Notes for week of Monday, 16 June-Sunday, 22 June

This week will be one of assessment and of learning how to use self- and group-assessment as a writing and learning tool.

If you go back and review my previous post on Writing Process, the last step listed is one labeled as "Review." This is the single most important step in the writing process, because it is where your work crafting one message impacts your ability to craft a better message next time. Review and assessment have you looking at the work you have done, figuring out if it was successful, and what you did to craft a successful message (or not). Think of review as a postmortem, and your goal is to try to figure out one or two things you should continue to do in future rhetorical situations, one or two things to modify next time, and one or two things you might avoid.

Those who taught rhetoric and composition in the past referred to such review improving "Rhetorical Memory," because in order to be a successful, good writer or speaker, you need a repository or rhetorical memory of tactics and tricks which work in specific rhetorical situations. This is one reason I've had you doing rhetorical analysis, that is, to see what works and what doesn't in everyday communication. According to the likes of Aristotle and Plato, the only textbook would be rhetors, that is, users of rhetoric, need is the ability to break down rhetorical situations, recognize what worked and what didn't in each situation, and a developing memory for these tactics. Getting in the habit of reviewing your own work and getting others to help you do it is part of your own journey toward becoming better writers and speakers.

Oddly, however, you haven't been trained to do review and gauge the value of your own work. You've been trained to let others do this work for you in the form of a grade. It's time to unlearn--at least in part--the habit of thinking of your learning as ended as soon as you get back a grade. A grade just gives you someone else's judgment about the success of a message. Students aren't trained to look at their own work, assess what they have done well, and where they still need to improve. Instead, they are given a grade and are trained the see the grade not as part of a process of continued learning but as the end toward which you are working. There's the old spiel about "Give a man a fish, and he will eat for a day..." Teaching students to gauge their own rhetorical performance and to see every act of communication as an opportunity to review and learn works a lot like teaching someone to fish versus giving them a fish.

This week you'll be learning to fish...

Steve