Jeremy T.
Mumford
Division:
Humanities
Department:
English/
Developmental
Contact Info:
Phone: (209) 384-6178
mumford.j@mccd.edu
Current* and Previously Taught Courses:
English 80
English 81*
English 84
English A
English 1A*
English 41*
English 1B*
Useful Student Links (includes online sites, class PowerPoint presentations, etc.)
Useful Teacher Links (includes online sites, links to journals, teaching websites)
Clubs:
Phi Theta Kappa
Students for Social
Justice
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| Pedagogical Information | Composition Journals | General Education | Writing Across the Curriculum |
| Cultural Studies | Organizations | Critical Thinking, Reading, and Writing | Grading |
| Grammar |
Radical Teacher: a socialist, feminist, and anti-racist journal on the theory and practice of teaching: "Radical Teacher is an independent magazine for educational workers at all levels and in every kind of institution. The magazine focuses on critical teaching practice, the political economy of education, and institutional struggles."
University of Illinois Composition Requirements
The Bedford Bibliography for Teachers of Writing: This online version of The Bedford Bibliography for Teachers of Writing provides a convenient resource for instructors and graduate students who want to familiarize themselves with the growing body of scholarship or acquire an overview of the discipline quickly, provides a brief history of writing instruction, with cross-references to entries in the bibliography, outlines the development of the discipline from classical rhetoric to composition and rhetoric studies through the 1990s, and contains approximately 400 bibliographic entries, each consisting of publication information and a brief descriptive paragraph, providing access to materials helpful for teachers of writing which have been selected for their practicability; furthermore, the works cited -- books, journal articles, periodicals, and bibliographies -- represent the theoretical and pedagogical concerns most prevalent in composition studies today.
Composition Studies: The oldest independent periodical in its field, Composition Studies is an academic journal dedicated to the range of professional practices associated with rhetoric and composition: teaching college writing; theorizing rhetoric and composing; administering writing related programs; preparing the field's future teacher-scholars.
BWe: Basic Writing e-Journal: This is a link to the Conference on Basic Writing (CBW) website. CBW's goal is to provide a site for professional and personal conversations on the pedagogy, curriculum, administration, and social issues affecting basic writing. You can find internet resources, an e-journal (where many interesting and free full-text articles are available), and reading list.
National Council of Teachers of English: Since 1911, NCTE has worked to advance teaching, research, and student achievement in English language arts at all scholastic levels.
College English Online: Informational only. Must subscribe for most content.
Praxis: A Writing Center Journal: Featuring free articles, a biannual electronic publication sponsored by the University of Texas Undergraduate Writing Center, a component of the Division of Rhetoric and Composition at the University of Texas at Austin. It is a forum for writing center practitioners everywhere.
The Writing Instructor: Featuring free articles, a blind, peer-reviewed journal, publishing in print since 1981 and on the Internet since June, 2001. Its distinguished editorial board consists of over 150 scholars- teachers- writers representing over 75 universities, community colleges, and K-12 schools. Find full-text articles and resources.
The Chronicle of Higher Education: The Chronicle of Higher Education is the academic world's No. 1 source of news and information. Subscribers who register can receive free access to all of this Web site and regular e-mail news updates.
Currents in Electronic Literacy: find full-text published works addressing the use of electronic texts and technologies in reading, writing, teaching, and learning in fields including but not restricted to the following: literature (in English and in other languages), rhetoric and composition, languages (English, foreign, and ESL), communications, media studies, and education.
RhetNet: A Cyberjournal: A concerted effort to see what publishing on the net might be in its "natural" form. Find theory, articles, and various other information on rhetoric and the web.
Across the Disciplines: Featuring free articles, in January 2004, Academic Writing and Language and Learning Across the Disciplines merged to form Across the Disciplines. Back issues and full-text articles of Academic Writing and Language and Learning Across the Disciplines are available on this page.
Substantial Writing Component Resources: The SWC Resource Coordinator provides support to instructors of Substantial Writing Component (SWC) courses, and to anyone using writing in the classroom.
Kairos: Kairos is a refereed online journal exploring the intersections of rhetoric, technology, and pedagogy.Hmong Studies Resources: This website is a source of comprehensive information about studies of Hmong history, culture, and adaptation in diasporic communities around the world. The site also includes detailed Hmong, Lao, Cambodian, and Vietnamese census data from the U.S. Census as well as bibliographies. They are proud to note that their website has recently received a 5 star rating of "Essential" Scholarly Usefulness from the Asian Studies WWW Monitor website.
Organizations National Education Association:
National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE): http://www.ncte.org/
National Writing Project (NWP): http://www.writingproject.org/Pulitzer Prize: Listing of current and historical Pulitzer Prize categories, winners, and contestants
Critical Thinking, Reading, and Writing Websites
Composition Center: Teaching Critical Thinking
Perspectives On Grammar and Teaching Grammar
Complete Articles
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Hartwell, Patrick. "Grammar, Grammars, and the Teaching of Grammar." CE 47 (February 1985): 105–27. Rpt. in Enos [449]. The debate about whether grammar instruction improves writing will not be resolved by empirical studies. These studies suggest that grammar instruction has no effect on writing, and they have been attacked by proponents of such instruction. Grammar may be defined in five ways: (1) The internalized rules shared by speakers of a language. These rules are difficult to articulate and are learned by exposure to the language. (2) The scientific study of the internalized rules. Different theories of language generate different systems of rules. These rules do not dictate the actual use of grammar in the first sense. Researchers find no correlation between learning rules and using them, or between using rules and articulating them. (3) The rules promulgated in schools. These are simplifications of scientific grammars and are therefore even further from grammar as used by speakers of the language. They reflect the questionable belief that poor grammar is a cognitive deficiency. Metalinguistic awareness, including some knowledge of grammar, seems to be central to print literacy, but the awareness appears to follow, not generate, print literacy. (4) Grammar as usage: a set of exceptions to grammar rules. (5) Grammar as style: the use of grammatical terms in manipulating style. Much research suggests that active use of language improves writing more than instruction in any grammar. See: Richard Haswell, "Minimal Marking" [357]. |
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The prescriptive rules of grammar were divorced from descriptive linguistics in the nineteenth century, and trying to remarry them is difficult. The tradition of grammar handbooks is long and deeply ingrained, while linguistics has focused on oral language and theory. Descriptive grammar does, however, have much to offer about grammar conventions that can enliven and improve the grammar we teach to students. Haussamen, a community college teacher, offers new descriptions of old conventions including verb tense, agreement, passive voice, pronoun agreement, and punctuation, all in aid of a more rhetorical approach to grammar. |
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Writing teachers now generally agree that what counts as "error" in writing is socially determined, yet we continue to treat discrete errors in student papers as failures in the writer's knowledge of correct forms. Rather, we should see errors as instances of the writer's and reader's failure to negotiate an agreement on how their relationship is to be actualized in the text, that is, agreement on the features the text that permits a satisfying relationship will need to have. Such negotiation could help determine, for example, whether a sentence fragment is to be regarded as an error or as a stylistic device. "Basic writers," then, are those who are inept at such negotiation. They need to be taught what it is and how to do it, including how to make decisions about when or whether to use variant dialects of English. Horner concludes with some pedagogical suggestions for how to help basic writers learn to enter into such negotiations while revising their work. |
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Grammar was long regarded as an essential element in the teaching of writing, an attitude criticized and discarded in more recent times. However, the usefulness and methods of grammar instruction are still debated, with some good arguments appearing for at least limited grammar instruction keyed to students' writing. Sixteen essays explore grammar instruction past, present, and future, including Cheryl Glenn, "When Grammar Was a Language Art"; Gina Claywell, "Reasserting Grammar's Position in the Trivium in American Composition"; John Edlund, "The Rainbow and the Stream: Grammar as System versus Language in Use"; R. Baird Shuman, "Grammar for Writers: How Much Is Enough?"; Stuart Brown, Robert Boswell, and Kevin McIlvoy, "Grammar and Voice in the Teaching of Creative Writing"; and David Blakesly, "Reconceptualizing Grammar as an Aspect of Rhetorical Invention." |
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Grammar handbooks, if they do not simply forbid using sentence fragments, give few guidelines for using them effectively. A survey of samples of formal prose shows that accomplished writers use fragments often and in predictable ways. Kline and Memering list and explain the conditions in which fragments are effectively used and argue that such effective fragments should be called "minor sentences" (following Richard Weaver's suggestion) and taught as a stylistic option. |
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The dominant theory of prose style prizes clarity, brevity, and sincerity. This theory tries to make prose transparent; it reduces rhetoric to mere ornament; it runs counter to common sense, to what we value in literature, and to the fact that context defines its three main terms. Classical rhetorical terms provide an alternative way to describe prose style. Noun style relies on "be" verbs, prepositional phrases, and nominalized verbs. Verb style uses active verbs. Parataxis is the absence of connecting words between phrases and clauses, and paratactic style uses simple sentences and prepositional phrase strings. Hypotaxis is the use of connecting words, hence a highly subordinated style. Either style may use asyndeton (few connectors) or polysyndeton (many connectors). The "running" style uses parataxis: it is characterized by a serial record of ideas with many parenthetical additions. "Periodic" style is hypotactic: highly organized, reasoned, and ranked. Other stylistic devices (isocolon, chiasmus) affect these styles differently. Descriptive analysis should also account for visual and vocal form, the use of several common and effective tropes and schemes, and high and low diction. The reader's self-consciousness about style tends to direct judgments of style as clear or opaque, but determining the appropriateness of style to a range of purposes through descriptive analysis is a better way to judge prose. |
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Although teaching transformational grammar is no more helpful in improving student writing than instructing in traditional grammar, practice in sentence-combining (originally used as a way of teaching grammar) leads to increased syntactic maturity, even in the absence of formal grammar training of any kind. See Donald Daiker, Andrew Kerek, and Max Morenberg, "Sentence-Combining and Syntactic Maturity in Freshman English," CCC 29 (February 1978): 36–41. Cf. Faigley [329]. |
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One of the most common revision maxims given in rhetoric textbooks is to substitute concrete for abstract language. This advice springs from an ideology of style that values ahistoricism (focus on the present moment), empiricism (focus on sensory data), fragmentation (objects seen outside the context of social relations), solipsism (focus on individual's perceptions), and denial of conflict (reported facts have the same meaning for everyone). Following this advice may trap students in personal experience and inhibit their ability to think critically about the world. Students need to practice the relational thinking made possible by abstractions and generalizations. See: National Council of Teachers of English, The Sentence and the Paragraph [299]. |
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To teach style, we must convince students that they must master
style to express themselves with individuality and to communicate
vividly. We must give students a way to recognize and imitate
different styles, to incorporate them into extended discourse, and
to suit style to the rhetorical situation. Finally, we must
demonstrate our own ability to vary style in writing done in front
of the class. Connors, Robert J. "The Erasure of the Sentence." CCC 52 (September 2001): 96–128. Sentence-based pedagogies of the 1960s and 1970s have been completely elided within contemporary composition studies despite the evidence that they did work to improve student writing. Three sentence-based rhetorics of the New Rhetoric were the generative rhetoric of Francis Christensen, imitation exercises, and sentence-combining. The first full-scale empirical study of the Christensen system did demonstrate statistically significant classroom results; imitation was also tested and determined successful in helping writers to internalize sentence structures and design. Kellogg Hunt's work on syntactic maturity and his concept of the T-unit paved the way for important experiments on sentence-combining, with confident results that sentence-combining exercises improved both syntactic maturity as well as perceived quality of writing in general. Reasons for the erasure of the sentence and the devaluation of sentence rhetorics can be linked to anti-formalism, anti-behaviorism, and anti-empiricism, and to the changing demographics of composition studies as it became a subfield of English. Crowley, Sharon. The Methodical Memory: Invention in
Current- Current-traditional rhetoric, until recently the dominant approach in American schools, developed in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries when rhetoricians like George Campbell and Richard Whately rejected classical rhetoric's invention schemes. To discover arguments, they claimed, the writer had merely to investigate the workings of his or her own mind, for all minds worked alike. In this model of invention, the individual authorial mind was privileged over community wisdom, and the written text was regarded as a record of the mind's operations. Clarity and logic were the goal. Pedagogy based on this model emphasized the formal features of texts—correctness and logical organization, for example—that presumably reflected the well-ordered mind at work. The metaphysical principles, supposedly universal, on which this pedagogy is based make it inherently conservative and insensitive to cultural difference. A preferable rhetoric and pedagogy is one that values difference and the diversity of communal treasures as archives for invention. Shaughnessy, Mina P. Errors and Expectations: A Guide for the Teacher of Basic Writing. New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1977. Basic writers' errors in Standard English fall into patterns derived from systematic gaps in students' knowledge of the written form and from students' own idiosyncratic but regular plans for using unfamiliar writing conventions. Chapters 1 to 5 catalog students' problems with handwriting, punctuation, syntax, and spelling. Chapters 6 to 8 show that basic writers are unfamiliar with the concepts and argument forms that are customary in academic writing. To help these students learn Standard English and academic discourse, teachers should not rely on atomized drills. They should instead discuss the grammatical and argumentative principles that inform academic writing. Teachers should remember that basic writers are intelligent adults. This book has had enormous influence on the study of basic writing, not primarily for its ideas on classroom practice, but for its way of understanding the writing that basic writers produce. Smitherman, Geneva. Talkin' and Testifyin'. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1977. Black English takes many grammar rules and pronunciation patterns from West African languages. In America, the use of Black English is associated with a culture that values several forms of oral display, such as church oratory, and that holds a worldview different from that associated with Standard English, for example, in its preference for logical structures that are hierarchical or cyclical rather than linear. This book focuses less on Black English than on black culture, which it describes in detail. Smitherman strongly opposes requiring Standard English forms and culture for Black English speakers. For her comments on a court case mandating bilingual instruction for Black English speakers, see " 'What Go Round Come Round': King in Perspective," Harvard Education Review 51.1 (February 1981), rpt. in Brooks [445]. Soliday, Mary. "From the Margins to the Mainstream: Reconceiving Remediation." CCC 47.1 (February 1996): 85–100. Within a volatile atmosphere for remedial writing programs, FIPSE funded the Enrichment Approach at City College, featuring a two-course, six-credit sequence that bypassed test scores and mainstreamed students into a well-supported curriculum centered on language variety and cultural differences. A close reading of one student's portfolio illustrates the effectiveness of the mainstreamed curriculum. For example, in learning to approximate academic discourse, "Derek" begins to formulate generalizations more sophisticated than simple agreement or disagreement with a topic and uses both subordination and metalanguage. This student's portfolio illustrates "the promise of responsible mainstreaming" when the curriculum emphasizes linguistic self-consciousness, the study of language and culture, and social interactions with readers; however, what remains is to account for the complex institutional politics of remediation. Haswell, Richard. Gaining Ground in College Writing: Tales of Development and Interpretation. Dallas: Southern Methodist Univ. Press, 1991. New information about development and new theory about human change invites a new study into how students' writing changes during college based on a model that sees writing development as three-dimensional—an educational lifework, including growth and maturation yet firmly embedded in culture. An assortment of interpretive frames causes clashes between developmental and nondevelopmental tales of interpretation, many of which compromise the engagement between teacher and student. Writing teachers should conceive of pedagogical tasks—evaluation, models, diagnosis, curriculum—as narrative. Evaluation and course content should be based not on the growth but on the maturing of students, when maturing is defined as generative change towards cultural standards. The transformative approach offers idiographic frames of action for individuals to try rather than nomothetic categories—general interpretations rather than explanatory laws. The paradoxical bind between writing instruction and writing style cannot be entirely overcome, but the transformative offers a guide for such issues as solecisms, rate of production, sentence sense, organization, and remediality. An instrumental perspective generates a distinct understanding of pedagogical sequencing; however, a lifework tale of sequence has teachers joining students in some work, not imitating educational disciplines. Similarly, lifework developmental perspectives should inform curriculum and (true) diagnosis. Parts of this book are informed by empirical data from a study analyzing first-week diagnostic essays, end-of-course essays, and similar essays written by college graduates employed in business, government, and industry. Eden, Rich, and Ruth Mitchell. "Paragraphing for the Reader." CCC 37 (December 1986): 416–30, 441. While research shows that paragraphs in admired professional writing don't necessarily contain topic sentences or follow prescribed patterns, textbooks continue to offer these "rules." Writers should be taught, instead, reader-oriented paragraphing. Readers expect to see paragraphs and project several qualities upon them. Most important, readers will always treat the first sentence of a paragraph as the orienting statement, so writers should ask only if their first sentence orients the reader as they wish. Moreover, this consideration should arise only during the editing process and not—as generative theories of paragraphing suggest—during composing itself. Paragraphing shapes the reader's interpretation of the text. Ineffective paragraphing usually comes from thinking of paragraphs as formal structures related only to the material. Christensen, Francis. "A Generative Rhetoric of the Paragraph." CCC 16 (October 1965): 144–56. Rpt. in The Sentence and the Paragraph [299]; in Francis Christensen, Notes Toward a New Rhetoric: Six Essays for Teachers (New York: Harper and Row, 1967); and in Francis Christensen and Bonniejean Christensen, eds., Notes Toward a New Rhetoric: Nine Essays for Teachers (New York: Harper and Row, 1978). Paragraph structure resembles sentence structure (cf. [324]). The topic sentence, usually the first sentence, is analogous to the main clause, and supporting sentences, working at lower levels of generality, are analogous to modifying phrases. Relations between sentences in a paragraph are coordinate or subordinate. Most paragraphs exhibit both kinds of relation, even when there is no topic sentence or when the paragraph includes unrelated sentences. Students should practice diagramming paragraphs by level of generality to see where coordinate and subordinate additions are needed. Cf. Braddock [296]. Christensen, Francis. "A Generative Rhetoric of the Sentence." CCC 14 (October 1963): 155–61. Rpt. in The Sentence and the Paragraph [299]; in Francis Christensen, Notes Toward a New Rhetoric: Six Essays for Teachers (New York: Harper and Row, 1967); and in Francis Christensen and Bonniejean Christensen, eds., Notes Toward a New Rhetoric: Nine Essays for Teachers (New York: Harper and Row, 1978). Professional writers write "cumulative" sentences, in which modifying words and phrases are added before, within, or after the base clause. The modifiers work at different levels of abstraction and add to the sentence's texture. Students should practice writing cumulative descriptions of objects and events in single sentences, which will make style and content more complex simultaneously. See also Christensen [297]. Labov, William. The Study of Nonstandard English. Urbana, Ill.: NCTE, 1970. Nonstandard dialects of English, such as Black English, should not be seen as error-ridden deviations from the standard form—but neither should they be seen as separate languages. Comparative studies reveal that nonstandard forms express many of the same logical relations among elements in a sentence that the standard form does, in different yet regular ways. Almost all native speakers of English can use more than one dialect of the language, and almost all have at least some acquaintance with the standard form. Social class tends to determine which dialect a person feels most comfortable using. Nonstandard dialects tend to be socially stigmatized, even by those who feel most comfortable using them. Teachers must be aware of the grammatical structures and conventions governing social use of dialects to mediate between the dialects and Standard English. Some in-class speaking, reading, and writing in the students' dialects may help them to learn the standard form more quickly with less damage to their self-esteem. Lu, Min-Zhan. "Conflict and Struggle: The Enemies or Preconditions of Basic Writing?" CE 54 (December 1992): 887–913. When students from marginalized cultures enter the academy, they experience the pain of learning to live with multiple, conflicting points of view, but also the exhilarating creativity and insight that their borderland consciousness makes possible. Early work in basic-writing pedagogy sought to alleviate this pain, ignoring the accompanying benefits. Thomas Farrell and Kenneth Bruffee proposed acculturation as the cure, welcoming students into the intellectually superior academic community. This approach calmed colleagues who feared that basic writers would bring destructive change to the academy. Mina Shaughnessy, in contrast, offered accommodation, promising that students could accept the academic worldview without abandoning home allegiances. This approach also spared the academy from change. But the real task of the basic writer is neither to conform to nor abandon a monolithic discourse community, but to find innovative discursive strategies for negotiating the boundaries. Basic writers are complex selves, not to be essentialized as products of a single cultural group. The academy must adjust to these border-crossers' new discursive forms. Lu, Min-Zhan. "From Silence to Words: Writing as Struggle." CE 49 (April 1987): 437–48. Rpt. in Perl [239]. Lu describes her experiences in negotiating among different worlds: her early schooling in Maoist China, her parents' Western education, her graduate work in Pittsburgh. Dealing with the often painful conflicts among these worlds, Lu attests, helped her grow as a thinker and writer. She concludes that writing teachers should avoid making only one kind of discourse acceptable in their classrooms. Students, however, should not be led to believe that they can move freely among the discourses they know and at the same time keep each discourse pure. Instead, the conflict of discourses—in the classroom and in one's head—should be a topic of reflection. |
Updated 9/14/04 by Jeremy Mumford