Using Memes to Teach Grammar with a Smile
Please Find Four Classroom Activities Below the Information on Memes
Memes from UCB Memes for Edgy Teens on Facebook
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Gen Z speaks the language of Internet memes. Before the pandemic, the go-to "Meme Page" at UC Berkeley Memes for Edgy Teens, or UCBMFET, or Overheard at UC Berkeley provided evidence. For example, CWR4B student Vanessa Kayombya researched "'Sad Reaccs Only': The Neophyte Bear's Guide to UC Berkeley Memes for Edgy Teens." The satirical phrase "sad reaccs only" or its synonym "sad reax only" alludes to the sad face emoji and captions specific content on UCBMFET.
Memes show Gen Zers' visual orientation. They approach "life from a global and visual perspective" and want "educational opportunities that use visually enhanced methods of teaching," as University of Illinois COLRS Executive Director Vickie S. Cook observes (2015). Memes can facilitate the cross-generational dialogue of teaching. They are an opportunity for teachers. |
Internet memes are "(post)modern folklore" (14). Media theorist and meme-analysis pioneer Limor Shifman also observes in Memes in Digital Culture (MIT Press, 2014): Memes help their users construct "shared norms and values . . . through cultural artifacts such as Photoshopped images or urban legends” (14). Memes are "a new vernacular" (23) with both "digital and nondigital expression" (23), and they epitomize Web 2.0 "participatory culture" (18). Shifman describes their hypermemetic logic (3), and how they go viral, are polysemous, and create our memescape (28). In Memes to Movements (Beacon Press, 2019), Harvard Berkman Klein Center technologist An Xiao Mina analyzes cat media to argue the complexities of the Internet. Her thoughtful book gives readers pause. We should milk it for its wisdom. Cat memes are dominant on the web, and are easily dismissed as just "a-mew-sing" (16), but the cat meme genre has a larger meaning: "Cats, both deadly predators and cutesy snugglers, are a perfect symbol for how memes operate: erratic, unpredictable, and yet somehow attractive, they embody the free-spirited nature of the internet" (16). She explores the subversive significance of memes, helping us become more aware netizens. Watch Mina's engaging "Memes: The Street Art of the Internet" (YouTube, 2013). Listen to her also on the Hyperallergic podcast with Hrag Vartanian (10 Jan. 2019). For these reasons and more, beginning in 2018 and before the pandemic started in March 2020, I recommended the Berkeley Meme Page and Overheard to others. The Meme Page has the distinction of being the first university meme page. In 2016, then Cal student Chris Tril started it small, wanting, he said, to "create a group in the hopes of finding some people who actually liked the same humor that I did" (Daily Cal, 2017). In its earliest years, the meme page had explosive growth: it went from 95,000 members in June 2017 to 159,980 members in April 2018, to 191,597 members in January 2019, to 195,789 members in February 2020. In December 2020 it had 197,600 members. Now, if we wish to stay up-to-date, we look elsewhere online, including Discord, TikTok, and YouTube, to see where Gen Z gathers. It's always best to ask them!
Memes behave like a language. They have evolving (and subversive) grammar, vocabulary, syntax, spelling, punctuation, registers, and discourse communities. Studying Memes reminds me of studying German. The summer before I left Georgia to study at Heidelberg University on a Rotary grant, I wrote down names of household items on cut-up note cards and taped these cues all over the house. In retrospect, it looked silly, but my mom was supportive. "Teller" taped inside a cabinet near the plates and "Gewürze" on the spice cabinet helped me learn. Studying Korean was similar. Before and during my family's year in Seoul while I taught as a Fulbright Senior Lecturer at Sogang University, my husband and I studied Korean. I wanted to understand my students' first language. They were respectful of my sincere but faltering attempts to speak it. Though I never progressed as I wished, what I did learn connected me with my students.
Teh Memes. Study tHeSe aMaZInG puZZlEs. |
Listening to memes helps us learn about Gen Z—how they socialize, how their minds work, and what is on their minds. See the slide deck: "Know Your mEme: Intentional Listening Activity" for my CW R4B course, "The Meme and the Human: Digital Literacies." I use the deck to spark discussions on the role of memes in society and how we can analyze them rhetorically to be better citizens. Like Song of Myself, it is under constant revision. Other research into memes occurred when my CWP colleagues Michelle Baptiste and Mary Grover organized the symposium "Working with UCB Undergraduates in 2018." My talk was on "Cultivating Intergenerational Dialogue on Campus: Teaching and Learning from Gen Z" (April 2018). The "Know Your mEme" slide deck is for anyone interested in learning more about the memesphere.
Classroom Activities
Exercise 1 / Passive Voice Meme Workshop
Exercise 1 / Homework: Passive Voice Online Discussion
At the end of class, show students some—what I’m calling—Passive Voice Memes. For the next class, invite students to post on bCourses in a “Passive Voice Meme” Discussion: a) a definition of "passive voice" (what ingredients comprise passive voice?), b) an example of passive voice, c) a one-sentence response to this Duke article on the use of passive voice in science writing and the debate surrounding that, d) a sentence on how they feel about using passive voice (to start them questioning do they consciously choose it or merely default to it), and e) a comment on two classmates’ ideas about the use of passive voice. Exercise 1 / Goals:
Exercise 1 / In Class Work Have a Passive Voice Workshop in class. In it, discuss intentional uses of passive voice, debatable uses of it (as in science writing, where many are saying, "Why not, 'We discovered that. . . .' rather than 'It was discovered that. . . .'"), sneaky ones: "Today the law that no one at all likes much was passed," and weak ones (especially weak ones). Having read the Duke article for homework and having commented on it in the online discussion, students discuss the use or not of passive voice in science writing—pros and cons. In teams of three, students make passive voice memes. They use the meme-generator site of their choice. Each team emails the teacher a hand-crafted passive voice meme and then comes up together to share that meme from the teacher’s laptop. First, students on each team ask classmates to comment on what they feel is happening in the passive voice meme and how it fulfills the "Goal." Then each team explains the process and specific goal/s in making this passive voice meme. |
Passive Voice Memes
Credit: Steve Benton's Approaches to Grammar.
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Thanks to colleague Karina R. Palau for introducing me and others in the Lecturer Teaching Fellows Program at Berkeley to the poem “Passive Voice” by Laura Da’. Da’ writes in this poem that a “trick” for teaching students to avoid passive voice is to have them circle the verbs and then “[i]magine inserting ‘by zombies’ / after each one.” You can see the beauty of this zombie exercise if you use the sentence above: "Today the law that no one at all likes much was passed by zombies."
From Rebecca Johnson’s 2012 idea to the 2015 poem by Da’ to Benjamin Dreyer’s calling Johnson’s idea the “zombie test” (14-15), this approach makes discussing passive voice fun.
From Rebecca Johnson’s 2012 idea to the 2015 poem by Da’ to Benjamin Dreyer’s calling Johnson’s idea the “zombie test” (14-15), this approach makes discussing passive voice fun.
Exercise 2 / Teaching the Academic Register
by Comparing It with the Snapchat Register
Exercise 2 / Homework: Ask students to watch this video: Register: Informal vs. Formal Writing. It is 5 minutes.
Exercise 2 / Goals:
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Exercise 2 / In Class Work, Part 1
Ask students: What group does not have communication guidelines? Look at the Meme Page (UCBMFET). You can have your "azz" banned for repetitive posting. Also consider the Rules of the Internet.
Click on the button "Ex 1 / In Class Small Group Instructions" for the next steps in this activity. Compare the register you use in writing academic papers/presentations with other registers you use in communicating on Snapchat and the Meme Page. Consider: OC is always important, no matter the context. So is civility.
Ask students: What group does not have communication guidelines? Look at the Meme Page (UCBMFET). You can have your "azz" banned for repetitive posting. Also consider the Rules of the Internet.
Click on the button "Ex 1 / In Class Small Group Instructions" for the next steps in this activity. Compare the register you use in writing academic papers/presentations with other registers you use in communicating on Snapchat and the Meme Page. Consider: OC is always important, no matter the context. So is civility.
Exercise 2 / In Class Work, Part 2
What are the academic register guidelines? Click on the button "Academic Register Guidelines" to see a list. What guidelines can you add to this list? Discuss in small groups. |
Exercise 3 / CWR4B The Meme and the Human /
"Who are you in this moment of your life?"
Exercise 3 / Homework:
Read "Meme Through the Emotions" by Madeline Happold, 14 East, 16 Jun. 2018. Answer this question thoughtfully using a meme: "Who are you in this Kairos moment of your life?" If you and your best friend were having a conversation, what meme would you show them for who you are at this very moment in your life? Select one. Then print it out (black-and-white is great). Write your name on the back. Bring your meme in to class. As technologist An Xiao Mina points out, memes intersect with physical reality in diverse ways. Memes are not just digital. This exercise will show us that truth vividly. Exercise 3 / In class: I will first ask if anyone wants to share their memes themselves, explaining their meme rhetorically and why they picked it. Then I will take up the memes and share them all so that we can come to know each other better and also to see how expressive memes can be personally. We will then analyze this dimension of memes as personal narratives. We will also discuss examples that you can think of concerning how, as Mina discusses in Memes to Movements (2019), digital memes intersect with physical life and vice versa. |
Exercise 4 / CWR1A Students Teach Mini Grammar Workshops
. . . Using Memes
Ex 4: Meme A
meme I made for CW R1A as snap Ex 4: Meme B
Credit: thegirl on Flickr |
Exercise 4 / Homework: Study Memes A and B. Type a paragraph to answer each of these questions (two paragraphs total):
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