Introduction and Conclusion

Introduction

Christians are expected to share their faith; both the events and significance of Jesus life, death and resurrection, and personal narratives about their relationship with God.  This annotated bibliography blog was written to help examine rhetorical prompts that are widely used by Christian educators as aides for composing a personal spiritual narrative, or “testimony.”  Because the goals and claims of Christianity are not critically examined in my research, it is important to emphasize the intended audience for this research are Christian educators and ministers, and the intended publication is Christian Education Journal.  Their methods are often the same as other teachers, but their goals emanate from a New Testament mandate, “…equipping of the saints for the work of service, to the building up of the body of Christ”(Ephesians 4:12).

Research on religious educational materials is thin.  I found no scholarship directly related to my specific research focus, which seeks analyze representative testimony prompts both rhetorically and educationally.   Specifically, my study examines testimony prompts and their use within the church as examples of Christian rhetoric, and as tools commonly used by composition teachers, i.e., writing prompts.  Creating a framework for this project required pulling together research from disparate sources.  These include books on ancient rhetoric, peer reviewed journals from many disciplines; including anthropology, developmental psychology, education and philosophy.  Also, I reviewed and sources that use and discuss the semi-structured interview as a method and tool for conducting research.  This bibliography contains five main areas of investigation: 

Area of Investigation	Goal	Sources
Christian Rhetoric	Enunciate a uniquely Christian rhetoric with its methods, goals and distinctions.	Augustine, Kennedy
Philosophical	Discuss the role of testimony as evidence or source of knowledge.	Augustine, King and Ballantyne, Root
Testimony Sharing	Review literature on the practice of sharing testimony.	Harding, Lindhardt
Writing Prompts	Review literature, studies and findings about the effects of rhetorical prompts on composition.	Butcher and Kintsch, Oliver, Kozma
Interviews	Examine studies using and discussing semi-structured interviews.	Barriball and White, Thoennes

Conclusion

The literature reviewed supports the sharing of one’s testimony as an ancient and modern Christian practice supported both theologically and philosophically within a Christian rhetoric and worldview.  Of critical importance to the Christian, is the Biblical mandate to share one's faith with the world.  This mandate was examined and moved forward theologically and philosophically by St. Augustine.  David Hume and Thomas Reid were two Scottish contemporaries who took up the rarely discussed philosophical question of the credibility of testimony.  They agreed that testimony, while not being evidence, is a sufficient reason for belief based on a relationship between the credibility of witness and the probability of the claim.  Their discussion of testimony is not limited to Christian witnesses of the resurrection or of personal experience of spiritual new birth, but applies to science and other sources of knowledge as well.  The ethnographic studies of testimony, as it is being shared within Christian communities, yielded good rhetorical categories for discussing testimony including, context, audience, persuasive appeals, and language.

The literature on writing prompts was very interesting.  All of the studies cited, and many others not brought into the bibliography, agreed on both the value and limitations of prompts eliciting rhetorical considerations.  The skilled writer, trained in the use of rhetorical appeals (typically a college student who has taken at least two composition including argumentative writing), is able to develop organize, plan, and write more effectively when using rhetorical prompts.  The surprising finding was these same rhetorical prompts tend to confuse the unskilled writer, who hasn’t been trained in the use of rhetorical considerations, like audience.  The rhetorical prompt increased the time planning the composition but produced worse writing. This has implications for the use of the representative testimony prompt examined in my study.  Are the intended users of testimony prompts skilled at situating their compositions rhetorically?  If not they may produced muddled testimonies that defeat the intended purpose.  Another finding showed prompts focused on content were effective for writers of all levels.  This may point the way forward for a better design of testimonial educational materials. 

Semi-structured interviews in research has benefits as well as negatives, both investigationally and evidentially.  I included two studies one where the interviews were handled with great care in all phases; including conception, planning, implementation, evaluation, and presentation as evidence.  These researchers wrote an entire article supporting the validity and reliability of their interviews.  They strengthened their position by anticipating and answering questions.  The second was not so good.  There the author effectively used quotations to support her position, but not enough detail was given about the process; including, interview subjects, training, the questions asked, or results of her findings.  This diminished the strength of her evidence and her argument.  Since I am using such a potentially subjective method of inquiry, I will more clearly support my research by clarity about how information was obtained, analyzed and presented.

One gap I see in my project is in the relationship between speech and writing.  The testimony prompts I examine are for sharing one’s testimony.  Presumably this is sharing is done verbally, person to person, or to an audience.   For this project, I don’t plan on researching the nexus between speech composition, written composition and personal communication, but a complete examination of testimony will require that inquiry.

Butcher, Kristen, and Walter Kintsch. "Support of Content and Rhetorical Processes of Writing: Effects on the Writing Process and Written Product." Cognition and Instruction. 19.3 (2001): 277-322. Print.

Butcher and Kintsch studied two different types of prompts, content and rhetorical, and the effects each had on the writing process and on the quality of writing.  Their study also examined a measurement tool for assessing texts known as latent semantic analysis (LSA).  For the purposes of this bibliography, I will ignore their evaluation of the LSA as a tool and focus on the results of their study of prompts.  Their findings yielded positive effects through the introduction of content and rhetorical prompts, with content having more effect than rhetorical.  They also found results similar to Kozma and Oliver within the relationship between the skill level of the writer and the effective use of rhetorical prompts.

Using two experiments, they evaluated the effects of either content or rhetorical prompts during two different phases of the writing process; first, the composition phase alone (experiment I) and, second, the planning phase and writing stage together (experiment II). 

The authors distinguish between the two types of prompts as follows:

"content processes work on problems described by the question, “What do I mean?”  In contrast, rhetorical processes in the rhetorical space operate on the question, “What do I say?"(280)

Rhetorical prompts have the writers explore and consider the reader's unanswered questions and their persuasive effect on the reader's understanding.  Content prompts have writers present specific knowledge and answer specific questions about what the writer thinks and what the writer knows.(286)

The only difference in the two experiments is when the prompts are introduced. Experiment I gave them at the time of writing.  Experiment II provided them in the planning phase.  The subjects used, 56 college students, were similar to others used in these types of writing cognitive process experiments.

Butcher and Kintsch's findings were consistent with others I have included in that the use of both types prompts vastly improved the quality of the finished product, although with content prompts being the most helpful.  Students were more able to write about what they knew than to consider the reader's needs.  Rhetorical prompts were even more problematic for inexperienced writers.  Rhetorically situating ideas to suit audience and contextual needs seems to require specific training and experience.  Unskilled writers become less effective when asked to consider rhetorical prompts they don't know how to use. 

Introducing prompts earlier in the writing process also yielded better finished products than if they were left until the time of composition.  The writers spent more time thinking about and planning their work and their organization was improved.  For my own research question, the results show the power prompts have to effect the quality and content of written assignments as well as a writer's need for training and experience with rhetorical techniques to yield good results.

This study was long and detailed because it wove two separate studies, one involving writing processes and one involving an evaluative tool, the LSA, together.  The writing process part of this study seemed very similar to others I have read, except for the exploration of content vs. rhetorical prompts.  However, their method did not involve separating the two and conducting different experiments.  Instead, they were combined and analyzed through coding of the finished product.  I think this was a weakness, because content prompts are easier to use and student subjects likely gravitate to them when given the choice of the two. 

Also, there is far less information provided about the subject's skill levels and backgrounds than in other studies.  This left me with questions about claims made about the writers experience and skills.  Demograhphic information would have been helpful. 

Finally, I can't tell which is more important to the authors, the writing prompt study or the LSA study.  I am not in a position to evaluate the LSA study, but there were areas where the writing process study was not conceived, conducted or presented as well as others in my bibliography.

Kozma, Robert. "The Impact of Computer-Based Tools and Embedded Prompts on Writing Processes and Products of Novice and Advanced College Writers." Cognition and Instruction. 8.1 (1991): 1-27. Print.

Kozma's study evaluates whether and how "computer based tools and embedded topical and rhetorical prompts," help college writers.  He looked at tools that help the writer plan and outline compositions. His findings correlate interestingly with Oliver's examination of the effects of prompts.  They both found an increase in the quality of writing containing rhetorical prompts, regardless of whether the writer was already skilled in their use.  Kozma also found an inverse relationship between the quality of less skilled writers and the time they spent planning.  More skilled writers increased their quality by spending more time in the planning phase.  His study concludes with implications and suggestions for research, software design and composition pedagogy.

Robert Kozma's work concerning learning with media is widely cited in papers dealing with teaching, cognition and technology.  In this 1991 study, he adds further evidence to studies by Butcher and Kintsch, and Oliver that rhetorical prompts play a large role in the quality of writing.  Consideration of audience, topic, purpose and context play a role in the stages of the writing process including planning, drafting and revising by bringing the goals of writing continually into the process.  These studies are interested in measuring and evaluating cognitive effects produced when rhetorical prompts are introduced.   Strategy, structure and thoroughness introduced by prompts in the planning and drafting stages results in better writing.

One interesting observation is that these prompts produce better results with older and more experienced students while the use of them may confuse students who haven't been taught how to use them.  For my project, this study raises questions about the skill level of the Christian composer asked to write their testimony.  For example, how do they construct an audience and do they have the training necessary to change the message to adequately meet each audiences' expectations.  What skills are necessary for a writer to convey very personal and difficult to express spiritual insights and experiences?  Kozma shows increases in planning as an asset to the skilled writer, while a deficit to the unskilled.  For my project, this study does not bring into focus the differences between writing and speech that are also a crucial consideration.

To study the effects of computer-based writing tools, Kozma designed a study using 41 students classified as either advanced or novice.  Novice writers were "students enrolled in an introductory English composition course...," advanced writers "had taken at least two writing courses, one of which was in argumentative writing."(6)  All students were trained in the use of MacWrite 4.5, a word processor.  Some were also trained in an outline Acta, or an idea organizer Learning Tool. 

Subjects were then given two hours to complete an argumentative writing task consisting of "... a baseline writing assignment, a practice assignment and a final assignment"(7).   Subjects were individually measured for demographic differences and for "writing anxiety"(8).  Finally, the subjects were evaluated on two kinds of "dependent" measures, "cognitive strategies..," and,"...the quality of the written product."(8)  Cognitive strategies were measured by speaking aloud as they thought about constructing the writing.  These were recorded, differentiated, and coded based on many evaluative points including writing, re-reading, use of media, planning, etc. The writing itself was measured by two "highly qualified and experienced raters,"(9) who used a rubric containing six points, three on quality and three on organization.  These measures were all evaluated statistically, and not easily explained here.

I found the study well conceived and the measuring points and criteria very specific.  The correlations were clear and yielded good information about how these software programs help students. 

However, questions arose for me about the cognitive measurements using the "thinking aloud,"(8) method of recording cognitive processes.  Kozma cited other examples for that method, but I wonder how well they reflect the actual writing process used by students.  Awareness of having one's thoughts recorded has to alter the actual thinking, as does speaking.  I think this could skew the results.  This type of complex study is useful to understanding the interplay of mind, technology and writing, construction and application; however, this study requires interdisciplinary knowledge of writing, teaching and cognitive psychology.

Root, Michael. "Hume on the Virtues of Testimony." American Philosophical Quarterly. 38.1 (2001): 19-35. Print.

This article explores the work of philosopher David Hume on the subject of the credibility of human testimony.  Root looks particularly at Hume's Enguiry Concerning Human Understanding, Section X, where he takes up the question of religious belief and the resurrection of Christ.  Hume wanted to know if the Apostles' testimony, that they had seen, spoken with, and touched Jesus after he was raised from the dead, gave him a reasonable basis for believing in the resurrection.  Root is not primarily interested in religion but on the relationship of the scientist to believability.  Should we believe something just because a scientist tells us, when we have no first hand knowledge of what they are telling us about the world?  Hume's reasoning on the subject applies to all types of knowledge including scientific, where we receive knowledge based on what we are told by another.  Hume's conclusion creates a relationship between the probability of a claim and the believability of the witness:

"...no testimony by A to B that p gives B sufficient reason to believe that p unless it is less probable that A is lying or mistaken than p is false.  Thus, the more improbable p, the more credible the witness must be for B to be justified in believing that p based on her testimony."(19)

The final answer for the author is that Hume had it right; testimony conforming to what is found in "nature" and "convention" is credible.  Nature is what we can expect to find, the truth about what we expect to find in human behavior or physical science.  Convention is based on the role of the witness.  Scientists come together and research to discover truth.  Therefore, it is reasonable to believe them.

Root critiques Hume's work in 6 sections, the first three are developmental explaining Hume's terms and reasoning concerning credibility; for example backward-looking reasons, natural and artificial virtue.  The fourth section of the article explains convention and the role credibility has in the scientific community, "When one member of a scientific community gives testimony to another she is expected to abide by the norm"(25).  Convention, the expectations for the group informs the witness, they don't act as single players but as representatives of the society."  The fifth section examines Thomas Reid's viewpoints on testimony.  I discuss this in my annotation of an article on St. Augustine's view of testimony.  Thomas Reid was a contemporary of Hume and their discourse on testimony is some of rare times philosophy takes up the subject testimony and credibility.  Reid felt the witness had credibility unless there was a good reason not to believe him.  Reid felt, "...we are naturally disposed to accept testimony of witnesses, and our disoposition is reasonable because witnesses are naturally disposed to tell the truth"(27).  Reid called this the principle of credulity and found it sufficient for accepting testimony.  Root disagrees and aligns himself with Hume because he finds the important ingredient being convention.  The politician, he argues, is not expected to be so truthful because he is not pursuing truth, but instead wants to persuade and get votes.  There are different rules governing different witnesses.  These conventions hold sway.  I see Reid as allowing this by prior examination of the witness for cracks in her credulity.  The sixth section brings up modern objections to Hume's argument; these  include the nature of truth and trust, Hume's treatment of testimony as evidence based on observation even though witnesses usually make their testimony align with pre-existing truth, and Hume's not accounting for social dimensions that effect real life individual testimonies.  The article is hard going, as is much of philosophy, requiring multiple readings.  I am surprised the subject of testimony has received such little attention from philosophers when so much of what we "know" is given to us second hand through witnesses, religious, scientific or otherwise.  Reading this article informs not only my treatment of Christian testimony, both Apostolic and contemporary, but also my role as a researcher.  I remember a discussion in Dr. Bowie's class about falsifying evidence, it had never crossed her mind, but at least one student had thought about it.  Without peer-review and integrity within a discipline credibility cannot be maintained.  I think this has implications for political activism within scientific inquiry. 

Harding, Susan. "Convicted by the holy spirit: the rhetoric of fundamental Baptist conversion.." American Ethnologist. 14. (1987): 167-181. Print.

This article is an ethnographic study of Covenant Baptist Church and the Reverend Cantrell for the expressed purpose of exploring the language of conversion.  It does that, but sadly in a way that is too personal, too adversarial and disrespects the subjects of the study.  Some value comes from the descriptions found within.

Susan Harding wrote this article in 1987 and from the first sentence of her article she positioned her study as a confrontation between the fundamentalism of Jerry Falwell and the Moral Majority and the rest, "their culture is premised on a commitment to assimilate "the world" on fundamentalist terms..."(167) Her purpose is to scrutinize "...a bundle of strategies—symbolic, narrative, poetic and rhetorical—for confronting individuals, singly and in groups, stripping them of their cultural assumptions, and investing them with a fundamentalist mode of organizing and interpreting experience”(167).  This type of language is reactionary and off-putting.  She throws objectivity out the window before she begins her investigation.   This framing, from the tone of her opening description to the use of selected psychologists’ and social scientists’ view that there is something flawed in the mind of those who convert, places Harding on a witch-hunt.  Otherwise good observations about the language of conversion, the culture in which it takes place, and meanings assigned by the speakers and hearers sharing their faith, are tainted by her excess.  While she attributes much of the language to appropriate religious categories she infuses hostile aggressive motives to the speakers.  The Reverend Cantrell is after her, engaged in, “…his final pitch for my soul.”(179) At one point she talks about how close she came to conversion,

“the membrane between disbelief and belief is much thinner than we think.  All I had to do was listen…it drew me across that membrane in tiny ways so I began to acquire the knowledge and vision and sensibilities, to share the experience, of a believer.”(178)

Fortunately, or I guess unfortunately from the Baptist perspective, Ms. Harding was able to come to her senses before she “went native.”  I have a hard time with this work because she seems so bias and lacking credibility.  However, I do think some of her categories and descriptions of the rhetoric of conversion are useful.

I doubt there was an IRB involved in Susan Harding’s investigation of this Baptist congregation.  It is unlikely they would communicate so freely with a person who was made to fully disclose the nature of her investigation.  Ethical considerations aside the ethnography yielded details, nuances, and intimacy with the subject no other method could match.  She was able to get in close and hear and discuss what she wanted to investigate in greater detail than any other method I’ve read.  When you are that close I believe you need to treat the subjects with greater respect than when they are anonymous statistical entries.  Harding glaringly crosses that line many times and it hurts her article.

Lindhardt, Martin. "Narrating Religious Realities:Conversion and Testimonies in Chilean Pentecostalism." Soumen Antropologi:Journal of Finnish Anthropological Society . (2009): 25-43. Print.

This article examines the personal religious testimonies, both of conversion and "life stories," of Chilean Pentecostal Christians.  Lindhardt, an anthropologist, argues that these Christians use testimonies to construct personal and social identities.  After framing the subject theoretically the author uses presents testimonies and the transcripts of conversations of six Chilean Pentecostals to illustrate his argument.  Lindhardt sees their personal narratives as a vital aspect of these Pentecostal's religious practice and of religious practice in general. These stories have a specific function,"the public narration of a testimony is a way of socially positioning oneself within a religious community while at the same time confirming and committing oneself to its basic values and world views."(40)

Lindhardt's anthropological approach produces views on testimonies corresponding with Christian concepts about sharing one's faith.  First, it is a rite of passage into the Body of Christ.  St. Paul wrote to the Christians in Rome, "For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you confess and are saved."(Romans 10:10)  It is not enough to silently believe a Christian is expected to stand up and declare his faith in Jesus.  Another study, by Susan Harding, shows a similar practice among American Baptists.  She refers to their testimonial practice as bearing "witness." where identity in the individual and group is formed by sharing stories of spiritual transformation.  Emphasis on the conversion story is also the focus of my critique of prompts designed to help Christians share their faith. A second concept Lindhart sees in his study is the way "post conversion life stories"(34) are shared by Christians as "important ways of continuously renarrating the engagement of the Pentecostal subject with divine others."  Here he is writing about testimonies that are shared where the focus isn't on conversion, with it's requisite before and after transformation from darkness and damnation to light and salvation.  Instead these testimonies are everyday life events infused with the knowledge and sense of God; for example comfort comes to the Christian in his or her soul from the Holy Spirit, a prayer for a job is answered, someone is healed, a new Biblical understanding is learned.  In these moments God seems real and present and the testimonies are opportunity for both the teller and the hearer to share an increase in faith.  These faith affirming testimonies are ongoing in the life of individual Christians and in their community of faith and "better seen as work-in-progress than a once and for all completed project."(34)  I will make a case in my own study for an expansion of the role of testimony-sharing educational products that includes these day to day encounters with God.

Lindhardt lived in Chile with his Chilean wife.  His article includes transcripts of individual and re-tellings of many encounters with Pentecostal Christians, but no mention is made to how the data was collected or recorded.  At points he speaks about asking questions, leading me to interpret the following texts as interviews.  At times he records dialogue between multiple speakers and describes worship services more in the style of an ethnographic study.  The article is published in a Finnish Journal which may have different conventions and assumptions about presenting data.  I did like his article.  He talked about times he and his Catholic wife were made uncomfortable, yet he always treated his subjects with a great deal of respect.  His published entire conversion narratives and "life stories" in long form.  This made it easier to hear the authentic voice of the speaker and more convincing than when quotes are used sparingly.

Oliver, Eileen. "The Writing Quality of Seventh, Ninth, and Eleventh Graders, and College Freshmen: Does Rhetorical Specification in Writing Prompts Make a Difference? ." Research in the Teaching of English. 29.4 (1995): 422-450. Print.

This study evaluates the effect of rhetorical variables on writers of different age groups from 7th grade to college students.  The author looked at three specified rhetorical variables, purpose, topic and audience.  Writing prompts were used to measure the effects of these variables on 7th, 9th, 11th graders, and freshman in college for variations in use.  The study asked two research questions:

"1. What relationship exists between writing quality and varying degrees of information about the writing prompt with respect to topic, purpose, and audience?
2. What relationship exists between students' age level, writing quality, and amount of information in the prompt?"(428)

The study found each age groups uses different rhetorical considerations in unique ways.  These findings have implications for designing and using prompts in teaching and evaluating writing done by students at different ages.

The author establishes the long-held importance for writers to be able to construct writing based on rhetorical situation or discursive task, but identifies a problem, "...writers who do not clearly understand the rhetorical question, or see only part of it within the assignment, often cannot solve the rhetorical problem."  Students struggling with this issue may have their writing assessed negatively when the problem is not with their ability to write, but with the assignment.  This the study isolates purpose, topic, and audience, as examples of areas with specific problems.  Students need a great deal of information around a "topic" to write effectively about it.  "Audiences" are a problem because of ambiguity.  Is the audience real or imagined?  How accurately can a 15 year old construct the demands of a fictitious audience of adults?  Other developmental problems accompany "purpose."  Recognizing this problem seems astute to me.  The author establishes the problem with a range of disciplines from Rhetoric and Composition to Developmental Psychology.  The study was well conceived and applied.  They evaluated four age groups, each producing over a 125 essays.  The students were all from "...advanced English classes in an affluent community in Central Texas," and college students from a "flagship campus of the state's university system, having graduated from high schools comparable to that of the high school students in the study."(430)  The evaluations were done by four high school english teachers called "raters".  The use of advanced students rules out variations based on lack of ability.  While the studies differ in focus a clear connection between quality and complexity of writing to the use of "rhetorical" prompts is consistent with the study by Butcher and Kintsch, and the study by Kozma.  My interest is in understanding how much rhetorical situation is effecting outcomes of Christian testimonies composed using prompts. 

The method employed to study these research questions was to have 624 students write essays to one prompt taken from a writing proficiency test given to juniors in a California University. The was made less abstract for younger writers.   The prompt was further modified for the study:

"Eight combinations were created to include more or less information in the assignment. Assignment #1 (T+P+A+) contains the most specific information about all three variables topic, purpose and audience while assignment #8 (T-P-A-) contains the least specific information about all three variables."(429)

After administering the 8 different prompts to students in a way designed to maximize participation but minimize stress, the essays were scored by four "raters" for trained to grade and given a rubric.  Each paper was graded on a 0-6 scale twice and any paper with too large a margin of difference in grade was assessed a third time.  The results were coded and evaluated by age group along two axis one being grade(0 to 6) and one being level of complexity (T- to T+, A- to A+, and P- to P+).  These results were recorded for each age group both graphically and as a statistical analysis of variance.  I found the graphical representation easier to quickly digest and the statistical presentation more precise.  The findings show topic and audience consideration are the most difficult to evaluate and that their effect was largely on the higher level 11th graders and freshman.  The author speculates this is a result of more training in use of these rhetorical effects.  These students reacted to strong audience and topic prompts and weak ones, but not mixed.  Seventh graders did better with less specific topic prompts.  Ninth graders did better with more specific.  All benefitted from more specificity on purpose.  The author clearly demonstrates a rise in the ability to use specific rhetorical prompts that coincides with the age and education of the writer and generates positive implications and suggestions in the pedagogical areas of teaching and assessing young writers.  The paper is well written, the use of charts and graphs effective (even when dealing with multiple variables) and the appendixes were complete; including examples of different prompts using different combinations of A,T and P, holistic grading guides, and examples of student work.  All together it makes an effective argument for considering age and development when designing and applying prompts using rhetorical situations.