Course Design & Teaching Materials
Unit 1 Language Literacies and Cultural Identities
Unit 1 Language Literacies and Cultural Identities introduces students to authors who are aware of how their culture influenced their language and literacy practices. Further, the authors also showcase for students how social and cultural experiences shape a writers identity and writing prose. In addition to this, the authors I share with students also provide students with an opportunity to reflect and compare their lives with the authors' lives. Showcasing how writing can be used to communicate life experience to promote critical thinking about real life social issues for their readers- social issues students can relate to themselves.
For unit 1 Language Literacies and Cultural Identities I assign Letter to My Teacher; and a Literary Text Analysis.
Letter to My Teacher was created by me and my understanding of how culture influences our language practices. This assignment does two things for me as the instructor. One, it allows me to get to know my students personally. I learn from my students what they value about language and communication, how culture has shaped their language practices and how they view themselves as communicators. In addition, their writing allows me to diagnose the development of their writing craft based on how they introduce themselves and how they answer the prompt questions.
Undoing the Silence Post-Reading Reflection- to gauge how students react to Louise Dunlap (2007) Undoing the Silence: Six Tools for Social Change Writing, I assign a post-reading reflection with guided questions to solicit how students engaged with the text ( how did the reading strategies they learned to employ serve them during their reading processes), what were their initial reactions to the authors message and whether they agree or disagree with the author's ideas about silencing culture.
Literary Text Analysis was adapted by Ann Beaufort's (2007) text, College Writing and Beyond: A New Framework For University Writing and Instruction. This assignment allows students to engage closely with a selected reading of their choice. Students select their favorite quotes from the reading and analyze the quotes, paying attention to the authors writing purpose, craft and style.
Informal task- a Discourse Community Chart is adapted from Beaufort's (2007) text; however, my rendition of this activity incorporates Paul Gee's definition of 'discourse'. Students identify key terms from a YouTube video and relate those terms to least four discourse communities they belong to and they chart how language is used in each discourse community depending on the social context of their social situation. Ultimately, students are able to visually see how they adapt their language (speaking, writing, listening and communicative habits) depending on the norms of their community.
Critical Topics Discussion- Jamila Lyiscott "3 Ways to Speak English' - For students' first critical topics discussion I ask them to watch a Ted Talk by Jamila Lyiscott who is a first generation American social justice education scholar and poet. This Ted Talk challenges students' perceptions on what it means to be articulate; students are able to hear the linguistic diversity spoken in Lyiscott's poetry and come to their own conclusions about the politics of language and how culture influences a writer's identity.
Undoing the Silence
During week one, students write their first post-reading reflection on chapter two, Understanding the Silence: What keeps us from writing to make a difference? Further, students use and apply their reading strategies and guided reading questions to comprehend the text into comprehendible fragments, a self reflective approach to reading as it ensures students monitor their reactions to the text and extract information needed to answer important questions about the authors message.
Letter to My Teacher Prompt
The purpose of this assignment is to prompt the student to introduce their self formally to their instructor and to provide the instructor with insight as to what the student values about language, culture, and communication. In addition, this letter will allow the student to express how they see themselves as readers, thinkers, and writers; thus, my hope is for the student to express their current attitudes about their literacy practices, strengths and weaknesses.
Literary Text Analysis Prompt
The purpose of this assignment is to raise students' awareness of genre conventions of literary essays. Further, it allows students to discover and analyze features of a text by paying attention to language, organization, and writing prose. This task also allows students to reflect on some of the content discussed in the readings. It will require the student to practice using reading strategies to familiarize themselves with genre conventions and practice citing in MLA format.
Discourse Community Charts
This task was adapted from Anne Beaufort's text, College Writing and Beyond: A New Framework for University Writing Instruction, to raise students consciousness of how writing and language norms shift depending on the social context. My rendition of this assignment includes Gee's definition of discourse to foster students' sociolinguistic backgrounds and to ensure they know they do not have to abandoned their metalanguages.
Critical Topics Discussion
"3 Ways to Speak English" by Jamila Lyiscott
"3 Ways to Speak English" by Jamila Lyiscott
This critical Ted Talk allows students to discover the politics of language use and how culture influences a writers identity and language practices. Students are able to see meta-knowledge in practice and consider embracing their meta-language practices.
Unit 2 Language, Politics, and Power
Unit 2 Language, Politics, and Power is a 3 week unit where students are introduced to a few overlapping theoretical frameworks of critical reading. The first critical reading framework I introduce students to is the study of semiotics, which is a theory that the world itself is open for interpretation- 'that we make meaning out of just about anything' (Silverman and Rader, 2018, p.13). Further, students learn that the world is filled with signifiers, moving texts, moving language and moving symbols that are waiting to be studied. Inspired by Silverman and Rader's (2018) text, The World is A Text: Writing About Visual and Popular Culture, I use this text to introduce critical literacy concepts so that students can learn to make sense of the different kinds of moving texts, language, and symbols by critically reading and writing about visuals and pop culture.
Further, students learn semiotics is the foundation of understanding how 'systems of reading' and interpretation work depending on the social, cultural and historical context of our times. Nonetheless, students unpack the meanings of different kinds of language and moving texts with relevance to social, cultural, political, and historical context.
Building on this framework of semiotics, I also introduce students to the works of Norman Fairclough (1989) Language and Power - an introduction and guide for how to implement Critical Discourse Analysis into our every day systems of critical reading and examination of language practices and policies. Students are not expected to read Fairclough (1989) nor are they tested on CDA; instead, I present a short lecture on how to do CDA and encourage them to 'do' CDA as they engage with texts in and out of school. My rationale: Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) goes one step further than semiotics. That is, CDA seeks to uncover inequities in language that implicitly convey unequal social and power relations between people and systems of power. It seeks to uncover how language is implicitly or explicitly oppressing or excluding particular groups of people from fully participating in their society.
How do students apply these frameworks in their writing and composition assignments?
Students apply the framework of semiotics to their Critical Topics Discussion board responses. For instance, after they watch and listen to a TED Talk by Titus Kaphar, titled, "Can Art Amend History?". My instructions require students to fuse the framework of semeiotics in their TED talk response. Students' responses and citations are influenced by their close reading of chapter 1 and 5 of Silverman and Rader (2018).
In addition, students also apply the study of semiotics and CDA in their music video Critical Discourse Analysis assignment. The Music Video Discourse Analysis prompts students to analyze the rhetorical strategies used in the music video of their choice. Further, students apply CDA to analyze their choice of linguistic utterances (words, phrases, lyrics) and unpack their meanings. In addition, they analyze the visuals and art of the music video by discussing the cultural influences, symbolism and power relations the authors might speak to in relations to society and history.
Students also apply CDA concepts to complete a Genre & Discourse Analysis as well. That is, students are asked to analyze two genres that are communicating similar aspects of a social and historical issue. One genre is a government document and the other document is a form of poetry. Further, students investigate how the two forms of writing are structured, examine their intended purposes, and analyze both texts’ power and social relations that speak to issues of government policy, human rights, and historical and contemporary representations of The First Indigenous Peoples of America.
Teaching Portfolio © 2020 by Fairuze Ahmed Ramirez is licensed under Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International
All of this practice of critical reading and writing through the lens of semiotics and CDA prepares students for their first major multimodal project: The Linguistic Landscape Presentation and Reflection Essay and it scaffolds their learning for our research unit as well. That is, students have had multiple opportunities to study and evaluate language, so by the time we get to our Research and Mass Communications unit, students will be able to transfer their 'critical systems of reading' to researching articles that discuss prevalent social issue topics.
The Linguistic Landscape Defined:
The linguistic landscape is the "visibility and salience of languages on public and commercial signs in a given territory or region"(Landry and Bourhis 1997, p.23). The linguistic landscape has been described as "somewhere at the junction of sociolinguistics, sociology, social psychology, geography, and media studies” (Landry and Bourhis 1997). In François Bogatto & Christine Hélot (2010), they write: “Like other researchers before us (Shohamy & Gorter, 2009: 3) we assume that language in the environment is not arbitrary and random; “rather there is a goal to understand the system, the messages it delivers or could deliver, about societies, people, the economy, policy, class, identities, multilingualism, multimodalities, forms of representation and additional phenomena”.
Formative Assessment of Unit 1 and 2
Cover Letter Reflection 1
After students have moved through Unit 1 and 2, I assign cover letter reflection 1 that acts as a formative student literacy self assessment. Basically, the student reflects on their reading, thinking, and writing practices since the first week of class and they share key moments of their learning processes about critical reading and writing processes and practices.
Unit 3 Media Literacy, Research and Mass Communications
Unit 3, Media Literacy, Research and Mass Communications is a four week unit where students build on what they have learned about the study of semiotics and critical discourse analysis and are prompted to apply these critical reading practices to media literacy- that is, critically reading media sources that are currently discussing prevalent social issues in society that are of interest to the student. Students learn the difference between how discourse is constructed in media versus how discourse is constructed in academics. In addition, students learn how public discourse influences and shapes our thinking and beliefs about certain social issue topics. Further, I created this unit to help bridge and scaffold some of the critical reading frameworks from unit 2 into this research unit, where students further develop and apply their critical thinking, reading and writing skills into researching prevalent social issue topics that are student centered and meaningful to the student. Students also bridge Dunlap's (2007) 'Undoing the Silence' "What keeps us from writing to make a difference?" to this research unit, where I prompt students to literally write to make a difference, and to spread awareness about a social issue that they feel is underrepresented in their home community, and that is not broadcasted in main stream media news.
Cognitive Bias Lesson Presentation.pptxWhat is Cognitive & Confirmation Bias?
To scaffold and support students' understanding of cognitive and confirmation bias, I engage students in an interactive lecture presentation to tap into students' mental processes and existing knowledge of what it means to have a bias opinion or deeply held beliefs. Students participate in a quick write (see slides for details) and after a short discussion on their quick write responses, students watch a short PBS educational video to further support their understanding of how our brains work while processing news and information.
Teaching Portfolio © 2020 by Fairuze Ahmed Ramirez is licensed under Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International
I begin Unit 3 Media Literacy, Research and Mass Communications by telling students this unit will allow us to understand how we read media by examining our own biases. Students participate in a lesson and activity on Cognitive and Confirmation Bias. Further, students learn about five different kinds of biases including confirmation bias and apply these vocabulary words when assessing certain public discourse statements, reports, and articles that could potentially be apart of their research topic.
In addition to this, students also apply the five different kinds of biases vocabulary words to this units' critical topic discussion on Verna Myers's Ted Talk- "How to Overcome Our Biases?"--where students respond to a series of self-reflection questions about where might we begin in our pursuit of examining our own biases to promote inclusion in our communities.
Misconceptions About Research.pptxStudents' Misconceptions About Research
Before engaging in Academic Research, I engage students in a discussion about what they think research is, and then fill in their gaps of knowledge with this presentation to reframe their thinking about conducting research that is guided by Critical Inquiry.
_F-Ramirez Research Thinking Tool Handout .docxResearch Thinking Tool Handout
This handout I created helps to frame students' thinking about how to conduct academic research before writing an annotated bib.
Project 2 Part 1 Writing to Research Annotated Bib.docxFrom here, I guide students into their first academic research assignment, the annotated bibliography which allows them to practice 'writing about research' and understanding 'misconceptions about research'--that one does not conduct research to 'prove' x +y =z--but, instead students learn research is conducted to identify what we already know and to search for gaps of missing knowledge, missing pieces, or different perspectives that are supposed to add depth to the research topic being studied.
Writing For Social Change Podcast Script & Audio Broadcasting
After students have conducted research on their social issue topics incorporating secondary, scholarly, and primary sources to add depth, and multiple perspectives to their social issue, students adapt their research notes into a podcast script. Students' final composition project is to write a podcast script and record an audio podcast promoting awareness on their underrepresented social issue topic. Students learn to use the app Anchor and its rhetorical audio devices to create an engaging podcast for listeners on their social issue topic as a call to action.
Formative Assessment of Unit 3
Final Course Reflections and Google Sites E-Portfolio
The Theory of Writing and Communication and the Google Sites E-portfolio are students' final course assignments which serve as a formal summative assessment for students' self assessment and the teacher's formal assessment of her students. These two final course assignments allow the students to personally reflect on how they achieved or worked towards the course's learning goals and outcomes. Students provide their teacher with concrete evidences and personal reflections as to how they managed to work towards their learning goals and outcomes and showcase their hard work in their Google Sites E-portfolio.
Varied Syllabuses for Advanced Academic Reading and Writing
Cosumnes River College English 300/108 Co-req College Composition Accessible Liquid Syllabus
Sac State English 5M Accelerated Academic Literacies Accessible Liquid Syllabus
Sac State English 20 College Composition II Accessible Liquid Syllabus
Novice-High ESL Integrated Reading & Writing Syllabus
ESL 37: Novice-High Integrated Reading and Writing ( before converting to Zero Textbook Cost)