How Your Poetry or Prose Recitation Is Graded

Teaching Assistant: Patrick Mooney
English 150
Fall 2013

Overview

Recall from the course syllabus that reciting twelve lines of poetry or prose from an assigned course text is a mandatory part of the class (and is necessary to receive a passing grade). Performing this recitation in section is worth five percent of your overall grade for the term. Additionally, you (in conjunction with other students who are reciting that week) will partially serve as a discussion leader for your section during the week you are reciting. Preparing for and serving as a discussion leader is worth an additional five percent of your overall grade for the term.

You must declare in advance what you plan to recite, and each piece of text may only be recited by one person in each section. (We will divvy up course texts in section during our second section meeting. Plan ahead and decide which texts you are interested in reciting. If you feel strongly about a particular text, be assertive in claiming it.) You must recite a text in section that has been assigned for the previous week's reading.

In addition to reciting the text, you will serve as a discussion leader for the text that you have selected after your recitation. This means that you should make a selection of (an excerpt from) a text that will encourage substantial discussion in section and should prepare a set of questions or themes that you believe the section will benefit from exploring in relation to the text that you have chosen. You may also, if you choose, prepare a handout or other visual aids that will facilitate discussion. You must email me a description or outline of your discussion plans by 10 p.m. the night before your presentation. (This may be just a paragraph or two, or it may be an outline, but I need to have some idea of what you intend to do so that I can plan for section in advance.) If you would like to email me a handout by 10 p.m. on the previous evening (as a .pdf, OpenOffice/LibreOffice or Microsoft Word document), I will also photocopy it for distribution during section that night for you. I will also post whatever you send me on the course website to serve as a study aid for other students.

Once you have signed up for a text, you must take all reasonable steps to ensure that you are present at the beginning of section that week and prepared to perform. You should prepare for your recitation with the same degree of care that you would prepare for an important presentation in a professional setting. If you are absent or late, you will be able to make up your recitation during a future week, but will incur a penalty to that recitation, and will have to choose a text that is appropriate to the week in which you are actually reciting (i.e., if you had signed up to recite Yeats in week three, but miss the bus on your way to campus and arrive late, then you may not recite Yeats in a later week — though you might choose, for instance, to recite a selection from Ulysses during week five or six).

The following are examples of acceptable reasons for missing a scheduled recitation:

• Family death.
• Your own hospitalization, or hospitalization of a family member requiring that you leave town.
• Serious illness requiring urgent medical care.
• Presenting a paper at an academic conference, or otherwise receiving a substantial academic or professional honor that absolutely cannot be be received at a different time.
• Natural disasters that personally affect you and/or the rest of the section.
• Other unforeseeable, catastrophic events that absolutely prevent you from being in class.

In these circumstances, you will have to schedule a later recitation of a text that is appropriate for that week's reading, but will not incur a penalty. (If any of these require that you be absent from your scheduled recitation, please let me know what's going on by email as soon as possible.)

The following are examples of unacceptable reasons for missing a scheduled recitation which will result in a penalty to your recitation after you reschedule it:

• Missing the bus on the way to campus.
• Not feeling well.
• Oversleeping, even if you have a really good reason why you're exhausted.
• Getting called in to work at the last minute.
• Needing to study for a test in another class, or needing to work on an assignment for another class.
• Feeling sad.
• Discovering at the last minute that preparing for this assignment is more work than you expected.
• Failure of the equipment you are depending on to present material.
• Being really stressed out. (However, if it's the recitation itself that is causing you stress, then please come talk to me, and I'll see whether I can find ways to make it easier for you.)

General suggestions

• Prepare in advance. If you have not engaged in memorization and recitation in the past, you may be surprised to discover how much work it can be and how much effort is required to memorize and deliver something in a way that is faithful and accurate down to the smallest detail. Trying to memorize something the night before your presentation is unlikely to result in an excellent performance unless you have unusually strong memorization skills.
• Think outside the box. You are welcome to do things other than simply recite twelve lines in front of the class, provided that what you do (a) is appropriate, and (b) includes the recitation of twelve lines of text from the syllabus. For instance, you may arrange lines of poetry into music and perform the resulting piece. As another example, three people together may perform a short section from one of the plays on the syllabus, provided that each is reciting at least twelve lines and each facilitates discussion after the performance has completed. There are many other possibilities.
• Choose a (segment of a) text that will promote useful and insightful discussion. Don't just pick the shortest, easiest-to-memorize twelve-line chunk; pick a segment that is a useful way for you to open discussion about the larger issues of the text and/or larger concerns of the course as a whole.
• Think about what you want the rest of the students in your section to get out of the discussion, and prepare a short set of questions or issues that you want to discuss with the rest of the class after your recitation has finished. Think about whether you wish to prepare a handout with thoughtful questions and/or selections from other parts of the text that you are not reciting, but that are relevant to the text's/Ireland's/Irish literature's/your/my/Professor Duffy's/the rest of the class's broader interests.
• Be excellent. Go above and beyond. Give a stellar, passionate, insightful, moving delivery and then facilitate a focused discussion about one or two key issues. Find ways to engage your peers' interests.

Grading criteria

The performance/recitation of your chosen text is worth five percent of your total grade for the quarter, divided as follows:

• Up to two percent for scrupulous accuracy in vocally reproducing the exact text that you have memorized. I will check your delivery against a printed copy of the text. (If you have specific reasons for needing to depart intentionally from the exact text that you are performing — for instance, if you are setting a poem to music and want to treat part of it as a chorus or refrain — please discuss your intentions with me in advance.)
• Up to two percent for excellent delivery and/or interpretation.
• Up to one percent for being genuinely amazing. Merely doing the minimum required does not result in the maximum possible credit on this assignment. Find ways to pass beyond merely reciting twelve lines of text; there are many ways to do this and be very very very impressive. (Some suggestions: Recite more than twelve lines. Give a performance that is also a dazzlingly insightful interpretation while yet being faithful to the original text. Set poetry to music. Set up a miniature performance of a section of a play. Come up with something else that is outstandingly wonderful while contributing to the larger-scale goals that you have in your discussion plans.)

The discussion following your recitation is worth an additional five percent of your course grade, divided as follows:

• Up to one percent for making a wise textual selection that allows you to open a meaningful discussion about important thematic issues.
• One percent for emailing me a description of your discussion plans by ten p.m. the night before your performance. (Emailing me later than ten p.m. the night before will incur a penalty of one-half percent. Failing to email me your plans by ten a.m. on the day you are scheduled to perform will prevent you from performing at all, obligate you to reschedule, and incur the no-show penalty for your rescheduled presentation.)
• Two percent for leading an insightful, focused discussion that engages the rest of the students in your section.
• Up to one percent for being genuinely amazing. Find ways to go above and beyond.

You incur a penalty of three percent of your overall course grade if you schedule a presentation, don't show up on time, and don't have a fantastic, documented excuse. Note that you will need to reschedule your presentation if you don't show up, because it is necessary to perform this assignment in order to pass the course.

I will produce an audio recording of your performance and discussion to assist me in evaluating it; if you request at least forty-eight hours in advance that I do so, I will also make a good-faith attempt to produce a video recording of your presentation and discussion (I am not much of a videographer, though). You are welcome to a copy of this audio or video recording, should you desire one; this can be a useful tool to help you assess your own presentation skills.

I will send your grade for the recitation and discussion by email within forty-eight hours of your presentation, along with a set of comments explaining why you received the grade that you did.

If you are planning on using equipment …

… other than the chalkboard/whiteboard in class, then you should speak to me in advance, even if you are planning to supply the equipment yourself.

It is not necessary to use any equipment other than your own voice in order to do an excellent job. If you do use additional equipment, remember that its purpose should be to enhance your presentation, not to carry the weight of it. The golden rule for equipment usage is that the show must go on in some form, even if the equipment does not work as expected, so be sure to have a backup plan in case the equipment that you've chosen fails to operate in the way that you expect.

If you are nervous about public speaking

You're not alone. Lots of people are nervous about public speaking. I'm sometimes nervous about this very issue, myself.

There are not other ways to satisfy this requirement (unless you have a documented disability that prevents you from speaking in front of the class), but there are ways that you may ameliorate the conditions producing your anxiety. One option that you have is to make a presentation as a member of a group. In this case, each of the group members will have to recite at least twelve lines, each will have to do a substantial portion of the work of leading discussion, and each will receive a grade independently of the others. Having someone else standing with you in front of the group may help to mitigate your anxiety. If you have suggestions for other ways that you can ameliorate anxiety-producing situations related to your presentation, please come to my office hours so that we can discuss your ideas.

If you would like, I can also refer you to an appropriate campus counseling service. You may find that speaking with a professional about your nervousness can help you to become more comfortable with the process of public speaking.