Newsgroups: bit.listserv.mbu-l
Date:         Sat, 26 Dec 1992 17:51:02 AST
Comments:     <26DEC92.16558991.0035.MUSIC@UNB.CA>
From:         Russ Hunt <HUNT@UNB.CA>
Subject:      uniformity, real audiences, & evaluation

     I had been away for a few days before Christmas and there
was a flood of interesting stuff on MBU while I was gone.  There
were a few items which seemed to invite responses from me.  Let
me try to do them all in one swell foop, as my father used to
say.  This may be a bit long, but remember, it's just one
posting, and it might well have been four or five  . . .
     I read most of the last few days of MBU on our netnews
server so I can't tell who MLB14@PSUVM is, but she/he commented,
in response to my suggestion about "having the authors know
something about their topics that their audience doesn't
know--and . . . creating those opportunities by avoiding common
texts and assignments," that "That'd never fly here" because "the
administration at my school is concerned that all sections of our
writing classes have roughly equivalent experiences and
assignments."  The question boiled down to "How is it possible to
maintain a situation where students write for real audiences and
purposes and still maintain a fairly homogeneous writing
curriculum?"
     There was quite a lot of discussion about the advisability
of "a fairly homogeneous writing curriculum" following this, but
I don't want to take that up: I want to address a different
issue.
     I would suggest that to ask students to write to each other
about something they've read that others need to know about (and
don't: for instance, describing how the novel they've chosen to
read, and which others haven't read, sounds and feels, and trying
to persuade others to read it) not only creates "a situation
where students write for real audiences and purposes," but also
avoids common texts -- and certainly wouldn't preclude various
classes having "roughly equivalent experiences and assignments."
Especially if those who read the papers were the rest of the
class, and if the result was that the rest of the class actually
decided whether or not to read the recommended work.  And even
more, if the teacher not only didn't mark it, but didn't (as far
as the author(s) are aware) even read it.
     Irv Peckham commented that "we have to be careful that the
issues and texts that we have them discuss and read have to be
close to their worlds.  We can stretch them, surely.  But we have
to be expert in knowing how much.  And we have to remember their
differences and that we are responsible for teaching the whole
class."  I seem usually to agree with Irv, but here I want to be
cautious.  It strikes me that the most likely error to be
committed by the sort of person on MBU (certainly by me) is to
be excessively cautious, to "teach down" and not to stretch, to
underestimate what people can be brought to be interested in.
The trick, it seems to me, is to find ways in which students can
stretch _each other_ dialogically.
     Hers's an example.  Suppose the recommendation of a novel
was fit into a situation where the first thing that happened was
that others in the class read it and asked (in writing) questions
whose answers they thought would help them decide what to read,
and the questions were passed back to the recommender, who was
invited to answer them?  And _then_ people read all the new,
augmented recommendations, and decided individually which books
they would most like to read?  And had to say why (in writing)?
And the reasons were "published" for the class, along with the
list of five or six books that everyone had to choose one of (a
list set up to include at least one book picked by everyone in
class)?
     That's what I'm currently doing with my first year class.
Over Christmas, they'll be reading one of a list of books created
and chosen that way.  It seems to me that they've already
stretched each other rather a lot, and will do so more as the
list of books narrows down.
     What I'm really interested in here, however, is the way they
invent a language for this new discourse task (they've never done
anything like this in their lives).  It's the invention/discovery
of the genre that I'm mainly concerned with.  This kind of
learning, I believe, makes it more likely that they'll be able to
learn the language of academic discourse as and when they get
engaged in that in the same way.
     I could go on, but I don't want to drive folks away by
riding my hobbyhorse.  I'll change the subject slightly.  Rhoda
Carroll asked Irv, after he agreed with me that it's a bad idea
to put grades on papers, "OK Irv, I'll bite: if you don't put
grades on your students' papers, what do you put in the box
labeled "grade" that your registrar gives you to fill out at the
end of each semester?"
     In response, I want to raise some questions here: how sure
is any of us that the grade on a completed piece of writing is an
accurate prediction of what a student might do on a future piece
of writing in a different (probably radically different)
situation?  Why should a grade in a course be determined by
grades on "papers"?  And how many of us believe that there's any
reason to doubt the studies which have demonstrated the
unreliability of grades on papers themselves?  I'd like to see
a description of how Irv "gets away" without grades, but in the
meantime let me say that in my experience there are two possible
answers to Rhoda's question, one obvious and one not so.  The
obvious one is writing portfolios.  The less obvious one is what
some of us do here at St. Thomas: we establish a minimum grade by
counting up instances of sheer participation, and raise that
grade by asking students to complete what we call "colleague
acknowledgements," whereby students evaluate the contributions of
others in the class to their learning.  Students who are rated
highly have their grades raised proportionately above the minima.
The instructor may specify that she/he might intervene to raise
an individual mark (I do, but I've never had to do it).
     I have to say, too, that I'm not so sure about Peg
Syverson's suggestion about specifying genres.  I'd rather
specify _situations_ and let the situation shape the genre
(that's how the real world works).  If you're in a traditional
classroom situation, there's a genre that's appropriate (a very
peculiar genre, one which is useful only in that situation), and
when we specify a different one we ask students to do what even
professionals find difficult.  I think we need to change the
situation, instead.
     Let me finish this overlong post by agreeing fervently with
Irv that "They don't have to all be reading the same thing.  It
does work best with some of these kinds of writing if they work
in groups, though, where they can share information, ideas,
drafts, etc."  And, in a later post, "The tutorial fosters a
dependency on the good ol' teacher--lot of ideological
implications there, practical disadvantages as well.  Go with
groups.  Let the teacher (as dominant instructor, telling writers
how to write) fade away."  I'm uneasy with Marcy Bauman's
description of what she wants to say -- "Okay, Student, what were
you trying to do here--right here, on line 35?  I don't get it.
Judging by your peers' comments, they thought X.  Is that what
you intended?"  I'd suggest that students almost never hear what
I'm saying in situations like that.  The teacher always speaks
through a megaphone.  They hear me saying, "No, that's wrong."
They hear me saying "C-."  In situations where evaluation is
central -- and where it exists, it's central -- they don't hear
their peers' comments; they hear me.  Why not let them hear and
deal with the comments as we do in conversation (which is how we
learn languages best)?
     And finally (finally!), even if our students could hear what
we're saying in situations like that, how often can we possibly
do it?  Even with superhuman effort from us (the kind we're all
used to, even those of us whose universities support weekly half-
hour conferences with individual students) our students can't
write and get responses often enough to be truly immersed in
written discourse.  If they write and read each others' work, in
situations where it matters, they can write many times as much
-- and get many times as much response.
     I'd like to chime in with all the wishes for everyone on MBU
to have a restful, restorative holiday.
                                    -- Russ
                                __|~_
Russell A. Hunt            __|~_)_ __)_|~_   Learning and Teaching
Department of English      )_ __)_|_)__ __)     Development Office
St. Thomas University        |  )____) |        EMAIL: hunt@unb.ca
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