VERBAL EQUINOX SPRING 2019

VERBAL

EQUINOX

SPRING

2019

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editor's

Introduction

The Fall 2018 - Spring 2019 school year has been a year of change, and it began with new emphasis placed on digital literacy. As Ashton Corsetti describes in his editorial "From Grammar to Graphics," our digital world challenges the traditional double-spaced, Times New Roman, printed paper that students have typically been required to write for classes. As a result, the WSU English Department has tried to incorporate additional elements of digital literacy into their classes this year. Ashton Corsetti argues, quite rightly, that tutors must adapt to the new demand and help students learn to use good rhetoric with the new digital formats; therefore, tutors had to quickly master using and tutoring students in three Adobe programs: Spark, InDesign, and Premiere Pro/Rush. Of course, the best way to truly teach something is to learn it yourself. As a result, part of the training for our tutors this year included the creation of a personal introduction in Adobe Spark, designing an editorial with InDesign, and presenting a digital documentary with Adobe Premiere Pro.

To reflect this new focus, this year's edition of Verbal Equinox consists of the magazine editorials that tutors made using Adobe InDesign. The structure of the traditional editorial is divided into three parts: First, the writer introduces the facts about the issue to the reader. Second, the writer takes a deliberate stance and presents an argument. Third, the writer explains the reasons behind their chosen stance. For this assignment, tutors were required to use MLA formatting, compelling images, a clear layout, and five seperate sources (three peer reviewed secondary sources and two primary sources). Next, the tutors explained the reasons behind their design decisions in an analysis of their rhetorical decisions because, even in a digital format, the piece should be deliberately constructed to fulfill its purpose.

The tutors' resulting editorials were incredibly perceptive and captured crucial insights into how tutoring and writing has been impacted by the current issues of our time. These editorials covered a broad range of topics. A few editorials focused on the effect our digital world has had on students' lives, their writing, and their ability to learn. Others focused more on how the polarization of political views has impacted writing--for example, how writers use the internet to find sources that support their view while deliberately ignoring other views, which undermines their argument. Others focused on a wide range of concerns regarding the Writing Center and its ability to meet various students' needs. All are valuable pieces in regards to both their topics and implementation of digital design, and we hope you appreciate reading them as much as we did.

Please enjoy.

Sarah Taylor Editor in Chief

contributors

Copy Editor

Kathryn Sullivan

Copy Editor

Cole Eckhardt

Copy/Design Editor

Mekenzie Williams

Design Editor

Llewellyn Shanjengange

Design Editor

Joshua Abbott

ii

Verbal Equinox Spring 2019 edition

Editor in Chief

Sarah Taylor

Executive editor

Claire Hughes

Verbal Equinox is a Weber State University Writing Center publication. Articles produced for the Fall semester 2018 tutor training course have been honed and refined for this edition, and that process has included licensing or replacing supposedly fair use images so that these pieces appear in as close approximation to the original documents as possible. Writing Center editorial staff accomplished all copy editing, layout, and publication design work with great attention to detail. Cover photos by Llewellyn Shanjengange. Fonts used include Bebas Neue, Raleway, and Forma. This volume was published in April 2019. Digital version at weber.edu/WritingCenter/verbalequinox.html

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VERBAL EQUINOX

TABLE OF CONTENTS

1 ASHTON CORSETTI From Grammar to Graphics: Addressing New Media Composition in Writing Centers

19 33 RAQUELLE TURNER The Need to Aid Students with

MIRANDA SPAULDING

How to Get out of That Book

Disabilities in the Writing

Report

5 CACI KYNASTON Tutoring with Socrates

21 KAITLYNN LOWDER 37 EMILY RICH

The Loneliness Epidemic

No One Wins

9 25 41 REED BROWN The Writing Center as a Safe Space

MEKENZIE WILLIAMS

Environmentalism in Higher

SETH SIEBERSMA

Your Lab Report Sucks

Education: Are Universities Doing

Enough?

15 PORTER LUNCEFORD 29 KATELYN SHAW 47 TREY HAWKINS

Are Writing Centers Benefiting Each

Striving for Greatness On and Off

Persuasion through Digital

and Every Student?

the Field

Rhetoric is Valid

51 KATHRYN SULLIVAN You're (More Than) Welcome

71 EMILY RIMMASCH How to Alter Student Perspectives and Help Students Who Are Required To Be There

i Introduction

55

LLEWELLYN SHANJENGANGE

PERCEPTION

61 IAN DUNCAN DIGITAL TUTORS

75 JOSHUA ABBOTT Digital Footprints: Managing Our Irrevocable Traces

82 Note on Rhetorical Anaysis

79 KELLY HART

83 Image Citations

The Future of English Teaching

67 JACKSON REED Echo Chambers: Can You Hear Me?

88 Acknowlegements

From Grammar to Graphics:

Addressing New Media Composition in Writing Centers

Ashton Corsetti is a professional and

technical writing major and Writing Center tutor at Weber

State University. His other work is published in Digital Rhetoric magazine.

Contact him at: ashtoncorsetti@mail.

weber.edu

Lately, the subject of new white paper" is no longer relevant media technologies has been (McKinney 32). Instead of writing discussed among tutors, instructors in a linear fashion--"left-to-right, and students of composition alike. top-to-bottom, page-to-page"-- Joshua Daniel-Wariya, an students now have a multitude of assistant professor of rhetoric choices available when it comes and professional writing at to packaging and distributing Oklahoma State University, opens their ideas (McKinney 33). his discussion of new media by Considering this range of quoting literature professor and possibility, McKinney adds a Storyspace co-founder Jay David note of caution: "We ought to Bolter, who once referred to this really think through whether a current era as the "late age of print." paper essay, say, is the best way According to his analysis, print to reach our audience or purpose. still seems like a viable resource If we decide to compose paper for rhetorical composition, essays knowing we have the but it is quickly becoming wide range of available textual obsolete as the use of new media choices, we are deeming the proliferates (Daniel-Wariya 33). paper essay the best way to meet Jackie Grutsch McKinney, our rhetorical ends . . ." (33). professor of rhetoric and However, deciding whether a composition as well as the paper essay is the best medium for Writing Center director at Ball a student's project would require State University, shortens this some knowledge of the other idea to the scope of college media out there. Recognizing campuses--specifically, to the that other media exist is half the realm of tutoring programs. The battle; what is more important decades-long norm of "typed, is knowing how they work double spaced, thesis-driven and what their limitations are. texts on 8?-by-11-inch, stapled, This creates a problem for

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college tutors who, no doubt, see would we decide what texts students the possibility in helping students can bring into the Writing Center? bring their message to a different Anne Frances Wysocki, associate platform. While it is our goal to professor emerita at the University help students become effective of Wisconsin Milwaukee, makes the communicators, it is worth deciding distinction that new media include how much writing tutors--with more than just computer programs. their already-extensive knowledge She writes that the makeup of of mechanics and rhetorical these texts is endless, but the analysis--should know about new producer of the text, as well as its media technologies so that they recipient, must "understand . . . that themselves can also remain effective. the various materialities of a text Perhaps McKinney states this contribute to how it . . . is read and point best. According to her, if the understood" (Wysocki et al. 15). focus of new media composition is These "materialities" are the just about learning the technologies elements that do not merely themselves, then students will find supplement the text but carry it it more effective to visit software along. They demonstrate how "any specialists rather than Writing text--like its composers and readers Center tutors. Thus, to remain --doesn't function independently of relevant, we have to not only know how it is made and in what contexts" the technologies themselves but (Wysocki et al. 15). Digitally show students how they also work as speaking, this can include those rhetorical devices (McKinney 35). design features that are familiar to That sounds great, but as us, such as typeface, color, pictures, McKinney mentions, what happens graphics, graphs and charts. if we spread ourselves too thin? If However, there are other ways we do, how well will we be able to we can engage--or "interact," as address the concerns in which tutors Wysocki puts it--with a text that are traditionally trained (McKinney doesn't require merely physical 29)? After all, what actually sensation. Clicking a hyperlink can constitutes "new media," and how have the psychological appeal of

"Writing has evolved with new composing technologies and media, and we must evolve, too . . . A radical shift in the way that writers communicate . . . necessitates a radical re-imagining and reunderstanding of our practices, purposes, and goals" (DanielWariya 49).

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pushing a button. Solving a puzzle Maybe, then, the issue is not what carries a sense of accomplishment type of new media we should tutor or progression. Even juxtaposing but how it should be tutored. If we a poem with an image can allow can focus on these "materialities" us to make simple connections as just other higher-order concerns between the two (Wysocki et al. 17). that lend to rhetorical devices,

then we can successfully blend new media with composition. McKinney backs up this idea by suggesting that writing tutors be trained in various "modes" of design (41). For example, a tutor can show how certain design elements set the stage for the upcoming message, connoting the tone of the project and representing "underlying themes" (McKinney 43). Repetition of visual elements, like typeface and color, can likewise unify the message of the student's text (McKinney 44). Students can also create salience by making readers focus on a specific portion of whatever they're writing (McKinney 45). Instructors of composition can contribute much to this new era, but before they can help students compose their own projects, it is just as important to consider new instructional methods.

Works Cited

Daniel-Wariya, Joshua. "A Language of Play: New Media's Possibility Spaces." Computers and Composition, vol. 40, 2016, pp. 32-47.

McKinney, Jackie Grutsch. "New Media Matters: Tutoring in the Late Age of Print." The Writing Center Journal, vol. 29, no. 2, 2009, pp. 28-51

Wysocki, Anne Frances, et al. Writing New Media: Theory and Applications for Expanding the Teaching of Composition. Utah State UP, 2004.

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