Design Slides
After many semesters of conveying the spirit of CRAP design principles to my students, I decided to outline exactly what I consider to be good and bad design work with tips and examples. I made this Google Slides deck for my 20803T students with the intention of using it for future audiences.
Course Description
“How can a knowledge of orality be derived from its opposite?” asked classics scholar Eric Havelock (44). The opposite to which Havelock alludes is literacy, or writing. Both orality (speaking) and literacy (writing) are modes of communication, but we often think of them as completely separate, like oil and vinegar. In this course, you will be challenged to determine the connection between orality and literacy for yourself. You will be asked to argue in response to questions, such as: "Can communication that travels across sound waves change the way we pen letters on the page? Will the way we call people to action on stage hold any bearing on the way we write convincing praise, insults, rationalizations, and advice? When does writing edit your speaking and speaking give voice to your writing? Endeavoring to assist you in answering these questions, your committed effort in this course will position you to use language and analysis of argument to expand your repertoire of skills to include rhetorical criticism, evidentiary source citation, and the ability to engage with familiarity and finesse in a range of contexts, from ancient-historical to contemporary-digital ones.
Credits: 3
Semester: Spring 2018
Progymnasmata
According to George A. Kennedy, “The Greek word progymnasmata means ‘preliminary exercises,’” used to prepare rhetors before delivering speeches (27). In this progymnasma, my student Kathleen Harrigan records an invective she wrote as a means of revising her writing through the practice of speaking.
Commonplace Books
To support my visual learners, I asked students to experiment with the idea of keeping commonplace books. Some students deeply enjoyed and benefited from this activity, as seen in the example below. These excerpts from a commonplace book created by Lindsay Carter demonstrate how this genre of writing and record-keeping can help writers in their prewriting efforts as well as their writing morale. Click through the gallery of images to explore her colorful imagery and inspirational thoughts on writing.
Videos
As part of our final evaluative experience in English 20803T: Orality and Literacy, Aaron Long remixes the ancient progymnasma of encomium as he creates a video as an alternative text to his spoken- and written-word performances of this piece. To see his works cited materials for this piece, please email me at jackie.e.h.elliott@gmail.com
As part of our final evaluative experience in English 20803T: Orality and Literacy, TCU student-athlete Steven Fossi-Noue remixes the ancient progymnasma of thesis as he creates a video as an alternative text to his spoken- and written-word performances of this piece.
Infographic
For another TCU student-athlete, rifle team shooter Emily Haag, the option to create an infographic was the more appealing option, when given the choice between an infographic or a video. In this visual illustration of her thesis project, Haag captures what she considers to be the most important warrants and pieces of data in her argumentative essay on the relationship between birth control and women's reproductive rights.
