43 Using Fiction to Gain Rhetorical Understanding – Brittany Bauernfiend

Brittany Bauernfiend resides in Bloomington, Indiana and is a graduate student in the English Department.  This paper is part of a research/theoretical project she completed for Dr. Edwina Helton in her ENG W682 course.  

Using Fiction to Gain Rhetorical Understanding 

Purpose:

To expose students to texts within the fiction genre that are within their reading age groups and to utilize these novels to aid students in understanding the introduction to rhetoric and how reading as a rhetorical act can be supported while also connecting reading and writing in the classroom.

By choosing the topic of utilizing works of fiction to better introduce high school students to rhetoric and reading as a rhetorical act, I believe that students will view rhetoric in a more interesting way as opposed to being first exposed to reading as a rhetorical act in college. By introducing the students earlier, they will have at least a foundational knowledge of rhetoric. My hope for this proposed course and its work is to prepare students for their upper-level high school courses and for their college career.

Theoretical Overview/Rationale:

I have chosen this topic because fiction novels have always been my preferred genre of text. I have learned that reading as a rhetorical act goes together with connecting reading and writing within the classroom. My reasoning for this is because fiction novels can be interpreted in various ways depending on who is reading it and when and where they are reading it. This leads readers to have multiple interpretations of the same text and their individual interpretations will have variants.

One must include the concept of interpretations varying regarding descriptions found in novels. More specifically, descriptions involving scenery or detailed clothing.

Sometimes perspectives are physical- actual places from which to view material things. For example, go to the top floor of the tallest building at your university and look through a window. What do you see? Likely, you will see the tops of trees and other smaller buildings on campus, and perhaps even a geometrical pattern of walkways crisscrossing a central quad or plaza. Then, leave the building, and as you do, stop on the front steps, and take another look at the campus. It is the same campus, of course, but because your perspective has changed, what you see is likely very different. (Karlyn)

Karlyn’s thought process suggests that there are multiple ways to interpret the same description and even though those interpretations vary, they are not necessarily incorrect or contradictory of one another. The reason this interests me regarding my own classroom is because I want to celebrate the students’ varying interpretations of the same work. By doing so, my hope is that the students will appreciate one another’s perspective and thus build off one another’s ideas. An example that I would use in my classroom is from “The Yellow Wallpaper:” “The most beautiful place! It is quite alone, standing well back from the road, quite three miles from the village. It makes me think of English places that you read about, for there are hedges and walls and gates that lock, and lots of separate little houses for the gardeners and people” (Gilman 4). This simple description can, and should, be interpreted in various ways.

Another concept that I want to implement with my students is the idea that analyzing or critiquing a certain type of reading or writing will result in the reader subconsciously adapting to that way of reading and/or writing. Fish states, “…the facts that I cite as ones ignored by a formalist criticism (premature conclusions, double syntax, misidentification of speakers) are not discovered but created by the criticism I was myself practicing” (147). My hope for this concept is to introduce my students to different methods which will include the introduction of understanding rhetoric through utilizing fiction novels. By introducing the students to this method of reading, they will eventually be doing so on their own without much instruction or pleading.

How would I do this, though? My plan would be to slowly introduce the students to reading as a rhetorical act. I plan to use Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” as a short introductory piece. By starting off the semester with a short story, rather than a full novel, the students will be able to see their progression of understanding sooner, resulting in them being rewarded with that understanding. My hope then would be that they feel accomplished and proud of themselves for understanding such a daunting theory that they would feel so inclined to continue using that rhetorical thought process throughout the full semester. “Most examples of rhetoric are not spontaneous, spur-of-the-moment exclamations; rather they are carefully thought-out messages” (Karlyn). Rather than diving into a lengthy novel while also trying to understand a convoluted topic, the students will be introduced to rhetorical reading and connecting reading and writing through a short story that they can read fully within the allotted class time.

Yet another aspect that I wish to implement into my classroom is the use of journals, corresponding to free writing and reader responses. My hope would be that by introducing students to journals, they would feel like they have a safe space to communicate. A lot of students do not like participating in discussions during class time whether it be due to nerves and anxiety or just a lack of understanding of the subject matter at hand. One added benefit of using journals in the classroom is that:

The act of taking written notes about the text material enhances comprehension, as this activity involves sifting through text to determine what is most relevant, transforming and reducing the substance of those ideas into written phrases or keywords. Intentionally or unintentionally, note takers organize the abstracted material in some way, connecting one idea to another while blending new information with their own knowledge (Miller 37).

By having students take notes during their initial read-through, they will be able to remember what they read better than if they had read it without taking notes. Also, by journaling with the intention of understanding rhetoric and connecting reading and writing, students will have a better insight into these concepts than if they had not been journaling, free writing, or completing reader responses. Moving towards free writing within the students’ journals, “…free writing is writing at such a rate of speed that the voice in my head takes over and starts to express itself through my fingers. If I were to stop to check the squiggles on the screen or to be sure that I spelled everything correctly, I would lose my train of thought” (Urbanski 54). By this definition, free writing is something that my students would be doing nearly every class period in their journals. One big concept that I want to implement in my classroom is the idea of journaling, or free writing in this case, when the student reads the text for the first time. I want them to write down their initial reactions, predictions, thoughts, feelings. I want them to essentially catalog their first reading experience. By doing so, they will have substantial information to look back on when they’re working towards their final paper and trying to decide on a topic for it. In the long run they will be writing their final paper throughout the entirety of the semester, they just won’t be aware of it.

Why does free writing work, though? Well, “[f]ree writing works because we can use language in order to tame the chaos in our minds created by all of the thoughts produced by the experiences. When we let those thoughts come freely then represent them on paper in a way that only we need to understand, we open the floodgates for all of the ideas that the magnificent human brain contains” (Urbanski 57).

By having students free write in their journals, they’ll be able to express their thoughts, their frustrations with what they are currently reading. And by recording those emotions, thoughts, and predictions, they will be able to reflect on them when they are further into the novel and see how their own thoughts have changed throughout the course of the novel.

Prior to free writing, the instructor needs to make sure that the students understand the expectations that come with free writing. I view this as more of a suggestion box than anything else because free writing and journals are personal and intimate with each student. Everyone will have various responses and journaling habits. The students need to know this. Mistakes will be made and there should not be a grade associated with the grammar when it comes to the journals. “It’s important to reassure them at the beginning that mistakes of writing etiquette are okay in the free writing phase. It is perfectly acceptable to digress, misspell words, talk to yourself, and deviate from standard English. This is a difficult concept for them to grasp at first, but without it, they will never feel their thoughts take over” (Urbanski 58).

While I plan on implementing journal check-ins, I don’t plan on using these times to grade the students on their grammar, their sentence structure, or anything along those lines. When performing a journal check-in, I mainly want to be double-checking that the students are using their journals and to answer any questions that they might have regarding their journals.

I have listed a few materials that I have created for this theoretical course. I have listed the Course Description and Details along with an example of a handout for Peer Review following the writing of a paper. I have also included some journal prompts to get students going with their journal writing in case they don’t have inspiration one day. My hopes with these materials are that each will provide a tool for the students to gain the most knowledge they can regarding rhetoric and reading as a rhetorical act.

Course Details/Description:

Course: Tenth Grade English Composition (Writing Intensive)

Topic/General Idea: Using Fiction Novels to Gain Rhetorical Understanding

Description: What is genre and how will we be focusing on it during our time together for this course? Genre is classified as “a category of artistic composition, as in music or literature, characterized by similarities in form, style, or subject matter” (Google). This course will be focused on using texts within the fiction genre to gain rhetorical insight and/or theory. Our focus will be free writing in journals and classroom discussions that are fueled by the topics written about in the journals. Alongside those, we will also include several papers where we will delve into the rhetoric behind these fiction novels. By the end of the course, you will have read several fiction novels and understand their part in the act of rhetorical reading and thus, you will have a better understanding of connecting your reading and writing.

Peer Review for Paper 1

Reviewer, answer the following questions (does NOT have to be full sentences, bullet points are fine) regarding the author’s work. Remember to be professional and use constructive criticism.

Fish, Stanley. Is There a Text in This Class? The Authority of Interpretive Communities. Harvard University Press, 1982.

Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. The Yellow Wallpaper. Rockwell and Churchill Press, 1899.

Karlyn Kohrs Campbell, et al. The Rhetorical Act: Thinking, Speaking, and Writing Critically. Stamford, CT, Cengage Learning, 2015.

Miller, Brett, Peggy D McCardle, and Richard Long. Teaching Reading and Writing: Improving Instruction and Student Achievement. Baltimore, Maryland: Paul H. Brookes Publishing, 2013.

Urbanski, Cynthia D. Using the Workshop Approach In the High School English Classroom: Modeling Effective Writing, Reading, and Thinking Strategies for Student Success. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press, 2006.