Rachel Dulaney

Dr. Irene Clark

ENGL 600B
15 December 2015
A Syllabus Rationale: Or, Why I Teach What I Teach
I recently read an application essay for my sister, who is applying for many graduate
programs on the East Coast. The particular essay that I read was for the program she is applying
to at Yale University. Toward the end of the essay, she transitioned into a paragraph or two
discussing the work being done by particular professors at Yale that dovetail with her
professional and academic interests. I thought to myself as I read, Great, this is exactly what
youre supposed to do as you apply for school or a new job, etc.
But this caused me to reflect on how, as I applied for the Teaching Associate position at
CSUN last fall, I failed to do any such research. I had no idea who Irene Clark was, or any of her
work in composition, or that she is a household name in the particular field of genre and genre
awareness. I stepped into that interview without having done any of the proper study that would
have made me relevant for that position (or at least, would have made me stand out in the
interview). Amazingly, I still got the job.
I believe a syllabus rationale functions in the same way as name-dropping in an
interview. It shows that you, as the person most recently entering the field, have the awareness,
comprehension, and wherewithal to give reasons for why, in fact, you should be there in the first
place. This is a difficult balance to strike. Try too hard, and, like Shakespeares Hamlet said of
Lady Macbeth, some might accuse you with The lady doth protest too much, methinks. In
other words, over-the-top demonstrations of your competence might indicate your lack. On the

other hand, without giving any support for the decisions one has made within their syllabus, it is
hard to take them seriously, and again, it may look like there is lack in that individuals
preparation and knowledge base. It is with this in mind that I would like to provide a rationale
for the pedagogical choices I have made in my syllabus.
Undergirding my syllabus is the conviction that an English professor must draw students
into the discourse community that they will need to both understand and ultimately master in
order to succeed as university writers. As David Bartholomae says in his article, Inventing the
University, The student has to learn to speak our language, to speak as we do, to try on the
peculiar ways of knowing, selecting, evaluating, reporting, concluding, and arguing that define
the discourse of our community (Johnson 3). I agree with this statement, and recognize that
though our students come into the classroom with many transferable skills, they also need to
learn to adapt those skills in order to fit the context of the university setting. As Bartholomae
goes on to discuss,
It is difficult to imagine...how writers can have a purpose before they are located in a discourse,
since it is the discourse with is projects and agendas that determines what writers can and will
do. The writer who can successfully manipulate an audience...is a writer who can both imagine
and write from a position of privilege (Johnson 8).
In this sense, bringing the students into the academic discourse--both the physical written
discourse and the discourse of appropriate activity within the classroom and on the campus--is a
chief aim of the composition classroom, and one I try to model in my class through creating a
classroom environment that welcomes (and facilitates) discussion and critical thinking on a
deeper level. This is facilitated in a practical sense by the numerous in-class writing prompts that
I start each class session with, and by group discussion questions that I assign throughout the
semester that engage the students in discussions about their reading that go beyond the surface
level what questions and ask why.

In a similar way, Irene Clarks theories regarding genre and genre awareness inform the
way I teach, and also speak to the issue Bartholomae brings up of ensuring students learn to
speak our language (Johnson 3). As Clark writes in her book, Concepts in Composition, genre
awareness is understanding texts in terms of genre, viewing a text in terms of its rhetorical and
social purpose, and recognizing how various elements of a text derive from its rhetorical
function (187). Both Bartholomae and Clark focus on the rhetorical significance of genre, of
learning how to navigate a given circumstance--whether that be an assigned essay or a
classroom--based on the expectations of the audience and the rhetorical purpose those words or
that situation serves. In my classroom, I attempt to help facilitate genre awarenesswhich helps
account for an understanding of purpose, audience, tone, stance, and even voiceby teaching
my students close-reading techniques and giving them a variety of texts to read, such that they
might explore the rhetorical function of those texts within the academic discourse community.
Finally, on the note of rhetorical function, Wayne C. Booth discusses the importance of
having the rhetorical appeals in balance. Though this is a more specific theory regarding the
balance of pathos, ethos, and logos within both student papers and published works, I believe
that it applies on both ends of the classroomthe students as readers and the students as
writersas they analyze texts for reliability and try to write within the academic discourse, and
within the presented genre, in a reliable, even way. As Booth writes himself,
The rhetorical stance [is] a stance which depends on discovering and maintaining in any writing
situation a proper balance among the three elements that are at work in any communicative
effort: the available arguments about the subject itself, the interests and peculiarities of the
audience, and the voice, the implied character, of the speaker It is this balance, this rhetorical
stance, difficult as it is to describe, that is our main goal as teachers of rhetoric (Johnson 166).
Teaching students how to properly support their arguments, through such methods as the quote
sandwich or the Argumentative Body Paragraph; teaching them how to find and use proper
sources in order to convey their authority on the subject; and teaching them how to word their

arguments in a way that is rational and fair rather than alienating are all aspects of Booths
rhetorical stance that I employ in my classroom that contribute to students ability to
communicate within the academic discourse community and within the specific genres which
they find themselves facing.
Though I have elaborated on these three theorists, many other theorists, from John Bean
to Gerald Graff to Beth Neman, have influenced the way I teach and the things I teach. I hope
that this syllabus rationale has given some idea of why I have chosen to structure my class the
way I have. As always, I hope to keep up my learning of these and other composition pedagogy
theories, so that I may grow as a teacher and as a professional within my field.

Works Cited
Bartholomae, David. Inventing the University. Teaching Composition: Background Readings,
3rd Edition. Ed. T.R. Johnson. Boston, MA: Bedford/St. Martins, 2008. 2-31. Print.
Booth, Wayne C. The Rhetorical Stance. Teaching Composition: Background Readings, 3rd
Edition. Ed. T.R. Johnson. Boston, MA: Bedford/St. Martins, 2008. 163-171. Print.
Clark, Irene. Concepts in Composition: Theory and Practice in the Teaching of Writing. 2nd ed.
New York, NY: Routledge, 2012. Print.