The scholarly community seems to want to find one single process method that will explain the notion of writing in a clear cut and logical manner that can be applied to everyone, student and professional alike, with predictable results. Our readings and theorist presentations have proven that this has been and continues to be an ongoing debate. Does this stem from a desire for scientific certainty, or merely the need to make sense out of our own actions? Whatever the reason, perhaps trying to define one comprehensive method for writing is not what best serves the writing community and composition classroom.
In our Norton readings, both Faigley and Berlin offer comparisons of the Cognitive, Expressive, and Social process theories of writing, while Brand compares cognitive and expressive theories. The cognitive theory focuses on the mind as the center of activity relevant to writing and proposes that writing occurs in a logical process that can be analyzed by contemporary cognitive science. Expressive theory is portrayed as everything from a Romantic notion that writing occurs as a result of Divine Inspiration to the notion that “good” writing is the result of individual expression. Social process or social-epistemic theory sees society as being the source of the writing process and the individual is merely analyzing and interpreting social discourse. Faigley argues that the Social process theory is the superior of the three, while Berlin attempts to prove that each theory has an inherent rhetoric that should be acknowledged. Brand clearly favors the expressive theory and strongly criticizes the cognitive theory. “What the cognitive models suggest is not so much that there are different composing styles but that one is better than the other. Nothing could be further from the truth” (710).
Is that not what all the theory proponents are arguing?
Dewey can perhaps offer a little perspective on the subject. Dewey proposed, as one of the underlying principles of progressive education, that education should reflect society, just as society reflected education. School is for “learning…certainly, but living primarily, and learning through and in relation to this living” (Dewey, School and Society). Each theory process is something that we experience and perform in society: logical processing, individual expression, and analysis of social discourse. Should we not then incorporate each of those processes in our learning to make it truly reflective to what we do outside of the classroom?
Dewey’s pragmatic philosophy also supports this. If a theory has practical application and relevance, then the theory is “true.” And all of these theories are relevant. Each of them successfully examines a portion of the overall writing process. But only a portion. I would argue that all writing contains an element of logical processing, individual expression, and analysis of social discourse. To focus on one alone as the sole determiner of writing process is to define writing as a limiting and limited exercise of relevance and practical application.
The point is that there seems to be this desire to choose one idea, and one alone, as the answer to all of the writing community’s questions about process. If the proposed theory can’t answer those questions, the community decides it must be criticized and discarded while a new answer is sought.
Dewey defined critical thinking as maintaining an open mind and a little healthy skepticism while analyzing the relevant information. "Reflective thinking, in short, means judgment suspended during further inquiry…and suspense is likely to be somewhat painful" (How We Think). We may be uncomfortable with not having the answer to this question of writing process, but that’s okay. That is part of the process of learning, seeking out answers. And it is okay if we make mistakes and propose theories that don’t hold the answers to all of the questions. “Socially as well as scientifically the great thing is not to avoid mistakes but to have them take place under conditions such that they can be utilized to increase intelligence in the future” (Dewey, Reconstruction in Philosophy).
Thursday, March 18, 2010
Thursday, March 11, 2010
The Unending Conversation
“Coleridge’s great metaphor for composition is the journey outward from the center of the self in order to embrace diversity and bring difference into harmony with the self. Such a journey requires an active mind and a perspective of composition that welcomes each act of composition as an attempt to explain something to yourself in such a way that others will want to join with you in composing” (Veeder 22).
For Coleridge, knowledge and truth are created inside the self through a process of examination, judgment, and questioning that leads to the development of personality and self. It is a constantly evolving process that requires some flexibility of mind to adapt to the changes that experience and facts necessitate. However, the learning process does not end with the self. Collaboration with others is necessary to test the self’s knowledge and develop a sense of the self’s role in the whole of society. The testing wasn’t for the purpose of convincing an audience, but rather to inform the composition author of the validity of the self’s truth. Composition then has both a very personal beginning and a collaboratively social polishing stage. “Coleridge’s philosophy of composition fundamentally asserts that composition is both dialectic and dialogue, dialectic being the discourse of reason and understanding and dialogue being the social equivalent of that discourse” (Veeder 23).
Coleridge’s view of composition seems rather prescient in light of modern teaching pedagogy, and Kenneth Bruffee would likely agree. Bruffee’s article, Collaborative Learning and the “Conversation of Mankind,” discusses collaborative learning and the social approach to classroom teaching. It began because students were unwilling or unable to take advantage of traditional university-sponsored tutoring and counseling programs by graduate students and teachers. An alternative to the traditional social structure of the classroom was proposed in peer tutoring. In the classroom, collaborative learning manifested as the teacher assigning a problem and the class collectively working on the solution. The students learned from each other, providing and receiving help in a social context far removed from the traditional teacher-centered classroom.
Bruffee argues that thought begins as external social conversation which is then internalized as reflective thought. Much as Coleridge theorized, we take what we see outside ourselves, internalize it, and then process it. Also like Coleridge, Bruffee believes the process of developing knowledge does not end there. “If thought is internalized public and social talk, then writing of all kinds is internalized social talk made public and social again” (Bruffee 550). Once the knowledge, the truth, is processed, it must be tested in public. Collaborative learning provides the setting and structure to pursue that testing through social interaction in an educational environment.
In The Voice of Poetry in the Conversation of Mankind, Michal Oakeshott argues that “what distinguishes human beings from other animals is our ability to participate in unending conversation” (Bruffee 548). Coleridge would perhaps, as an active participant in the unending conversation, agree with that notion. And as teachers, we are actively engaged in perpetuating that conversation and enabling our students to be able participants as well.
For Coleridge, knowledge and truth are created inside the self through a process of examination, judgment, and questioning that leads to the development of personality and self. It is a constantly evolving process that requires some flexibility of mind to adapt to the changes that experience and facts necessitate. However, the learning process does not end with the self. Collaboration with others is necessary to test the self’s knowledge and develop a sense of the self’s role in the whole of society. The testing wasn’t for the purpose of convincing an audience, but rather to inform the composition author of the validity of the self’s truth. Composition then has both a very personal beginning and a collaboratively social polishing stage. “Coleridge’s philosophy of composition fundamentally asserts that composition is both dialectic and dialogue, dialectic being the discourse of reason and understanding and dialogue being the social equivalent of that discourse” (Veeder 23).
Coleridge’s view of composition seems rather prescient in light of modern teaching pedagogy, and Kenneth Bruffee would likely agree. Bruffee’s article, Collaborative Learning and the “Conversation of Mankind,” discusses collaborative learning and the social approach to classroom teaching. It began because students were unwilling or unable to take advantage of traditional university-sponsored tutoring and counseling programs by graduate students and teachers. An alternative to the traditional social structure of the classroom was proposed in peer tutoring. In the classroom, collaborative learning manifested as the teacher assigning a problem and the class collectively working on the solution. The students learned from each other, providing and receiving help in a social context far removed from the traditional teacher-centered classroom.
Bruffee argues that thought begins as external social conversation which is then internalized as reflective thought. Much as Coleridge theorized, we take what we see outside ourselves, internalize it, and then process it. Also like Coleridge, Bruffee believes the process of developing knowledge does not end there. “If thought is internalized public and social talk, then writing of all kinds is internalized social talk made public and social again” (Bruffee 550). Once the knowledge, the truth, is processed, it must be tested in public. Collaborative learning provides the setting and structure to pursue that testing through social interaction in an educational environment.
In The Voice of Poetry in the Conversation of Mankind, Michal Oakeshott argues that “what distinguishes human beings from other animals is our ability to participate in unending conversation” (Bruffee 548). Coleridge would perhaps, as an active participant in the unending conversation, agree with that notion. And as teachers, we are actively engaged in perpetuating that conversation and enabling our students to be able participants as well.
Thursday, March 4, 2010
The Role and Responsibility of the Audience
When does rhetoric become manipulative? When the orator deliberately misleads or unfairly takes advantage of weaknesses in the audience? Or, perhaps, when the audience is ignorant of the methods and goals of rhetoric and is easily swayed by the orator, however well intentioned? That is a very distinct difference, but can both situations can lead to manipulation of the audience? If that is the case, what is the role and responsibility of the audience in rhetoric? That question is not addressed specifically in many of our readings, but some conclusions can be made based on them. For example, how would Mary Astell and George Campbell see the audience and their responses through the lenses of their respective rhetorical theories?
Mary Astell appealed to her audience through ethos and encouraged her audience to do the same in their own rhetoric. Astell believed, along with Quintilian, that eloquence was not possible with immoral discourse. She was primarily concerned with educating her audience, mainly "fashionable" but uneducated women. "They have a responsibility to improve their minds" (Sutherland 148). She clearly views her audience as becoming motivated by her words and their inherent responsibility to educate themselves and participate in rhetorical discourse. "She expects women to engage in serious intellectual discussion and controversy" (Sutherland 150). She does not direct A Serious Proposal to the Ladies to the working class, however, who would not have had the time or finances for "partying, gossiping, and gambling." She expected them to have knowledge of societal structure and the topics that constitute intellectual discussion, as well as basic reading and writing. Manipulation would not have been thought possible by Astell with her focus on ethos and her audience's effort to educate themselves.
George Campbell, on the other hand, was concerned with appealing to pathos and the means and ends of rhetoric. "The vehement passions, e.g., hope, ambition and anger 'elevate the soul and stimulate to action,' are useful for persuasion" (Walzer 76). Campbell also believed that appealing to reason was important because it would help to rouse the passions. But, only if the appeal to reason was concealed. For Campbell, rhetoric was "an art that conceals art" (Walzer 81). So he was concerned with eliciting the desired response from the audience, through the passions, and concealing the art of the appeal. However, the passions were not emotion without reason. "For Campbell, the passions (as emotions) do not obscure judgment but enable action" (Walzer 76). For a Presbyterian minister and professor of divinity, it's not likely that Campbell would endorse manipulation as a rhetorical method. His audiences would also have consisted of educated men, many of whom were learning the very rhetoric he proposed.
These two rhetoricians, though with very different approaches, expected their audiences either to be educated or to educate themselves regarding the theory of rhetoric. Perhaps that is the key element that is missing from modern rhetoric. A larger portion of the population has voting rights and access to education. But there has been a corresponding lowering of standards and expectations in modern education, hence the absence or reduction of rhetorical theory. Today's population isn't trained to understand the methods or goals of rhetoric and so is easily manipulated by it. The audience actively participates in rhetoric by educating themselves to understand and counterbalance it. Without that aspect, rhetoric does become manipulation, regardless of the intentions of the rhetor.
Mary Astell appealed to her audience through ethos and encouraged her audience to do the same in their own rhetoric. Astell believed, along with Quintilian, that eloquence was not possible with immoral discourse. She was primarily concerned with educating her audience, mainly "fashionable" but uneducated women. "They have a responsibility to improve their minds" (Sutherland 148). She clearly views her audience as becoming motivated by her words and their inherent responsibility to educate themselves and participate in rhetorical discourse. "She expects women to engage in serious intellectual discussion and controversy" (Sutherland 150). She does not direct A Serious Proposal to the Ladies to the working class, however, who would not have had the time or finances for "partying, gossiping, and gambling." She expected them to have knowledge of societal structure and the topics that constitute intellectual discussion, as well as basic reading and writing. Manipulation would not have been thought possible by Astell with her focus on ethos and her audience's effort to educate themselves.
George Campbell, on the other hand, was concerned with appealing to pathos and the means and ends of rhetoric. "The vehement passions, e.g., hope, ambition and anger 'elevate the soul and stimulate to action,' are useful for persuasion" (Walzer 76). Campbell also believed that appealing to reason was important because it would help to rouse the passions. But, only if the appeal to reason was concealed. For Campbell, rhetoric was "an art that conceals art" (Walzer 81). So he was concerned with eliciting the desired response from the audience, through the passions, and concealing the art of the appeal. However, the passions were not emotion without reason. "For Campbell, the passions (as emotions) do not obscure judgment but enable action" (Walzer 76). For a Presbyterian minister and professor of divinity, it's not likely that Campbell would endorse manipulation as a rhetorical method. His audiences would also have consisted of educated men, many of whom were learning the very rhetoric he proposed.
These two rhetoricians, though with very different approaches, expected their audiences either to be educated or to educate themselves regarding the theory of rhetoric. Perhaps that is the key element that is missing from modern rhetoric. A larger portion of the population has voting rights and access to education. But there has been a corresponding lowering of standards and expectations in modern education, hence the absence or reduction of rhetorical theory. Today's population isn't trained to understand the methods or goals of rhetoric and so is easily manipulated by it. The audience actively participates in rhetoric by educating themselves to understand and counterbalance it. Without that aspect, rhetoric does become manipulation, regardless of the intentions of the rhetor.
Thursday, February 18, 2010
Balancing scholarship with experience
What kind of value can we place on personal experience when used as evidence of argument in a classroom? The answer, judging by the instruction and admonishments from our graduate instructors, seems to be very little. The reasoning seems to be that personal experience, anecdotal evidence, is simply unreliable and specific to a small cross-section of human experience. Would Locke and Vico support such a view of knowledge and education today?
According to Locke, in his tabula rasa theory, we aren't born with innate knowledge. Rather, humans develop knowledge through their experiences. Everything we know and understand, then, is dependent on personal experience. "The mind gets its ideas of particular, concrete objects through one of the five senses; it gets all other ideas by reflecting on its own operations." When we attempt to strip away that personal experience from the learning process, are we doing a disservice to students? In composition classes, we as teachers attempt to wean students away from depending on anecdotal evidence to prove arguments. But it is possible that we impede learning and make the process of writing a dry and empty process rather than a rich, fulfilling experience in and of itself. Perhaps we should seek to expand and encourage personal experience. As Corbett says in his essay on Locke, "If our students sometimes fail in doing our writing assignments, their failure may be due, not to the malfunctioning of whatever heuristic system they may have used but rather to the narrowly circumscribed range of their experiences." And if we go to all that trouble to encourage experience for the sake of learning, does it then make sense to stifle that expression of experience completely?
For Locke, experience was knowledge. For Vico, self-discovery was knowledge. What is experience if not self-discovery? "[Vico] also wanted to start a movement of autonomous self-development in the student. The latter must rediscover his soul himself, and must seek the connection between human nature and the Divine. The study of the classics and their expressive formulas becomes a mean of intellectual development and not an end it itself." He respected the classics and saw their value for a well-educated individual, but learning the classics wasn't the end. As we learned from both the article on Vico and the presentation, he believed strongly in sending his students out into the world to utilize their hard-earned knowledge for the sake of their people and society. Again, there is that emphasis on experience and utilizing that experience for productive means.
I don't advocate a progressive form of education that focuses entirely on self-expression to the exclusion of research and presentation of authoritative sources. To do so would be to disregard the rationality and wisdom to be found in scholarship. As Maiullari says of Vico's theories, "The interest and primary aim for every man must be to achieve a balance between his own nature and his own actions, between theory and action." I would suggest that such a strong exclusion of experience is a detriment to the knowledge and development of our students and that we should seek a balance between scholarship and experience.
According to Locke, in his tabula rasa theory, we aren't born with innate knowledge. Rather, humans develop knowledge through their experiences. Everything we know and understand, then, is dependent on personal experience. "The mind gets its ideas of particular, concrete objects through one of the five senses; it gets all other ideas by reflecting on its own operations." When we attempt to strip away that personal experience from the learning process, are we doing a disservice to students? In composition classes, we as teachers attempt to wean students away from depending on anecdotal evidence to prove arguments. But it is possible that we impede learning and make the process of writing a dry and empty process rather than a rich, fulfilling experience in and of itself. Perhaps we should seek to expand and encourage personal experience. As Corbett says in his essay on Locke, "If our students sometimes fail in doing our writing assignments, their failure may be due, not to the malfunctioning of whatever heuristic system they may have used but rather to the narrowly circumscribed range of their experiences." And if we go to all that trouble to encourage experience for the sake of learning, does it then make sense to stifle that expression of experience completely?
For Locke, experience was knowledge. For Vico, self-discovery was knowledge. What is experience if not self-discovery? "[Vico] also wanted to start a movement of autonomous self-development in the student. The latter must rediscover his soul himself, and must seek the connection between human nature and the Divine. The study of the classics and their expressive formulas becomes a mean of intellectual development and not an end it itself." He respected the classics and saw their value for a well-educated individual, but learning the classics wasn't the end. As we learned from both the article on Vico and the presentation, he believed strongly in sending his students out into the world to utilize their hard-earned knowledge for the sake of their people and society. Again, there is that emphasis on experience and utilizing that experience for productive means.
I don't advocate a progressive form of education that focuses entirely on self-expression to the exclusion of research and presentation of authoritative sources. To do so would be to disregard the rationality and wisdom to be found in scholarship. As Maiullari says of Vico's theories, "The interest and primary aim for every man must be to achieve a balance between his own nature and his own actions, between theory and action." I would suggest that such a strong exclusion of experience is a detriment to the knowledge and development of our students and that we should seek a balance between scholarship and experience.
Thursday, February 11, 2010
I tinker before I spam?
As the "Telephone" game was brought up in class Tuesday night, allow me to use it to illustrate a concept that I took away from Edward Corbett's Topoi Revisted and Enos' Recovering the Lost Art of Researching the History of Rhetoric.
We know, thanks to our readings, that the Latin rhetoricians took Greek concepts of rhetoric, Aristotle's concepts, and adapted them to suit the Roman ideals and culture. Some of his ideas were given less importance in this new rhetorical scheme, ideas such as the topoi. To Aristotle, "the topoi were devices enabling the speaker to find those arguments that would be most persuasive in a given situation." They were intended to assist the invention process by enabling discovery of the most appropriate and successful direction in which to take an argument based on the matter of the argument itself. But Cicero and Quintilian reduced the topoi to training devices for students, with the intention that the student would soon grow out of reliance on "this rather mechanical system of heuristics." And later, as described by Curtius' book European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages, the topoi "became not so much devices for finding persuasive arguments in letter writing...and preaching...as guiding principles for the composition of literary texts." The topoi became formulas for funeral sermons with "stereotyped themes." New topoi were employed for the introductions and conclusions of poetry, with "hackneyed themes and conventions."
Oh how the mighty topoi had fallen. Clearly, this wasn't what Aristotle had in mind, but why did it come to that? It is the historical research version of Telephone.
The new topoi in the Middle Ages appears to be an attempt to reexamine the topoi from different perspectives. But, according to Corbett, "these new topoi served to formularize literature but did little to enliven or innovate it." They seem to have gone to Cicero and Quintilian for their ideas of what topoi should and could do in literature, or research on topoi based on what Cicero and Quintilian perceived them to be. Perhaps that is a disservice, as I don't actually know what sources they used. But Aristotle seemed more interested in the invention aspect of the topoi and what could be discovered, rather than what formulas might be gleaned from them to cut and paste into a document.
We have lost the art of research, according to Enos, specifically in the field of rhetoric. Primary scholarship is no longer the focus. "Rather, what we are presenting as historical studies are critiques on secondary scholarhip, speculative essays on meta-theory and point/counter-point debates over characterizations of ideologies." Enos sees this shift in the focus of research as detrimental to the field of rhetoric for a number of reasons, not the least of which are a lack of respect for the true art of research and the loss of valuable knowledge.
Essentially, we as scholars are in danger of being caught in an unending game of Telephone. We seek out secondary scholarship and treat it like a primary source, which is a shaky place to start. There is information loss between the primary and secondary sources as focuses shift and meanings are skewed based on interpretation. That is inevitable and it would behoove us to keep that in mind as budding scholars. If we hope to make a lasting and worthy contribution to our fields we might want to stop playing Telephone and attempt to go to the source, whatever form that may be.
We know, thanks to our readings, that the Latin rhetoricians took Greek concepts of rhetoric, Aristotle's concepts, and adapted them to suit the Roman ideals and culture. Some of his ideas were given less importance in this new rhetorical scheme, ideas such as the topoi. To Aristotle, "the topoi were devices enabling the speaker to find those arguments that would be most persuasive in a given situation." They were intended to assist the invention process by enabling discovery of the most appropriate and successful direction in which to take an argument based on the matter of the argument itself. But Cicero and Quintilian reduced the topoi to training devices for students, with the intention that the student would soon grow out of reliance on "this rather mechanical system of heuristics." And later, as described by Curtius' book European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages, the topoi "became not so much devices for finding persuasive arguments in letter writing...and preaching...as guiding principles for the composition of literary texts." The topoi became formulas for funeral sermons with "stereotyped themes." New topoi were employed for the introductions and conclusions of poetry, with "hackneyed themes and conventions."
Oh how the mighty topoi had fallen. Clearly, this wasn't what Aristotle had in mind, but why did it come to that? It is the historical research version of Telephone.
The new topoi in the Middle Ages appears to be an attempt to reexamine the topoi from different perspectives. But, according to Corbett, "these new topoi served to formularize literature but did little to enliven or innovate it." They seem to have gone to Cicero and Quintilian for their ideas of what topoi should and could do in literature, or research on topoi based on what Cicero and Quintilian perceived them to be. Perhaps that is a disservice, as I don't actually know what sources they used. But Aristotle seemed more interested in the invention aspect of the topoi and what could be discovered, rather than what formulas might be gleaned from them to cut and paste into a document.
We have lost the art of research, according to Enos, specifically in the field of rhetoric. Primary scholarship is no longer the focus. "Rather, what we are presenting as historical studies are critiques on secondary scholarhip, speculative essays on meta-theory and point/counter-point debates over characterizations of ideologies." Enos sees this shift in the focus of research as detrimental to the field of rhetoric for a number of reasons, not the least of which are a lack of respect for the true art of research and the loss of valuable knowledge.
Essentially, we as scholars are in danger of being caught in an unending game of Telephone. We seek out secondary scholarship and treat it like a primary source, which is a shaky place to start. There is information loss between the primary and secondary sources as focuses shift and meanings are skewed based on interpretation. That is inevitable and it would behoove us to keep that in mind as budding scholars. If we hope to make a lasting and worthy contribution to our fields we might want to stop playing Telephone and attempt to go to the source, whatever form that may be.
Tuesday, February 2, 2010
Personal Investment
From Pre-Writing, "We described the entire activity called 'writing' as a person's transformation of the events of his life into experienced conceptual structures revealed in language for the sake of his own self-actualization and for communication with other persons through commonly shared patterns of meaning."
I believe in structure in a writing curriculum. Structure is your foundation. It's what you build first, so that later your creation won't come crashing down around your ears. Grammar is important because it is a method of expression and also a connection between a writer and her audience, and therefore deserves time and attention. I also believe in pre-writing and the outline. Structuring an argument, providing argument support, and ensuring logical execution are easier to visualize as new writers with structure supporting it. So yes, I like structure, and rules, and form.
But once your foundation is built, you enter less certain territory. Rhetoric, creativity, and theory in writing require human evaluation. We can tell our students what to think, and that may stick for an hour, 3 weeks, or years. But what we really should be doing is encouraging that human evaluation from our students. We should give them the critical thinking skills to take those areas of thought on writing and learn to deconstruct them for the tools they need. Then, using rhetoric, creativity, and theory along with their own experiences and beliefs, they can build their own creations in which they are personally invested.
A structured argument will always be important because it’s the discourse most often used in daily life, and education should have a practical application. However, I think it’s important to expose students to a wide variety of textual forms, not only to make them aware of the ranges of human expression, but also to allow them opportunities to find their own expression. A balance of structure and free-form writing allows a range of expression while providing stability to that foundation. In short, I think balance is important.
Essentially, all these elements are used to give students the tools they need. But the experience and insight they each bring to the table personalizes the writing process and makes it unique. Whether they are writing for scholarly recognition or to tell a story they need to be invested in the final product and not just regurgitating rules and structure. At this point I don't know exactly how you do that, yet. But I'm personally invested in figuring it out.
I believe in structure in a writing curriculum. Structure is your foundation. It's what you build first, so that later your creation won't come crashing down around your ears. Grammar is important because it is a method of expression and also a connection between a writer and her audience, and therefore deserves time and attention. I also believe in pre-writing and the outline. Structuring an argument, providing argument support, and ensuring logical execution are easier to visualize as new writers with structure supporting it. So yes, I like structure, and rules, and form.
But once your foundation is built, you enter less certain territory. Rhetoric, creativity, and theory in writing require human evaluation. We can tell our students what to think, and that may stick for an hour, 3 weeks, or years. But what we really should be doing is encouraging that human evaluation from our students. We should give them the critical thinking skills to take those areas of thought on writing and learn to deconstruct them for the tools they need. Then, using rhetoric, creativity, and theory along with their own experiences and beliefs, they can build their own creations in which they are personally invested.
A structured argument will always be important because it’s the discourse most often used in daily life, and education should have a practical application. However, I think it’s important to expose students to a wide variety of textual forms, not only to make them aware of the ranges of human expression, but also to allow them opportunities to find their own expression. A balance of structure and free-form writing allows a range of expression while providing stability to that foundation. In short, I think balance is important.
Essentially, all these elements are used to give students the tools they need. But the experience and insight they each bring to the table personalizes the writing process and makes it unique. Whether they are writing for scholarly recognition or to tell a story they need to be invested in the final product and not just regurgitating rules and structure. At this point I don't know exactly how you do that, yet. But I'm personally invested in figuring it out.
Thursday, January 28, 2010
Make Them a Part of the Learning
The main thing I took away from the Research in Composition excerpt - besides the fact that I never, ever want to do formal scientific research - is the overwhelming number of variables that have to be considered in the teaching and learning of composition: the writer variable, the assignment variable, the rater variable, the colleague variable, the rating method variable, and in general controlling all those variables. So why is this relevant if I never plan to research this subject? Because these are factors that we as teachers will have to deal with every day in and out of the classroom. (And I write this as a future teacher.) However, I'm primarily interested in the writer and assignment variables for the purposes of this little blog here.
"Often referred to as measures of writing ability, composition examinations are always measures of writing performance..." We don't evaluate what composition and rhetoric skills the student contains, as if they were a jar that we fill up, but rather what skills they allow consciously or unconsciously to pour out. We have to fill them up first, but we must also teach them how to give back what they've been taught in the most effective and successful manner.
The topics we choose as assignments should be chosen carefully, as they will affect the performance of the student. Disinterest and unfamiliarity could produce poor writing, consistently if the topics are not varied and some attempt made to connect them to students' lives. The diverse population also affects these topics, as everything from maturity level to socioeconomic backgrounds may need to determine at least in part which topics are rejected and which are assigned.
But this topic selection for maximum interest and writer performance seems easier said than done. How do you get students to care about the assignment if they're fundamentally disinterested anyway? For that I turn to the excerpt from Pre-Writing: The Construction and Application of Models for Concept Formation in Writing. The authors' conclusion is mainly that what the student is asked to do in many composition classes consists of regurgitating rules and vocabulary for the edification of the teacher, which doesn't involve the student and is therefore a pointless exercise. "He is not essentially engaged as a human being in what he is doing because the only motivation he is made aware of is extrinsic: he must write correctly and effectively because the teacher and society commands him to."
Most students in composition classes today, I'm guessing, are not planning to become English teachers. They are checking off a box on their transcripts in order to move on to what they are truly interested in, whatever that may be. So maybe we start off a composition class by discovering what those interests are and then demonstrating how writing is used in those other disciplines, how it is crucial for communication and advancement, and how the student can use the class to advance their chosen interests. Already you've involved the student in their own learning process.
I agree wholeheartedly with Pre-Writing's promotion of writing as a self-actualizing experience and that finding methods to encourage that process will only increase students' willingness to engage in it. I do, pragmatically, acknowledge that it's easy to lose sight of that goal when demonstrations of calculable gains in knowledge and expertise are necessary, when students are unwilling to learn, and when the teacher is fatigued by endless composition classes. But we have to seek that balance if we're to provide students with the communication tools necessary to successfully embrace their place in society.
"Often referred to as measures of writing ability, composition examinations are always measures of writing performance..." We don't evaluate what composition and rhetoric skills the student contains, as if they were a jar that we fill up, but rather what skills they allow consciously or unconsciously to pour out. We have to fill them up first, but we must also teach them how to give back what they've been taught in the most effective and successful manner.
The topics we choose as assignments should be chosen carefully, as they will affect the performance of the student. Disinterest and unfamiliarity could produce poor writing, consistently if the topics are not varied and some attempt made to connect them to students' lives. The diverse population also affects these topics, as everything from maturity level to socioeconomic backgrounds may need to determine at least in part which topics are rejected and which are assigned.
But this topic selection for maximum interest and writer performance seems easier said than done. How do you get students to care about the assignment if they're fundamentally disinterested anyway? For that I turn to the excerpt from Pre-Writing: The Construction and Application of Models for Concept Formation in Writing. The authors' conclusion is mainly that what the student is asked to do in many composition classes consists of regurgitating rules and vocabulary for the edification of the teacher, which doesn't involve the student and is therefore a pointless exercise. "He is not essentially engaged as a human being in what he is doing because the only motivation he is made aware of is extrinsic: he must write correctly and effectively because the teacher and society commands him to."
Most students in composition classes today, I'm guessing, are not planning to become English teachers. They are checking off a box on their transcripts in order to move on to what they are truly interested in, whatever that may be. So maybe we start off a composition class by discovering what those interests are and then demonstrating how writing is used in those other disciplines, how it is crucial for communication and advancement, and how the student can use the class to advance their chosen interests. Already you've involved the student in their own learning process.
I agree wholeheartedly with Pre-Writing's promotion of writing as a self-actualizing experience and that finding methods to encourage that process will only increase students' willingness to engage in it. I do, pragmatically, acknowledge that it's easy to lose sight of that goal when demonstrations of calculable gains in knowledge and expertise are necessary, when students are unwilling to learn, and when the teacher is fatigued by endless composition classes. But we have to seek that balance if we're to provide students with the communication tools necessary to successfully embrace their place in society.
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