What appears below is a response to the Special Exercise (SpEx) assignment required of the students enrolled in my ENGL 1213: Composition II classes during the Spring 2016 instructional term at Oklahoma State University. Circumstances surrounding the SpEx allowed students to do a fair bit of preparation for it; I have availed myself of similar opportunities by setting up the initial essay materials (such as this prefatory blurb), but I composed the actual text of the response (below) in roughly the same amount of time allotted to the students. I try to model the behavior I want to see.

I have studied Japanese martial arts since I was twelve years of age. Although my training in them has been inconsistent, it has spanned more than two decades and several styles: what is currently taught as taiho-jutsu, Kodokan judo, and Aikikai aikido. Consequently, I entertain the conceit that I have some idea what I am doing on the mats and, although I hope never to put it to the test, in an actual fight. Owing to that conceit, I assert that I would rather fight a single horse-sized duck than 50 duck-sized horses, if ever such a situation were to arise.

This does not mean I do not think I would do well against the horses. A decently-sized duck is perhaps a foot tall, a foot and a half long, and maybe three-quarters of a foot wide. Scaling down a horse to such a size would make what is normally a formidable animal far less so. It would still be able to kick, to be sure, but the kicks would be of far less power, driven by greatly reduced muscle mass, and although the similarly shrunken hooves would focus that force, it would be able to be delivered only to my legs and feet, perhaps up to just above the knee. Bites would be similarly restricted in power, scope, and range. Having studied judo, with such foot-sweep and -reap techniques as kouchi gari, de ashi harai, hiza garuma, and osotogari, I know that I am well able to endure abuse to the parts of my body likely to be affected–and to press on despite the abuse. In brief, I would be well able to endure what each horse could deploy against me, which would help me to fight successfully.

The horse would not be alone, however; 50 such animals would be arrayed against me, and any fight against multiple opponents is necessarily more complicated. Training in Aikikai aikido has shown me the truth of the assertion. But it has also allowed me tactics to use in such situations. Continual movement, so that the bulk of attackers cannot rush on at once, is key, and even if I do get cornered, there are only so many attackers that can reach me at once. More than a few will get in each other’s way, allowing me an avenue for reprisal. It might well be a brutal one, in which I use my superior size (for I am far larger than a duck-sized horse) to seize one attacker to use as a weapon against the others, adding (admittedly sickening) blows from above to the kicking and stomping that fighting such smaller opponents suggests.

Fighting the duck would be better, however. While such an opponent would be physically larger than I am, I am accustomed to working against larger combatants; I often worked with larger and heavier people than myself in judo and aikido. Also, a single opponent is generally easier to defeat, as there is less need to attend to other factors than the single opponent than in a fight with multiple attackers. And scaling up the duck to the size of a horse would take away one of the few combat advantages it might otherwise have; a bird so large would not be able to fly, certainly not from a standing takeoff such as it would have to use to be efficacious in a fight. Indeed, the duck’s mobility would be sharply limited, as ducks on land are ungainly and awkward; I would have no trouble maneuvering into favorable positions from which to attack the duck and strike it repeatedly until it either fled or fell.

Another factor that makes fighting the duck a better option than fighting the horses is the issue of cleaning up afterwards. Both horses and ducks are free with their excretions. Fifty sets of excretory organs will leave a large mess than one, or at least a more widely distributed one, so that cleaning up after the fight against the horses will be more of a chore than would cleaning up after the fight against the duck. And if the fights were to the death, rather than to unconsciousness or retreat, the disparity of cleanup would be greater. Fifty duck-sized horses would need disposal, meaning fifty broken bodies of animals would have to be handled. A single large duck, however, could be butchered for meat–and a fair bit of it, too, as well as far more readily and easily than the horses. There would be less waste from the duck, then, than from the horses, so that the end of the fight against the duck would be better than the end of the fight against the horses. The end of the fight is the thing that matters most about it, so a better ending makes a better fight; fighting the duck is the better option.

Either situation–fighting 50 duck-sized horses or fighting a single horse-sized duck–is unlikely. It is not as though a coruscating series of high-pitched whinnies or a resounding, mighty QUAAACK! will herald the coming of the horses or the duck, and it is far less possible that both will occur in such a way as to afford me the choice of which to confront. If, through some unintended consequences of genetic research or some malevolent machinations of a mastermind, the situation does arise, however, I know what I will do. I can only hope that others will attend to the other problems, though, while I ensure that the duck is defeated.

What follows is an infographic portfolio such as students are asked to write for the Infog assignment during the Spring 2016 instructional term at Oklahoma State University. As is expected of student work, it treats an issue of its writer’s curriculum. It also adheres to the length requirements expressed to students. (They are asked for a statement of goals and purposes of approximately 500 words, exclusive of heading, title, and page numbers, as well as for a hand-drawn and digital-original version of an infographic; the statement below is 498 words long when judged by those standards). Its formatting, however, will necessarily differ from student submissions due to the differing medium. How the medium influences reading is something well worth considering as a classroom discussion, particularly for those students who are going into particularly writing- or design-intensive fields.

The sample below treats a question voiced in the earlier “Sample Developing a Topic and Locating Sources Assignment: Questions about the Comprehensive Exams for UL Lafayette PhD Students in English,” continuing the same project being treated for the benefit of students in classes at both Oklahoma State University and Northern Oklahoma College. Because it is a continuation of the same project, some phrasing will likely be similar to that of sample assignments written for both sets of students.

Earning a doctorate in English from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette (ULL) obliged me to sit for a series of comprehensive exams. Like my contemporaries, I had to take four five-hour tests over such areas of inquiry within English studies as English languages and literatures to 1500, early modern English literature, American literature to approximately 1900, and contemporary fantasy literatures in the US and UK. The idea behind such exams, according to how the ULL Department of English describes them on its website as of 23 September 2015, is to facilitate both teaching and continued research, ensuring that students who complete the program adequately reflect the generalist orientation of the program. Yet while the expressed requirements for the exams note that coursework across literary areas and periods must be taken, many of the students in the program are not obliged to range outside of literary studies, and most graduates will teach outside those areas–namely in rhetoric and composition. Why this is so is unclear; such a lack of clarity merits investigation.

Finding out why the PhD program in English at ULL acts as it does prompts looking at peer institutions of that school. The most immediate peers are the other members of the University of Louisiana system, given that they are unified at their higher administrative levels and therefore operate under many of the same constraints and restrictions that will affect ULL. The problem with doing so is that ULL is the only institution in the University of Louisiana system that offers a PhD in English. A slightly less immediate set of peers is the membership of the Sun Belt Conference, the schools against which ULL competes in athletic events; conferences tend to be organized to bring comparable schools into competition, so the member institutions are likely juxtaposed fairly. Too, more of the schools have PhD programs in English than in the University of Louisiana system, offering more useful data for comparison.

In composing the infographic, I sought to connect my presentation to the materials being presented. Consequently, I strove initially to mimic the color scheme and typefaces used by my focal materials, the description of the comprehensive exams hosted by the ULL English Department; the idea therein was that the treatment of the subject would reflect the subject itself. The infographic title was put at the top center to foreground it most prominently. Information was positioned to move from broad to narrow, leading readers down the page along a single center line. Alignment and grouping were seen to via tables, into which the increasingly narrow data-sets were set for ease of reading; while the focal information was placed near the bottom of the infographic, the plethora of earlier information serves to balance the document. Citations follow typical online practice, providing URLs for the materials collected and grouping them under a single heading at the bottom of the page; they need to be present but unobtrusive, and the placement and smaller typeface conduce to that end.

Raw-Form Infographic

Digital-Original Infographic

What follows are a topic proposal and annotated bibliography such as my students are asked to write for the T&S assignment during the Spring 2016 instructional term at Oklahoma State University. As is expected of student work, it treats an issue of its writer’s curriculum. It also adheres to the length requirements expressed to students (they are asked for 325 to 650 words in the proposal and several citations and brief paragraphs for the annotated bibliography, exclusive of heading, title, and page numbers; the proposal below is 388 words long when judged by those standards, and the annotations after the introductory paragraph are appropriate in content), although its formatting will necessarily differ from student submissions due to the differing medium. How the medium influences reading is something well worth considering as a classroom discussion, particularly for those students who are going into particularly writing- or design-intensive fields.

The text works in tandem with “Sample Topic Proposal: Why Not Have a Rhetoric Requirement among UL Lafayette PhD Students in English?” The text thereof is available here : https://elliottrwi.com/2016/01/14/sample-topic-proposal-why-not-have-a-rhetoric-requirement-among-ul-lafayette-phd-students-in-english/. 

To earn my doctorate in English from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, one of the many things I was asked to do was sit for a series of comprehensive exams. Like my contemporaries, I had to take four five-hour tests covering knowledge selected from among twelve separate areas of inquiry within English studies. The idea behind them, according to how the school’s Department of English describes them on its website as of 23 September 2015, is to facilitate both teaching and continued research, ensuring that students who complete the program adequately reflect the generalist orientation of the program. Successful completion of the exams is required before advancing to work on the dissertation in which the doctorate concludes, and continued presence in the program hinges on passing the exams. They are therefore of singular importance.

Because the comprehensive exams are as important as they are, they are perpetual subjects of discussion, both for those who sit for them and for those who administer and assess them. They are described by the Department in part as being meant to demonstrate students’ mastery of various areas in support of the generalist nature of the program, and the expressed requirements do tend toward that goal–but there are areas in which the comprehensive exams could align more closely to the goals of the Department and to its students.

Investigating the comprehensive exams could easily follow several paths. One would be to ask why the Area 1 requirement is framed as it is. Focusing on English languages and literatures prior to 1500, it effectively covers multiple distinct languages, as the differences between Beowulf and Chaucer attest, and the separation of the area at 1500 seems at odds with prevailing understandings of changes to the language–the medieval in England is usually held to end at 1485. Another question to ask could be why all students are not asked to sit for an exam in rhetoric. All students are asked to sit for exams in literature, and there is certainly nothing wrong with such a requirement, but more students will teach composition classes, and having a background in that sub-discipline would be helpful. A third possibility, although by no means the last, would be to ask why the comprehensive exams retain their traditional on-site, in-the-room form, when so many other schools and fields administer them differently.

Answering any such questions will benefit from recourse to the many discussions of curriculum and exams that go on. Various educational agencies and organizations will have something to say about how exams are conducted, as will disciplinary organizations. Publications of the National Council of Teachers of English and the Modern Language Association of America suggest themselves as useful initial avenues of inquiry. So do pieces from such databases as the Educational Resource Information Center. A few selections from simple keyword searches of such sources appear below.

Hassel, Holly, and Joanne Baird Giordano. “Occupy Writing Studies: Rethinking College Composition for the Needs of the Teaching Majority.” CCC 65.1 (September 2013): 117-39. Print.

The article argues against perceptions among writing scholars that devalue the work done by most writing teachers, who work in two-year and open-admission institutions. After defining a number of its terms, the authors note that studies of such teachers are not proportionate to the work they do. They continue with discussions of the two-year teaching environment, the focus of writing scholarship on four-year and elite institutions and the concomitant problems associated with community colleges, and what benefits would accrue to teachers and scholars from a reconsideration of such positions as they outline. The article concludes with a few recommendations of how to proceed, namely the support of research by and about two-year and open-admission institutions.

Of particular importance in the article is a quotation from a  Chronicle of Higher Education article by Schmidt, one noting that non-tenure-track faculty account for more than three quarters of teaching positions (119). While it does not discuss the comprehensive exam as an item, it does point towards the ubiquity of writing instruction by those with graduate degrees in English, irrespective of their specialization; it is a point the article reiterates. As such, it helps provide context and support for the need for graduate students in English to take exams and concomitant training in rhetoric, since it is from rhetoric that the practice of teaching writing emerges.

Nolan, Robert. E. “How Graduate Students of Adult and Continuing Education Are Assessed at the Doctoral Level.” Journal of Continuing Higher Education 50.3 (Fall 2002): 38-43. PDF file.

The article encourages discussion of the forms comprehensive examinations in doctoral coursework should take to increase completion rates and more accurately reflect the expectations placed on those who pursue advanced graduate study. After explicating then-current demographic data among graduate students, the piece lays out its purpose and summarizes previous studies of the topic. It then lays out its methods–noting the group surveyed and describing the survey used. Findings follow, identifying major trends about the timing, format, and intentions of comprehensive exams. The article concludes with notes that indicate no consensus among programs about how to hold comprehensive exams and what they ought to do.

The article may suffer somewhat from concerns of age, and repeated mentions of what various things “presumably” do weaken some of the rhetorical force of the piece. The brevity of the piece may also be of some concern. The article does, however, provide a useful summary of tendencies in how examinations have been conducted at the doctoral level across disciplines. In that regard, the article offers a useful starting point for discussion of any topic treating comprehensive exams at the doctoral level. As background material for framing investigation of the comprehensive exam, then, it is worth reading.

Ponder, Nicole, Sharon E. Beatty, and William Foxx. “Doctoral Comprehensive Exams in Marketing: Current Practices and Emerging Perspectives.” Journal of Marketing Education 26.3 (December 2004): 226-35. PDF file.

The authors identify and explain then-current and -emerging practices regarding doctoral comprehensive exams in United States marketing programs. After offering a general introduction to the topic, the authors review available literature on the topic, focusing largely on Bloom’s taxonomy. Methodology follows, with a survey described and the process of its dissemination, completion, and interpretation articulated. Results detailing the perceived purposes of doctoral comprehensive exams, structures of those exams, and changes to the latter are presented, and less traditional emergent structures–an “original papers” approach, an “extended take-home,” a “specialist,” and a “no exam–no paper” approach–are explicated. Results are discussed, and a conclusion suggesting that the traditional closed-book format of comprehensive exams will be less common in marketing schools finishes the article.

Although Ponder, Beatty, and Foxx discuss marketing, specifically, many of their assertions are likely applicable to other fields. Despite common perceptions of advanced education as liberal and socially deconstructive, academia tends to remain wedded to older structures, so the “traditional” examination structures discussed in the article are likely to be represented in other fields and programs entirely. If such points of correspondence are in place, then others may also be, making the conclusions reached by the article at least provisionally applicable to other areas of advanced education. Also notable in the article is the concern voiced by some faculty that changes to traditional exam structures “are depriving students of the opportunity to integrate a broad range of knowledge at a deeper level than they will ever have an opportunity to achieve again” (234), offering an unusual perspective on the comprehensive exam that may well bear examination.

Schafer, Joseph A., and Matthew J. Giblin. “Doctoral Comprehensive Exams: Standardization, Customization, and Everywhere in Between.” Journal of Criminal Justice Education 19.2 (July 2008): 275-89. PDF file.

The authors describe general tendencies regarding treatment of comprehensive exams by programs awarding doctoral degrees in criminal justice. The need for systematic study of criminal justice programs is articulated before the doctoral comprehensive exam is contextualized. Exam procedures are described and historicized. Study methods–largely focused on conducting surveys and interviews–are described and findings articulated, the latter focusing largely on the forms the exams take. Findings are subsequently discussed, identifying and commenting on the patterns that emerge from the study and treating relative merits of several exam formats. The article concludes with questions about the ongoing utility of curricular standards to both the discipline and the broader community the discipline serves.

Although Schafer and Giblin treat the discipline of criminal justice, specifically, they ground their article in information deriving from studies of other fields–notably including rhetoric–and assert that their own discipline largely follows the structures of others. The conclusions they reach about their own field therefore present themselves as able to be generalized back to those other fields, so that what they say about comprehensive exams can be applied to other areas than their own. Additionally, their relatively recent (to this writing) article allows their conclusions to be taken as more timely, and their relatively extensive bibliography offers useful insights as to further reading.

What follows are a summary and description of reading strategies used to create it such as my students are asked to write for the StratRdg assignment during the Spring 2016 instructional term at Oklahoma State University. As is expected of student work, it treats a document in the writer’s field (in this case, medievalist studies*, with the document itself appearing here), presenting it to first-year students in that field. (The text shows up with a Flesch-Kincaid grade level of 13.2, which indicates an early first-year college student.) It also adheres to the length requirements expressed to students (they are asked for a 300- to 500- word summary and a 700- 1,000-word description of reading strategies used, exclusive of heading, title, and page numbers; the sample below has a summary of 376 words and a reading strategies description of 1,000 words when judged by those standards), although its formatting will necessarily differ from student submissions due to the differing medium. How the medium influences reading is something well worth considering as a classroom discussion, particularly for those students who are going into particularly writing- or design-intensive fields.

Bonnie J. Erwin’s “‘Is This Winning?’: Reflections on Teaching The Two Noble Kinsmen” appears in the 2014 issue of The Year’s Work in Medievalism. In the article, Erwin asserts that teaching students about the medieval through the early modern that engages with the medieval is particularly effective, citing a reading of Shakespeare’s The Two Noble Kinsmen against its source in Chaucer’s Knight’s Tale as a useful case study of how such teaching could work. Following an epigraph from E. Talbot Donaldson and the presentation of the thesis, the article lays out the context of teaching: an introductory literature survey broadly treating the distant past and arriving at the idea that peripheral figures allow closer interrogation of the past. Erwin notes the self-positioning of the play as outsider to the medieval antecedent before glossing the in-class contextual materials given her students, namely chivalric literature and explications of its ideologies. She notes also that her students largely focused on the Shakespearean Emilia, using her as a means of entry into the work. Her contrast with her Chaucerian counterpart is noted, as are the differing narrative attitudes towards the characters. The article comments on the lapses in Chaucer’s Knight’s narrative control over Emelye and its contrast with the seeming self-actualization of Shakespeare’s Emilia, with prior student discussions references to illuminate assertions.

Afterwards, Erwin lays out a series of classroom activities she conducted with her students. They initially divided into five groups, each treating one of the characters most prominent in discussing love in the play. Groups were asked to interpret the assigned character’s stances on love and friendship, interrogating the particular position and its supporting evidence; the group focusing on Emilia receives special attention in the article, with comments from students related. Students were subsequently redivided into discussion groups and asked to debate from characters’ perspectives about the preferability of courtly love or early modern friendship; the latter was valued over the former, with Emilia held up as offering the exemplary critique of the former. Problems students identified in Emilia are also noted in the article, which concludes with note of an extension activity and the idea that the medieval and other pasts are still in dialog with modern ideas of the self, offering a conversation well worth investigating.

Selecting a medievalist text to summarize took a bit of doing. Most scholarship in the field is expansive, displaying both the interdisciplinarity common to the field and the attention to detail that bespeaks long-tended love of the subject. Neither makes for the most accessible text, although both do much to enrich prevailing understanding of how what has gone before works with what is going on now. The Year’s Work in Medievalism, however, tends to offer reasonably easily treated pieces, such that an article from the journal can be used to demonstrate how to approach scholarly reading, generally, and medievalist scholarly reading, in particular.

Before selecting the text, I knew I would be using it to draft a summary and description of my strategies for reading. Having an understanding of the uses to which a given scholarly text will be put helps inform the reading done, as it shapes what the reader will look for in accomplishing the reading. Since I knew what I would be doing with the text, I knew that when I looked through it, I would need to point out the thesis of the work, as well as indications of the major points of discussion and the ways in which those points were treated. I also knew that I would need to point out any paratextual features–that is, those parts of the article not necessarily included in the text proper but still necessarily related to it. With such ideas in mind, I plunged into the reading.

I quickly noted not the title, which seemed to my eyes a standard piece, but the epigraph from E. Talbot Donaldson. Its placement on the page, markedly different from that of the main text, attracted attention. Its source, one of the major critics of medieval literature, also attracted attention. Donaldson’s words carry weight with medievalists, so his deployment before the article even begins situates the article as engaging with some of the major threads of medieval studies. It also serves to position the article in tension with commonly received wisdom, identifying the context in which Erwin’s discussion takes place.

Pressing onward from the epigraph, I scanned the first paragraph, looking for the article’s thesis in one of the traditional places: the beginning of the first paragraph and the end of it. I found it in the latter, noting its presence in the margins and underlining it to call visual attention directly to it. I also underlined a few sentences earlier in the paragraph, sentences that bridge from the epigraph to the thesis and which seem to correspond to my own other interests; highlighting them will prompt later recall.

As I continued reading, I noted that the next paragraph serves to contextualize Erwin’s discussion. That is, it articulates the circumstances in which Erwin came upon the idea her article explicates. I highlighted a few key sentences that describe that context, but I largely passed on from the paragraph. Context is useful and necessary, certainly, but for my immediate reading purpose, it sufficed to note the presence of the context and a cursory image of it.

The article continues with a description of how The Two Noble Kinsmen situates itself as a medievalist text, something I underlined as being of interest to me as a medievalist. When it returns shortly after to a discussion of the class from which the article arises, it offers something else of interest to me as a medievalist: a comment about the lapse of a major medieval construct. I highlighted it and appended a bit of marginalia, connecting it to a conference paper I gave some time ago. Building the connection to my own prior knowledge helps me to place Erwin’s work in context, as well as to broaden my understanding of materials with which I was already familiar. Additionally, the simple act of writing helps cement the connection through engaging multiple means of recall. (Underlining does, too, if not as specifically and therefore less powerfully.) I also highlighted the citation embedded in the paragraph and its related footnote; the source referenced appears to be one of interest to me, so calling attention to it serves as a reminder of my ongoing need to read.

Erwin presses on to relate her students’ progress through the exercises associated with the reading, and I underlined the major assertions she makes in the piece. The specific support for those assertions I left unmarked, having skimmed over them. I need to know that there is support, and I may need to know what that support is later, but the immediate purpose of my reading does not demand that detail, so I let it lie. It results in some of the pages of my copy of the article being less heavily marked than others, to be sure, but that is not a problem now.

It had been, though, as I had skipped over more than I ought to have done, something I realized as I came initially to Erwin’s summation of classroom findings. They had not made sense to me on first reading, prompting me to recognize that I had glossed over vital details. At that point, I made a note in the margins indicating how far back I would need to read, and I re-read the text from that point. As I went through again, I paid closer attention, underlining details that illuminated the summation I had earlier failed to understand. The reading made more sense in the repetition, as is often the case, and I moved into the conclusion, underlining again the major points Erwin makes.

My own reading methods are idiosyncratic, certainly, developed over years of reading and reading in my field. They pull upon substantial background knowledge in determining what is important to highlight for the purposes I am about at any time. Knowing those purposes , though, is a useful first step; even reading slowly with “Does this inform what I am doing?” in mind helps make the reading go better, and practice helps with speed later.

*The term denotes studies of how the medieval is mis/used and mis/appropriated by later periods. Study of the medieval itself is necessary to study of the medievalist, but the medievalist study also has to encompass knowledge of the receiving period. More information can be found from the International Society for the Study of Medievalism and the Tales after Tolkien Society. Return to text.