Where am I?

Walked in this morning, hoping to just nail down the final section of the article and call it a day. Now, confronting two new tasks:

1. Learning/reading about Powerpoint--do I need to bring some other voice to my discussion of Tony's PPT presentation?
2. Struggling to focus the second part of the article. Is much improved, but still not focused. The question I'm still not able to answer concisely: What is the takeaway?

So, the second part of the article. In its previous iteration, it was mostly about plagiarism. Now, it is mostly about assemblage. I'm hardly talking about plagiarism at all. What is my point in sharing this story about Tony's "The 1960s"?

One important point I am making comes here (I think):

But in order to meet adult or nontraditional students half-way, those who work with such students might begin by acknowledging 1) the entrenched nature of assemblage as a composing practice outside of school, 2) the considerable role assemblage may play in the composing repertories of some adult students like Tony, and 3) the reality that in many instances, assemblage composing does get the job done—or, to borrow from Johnson-Eilola and Selber, it is “what works,” what “has social effects" (380).

Who or what am I speaking to here? Well, not to Barbara's assignment. She is the one who created the assignment in the first place, thus allowing students a bridge from work to school. Here, I seem to be speaking to those who resist assemblage as a valid composing strategy. I'm trying to help English teachers, who may live more in the world of MS Word than MS PowerPoint to understand the power of this technology outside of school. So, I'm not really speaking to Barbara's course here.

With the first half of the article, I'm basically saying--these people bring a repertoire of professional genres of writing with them to their classwork. Consciously or not, they may draw on this genre knowledge in trying to compose academic genres.

In the second half of the article, I'm basically saying--in the workplace, this method of composing which is sort of anathema to what we do in school is ubiquitous and an effective means of accomplishing all sorts of tasks. Validate it, but acknowledge its limitations.

The point: build in occasional opportunities for assemblage, but also recognize the need for asking students to produce original compositions.

The "Present a Decade" assignment allows students to engage the skills of assemblage they may have acquired in the workforce.

Does assemblage serve as a kind of bridge?

Attitudes towards writing...(another implication?)

Early on in the article, I write: 

The professional discursive knowledge that many adult or non-traditional students accumulate in the workplace—the genres they produce and consume, the composing strategies they enact, and the attitudes and dispositions towards written discourse they internalize—can and often do play a role in their transition they make, as writers, from workplace to academic sphere.

It occurs to me now that there may be an interesting small point to make here. In the workplace, writing is usually a means towards an ends--it doesn't draw attention to itself. You do as little as you need to do to get the job done. This is an attitude or an orientation towards writing. The writing is entirely instrumental. This disposition may be translated to academic writing assignments, although, I have no evidence for it. 

Attitudes might come from other sources--anxiety and past history. Is this a point that I might make in the other article, another potential implication:

Adult students are likely to bring a range of different attitudes and orientations towards writing to their academic work. Some bring positive attitudes, others negative, others may see writing as a means to an end.

???

Tony on why he may not do well in American Pop Culture

Just an interesting passage that I may want to work in the paper somewhere:

My problem is, I can’t visualize it. I can’t visualize the mechanics of a sentence. For me, it’s visualization—I need to connect with that.

But where does the visualization piece happen with the writing?

When I look at a piece of writing, I can’t see the independent clause. I will not be able to write correctly until I can see that.

My problem is, I have a hard-time thinking outside the box. I really do. I can’t really think abstractly. I’m very much a linear thinker. I don’t try to say that I’m not capable of abstract thinking—but I can’t look at a piece of art and go, yeah, I know what that artist is trying to say. I’m a scientific person. You have these artists that are very abstract thinkers. The arts, humanities classes—I struggle through those. I’m a very linear thinker. Psychology is a little abstract. I’m getting the hang of abstract thinking—I practice. If you are always thinking linearly. My way of compensating for—thinking outside the box…I just make my box that much bigger, to encompass that much more.

Re-Working "Take Two"

Over the past two writing sessions, I feel as though I have gained some clarity on how to proceed with the second part of the article, on assemblage. This writing has taken place in two entries, here and here, on the blog. It's been fragmented and not very linear or logical, but thinking rarely is.

From Selber/Johnson-Eilola article

MAIN ARGUMENT: We want teachers to start seeing assemblages as a valid and valued form of student writing—and of writing in general. (380)

Argument #1: "a view of writing which shifts the emphasis from performance to action or effect in action" (375)

Argument #2: "this highlighted separation [between invented and borrowed work] is frequently constructed as a hierarchy in terms of the writing process: The best work of writers is understood to be their original text with citations and borrowed materials situated as useful, but less valuable support. As we will maintain, however, this distinction is not only problematic but also counterproductive, especially as teachers attempt to prepare students to be writers in their professional and personal lives . (375)

Still, as a field, we tend to remain fundamentally committed to that final artifact: the text that students produce. And that final text—here is the real crux of the problem—by default remains much as it ever was: a unique, creative text, the “original” words produced by the student. The ghost of the authorial, creative genius remains standing between the lines, propping up what is an increasingly unrealistic artifact in our postmodern age. (378-379)

We want to change the goal of writing from performance to action or effect in context. That is, we want to lend some weight to a movement that shifts the terrain of the assignment by shifting our approach to writing instruction and assessment: What if the “final” product a student produces—a text—is not concerned with original words or images on a page or screen but concerned primarily with assemblages of parts? (380)

"assemblages are interested in what works, what has social effects." (380)

assemblage as a writing practice in academic courses is only beginning to appear on our collective radar screen despite the fact that remixed artifacts are everywhere, all around us, and not just in popular culture. (380)

In most cases, the recognition of assemblages (often going under related terms such as “remix,” “collage,” or “boilerplate”) is not represented as a replacement of other methods of writing or designing but as one valid practice among many. Our intent here is not to replace the acts of writing prose by individuals but to augment practices by enriching repertoires with one more equally valued approach. (382)

It occurs to me that Tony does sometimes produce longer prose writing (a memo) for example, but prefers assemblage. There is that one wonderful passage where he laments the need to produce "another report." Well, if there is a problem with a particular individual in the workplace and you must document it in the form of a report, that is going to require the production of original prose. You cannot borrow or re-adapt such a composition. Thus, he groans under its weight. Assemblage is his preferred means of composing. Why? It requires the creation of only a minimal amount of new or original text. Assemblage values other things--the ability to creatively borrow, organize, present. Assemblage, for him, functions as an effective means of coping with his perceived difficulties with composing longer texts. J & S argue for assemblage not "as a replacement of other methods of writing...but as one valid practice among many." Schools value the original text over the assembled. Tony feels he is good at assembling, it is a way to minimize his perceived difficulties. I have all these passages where he shares his concerns about writing and how difficult it is. I need to bring this into the second half of this essay--I am beginning to show the logic of his creation of "The 1960s"--because here was an opportunity to write in a way that he feels he is good at. It is an assignment which allows him to shine (again, he gave this to me first). Assemblage is, though, a kind of crutch. Right? It's worth pointing out that the other option, in terms of assignments Tony could have chosen to do, was a 4-6 page "survey paper" (see assignment sheet). 

My two important insights here:

1. Tony choose to do an assignment which allowed him to create the kind of "assemblage" he feels he is good at.

2. Assemblage (as opposed to, say, producing an original report) is a kind of writing which allows him to minimize his deficiencies.

Are there, then, two main points to make in regard to "The 1960s":

1. It reflects a method of workplace composing in which Tony engages on the job all the time.

2. It simultaneously reflects his discomfort with one composing strategy (generating original content) and comfort with another (assembling and borrowing content to create something new). As J & S point out, one is rewarded in one context (work) and punished in the other (school). There is a point to be made here about the way in which Tony has learned to lean on assemblage as a crutch. While I'm willing to grant assemblage legitimacy, as a composing strategy, what would be best, I think, is to broaden his repertoire of skills to the point where he can choose assemblage, when necessary, but also create longer "original" prose, when necessary (to write papers in school, to write reports at work). This might be an opportunity to point out that he managed to avoid the mandatory writing class until the end of his college career. The very thing that might have helped him break out of this singular mode of composing (assemblage), The Writing Process, is what he avoided or put off. This also speaks to the depths of his discomfort with writing--the lengths to which he was willing to go to avoid having to confront something at which he feels he does not excel. So, why does he use assemblage? Because A) it's what he knows and B) it prevents him from facing his fears and history of frustration and failure. 

In key ways, the availability and widespread use of templates in activities such as web design signals a hierarchically subordinate value placed on visual elements of a text (the template) compared to primary textual elements (the textual content of the web site). This distinction allows “writers” to freely borrow templates in most contexts without being accused of plagiarism. (Selber, 386)

An important premise of our argument is that an assemblage can only be assessed in context. Comparing an “original” text to its “remixed” counterpart is less important than understanding how the remixed artifact was redesigned for the new context or how the redesigned artifact is performing in that context. (387)

These two passages articulate the process of assemblage:

So if personal narrative and photography are creative acts, they tend to rely less on traditional notions of authorial genius and more on the very skills called on by remixing: decisions about how to frame, re-frame, modify, and hide various aspects of pre-existing scenes. (391)

In the end, as we see it, this all comes down to a reconfigured notion of “creativity,” one more in line with postmodern work. Creativity is no longer, as we said, re-inventing the wheel, which does not remove creativity but shifts it to the assemblage: Take what already exists and make something else, something that works to solve problems in new, local contexts. Creativity, in this rearticulation, involves extensive research, filtering, recombining, remixing, the making of assemblages that solve problems. Citation is no longer a way of marking subordinate elements in a text to downplay their value in student work but a way to reward students for their new skills, to situate texts not only in pre-existing but new contexts. (400)

---

...creating assemblages requires the same rhetorical sophistication as any text: One must do much more as a designer than download templates and replace their placeholder items with real content. (391)

An interesting point: Dias et al. claim that in the workplace, writing functions to get things done; in school to aid in evaluation and to help students learn. Thus, when students plagiarize, they are...breaking this contract. If they hand in someone else's work, we can't assign a grade to it because it's not their's. If writing is used to evaluate people, the writing must be their own. Additionally, if they plagiarize, say, use a borrowed paper or buy a paper, they break the second rule, which is that through writing they are supposed to learn something. Handing in someone else's work implies that YOU didn't learn anything. 

In arguing for the validity of assemblage, S & J write, 

So while a writing pedagogy might focus on the production of original text in some instances, it might also focus just as productively on assemblage, remix, or collage in the same way. (400)

What do I want to do with this quote--I do not want to echo their call for assemblage. To point out the difficulty of moving from assemblage back to the production of original text. To point out that for some adult students, like Tony, this will be a difficult transition because they were never very good at producing original text in the first place. And for other adult students, this will be a difficult transition because they may be out of practice--assemblage may make up such a significant portion of their workplace composing that they have grown unaccustomed to creating extended original text in the form of, say, an essay. This seems like a really important point!

Furthermore, S & J write, 

The shift we are suggesting is a pretty simple if powerful one: Stop encouraging students to produce “original” texts all the time. Tell them, at least occasionally, to work on texts that are complete assemblages. (400)

Just as traditional-age students steeped in the production of extended original essays might have difficulty crafting rhetorically effective assemblages, at first, so adult students whose dominant means of workplace composing is assemblage are likely to struggle, initially, in the production of extended original prose. 

Key Phrases:

• a remix culture. (380)
  
• invented and borrowed work (375)
• the “original” versus “borrowed” hierarchy (399)

Where am I?

This week, I've been working on the CE article. I've made some good progress. I'm feeling better about the section on genre repertoires and antecedents than I ever have. 

The problem I've run into, and the problem that needs to be resolved, is the issue about plagiarism. Here's what I know: 1) Tony plagiarized. 2) He wasn't told NOT to plagiarize. 

So, I'm not sure how to handle this and I guess I'm waiting to talk to Barbara this weekend, to get her thoughts. For her, as she explained, this was not a major assignment and it was the last one of the term, so she wanted the students to have some fun with it--a nice kind of end-of-the-semester project to be shared. And yet, the assignment is worth 1/5th or 20% of his final grade. I don't know--there is a disjuncture between her words and the point value she assigned to this assignment, methinks. But, perhaps that's just me. 

What DON'T I want to say--well, the teacher said she didn't care if they plagiarized or not. (makes her look bad) Or, Even though he wasn't told not to plagiarize...

What do I WANT? I want this to be an occasion where I can talk about attribution policies and the differences between them on the job and in the classroom. I think I've done a good job walking the reader through the process of assemblage that Tony uses on the job, with the Competency Manual. I think I really do a good job of documenting and dramatizing how that document came into existence. The question, now, is what to say about his "The 1960s" presentation? It was easier, in some ways, before--when I didn't know the actual assignment. I guess what I'm trying to do here is pick up the pieces a bit, now that I do know the assignment and still find a way to do what I wanted to do originally--which is what? I think, just to raise awareness. To SHOW how it works in one sphere and how that method has been transported to another. 

And that's the point and now it doesn't really matter whether he was told he could or not! The point is, he has transported this composing method--right-click-steal--from one sphere to the other and...and here is where I am on slimmer ice, now that I know the assignment--it doesn't work. It's not allowed. He's breaking the rules, whether his prof meant to allow him to or not.

Finally, the added information. There are two things that I want to bring to this revision, in addition to the actual assignment itself. But, first, I want to add that, since I did the "when I shared my analysis with Tony..." in the first half of the article, I think I need to do that same thing in the second part, and I think I can, with the notes from Interview 8. But, the two things: 

1. Here's the part that's really interesting:

It’s kind of hard because there are really no in-text citations in a PPT presentation. So, where do you list your references. There is no way to connect to a source. You can list, at the end, all your references. But there is really no connection to which part of the speech this was, unless you did, say, a direct quote. Other than that, there is no way to accurately site a source. Anything that is published should be—that’s what I look at when I look at articles. What are the references. Where are you referencing your material from? If I look at an article and there are no references, it’s all speculation, yeah, I may agree with the idea, but who is to say that it has any validity? I think listing sources is good for giving the people that did the work some credit.

What's interesting about this? Most interesting and perhaps most important: Tony gets it. He understands, as he reveals near the end of this passage, why it's important to cite sources, why we do it. And, in fact, he doesn't just understand it in theory, he actually looks at sources. He reads Domain3--and in this publication, sources are cited in many of the articles. So, one important point to make here is that it is NOT the case that Tony doesn't understand how the rules of citation work or that we cite sources to both give credit to others (when we incorporate their words and ideas into our own work) and to establish, as Tony puts it, the "validity" of our own work. 

Sidebar: why do I use sources? I feel like Tony is saying something here about the role of sources in a paper which is very common and very typical of students and people who are not academics. This view is that you use authoritative sources--to do what? The sources are supposed to "back up" or bring some level of credibility to your own words (this is the sense in which Tony seems to understand sources). For Tony, he wants to know that the people behind the article or upon whom the writer is drawing in the article know their stuff. So, we talk to students about the ways in which some sources (academic journals) are more authoritative than others (some jerk in Nebraska's personal webpage rant on...whatever). And we tell them they must have references because if they don't--well, I guess the presumption is that just your own opinion is not enough. You need to call on "experts" to help you make your argument. 

But, of course, the odd thing is that we don't use sources that way--those of us who are actually participating in the discourse community, contributing to it. Or, maybe we do, but I'm not--at least, not in this article. I am using sources to do something totally different. I am using sources to frame the entire focus of the article, in the case of Brandt, in the beginning of the essay. And then I am using sources or bringing theoretical information from sources (genre repertoires/antecedent genres and assemblage) to bear on something new (Tony's two writing assignments). This is a very different use of sources. Closer, I think, to the idea of what to do with sources that comes from Ways of Reading or Joe Harris' Rewriting. 

Back to Tony. So, we have these conflicting pieces of information: 1) he has plagiarized the whole thing. 2) but at the same time, he understands what sources are and why and how we use them. It is not the case, in this second half of the article, that I am going to say--well, he just didn't know or understand so we need to make sure to teach students and don't assume that they know. This may be the case for some adult students, but I'm guessing that most of the students in my study had at least some knowledge of the fact (whether from work, as in Tony's case, or from memories of school) that they needed to avoid plagiarizing. Most of us learn this stuff, albeit at a very rudimentary level, in high school: if you are going to incorporate the words and ideas of others into your own work, you must somehow give them credit. 

The other point to make--he works frequently in PPT. When he does so, presumably, he doesn't have to worry much about this issue. Now he's using PPT in a different context/sphere. He says, "there are really no in-text citations in a PPT presentation" and "there is no way to accurately site a source." Well, this just isn't true. People create PPT presentations all the time and cite their sources. I have--although, it occurs to me now that I have never created a Works Cited slide in my PPT presentations. You can do endnotes or footnotes. There is a page, here, which gives instructions on how to cite sources in PPT. 

There are certain sections of this presentation in which Tony quotes verbatim from Lonestar College's page (for example: slide #2, "Facts about the 1960s" is copied verbatim). There are other sections where he has patch-written (for example, the final slide is a rough paraphrase of the first paragraph on the Lonestar page). 

Rebecca Moore Howard (1993) discussed one strategy writers in development use to begin learning to participate in discourse communities. “Patchwriting,” according to Howard, “involves copying from a source text and then deleting some words, altering grammatical structures, or plugging in one-for-one synonym-substitutes” (p. 233, qtd. in Selber article, p. 382). 

But, now that I look at this presentation again, it's definitely the case that he went elsewhere for material. Not all the pictures in his PPT presentation appear on the Lonestar page. They must come from somewhere else. It's interesting to note that Lonestar page contains information about art and architecture, fashion, etc., Tony's presentation focuses mostly or entirely on just a few categories: "events," "television," "movies," "music."

So, what has Tony done? Well, he has assembled the document. Similarities:

1. I would note that like the Competency Manual, the design that contains his writing with "The 1960s" is pre-established. With the Competency Manual, he has the grid from the hospital. He has to write some text to fill into the grid. With "The 1960s," he can just choose a background for his slides and this will organize his writing. In other words, there are these pre-established containers into which he can write--in both instances. Content is something you add to a pre-existing structure.
   
2. Writing--sheer quantity--is minimal. Words/sentences/phrases are just one element of construction (balanced, in teh case of the "The 1960s" with images).
3. With the Competency Manual, he has to devise the various competencies that he will include. He needs an organizational structure and the structure he chooses is a page for each competency. With "The 1960s" he must also devise a structure, and he goes with a year-by-year approach (the Lonestar Library page was not organized this way). There will be a slide or a series of slides for each year.
   

The point: he shares this document with me because it's what he's good at: putting stuff together. Assemblage. And I should try to come full circle with this point. Talking about plagiarism is, in some ways, beyond the point, or should be held to the end. I should talk, more explicitly, about how the process of assemblage plays out in this Competency Manual and then compare/contrast with how it plays out with "The 1960s." (Problem: I don't have him saying a whole lot about how he created "The 1960s," do I? 

The point: What he did is more important than the consequences of what he did. 

(I think?) I need to steer this away from plagiarize and more towards the logic of transporting assemblage as a composing strategy. Plagiarism discussion should come last. 

Of what does assemblage consist?

• Selecting Content
  
• Designing and Arranging (or re-arranging) Content
  
• Creating (new) Content
  

To find/re-review:

1. Tony talking about "The 1960s."
2. How Selber and the other dude describe the process of assemblage. Is it the three elements I've identified above?

More To Do With Tony

To Do:

1. Find the hard copy of his entitlement generation essay and look to see if there is a grade.
   
2. Get specific MLA specs on Anis Bawarshi's essay on "incomes." 
   
3. Need to add the Domain3 issue to my works cited.
   
4. In Interview 4 (p. 6), Tony reveals that he got the idea for the Orientation and maybe the competency manual from reading Doman3. Should this be a part of my article?

This morning, making real progress on the CE article on Tony Vaccaro. It is turning out to be a considerably different and better article from the previous draft. Things that are changing: I am working with the actual terms of Barbara's assignment now, which is important. I'm also tying in the idea of the role of read-genres in one's genre repertoire. This was a bit of a breakthrough this morning. There are a number of things that I am doing differently--too many to record all of them. But, there are two things that are on my mind that i just want to get down here:

1. Ongoing questions about the relevance of the second part of the article. But then, I haven't even begun to revise it yet, so I should withhold judgment until I get into it. In any event, if I decide to bag the first section, I think I have a great article to submit to TETYC and possibly even CE or some other journal. I'm close to twenty pages with just the bit on antecedent genres. 
   
2. Big picture. One of the things I have realized I struggle with a bit is tying pieces together. I get so into writing a particular section of the piece, I forget to tie in what I am doing to the larger picture of the essay itself. For example, today, I've been so focused on antecedent genres that I've almost entirely lost site of my introduction and the notion of moving between spheres, that I set up with Brandt. When I was into the section on mapping out Tony's essay, I began to forget about the point about antecedent genres. It's that old thing of coming back to the major themes, reminding the reader of what you are trying to say or do. It's very hard to do this when you are in the trenches, trying to construct meaning coherenetly. But, asking questions about the global coherence of the piece is important and something I think I can do better. 
   

That's it for today. I can see myself wrapping up this section of the article in one more writing section, and then I move on to the next section, which will, undoubtedly, take a few more days. Still, this is progress and I feel as though the piece has been strengthened a good deal already. 

Back to work

Spent the entire morning working on the introduction to my essay on Tony Vaccaro for CE. I think I'm making progress. But boy am I exhausted with this piece. And yet, there is still a good deal left to do. 

4/10

This morning...not feeling too motivated to work. Just feeling tired. 

I've had some great success with Barbara Benham, Brad's American Popular Culture instructor. She's found her syllabus, her assignments and an explanation of what they read and why. Here is, I think, the assignment to which Brad was responding in his "entitlement generation" essay:

Project A1. Possible 20 points. Bring in a current article or news report that shows American Pop Culture “at play” here or abroad. You can write about the popularity of a latest craze, or a new spin on an “older” craze illustrating the revision of American Pop Cult artforms and how they evolve. The article you’re sharing could be about something that’s being embraced by one group and is being fought by another group (conflict always makes an interesting read :o). You are responsible for
providing a copy of the article for each student (20 copies).
Writing a two page position paper on your analysis. Read this to the class or facilitate a discussion about the article.
Hand your position paper in to me for feedback.

Well, I just went online to see if I could find the article he was supposed to have brought in. Haven't found it, but have found other things. Now, found it.

Okay, so I have two more pieces of data now: 

1. The actual assignment.
2. The article that Brad used to write the essay.

What is there to say?

First, the assignment wasn't a compare and contrast assignment. So, that is going to need to be changed. There are two sentences, that I note from the assignment sheet, that seem important:

• The article you’re sharing could be about something that’s being embraced by one group and is being fought by another group (conflict always makes an interesting read :o).
  
• Writing a two page position paper on your analysis. 
  

Well, in regard to the first item, Brad definitely has conflict here. There are two groups--baby-boomers and the entitlement generation, but they have been translated into the entitlement generation and...? The younger generation?

The second point...a "position paper." This is a term that I'm not clear about and I suppose this is something I'm going to need to talk more with Barbara about. What is, in her mind, a position paper? And, to what extent has Brad fulfilled the demands of this genre? 

This may be the key question--I was calling it a compare and contrast. But she's calling it a position paper. So, has he created a position paper? What is a position paper? 

Another point worth making here: plagiarism is, once again, an issue. The question Brad asks at the top of his essay is not his own essay, but there is no attribution. Also, the way in which he works with Mel Levine is...weak. He doesn't quote where appropriate or attribute phrases such as "coddling parents." He doesn't work well with sources. That is definitely one clear observation. 

If he is taking a position, what is the position he is taking? What he's doing, near the end, is proposing something...

Of course, the other thing that is interesting is that, I'm not sure what they were reading, but, it's not surprising that Brad has taken the assignment and made a connection between a liberal arts type class and assignment and his workplace. I think the question I need to ask Barbara is, to what extent she thought he was successful with this assignment. 

------------------------------------------------------

The second assignment:

Project C1. Worth a possible 20 points. No Paper. Research and class presentation.

Team up or go solo on this research project & presentation called “Presenting a Decade.” Go to the internet. Find out what was “hot” in that decade, cultural signposts that allow later generations to use their imaginations and figure out who these people in past eras really were. How did their current events play out in the popular culture (for example WWII or the Great Depression)? What does their popular culture reveal about what they valued in consumables ? What does this reveal about their values, character and imaginations? Give an overview of the decade and then focus in on one or two signposts such as movies or music or fashion. Cars. Architecture. . . . No paper. Just a class presentation. Visuals help. You can use powerpoint if you’d like. Go solo. Or team up with a classmate who’s interested in the same decade, and you each can focus on different signposts of the era. Each person in the presentation should have 10 or 15 minutes of material ready.

The first thing I notice about the assignment is that the instructions say nothing about the conventions of academic writing and attribution. She writes, simply, "Go to the internet." What was she expecting from this, I wonder. If I tell her that Brad plagiarized the entire presentation, then what? This raises interesting questions about...well, what do those who teach adult students like Brad expect from them, when it comes to issues of citation and originality? Also, unlike the earlier assignment, I don't have her feedback on the presentation. I only have the presentation itself. So, it seems as though a place to begin would be to ask for her appraisal of the presentation. Was it what she wanted? What does she think of the fact that it was plagiarized? Does it matter? 

Bottom line: I think that what I've begun doing here is preparing for my interview with Barbara. There are a few things I need to do, I think:

1. Get her to sign a consent form.
   
2. Get her to talk about the two assignments. Do Brad's documents fulfill her assignments? What about the issue of academic writing--things like working with sources and citing sources? How does she deal with these issues?
3. Show her some of my writing and research and get her feedback.
4. Get her thoughts on professional/academic writing, since she's been teaching adult students for some time. What are her thoughts on the "reverse commute"?

And an emerging question: what should a first-year writing course aimed at adult students do: is it an introduction to academic writing? Is it something else?

4/7

Today, I've been working on the CE article and, frankly, getting tired of it when I know there is still a good deal of work to do. But, I have accomplished a few things today, I think. 

First, I'm feeling better about the first few pages, but the sections leading up to the actual case study are still emerging. In particular, I have 

1. moved up the statement of argument. 
2. cut the 4-5 page overview on Tony.
   
3. cut the description of GSC entirely.

The things I am still working on are:

1. Theorizing--academic and professional literacy. (this is the section that is taking the most out of me, the kind of writing I suck the most at, the hardest. But, I have a start.
2. Framing my article--not sure where I am going to do this. It seems I have so many things I need to do before I get to the case studies. To the actual reverse commute. It's a bit overwhelming, but may harken back to the problem of learning how to condense and tighten that I wrote about a few days ago.

So, projects left to do:

1. Keep working on introduction--in particular, focus the section on professional and academic writing.
2. Bring Bawarshi's recent article on "incomes" into the first reverse commute section.
3. Revisit, entirely, the second reverse commute section.
4. Revisit the conclusion. 

I think that's it for writing for today. I wish I could work in more of these quick/short bursts. I've only been writing for about 2 hours today, but already, I feel tired. 

Just a quick brainstorm on academic discourse. Sources:

• Inventing the university
  
• Pat Bizzell (blue book)
  
• Thaiss/Zawacki
  
• Teaching Working Class (Sherry Lee Linon)--I wrote some notes about this piece a ways back that I should return to.
  

4/5 (Summarizing Reviewer #2 Feedback)

As I said in an earlier posting, R2 gave some really great feedback. I thought I would take a moment to bullet it here.

• Although the emphasis on genre studies seems appropriate in light of the focus on professionally literate, working students returning to college, the article would be improved by more attention to scholarship on adult learners and nontraditional students, especially research that illuminates their points of view. Specifically, the author might consider more fully the perspectives of returning adult students who call into question the assumptions of college administrators and teachers as well as the general public (see, e.g., Hallet, “She Toiled for a Living…” in Identity Papers: Literacy and Power in Higher Education, ed. B.T. Williams, Utah State UP 2006) and of workers (see Hull, “Hearing Other Voices: A Critical Assessment of Popular Views on Literacy and Work,” in Literacy: A Critical Sourcebook, Ed. E. Cushman et al, Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2001). Mike Rose’s recent book, The Mind at Work: Valuing the Intelligence of the American Worker, might also be relevant to the author’s research.
  
• While the author appears to be primarily concerned with the question of how best to teach returning adult learners, it is the key ideas of antecedent genres and assemblage in relation to such instruction that I find most original and compelling. These ideas need both to be more fully theorized and their relevance to returning students like Tony more clearly demonstrated. 
  
• The narrative at the beginning is too long; the author should state the focus or thesis sooner (see p. 5, first full sentence, as a thesis that could be moved closer to the front of the article) and anticipate the two focal points of antecedent genres and assemblage. 
  
• There are also problems with the examples of Tony’s writing; in the first case, the fact that we never know the assignment makes it difficult for the reader to evaluate the essay (which struck me as a fine first draft, one that would be quite easy for a teacher to comment on effectively); in the second case, the plagiarism is so extreme that its use as a pretext for a discussion of assemblage seemed overly abstract. What were the teacher’s comments on the popular culture essay? What grade did the paper receive? The assignment for “1960s” presentation is likewise vague and the teacher’s response omitted. 
  
• Finally, the author’s conclusions pertain to reverse commuting students but not to the insights on antecedent genres and assemblage and recommended practices for their teachers, reaffirming my sense of the article’s somewhat skewed focus. 
  
• More descriptive subtitles throughout might help focus and unify the article.
  

Today. Tried to rework the damn introduction. I seem to be going around and around and around with it. Frustrating. Today was not a confidence booster of a day.

4/5 (Thaiss/Zawacki)

Today's reading: Thaiss/Zawacki's Engaged Writers/Dynamic Disciplines. I am looking over their Introductory chapter, in which they attempt to lay out a definition or explanation of academic writing.

There are a few nice disclaimer statements:

1. "Academic writing" is one of those terms that is often invoked, usually solemnly, as if everyone agreed on its meaning, and so is used imprecisely yet almost always for what the user regards as a precise purpose; e.g., commonly by teachers in explaining what they want from students. 
   
2. "There are exceptions to almost every principle an analyst can identify as a characteristic of academic writing." (5)

T/Z offer the following "characteristics" of academic writing:

1. Clear evidence in writing that the writer(s) have been persistent, open-minded, and disciplined in study. 
   
2. The dominance of reason over emotion or sensual perception. 
   
3. An imagine reader who is coolly rational, reading for information, and intending to formulate a response. (5-7)
   

Okay, so I've finished reading the first chapter of T/Z. It looks like an incredibly interesting study and I hope to be able to keep reading it, but there was not too much else of interest to my project there. 

4/3

One of the issues that came up with my article for CE was defining academic discourse. Here are the passages worth noting:

1. From Schilb's letter:

Their reviews lead me to believe, specifically, that there needs to be more in the essay about (1) the nature and definition of academic literacy in general...

2. From Reviewer #1:

First, academic literacy is not very well defined. The example used (the one Tony has such trouble with) is the compare and contrast essay, and this suggests a kind of monolithic definition of academic writing that appears to ignore the broad range of writing students are asked to do in college as well as the shift from the traditional essay-based writing to writing-as-rhetorical action that characterizes many college classrooms. I admit that at many institutions where traditional and conservative approaches to writing instruction still hold sway, this essay may be an eye-opening piece, asking us to rethink approaches toward curricula for adult students like Tony (and, I would argue, for all students). But for most CE readers, I think the lack of discussion surrounding the characteristics of academic literacy will be a problem.

3. Reviewer #2 did not speak specifically to the issue of academic discourse. But, wow, after rereading R2's comments, I should consult them more carefully. R2 is RIGHT on in so many counts, I need to heed her wisdom more.

In any event, this afternoon, I'm just looking at the issue of academic discourse. R1 used my undertheorizing of academic discourse as grounds for disqualification. Schilb just wants me to flesh it out a bit more. 

It seems to me that, aside from the research that I'm doing, there is something more to say, two things, actually:

1. Those who teach adult students at schools like GSC, for example, may have among the most narrow definitions of academic writing. Given the fact that many such instructors are hired on an ad-hoc basis and may be distant from current academic conversations within their disciplines, their sense of what counts as academic might be the most conservative.
   
2. Additionally, many programs at schools like GSC institute courses that all students must take. I'm thinking of the "critical thinking" course, for example, where they do a sort of "immersion" in academic writing--or traditional forms of it. There is a hyper-awareness or concern, it would seem, about moving students back into academic forms of discourse at a school like GSC, given their assumed distance from the classroom. In the process, very traditional notions about academic writing may be most emphasized. (think of the assignments in John Beech's critical thinking course).

3/17

Working on revising the CE article this morning. First step: generating a "To Do" list. 

Or...first step, revise introduction. That's what I've spent the morning on. There are some substantive changes here. First, I cut the descriptive section on NSC. Then, I added Brandt to the introduction--a decision I was at the time a bit unsure of (and am, perhaps, still a bit unsure of). Then, i got to work reworking the introduction. I'm feeling pretty good about what I have at this point, but I still have the concern, a concern which was raised by the reviewers, that I don't get to my argument until p. 5. I was hoping to move that up and now, with all the revision I've done, it still is at p. 5. The exact quote from Schilb's letter is:

Indeed, I share the concern expressed by one of the referees that the article’s main claim or argumentative intent doesn’t currently appear until page 5, which seems fairly late.

Well, I've changed my introduction around a good deal, but the main argument still doesn't come until p. 5. GIven that this is specifically mentioned by a reviewer and the editor, it does feel as though I should probably DO something about this. My choices--delete stuff so it can be moved up or rearrange a bit to get the argument up earlier.

But, the accomplishment of the morning is getting that first section rewritten. The next thing to do is:

1. Allow some time to go by and return to the intro for editing (too frequent use of the "transition from school to work" phrase.

2. Should there be a few sub-headings in the intro? For example, methodology? (no).

3. How to move that claim/argument up?

Then, onto the next section--very shortly after this introduction, I need to get right to the Reverse Commute, Take One. I need to either:

A) incorporate the overview on Tony into the first section, or

B) cut that section down to maybe 1-2 pages. (it is currently 4-5)

In general, I have this habit of forcing the reader to wade through too much stuff. I am too copious in some ways. As an academic writer, I need to learn how to be more concise. This was a problem with my dissertation and it is a problem here, as well. 

Once I get through the Introduction and cutting down the background section on Tony (or cutting it entirely). I need to draw in Bawarshi's concept of "incomes" to the first section of the reverse commute and also, perhaps, bring in a bit of Adler-Kassner's definition of academic literacy. 

Then, the second section on plagiarism needs a bit of an overhaul--the main thing I need to do there is to begin NOT with Tony's 1960s ppt. but, instead, with a rich description of the competency manual/orientation manual. 

This was the first time I have returned to work on this article in some time. I am feeling good about it. I think I know what I need to do and now I just need to find the time to do it. Solving small problems, one at a time...

3/10 (4)

Okay...I think I've found some direction here today on how to revise the essay for CE. 

First, I think it's clear that I have to rework the beginning...I have to cut a good deal, if not all, of Tony's background literacy narrative OUT and just focus on explaining his work and the various hats he wears and how these hats engage his literacy skills. 

The Reverse Commute: Take One focuses on genre antecedents and Tony's Entitlement Generation essay. I have been trying to get in touch with Laurie Quinn to try to track down Tony's American Popular Culture instructor so I can get a bit more context on the assignment and perhaps even talk with her about Tony's essay. But, tonight, I've been reading Linda Adler-Kassner's essay and as I'm reading, I'm realizing that she is doing a lot of the same kind of analytical work that I'm doing...see the two case-studies in the middle of her essay. The writing there, where she is sharing excerpts from these two texts that her students created, is very similar to the kind of analytical writing that I produced in the Take One section of my article. She's analyzing student writing, making assertions about what she sees and thinking through how the students' texts do or do not conform to the standard "academic essay." This is very useful for my project and I might hold my own writing up to hers to compare and see what I can do to make mine better. She also lays out a nice simple definition of academic writing, defining it as "thesis, evidence, conclusion, with topic sentences and other points of reference that help the reader follow the writer's argument" (98-99). Her explanations of what the academic "essay" entails (and I think we could substitute the word "genre" here) are useful and helpful to me for what I'm up to. 

The attribution section...how much of the story of the way Tony creates the competencies did I relate? Here is a question about revising part II of the article. I don't know how much I actually wrote about Tony's process of creating the A) Competency Manual or B) Orientation Manual. I think that, essentially, the entire second part of my article just focused on the point: we all know about intertextuality, why not bring students in on this conversation. In the first section, I think I do a good job contextualizing the "Entitlement Generation" essay--surrounding it, so to speak, with Tony's workplace writing. But how good of a job do I do with this in the second part of the article, when it comes to his "The 1960s" PPT presentation? I'm not sure I do. 

Fuck. I just went and looked at it and sure enough, I do talk a bit about how he composed the competency manual. But, I think that this could be expanded. I talk a lot more about assemblage. I think I can do a better job showing and discussing his dominant composing strategy at work--right-click-steal. The question that Schlib asked me is something along the lines of--what would you say to those who would argue that he is plagiarizing? I think I can answer that question--and the answer might take a bit more research on plagiarism and working this into the text, but it seems to me the answer is, yes, he is plagiarizing, because "The 1960s" is an academic endeavor. But this gives us the opportunity to reflect on teh reverse commute because, just like if a guy writes the same genre over and over again, if he composes in the same way all the time, you can bet that his composing strategies are going to jump contexts...which is to say that the way he put the 1960s together would have been a perfectly logical way to do it, and the way he WOULD HAVE done it, had he been creating this presentation for his job. 

So, I'm beginning to map out strategies for revising this piece:

1. Cut beginning, move up argument. 

2. The first part of the essay focuses on The Reverse Commute: Genres (and here, I might be able to draw on Adler Kassner's work to talk about the kinds of generic "academic essays" or genres that nontraditional and traditional students alike are often asked to produce in liberal arts classes like American Popular Culture...and also how these genres and the values behind them are, perhaps, in conflict with the genres students produce outside of school.

3. The second part of the essay focuses on The Reverse Commute: Composing Strategies. Here, now that I've freed up space by cutting the beginning, I can develop a bit more to contextualize the extent to which Tony uses "right-click-steal" in the workplace. 

The question is, what do nontraditional students bring with them? Sort of, the things they carried. This could be fun, by the way--I could use that quote from Tim O'Brien about the things they men carried into combat to sort of set the stage. I might, then, be able to salvage "The Reverse Commute" for the other article I'm working on? 

Implications: as more and more of our traditional and non-traditional students compose in more and more diverse environments outside the classroom, we are likely to face new kinds of problems of transfer. We can no longer assume that most of the writing students do they do in school--and this goes for traditional and nontraditional students. I might share James' email to me to show how this is relevant to traditional age students, as well. Here's the part of his email that might be useful:

When I write something, for example at work or for virtually any class, I usually do not have to consider keeping the reader's attention. Technical documentation or specifications are usually not read for pleasure, so I can use the language and style which I'm comfortable with and not have to worry about keeping people interested. The majority of writing I've done is in response to something... something is broken so I write describing the problem and how it should be, or if I've programmed something I write how or why something works, etc. When someone reads what I write, they do so because they *have to* with the intention of extracting certain pieces of information. As soon as they figured out what they need, they stop reading -- and that's good. I guess with most things in work I try to adapt what I'm writing to *minimize* what readers need to read. The things I write (and read!) less is more: the faster the reader gets what they are looking and stops reading the better I've written whatever it is.

3/10/ (3)--Linda Adler Kassner's essay

Linda Adler-Kassner, "The Shape of the Form: Working Class Students and the Academic Essay" (in Teaching Working Class, 85-105)

At the beginning of the term, I ask the students in my basic writing classes to write about their previous experiences with reading and writing. (85)

The argument advanced by these basic writing researchers [Perl, Rose, Bartholomae/Petrosky, and Shaughnessy] that some of these students' issues with academic writing come from their inexperience with the genre has been an important one for compositionists because it has helped us look closely at the relationship between  basic writers' prior experiences and their performances in our classes. But I'd argue that issues connected with these students' success or failure with academic writing go beyond lack of exposure to the acts of reading and writing. They extend to a disjuncture between students' own values, reflected in their literacies, and the values and literacy reflected in the shape of the essay itself, as a genre. (emphasis added, 86)

I've bolded this final section because it is germane to my Tony project. A disjuncture between students own values, reflected in their literacies...yes, workplace/professional values. This is Tony. 

ACADEMIC WRITING: 

• The contemporary academic essay is something most readers of this essay know well. It begins with a thesis that introduces and summarizes the writer's argument, moves on to evidence supporting the thesis, and ends with a conclusion that might summarize the essay, demonstrate the relevance of the paper or suggest avenues for additional investigation. The writer is expected to draw the reader through the argument, demonstrating how the evidence in teh essay is related to the thesis. (89)
  
• She later refers to this kind of writing as "thesis, evidence, conclusion form of the essay, integrating quotations from other sources" (92).
  
• And yet again: "The model we expect in the essay--thesis, evidence, conclusion, with topic sentences and other points of reference that help the reader follow the writer's argument..." (98-99).

For those of us immersed in this kind of academic writing--because we write it ourselves, grade stacks of it on a regular basis, or read it in academic texts--it is familiar territory. As successful survivors of multiple components of the educational system (elementary school, high school, college, graduate school), it feels fairly natural because we've done it for so long and becuase, for many of us, the essay reflects the values that we've (willingly or unwittingly) adopted in our own lives. (new paragraph) Too often, however, we forget that the values reflected in that form don't represent everyone's culture. (89)

This is a passage that sort of blew my mind (because...who says that you have to be able to master academic writing to achieve economic success? Surely it's true that they need to master certain genres of academic writing to do well in school...but the connection between academic writing and economic success? Other than that you must pass college to get a diploma and that earning a diploma will lead to greater economic success--what connection can there be made between mastering academic genres and economic success?):

While academic writing doesn't enter in Jones's argument directly, many have made the same argument with regard to this medium as well--students need to master it to do well in school, and that success is one step toward economic success. (88)

David Bartholomae has argued that students' success with academic writing depends, in part, on their abilities to strike a balance between their own modes of expression and the discourses they're expected to produce. According to Bartholomae:

The student has to appropriate (or be appropriated by) a specialized discourse, and he has to do this as though he were easily and comfortably one with his audience...; has to invent the university by assembling and mimicking its language while finding some compromise between idiosyncrasy, a personal history, on the one hand, and the requirements of convention, the history of a discipline, on the other. He must learn to speak our language. Or he must dare to speak it or to carry off the bluff, since speaking and writing will most certainly be required long before the skill is "learned." And this, understandably, causes problems. (qtd. in Adler-Kassner, p. 93)

Excerpts from Ned's and Frank's papers demonstrate common points of difficulty that working-class students seem to have with academic writing. The model we expect in the essay--thesis, evidence, conclusion, with topic sentences and other points of reference that help the reader follow the writer's argument--seem less accessible to these students than they do to others who might have more academic experience with writing and reading. But by examining examples like these side-by-side with the historical context in which ideas about what an essay should look like evolved, it becomes clear that some of the reasons for this inaccessibility go beyond lack of experience with academic writing, perhaps to differences in ideologies and values reflected in the forms of expression most commonly used by students. As the excerpts from early-twentieth-century compositionists demonstrate, mastery of the essay's form has long been integrally linked to assimilation of cultural values that they consider to be reflected in and perpetuated by the form of the essay. If studnets come to that form with different values, it might seem far less "natural" to them than it is to students who already participate in those values. (98-99)

3/2 (3)

Their reviews lead me to believe, specifically, that there needs to be more in the essay about:

(1) the nature and definition of academic literacy in general;
(2) the details of the comparison/contrast assignment and the course in which it appeared; and
(3) the possible charge that Tony has simply committed blatant plagiarism and should be punished for it.