Forming and Meaning: Writing the Counterpoint Essay.
Although many composition teachers talk about the need to find "or ganic" forms in composing, students are often content to organize their writing in formulaic ways, frequently resorting to the five-paragraph theme?an introduction followed by three or four supporting points and a summary conclusion. Most students have internalized this form to such a degree that it has become the "default drive" for expository writing. When teachers ignore the form that student writing will take, they are not necessarily allowing students to produce organic structures but are generally encourag ing conformity to standard patterns of exposition. Much of our resistance to discussing form with students comes from a romantic view of composition that posits form as a product of inspiration and suggests that specifying a form for composition, therefore, inevitably limits a writer's individual genius. In other words, form is often associated with conformity?, with rigid rules and "boiler plate" prose. However, as students become aware of different options for organizing discourse, they are not simply learning alternative methods of arrangement; they are learning new ways of thinking about their subject. A growing recognition that form serves a generative purpose in writing, that it liberates rather than limits many student writers, is evident in the scholarship of such writers as Chris Anderson, Richard Coe, Frank D'Angelo, Keith Fort, and Ross Winterowd. Further, Ann Berthoff argues that form is the creative force behind composition:
Teaching Students What Not to Say: Iser, Didion, and the Rhetoric of Gaps.
We all teach our freshmen that coherent writing depends on the use of transitional words and obvious signposts of structure to signal the relationships and sequences of ideas. At the freshman level, we necessarily teach explicitness and transition. Using the literary theory of Wolfgang Iser and the nonfiction of Joan Didion, I want to consider a paradox about coherence that experienced writers soon discover: powerful writing often depends on the deliberate omission of signposts and commentary; meaning sometimes carries across the gaps or silences in a discourse with greater power than words them selves can bear. This is not a new idea, either in rhetorical theory or in pedagogy. My purpose, however, is both to propose a somewhat different theoretical approach to the concept of implicitness and to make some practical suggestions for teaching implicitness to our students. I will begin with a quick sketch of Iser's theory, apply the theory to Didion's strikingly stark style, and then discuss how to apply this theory in the advanced composition class.1 My focus throughout will be restricted to what Ronald Weber has called "literary nonfiction": informative and reflective writing, primarily narrative and dramatic in mode, in which the language has an intrinsic literary interest. Iser's notion of implicitness, I will argue, is one way of explaining this "literary" quality. Furthermore, my recommendations for teaching will be limited to advanced composition. In my view, the rhetoric of gaps should be taught only after conventional instruction in cohesion and only as a means of supplementing traditional notions of how sentences and paragraphs fit together. The rhetoric of gaps gives us a vocabulary for teaching the kind of creative, exploratory, open-ended nonfiction that we want our students to try once they have mastered the basics of form, structure, and coherence.
Determinant factors of entrepreneurship intentions of electronic technology education students in Nigerian universities
The major purpose of this study was to explore the determinant factors of entrepreneurship intentions of Electronic Technology Education students in Nigerian universities. The study explored the influence of entrepreneurial factors as well as entrepreneurial learning experiences activities on the entrepreneurial intentions of Electronic Technology Education students in the universities. The study adopted a correlational survey research design. The population for the study was 366 Electronic Technology Education undergraduate students. There was no sampling as a result of the manageable size of the population. The students were surveyed by direct contact using questionnaire. They were asked to indicate the entrepreneurship learning experiences activities they were participating in/would participate in as part of their curriculum. Data collected were analysed using descriptive statistics and multiple regressions. The findings show that the more entrepreneurial activities students are engaged in, the less the influence of entrepreneurial factors on their entrepreneurial intentions and this significantly increased entrepreneurial intentions of students who prefer career choice as an entrepreneur. The findings also revealed that there is a positive relationship between gender, age, career choice, parents’ occupation, and entrepreneurial intentions of Electronic Technology Education undergraduate students. It was recommended that Electronic Technology Education undergraduate students should see career options with a balance view in order to understand their abilities before deciding to venture in any electronic business enterprise.