Teaching Demonstration

During this semester I have designed and implemented three writing assignments supplemented with an in-class introductory writing exercise.  The following is an analysis of the attached in-class assignment on audience that was observed by Program Assistant Jeff Ludwig. Attached is a copy of the writing assignment and the observational comments written by Jeff.

Course Objectives:

1.     To facilitate collaboration and self-disclosure among students (group members).

2.     To assist students to give expression to their individual experiences

3.     To increase awareness of images and stereotypes and to develop student skills for choosing an audience for their writing.

4.     To give students more choices for responding to peers and to allow for more possibilities for developing productive revision strategies.

5.     It is expected that at the end of this activity, students will feel more comfortable and knowledgeable about identifying an audience as a significant element in the writing process.

Theoretical Underpinnings: The theories that identify audience in the writing process are at the core of this lesson design. (Based on social constructivists'  theories on Collaborative Learning and  those of Lev Vygotsky and Kenneth Bruffee).

A List of Materials Needed: Various magazines brought by the students

Outline of Activity: Students bring in a magazine of their choice and engage in an in in-class discussion about why they think they are the target audience for that particular magazine.

Self-Evaluation & Suggestions for Revision:

After introducing the assignment I wondered if students were still cloudy about who their audience was and also what images and stereotypes they were going to discuss in their papers. After taking attendance on Monday I asked two questions:

1) Did everyone choose an audience to write to?

2) Did everyone choose a topic for their paper?

Upon asking the question I looked around the room to see head nods and puzzled looks, so I went to each person individually and asked how their paper was coming along. A lot of the students had not identified their audience as of yet and most of the students did not realize that they paper is supposed to be about images and stereotypes of people that they see in the media. I had to tell the students more than three times everyday that the images and stereotypes should be from either, movies that they've seen, pictures in magazines and/or words that are used by people in the news and newspapers.

It was not until I asked someone to give me they're topic and I gave specific examples from movies that students were able to say, "Oh I get it." I used the example topic: College students and how they are seen in the media and I identified the negative images of college students who just go to school to party like in movies like Animal House, Dead Man on Campus, and American Pie 2. I said that the audience could be either directors of the movies, college students, parents, the police, or older people who reside in college towns.

If I were to implement this assignment next semester, I would probably put the students into groups of no more than four, and have the students pick a note taker for the discussion.  After about 15-20 minutes, I would call the group leader/note taker to the front of the class to present what was discussed in his/her group.  I think that this is an ideal process because it gives everyone in the group a chance to speak without the fear of being in front of the entire class. 

Another way that I could conduct this lesson is by letting the students bring in various advertisements from various forms of media, choose their own groups, and discuss the assumptions the advertisement makes about its target audience.  Students would also discuss why they think they make those assumptions, and how the advertisement captures the attention of its target audience.  I can then have students pick a representative ad, analyze its audience and rhetoric, and share their findings with the class. In this lesson I would serve as group facilitator, going around to the various groups and just listening in.

Paper #2 – Audience

In this paper your emphasize will be on audience.  Each student must choose a specific audience to write to when answering the question “How do images affect the negative or positive stereotypes that you see in the media? What can we do to dispel these images and stereotypes?”As you write to your specified audience about these images and stereotypes, you will need to consider the following questions about your audience:

What do I know about my audience? (Who are they?)

Are they friends, or people I do not know?

What are their age, sex, and educational background? 

What is their ethnical, political, and religious background?

What role do they serve in society?  (Doctor, student, teacher, parent, etc.)

What employment and/or economic status do they come from?

What are their interests/hobbies?

What does the audience already know about my subject?

What amount of general knowledge may this reader have about what I write?

What amount of specialized knowledge may this reader have?

What preconceptions do they bring to the material?

What types of reading have they done or not done before reading my piece?

For example:

If the audience I chose were Independent Women. This is a group that I can personally identify with because I consider myself to be an independent woman. The images of independent women are affected by the stereotypes that I see in the media because they are negative ones. They are the ones that depict independent women as selfish, independent, confused, sex crazed animals. Television shows like “Sex in the City,” “Girlfriends,” and “Ally McBeale,” all of which are sitcoms that show negative images and stereotypes of women.  They are women who are who are not married, have no children, have numerous sex partners and are clue less about worldly issues such as sexually transmitted diseases and sexual harassment in the workplace. In this paper I would discuss why I think these images and stereotypes are negative, and how these negative images and stereotypes have affected me personally. I will also list and talk about the various media in which these negative images and stereotypes are shown, and finally discuss what can be done to dispel these negative images and stereotypes.