Speaking, Writing, and Performance: An Integrated Approach to the Word.

To provide students with a rhetorical stance and motivation, a college freshman composition class adopted the ideas of the "radical" literacy educator, Paulo Freire, who believes that literacy should allow students and teachers to become truly conscious of the world. Class projects were initiated in which the students had as much expertise as the instructors. The first project addressed people's consciousness of themselves as workers (students were invited to share impressions of their worst job), while the second focused on television criticism, comparing "Hill Street Blues" and "Miami Vice." The third project featured a look at public issues through editorials in the local newspaper, and in the fourth project, the students presented "tours" of parts of their city. All the projects involved various levels and kinds of peer feedback, and the students, most of whom were taking only this one class, quickly developed a feeling of shared community. The essays that came out of the first project, although many contained technical errors, had a natural order to them that interested the readers and the writer. The television project discussions led to shifts of consciousness that enabled the students to grasp the notion of concession in argument, a concept that also helped in the third project, concerning arguments and editorials. In the final project the students examined their city closely, gaining a sense of civic pride and appreciation. (NKA)