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.