Things to Know While I Reflect
Recently, I was able to read Teaching Arguments: Rhetorical Comprehension, Critique, and Response by Jennifer Flecther. The book contains an array of information with supplementation of useful and effective activities for teachers to integrate into the classroom.Thus, I highly recommend that all ELA education majors and current English teachers read what Fletcher has composed. Not only does she provide a wealth of information and activities for teaching argumentative writing, but she also speaks on other genres that require students to critically analyze with supportive reasoning.
In order to TRY to summarize the book's important points, I have decided to pick a useful quote from each chapter that are self-explanatory!
1) "We want students to practice the same art of patience when they listen to written texts. Patience is essential so that we don't prematurely foreclose any interpretive possibilities or force our own perspective on the situation too soon . . . Peter Elbow calls this noncritical approach to reading playing "the believing game," because we willingly give the writer the benefit of the doubt, at least for a time . . . Listening to a text and postponing judgments [means] we're not just waiting for turn to respond; we're engaging and reading at discovery or invention" (5-6).
2) "John T. Gage says that 'the purpose of the scholarly community is to inquire and to share with others the products of inquiry- understanding and knowledge' and defines inquiry as 'the active search for answers to questions.' Finding answers doesn't necessarily mean that the answers are already out there, waiting to be discovered. Often, the search for knowledge leads to the production of knowledge; it's a generative, constructive process of knowledge making as much as it's a process of knowledge finding" (50).
3) "In rhetoric, the concepts of occasion, audience, and purpose represent learning thresholds that require students to cross into you intellectual territory" (52).
4) "Let us now consider the various types of human character, in relation to the emotions and moral qualities, showing how they correspond their various ages and fortunes" (74).
5) "[George] Hillocks calls argument t'he heart of critical thinking and academic discourse' and 'the kind of writing students need to know for success in college and life.' Regardless of what terms we choose, the key ideas to share with students is that a writer's sense of purpose is shaped by the particularities of the rhetorical situation-especially audience, occasion, and exigence"(116).
6) "Praising students' instincts for identifying faulty logic or syntax in their own writing helps to build their confidence and sense of self-efficacy" (179).
"Students need to read a wide variety of texts before they can understand that effective writing is based on choices, not rules" (179).
In all honesty, I have never enjoyed reading a textbook as much as I did with this one. I have learned so much! It was also a nice touch to see that the book emphasizes the importance of rhetoric, which I appreciated since I am a Writing and Rhetoric minor.
7) "Nurturing students academic habits and identities can be an important place to start. Aristotle says that 'we are completed through habit'; In other words, we are what we practice . . . Revealing the process of apprenticeship that all learning requires can reassure many frustrated students-and help them understand that the first step toward better performance is to see themselves as capable of achievement. Students who develop this strong sense of self-efficacy are, not surprisingly, more motivated to improve their reading and writing skills" (181 & 184).
