Pratt Handout

CRTW 201

Dr. Fike

YOU MUST HAVE PRATT'S TEXT TO TAKE THE QUIZ. IF YOU DO NOT, PLEASE GO GET A COPY AT THE LIBRARY. YOU MAY REJOIN THE DISCUSSION IN PROGRESS.

DAY ONE

Quiz.

Go over Paper 4 assignment sheet.

Announcement: Peer editing one week from today. You must bring a full draft of your paper and the peer editing sheet.

Go over the quiz.

First reactions to Pratt's text.

As we have noted again and again this semester, identifying and working through key concepts is often a helpful way to understand a text. Today we will begin in that fashion.

What is the text’s key concept (487)? What concept in Anzaldúa does it remind you of?

PBFF (20 MINUTES): "Passage-based focused freewriting is probably the single best way to arrive at ideas about what you are reading. . . . It is the best place to practice the heuristics in this book" (WA 109-10). Pick a passage such as the par. that spans pages 487-89 (or some other that appeals to you) and do passage-based focused freewriting. I will keep time.

• 7 minutes: First, COPY the par. into your notebook. Copy as much as you can; do not worry if you run out of time.

• 3 minutes: Annotate what you copied. Do it in your notebook, not in your textbook.

• 5 minutes: Freewriting.

• 5 minutes: Share your discoveries with the rest of the class.

Question: How did copying the passage by hand affect the process of critical reading?

CHART EXERCISE: Work in your groups to fill in the following chart. When you have finished doing so, figure out why the left column is arranged in a particular order. Also, DRAW the relationships among these four concepts.

Hints:

Authors from different cultures produce the following types of statements:

• Ethnography (487)

• Transculturation (491)

There are two main types of transculturation:

•  Mediation

• Autoethnography

OTHER CONCEPTS: Write down definitions of the following four additional concepts.

• Community (493)

• Marginalization (497)   

• Safe houses (497)

DAY TWO

YOU MUST HAVE PRATT'S TEXT TO PARTICIPATE TODAY. IF YOU DO NOT, PLEASE GO GET A COPY AT THE LIBRARY. YOU MAY REJOIN THE DISCUSSION IN PROGRESS.

ANNOUNCEMENT: REMEMBER THAT YOU MUST BRING A FULL DRAFT TO OUR NEXT CLASS SESSION. A FULL DRAFT IS THE PRICE OF ADMISSION. IF YOU DO NOT HAVE A DRAFT, YOU MAY NOT PARTICIPATE AND WILL RECEIVE AN ABSENCE.

Why are the concepts in the chart above arranged in that order?

GROUP ACTIVITY ON INTERPRETATIONS: Do an outline of the text. Hint: It has 3 major sections. Then ask yourself how the first relates to the others. Why is the first even IN this text? Find connections among the sections in order to understand the text’s unity and coherence.

I.         

II.

III.

Note that what we are doing with “Arts of the Contact Zone” is a model for what you can do with any reading assignment you have in any of your other courses.

FINAL EXERCISE: With all of the above as preparation, use “The Logic of an Article” to do a thorough analysis of “Arts of the Contact Zone” by the elements of critical thinking. Note that you have already done #5. Note also that these questions are very similar to “Going Around the Circle: The Basic Process of Analysis” (Nosich 68).

The Logic of an Article

1)         The main purpose of this article is             .

(State as accurately as possible the author’s purpose for writing the article.)

2)         The key question that the author is addressing is             .

            (Figure out the key question in the mind of the author when s/he wrote the article.)

3)         The most important information in this article is             .

            (Figure out the facts, experiences, data the author is using to support her/his conclusions.)

4)         The main conclusions/interpretations in this article are             .

            (Identify the key conclusions the author comes to and presents in the article.)

5)         The key concept(s) we need to understand in this article is (are)             .

      By these concepts the author means _______.

            (Figure out the most important ideas you would have to understand in order to grasp the author’s line of reasoning.)

6)         The main assumption(s) underlying the author’s thinking is (are)             .

            (Figure out what the author is taking for granted [that might be questioned].)

7a)       If we take this line of reasoning seriously, the implications/consequences are              .

            (What consequences are likely to follow if people take the author’s line of reasoning seriously?)

7b)       If we fail to take this line of reasoning seriously, the implications/consequences are

            .

            (What consequences are likely to follow if people ignore the author’s reasoning?)

8)        The main point(s) of view presented in this article is (are)             .

            (What is the author looking at, and how is s/he seeing it?)

9)         The context of this article is _____.

10)       The article presents the following alternatives: ______.

Adapted from: Linda Elder and Richard Paul, The Thinker's Guide to Analytic Thinking (Foundation for Critical Thinking, 2006), 24-26.

 FINAL DISCUSSION: Here are some final questions that merit discussion.

·       How does Pratt’s essay apply to your education?

·       Does it apply to this class?

·       By emphasizing the elements and standards, does CRTW try to get you to fit into “a homogeneous social world” (494)?

·       Does CRTW push “a single set of rules or norms [to be] shared by all participants” (494)?

·       Whom are you more like—Poma or de la Vega?

·       How did you learn about the world? Was it through a medium like baseball cards? How did it measure up to the standards of sufficiency, depth, breadth, fairness, and inclusiveness?

What tools have Anzaldúa and Pratt equipped you with for understanding your cultural event?