{"id":1773,"date":"2016-02-23T21:30:58","date_gmt":"2016-02-24T03:30:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/content.principia.edu\/teaching-excellence\/?p=1773"},"modified":"2016-02-23T21:34:46","modified_gmt":"2016-02-24T03:34:46","slug":"teaching-acknowledgement-and-response-and-modeling-academic-conversation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/content.principia.edu\/teaching-excellence\/teaching-acknowledgement-and-response-and-modeling-academic-conversation\/","title":{"rendered":"Teaching Acknowledgement and Response (and Modeling Academic Conversation!)"},"content":{"rendered":"

One night recently, less than twelve hours before my 8:00 a.m. Fundamentals of Academic Writing class was due to meet, it hit me that I needed a new strategy for teaching my students how to incorporate counterargument into their essays. My students had written first drafts of position papers, and they were ready to work on addressing alternate viewpoints.<\/p>\n

But it wasn\u2019t going to be enough just to tell my students, \u201cBring the opposing point of view into your paper,\u201d or even to have them analyze some published examples: My students needed to experience<\/em> what it was like to account for an opposing viewpoint, and they needed a model for doing so.<\/p>\n

Digging back into my theatre background, I decided to write a script.\u00a0 The script would have to accomplish three purposes: (1) Show students how to articulate an alternate viewpoint; (2) provide students with a framework in which to practice acknowledging and responding to that viewpoint; and (3) model\u2014however broadly\u2014the conventions of civil academic discourse.<\/p>\n

The script that emerged [click here for script] <\/a>allowed students to practice these skills at both the whole-essay and paragraph levels.\u00a0 Entitled \u201cI see what you\u2019re saying, but\u2026,\u201d the script took the form of a fill-in-the-blanks dialogue. Students were divided into pairs, one student taking the part of the author, the other the reader (or respondent), and they worked their way through the script, first acknowledging and then responding to arguments that challenged their essay\u2019s main claim (or thesis), and then doing the same for the essay\u2019s subclaims at the paragraph level.\u00a0 Then the two team members switched roles.<\/p>\n

My one concern about using the script was that students might find it vastly oversimplified.\u00a0 In fact, I encouraged my students to go off script as soon as they learned the drill.\u00a0 But they didn\u2019t.\u00a0 They stuck closely to the script, calling out their lines to each other: \u201cI\u2019ve considered your claim,\u201d the student-readers announced, sometimes gesturing emphatically, \u201cbut it is not valid because of [alternate claim].\u201d\u00a0 \u201cWell,\u201d the authors responded, \u201cI\u2019ve considered that [alternate claim],\u201d but while it is valid, my claim is still valid because _______________.\u201d It was an incredibly lively class, and all students were fully engaged.\u00a0 And when my students turned in their revised essays, each of them thoughtfully incorporated counterargument.<\/p>\n

One of the takeaways I had from developing this script was how much students can benefit from an interactive model\u2014in this case, one that allowed them to engage in and emulate a technique they will need to use throughout their college and professional careers.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Anne spent the first years of her professional life pursuing a career in theater. She then shifted gears so that she could study Renaissance literature at the University of Virginia.\u00a0 While at UVA, Anne discovered a love for teaching academic writing, and in addition to serving as a lecturer and instructor for literature courses, taught writing extensively; she also served for a year as the director of first-year writing. \u00a0At UVA, Anne was also managing editor of <\/em>Postmodern Culture. Most recently, she has taught English at the Mount Snow Academy and worked as a freelance editor. Anne\u00a0works in\u00a0Principia College\u2019s Center for Teaching and Learning.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One night recently, less than twelve hours before my 8:00 a.m. Fundamentals of Academic Writing class was due to meet, it hit […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[110],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1773","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-teaching-tips"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5DI6r-sB","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/content.principia.edu\/teaching-excellence\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1773","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/content.principia.edu\/teaching-excellence\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/content.principia.edu\/teaching-excellence\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/content.principia.edu\/teaching-excellence\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/content.principia.edu\/teaching-excellence\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1773"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/content.principia.edu\/teaching-excellence\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1773\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1778,"href":"http:\/\/content.principia.edu\/teaching-excellence\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1773\/revisions\/1778"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/content.principia.edu\/teaching-excellence\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1773"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/content.principia.edu\/teaching-excellence\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1773"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/content.principia.edu\/teaching-excellence\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1773"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}