Events
- Annual Convention
- Great Teaching Round-up
- Leading from the middle
- fall conference for faculty leaders
- Webinars
"I think there is something more important than believing: Action! The world is full of dreamers, there aren't enough who will move ahead and begin to take concrete steps to actualize their vision."
Events: 2010 English Schedule
English Summary
Friday, 11:15 a.m. - 12:45 p.m.
"Quote Mining: A Fresh Look at Plagiarism"
Speaker: Rebecca Moore Howard, Professor of Writing and Rhetoric, Syracuse University
Saturday, 9:00 - 10:15 a.m.
"Practical Argument: Preparing Students for Civic Engagement"
Speaker: Harry R. Phillips, Professor of English, Central Piedmont Community College
Friday, March 5th, 11:14 a.m. - 12:45 p.m.
"Quote Mining: A Fresh Look at Plagiarism"
Speaker: Rebecca Moore Howard, Professor of Writing and Rhetoric, Syracuse University
WOW! Meet Rebecca Howard on TCCTA Online!
Saturday, March 6th, 9:00 - 10:15 a.m.
"Practical Argument: Preparing Students for Civic Engagement"
Speaker: Harry R. Phillips, Professor of English, Central Piedmont Community College
Public education, claimed John Dewey, can best serve a democratic culture when it connects classroom with community and by thinking of the classroom as a laboratory for intelligent democratic activity. With Dewey’s idea in mind, this presentation will focus on how argument can fit into the lives of our students and how it can be a practical response both to the issues in everyday life and to academic and intellectual problems encountered in the classroom. Strategies for how to move student writers into the realm of civic engagement based on their concerns will be discussed. Specifically, the importance of students recognizing the communities they belong to—workplace, school, neighborhood, family, concerned citizen, and consumer—and issues connected to each community will be emphasized. This student-centered approach, contrasted with an approach grounded in logical exercise and assigned topics, in many cases has generated inspired, original writing. Different kinds of argument will also be discussed, and these include not only classical and Toulmin models but models that encourage argument grounded in common ground and middle ground thinking. These latter two models stress close attention to the opposition, a skill that has much benefit in the back and forth of daily life. Additionally, a new approach, an argument based on a microhistory, will be demonstrated. In this kind of argument, writers work with primary documents such as letters, newspaper clippings, photographs, or local individuals and events and compile a history that heretofore has been unrecognized in the mainstream.
This approach to teaching argumentputs in place the groundwork for student writers to create possibilities for themselves in a culture that demands more and more from its citizens. When so much of what we encounter has to do with the lure of consumption, and when so much of our national discourse is riveted to economic conditions, job security, and terror and intervention, it can be tough for freshman writers to think of themselves as agents capable of meaningful change. But this approach enables student writers to establish rhetorical places for themselves that ideally can reinvigorate our democracy via responsible citizenship. Because communication is less local in advanced industrial nations, practical argument invites a return to a more traditional form of democratic participation with its attention to local engagement. And local engagement can begin with a writer’s commitment to the idea that the private responsibility to argue is essential to the public good.
These ideas are the foundation for a forthcoming textbook, Practical Argument: A Guide for Students, a project based on twelve years teaching argumentative writing. The approach centers argument in the worlds of our students and on their terms. It pushes students into responding through carefully planned arguments to the issues that most concern them. Emphasis is placed on a step-by-step approach to each kind of argument so that writers are fully aware of the range of elements needed for a convincing argument. Like the textbook, this presentation will include numerous examples of each kind of argument, discussion of successful classroom strategies, and discussion of a wide range of prompts and exercises.
English Section Co-chairs:
Martina Kusi-Mensah, Lon Star College and
Patricia Cearley, South Plains College