Teaching English in the Two-Year College - Volume 28, Issue 4, 2001

Considers how Frank O'Connor's “My Oedipus Complex” provides a good introduction to the subtleties of narrative voice and control. Concludes by considering the notion of control and its relation to the narrative point of view in O'Connor's story and how it bears directly upon the value of reading literature and the reader's role.

Considers how using music in teaching language arts and literature helps to create kinship between students from various backgrounds and various parts of the world. Outlines the philosophical and historical basis for such an approach and discusses more benefits of a music-related approach. Suggests several class-tested curriculum strategies and specific assignments for introductory literature courses.

Suggests that it is easier to invigorate class discussion and stimulate critical thinking if students discover the constructed nature of the canon by first seeing that their notions about a “typical” Poe story have been shaped by an often invisible process of selection and exclusion.

Discusses leveling a charge of anti-intellectualism against compositionists who demand that theory result in classroom practice. Suggests the charge ignores the material conditions and intellectual reasons for that demand. Concludes there is a crucial place for theory in composition, even theory for theory’s sake, but teaching in the composition classroom should be the center of the discipline, its epistemological heart.

Considers how rhetoric, cognitive awareness, and competing cultures of community college composition students challenge instructors. Discusses issues such as: updating the definition of “student”; historically dynamic biculturalism; collaboration versus negotiated meaning; destabilizing knowledge; inventing the student; and mastering the art of persuasion. Concludes that instructors must be aware that theories, ideologies, and pedagogy influence students and therefore must be current.

Presents a questionnaire that helps gather valuable information about students’ attitudes toward mandatory placement in basic writing courses. Concludes that with the kind of information gleaned from responses to questionnaires similar to this one, educators can better understand the strengths and weaknesses of basic writing programs and revise their curriculum and placement procedures as necessary.

Notes that student writers gain greater insight into the importance of audience by analyzing business documents. Discusses how business writing teachers can help students understand the rhetorical refinements of writing to an audience. Presents an assignment designed to lead writers systematically through an analysis of two advertisements.

Offers a critical distinction between scholarship and research. Notes how George Vaughan urges community colleges to support and reward scholarship. Comments that excellence in teaching and therefore excellence in learning happen only when faculty and staff are engaged in their fields and supported in their daily work.

Available in print version only.

Reviews two books: Contexts, Intertexts, and Hypertexts, ed. by Scott Lloyd DeWitt and Kip Strasma; Writing and Healing: Toward an Informed Practice, ed. by Charles M. Anderson and Marian M. MacCurdy.