[Teaching_Composition] Rhetorical analysis of scientific research report

[Neal Lerner]

Russ, I wish I had an easy answer for the challenge I offered (always  
easier to offer the challenge, right?!).  I want to respond to one  
point you made with an experience of my own:

> This is a challenge, for sure. In some years we've had the students  
> create a Web site, but the technical challenges often seemed to  
> overwhelm the rhetorical ones, and only once or twice in the years  
> we've done that has there been response from the world outside.  
> This year they produced a print book, distributed to everybody in  
> the course . . . but, as often happens, their colleagues took it as  
> a classroom based assignment, and responded accordingly. A  
> "classroom based exercise" categoricalloy constrains being judged  
> evaluatively, as an "English teacher" would evaluate it. I'm still  
> working on this problem.

This semester, my first-year writing class (labeled very loosely as  
"Introduction to Technical Communication") is working for a sponsor:  
a non-profit foundation whose mission is to raise money and awareness  
to fight a rare disease.  The bulk of the writing students will do  
will be for our sponsor's website.  Real and authentic, for sure.   
But the sponsor and I both are coming to grips with the reality that  
my inexperienced students will not necessarily come through in the  
end.  I'm hoping they learn a hell of a lot, but as far as usable  
text or redesign for the website (or more donor dollars because of  
usable text or redesign), we're not quite sure.  Partially, it's the  
deadline of a 15-week semester, partially it's their inexperience,  
partially it's my inexperience with the topic and the sponsor.  I  
feel creeping disappointment, but also hope that some students will  
rise to the occasion.  I really don't know.  The real world can be  
results oriented in ways that writing for class might never match. A  
grade of C or B gets you by, but it also gets you fired by the  
client.  And I'm still working on that problem.

Best,

Neal