Perspectives and Balance

Okay. So, I thought that the articles we read produced some helpful ideas and some not-so-helpful ideas. I was a bit irritated that most of the "invention activities" described were geared to helping students produce good personal narratives or creative writing; though I know these activities can be altered and adapted as deemed fit, our English 1000 classes have such a focus on preparing students for academic writing that I was hoping to find more activities devised for that.

Anyhoo, I want to talk a bit about Susan Allspaw's "Writing Exercise--Connections." I think Allspaw has a tendency to go a bit overboard with her mumbo-jumbo about power struggles between writer and subject and how "the writer...should want to please the subjects" (263) when writing personal narrative, but I was drawn to her activity because she has students unearth the "story" in a photograph, inventing and developing as needed, and I'm planning to do a writing assignment with my kids in which they analyze the argument made by war photographs. Moreover, Allspaw brings up what I feel to be a crucial issue for student writers, whether they're writing personal narratives or not: perspective. Beginning writers often have a difficult time writing anything without letting their personal opinion or views color it, and they need to learn to adopt different perspectives and understand "how many different vantage points there are" (264) in order to be successful writers. Interpretations change when vantage points change, and I think Stancliff's "pass-the-topic-around-the-cirlce" exercise also emphasizes this notion. By making her students adopt the viewpoints of the subjects, observers, and photographers of pictures, Allspaw creates an interesting (and pretty fun) way to convey the importance of having a well-rounded writer's persepctive.

Allspaw opens her essay with this sentence: "There is a delicate balance between being an observer and transferring these observations into writing." I know she's talking about writing personal narratives, but isn't that statement really applicable to all writing? We are always observing, whether through research or reading or listening or literally watching something, but we rarely know how to deftly transform those observations into writing that does them justice. And I say "we" beacuse all writers struggle to achieve this balance, and that's a fact that I think it's important our students know. So, we should say it a lot. Don't you think?

Invention

Comp Teaching

The main theme for me was this idea from Charney: "usually practicing a skill reduces the time necessary to execute the skill successfully" except with writing. This seems obvious when I read this. It is important to convey this to students because their thinking is generally the opposite: The more I write, the easier it will get or Writing comes naturally and easily for everyone except me.

This idea was reflected in several of the essays. Bizzell writes that students think that good writers write quickly and get A's, "instant text production." Donald Graves is quoted in Sudol’s article: “Children suggest that when adults write, the words flow, arrive ‘Shazam!’ on the page. Like the tables, word ar dictated to us form on high; we only hold the pen and a mysterious force dictates stories, poems, and letters. The better the writer, the less the struggle.”

All of these quotes made me think about the importance of sharing our own writing processes and failures with students. Sudol agrees, “I model my own invention process by writing along with my students and sharing my work.” So, while you present the invention exercises to the class, will you stand in front of the room watching everyone or will you sit and write with them and share your writing with the class?

Pass this sentence around the circle

Of the readings for this week, I think I found Stancliff’s “Exploring Topics: Rationale for a Class Exercise,” to be the most useful. Although I’m not sure when I would use the activity, I found the idea of having all students give their perspectives on a topic to be a good way to encourage students to take other points of view into consideration.

For this post, however, I want to briefly reflect on one sentence from another article that has stuck in my mind since reading it. In Susan Allspaw’s “Writing Exercise—Connections,” she describes an activity where she asks students to look at pictures from different perspectives. In the end, she writes, “In the past, my students have reacted positively to this exercise because when they’re writing they’re not aware of its intended purpose until the end” (256). I both agree with and am troubled by this sentence.

I agree with the statement because Allspaw seems to be suggesting that the students are free to be more productive and creative with their writing precisely because they don’t recognize it for what it is; they don’t realize that they are actually beginning a writing assignment they will eventually turn in for a grade. I can’t remember if I’ve already blogged about my experience with this approach, but in one of my undergrad comp courses, the teacher told us to write a paper that we would never turn in. I think we all knew that we really were going to eventually turn it in, but I was able to convince myself that I wasn’t, and I found the experience to be oddly feeing, and the paper turned out better than I would have expected. So, I guess my point is that sometimes it can be most beneficial for students to not have them see the big picture; if they are involved in the task at hand without having to worry about where their work must later lead, they might feel more free to experiment. They will use the information to shape the assignment rather than using the assignment to shape their information.

The hesitation I have about this approach, however, is precisely the fact that one seems to be withholding information from the students. In my experience as a student, I know that students want to be told up front and honestly; feeling that the teacher is hiding information only leads to frustration because students (often rightly) assume that what they don’t know will hurt them (or at least their grades). There is also the fact that we are not just teaching students this activity so they can succeed on one paper, but rather we are building students’ understanding of the writing process so they can have resources from which to draw at later points in their lives.

I guess what I’m trying to find is the fine line between freeing students from the worry about the big picture of what they are supposed to be learning while also allowing students to be aware that what they are learning does have broader applications and implications. Perhaps just a simple discussion of or reflection on the invention process would be helpful in making the students more aware of how invention activities work. Allspaw does say that her students, at the end, are aware of the process. And maybe using the same activity at different points in the semester would also help students see how the activity has taught them a transferable skill.

I know this didn’t do much to cover the readings in general, but I found that one sentence to be loaded and provocative, and I’m sure others have even more perspectives on it.

Scribbling on the Paper

“Students who were asked to write a complete draft in order in grammatical sentences produced many fewer ideas than students who were free to write as they liked” (94-95). Charney’s reference to a study by Shawn Glynn and colleagues, depicts my own writing experience. When I recall writing in high school, it was often constrained by this, and my college papers as an undergrad seem abysmal to me now. I was writing to get an assignment done, and dreading too many drafts on my typewriter. I wanted that perfect first draft, and it looked so good on my new typewriter, that surely presentation counted for something. Between use of a typewriter and product focus of my writing, I am amazed that I succeeded (though I had my share of bad papers). My process now is so much different, mostly because I am aware of writing as a process and that the early writing and invention strategies are crucial to finding the ideas for my writing.

I know that middle-high school text books have taken the steps of writing process and done what Mike Rose called the “rigid rules” instead of using them as “helpful hints” as Charney calls them. Don’t we often want to make our teaching (and grading) easier, and if it’s a formula, a recipe to follow, then the students are happy and we can more easily check off the blanks as students fill in what is needed. Binkley addressed this as well: “The process model of composing in practice frequently becomes a model of writing taught as a compartmentalized phenomenon. Each stage is strictly adhered to and followed in sequence” (239). Around 1984-5, I was working on a senior paper on the teaching of grammar. My advisor/mentor teacher, must have struggled with my inability to invent and let the ideas grow as I was writing, and to move revision beyond editing. One day we discussed the writing process and he took a piece of paper, and said, “Amy, the process of writing is not a straight line, it’s a mess.” And he scribbled all over the paper. That day my view of writing changed as I saw and kept his scribble. I realized that I was trying to make it neat, and in so doing I was making very little progress in my own writing and thinking. That day writing may have become more difficult as I had to let go of habits, but my thinking went deeper and I started to discover what I could learn from writing.

Campo’s article reminded me of the overlap of the invention and revision strategies. Dr. Roy Fox, our English Education advisor, uses what he calls “radical reformulation” that reminds me of what Campos and others describe. After much writing is done, the writer takes one paragraph and reforms it with either a different voice (a scientist, Huck Finn, or Oprah, for instance) or just a different version without changing the voice. After four new paragraphs have been written, the writer shares these, and looks at them, not to see which is better (avoiding the vague notion of what “better” means), but looks to see how the paragraphs differ and which may be more effective for the writing. What has happened for me is that I discover at least one whole new draft as well as ways to reformulate a current draft.

I’m curious what your stories have been – have you had good support in school-based writing, such as to try various invention strategies? Have the steps of writing been prescribed?

From the Carrot's Point of View

I appreciated the philosophy behind Theresa Enos' Invention Activity in the reading for this week, but I had some hesitations about the activity itself. I liked that she saw invention activities as something that students should be able to use in other writing situations, and that she believed that invention activities should take the writer in several directions.

But when I read her actual invention activity (choose an object, write something about it from different rhetorical perspectives) I found the same problem with it that I have found with several of the lesson plans that we've had in class. They're cute, they're fun, and the students would likely be engaged by them -- they're just not relevant enough to the ultimate goal of writing a paper. For example, if a student who did Enos' activity was asked after class to summarize what happened in class, I could virtually guarantee you she would say, "I wrote like a carrot" instead of "I learned the aim of different kinds of discourse and the rhetorical choices reflected by voice" (236). And I kind of feel like the student who says this probably "learned" what she was supposed to learn, but if she can't clearly articulate or remember it, what does it matter?

My point here is that our invention activities must lead to something. It is not enough that they teach principles, lessons, or maxims in writing, because if they don't actually lead directly into an assignment, I think they end up feeling like busy work! This is why I liked David Sudol's "Model of Invention" better. The students did lots of "fun" freewriting, but it led them into the paper they had to write.

What say you?

Donna, Collin, Clancy, and a bunch of other academics at colleges and universities across the country are engaging in a Rhetoric Carnival where they all read and blog about Wayne Booth's book, A Rhetoric of Rhetoric. Their discussion is really quite interesting and inspiring.

I'd like to propose a rif on their carnival and propose that we read Clueless in Academe (reviews) by Gerald Graff and/or What the Best College Teachers Do by Ken Bain over the summer and blog our responses. I think these two texts might be interesting for us to read as we begin or extend our teaching careers.

We could even meet once a week/month/whatever for coffee and discuss. Sort of like a blogger's book club. Oh! Here's another idea: we could do a traveling blogger's book club and have coffee at each other's abode. If you're interested in this aspect, I'd even volunteer to host the first one at my apartment and serve coffee or tea to any who care to attend.

Comment and/or offer suggestions please.

Potpourri

So, I'm not really a journal person, either. I guess I think the idea of informal "free" writing that you have to do is a bit contradictory. I also agree with Faith that the word "journal" can signal thoughts of weepy teen confessionals, and the term can also immediately connotate busy work for students because trust me, they're smart enough to know that teachers can't really read and respond thoughtfully to every single entry. I think that to do journals well in your class you really need to be vigilant, organized, and dedicated to making sure that it doesn't become a busy work activity. The students have to know that the journals really are useful/essential to developing class discussion, and truthfully, you are fully responsible for communicating that idea to them. I've never been able to do journals well as a teacher, so I'm sure that contributes to my bias, but they just get a bit overwhelming in terms of grading, so I always ended up letting them wane as the year progressed until they were just completely phased out.

A quick word on grading, Brittany -- the key is rubrics. Develop a detailed rubric with clear categories and specifications, and that'll really cut down on a lot of the "I got a C and I don't know why" responses. Developing the rubric is a bit tricky, I think, because you wrestle with those issues you were talking about: how much weight to give to mechanics, style, content, etc. But there are books and sources to help you do that, and I'm sure we'll talk about the topic of grading extensively in class.

I would just like to say that I'm really appreciating the time we're devoting in class to discussing each other's syllabi. Nothing is more helpful to me right now than seeing what other people are putting down on paper as they design their classes and getting input about my class from those people. Sometimes I feel as though the readings we're doing are interesting but not necessarily very applicable to our current practical concerns, but I appreciate the class time we're devoting to practical matters, particularly since those practical matters usually lead to more theoretical discussions.

And I just want to send a shout-out to my fellow burdened, overloaded grad students. I think most of us are struggling a bit right now. We're doing it together, guys. And an extra shout-out to those of you doing this while trying to lead the life of a parent or spouse, too -- I cannot fathom how you're managing it all. Kudos.

Outcomes

While Peckham expressed some hesitation over using the term "outcomes" in his article in Roen, et.al., he still impressed upon me the usefulness of defining outcomes for student learning (note to self - look up on/upon usage).

The brief outcome statement he provided addresses outcomes for rhetorical knowledge, general reading, writing, and thinking skills, process knowledge and conventions.

I am thinking about beginning my course with a section on critical reading and thinking. Of the texts I've looked at so far, I think Allyn & Bacon has the most space devoted to it and does the best job explaining rhetorical reading and inquiry-driven analysis.

Then, I hadn't thought about using journals as a feedback mechanism. That might be useful, although, I am reminded of the old law school adage: never ask a question you don't know the answer to. Yet, while it might be scary at first to ask for feedback, I think I'd like to know sooner rather than later so I could make a course correction if necessary. As a side note on the topic of asking for feedback, when I sat in on Juliet's class last week, she asked her students if they found the last two assignments helpful. I liked that she required them to give a reason along with their positive or negative opinion. I was also happy to note that students felt empowered enough to provide some constructive feedback.

Peckham has some good examples for writing in different rhetorical situations that I'd like to remember.

compare information gathered from brochures, tabloids, general newspapers, and professional journals...
evaluate the different kinds of power that information has for different audiences...[including] anecdotes...

Peckham does one thing that I've noticed that Donna does as well. They both require their students to reflect on the writing that they have done. I think this could be really powerful. It also leads me to want to clarify in writing, for myself, what I hope to get from this class and also next year when I start teaching. My first question for myself will be, what unique strength do I bring to this thing called writing, or more generally, education? ((endless curiosity?...continued reflectiveness..??))

His article did leave me with a few questions (1) why so much hesitancy with the term outcome? (2) what other ways of doing group work have proven successful, especially so that students get in the habit of learning from each other and not just the teacher and as it pertains to peer reviews? and (3) I wonder if MU be okay with a portfolio approach?

Hess Article

I didn't like the sound of Hess's Surrealist theme when I began reading, but then I liked some of his assignments. I also realized Hess and I share some opinions on teaching. Hess seems different than some composition teachers. As teachers, we are quick to judge and dismiss what the students bring to our classes. "Didn't anyone teach them before they came to my class?" I think this feeling is prevalent for most teachers. He says that it is important to value what they bring to the classroom.

Also, he cares about how the students learn. His mention and concern of students' metacognitive awareness surprised me. It is easy for the assignment to become the focus instead of helping students to meet the requirement of the assignment rather than blindly expecting them to accomplish the task. He isn't just asking them to fulfill a writing assignment, but he asks them to think about their own process--do some metacognition--and to allow them to work together in a collborative environment. He really decentered the authority in that classroom by allowing the students to become the experts--the sources. By creating this student-centered classroom--this inquiry classroom--he models Friere.

I thought it was interesting that he modeled this student-centered classroom and really forced them to re-think their perspectives on research and then he included some assignments that didn't seem to match his previous goals. And the students noticed. It can be very easy when you get tired or you are not sure what to do in class to just throw some assignment in that isn't genuine--that doesn't have a real purpose. He had challenged their thinking so much and then he gave them the equivalent of some busy work and some of the students noticed.

I would like some ideas on theme. Does anyone have any ideas that they would like to share? Will you have some kind of theme for your comp class?

Paper Instructions

I stumbled on this bit of humor: rules for papers by way of The Rhetoric of Blog Humor and I thought you would enjoy it.

Apparently, staples are a hard thing for students to manage.

Clancy Asks the Same Question

I am interested in the following the discussion over at Culture Cat. I thought you might be interested in it too. Clancy Ratliff, wonders what texts other instructors use for a first-year rhetoric or composition course.

Her post and the comments it is generating are interesting reading because these people, like Donna, have significant experience teaching composition and/or rhetoric and I think they are raising important questions about textbook selection that are worthwhile to consider.

Myths of Authorship

I want to begin by describing a theory from another of my seminar courses this semester, and then use that to try to synthesize and generalize about the readings we did on “Constructing Effective Writing Assignments.”

In my 18th Century British Women Writers class (Marcia and Kristina are also in the class), we briefly discussed myths of authorship—that is those general metaphors that we often use to describe authors. But part of the foundation of this discussion was a question about why we even think in terms of authors at all. Certainly many things that we encounter are the work of more than one individual, and even if a text is primarily attributed to one person, the individual and cultural experiences that have informed that work are infinite. The idea is not totally new—it is the general theoretical questioning of why and how we attribute so much authority to the author.

The key idea here is the powerful position of the author, which is also what I see as central to the readings in Chapter 4. One goal of an English 1000 class is to get students to seriously consider the role of the author, both themselves as authors of their own writings and the positions of other authors.

We and the theorists have at least all agreed that the process of writing is incredibly complex. “Writing-to-learn” has been a way of describing writing that has been used over and over again. But I’m not sure it ends there. We write to figure out what we know and what we mean, but then we have to reconsider how we say what we know and mean. Structure, word choice, tone, etc. can significantly alter the same basic idea (as Kristina’s lesson plan from last time emphasized). Obviously, such considerations are meant to be addressed when we ask students to consider audience and purpose, but it isn’t always that simple. So, I guess one of the myths of authorship we want to break down is the myth that the student is not an author. Effective writing assignments convey to the student that what they have to say matters, and they have to write in such a way that considers all the implications of their authorship.

Perhaps the second myth of authorship is the myth of the disembodied author (and this draws primarily from Donald Murray’s quote that “All writing is autobiography” in the “Autobiography” essay, page 137). I think the perception often is that the author’s voice is not allowed to come into academic writing. Here, I agree with Murray and Kyburz that this is impossible; academic writing is going to reflect its author. (And I am aware that I am probably contradicting my introductory question about the nature of authorship—here’s to “wallowing in complexity.”) At some point, almost all of the assignments in Chapter 4 talk about the importance of rhetorical analysis. So, just as students should be aware of the ways in which they manipulate meaning in their writing, so should they be aware of rhetorical choices in others’ writings and not be afraid to question them.

And even before I publish the above, I want to reflect just briefly on what I’ve said.
I don’t think I’ve asked questions to stimulate class discussion for Wednesday. Perhaps we could ask “What myths of authorship exist?” and “What, if anything, should we do about them?”
I also feel that my post this week is only adding theory to more theory, and therefore not concrete like Kristin’s very helpful play-doh example. Obviously using what I have learned to create an actual writing assignment will be where I have to go next.

What are we about?

I’m surprised at the similarities between college writing assignments (as described in Roen Ch. 4) and my experiences teaching middle-high school student writers. The assignments are similar as are and the resources. For example, the idea that all writing is autobiography (Donald Murray’s phrase as used in Kyburz’s essay, Roen, p. 137). I’ve read Murray’s article on this, and agree that all writing is autobiography (if it is writing and not fill-in-the blank). Why does this surprise me? I guess because it seems too simple, too accessible for writers to enter into a writing assignment when the topic, focus, and ideas start within. I’m glad to know that this idea does not end when we step out of the high school writing classroom. The sad truth is that (I fear) few teachers value the role autobiography plays in writing. I think it is too easy to focus on the need to complete a list of assignments that have been prescribed by an outside curriculum, and that student input on topic or form is seldom considered, and if choices are given, they are highly controlled.

I have a question though - how much flexibility do college composition students find for choosing their own topic or form/genre? Is this traditionally prescribed so that all students write the same type of paper? I would imagine the students choose the topic, though the type of paper is prescribed? What might be the benefits and/or drawbacks of allowing student choice?

After reading the first article in Ch. 14 of Roen, I wonder about the use of research writing. If I take the writing assignments in both chapters 4 and 14, I wonder how much can be accomplished in a one-semester course? I see value in the variety of assignments presented, and I think student inquiry should drive as much as possible of what a student writes. However, the time commitment is huge for the type of inquiry projects as outlined in “First-Year Composition as an Introduction to Academic Discourse.” Our decisions as instructors seem to boil down to first knowing our course’s main objectives and drafting a syllabus that will best support this, and then structuring assignments to “make” it happen. Is the course’s objective to strengthen student writing and confidence for a variety of writing experiences, or is it to prepare students to enter into academic discourse (as defined by the Braun and Prineas chapter), or what? I’m trying to remember myself during my first year in college – what would I have researched that would have benefited me in my career? I’m afraid my then-medical course of study would have led me into a dismal topic that may not have assisted me in joining the Burkian Parlor. I’ll have to keep thinking about this—I do like research, especially student-generated topics that they care to study. I think it was the language (“professoriate”) and the slam (though likely justified) on non-academic texts (again, the Braun article) that have left me a sour taste.

Educational Theories as Play-Doh

So, I've been trying to compose a coherent post for awhile now, and I've come to the conclusion that I'm overwhelmed because I'm trying to talk about too many ideas -- we read so many different articles in the Roen et al. that I find it difficult to focus my energy for the sake of electronic discussion. Thus, here's what I'm thinking right now:

I can see the purpose in having us read every article in the chapter about designing assignments, because it's when we read such a variety of ideas and methodologies that we start to shape our own ideas and develop our own methodologies. Unlike Faith, I never felt as though I was reading theory, although I guess we were; to me, theory is the stuff by Said and Bhabha that I read for my Postcolonial Middle Ages course, not different people's thoughts about how to teach. And I think that seeing these articles as just that -- ideas, opinions, and views about teaching composition by people who've done it before -- is key. If we think of them as theories, which is what Faith seems to be doing, we tend to get bogged down by their contradictions and shortcomings, but if we think of them as teachers discussing how they teach, I feel as though we're apt to find them more useful. Can we learn from them? Yes. Can we argue with them? Heck yeah. I think we're supposed to, actually. Do we need a theory to justify everything we do? I don't think so. Sometimes it's good enough to say, "I do it because it works for ________ (fill in blank: "my students," "me," "the curriculum," etc.)." Isn't it?

Bear with me as I try to be more articulate (yet dangerously dorky) with a metaphor. I'm thinking that all of these theories that we're learning about and discussing are all different colors of Play-Doh. To construct my Play-Doh elephant (or whatever), maybe I'll use some orange Play-Doh for the ears, some pink for the tail, and make its body green; maybe for my English 1000 class, I'll draw on Freire to prevent myself from acting like a banker, on Flower to remember her useful ideas about writer-based prose, and on Salibrici's role-playing ideas (171-175) to help my students understand audience and angle of vision. Maybe I don't think my elephant should have any brown on it; maybe I don't think Bartholomae's ideas work for my teaching goals. Maybe I'll shun the Play-Doh and make my elephant's eyes out of rocks I find in my driveway; maybe part of my English 1000 class is based on practical needs or prior experience rather than on theory. We survey the plethora of Play-Doh colors and, upon careful scrutinzation of color, texture, malleability, etc., we choose what colors suit our needs. We're all going to make good elephants if we put thought into our Play-Doh selections and effort into creating our pachyderms.

That was exhausting. I'm interested in hearing others' thoughts on the various articles in Roen et al.; briefly, I found the excerpt from the Penn State University Composition Program Handbook (134-136) to be vague, unrealistic, and kinda crappy while I found some great ideas to steal in Salibrici (171-175) and the article about defining rhetorical terms (145-150). Also, the Braun and Prineas article in Ch. 14 was a highlight -- thorough, smart, and accessible with great explanations of their concepts. I could easily picture myself adapting parts of it to use in class.

Also, question to all, including you, Dr. Strickland: do we have the Phillip Levine "What Work Is" article somewhere? Is it on the web? Did you hand it out and I'm just an idiot? Just wondering where I'm supposed to get it in order to read it for Wednesday. Thanks.

Or something.

Wading through this week’s highly theoretical reading, I found myself thinking: Are theories the reason we do things? This question was particularly bothering me when I read Bonnie Kyburz’s “Autobiography: The Rhetorical Efficacy of Self-Reflection/Articulation.” I was excited to read it, because I’d like to assign autobiographical writing, but upon reading Kyburz’s arguments, I became disenfranchised. For example, she makes the argument that autobiographical writing can contribute to “catalyzing Freirian processes of concientization” and help students realize “social constructionist rubric” despite “postmodern assaults on the notion of the subject and notions of individual agency” (138, 137).
Or something.
What I do know that none of the reasons I want to teach autobiographical writing were mentioned in her essay. I just though it would be cool because (1) it would be interesting for me and for the students (2) it requires creativity, which I’m good at (3) it would help me get to know my students (4) they wouldn’t have to do a lot of reading. I thought these were all good reasons, yet they don’t fit into a theoretical framework, so I feel like they are “wrong.”
So that’s the question I have for this week: What do we do with these theories? Are we supposed to learn from them? Argue with them? Use them to justify everything we do? Are theories the only way to justify doing anything? What happens if we do something that goes against a theory?
Do we start with a theory and build a lesson from there, or do we start with notions of what we want to teach and then look at the theories and modify? Or do we teach what we want to teach and then nod at that theories and say, "Yeah!"?

Penthouse or Bust?

So, a day removed from class, I'm sitting here typing this blog and wondering, "Why didn't we really talk about Flower?" I mean, I know we mentioned her in tandem with the Bartholomae, but did we all pretty much say, "Yeah, Flower makes sense" and move on? Was she that uncontroversial? I mentioned in my individual blog that Flower makes great points about the need to transform writer-based prose into reader-based prose, but she makes it sounds as though simply helping students to recognize what writer-based prose is will make the transition quick and easy -- but it's not quick and easy. Not at all. And I'm not so sure Flower offers concrete steps to do so, though I think I own a book of hers that has a whole bunch of strategies in it...I'll have to check my shelves when I get home.

On a different note, I found our class discussion of Bartholomae to be lively and thoughtful, and I'm still pondering some issues. I find it interesting that when most of us talked about "academic discourse," we seemed reluctant to group ourselves into the category of "those who require/value academic discourse" and instead talked a great deal about our own current struggles to accomodate the expectations of academia. Did we place ourselves on a similar, if not the same, plane as the "white shoes" and "clay model" writers? I feel as though most of us did, which strikes me as odd because our struggles are not the same as those of the "clay model" writer. We do write differently than incoming freshmen, thank goodness, but we also write differently than out professors (at least I know I do). So perhpas Bartholomae's distinction of two categories of academic discourse -- "theirs" (the language of student writers floundering in their attempts to write for college) and "our" (the language of educated academics) -- isn't so clear cut. Are we on the transitional level, somewhere between "theirs" and "our"? And do we all want to strive to acend to the "our" level? If most Comp students are in the basement and professors are up sunbathing on the roof, are we stuck somewhere on the mezzanine, staring at the elevator keys and desperately pressing the keys to take us as high as we want to go? Or do we look at the elevator and decide that we can make do on the mezzanine, and then turn around, walk past the staircase without a second glass, and go grab an iced tea in the mezzanine lobby?

We sold our soul to academic discourse.

"but I am unwilling to believe that any reasonable college professor would fail to recognize a good essay even if it didn’t contain this exclusive language."

This quote from one of the posts struck me. I understand exactly what this person meant. It is hard to believe that any "reasonable" person couldn't recognize a good essay because of the language, but I think we all have these little subconscious pet peeves that could strike even the most reasonable of teachers. I think I said this last week, but it is so important to know your biases as a reader. I'm reading Teaching Grammar in the Context of Writing by Constance Weaver. She gave a survey to business people, I believe, and asked them to rank how much the grammatical or punctuation error bothered each person. Many of the errors were dialectic--errors of social class.

All of this reminded me of Ruby Payne's book, A Framework for Understanding Poverty, I can't remember the language she used to describe this but she talked about talking about language appropriate to the occassion. That's nothing new, but explicit talk about this is necessary.

So I teach first year comp and academic writing (two separate courses) to seniors in high school. Beginning writers are egocentric. Most of the time they haven't had lots of opportunity to write to various audiences and for various purposes. I think that writing a lot and allowing many different kinds of responses to the writing--becoming fluent writers--helps them, eventually, to join academic discourse. We have all joined academic discourse whether we like it or not.

Transformations

While I was unfamiliar with Linda Flower's term Writer-Based prose on a theoretical level, I am quite acquainted with it on a practical level. Often students arrive at the writing lab where I tutor (this one, not this one), with really great content still in their heads, rather than written on paper. Flowers call this content “uncommunicated content” and says it’s vital to acknowledge its legitimacy, “especially [for] inexperienced writers, [because acknowedgement gives beginning writers] the confidence and motivation to go on" (330). Just going on and trying again is important. Teachers and tutors can serve a vital role by encouraging beginning writers to just keep writing.

The transformation of Writer-Based prose to Reader-Based prose occurs when writers move from giving readers a narrative tour to analysis and explanation of concepts. Often instructors describe this transformational step in the writing process as answering the “so what” question or by requiring that students’ writing “do” something and both of these questions can sometimes be hard for students to grasp. Flowers offers a worthwhile suggestion in the transformation process when she advises “[t]he most general transformation is simply to try to take into account the reader’s purpose in reading” (329). While this statement is somewhat obvious, reading and comprehending this suggestion was quite profound for me. I realized that the question I most often have in mind relative to my audience is “can a reader understand what I have written?” On the other hand, asking the alternative (or additional) question regarding ‘the reader’s purpose in reading’ is quite likely to have a transformational outcome in my own writing and is a question I’ll most likely take to my students.

My question for us to consider is this: What have you discovered as either a teacher or tutor that you absolutely want to share with your students? That is, when students leave your classes, what is the one thing (or top 3 things) you want them to remember? Further, (if you know) are these issues grounded in theory and/or practice?

Another Grand Synthesis

If you click on the link above, you'll find a position statement from NCTE (National Council of Teachers of English) that provides a more recent summary of what "we" now believe about writing. (More recent than the article I emailed to you, although that one is useful, too.)

In your individual blogs, in addition to anything else you feel moved to write there, I want to encourage you to continue to use the readings and class discussions to revisit and reconsider what it might mean to teach writing in college and how you might go about doing that. Reading and reflecting. That's the main "purpose" I see in keeping an individual blog for the class, though you're certainly free to do more with it.

What to do when students aren't prepared

Remember in class how we talked about kicking students out of class if they were not prepared. Well, I was doing some research and ran across the following option at jill/txt:

I’m pleased that instead of refusing students who’ve not done the preparation entry to classroom or punishing them somehow, as has been suggested to me, I set up activities that plain aren’t fun if you’ve not prepared. Also, small groups make it so embarrassing if you’ve read nothing. And I don’t have to do or say a thing about whether they’ve read or not.

This might be the ticket,, "setting up activities that plain aren't fun if you're not prepared." What do you think? Small group activity might work to cut down on students not being prepared, especially if you have it organized as she did, freewrite, group work, group presentations, writing revision.

Also, this made me think that group work announced in advance might be a way to get students to do the reading in advance because they might get pressure from their peers to contribute in the groups. I guess they could just as easily talk about the party on Friday and leave it to others to do the thinking about course content, but having each group make a presentation does put the group on the spot to add something to the discussion.

What do you think? Other ideas anyone?