INTERACTION

INTERACTION, AUTHORSHIP, TEXTUAL BORROWING AND PLAGIARISM



I. OVERVIEW



A. Casanave, Chap.5: Interaction




Briefly and basically: Teachers’ awareness on interaction, audience and textual borrowing in writing class.


1. Interaction between the writer and: reader, peer writers, imagined or real audiences, evaluators, critics, etc. (p. 157, para 1)

1.1. For audience design: Audience in mind while writing

a. Real audience: teacher, examiners, peer reading (more beneficial: friendly, interaction, live feedback, p. 167, para 2)
b. Electronic audience: No confrontation, freedom, secure alone before the screen (Matsuda’ experience, p 165, para 2)

1.2. Against audience in mind: Frustrating, constraining and threatening (Elbow, p. 168)

2. Plagiarism

a. Widespread in academic settings (US, Japan, p. 171-172)
b. Culturally, socially and historically constructed: no black-white definition (tentative definition on p. 173
c. Teachers’ role of explaining learners what plagiarism is.



B. Pennycook: Borrowing others' words: Text, ownership, memory and plagiarism.

Briefly and basically: Understanding plagiarism as a contextualized construct in relationship with text, memory, and learning.

1. Diachronic discourse about authorship

a. Mimetic in pre-modern: Divine inspiration
b. Productive in modern era: authorship (still traces of imitation)
c. Parodic in post-modern era: Knowledge socializationand death of the author (p. 204)

2. Gray areas of plagiarism

a. Some learners do not really understand what plagiarism is: word, idea, both?
b. Chinese education based on memorization
c. Veneration of old textual authority
d. Memorization for better understanding.

3. Teachers' supportive attitude instead of sanction-oriented pedagogy

4. Borrowing other’s word as a part of learning process and plagiarism as a social, historical and cultural construct in perpetual transformation


"...to try to consider self-reflexively how a particular notion of authorship and ownership has grown up, how it is a very particular cultural and historical tradition and may now be undergoing transformation, how our students may be operating from fundamentally different positions about texts and memory. All language learning is to some extent a process of borrowing others' words and we need to be flexible, not dogmatic, about where we draw boundaries between acceptable or unacceptable textual borrowings." P. 227



II. CLASS DISCUSSION.



1. Theoretical and methodological questions

a. While discussing the diachronic discourse of the concept of authorship, Pennycook tends to juxtapose the mimetic to the parodic era. (P. 204). Both terms have almost the same meaning and yet both historical periods are substantially different in knowledge construction and authorship. How do you get to understand the author’s thought?

b. How do you find Casanave’s conclusions on electronic audiences (p. 168-169) and section on against audience (p. 169)? Did she adopt a reserved tone/voice because she did not want to sound more authoritative (modest) or she did not have enough data to draw on and make an informed decision, which would have given her more authority?

2. Pedagogical questions:

a. In most cases, peer review is seen as a beneficial practice to learners. (p. 167, para 2). However, to what extent will it be critically useful in societies whereby learners—based on social norms— are reluctant and sensitive to critique? Does peer review free teachers from their coach's role? Otherwise, how do they come into the game?

b. Is it pragmatic to teach writing or to write without audience design in mind (As suggested by Elbow, p. 168)? If so, should such an approach be an end itself or just a step in writing process?

c. As a composition teacher, how do you detect a plagiarized text if you are not familiar with the plagiarized material ? In case it happened in your class, how would you handle the issue?


d. Since plagiarism is always contextualized, how is it perceived in your academic milieu?

e. Could you provide some practical advice about raising learners’ awareness on plagiarism?

VOICE AS A MULTIFACETED CONSTRUCT

Voice—whether ideational, interpersonal or textual—, is socially and historically constructed (Ivanič & Camps, 2001). Any piece of writing bears the seal of the author’s background, ideology, world perception, learning experience, etc. Assigned readings explicitly/ implicitly acknowledge the cultural/multicultural impact in writing process.

Therefore, going beyond liberal multiculturalism where people just celebrate diversity, will composition teachers, researchers in L2 writing step further to critical multiculturalism and help L2 learners be aware of and sustain their voice as it is genuinely constructed in their home society? Or will they encourage them to slightly, but irreversibly, merge into Western one-way traffic flow (with regard to voice and rhetoric) with risk of getting high tickets in case they (learners ) drive the other way round?

How will non-Western societies take advantage of knowledge of their sons and daughters graduating from western institutions if, to some extent, the imported knowledge may possibly clash with local social and cultural values?

VOICE AS A MULTIFACETED CONSTRUCT

Voice—whether ideational, interpersonal or textual—, is socially and historically constructed (Ivanič & Camps, 2001). Any piece of writing bears the seal of the author’s background, ideology, world perception, learning experience, etc. Assigned readings explicitly/ implicitly acknowledge the cultural/multicultural impact in writing process.

Therefore, going beyond liberal multiculturalism where people just celebrate diversity, will composition teachers, researchers in L2 writing step further to critical multiculturalism and help L2 learners create, reinforce and sustain their voice as it is genuinely constructed in their home society? Or will they encourage—or force—them to slightly, but irreversibly, merge into Western one-way traffic flow (with regard to voice and rhetoric) with risk of getting high tickets in case of driving the other way round?

How will non-Western societies take advantage of knowledge of their sons and daughters graduating from western institutions if, to some extent, the imported knowledge may possibly clash with local social and cultural values?

INTERCULTURAL RHETORIC

Intercultural rhetoric

A. Kaplan


Briefly and basically:

Pedagogical premises of contrastive rhetoric (CR): Teachers’ awareness in reading and writing classes.

Overview, concerns and class discussion:

Our perceptions greatly depend on cultural dispositions (Sapir-Whorf hypothesis);
Reading and writing processes are affected by cultural factors;
There is no single rhetoric since there are multiple cultures.
Comparison between English rhetoric and Semitic language (Bible)


Question 1: On p. 47, the author discussed English rhetoric based on parallelism found in the Bible and he claimed that the passage was influenced by one Semitic language the Bible (King james version) was translated from. Was the English version of the Bible really translated from a Semitic language? Which one?


Question 2: The author provided two models of paragraph writing on pp. 53-55. To what extent do you find them useful? Do you have any suggestion for another model to propose?

Question 3: Kaplan proposed 5 visual representations on paragraph structure in various cultures/languages. What are exactly the classification criteria?


If you belong to any of the author’s “classification”, do you agree with his findings about rhetoric patterns?

B. Casanave

Sharp critiques on Kaplan’s article

In her study of 46 students, Kubota (1998) found no evidence of cultural influence on the participants’ English writing (p. 36)



New orientations

Matsuda and Leki: Learners’ background

Writers’ agency to be taken into account: background, socioeconomic class, past writing experience

Casanave: Learner-centered approach

Teaching writing according to learners’ needs
Giving learners opportunity of looking into English articles and comparing them to materials in other languages and drawing conclusions
Learners as ethnographers of their own writing
Contextualization of writing classes.

Question 4: Both Kaplan and Casanave look at English as a homogeneous and identical language (English rhetoric is linear) worldwide and yet there are World Englishes (English was spread in different countries, merged with local cultures and amalgamated with indigenous languages with radical changes in grammar, pronunciation, lexical items and ……possible new sprouts in rhetoric!) Therefore, how to define and and eventually teach rhetoric of World Englishes? Is the idea of English rhetoric perceived the same way in multiple contexts?

REFLECTION ON READINGS

At the end of the readings assigned for this week, I have two main points to raise about my satisfaction on the one hand and concerns as well as questions

1. Satisfaction

a. After reading the introduction and the first chapter from Casanave, C.P., I appreciated the author’s position about the relevance and balance of both process and product in writing process. A good product need to go through a series of process and process without end product does not make sense. P. 2.

b. Even if a couple of teaching methods emphasize on the teacher’s role as a coach, co-learner, collaborator (which is true), the author reminds teachers that, above all, they have another special and delicate role of decision-making about what to teach, how to teach it and why. Pp 7-8.

2. Concerns

One of the multiple aspects of the post-process era is about perceiving writing as a “sociopolitical artifact”, implying that any piece of writing should contribute to some extent, to social change. In my opinion, it is good to raise learners’ awareness about social, political and economical issues that society is facing. However, I am afraid that teachers may consciously/unconsciously get to cross the line and run the risk of changing a writing class into indoctrinating, campaigning, or lobbying sessions, which might be troublesome. Plus, why shouldn’t learners just write to express whatever touches their feeling and emotion: love, nature, trips, etc. Just art for art, I mean!

MY NARRATIVE ON SECOND LANGUAGE LITERACY

Along with French, Kiswahili and English, Latin was one of the second/foreign languages I have learned in high school for six years. It was a required class for my major which was Latin and Modern Languages. The method used was, of course, grammar-translation, French being the medium of instruction. Writing process varied from level to level. However, class activities involved two-way translation drills: Latin-French (Version) and French-Latin (Theme).

In advanced classes (4th-6th year), students were allowed to use bilingual dictionaries whereas in lower classes (1-3), learners could not use dictionaries because vocabulary was a part of skills to check on. Actually, quizzes and exams for lower classes were designed according to their knowledge in vocabulary they had from previous classes. (It was a routine to have one to two vocabularies quizzes a week)! I did enjoy them! In advanced classes, literary translation for classics such as Cicero, Virgil, and Ovid was preferred to the literal translation. Grammar and accuracy were obviously recommended.

In class activities and exams (for advanced classes), reading and writing went together because before translating, students had to read the text and re-construct it (re-organize a Latin text according to French syntax) baring in mind French canons with regard to grammar and logic analysis.

Latin class was relatively tough and students would sometimes complain about learning a dead language and teachers would ironically reply: “Latin is not dead; as a matter of fact, you’ll die before it.” Were teachers wrong?

Latin class was very rewarding to me for a couple of reasons:

• Resource: It was a great resource for my history class because Latin was the language of the Roman Empire that dominated the world especially Europe for centuries (756BC-1456AD). Most of Latin literature texts recalled Europe history;

• Etymology: A good number of French terms (and some in English) especially in science, law, diplomacy come from Latin;

• Reasoning: Re-construction and translation were good drills to sharpen my reasoning skills.

I got to teach writing classes in English, French, Kinyarwanda and Kiswahili. The focus was grammar, accuracy and error correction; and I find myself now in pre-process generation; that is product and product only! What a long way for me to go so as to catch up with process before entering the post-process era!