[Teaching_Composition] Drafts and Info Literacy

[Phyllis Mentzell Ryder]

Hi Rolf,
It's great to hear your voice on the listserv; I've admired your work on 
rhetoricizing info lit.  It's a very convincing argument and has helped 
to generate many productive partnerships between our first-year writing 
faculty and our university librarians.

To answer your prompt: In terms of the drafts I have on my desk, I find 
that one rhetorical move that my students don't yet recognize as they 
use sources is that simply stating the conclusion of someone else's 
article is not enough to convince an (academic) reader that the 
conclusion is valid.  I've been writing on the drafts something like, 
"can you provide some information about the methodology of the study so 
we can see how the author arrived at this position"?  In workshops today 
this seemed like a new idea to some of them.  Others were doing it to 
excess--getting more caught up in summarizing the methods of an article 
than in using that article to advance their own positions.

But more interesting, I think, was a conversation in a peer workshop 
group.  The student author had developed a pretty solid argument, 
mounting her evidence and intertwining her sources--and then in the last 
paragraph she summarized an article that turned everything on its head.  
The final paragraphs revealed her wrestling with this new source, trying 
to downplay it but also interested in what it was saying.  In the group 
workshop, one peer said, "I think you should cut this part."  The author 
said, "but I think I believe it.  It's confusing because I came to it so 
late in the reading and I don't know what to do."  So I said, "maybe 
that article and the problems its causing you are the real starting 
point of the paper.  The goal is not about winning an argument but about 
finding out what you believe."  Those are the moments when teaching 
research is most exciting.
Phyllis

-- 
phyllis mentzell ryder | assistant professor of writing |university writing program | the george washington university |  2100 fox hall road | washington dc 20007 | pryder@gwu.edu | academic center 107 [mt vernon]|fax: 202.242.6669 | 202.242.6667 


Everything will be okay in the end.  If it's not okay, it's not the end.