University Studies Program: Oral Flag

Approved by Faculty Senate March 22, 2004

UNIVERSITY STUDIES PROGRAM: ORAL FLAG

COURSE PROPOSAL AND RATIONALE

ENGLISH 471: Seminar in British Literature

The purpose of the Oral Communication Flag requirement is to complete the process of providing graduates of Winona State University with the knowledge and experience required to enable them to become highly competent communicators by the time they graduate.

Courses can merit the Oral Communication Flag by demonstrating that they allow for clear guidance, criteria, and feedback for the speaking assignments; that the course requires a significant amount of speaking; that speaking assignments comprise a significant portion of the final course grade; and that students will have opportunities to obtain student and faculty critiques of their speaking.

These courses must include requirements and learning activities that promote students’ abilities to

a. earn significant course credit through extemporaneous oral presentations;

As this course is an advanced seminar, it is an ideal setting for oral-flag activities, for such seminars customarily entail a comparatively great emphasis on not only discussion, but also, and more pertinently, students’ contributions in the form of presentations. In other words, in an advanced-seminar setting, students are typically expected to participate actively in the introduction and exploration of information and ideas related to the subject of the seminar. Moreover, because this course will be populated primarily be seniors, the students will have at their disposal a substantial array of skills that will support their endeavors in making oral presentations on literary topics.

Exactly what form this oral component may take will vary from course to course, for many different English faculty will teach the course, and each will bring to the class his or her own plan for fulfilling the Oral Flag requirements. Regardless of these differences, all faculty who teach English 471 will make sure that every student presents at least twice and receives helpful feedback—from peers and the professor—on both presentations. Each 471 course will include some treatment of effective oral delivery and of oral-presentation skills as they relate to the field of literary studies. Additionally, in every 471 course, students’ grades on their oral presentations will constitute a significant component of their final grades, though different professors teaching the course may vary slightly in this regard. For instance, one professor might make the presentations 30% of the final grade, while another may make them 50%.

In view of the diversity of ways that English faculty might integrate the Oral Flag activities into English 471, setting forth herein a specific and prescriptive paradigm of such would be inadvisable. Some professors may have each student do several comparatively short presentations, whereas other professors may have each student do two major presentations. Still other ways of productively implementing the Oral Flag are conceivable as well. For the sake of this rationale, though, a particular example of how a professor may do so should be included. Hence what follows is to be understood as simply one way in which the course may be designed to fulfill the Oral Flag objectives.

Each student in this course will give two oral presentations, one lasting ten minutes and another lasting twenty minutes. The first will count for 10% of the final grade, while the second will count for 20% of the final grade. Thus the oral-presentation grades together will constitute approximately one-third of a student’s final grade.

Both presentations will be extemporaneous in two ways, coinciding with two different, but both standard, definitions of this term. First, although the content of the presentation will be prepared in advance, the speeches will be delivered without direct, sustained recourse to a prepared text: i.e., students will not merely read papers they have written. They will, however, be able to use detailed outlines for notes to which they may refer during their presentations. A second way in which these presentations will be extemporaneous lies in the oral improvisation that will be required when students answer questions and lead discussion during the last segment of their presentations.

The ten-minute presentation will have a tightly focused topic, while the twenty-minute presentation will be focused in a way that gives the student more freedom, and therefore more responsibility, in the development of his or her material. For instance, the ten-minute presentation may address a subject such as a writer’s biography, in condensed form; the publication and reception history of a certain work; a particular theoretical or critical approach to a particular piece; an interpretive issue that arises in relation to a text; or a specific motif, character, or other noteworthy literary element of a piece. The twenty-minute presentation will, it is hoped, manifest a more thoroughgoing and extended treatment of a topic connected to the writer or literary work in question. For example, for this project a student might address a piece of literature in its entirety; a set of related, mutually illuminative dimensions of that piece; a comparison or contrast of one work to another; a significant aspect of the social or historical context of the literary period covered in the course; or several different critical or theoretical approaches to a literary text.

The topic for the first, shorter presentation will be assigned; the topic for the latter, longer presentation will be developed by the student in consultation with the professor. In this manner, students will gain experience in giving speeches on predetermined subjects as well as on self-determined subjects. Research will be required for both presentations, especially the major one. The presenting student will be asked to distribute, among whatever other handouts he or she chooses to hand out, a bibliographic list of sources cited in the speech and sources consulted in formulating the speech.

In addition, the presenting student will be asked to distribute a relevant handout to serve as a visual, tactile aid for other students. For the major presentation, students will be required to incorporate a further visual element, which will vary according to the topic, technological capacities, and oratorical tastes of the student giving the presentation.

b. understand the features and types of speaking in their disciplines;

Again, since many different professors in the department will be teaching English 471, there will be some variety in the way that this objective is addressed. However, all professors who would teach the course have had experiences giving and listening to seminar presentations in classroom settings. These professors have also had experiences giving and listening to talks in conference or colloquium settings. Bringing this background to bear, the professors teaching English 471 will guide students in their efforts to fashion their oral presentations in accordance with field-specific conventions.

This guidance may take a variety of forms. For instance, a professor could require that students attend a conference or graduate seminar. Alternatively, a professor might guide students more directly and explicitly. In the attached syllabus, for example, two classes early in this course are devoted to an overview of the kinds of speaking in which specialists in literature tend to engage, from the informal conversation or class discussion to the formal address. Most students will have participated in the former, and a few may go on to deliver the latter. However, most of the speaking in the discipline inhabits the middle of the spectrum between these extremes and falls into the oral genres of the seminar paper, the conference presentation, or the teaching lecture. The distinctive characteristics and objectives of these five types of speaking will be treated in an in-depth manner and will often re-emerge as significant concepts as the course progresses.

c. adapt their speaking to field-specific audiences;

The field in question is literary studies, and speaking to audiences within this field involves a certain set of expectations and conventions that vary depending on the venue (e.g., seminar, conference, lecture) and on the educational or professional register of the audience. It is worth repeating that the mode of treating this dimension of the Oral Flag aims will vary among professors of the course. One such way a professor might approach this objective would be to focus an entire class on the subject. Students would be asked to consider and discuss the diverse audiences that, within literary studies, they have addressed or may address, and audiences’ variations in such matters as background knowledge, objectives in listeningto the speech, and level of formality. How does the nature of one’s audience bear on the purpose, rhetorical stance, and content of an oral presentation?

The field-specific audience about which the students would likely be asked to think the most is that of the advanced seminar in literature. Such a set of listeners likely will have particular needs, tastes, and expectations. For example, this audience will expect information, clearly presented, that will contribute to their knowledge of that literature covered in the course. The vocabulary used by the presenter will probably include literary and critical terminology, and the material that he or she presents will probably include well-recited passages from, say, a poem or novel. And, like most audiences, literature-seminar students want to be stimulated and entertained as they learn.

d. receive appropriate feedback from teachers and peers, including suggestions for improvement;

Despite the diversity of professors’ approaches to the Oral Flag element of English 471, all professors will design some sort of “feedback document” to facilitate students’ commentary on one another’s effectiveness as speakers and on the strengths and weaknesses of one another’s presentations. This document would include a section of specified criteria, both for the presentation and for speaking skills.

Hypothetically, a response form might accommodate two sorts of feedback: first, checks in applicable columns (Excellent / Satisfactory / Unsatisfactory) that correspond, in table form, with specified criteria; second, written remarks in response to evaluative questions requiring a short prose answer. Two of such questions might focus on ways a student-speaker could improve his or her presentation skills or oratorical effectiveness.

After a student’s presentation, he or she will receive copies of these feedback sheets, one of which will be completed by the professor. A student’s second presentation should reflect his or her improvements made in areas that the professor and the student’s peers have indicated as needing improvement.

e. make use of the technologies used for research and speaking in the field;

To find relevant primary and secondary sources, students in advanced literary studies make use of computer technologies such as databases and indexes (e.g., the MLA Bibliography) that provide, at the very least, the titles, authors, and publication information of books and articles bearing upon the research subject at hand. Some of these technologies offer students full electronic texts, but regularly students involved in advanced literary research must use the computerized catalog of their base library and other libraries. Often, too, students must use Interlibrary Loan the secure their books and journal articles.

In preparing handouts for their audience, presenting students will of course avail themselves of computer word-processing technologies, not only to get words on a page, but also to enhance the document format and visual appeal of their handouts.

If students integrate a visual element into their presentations, they may use a VCR, PowerPoint, overhead projector, or some such machine to facilitate the introduction of viewable material. Students who opt to supplement their presentations further, with auditory elements beyond their own voices, may use technology like that furnished by a CD player.

f. learn the conventions of evidence, format, usage, and documentation in their fields.

Inasmuch as these conventions cross fields of advanced academic study in the humanities, students begin learning these conventions as early as English 111. With this foundation, students concentrating in literary studies within the English Department all take English 290, a 5-credit course designed, among other things, to teach students the conventions of evidence, format, usage, and documentation in research and writing papers on literary topics. Most other classes that students in English 471 will have taken in the English Department reinforce students’ knowledge of these conventions. By the time that such students take English 471, they do not need to learn these matters anew. Rather, the professor would review—and the class would discuss—what sorts of evidence make a paper or presentation persuasive; what kind of language and conceptual paradigms are acceptable and useful in advanced academic writing and speaking about literature; how primary and secondary sources should be cited and documented through MLA format; and how issues of format translate from written work to oral deliveries.

It is conceivable, but improbable, that a student who is not an English major or minor would be enrolled in English 471 and therefore be relatively unexercised in the conventions governing evidence, format, usage, and documentation in this field. However, because such a student would have to have taken English 111 and English 290, prerequisites for the course, he or she would bring to the class a working knowledge of these conventions and would consequently need only slightly more review than his or her peers more practiced in these conventions.

SAMPLE SYLLABUS

UNIVERSITY STUDIES ORAL-FLAG PROPOSAL

ENGLISH 471: SEMINAR IN BRITISH LITERATURE:

THE CONTEMPORARY BRITISH NOVEL

USP ORAL-FLAG COURSE

[3 credits; semester; course id. #; class days, times, and room]

Professor Chris Buttram

[office hours, office, office phone, email address]

Catalog Description of Course:

Advanced study of a period, genre, or figure in British literature. The course will focus on critical methodologies and student research. Offered yearly. Prerequisites: English 111 and English 290.

Basic Course Objectives:

1. To concentrate on a specific period (and, perhaps, genre) of British literature and become versed in the chief literary styles, concerns, and figures of that period.

2. To show—and show off—what knowledge and skills you have acquired as you have undergone the reading, writing, thinking, and speaking involved in your development as an English major or minor (or, in some cases, as one including literature in one’s course of studies).

3. To engage in worthwhile, productive discussion of literary topics.

4. To conduct substantial writing in relation to that period and to produce a research paper worthy of inclusion in the senior portfolio.

3. To satisfy the requirements of a USP Oral-Flag course by delivering two presentations, as described later in this syllabus.

The General Nature of English 471 and the Specific Focus of this Section:

The content of English 471, Seminar in British Literature, will change each semester; depending on who teaches it and what his or her area of expertise may be, the course will offer undergraduate seniors, and advanced juniors, a chance to study rigorously and vigorously a particular area of British literature. As noted above, the course has an Oral Flag, so it entails not only a great deal of reading and writing, but also a significant component of oral presentation. Another priority is, of course, class discussion.

This term, English 471 is a course in the British novel of the contemporary period. The historical context is a very recent one, dating back less than thirty years. While this chronological orientation obviates the fun complexity of remote historical study, it introduces its own complications in this regard since students will have to muster objectivity and perspective on the time period that coincides with their very own lives. In some ways, then, this course invites commentary on contemporary life and on the students’ experiences of their world.

Because most (if not all) students in the class will not be British, the students will be asked to learn about British culture. Though the United States shares a language with the United Kingdom, and though the U.S. and England have historical and current affiliations along diverse lines, there do exist important cultural differences between the two nations and their respective recent histories. Recent British history will therefore emerge as an important subject.

Much great literature has come out of Britain in the last twenty or thirty years, yet this class will focus on one genre—the novel. Consequently, questions of genre will present themselves. The students in this course will review the development of the English novel as they study the forms that contemporary novelists have opted to use. Students will additionally review and employ the literary and critical terminology that goes along with the genre of the novel.