Storyboard

Storyboard - Script

Why Oral Rhetoric should be taught in composition classes

In composition classes today alphabetic writing is king. Should this be a surprise? Isn’t composition writing? It’s what most people probably thing of, but what about other forms of composition? In the digital age and with the growth of “new media” in composition studies, writing is no longer universally accepted in composition studies as the only form of composition. [insert Selfe, Wysocki]. New media composing might include video and audio composing.

New media compositions that include audio are, of course, not entirely new. Orality has been part of rhetoric since ancient times. [Insert quote from Cicero? Not sure which one yet] By the end of the 19^th century, however, rhetoric had drifted from a focus on orality to a focus on written composition, which remains the primary focus today. To a large extent, the oral aspect of rhetoric has been entirely neglected. Many teachers now assume that teaching students to compose effective written rhetoric should be the focus of English composition classes. They are service classes, whereby students learn how to write in an academic setting and eventually in their careers (which may or may not involve writing).

Certainly, students probably write more papers than they give oral presentations. However, to assume that written rhetoric is all that students must learn is to ignore all other forms of communication in a communication age. Students encounter others forms of communication every day: websites, videos, the radio, music, speeches and oral presentations.

In this increasingly visual age, some rhetoric textbooks have some forms of visual analysis should be included in composition, but why is sound neglected? Videos have sound, music is sound, radio broadcasts are sound, speaking both privately and publicly is sound. Teachers largely depend on their students learning in classes through lectures and class discussions—sound. Yet, studying and composing oral rhetoric, sound-based rhetoric, is absent. Why?

Like any communication medium, sound communication has its limitations, but also advantages that writing does not have. With oral composition, one must consider tone of voice, emphasis of words, speed of delivery, and clarity in pronunciation, which are not concerns for written texts.

For instance, tone of voice can convey emotion that is more difficult in writing:

[Here I will insert an audio clip from a speech to demonstrate this.]

Emphasizing words or certain points is also easier with oral rhetoric:

[Another audio clip].

This kind of emphasis is more difficult in writing. Writers must use visual cues, such as capitalization or italics to emphasize some words or points, but it is often less effective. With writing, one’s readers read at different speeds, but with oral delivery, the speed at which one speaks can greatly affect its effectiveness. I once attended a conference presentation in which the presenter read her paper so quickly that I, and I presumed much of her audience, could not even follow her main points, and so she received no comments or questions about her presentation afterwards. One’s speed of oral delivery can make one’s words more effective, such as by slowing down to give greater attention and emphasis to certain words.

[Here I’ll insert another audio clip]

Then, of course, one’s clarity and pronunciation are important. Mispronouncing words can have a negative impact on one’s message:

[Insert sound clips to on mispronunciation, such as Obama and “corpsmen”, Palin, etc]

Dialects are also can play a role in oral rhetoric that are less present in writing. While one might try to write in dialect, it is often meant to reflect what is naturally oral:

[Here I’d like to insert some audio clips in different dialect, perhaps demonstrating the oral skill of bidialectalism, such as with Oprah]

With the many means of communication today, tone, emphasis, speed, and clarity and pronunciation all have an increasingly important role, as many new forms of communication involve some orality.

Certainly visual communication is more important today than it ever has been, and so it is only appropriate that many of our rhetoric textbooks include sections on visual arguments. But oral communication is also more important now than it has been for the past few centuries. While the writing cultures of the 19^th and 20^th centuries caused composition studies to focus on writing, the 21^st century’s technological and multimodal culture gives oral rhetoric an important role. Our composition classes should also give it a place.

[NOTE: Obviously this script is very rough. It’s really the basic argument I’ll be making and where I’ll be using some sound clips, although I am still deciding exactly which speech excerpts to use. I would like to also work in some music of some kind, although I am uncertain as to where and exactly what kind of music. The same goes for sound effects. I was considering doing something to the voice effects whenever there’s a quotation from one of my sources. I’ll have to play with the sound once I record to see how it might work. I still need to insert the exact quotations from sources that I’d like to use. I’m also looking at where else I should use them. I’m concerned about being too heavy on quoting sources if I start bringing in a lot of them. We’ll see how that goes. I welcome suggestions on everything, including the argument and organization. I do, after all, need to make a strong argument].

Project Proposal

For the Assignment Assignment, I created an assignment that asked students to compose an argument in the form of 1-2 minutes of audio. While I would like to do my project with audio, in following the assignment I designed I would be restricted to only 1-2 minutes to make an argument, and I would like to be able to compose something longer (5-10 minutes). Therefore, I would like to do an audio-based project that would be similar to the assignment I designed, but longer.

Essentially, the argument I would like to make in the form of audio is the argument I make in my conference proposal: oral rhetoric has a place in composition classes and can be revived in new-media composition projects, such as the audio essay. To make this argument, of course, I will need to do a lot of research. I will use the Cynthia Selfe article I reference in my conference proposal, and probably Walter Ong, some of the readings we had this quarter, and other sources I have yet to locate. (My research on this is really just starting).

For the project, I plan on using my own voice, music, sound effects, and clips of other voices. I will need to write a script for this, of course, and so I will be composing in both alphabetic text and sound. As far as programs and equipment go, I will primarily use Audacity for the audio editing and mixing, and I have a microphone built in to my computer at home, a microphone I can plug in, and a digital audio recorder in my mp3 player, which works well.

Revised Conference Proposal

Reviving Oral Rhetoric in Composition Classes Through New Media

In her 2009 CCC article, Cynthia Selfe points out that when printed alphabetic texts are the only accepted means of composition, we “ignore the history of rhetoric and its intellectual inheritance” (618). In particular, Selfe argues that sound “is often undervalued as a compositional mode” (617). Today, students are frequently exposed to multiple modes of communication such as audio, video, webpages, etc, and so they should have the ability to compose in multiple modes. Therefore, Selfe says, some focus on aurality and other modes of communication should have their place in composition classes in addition to writing (625-26). Building on Selfe, I will argue that because modern students should have the ability to compose effectively in multiple modes, oral rhetoric has a place in composition classes. Further, new media composition’s use of audio might be viewed as an effective way to revive oral rhetoric in our classes. When students compose multimodal projects with audio, using their own voice, they must carefully consider their tone, emphasis, speed, pronunciation, clarity, etc., which are all concerns of oral rhetoric. Further, music and sound effects can play an important role, affecting how the voices are heard. While new media composition is new in that it largely depends on computers and technology, the oral element of an audio essay is an important part of traditional rhetoric. From ancient times until the nineteenth century, orality was of central importance to rhetoric. With the increased need of writing by the end of the nineteenth century, however, less emphasis was placed on oral rhetoric, and so today it is given little attention in composition classes. With new modes of communication, however, oral rhetoric does have a place in our classrooms, and new media might be a way to give it a place.

Conference Proposal

Will New Media Revive Oral Rhetoric in Composition Classes?

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Most composition classes focus primarily on traditional alphabetic texts. While many new rhetoric textbooks include visual analysis, the means of analysis is still alphabetic. With the rise of new media in composition classes, however, students are beginning to compose in non-traditional ways using multiple modes, such as video, audio, webpages, blogs, etc. This kind of composing involves more than writing, such as video and audio editing and mixing. In her 2009 CCC article, Cynthia Selfe points out that when printed alphabetic texts are the only accepted means of composition, we “ignore the history of rhetoric and its intellectual inheritance” (618). In particular, Selfe argues that sound “is often undervalued as a compositional mode” (617). Therefore, she says, some focus on aurality and other modes of communication should have their place in composition classes (625-26).

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While new media composition is new in that it largely depends on computers and technology, the oral element of an audio essay is an important part of traditional rhetoric. From ancient times until the nineteenth century, aurality was of central importance to the study of rhetoric. With the increased need of writing by the end of the nineteenth century, however, less emphasis was placed on oral rhetoric, and so today it has little importance in relation to student compositions.

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I will explore the idea that new media composition’s use of audio might be viewed as an effective way to revive the oral aspect of rhetoric in our composition classrooms. In assigning students to compose multimodal projects, whenever audio is involved, especially their own voices, they must carefully consider their tone, emphasis, speed, pronunciation, clarity, etc., which are all concerns of oral rhetoric. Further, music and sound effects can play an important role in an audio composition, which affect how the voices used are heard. I propose, then, that if multimodal compositions involving audio are a revitalization of oral rhetoric, then more emphasis on effective oral rhetoric needs to take place in composition classes, such as through analysis of oral texts and practice with oral delivery.

Final Draft of Audio Argument Assignment

Here's my final draft of the Audio Argument Assignment.

Reflecting on Blogging

Blogging has been an entirely new experience to me. Before this class I had never maintained my own blog or even commented on someone’s. I just looked over my other postings and the first thing I realize is that writing on a blog changes my expectations of my finished product. Unlike most of the academic writing I have done, when writing for the blog I did not worry about using a formal academic tone, even though in posting what I wrote it was “published” in a way that other responses and papers I have written were not. I think this relaxation of tone is largely due to my own understandings of the genre of blogs. Blogs are not supposed to be polished academic pieces, and so I did not feel pressured to produce a polished academic paper when I wrote. Even when I write responses for other classes and give a hard copy to the professor, I am usually overly stiff and formal in my writing tone. Writing and publishing on the internet seems like a less academic setting and, with the possibility of receiving and leaving responses, much more conversational.

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It is this conversational nature of the blogs that I liked the most, which I have also experienced on online forum board (although I liked the look of the blogs better). So, with this conversational element of the blogs, I found it to be less an exercise in new media and more a way of expressing my response to readings and seeing how others responded (and then commenting on each other’s ideas). This, of course, was one of the main purposes of the blog. This opportunity to respond and see how others responded often covered ideas that were not touched upon in the class, and so the blogs were an opportunity to engage with the readings and ideas of the class in greater depth. Not being the most talkative person in class (I never have been), I enjoyed the chance to engage in the blog dialogues.

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As I reviewed my blog, I also noticed that I only included one picture throughout all of my posts. That post, on Sirc, was the only one in which I could actually think of an image to include, as a box image perfectly fit Sirc. Even then, trying to get the picture to do what I wanted it to do was frustrating, (which is one reason why I did not include pictures in subsequent posts). Although images, videos, etc, can make a post more attractive or interesting, for the most part, most of my posts were picture-free merely because I could think of no reason to include them. Perhaps this is because I am not usually a visual-learning kind of person. For the most part, then my posts were very alphabetic-text based. I usually composed my posts in a Word document (as I am doing now) because I am afraid that the blog will delete what I say or post it incorrectly. The Word document offers more security that I won’t have to recompose the whole thing if it gets messed up. Of course, the fact that the blog will not let me copy and paste this into the message box and so I have to make the window small and drag it there is quite frustrating, but at least it works.

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I think I enjoyed reading others’ blog posts and commenting more than writing my own. Each person had their own particular style and approach with both design (such as use of images) and general tone of response. It was this variety of voices and perspectives that was most valuable with the blogs. I looked forward to seeing any comments my classmates might leave in response to any of my posts, just as I enjoyed posting comments on other posts, although I did not have time to comment on everyone’s.

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The experience of blogging has made me more interested in using blogs in one of my classes in the future. We’ll see…

Multimodal Peer Review

I liked much of what Kara Poe Alexander wrote about Responding and Peer Reviews in Chapter 9 of our reading for today. Although peer review is always a part of my 151 class, I had completely forgotten about the possibility of using peer review in a multimodal composition class. (Perhaps this should have occurred to me).

Most of the tips Alexander gives, however, seem to be just adaptations of suggestions for peer reviews with alphabetic texts. This, of course, might make sense to some degree, if we still want to call it a composition class. Obviously many tips for giving feedback on something can be easily applied to alphabetic or multimodal texts, such as questions evaluating the rhetorical effectiveness, or how to prepare students to give each other useful feedback.

Those of us who have our students do peer review with alphabetic texts, of course, (probably all of us) know that it can be effective and helpful for students, but that there are also a lot of problems with it too. Some students still will not go beyond “I think your paper was great. I really liked it,” not matter how much you model and tell them that that is not helpful to their peers. Then, of course, there are those students who might offer suggestions, but are so afraid of offending their peer that they focus only on minor obvious problems. My own teaching and preparing students is probably at fault to some degree, of course, but nonetheless, there will always be some problems with peer reviews.

Now, as far as Alexander’s chapter goes, I was hoping to see more about potential problems with peer review on multimodal projects and more tips that were particularly applicable to multimodal projects and that might not have applied to the alphabetic texts we have always taught. Yet, as I read the 11 tips, it was always obvious how they were just adaptations of peer reviews on alphabetic texts. Perhaps I am assuming that there should be more difference in such peer reviews than there actually are. However, even if it is as simple as applying what we already know to a new medium, just adapting, then perhaps some anecdotes about how such adaptations worked would be useful.

One other problem that I had with Alexander, or perhaps just a question, is how am I supposed to fit in time for instruction and experimentation with the technology, time for students to create their initial “drafts” of their project, time for peer reviews, and “time between peer reviews and project deadlines”? (130). Perhaps a simple timeline schedule would be helpful for me here, but my impression from this and previous chapters, is that having students do a multimodal project is extremely time consuming, and, especially with a quarter’s system (which won’t be round for much longer here), I don’t want to spend half the term, or more, on one project. Of course, perhaps I would teach a class that is strictly multimodal composition rather than just one multimodal project at the end with alphabetic projects before, but even then, I see time management as a potential problem.