Works Cited and Additional Bibliography

Beene, Lynn Diane. “Assignment Making,” in Michael G. Moran and Ronald F. Lunsford (Eds.), Research in Composition and Rhetoric: A Bibliographic Sourcebook. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1984, pp. 239–262. Surveys several ways to sequence assignments.

Berlin, James. Rhetoric and Reality. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 1987.

Comprone, Joseph J. “Using Problem-solving as a Method of Developing Sequenced-assignments in a Writing About Fiction and Film Class,” Exercise Exchange 24.1 (1979), 4–13

Connors, Robert. “The Rise and Fall of the Modes of Discourse.” College Composition and Communication 32.4 (December 1981): 444–455. Traces the systematicization of the four modes (narration, description, exposition, argument) to Bowdoin College’s Samuel P. Newman (A Practical System of Rhetoric, 1827). Then follows the history of the modes in composition teaching, from his apogee 1890–1930 through its decline under the impact of theories of communication and general semantics 1930–1950 and its “abandonment” thereafter. See also pp. 225–250 in Connors’s Composition-Rhetoric: Backgrounds, Theory, and Pedagogy (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1997).

Crowley, Sharon. The Methodical Memory: Invention in Current-Traditional Rhetoric. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 1990. Discusses the persistence of modes-based instruction in USA composition practice.

Foster, David. A Primer for Writing Teachers: Theories, Theorists, Issues, Problems. Upper Montclair, NJ:L Boynton, 1983. Characterizes a good writing course as “a series of purposeful writing tasks” and classifies the sequences of the tasks in terms of logical composing processes, ordered series of writing topics, or sequence of rhetorical situations (p. 124).

Gibson, Walker. Seeing and Writing: Fifteen Exercises in Composing Experience. 2nd ed. New York: David McKay, 1974. Only one of many textbooks arranging writing assignments in a carefully reasoned sequence, but one of the best. Gibson aims to challenge the student with increasingly complex writing tasks that will themselve teach the student that seeing is “a kind of prejudicial medium.”

Haswell, Richard H. “Rose M. Kavana” (CompPanel No. 21) http://comppile.tamucc.edu/comppanel_21.htm Describes two composition textsbooks by Rose M. Kavana, one published in 1903, the other in 1920. Although the assignments in the texts are based upon the four modes, the modes are not treated in isolation. Assignments are combinations of narration, description, exposition, and argumentation. Kavana’s textbooks show that the modes were not always treated as simplistically as Robert Connors perhaps suggests.

Pytlik, Betty P. “Sequences Writing Assignments: What’s Been Done and Why? ERIC Document Reproduction Service, ED 294 202 (1987). Takes up the issue of sequencing assignments in composition classes. Provides a taxonomy of different kinds of sequences that have proved popular (e.g., personal to impersonal, easy to hard, simple to complex in terms of critical thinking skills). Also provides a bibliography on the subject of assignment sequencing, as well as eight sequenced writing assignments.

Rankin, Elizabeth. “From Simple to Complex: Ideas of Order in Assignment Sequences.” JAC: Journal of Advanced Composition 10.1 (1990), 126–135. http://jac.gsu.edu/jac/10/Articles/10.htm Begins with a deconstruction of the notion “from simple to complex” and continues with an analysis of differing writing-course sequences (hierarchical and non-hierarchical, serial and cumulative) and their conflicting underlying assumptions. Concludes that “to imagine that we can be free of sequence” is an illusion. Course sequences are not natural but naturalized. On the other hand, teachers and students need sequences: “an assignment sequence is a necessary fiction” (p. 134). One of the best discussions of the issues.

Saxton, Ruth O. “From the Impersonal to the Personal: A Cognitive Rationale for a Radical Freshman Writing Syllabus.” ERIC Document Reproduction Service, ED 284 285 (1987). Argues that personal writing is a more demanding assignment than teachers may think. Offers an assignment sequence from a first-year writing course at a California women’s college, beginning with text-based assignments, moving to argumentation, and ending with an autobiographical paper.

Skorczewski, Dawn. “Want to Tell a True Story About First-Year Writing Programs?” in Linda Adler-Kassner and Susanmarie Harrington, eds. Questioning Authority: Stories Told in School. Ann Arbor: U. of Michigan Press, 2001: 168–186.

Standiford, Denise M. “In the Process: Using the four Modes to Develop a Layered Composition.” English Journal 81.8 (1992), 47–53. Describes a complex assignment which asks students to write on one topic through each of of four modes. Instead of the traditional Description, Narration, Exposition, and Persuasion, Standiford refers her students to Recording, Reporting, Generalization, and Theorizing.

Sternglass, Marilyn. “Sequencing tasks on the basis of their cognitive demands.” ERIC Document Reproduction Service, ED 240 614 (1983). Analyzes student papers from three universities in terms of their cognitive structures and found an increase in complexity moving from expository to argumentative to speculative. Student writing also grew in cognitive sophistication when they translated a general problem into a personal one. Sternglass argues that any assignment can be made more demanding by specifying the purpose of it. So summary-writing grows in sophistication as students move from mere restatement, to description, to analysis.