in his seminars were competitive and suspicious of each other: the aggressive dominated class discussions, the timid dropped out, and few felt their solitary reading experiences were acknowledged by the process. Conversations often seemed arid and without substance. As a teacher of religious studies in which reading is the dominant model of learning, Bjorn shared Robin's experiences and concerns. Venturing out into the emerging fields of ritual and performance studies, he looked for a

Theories of Cognitive Development and the Teaching of Argumentation in First-Year Composition.

Abstract: Understanding the connections between students' levels of intellectual development, their view of the nature of knowledge, and their developing argumentative writing skills is central to helping students learn to write good argumentation. The first researcher to develop a model of intellectual development among college students was William Perry in his study of students at Harvard University in the 1950s. Mary Field Belenky articulated a cognitive-developmental theory based on Perry's work but focused on the intellectual development of women. M. L. Davison and others developed a model of reflective judgment in college students and adults. The newest formulation of a model of adult cognitive development is Michael Basseches's model of dialectical thinking, a stage of 'cognitive development beyond Piaget's formal operations. Basseches does not address the issue of the influence of dialectical thinking on students' ability to form and write effective arguments, but his research suggests that level of dialectical thinking increases with level of formal education. A college English instructor is carrying out a study to attempt to learn which model of cognitive development best predicts success on an argumentative writing task in first-year composition. The instructor predicts that either the Perry scheme or the reflective judgment stage would more closely correlate with writing effectiveness. The next stage in this lins of research would be to determine which curricula and instructional methods would best foster intellectual development and the ability to form effective arguments. (Contains 14 references.) (RS) *********************************************A.****************** Reproductions supplied by EMS are the best that can be made * from the original document. *****************************************************************7 * Theories of Cognitive Development and the Teaching of Argumentation in First-Year Composition c7S u s DEPARTMENT Of EDUCATION Office 01 Educahonal Research and Impforement EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATION CENTER (EMI "kind document has been reprOduced IS r7 Wowed trom the person or OrganizatIon orogInahng II 0 Wm>, changes have pen made to onetove r*PrOduchon (lushly Pomls ot wevr o opirhons stated in this 00Cd men! do not necessenty represent ("Plat OEPI position 01 policy by