Unit I Discussion
Minor Works:
“Two Ways of Seeing a River”—Mark Twain [handout/online]
Over the Edge: Death in the Grand Canyon(excerpt)— Ghiglieri & Myers [online]
“Shooting an Elephant”—George Orwell [in Language of Composition/online]
“The Death of the Moth”—Virginia Woolf [online]
“The Death of a Moth”—Annie Dillard [online]
Through the Dark Continent(excerpt)—Henry Morton Stanley [online]
Travels in West Africa(excerpts)—Mary Kingsley [online]
“Who Killed Easter Island”—Jared Diamond [online]
Nature(excerpt)—Ralph Waldo Emerson [online]
Major Work:
The Demon in the Freezer—Richard Preston
What to expect: This time around we will keep it simple. It will be set up as an inner/outer circle discussion (or, in those classes small enough, only one circle). Only the people in the inner circle will be allowed to speak. Halfway through the class, we will switch so that everyone will get a chance to contribute to the discussion.
Ground Rules:
- There is no winning here. This is not a debate where one side is trying to outdo the other. This is a discussion where we are all bringing something to the table, and together hoping to work towards a better understanding of the texts.
- Keep the discussion text-based. Cite specific examples and quotations. This means that you will need all texts in front of you! Come prepared.
- Disagree with ideas, not people.
- Do not use the time when others are talking just to think of what you will say. Pay attention. If necessary, we will institute the rule that as part of your response, you will need to repeat the argument of the previous person (as in, “I think what you’re saying is that Preston ______, and I agree to a certain extent, but I think we also need to consider______.”).
- Respond to the idea at hand. Do not bring up new points randomly when others are still discussing something else.
- Look to invite new voices to speak. Your job is not just to share your ideas, but to ask questions that provoke high-level responses from others.
- We are looking to cover entirely new ground in this discussion. Comments should show evidence of independent thinking. Do not rehash what we have already discussed.
- Do not dominate conversation (either individually or with back and forth banter). You are not graded on the number of times you speak, but on the quality of your contribution. If you interrupt or talk over others, you will lose points. If you are not engaged in the conversation, you will lose points. If you continually display such disrespectful behavior, you will be asked to leave.
Questions to get you started: As you prepare for discussion, read back over your annotations on all the works. Spend some time thinking about the questions below. It might be helpful to jot down some of your responses so that if you get nervous during discussion, you can refer to your notes. You will also want to prepare some questions of your own.
- What is the individual’s responsibility to nature/the environment? What does our interaction with the environment say about us? [Overarching six week question]
- What connections do you see between/among these texts? Which texts have similar purposes? Audiences? Arguments? Tone?
- In this group of writers, who would disagree with whom, and why?
- In The Demon in the Freezer, Preston appeals to ethos, pathos, and logos in a very calculated manner. Compare his use of appeals to that of another author whose work we have read this six weeks.
- Pick a rhetorical strategy and discuss how it is used for similar/different effects or purposes in at least two or three works we have read this six weeks.Explain in detail.
- What prompted the authors to write these pieces? Was there an event or occasion to which they were responding? If you don’t know, can you speculate?
Your questions: In preparation for our discussion, you should come up with your own questions to pose to the group. These should not be level one, factual right/wrong questions with easy answers. Try to make connections between texts. Try to ask questions that require analysis and synthesis.