APPENDIX: SUGGESTED ASSIGNMENTS
Glancing back at the history of radio in the 1930s English classroom can be a fruitful way of reimagining sound-based pedagogies in our contemporary moment. Here is a handful of assignment ideas for working with audio production and reception, inspired by voices from the past.
1. The Mockvertisement. In 1939, Mildred K. Carson bemoaned the sorry state of radio advertising, but saw value in the challenges posed by creating short-form sales pitches solely with audio:
We accept, with indigestion, most of
the advertising that comes over the air. But suppose each of us was
responsible for writing a selling talk in twenty words for the Chewy
Chewing Gum Company which would reimburse said company with sales
enough to keep their $125,000 advertising money on the air. Try it
sometime on your Saturday afternoon off! (pp. 479-80)
Take Carson up on her challenge (well, maybe not on a Saturday—use your regularly scheduled class time) and have your students produce audio "mockvertisements.” These strictly timed 30- or 60-second audio commercials can be based on ridiculous premises that you or the students come up with, such as a political spot for a goose running for city council, a commercial for a funeral home done in the style of a monster truck rally announcer, or a promo for an upcoming fall sitcom called “Babies With Rabies.” Students not only have to devise the rhetorical strategies for selling their premise, they also have to script, perform, and edit it using software such as Garage Band or Audacity.
2. You've Come a Long(-ish) Way, Baby. Given the distance of several decades, the sexist and ableist assumptions that surface in some of the articles seem quite jarring to contemporary readers. While we've made progress in terms of this way of thinking, implicit and explicit biases concerning whose voices are valued, and in what contexts, still persist. We suggest holding a class discussion about the politics of gender in audio media to help students become mindful of such issues in their own production practices. You could jumpstart this discussion by reading some recent feminist critiques of how pejorative accusations of "vocal fry" are used to silence young women (Higdon 2016; Marcotte 2015). You might follow up this discussion with an activity asking students to listen to certain types of audio content, taking notes about which voices tend to be privileged and excluded in these programs. This activity could be followed up with a discussion about how sexist, ableist, racist, and classist structures influence audio production and reception. (For a great elaboration of intersectional feminist approaches to audio writing pedagogy, see Jean Bessette's "Audio, Archives, and the Affordance of Listening in a Pedagogy of 'Difference'.")
3. Don't Touch the Technology. In her article “This is Station DHS,” Mildred Campbell describes a no-tech approach to creating radio dramas which essentially relied on a bit of imagination on the part of the audience and performers alike (the students made fake microphones and other implements from common household objects). Today, we might similarly embrace live, embodied performance as a viable mode of audio composing. You might ask your students to create live performances of an audio assignment as a kind of rough draft or pre-writing exercise, complete with background music and sound effects (using instruments and objects, or even just mimicking them with their own voices). As an inventional activity, this approach allows students to focus on nontechnical aspects of the assignment (organization, delivery, production style, etc.) without getting mired down early on in the technical aspects of the project.
4. This [Your Town Here] Life. Ruth Batten was a proponent of collaboration when it came to audio production projects for her students; she saw it as a pathway to responsive citizenry. We can promote that same type of mindset by providing collaborative opportunities in our own audio production assignments. For example, have students work in small teams to produce a multi-segment podcast highlighting various human-interest angles in your community. Ask that each segment involve at least one interview subject, refer to local news coverage, and include some call to action. Such an assignment expects students to conduct both field research and secondary research, it allows them to work on scripting and audio editing, and encourages them to find out more about issues affecting their local community.
5. Listen Up and Learn. As Max Herzberg writes, "Radio, like the motion-picture theater, provides models for thinking and feeling; it determines life-attitudes, ambitions, intonations of the voice" (p. 546). Rather than prescribe those models to your students from up on high, have them actively investigate what makes for effective, engaging audio production, be that in terms of vocal delivery, sound editing, stylistic elements in scripting, and so on. Have students create their own audio-based listening journals as a inventional activity, where they gather together clips from various audio productions that they deem either good or bad examples of a particular element. They should then assemble these clips into a 3-minute collage with accompanying annotations (using Soundcloud, for instance, students can select segments of the waveform and append an annotation in alphabetic text; alternatively, they might simply follow up clips with their own audio commentary in a single audio file). Follow up this activity by playing them in class and discussing the various examples; this follow-up discussion could be used to develop criteria for a rubric used to evaluate a more formal production assignment later in the term.