The Best Place to Start is the Beginning

Of all the talks, Elder Larry R. Lawrence’s, of the Seventy, was understated and simple, and only after I looked at my notes again did I realize how powerful his message was. I want to focus on the arrangement of his talk and how it ties in with the possible/impossible topic of invention.

Elder Lawrence began the body of his message with one of the Lord’s commandments: “Be ye therefore perfect, even as your father which is in heaven is perfect.” Elder Lawrence then remarks about how discipleship isn’t easy. He uses the story in the Bible of the rich young ruler who was humble enough to ask the Lord what more he could do, but not humble enough to act on the Lord’s advice. At this point in the talk, discipleship seems impossible. Elder Lawrence makes it seem like a gauntlet of hardship and upward drudgery, with no end in sight, acknowledging that we’ll have to wait for perfection in the next life. But Elder Lawrence set up the rest of his talk perfectly. As soon as he had his audience wondering about whether or not they’d be up for the task, he surprises them with small, simple stories of where they can start.

The seemingly insignificant anecdotes, reminiscent of the Spirit’s still small voice, act as the “possible” part of his talk. In these stories, the Holy Ghost whispered to those that had asked these bits of advice: “stop complaining”; “clean up your language”; “don’t interrupt people”; “keep the Sabbath day holy”; and in stunning simplicity, “clean up your room.” With each successive story, Elder Lawrence’s implicit message becomes clearer: the best place to start is at the beginning. It is possible to walk the strait and narrow. In contrast to his earlier anecdotes, discipleship becomes a possible task. With such an arrangement, Elder Lawrence is able to amplify the topic of invention of possible, and encourage and lift others to the task of discipleship.

Talk Ain’t Cheap: Why Effective Rhetoric and Communication is Vital for English Teaching Majors

Introduction

            In second grade, I had a particularly horrible teacher.  I cannot remember his name, but I do remember his complete and utter incompetence at explaining even the simplest concept to our class in a way we would understand.  One day, after a particularly ineffective lesson on verbs in which I was

Don't let a second grader take over your class.
Communicate!

being an extreme smart aleck, he snidely asked if I would like to teach the class.  Fully valuing the fact that he had finally recognized and accepted his own teaching ineptitude, I readily agreed, got up from my seat, strolled to the front of the class, and began to teach my second grade pupils on the value of verbs.  Needless to say, the subsequent events did not go well for me, and I was shoved back into my seat.  I realized much later that his unsuccessful teaching method came from the fact that he could not communicate with and engage his students.  I also realized much later what a rhetorical question was.

My experience illustrates an intriguing dilemma about teaching, especially English teaching: in a field all about communication, participation, and learning, why are so many teachers so ineffective at communicating to their students in a way that engages and endears them to their teacher?  We have all had terrible teachers.  Why, when they have chosen the profession of education and have all the necessary qualifications, are some so bad at what they do?  There might be several answers to this quandary.  For one, communication is not the only way to be successful in the classroom, so it can sometimes be forgotten as truly important.  Other ways to be a successful teacher are to grade quickly, enforce classroom rules, understand material completely, get along with staff, devote time to self-improvement, and love what you do.  These do not involve communication that much.  However, by far, the most important method for success is communication.  It governs nearly everything you will do as a teacher.  Your work is literally communicating and persuading students about literature, writing, and grammar, which are, in themselves, subparts of communication and persuasion.  Thus, communication is absolutely imperative to effective English teaching.  Without

These students are engaged in their English
           teacher's lesson because he can communicate
effectively to them.

effective communication, no teacher can be truly excellent.  The teachers might know the subject matter by heart.  They may have carefully constructed lesson plans.  But if teachers cannot engage students in learning the material, every carefully learned and crafted lesson goes to naught.  A bad teacher is usually a teacher who cannot communicate successfully.  Although teaching is more than just successful communication, as prospective English teaching majors, it is completely and utterly essential that you learn how to communicate and persuade well in your classes.  Learn these skills of communication now, and you will not be frustrated with your students later on.  In order to be the most effective teacher you can, you need to be able to effectively communicate on a general classroom level with the skills of clarity, arrangement, and entertainment, and on an individual basis with persuasiveness. 

Clarity in the Classroom

The most important communication will be in your classroom.  You talk the most in the classroom, and you affect the most people in the classroom.  The most important aspect of any teaching method is simply clarity.  The sign of any true comprehension of material is if you can teach it simply, carefully, and fully without any confusion, so teaching with clarity demonstrates how well you know certain material.  Simplicity is especially important when talking to a large group because the message must be comprehensible to everyone in the room, from the student with a knack for English to someone who cannot seem to grasp English concepts of grammar, literature, or writing.  This idea of clarity as the best means of teaching exists throughout history.  For example, in his De Doctrina Christiana, Saint Augustine instructed readers that the best way to teach a sermon to a large

Saint Augustine allows us to see the
               historical context and importance

of talking clearly without condescension 

group is to use simple language, but to not be tedious or over-repetitive (81).  The same principle applies not only to sermons, but also to English teaching.  You can easily slip into unwanted condescension about which St. Augustine so carefully warns us if you talk clearly but repetitively and below the level of your students.  Thus when teaching a lesson, you should always keep in mind your students as your audience and change how you teach a concept respectively.  For example, how you would explain a concept to an AP English classroom would be perhaps a more deep and complex explanation than how you explain a concept to a regular English class.  Although you will probably learn how to address different class scenarios when you do your teaching classes and student teaching, the course outcomes usually lack any mention of effective communication.  Thus, it is up to you to recognize the need for clarity when teaching.  When you use clarity and firm simplicity, your students will appreciate your teaching style and will respect you more for teaching effectively.  You will build up your character (known as ethos in rhetoric (Burton)) and admiration from students because you are concise and clear without any arrogance.

Arrangement in the Classroom

To communicate and persuade your students to learn, you need more than simply clarity.  How you arrange your lesson is also vital to effective communication.  Arrangement, in ancient Greece and Rome, was chiefly concerned with the exact order used in a usually persuasive oration (Burton), but today, arrangement is extremely important to all large-scale speaking and writing.  The importance of arrangement extends from the fact that the best way to competently teach is to form arguments and ideas that follow a logical and clarifying organization.  Many English teachers, especially those who only lecture, do not practice effective arrangement.  Even with carefully planned lessons, some teachers get easily sidetracked or jump quickly from one idea to another without any transitions or real arrangement.  I had one teacher my senior year of high school whom I regard as one of my worst teachers.  She knew her material and was highly intelligent, but she was so scatter-brained that I learned nothing from her.  Even if concepts are explained clearly, if your transitions between thoughts and ideas are as sudden, scatter-brained, and confusing like my teacher’s, all the clarity in the world will not really help successful communication in the classroom.  One of the best ways to help your arrangement is to use

We as teachers can use PowerPoints to assist
           our arrangement of our lessons.

technology such as PowerPoint and Prezi.  These presentations can add an entertainment value to your lessons, while also keeping you focused.  In order to avoid boredom, PowerPoint should be a guiding mechanism for an already basically memorized presentation, not just read out loud slide by slide.  By already knowing your own material well and by keeping to a logical and clear arrangement that moves from one idea to another, you will better help your students learn.

Entertainment in the Classroom

Today's students want instant entertainment
from their classroom experience.  We can
use entertainment to further the class
engagement levels and help classrooms learn!

Teaching high school students extends far beyond simply relaying information to your students.  In today’s world of easy and quick gratification and social media, everyone, especially teenagers, requires instant entertainment.  A huge conflict (called a stasis in rhetoric (Burton)) with teaching today is engaging students in a lesson while still maintaining a stimulating curriculum.  The best way to have the best of both worlds is to simply combine rigor with entertainment.  Thus, while your classes can still be challenging—and they should be challenging—your lessons should also have an element of entertainment.  For example, in Roman antiquity, Quintillian in his progymnasmata, writing exercises that taught grammar and how to speak and write effectively, made sure that his drills were entertaining as well as informative (Burton).  Today, our entertainment value can come from technology such as social media or videos.  However, because new technology is usually just a fad that passes rapidly, quick wit and humor inserted into your lesson is often the best way to engage students.  While you always want to remain authoritative, a pleasing and humorous speaking style (called middle style in rhetoric) will never go amiss in a classroom where students often demand entertainment.  English classes can include a ton of entertainment through wit in lessons.  For example, students might be required to diagram sentences to learn grammar, but diagraming “Josie engulfed the giant pickle into her pudgy pie hole” is much more entertaining than diagraming “Josie ate the large pickle.”  Entertained students will be usually be far more engaged in a lesson than those who are not entertained.  Teachers must always meld entertainment and engagement with the curriculum to truly help students learn.

Persuasion in One-on-One Situations

Parent and Student Meetings with you do not need
to be heated or angry experiences.  Through
persuasion to your side of a situation, parents
and students will be appeased and respect
you as an authoritative figure.

Although most of your time will be spent in the classroom, and thus most of your university learning will be geared to teaching whole classes, we often forget that we must also communicate with others on an individual basis, either with parents, students, or faculty members.  Without knowledge of persuasion as well as communication techniques, you will not be able to successfully solve issues with individuals.  Your audience has changed from a large group of people to a few or one.  How you approach individuals versus an entire classroom must also change.  Clarity and arrangement are no longer essential for your argument, but rather frank but appeasing talk is vital to convince individuals about your point.  This switch in communication is due to the fact that the context of your situation has changed, and your language must also.  For example, much of the time, the people, especially parents and students, you will be dealing with on an individual basis will be angry or frustrated at grades, behavior in the class, or other problems that classrooms typically encounter throughout the year.  Large classrooms usually do not present heated situations.  Thus, the language you use in a large classroom will be much different than the language you use to address angry individuals.  This change in language often involves an increase in persuasion for individuals.  Persuasion rather than just simple communication is much more important on an individual basis than with classrooms.  In the classrooms, your job is to teach and instruct while engaging the student’s attention and learning.  Individually, while you might be still instructing if a student has a question about an essay or assignment, you will most likely be convincing someone of your side of a situation in order to explain a bad grade or horrendous behavior.  You will be using rhetoric, the art of persuasion (Burton).  Successful individual persuasion will allow parents to accept a bad grade as reality without making you the “bad-guy.”  However, without successful persuasion on an individual basis, students and parents will likely still be angry, and you will not garner from them the respect as a successful teacher you deserve.  I have seen teachers both convince and fail to convince me that I deserved an unwanted grade.  I respected the persuasive one and continued to be frustrated with the unconvincing teacher.  Although, not commonly part of an English Teaching major’s university courses, in order to be a respected and successful teacher, it is imperative that you learn how to persuade individuals to accept your side of a situation. 

Conclusion

With successful communication and persuasion,
you can become the best English teacher you
could ever be!

Communication and persuasion are essential to the English teacher.  Although we teach communication, we are occasionally surprisingly ineffective at communicating effectively to our class and individuals.  However, in order to teach well, as we all want to do, we must be able to master the art of communication and persuasion through clarity, arrangement, entertainment, and persuasiveness.  With effective communication and persuasion, students will listen and learn from you, and a second-grader won’t try to take over your lesson. 

                                                   Works Cited

Augustine, Saint.  De Doctrina Christiana. Grand Rapids: Christian Classics Ethereal Library, n.d. Online Christian Library. Web. 13 Dec. 2014

Burton, Gideon.  Silva Rhetorica. Brigham Young University, n.d. Web. 13 Dec. 2014.

Ridicule or Modesty: Modes of argumentation

I found, as Macey R did, that there were many similarities between Aristotle’s Gorgias and Cicero’s De Oratore. The Kairos of the speeches were very similar in their casual, friendly conversation. I found the styles to be similar, as well as their arrangements and persuasive techniques, although I found Cicero’s dialogue to be more civil and humble. I’ll start with an explanation of the similarities.

I just felt like this guy reminded
me of Antonius; "Your turn, Crassus!
You've got this!"

In both works, an intro is compiled, and then a reflective dialogue is given. Both of the main speakers are writing as they think back to how the situation was at the time. Each of these works uses definition, questions to form their ideas and insight comprehension in their audience. The authors of both make a striking appeal for their side, by arguing that their art is the greatest of all the arts. In this, they both make passionate arguments backed up by reason and examples. They pose similar questions, including thoughts such as ‘can this art be taught?’ and ‘how does one gain this skill?’ It seems as if the arguments and questions, as well as how the arguments are brought up and discussed is very similarly categorized.

The reason that I view De Oratore to be more civil and humble is because of the actions and words of Cicero. While in Aristotle’s Gorgias the questions posed are used to belittle and contradict and make the audience (or others arguing) fumble in their argument, Antonius uses the intellect of others, and relies on multiple witnesses to argue his point. At one point, he even says (after a compliment) “I am describing my own meager achievements.” This is the tone that he holds the entire work. Later, he passes the argument to one who he views to be more eloquent and knowledgeable on the topics discussed. While Gorgias argues with multiple people and uses his intellect and pompous nature to bring shame and ridicule to his competitors, Antonius stays calm and builds his argument on knowledge and ethos, as he discusses is important to oratory. 

Growing Up

As with Katie's post, I would like to make my own focusing on De Inventione and De Oratore also, expounding more particularly upon the later portion of the post and adding my own thoughts accordingly. 

What better transformation to use as an example than that of
the Bald Eagle from child to adulthood?  America!

At the time of its writing, De Inventione was indeed authored by the young adult Cicero of about twenty years.  Cicero must have been proud of his work, as it was the best that he could accomplish at that time; even for such a fresh new member of the rhetorical society, Cicero left a very noticeable mark.  If not, people of today would not be reviewing it.  Still, though Cicero spelled out the concepts expressed in the branches of oratory and the five components in arrangement, the format could be considered a bit forced and rigid—unnatural, even.  This is not to say that the piece is a poor instance of writing, but that it is only the first attempt made by Cicero in his new career. 

On the other end of the spectrum, there is Cicero's De Oratore, which is a masterful work laid out carefully in a way that demonstrates fluidity, knowledge, experience, and overall better presentation than his previous endeavor.  Perhaps this is most notable in the fact that, as Katie said, Cicero's role changes in De Oratore, a product of his later years.  In this newer work, the fledgling rhetorician Cicero has shorn away his young down and taken to the skies of discourse with his seasoned, developed wings.  Probably the most notable demonstration of this is through Cicero's use of distancing himself from the text (as he personally narrated De Inventione) and instead hashing out the words through the discussions of third party characters.  In this way, readers focus less on Cicero and more on the nature of what he is telling through the characters.  Due to this dialogue form, he is able to take himself directly out of the spotlight and strictly put his creations up for display.  Still, at the end of the performance, it is the puppeteer who has the final applause.  Cicero merely disappears for a time only to reemerge at the opportune moment and harvest when the field is at its ripest. 

Cicero's puppets are a direct and indirect means of siphoning
more of the praise from his audience for himself.

In summation, from his early De Inventione days, Cicero practiced and refined his rhetorical skills in order to produce De Oratore in its highly polished state.  Part of this involved change associated with experience, but also dealt with learning that there was needed change in his old ideas—that putting them into a more appropriate form of dialogue would yield better results.  Now, seeing as I have taken this idea of Katie's further, and I sort of have the floor, I would like to ask if anyone wishes to expound upon any of the portions contained within my post.  Either that, or maybe a segue from Cicero within Cicero to a comparison of his De Oratore with Plato's Gorgias would be interesting.  What do you think?  Where will this discussion end up?

The Gettysburg Address, Greek Style!

History

What most impressed me about Greek civilization is the revere they gave their dead. Courtney did a great job of pointing out about how they celebrated those who died in battle. She mentioned when Thucydides points out about those who died at marathon. I was curious so I did a bit of research and it looks like that is referring to the battle of marathon which seems to be the turning point in the Persian war. They revered them because that is where their country was born, or at least flexed its muscles to show that the ideals that they stood for could withstand one of the greatest armies on earth. Certainly the Greeks had very high respect for that battle the way we revere those who fought in the revolutionary war.

Did Lincoln get his inspiration
from Pericles?

Rhetoric

Now, as my title says, this reminded me so much of the Gettysburg address. The arrangement of both speeches is essentially the same.

• Talk about the founding of your country and ideals.
• Talk about how what you say cannot honor these men anywhere near the sacrifice they have already made. 
• Talk about the cause they were fighting for .
• Encourage all those present to continue on in that cause.

As Macey R pointed out, this speech definitely has some deliberative points in it, and based on the situation I must say that I think it is right to do so. So did Lincoln.

Philosophy

First, I agree with Thomas that this speech shows aspects from each category, and rightly so. (He does a great job of showing why). Specifically though I wanted to comment on how he would fit in with Socrates. Remember, Socrates said “the unexamined life is not worth living.” As an Athenian he is always examining, and he points out that all Athenians should examine the politics, for to do anything else would be an injustice to their system. Alexander shows that the people are not arguing for the sake of arguing, but for progression. What better example can there be of a people examining their lives?

Arrangement is everything

My mission president once called one of my companions a “silver tongued serpent”. This particular companion was very skilled at using words to get things done the way he wanted. Sometimes it was a good way, sometimes not so much. He would follow the same arrangement that ancient Greeks employed, namely:

1)      Introduction

2)      Statement of Facts

3)      Division

4)      Proof

5)      Refutation

6)      Conclusion

As I read through Gorgia’s “Encomium of Helen” I saw this same pattern. For Gorgia’s, the arrangement is something like

1)      Helen is not to be blamed

2)      Stating who Helen was

3)      It was either by the wishes of Fortune and plans of the gods and decrees of Necessity she did what she did, OR abducted by force, OR persuaded by speeches, OR conquered by Love

4)      If it was the Gods will, then she had no choice she needed to follow.

 If it was force, then she is a victim, not an inciter, and received injustice, not caused it.
 If by a convincing speech then surely she cannot be blamed because speech has such great persuasive power that we cannot help but follow, for better or worse.
 If it came as a result of Love either it came from the Gods so she couldn’t resist or it came as a result of her mortal condition so she can’t be blamed because of her genetics.

5)      Surely it was one of these, how could it be anything else?

6)      I have shown that Helen is innocent.

He’s got me convinced. The same arrangement has worked on me before. That companion from my mission is the reason I am not a psychology major. His argument was arranged like this:

1)      Psychology isn’t a good major.

2)      If you want to support a family comfortably with a psychology major you need to get an advanced degree.

3)      You need to do more school for that major then another one. Also you need to have a certain personality type to make it in that field.

4)      The money to support a family simply isn’t really there.

5)      You have failed at talking to people for free, how will you do it for a job? Also, look at the stats.

6)      Psychology isn’t for you.

Needless to say, I’m not a psychology major.