A "Discovery of Competence" Course - Blog 3 (Summary)

Chapter 7 in The Discovery of Competence, “Extending Competence,” builds off of the project described in Chapter 6 where students research language by listening in on conversations in the workplace. The students in Chapter 7 have told a story to the class then written out the story. In this act, they think through what needed to change between the oral and written forms. The students then do research in the discourse community that exists when family and friends get together and re-tell familiar stories. The chapter describes two examples of this research, stories told about a grandfather’s life in Ireland (recounted by a single teller, the mother or aunt) and the group telling of story about a dog that the children let kill the neighbor’s cat. In the process of gathering and writing down these stories, the students learn both the function of language in their families (one to pass down family history and culture, and another to transmit shared values and reassure members of the group) and learn how stories turn into literature through the act of writing.

Key points from the chapter:

• Students are studying “how language works in the world around them” (124) by discovering the difference between spoken and written versions and, later, by focusing on the context in which stories are told.
• James Britton defines two types of discourse:  transactional and poetic. Transactional is the language that happens in order to get things done in the world. Poetic language exists when the spectator evaluates or comments on experience.
• The stories the class compiled and wrote were gathered into a collection that students were asked to study. Students organized the 30+ stories by noticing different types of stories and different functions of language (the style, the topic, the context and use of such stories).
• Research was done by keeping a notebook of observations. Students sometimes recorded dinner conversations or holiday gatherings. Students also chose different communities to focus on:  home, workplace, church, daycares, restaurants, Al-Anon meetings, etc.
• The process of gathering, transcribing, writing and reflecting on these stories made students more competent readers. Students learned to become “strong readers” (Richard Rodriguez). That is, they were able to engage with readings in new, more in depth ways, because they had become familiar with modes and uses of language in communities. 

A "Discovery of Competence" Course - Blog 2

Sketch out a 3-week unit for a Kutz, Groden, and Zamel course that meets 3 time a week for 50 minutes per meeting. You'll want to include pre-reading activities, reading assignments, post-reading activities, brainstorming, drafting, revising, and editing/polishing.

•   day 1: Class welcome – present syllabus. Then, as an introduction to the course and to each other, think of a story you tell often to friends or family. No need to write yet. Get the idea of the story firmly in your head and come prepared to tell your story to the class on Wednesday. Volunteers tell a few stories as time permits at the end of class. 

•   day 2: Finish telling stories. Then ask students how they came up with which story they wanted to tell. Was it easy or hard to get an idea? Did they change their mind at any point about what to tell? What kinds of stories did we hear from the class and what was the intent of the telling (what did we learn about each other)? Following class discussion, give time to write down the story you told. HW: Finish writing the story and bring a draft to class.

•   day 3: Discuss how written stories might be a bit different than the oral versions (you’re using paragraphs now, for one thing). Lesson on paragraph structure and development. What is the purpose of paragraphs and how do they help the reader? Peer review of draft stories. HW: Revise story. Reading about oral storytelling, ask students to underline/highlight some parts they find interesting.

•   day 4: Collect stories. Discuss the reading and the act of annotating. What did you highlight and why? What other kind of markings might be useful to you as you read?

•   day 5: Put students into reading groups based on similarities I’ve found in their stories. As a group, read each other’s stories and talk about when you usually tell the story and how it was different telling it in front of the class compared to its usual context, how it is different written than they way you usually tell it? Come to some group conclusions about oral vs written texts. What are their functions? Present your group hypotheses to the class. Write ideas on board.  HW: Give students 3 circles. In Circle 1:  key points in your oral story, reflections on the story   Circle 2:  favorite lines in your written story, reflections  Circle 3:  note similarities and differences in language and context

•   day 6: Share your circles with your group. Jot down any new ideas that you’ve gotten from seeing what your groupmates wrote. Lesson on essay organization, transitions, etc. Brainstorm ways to organize your ideas.  Give essay prompt.

•   day 7: Bring draft of First Essay to class for Peer Review. Peer review with your group AND with someone not from your group (are your ideas clear to someone not in your discourse community?).  HW:  Revise paper.

•   day 8: Bring revised paper to class. Brief lesson on grammar/editing based on sentence-level errors seen in earlier drafts. Brainstorm different discourse communities students are a part of in preparation for next unit (ethnographic research on transactional/poetic discourse). Reading/example from Fieldwork textbook. Ask students to draw hypotheses about language use in different communities—write ideas on board. HW: choose a community to work with for next unit.

•   day 9: Turn in final draft of 4-page paper. Pre-writing about their discourse community. Assign daily discourse log for their fieldwork. 

A "Discovery of Competence" Course - Blog 1

What would a 15 week Kutz, Groden, and Zamel course look like?  Write a paragraph about each teaching unit. What kinds of actvities might we see?  What kinds of reading/writing might we see?  How might students develop as writers?  Be sure to ground your ideas in the text. 

A 16-week semester would probably focus on ethnography and discourse communities. Primary texts, at first, would be writings the students produce themselves. Students are asked to view their writings as part of class research on the nature and uses of language and to find connections between their own writing and their classmates’ work. Other texts range from ethnographic studies (in addition to those produced by the students), memoirs about culture and language acquisition, and literature that depicts discourse communities within cultures (ex: Toni Morrison, Mark Twain).

It is difficult for me to ground specific “writing skills” that will be covered based on the text because the authors so clearly push against any formal/traditional curriculum for writing instruction. I can’t envision these teachers presenting a lesson on paragraph structure or FANBOYS, though perhaps I can conceive of them doing a lesson on organization, either through outline modeling the board or literal cutting and pasting (get out your scissors and tape!) in class of the students’ drafts into more organized units (a lesson in building the narrative or argument according to what the writer wants to focus the reader’s attention on).

I’m also struggling to come up with a “Unit 5,” probably because I’ve only read through chapter 7 of the text. I hope the book eventually gets to a culminating project that the students get to complete. Perhaps I could extrapolate that they eventually move into more formal research, but I may just be stealing that idea from our next text, Facts, Artifacts and Counterfacts.

Unit 1.  Rather than starting with a straight personal narrative (as many FYC classes do), students tell a story to the class then write it out. They reflect on how the story changed between telling and writing. How was the story told differently to the class compared to the usual setting in which it is told? 4-page paper includes their written account of the story and their commentary/reflection on when and why they usually tell the story and how it changes when put in writing.

Unit 2.  Students choose a discourse community to observe and research. This should be a community they encounter often but is outside their home. Possibilities include church, work, a coffee shop, a group they belong to (sports team or campus club), restaurant they frequent, etc. Students will listen in on and transcribe excerpts of conversations. How is language used in this community? Is it functional or evaluative (transactional vs poetic)? 4-pages of writing will consist of field notes, observations and conclusions about the community.

Unit 3.  Ethnographic work now moves to the home, be that family, roommates or close friendships. Students record storytelling in this community and transcribe one or two stories. They then write the story out for the class as an audience. These stories are reproduced and given to each student as a collection. Split class into groups and ask different groups to focus on different elements of the collection:  recurrent themes, how the story functions, types of language, etc.  4 page essay at the end of this unit involves describing the use of their story in their family then extending that to a broader discussion of the use of language (giving examples of other stories from the class that served similar functions).

Unit 4.  More writings are brought in relating to other discourse communities. Short stories and memoirs about contact groups, perhaps, and some literacy narratives. Students are asked to extend their new knowledge beyond their own social circles into broader discourse communities. Discussions of race and culture are brought into play now. How is language a function of culture—the way it is created by the culture and signals one culture to another, the clashes when rules of discourse communities clash, etc. 

Discovery of Competence - Blog 4/Chapter 4

Summarize the key ideas in your assigned blogging group chapter.  What important ideas will you want to convey to the class when we do the jigsaw? What ideas do you agree/disagree with? How might these ideas inform your own teaching unit?

Chapter 4, “Teaching as Inquiry,” asks teachers to reposition themselves as researchers rather than instructors or gatekeepers of academic fluency. The authors want teachers to move from seeing error and deficiencies in student writing to noticing student learning and seeing possibilities in student texts. The chapter gives several examples of student work that, though riddled with surface errors, are in fact indicative of language acquisition (again, “literacy is mastered through acquisition, not learning” (61)).

If teachers position themselves as researchers, as inquiring into students’ potential as writers, they will notice evidence of 

1. systematic acquisition of new discourse structures, 
2. evidence of new conceptual structures—analytical, dialectical and metaphorical, and 
3. development of new evaluative structures (how students place themselves in the world).

The authors frame their pedagogy as the discourse of possibilities vs the discourse of error. One of their examples (Vito, 66-67) falls flat, however, because they give a lofty description of a student as “striking systematicity in one orthographic feature: the capitalization of the first word of each line,” believing that this student uses capital letters at the beginning of each line of his essay because he has absorbed this as a rule from seeing and reading English poetry. It’s clear to me, however, that the student is probably unfamiliar with the way MS Word automatically capitalizes a word when you hit “enter” and begin a new line. Every semester, I see students with capital letters at the beginning of each line, and when I ask it always comes down to them believing they had to hit enter in order to start the next line of typing (I'm not sure why 18 year olds who have never used a typewriter come to believe this, but it’s true of old and young alike). In any case, I don’t think Vito was being nearly as astute as they give him credit for. His writing and thinking were quite developed, but I am not convinced that systematicity of any kind was present.

That criticism aside, I find the authors' positioning of themselves not as error-finders but as cognitive process recognizers as refreshing. It must make for better understanding between instructor and student and a less antagonistic relationship in the classroom or in conferencing. Perhaps some of my fellow Chapter 4 readers will have a concrete idea for implementing this pedagogically, but I see it not in terms of its application in specific lesson plans and more about my own tone as instructor—the way that I approach and view student work can either dig up competencies and potential or knock down messes and error on the page. 

Discovery of Competence - Blog 3

How does The Discovery of Competence approach fit with Goen's principles and strategies for the SFSU IRW program?  

Surely Goen-Salter and the other faculty at SFSU who were designing the university’s FYC program had read The Discovery of Competence.

The IRW instructors at SFSU believe that the students they teach are fully capable of meeting FYC proficiency after a single year of remediation, and the students in these classes are viewed as members of the academic community already—two viewpoints that jive closely with Discovery of Competence.

The pedagogy underlying the IRW program clearly views students as acquiring academic language in the context of their own reading and writing, so the idea of “use” and “need” in language acquisition is being utilized. Writing assignments seek to build cognitive and metacognitive skill, and the IRW program teachers appear to read student work not as error-laden but as moving toward academic discourse. Indeed, the premise of the course is that students can be brought immediately into the academic community and will gradually acquire the skills to communicate within it.