WP3

WP3 Article Summary

The scholarly article “Teaching Punctuation as a Rhetorical Tool” by John Dawkins describes the rules and significance of punctuation as a rhetorical tool. Dawkins further explains the flexibility that punctuation allows and presents a new idea called functional punctuation: an idea that focuses on punctuating according to meaning and rhetorical situations rather than by grammatical rules. Similar to how genres and rhetorical conventions change based on an intended audience, punctuation changes based on how you want to present your ideas. Dawkins explains that the way each writer chooses to use a specific punctuation mark is entirely based on what they are trying to imply.

Dawkins also explains that this form of punctuation is used to clarify our meaning and gain appropriate emphasis. For example, one could write “Today John went to school.” Another way this could be written is, “Today, John went to school.” That being said, in the second example, the author would be choosing to add the comma, placing a pause after the word “today.” Although the sentences don’t differ much, there is a difference in the way the information was presented. Adding the comma affects the flow of the sentence and how one would read the sentence. Dawkins believes that functional punctuation is very beneficial, as it encourages students to analyze their rhetorical intentions and meaning. Likewise, this approach to punctuating is key to enforcing the idea that writing is thinking.

WP3: Transformation to younger audience

Genre: Children’s song

Punctuation Jam

Chorus:

Punctuation marks,

They make your writing smart

If you want your writing to glow,

use punctuation to make it flow.

Whether you’re writing for school or just to correspond,

without punctuation, your sentences will go on and on and on.

Don’t forget that punctuation,

will keep your meaning clear in any situation.

Periods are the first punctuation mark,

use it to end every sentence before another can start.

A period implies a full stop,

It’s simple, all you have to do is make a dot.

[Chorus]

Next is the comma, we use it a lot

use it to separate a list of things you bought.

You can also think of is as a pause,

use it when you want to connect an independent clause.

Then there is the colon, used in a few situations:

before an example, a list and sometimes before quotations.

A colon consists of two dots,

use it to express your thoughts.

Then comes the semi colon, which can be hard to understand

use it to join two sentences with no “and”.

Remember, if you get confused,

it will be the semi colon rather than “and” used.

[Chorus]

At last we have the dash, used to emphasize

or in other words to -- intensify.

We can also use the dash to separate thoughts,

don’t overthink if or you might get lost.

Don’t forget this song; it will make you smart.

Punctuation’s not too hard: soon you’ll know it by heart.

  

 WP3: Transformation to older audience

Genre: Teacher’s lesson plan

Date: 3/6/16 Lesson: Punctuation: As a Rhetorical Tool Class: Intro to Writing

Learning Context	Learning  Goal	Learning Development	Learning Activity	Learning Evaluation
An advanced level writing course; a unit on  punctuation as a rhetorical tool.	By the end of the lesson, students will be able to recognize and employ multiple uses of punctuation marks, based on rhetorical situations.	*Power Point	Write sentences on whiteboard and call on students to come up and write the punctuation where they think it should go. Go over answers with class.	*Quiz
		20 min	30 min	10 min

Notes:

                                                                                                     

·            Remind students that quizzes will be graded and uploaded by next class

·            Remind students that PB1A is due next class

·            Hand out updated syllabus

·            Remind students how to post PB to blog

          WP3 Follow Up Self-Analysis

The article “Teaching Punctuation as a Rhetorical Tool” by John Dawkins describes the rules and regulations and the value and significance of punctuation in writing. Dawkins further explains the flexibility that punctuation allows and presents a new idea called functional punctuation: an idea that focuses on punctuating according to meaning and rhetorical situations rather than by grammatical rules. Just as Losh and Alexander claim that “rhetoric is about saying the right thing at the right time”, the idea of functional punctuation claims that this form of punctuation is about using the right marks at the right time, depending on the situation. From this scholarly article, I transformed the material into two new genres. Using my own moves and prior knowledge on “how to communicate effectively with different communities”, I turned one into a genre for a younger audience and one into a genre for an older audience (Losh and Alexander).

        To turn the material presented in this scholarly article into a genre for children, I decided to change it into a children’s song. My goal for this piece was to teach a lesson on punctuation in a way that could be easily understood by and engaging to a child, specifically between the ages of 7-9. While trying to transform the scholarly article into a song, there were many questions I had to ask myself. I had to ask myself what aspects of the piece (if not the whole piece) would I focus on in the song, how would I break down the concepts into simpler terms, and how would I keep the attention of the child, all while following the conventions of a children’s song.

To start, I knew I had to pick a specific aspect of the scholarly article to choose from, as it would be nearly impossible to translate 17 pages of text into a song. I thought to myself, what are the most basic concepts that I could pull from the article and did just that. Rather than focusing on the abstract main idea of functional punctuation presented in the article, I focused on the basic punctuation marks and their functions. As children are not used to digesting advanced language and concepts, I wanted to make it as simple as possible so that they could best understand. To keep their attention, I used rhymes, as most children songs do. I created a chorus, as I wanted something that could be repeated and hopefully stick in their minds. I also tried to make the song visually pleasing (on paper) because bright colors and pictures are huge attention grabbers to children. One thing I decided to do differently than many authors of children’s songs was to include punctuation in the lyrics. I noticed many children’s song lyrics lacked basic punctuation marks and because my song is on the topic of punctuation I though it would be a great way for readers to see the marks I was teaching them in use. As many people are visual learners, just using the punctuation in the lyrics could help kids learn how to actually use the punctuation correctly. The tone of this song is playful and happy, a tone that I feel suits the needs of a child audience very well.

       To turn this scholarly article into a genre for adults, I decided to make a teacher’s lesson plan. My goal for this piece was to prepare a lesson plan on “Punctuation as a Rhetorical Tool” that any teacher could use to teach college freshmen students (young adults) Dawkin’s new theory of functional punctuation.  I chose this age group because this is when I first learned about the idea of functional punctuation and feel that others, like myself, would benefit from learning this too. When transforming this material into a lesson plan, I had to ask myself what was the best way to present the information and what aspects of the article I was going to use, all while following the conventions of a lesson plan.

            As I don’t have any experience with writing lesson plans, I had to do much research to find the conventions that make it one. That being said, I’d agree with Losh and Alexander when they say that “adopting an identity can be about doing real research—not just putting on a costume.” After researching for a while, I found that lesson plans come in many different forms whether it be daily, weekly, monthly, ect. I decided to do a daily lesson plan, as I figured that I would be able to teach students this topic in one lesson. When it came to formatting the actual lesson plan, I used a combination of many other templates I had seen. I made a diagram with 5 columns consisting of the headings “Learning Context”, “Learning Goal”, “Learning Development”, “Learning Activity”, and “Learning Evaluation”. I specifically chose those five headings because from all the lesson plans I saw, I felt that those were the most important aspects to a lesson plan. Under the first two headings, I gave a brief summary of the context that would be taught in the lesson and the goals of the lesson. In the “learning development” column, I wrote “*power point”. For learning development, which is the actual teaching of the lesson, I made a power point explaining the abstract concept and gave diagrams to help students understand. In the power point, I decided not to include in depth explanations of the material, as teachers usually put simple information on power points and then use their own knowledge on the topic to further explain. In the “learning activity column” I wrote down a simple activity that I would have the students do in class and in the “learning evaluation” column I wrote “*quiz”. To evaluate students and understand how well they grasped the material I taught them, I made a very brief quiz with a few questions that correlate directly to the power point. I also made a key with the answers and explanations as to why the answers are correct. According to Losh and Alexander, “sometimes you may want to show your deep understanding of your subject.” I felt that this was particularly relatable in this situation as a teacher holds more authority and should know the material they are teaching very well. In this lesson plan, I kept a professional tone throughout it and used advanced vocabulary to support the needs of my adult audience.

            During this project, when it came to appealing to an older and younger audience, I had to “[create] a completely different rhetorical effect” for each one. For the child audience, the tone was light and cheery, the concepts were simple, and the rhetoric was visually pleasing. In contrast, for the adult audience, the tone was professional and scholarly, the concepts and diction were abstract, and the rhetoric was professionally designed using charts and a power point, along with much less color. When creating the new genre for children and adults, I tried to “morph [myself] and [my] writing to fit [the two] different subjects [and] situations”. This allowed me to best understand how to present my ideas to appeal to each specific audience.

            Although planning and executing this project took a lot of time and effort, it forced students, including myself, to get creative. This was a very abstract project and at first it was hard to comprehend but with practice and more explanation, it became easier to understand and better yet, it became exciting to create. With this project I was definitely challenged a few times, but it only made me grow as a writer. I had to make revisions quite a few times to make everything flow, but overall I’d say I enjoyed the freedom that we had with this project. It allowed us to be ourselves and express a part of our creative mind that few other writing projects allow.

Works Cited

Dawkins, John. "Teaching Punctuation as a Rhetorical Tool." College Composition and Communication 46.4 (1995): 533-48. JStor. National Council of Teachers of English. Web. 23 Feb. 2016.

Losh, Elizabeth M., and Johnathan Alexander. “Writing Identities.” Understanding Rhetoric: A Graphic Guide to Writing. 114-139. Print.