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?
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?
posted by K. | 1:28 PM
3 Comments:
Kristin,
Thanks for summarizing and extending our thinking on the Barth discussion. As we consider the elevator, what if we as graduate students and writers in English 1000 learn that we can move to the different floors based on the writing that we need to do? My husband is a professor of math education. As he began his career he had to move through different voices in his writing. Some of his publishing opportunities required a formal voice and complex language, whereas others needed an informal voice with simpler language. It was the latter that was more difficult (for him). Perhaps other academic writers struggle with this as well (I think they do, based on some the inaccessible writing we encounter in some journals). This is just a thought that is hitting me as I picture the need to move our writing style up and down the elevator - we need to speak the language of whatever floor we desire to visit. It's this flexibility I want to work on with student writers. Granted, I don't see Eng 1000 students writing for a research journal, but they can analyze and choose appropriate writing style based on the audience and purpose.
In my last paragraph, "acend" should be "ascend" and "glass" should be "glance." I hate when I have typos, but this time, I blame them on Jeremy--he brought his pretty babies into the Success Center as I was finishing and totally disrupted my concentration. Doggone it.
Kristin,
I just want to tell you how much I appreciate your metaphor--both for the clarity the image adds and the fun it provides. And just as you blamed Jeremy for your mistakes, I am going to blame you for the fact that I am probably going to go get a mocha now from the student union...
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