Lauren: "If I hadn't distributed the written text, no one would have thought I made a 'slip'". Fields of Play: Constructing an Academic Life, "The Case of the Skipped Line, p. 153
In her one-act play "The Case of the Skipped Line", Richardson literally creates an academic production about an an apparent nonevent: Lauren, a dramatization of Richardson's professional persona, "misreads" one line of a poem that she has written. A progression of hostile audience members, all male, harshly critique Lauren's "mistake"; Lauren maintains that her "performance" of her own poem is not accountable to the text that she has distributed, and that the critique unfairly priveleges written language over the spoken word.
In this response to Richardson, I shift my focus from research to teaching to illuminate one of the most exasperating and under-talked-about "moments" in the teaching of writing: Students compose general responses to the readings listed in the syllabus, but they read the syllabus and assignment sheets line-by-line, with no tolerance for critical framing or variation in the structure.
Hilary: As stated in the assignment sheet, your academic essay must have one MLA-style in-text citation per paragraph--
Student: But I THOUGHT we had to have one citation per PAGE.
Hilary: Hmmm....interesting.
Student: So which is it?
Hilary: I don't know. What do you think?
Student (scanning the assignment sheet in panic): It doesn't SAY.
Student sub 1: What's a "citation"?
Hilary: We spent two days on that in class.
Student sub 2: But I wasn't here.
Hilary: Oh.
Student sub 2: And if I'm not HERE every day, the assignment sheet makes no sense.
I suspect that this moment of frustration happens in worldwide Freshman Composition classrooms every time an assignment sheet is handed out: you discuss the assignment sheet with the students, who spend the next three weeks telling you that they do not "get" it. Before reading Richardson's drama of the "skipped line", I assumed that the problem was with either 1) me or 2) my students. Now, it has occurred to me that yet a third problem might be at play: the tradition of writing up an assignment sheet before discussing that assignment is problematic. By pre-creating an assignment sheet and then holding students responsible for that assignment, teachers of writing priveledge written language over the spoken, living word. A more constructive tradition might be to discuss the present the basic concept of the assignment (a verbal prototype) in class before discussion, then compose the assignment sheet after the class has met--incorporating students' language, confusions and suggestions into the assignment description and timetable. If the assignment description mirrors (while challenging) students' internal model of how writing works, the disconnect between the writing teachers' language and students' understanding might become less formidable.
Royanne: Hilary, it's just hard to take you seriously--
Male: All this happened, Laurel--
Royanne: with that hat on--
Male: because you were wearing orange--.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
3 comments:
I did something similar this semester. In deciding what to do for a final project w/my class, I projected a blank page in the word processor, and typed as we discussed. When we were done, we had a working "assignment sheet" with due dates and all. We'll see if they "get it," because, of course, some people weren't there,etc.
I should also note that I did this not (only) for pedagogical reasons, but because I am lazy and didn't want to spend time outside of class doing this thing, and I didn't have other plans for that day in class.
perhaps a wiki would be the way to go. have them collectively make the assignments, with their language(s), etc. of course, you still have the potential problem of some students not understanding the language of others, but you haven't hit them with an assignment out of the blue. And then in job interviews you could use the word wiki. Wiki.
Post a Comment