Practice Post 3 - Extended Metaphor Instructions PDF

Preview

Summary

Instructions for the third online practice post of the semester...

Description

Overview and objective: This third practice post asks you to work with metaphor. The objective of the assignment is twofold: 1) Demonstrate that you can extend a metaphor. 2) Use metaphor to impart negative qualities onto your topic. A metaphor talks about one thing in terms of another. For example. we are talking about argument in terms of war when we say: "I refuse to cede any ground on that point." We are talking about education in terms of gardening when we say: "My goal is to plant the seed in hopes that a love of science blooms in students." Remember, metaphor is a trick of language. There is no actual relationship between your topic and the object you borrow from. Education does not have some innate intrinsic quality that makes it comparable to gardening processes. The gardening metaphor is successful only because we know how a garden grows. Metaphors endow an abstract intangible topic (like education or liberty) with tangible concrete traits that we can visualize. We can't say what knowledge looks like, but we can picture ships and hiking paths, both of which have served as metaphors for knowledge. An example: say that you are promoting a career readiness program and you tell prospective students that they will learn desirable skills that will prepare them for the workforce. Those are abstract concepts. Students will wonder exactly what your program offers. If instead you tell them that your program puts them in the fast lane toward their career goals or helps them to avoid stalling while life passes them by" then they will have a picture in their minds of what the program will do. They will be able to picture the program, not because you've given them any more details about it, but because they know what a freeway is and how it works. Metaphors direct our attention. We can use them to make something seem appealing, or to discredit it. In this assignment, your task is to use metaphor to cast your topic in a negative light. Instructions: 1) Create an original metaphor that allows you to criticize a specific educational policy, program or practice. 2) Extend the metaphor by composing two different phrases about your topic that borrow terms from another object. Do not refer to the object itself. In other words, please don't tell us - "Education is a garden. It helps students to grow." 3) Employ the metaphor in such a way that we see specific features of the policy/program/practice as shortcomings or negative traits. Your metaphor can be anything (original) except for the following items, which cannot be used for this assignment:

4)

House/garde



n Key/lock Boat/train/pl ane/ car  Bridge  

Light/lamp Cooking/kitc hen/ menu  Symphony/ orchestra  

Banking/mo



ney Factory/ assembly line  Highway/fre eway/ road/path 

  

Mountain Pipeline Prison...