Incompetence Continued

How refeshing that I'm referring to my incompetence in cooking rather than in teaching.

Javier, Jeanne, Ken and I had a wonderful, very animated conversation, and why not?  Our mouths were not full.  I noticed Jeanne doing what kids do, pushing the food around on her plate, as if trying to make it dissolve and disappear.  The funny things is that I love the dish they didn't like.  I must remember to do them the kindness of not inviting them over to eat here.  We can take them out.  But if I ever do invite them over again, I'll make lasagne, not my variation on Nigerian stew.

Now back to an article I really want to write before I got back to campus tomorrow.

Here's the rough draft:

Test question from College Oral Communication 2:   If you want to participate in a class discussion, you should . . .

         a. listen carefully, looking down at the floor, and raise your hand

       b. look directly at the person talking and politely interrupt

       c. speak as loudly as possible and give your opinion

       d. wait until everyone is quiet and then speak

The correct answer is to look directly at the person talking and politely interrupt!  I wondered what gave the author, Ann Roemer, this idea, so I Googled it and found Deborah Tannen saying the same thing.  A woman who disagreed with her interrupted her to say so! 

                We all have cherished assumptions, but now that people can effectively gather data on what we actually do rather than our theories of what we do, we have new insights challenging our assumptions or speculations.  One assumption that many students—talkative or quiet-- make is that the people who are contributing the most to discussions are the students who talk the most.  I’ve referred more than one student to the best-selling book Quiet:  The Power of the Introvert in a World that Can’t Stop Talking.  Imagine me, so representative of the world that can’t stop talking, championing those who can!

      As I come to the end of a career teaching on four continents, I'm grateful that there are still surprises right here at home, and Ann Roemer's College Oral Communication provided me with a couple.  The second surprise was in her scale on group participation.  On the scale of one to ten, passive is 1 and aggressive is ten, so the best rating is 5, which is assertive. 

Hiroko Saito  Teachers’ practices and students’ preferences in feedback (and not just feedback but on methodology)