As much as I enjoy Comstock and Hocks’ study that focuses on sonic literacy, I have problem with the very beginning of their discussion, and this is a problem correlated with many of the concerns we expressed in our last blog posts in response to Sirc’s argument. Comstock and Hocks foreground their discussion by stating that “Even with the renewed emphasis on visual and digital rhetoric, however, we as writing teachers are still very text-centered in our classrooms.” I wonder how would they define teachers being text-centered, since most of the teaching methods or methodology we read so far are still text/word/expression-based no matter how many new media elements are being incorporated. How are the assignments they introduced in the article making writing teachers less text-centered if the process of composing (drafting, revising etc.) and the effectiveness of the voic-narrative (expression, speaking techniques, critical thinking etc.) remain what teachers value in evaluating the assignments? As the projects they describe serve well for the teaching of listening rhetoric, Aristotelian rhetoric (in which social relations and civic roles of writers/speakers are emphasized,) and sonic composition, how do they differentiate the teaching of writing and that of rhetoric, if there is any to them? Furthermore, how does this distinction help us in broadening while also specifying the definition of Writing and Rhetoric—the freshmen comp course we are teaching?
No comments:
Post a Comment