You Say Tomato...

Writing a blog has never been easy, at least not for me. I do it not for fun (although at times it can be quite enjoyable), but I do it to show my writing students what conversations can be had in the blogosphere. I have reminded myself time and time again that there is one subject, both on blogs and in the papers that students write, that comes up. And that's this: how do professors deal with controversial topics in the classroom, ones in which students and faculty might align themselves on opposite ends of a discussion or issue? What can you constructively say when you think the writer is wrongheaded, or stubborn, or clearly ill-informed?

This happens to me every semester.  I read and evaluate a students' argumentative texts (be it essays, blogs, or even classroom discussions), and it is my job is to evaluate the strength of their arguments based on argument structure, evidence, and so forth. In Aristotle's On Rhetoric, he outlines three distinct types of persuasion: pathos (appealing to the emotions of the reader), ethos (the character of the author), and logos (the data and details that can make an argument credible), and I think his categorization was pretty spot-on and relevant to this day, even in the era of the technical online writer. I often find in my freshman students' writing that we get a wide variety of all three: there are a lot of emotional appeals to readers in an attempt to reach out and relate. For example, students in one of my online ENG 3 courses happen to write about U.S. health care reform, and often they use anecdotal evidence of their experiences with and without health care coverage. These circumstances can often be harrowing to read, especially when a student talks about his father's heart attack or another her mother's drug overdose and the type of health care responses that followed. Pathos allows these students to share feelings and thoughts with readers, and to let readers "empathize." Students often write with ethos in mind when they highlight their career goals and ambitions and describe their own experiences in their field. Ethos in writing can range from a cover letter highlighting the credentials of the writer, to an essay writer keeping their tone controlled and congenial and not overly aggressive when writing for a wide range of readers on a hot topic. Finally, every semester I cajole students into providing supporting information through the use of logos: those bits of reliable data and details that scaffold an argumentative position. 

So, if students have these three persuasive tools to choose from, how is it that sometimes I just am not convinced, no matter the data delivered, the emotional appeal provided, or the credential of the author and their expertise satisfied? I wonder if it is in human nature to disagree? (Of course it is.) I think of the political power couple of Mary Matalin and James Carville, both strategists for the Republican and Democratic parties, respectively. If they can stay married knowing their own political polemics, how hard can it be to accept the validity of a student's written truth, even if that truth is far and away not a truth that I can accept?

It comes down to understanding, I think, that the very heart of an argument is a thesis: the arguable position one takes. Persuasive tools aside, a student writer/blogger must make their case, to support that thesis with rational, reliable evidence. And to do that with ethos, they must use the best and freshest, most credible sources and examples they can find, through in-depth research, which we must model in the classroom learning space. Students should use pathos sparingly: it works in small doses and can enhance the connection and dialogic between writer and reader, but overkill can mask a lack of ethos and logos. And, above all, students must be able to understand good data, and that there is a difference between data. How does one create a survey? Who is surveyed? What type of test, or participant-observation, or interviewing, or historical research was done, by whom, and for what reason? Does this data really fit the student's argument? Where could it be flawed? 

I think it is easier for me to accept the work of a student with whom I fundamentally disagree, for example, if the student has paid attention to choosing reliable sources, verifiable data, and evidence both personal and of-the-world. These students are welcome to come to alternative positions on the issues. Don't economists? Don't lawyers, and doctors doing tricky surgeries or trying new modes of treatment? Don't historians interpret the events of our shared pasts in a wide variety of ways?

We do not have to agree with our students to help them to make acceptable, nuanced arguments. Based on my own research and understandings of the world, just about half the time I won't agree with a conclusion. And if the conclusion is flawed in a way that I can help the student (by finding better data, by evaluating the credentials of sources, by having additional sources or by thinking of an issue from many opposing sides), I must speak up, out, and pitch in to help the student find firmer ground on which to stand (Hurlbert). We have not had the experience of our students, nor have we shared in all of their research and thought processes. The place from where they "stand" is quite far apart from our own. But if a student puts thoughtful effort and research and comes up with a plausible argument that puts him or her on another side of an issue I am on, I just hope to learn more from them. And, maybe, be invested in the potential of continued dialogue. You never know. Sometimes you can change someone's mind, or at least open up the possibilities...

Work Cited

Hurlbert, Claude. “A Place in Which to Stand.” Relations, Locations, Positions: Composition Theory for Writing Teachers. Ed. Peter Vandenberg, Sue Hum, and Jennifer Clary-Lemon. Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English, 2007. 353–58. Print.

Writing in an Everywhere Space

Like my students, I have had to transition into blog writing from a more "traditional" academic space of masters and doctoral English classes. I am fairly skilled at MLA style, argumentative structures, Toulmin's model for Argumentation, and the like. But what about writing in a 3-D space, one that invites dialogue, disagreement, and what I would like to call "live" writing (writing that has not ended because its potential through a blog and through continued potential audience interaction allows it to continue to "breathe" on the Internet)? What can students learn from blog writing that will benefit their academic life? And what from their academic life can benefit the blogosphere?

Take the advice of master fictioneer Stephen King. In his Second Foreword in On Writing, he suggests that On Writing is short ecause "most books about writing are filled with bullshit. Fiction writers, present company included, don't understand very much about what they do--nor why it works when it's good, nor why it doesn't when it goes bad" (11). I think that King could be talking about nonfiction writers in academia, too. I remember most of my work back in the day, up to and including the very recent present with my final dissertation defense. I know what environment I set to write that text (Centreville Library cubicles, laptop, a heavy bag full of books and a Diet Coke, and T-minus three hours until I was back on baby duty). But I don't know how I did what I did, really. I cannot look in on my brain and decipher step-by-step actions in the writing of academic texts. Really, all I can do is share a feeling that I was setting the stage in an appropriate way. I worked with feedback from my director, and went back to the library. I would research and read mostly at night, in bed before I fell asleep; and I would write in the mornings and during the quiet afternoons when my daughter was asleep. Sometimes at home I'd work on it with a big glass of Cabernet Sauvignon. In the end it worked out.

That text said a lot about how students writing blogs was a good thing; that students created "artifacts" that continue to speak to those who interact with those artifacts. So now I encourage students to write blogs in my ENG 112 classroom. I tell them to choose a newsworthy and researchable topic (as the best topics I've found are those that the authors are interested in but aren't experts--not yet).

So what works with these online artifacts? 

1. They can absolutely be academic. By the very nature of topics chosen, students can quickly link to current trends in IT, in neuroscience, in healthcare policy, in the environment. 
2. Students can write conventionally; they can choose academic phrasing and structure, making their texts more like academic papers than newspapers or social blogs/social media Twitter responses.
3. Blog discussion can fuel an edit and an enhancement of text, which mirrors peer-to-peer or instructor-to-peer classroom feedback on early drafts of academic papers.
4. Blog writers can learn burgeoning Web technologies that will help transition them to real-world writing experiences (because, really, not all student writers will land careers in academia).
5. Blog writing is the great equalizer: there is no peer-review, and fresh ideas can be published by anyone with access to the Internet.

Of course, there are issues with online writing, too:

1. Students can adopt the writing of the personal on the Web. Slang, misspellings, fragmented sentences, and a lack of clarity of argument can fill the spaces of a blog post. Student writers can forget audience and imagine that they are writing an online diary and not an academic text.
2. Freedom in blog design can support some students but throw other students off (those without an "eye" for pleasing design. Strange blog layouts, color combinations, small fonts (all the creative, visual things an academic paper strips from students' work are available on blogs) can distract from even the best argument.
3. When students don't research well (the first few hits on a Google search is quite different from a real in-depth research of Lexis-Nexis or other a college's educational databases), their arguments can seem trite, "too safe," or just plain ill-informed.
4. Student blog writers can find argumentative blogs to emulate that have no real substance, creating a never-ending loop of false support. 
5. While blog writing is the great equalizer, a lack of peer-review can affect not just the quality but the quantity of texts one has to wade through. Making quality works more difficult to find in a saturated blogosphere.

I'm confident that students blogging can overcome these negatives and come up with a series of texts that dig deeply enough on a topic that they will have gained benefit from their research and writing. I don't know if I can tell a student how to write a blog any better than I can tell them how to write an academic essay. Each student has to grapple with context: What is the topic they chose? What position do they take on the issue? Why? What don't they know about the issue? What can an audience be educated about so that they can be persuaded ethically? These are the questions writing professors can and should ask. But it doesn't really change when writing for the Web. Those questions are still important. The benefit, though, is that students get an audience with potential, much wider than that of a 16-week college classroom. The benefits of those online audience members, and of the potential academic artifact, expand into possibility.

Work Cited

King, Stephen. On Writing. New York: Scribner, 2000.

Blog Writing: Coming up with a Workable Idea

This semester is another one in which my students are diving into blog writing for our semester in ENG 112 (second semester composition). I have seen a variety of topics over the years, to include politics, the environment, cultural differences ("fish out of water," stories, for example). The paranormal, movie reviewers, and South Asian entertainment have also been tackled. What drives students to these topics? How do they choose them and sustain them over the course of a semester? Some students key in on a topic they're comfortable with, something that they read about or watch or study in their spare time. That was true when I did my semester blogs on home improvement and personal finance. Others choose a topic they want to learn more about, allowing them to benefit their personal interest by tying it to an academic assignment.

One of the main goals I try to drill into students is that when they have a choice in the topics they write, they should choose a topic that has personal interest to them. But I also want them to be challenged. If a student is into fashion, I don't want a basic fashion blog. I want each student to challenge their understandings and assumptions of fashion and write about what they don't fully know about. For example: for the fashion student, how hard would it be to get a design off the ground? What time, tools, education, connections, luck, finances, and skills would a designer need? This student could also research how fashion magazines key in on trends; how having celebrity spokespeople helps or hurts a brand; even the commodity of fashion could be discussed. 

Any blog writer must be determined to build their archive of posts to show a depth of discussion, time studying the topic, an understanding of a dual audience (classmates and those interested in their topic), both academic and real-world writing conventions (citations/references for academic-style posts, and hyperlinks and clear citations for the blog-oriented posts). Writers should encourage discussion and debate and build additional posts based on these dialogues. 

Remember: blog writing is community-oriented writing. Your audience will appear; they'll make themselves obvious through their comments, and they'll let you know what they think about your content. You can make that a benefit and continue to grow as a writer through all of that interaction. Take a chance with blogging and see what comes of it...