Discourse Chronicle

[Today my section of students in English 104: Composition and Rhetoric and I began our first “real” day of class. I say “real” day of class because we started working with rhetoric concepts from our textbooks. I am teaching a MWF section with 50 minutes each meeting and I wonder where the time goes. I planned on introducing the rhetorical situation (sender, receiver, message, context), starting to work with the rhetorical situation using a packet of sample visuals (Death of Superman cover, Lego Batcave ad, Batman Begins DVD cover and back, political cartoon about John Mark Karr), and show them Aristotle’s Model of Argument as a means of approaching how to react to visuals. I planned too much stuff into a 50-minute period.

I managed to introduce the rhetorical situation and identify its parts before launching into a group activity identifying the rhetorical situation in those sample visuals for 10 minutes, but that time vanished almost as soon as I said we were going to do it. However, good discussions resulted as one group debated about what “context” means when looking at an ad with an image and text, plus the group I worked with made a connection between detail in a visual and context. I feel proud about our beginnings because it tells me how to pace myself through these remaining three weeks and students are picking up on what I planned on. We did not make it to Aristotle’s Model of Argument.

Tentatively, I imagined Week 1 being about rhetoric and the rhetorical situation; Week 2 being about beginning college writing; Week 3 about research; and then Week 4 being about peer review as a precursor to turning in their first papers at the end of Week 4. Now I am thinking about spending two weeks on rhetoric and rhetorical situation and discussing basic college writing with research the following week. BK]

category: Pedagogy