Every week I make the mistake of reading through the entire assigned chapter before sitting down to write. I do this because I like to develop the “big picture” being discussed in the chapter before committing words to print. Although I annotate and highlight along the way, I inevitably get to the end of the chapter and think, now what? This week is no exception, as this was again a chapter rich in ideas and terminology. However, I really find myself drawn to the sections of the chapter dealing with voice and rhetorical distance, particularly as a teacher. After all, my purpose for taking this class is credit toward a Writing Specialist Certification, so my first priority is how the information will help me to not only be a better writer, but a better teacher of writing. To that end, this chapter is loaded!
When I sit down to write a piece, I believe the consideration of distance between rhetor and audience develops automatically. I consider the audience, decide how I will approach my topic, and the thoughts just seem to roll. The voice, attitude, “grammatical person,” and punctuation just happen without much forethought. Despite my seemingly scattered nature when creating these blogs, my colleagues view me as an effective writer and often come to me for advice when composing pieces to administrators and parents. But being a proficient writer doesn’t necessarily make me an effective teacher of writing. Reading this chapter has forced me to more closely analyze the importance of these various components when teaching writing to students. Of course, these points are part of teaching my students to write, but I believe that in the elementary classroom, the points in this chapter come more into play during reading instruction, applying various strategies when reading, etc. But how great would it be if the students, even at nine years old, could apply these same strategies to their writing? Of course, we talk about the five domains of focus, content, organization, style, and conventions according to Pennsylvania’s Writing Rubric. But just thinking about getting the kids to connect reading and writing on a deeper level – my head is spinning with ideas just from reading this chapter. (I realize that Crowley and Hawhee probably didn’t have nine year olds in mind when they published this book, but as I said earlier, each of us is in this class for a different reason, so I’ll take from it what directly applies to my situation!) Did I offend anyone with my use of bold and an exclamation mark?
The other part of this chapter that I really took to heart was the connection between a speaker and his audience. We spent a great deal of time during our last class discussing audience and the rhetor’s approach from a logical (logos) standpoint. But now that I’ve read about ethos, I’m really thinking about how people present themselves, whether they be politicians, celebrities, teachers… What makes them credible, or not credible? First impressions, appropriate distance between speaker and audience, voice – all affect what people think. How much of what people put forth is truly them? How much is invented? That’s a separate blog altogether – probably more of a psychology course. Definitely much to think about…
Looking forward to further discussion tonight…
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