How to Write Properly; Or, What We Deal with as Writing Instructors

http://andyhayes.com/announcing-the-red-pen-review

Our students come to our classes expecting us to make them great writers so that when they leave our classrooms they will be fit for any writing task they are ever handed. Now that’s a tall order if you really think about it. Why not teach students writing skills that they can use later on in whatever field they choose to enter? The sentiments are good and certainly there are valiant writing teachers out there trying to do just that - teach transferrable writing skills to their students. I agree that there needs to be a foundational level of writing (Basic Writing if you will) that will develop into area specific writing skills later on in our students’ careers. But I think there needs to be something more, somewhere we are missing something crucial to writing instruction.

Perhaps, Writing Across the Curriculum (WAC) is the solution but we need to see it on a larger scale to really analyze the effectiveness of that approach. As David Russell mentioned in “American Origins of the Writing-across-the-Curriculum Movement” (1992), “Instead of viewing writing as a complex and continuously developing response to a specialized, text-based, discourse community, highly embedded in the differentiated practices of that community, educators [had come] to see it as a set of generalizable, mechanical “skills” independent of disciplinary knowledge” (153). Writing was seen as more of “skill”, that once learned, remained unchanged yet applicable to every context. 

Sadly, there are still many in the academic community who believe that writing is simply a tool that one can learn in a course or two at the beginning of a college career (or arguably earlier in secondary education institutions). This is exactly the basis that WAC combats. As Charles Bazerman wrote in his essay “The Problem of Writing Knowledge” (1988), “...academic assignments bear a loose relationship to the writing done by mature members of the disciplines” (502). This is a relatively new sentiment that has really come to light with the WAC movement. Instead of viewing writing as a stagnant means of communication that can be easily mastered, Bazerman and many proponents of WAC, emphasize the importance of writing being discipline specific.

So wait...what does this mean for us writing teachers? I do no propose that we all loose our jobs of course. Rather, I think that basic writing skills can be taught (to an extent) but beyond our classrooms, students need to continue learning about writing within their disciplines. This is essentially the premise of WAC. There needs to be communication across the curriculum to teach writing that will benefit our students.

So how do we teach basic writing then? That is still being eagerly awaited by many writing instructors, including myself. Our students are still coming to our classes expecting us to magically mold them into convincing writers but our views of writing are shifting, leaving them staring at red-covered papers in despair. I propose that we need to teach our students that writing instruction does not end with us, but instead, they must continue to grow and learn about writing in their discipline specific courses. In that case, our job is to teach them basic writing and the tools that they will need to evaluate written texts within their respective disciplines whether those criteria of writing are specifically taught or not. “What a text is must take into account how people create it and how people use it,” (Bazerman 503). So rather than prescribing set “rules” for how to write, we need to engage our students in critical thinking  that applies rhetorical awareness to the texts they encounter. Joseph Williams in “The Phenomenology of Error” (1981), described that when we approach a freshman example of writing, we come to the table expecting to find errors. With that frame of mind, we undoubtedly find errors (420). So what is an error?

I think that students need to get more credit than they are given in their writing. Currently, we are asking them to make writing moves that most likely they have not had to do as of yet in their college careers. We lecture to them and give them those activities that we spend hours planning but sometimes I think those things fall short of their mark. When we grade, we still find those irritating “errors”. Their papers consequently get handed back to them covered in red ink or the computerized equivalent. “[T]he BW [basic writing] student both resents and resists his vulnerability as a writer. He is aware that he leaves a trail of errors behind him when he writes. He can usually think of little else while he is writing. But he doesn’t know what to do about it” (Shaughnessy 391). Williams proposed that we need to see these errors not as isolated issues restricted to the page but as “a flawed verbal transaction between a writer and a reader”(415) because oftentimes, the writer (the student) is not able to think about all the “rules” that he or she is supposed to know and consequently gets bogged down by whether or not those “rules” are followed properly and not necessarily by whether meaning is clear. 

Don’t get me wrong, those “rules” are there for a reason but as Williams concluded in his essay, those “rules” are also meant to be broken. Williams ended his essay with a section asking his readers to try to remember all the “errors” that he committed throughout the length of his essay. A really poignant approach to this issue of “errors” because it asks us what really is the importance of some of those rules given that we can read his essay and most likely not remember many (if any!) errors at all. He message is quite clear and we might not even notice that he made any “errors” at all if he didn’t ask us to evaluate his writing at the end of his piece. Thus, we can come to some sort of conclusion that at least questions the good of our “rules” that we seem to prize so much in writing (maybe because we don’t have much else to cling to as writing instructors?). 

So to conclude myself, WAC has the beginnings of the general movement that we need to see in writing instruction. Writing is not a formulaic approach to exchanging meaning but it is an exchange of meaning and its effectiveness is dependent upon both the writer and the reader. Writing is discipline specific, especially when put to use in specific discipline contexts that expect certain writing features that general writing instructors are not privy to. I think that a lot of our work ahead of us as writing instructors lies in teaching our students how to negotiate those different writing contexts and giving them the rhetorical strategies to chose deliberately how and when they adhere to “rules” and the consequences of those choices in their own writing and the writing of others. Writing instruction cannot be left to us alone but also must carry over to discipline instructors because they will be the real gatekeepers to the discipline expectations that our students enter. We have to pass on the knowledge that will give our students the tools to evaluate their discipline writing and learn from those examples. 

Do not despair, writing instructors! The task is daunting but we will continue to grow with our students. We will find a way to work with other disciplines to create an effective approach to teaching writing but in the mean time, strive towards rhetorical awareness and critical thinking strategies that will help our students become aware of the moves that are made within writing to communicate effectively between writer and reader.

Works Cited

Bazerman, Charles. “The Problem of Writing Knowledge.” The Norton Book of Composition Studies. Ed. Susan Miller. New York: W. W. Norton, 1988. 502-514. Print.

Russell, David. “American Origins of the Writing-across-the Curriculum.” The Norton Book of Composition Studies. Ed. Susan Miller. New York: W. W. Norton, 1992. 151-170. Print.

Shaughnessey, Mina. “Introduction to Errors and Expectations: A Guide for the Teacher of Basic Writing.” The Norton Book of Composition Studies. Ed. Susan Miller. New York: W. W. Norton, 1977. 387-396. Print.

Williams, Joseph. “The Phenomenology of Error.” The Norton Book of Composition Studies. Ed. Susan Miller. New York: W. W. Norton, 1981. 414-429. Print.

Image borrowed from:

http://andyhayes.com/announcing-the-red-pen-review

The Results are In: The Issue of Grading

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/2014/10/20/the_trouble_with_early_voting_343810.html

It could be said that grading is one of the hardest parts of teaching a writing course and arguably one of the most dreaded aspects as well. We create those amazing lesson plans, teach those spectacular class periods, and then end up with a mountainous pile of student papers to grade. What are we to do with them? How are we supposed to grade?

Perhaps to see where we are going, we first need to take a step back and look at where we are coming from with our grading. Kathleen Blake Yancey wrote “Looking Back as We Look Forward: Historicizing Writing Assessment” (1999) in which she offered her readers an overview of the three stages of writing assessment. In short, “During the first wave (1950-1970), writing assessment took the form of objective tests; during the second (1970-1986), it took the form of the holistically scored essay; and the current wave, the third (1986-present), it has taken the form of portfolio assessment and of programmatic assessment,” (Yancey 1187).  Yancey used two terms to describe these waves and their focus in assessment: validity and reliability (1187). 

As she described, the first wave was focused on validity. Is the information correct? A necessary point of course, but much was left lacking in the area of response given the standardized methods of the assessment (i.e. testing). The second wave was focused on reliability. Again, a necessary component of writing, but this aspect focused on consistency as opposed to measurability assessed through validity. 

The third wave, and consequently our current wave, is a combination of both approaches from the previous waves. We now focus on validity and reliability through portfolio assessment. It is our aim, through grading, to provide students with meaningful response to their writing so they may improve their skills (at least that is the intended goal). Oftentimes, we see this goal fall short of the mark. Students take the surface comments and leave the comments based on argument and structure. So where do we lose them?

Richard Haswell took up this line of conversation in his article “The Complexities of Writing; Or, Looking for Shortcuts via the Road of Excess” (2006). As teachers, we want to minimize the lengthiness that is the process of grading (for sanity purposes, of course). Almost counter to that aim, our students want responses from their teachers that will improve their writing. Haswell proposed that “Discourse activity theory has added the complication that as all human practices, teacher-student interactions, including teacher response to student writing, are mediated by cultural tools, especially language but not exclusively language,” (1264). This perspective is a potential means of assessing the lack of communication and a reevaluation of the common-grounds between our goals as teachers and the needs of our students. Our human practices and cultural tools differ so we need to see our goals (as teachers) in writing assessment differently to take into account the actual needs of our students in conjunction with what we value they need to know. So the question stands: How do we cross the divide to reach our students?

Part of this negotiation that we need to have in writing assessment is a reevaluation of our expectations and theirs. According to Paul du Guy (1997) and elaborated upon by Haswell, there are five “activity nodes” which interrelate and shape our language practices: consumption, identity, representation, regulation, and production ( Haswell 1264). 

                 

http://ctcs587.blogspot.com/2014/02/the-circuit-of-culture.html

Using the above image of interrelationships within culture, we can start to dissect influences writing and thus writing assessment. All writing response is a regulation of some idea (Haswell 1265). Students consume (consumption) specific types of writing response more readily than others (i.e. Surface remarks versus structural comments) (Haswell 1270). Production plays out in the amount of writing students produce and consequently how much teachers have to grade (Haswell 1265). Representation is apparent in both teachers and students thus forming expectations based on those characteristics which finally ties to identity which is how we think we shape ourselves or reflect ourselves to the world (Haswell 1265). 

All components produce complicated lines of inquiry which further tangle the web of interrelationships between students and teachers, especially when it comes to writing assessment. It is through the third wave of writing assessment that we have come to really grapple with these five nodes of culture. Writing is a social act and thus writing assessment is a social act as well (Yancey 1198). 

While we do not have any answers on how best to approach this complexity that is grading, that does not mean that we are at a loss. Rather, at our current stage of writing assessment we are focusing on the portfolio. This offers us as teachers, a unique perspective into how we negotiate the culture circuit. Not only do we see the papers that our students produce but we can see into their writing process through the portfolio.

Their writing portfolios offer us a glimpse into what their composing process is along with how they approach revision and comments. Frequently students do not take all the suggestions that we offer them (specifically the argumentation and structurally focused comments), but by studying what types of comments they do take, we can better revise our own methods of grading to give them responses that they will apply to their writing. 

That being said, we cannot simply do away with comments that the students seem to disregard either. Those comments may be meant to be teaching moments. Structure and argument are integral parts of writing and are nothing to sneeze at and throw away like students tend to do. Perhaps as teachers, our mission should be to find ways to address these issues some other way besides through the disregarded comments on papers which we spend hours writing while grading. A kill two birds with one stone approach if you will. 

If students have issues with structural organization and do no understand your comments (or choose to ignore those comments) then something is being said about their needs as students that we need to address as teachers, our cultural perspectives are disconnected. A possible approach could be to take those overall comments that we might have written in the margins of their papers and create meaningful activities that will help generate better understanding for them regarding those elusive topics that they struggle with such as structure, organization, and argument strategy.

As we navigate the confusing waters of grading and writing assessment, we can keep the ideas of previous waves (validity and reliability) but there remains a need for reevaluation with the student in mind to give them the feedback they value but also those comments that they need for their writing that we view as important as teachers. Nevertheless, we must also keep in mind the teacher needs such as time dedication and teaching. There are no clear answers as to how we need to address the issue of grading but “teachers carry on,” (Haswell 1283) and we shall continue to grow with our students by bettering our writing assessment strategies.

Works Cited

Haswell, Richard. “The Complexities of Responding to Student Writing; Or, Looking for Shortcuts via the Road of Excess.” The Norton Book of Composition Studies. Ed. Susan Miller. New York: W. W. Norton, 2006. 1262-1289. Print. 

Yancey, Kathleen. “Looking Back As We Look Forward: Historicizing Writing Assessment.” The Norton Book of Composition Studies. Ed. Susan Miller. New York: W. W. Norton, 1999. 1186-1204. Print. 

Images borrowed from:

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/2014/10/20/the_trouble_with_early_voting_343810.html

http://ctcs587.blogspot.com/2014/02/the-circuit-of-culture.html

Melting Pot or Salad Bowl?

http://www.iwallpapersfive.com/salad-bowl-hd-widescreen-wallpapers.html/salad-bowl-hd-widescreen-wallpapers

You might be asking what a salad bowl has to do with composition but I assure you, it does have a purpose. In fact, I propose that the image of a salad bowl has a very useful purpose as a potential metaphor representing what a classroom should look like. Much of what we do in the classroom is directed towards teaching our students what is good writing and “how to write well” but many in the field of composition are questioning how we approach those aspects of our classrooms.

At this point in our country’s life, we have developed this image of the “melting pot” where all cultures have come together to create the ideal “American”, but what does that really mean? Kris Rutten and Ronald Soetaert wrote on this topic of ideology in their article “Rhetoric, Citizenship, and Cultural Literacy” (2013). They propose that we rethink the connections between education, democracy, and citizenship. Their aim is to build a broader view of contemporary education to encompass a “contextualized” understanding of civic and cultural literacy (Rutten and Soetaert). Literacy and illiteracy (indeed, even those terms) are built upon ideologies. As writing instructors, we then need to teach our students how to negotiate those ideologies to shape their knowledge and attitudes to become informed citizens. 

Part of this monumental task of reformation has to begin at the source. Our ideologies, as Americans, are built upon the ideal of the American dream where everyone is the same and accepted. We need to break from that idea (and indeed, we are beginning to see this happen) - we are not a melting pot but rather, we are a salad bowl. Colonialism is a major perpetrator in this struggle we are encountering now in our classrooms. 

Victor Villanueva Jr. engaged with the struggle of colonialism and outdated misconceptions of culture in his article “Maybe Colony: And Still Another Critique of the Comp Community” (1997). He did not propose a solution to the issue of how we should address colonial pressure versus a more diverse perspective of culture but he did put out a call asking teachers to rethink how we approach writing and what we pass on to our students because our instruction can perpetuate hurtful ideologies that do not allow for growth and understanding between dissimilar people. Villanueva wrote, “What we need, I’d say, is a greater consciousness of the pervasiveness of the ethnocentricity from which we wish to break away,” (992). Cultural literacy, as described by Rutten and Soetaert, is an integral part of what we need to teach our students when we teach them writing. Villanueva calls for collaborative deliberation for a solution to this ongoing issue in our classrooms. 

Colonialism forces an unrealistic similarity upon people which drowns out their cultural differences, it pushes the melting pot metaphor upon cultural minorities to “normalize” their identities to conform to the “American” identity. We are seeing a shift from this deceiving preconception of what it means to be an American in many classrooms with the attempt to allow students to explore their cultures through narratives, yet still we see traces of the past colonialism seeping into their writing practices. Cultural literacy is the key to how we should change this harmful ideology but like Villanueva says, “It’s just that the way has not quite been found,” (997). 

Perhaps an approach we can take together as writing teachers to rethink writing pedagogy to be inclusive of cultural differences and to build a beautiful, cohesive salad is to take the advice of Ann Berthoff. In “Learning the Uses of Chaos” (1980), she wrote, “I believe we can best teach the composing process by conceiving of it as a continuum of making meaning, by seeing writing as analogous to all those processes by which we make sense of the world,” (Berthoff 648).  We view the world and what happens through the lens of our identity and what has shaped us. Thus colonialism and culture are major parts of how we compose. By forcing students to write using old methodologies that do not allow for personal interpretation and prescribe a set formulaic approach to composing, we are not allowing them to objectively see the world and make sense of it using the tools that they need to actually understand. We are shaped by our culture and the underlying ideologies associated with that culture, and so by not allowing our students to make meaningful connections that integrate their own identities with the way they write, we are hindering their progress and ultimately placing them at a disadvantage.

Like Villanueva, I believe that we need to reevaluate how we teach writing. Berthoff proposes that we engage with chaos.  She views chaos as a necessary tool to viewing the world and the writing process because “it creates the need for [...]dialogue,” (Berthoff 650). I think a potential application of her idea of chaos could be an answer, or the kernel of a solution, to how we need to respond to the cultural aspect of composition.

By asking questions in our classrooms that engage in meaningful dialogue between students we can foster a better understanding of where composition instruction needs to go in the future to better acknowledge culture and individual perspective. Personally, I think a good step in finding the solution is to ask questions of our students like those proposed by Berthoff. For example,  asking our students “How does it change the meaning if I put it this way?” (Berthoff 650) when they are revising their writing. It is not a solution in and of itself, but rather I think it will yield conversations that will help us, as teachers, work together to find a solution and build an inclusive, cohesive community of writers - a salad bowl if you will. The students will engage in critical thinking that will push the borders of their constricted writing practices to question alternative points of view. In essence, this is what we need to do as writing teachers as well because “the classroom is where theory and practice intersect,” (Rutten and Soetaert). 

Works Cited

Berthoff, Ann. “Learning the Uses of Chaos.” The Norton Book of Composition Studies. Ed. Susan Miller. New York: W. W. Norton, 1980. 647-651. Print. 

Rutten, Kris and Ronald Soetaert. “Rhetoric, Citizenship, and Cultural Literacy.” CLCWeb:

Comparative Literature and Culture 15.3 (2013). Web. http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2242&context=clcweb

Villanueva Jr., Victor. “Maybe a Colony: And Still Another Critique of the Comp Community.” The Norton Book of Composition Studies. Ed. Susan Miller. New York: W. W. Norton, 1997. 991-998. Print.

Image borrowed from:

http://www.iwallpapersfive.com/salad-bowl-hd-widescreen-wallpapers.html/salad-bowl-hd-widescreen-wallpapers

Collaboration and Social Constructs

http://libguides.stthomas.edu/c.php?g=88711&p=572570

Authorship poses many problems. We can see this everyday regarding the use of sources, misuse of another’s words, illegal pirating on the Internet, the list goes on and on. This is really not a new phenomenon but rather one that is gaining prominence as we experience a shift in how we view authorship and the writing process.

Lisa Ede and Andrea Lunsford address this shift in writing strategy in their article “Collaboration and Concepts of Authorship” (2001). They argue for a re-evaluation of how we view authorship. The wider world beyond the humanities is frequently built upon the collaborative efforts of a team. This collaboration is making its way into the humanities slowly but surely. Yet we still place singular authorship on a pedestal. One of Ede’s and Lunsford’s examples is that of the doctorate candidate and how that person is expected to write their dissertation alone yet contribute something original and meaningful to their respective field. Instead, they propose that looking at collaborative and non-collaborative authorship has the potential to reveal “the powerful ideological, cultural, social, and political forces that work to resist, co-opt, or contain change,” (Ede and Lunsford 356). Furthermore, they conclude that by examining the strategies of collaborative and non-collaborative processes we can work to replace debilitating academic practices of authorship that hinder progress and learning.

In conjunction to understanding the collaborative process of writing in the university, we also need to evaluate how we perpetuate ideas of writing in the ways that we instruct writing practices in the classroom in university settings. David Bartholomae in “Inventing the University” (1985), early on makes a call for understanding how we expect unattainable results from our students by asking them to join academic conversations that they are wholly unprepared to join. We ask our students to “learn to speak our language. Or he must dare to speak it or to carry off the bluff, since speaking and writing will most certainly be required long before the skill is “learned.” And this, understandably, causes problems” (Bartholomae 606). In asking students to write an academic paper, we are most often asking them to write to a level that they are not prepared to write to with the added burden of trying to write to someone that is far beyond their own comprehension of the topic they are writing about. And to make matters worse, we are asking them to use a discourse that they are unfamiliar with and unprepared to utilize. Thus we often see our students slip into the “teacher role” where they shift voice from conversation to lecture which can potentially alienate the reader (the teacher) because of the shift in power structure. 

This idea of alienation relates to Ede’s and Lunsford’s idea about evaluating writing practices and authorship for a revelation of ideology. We ask students to offer academic conclusions and ideas to the reader by mimicking works by respected academics who are accustomed to making the rhetorical moves of their field and furthermore have the authority to do so. Instead, as teachers we need to teach “students to revise for readers” which will in turn prepare them to eventually write with the reader in mind from the beginning of the writing process (Bartholomae 609). Essentially, we need to teach students how to be appropriated by the writing communities so they can learn the expected discourses of those communities.

To do such instruction, writing teachers need to be more aware of students and their needs specifically in relation to social constructs and classroom organization. Glynda Hull, Mike Rose, Kay Losey Fraser, and Marisa Castellano speak to this idea in their article on remedial writing instruction titled,“Remediation as Social Construct: Perspectives from an Analysis of Classroom Discourse” (1991). In their article, the authors focus their attention on remedial social constructs and the influence those particular constructs have on student outcomes but much of their discussion can be applied to any writing course. Through their analysis of real classroom interaction, the authors offer four major suggestions to combat negative social constructs present in writing classrooms: “remembering teacher development, attending to classroom discourse, making macro-micro connections, and rethinking the language of cultural difference” (Hull et al. 799). 

Teacher development is exactly what it sounds like in that we need to continue to grow and learn as instructors and not fall into stagnant teaching practices that do not address the needs of our students. Closely tied to this concept is the suggestion of attending to classroom discourse because “discourse structures direct talk in particular ways and that certain moves within those structures can instantiate assumptions about cognition and undercut creative thinking and engagement” (Hull et al. 804). Examining how the classroom operates at a macro and micro level also aids in this construction of a positive learning environment because it asks the teacher to objectively evaluate how the classroom works in relation to students and social/cultural expectations of writing and student ability. And finally, we need to evaluate how language and social conditions shape how we use language as a social instrument that can potentially devalue a student and place undue cultural characteristics upon them that hinder learning or poses lofty expectations that they are unable to meet.

Writing and language are closely tied in that how we use each are heavily influenced by social constructs of what constitutes each. We need to evaluate those social constructs and learn what they have to offer/hinder the writing classroom. How do those expectations, both attainable and not attainable, shape how we instruct students and how do our teaching practices perpetuate those social constructs? Are those constructs beneficial to our students and the larger society as a whole?

Works Cited

Bartholomae, David. “Inventing the University.” The Norton Book of Composition Studies. Ed. Susan Miller. New York: W. W. Norton, 1985. 605-630. Print.

Ede, Lisa, and Andrea A. Lunsford. “Collaboration and Concepts of Authorship.” Modern Language Association 116.2 (Mar., 2001). 354-369. Print. 

Hull, Glynda, Mike Rose, Kay Losey Fraser, and Marisa Castellano. “Remediation as Social Construct: Perspectives from an Analysis of Classroom Discourse.” The Norton Book of Composition Studies. Ed. Susan Miller. New York: W. W. Norton, 1991. 783-812. Print.

Image borrowed from:

http://libguides.stthomas.edu/c.php?g=88711&p=572570

Community of Writers

http://aaronswank.com/2012/11/15/what-prevents-us-from-getting-into-communitygroup/

Community...what does that word really mean? Most would probably conjure up a vague mental image of a group of people getting along together. The word community tends to give a sentiment of closeness and goodness. Nothing particularly concrete comes to my mind when given the word community and that vagueness in community is exactly the issue behind much of writing instruction in our classrooms.

Joseph Harris in his article “The Idea of Community in the Study of Writing” addresses the issue of what it really means to instruct our students with the idea of “community” given the lack of an unambiguous definition surrounding the concept. He builds upon the ideas proposed by Patricia Bizzell and David Bartholomae, and suggests that we need to take a closer look at what we are teaching when we teach writing as a communal activity. He wrote, “We write not as isolated individuals but as members of communities whose beliefs, concerns, and practices both instigate and constrain, at least in part, the sorts of things we can say. Our aims and intentions in writing are thus not merely personal, idiosyncratic, but reflective of the communities to which we belong” (Harris 749). This idea of community as a shaping agent is a critical factor to why many teachers have kept this vaguely formed idea as a pivotal component of their teaching pedagogies. Harris explores this phenomenon of community throughout his article and relies on the idea of opposing binaries and how those have a pivotal impact on how students approach writing.

Many writing curriculums approach writing with one of two attitudes: that of writing being a communal effort and the other being that of the power of the individual imagination. Since many academic writing programs are moving towards the community approach, we have developed a sense of a we which is a very powerful motive for many writers but it also has the adverse effect of creating a they. Both terms create a sense of other and we challenge our students to negotiate that binary. Many times, they come up short and we are disappointed as instructors because we have aimed to create a community which has failed. More often than not, our students end up summarizing thoughts of others within that particular community that they are challenged to write in. This is not a fault of the students but rather a problem that writing instructors must frame and teach to the students. How do you as the writer negotiate different types of discourse? Harris proposed that “they [the students] might better be encouraged towards a kind of polyphony - an awareness of and pleasure in the various competing discourses that make up their own” (754).

Writing instructors must teach students how to “reposition” (Harris 755) themselves in relation to different competing discourses when they approach academic writing, or any writing for that matter. One idea proposed by Wayne Campbell Peck, Linda Flower, and Lorraine Higgins advocates towards writing and the issue of community in writing is their approach to alternative discourse or “community literacy” (1102). In this idea, they define four key parts that support community literacy as a means to negotiating writing in different discourses.

Community literacy “supports social change” meaning that problem solving for a purpose is a key aspect behind communal writing practice (Peck, Flower, and Higgins 1102). The second component of community literacy is the idea of “intercultural conversation” which gets at the idea that oppositional viewpoints must be in constant conversation with one another to reach a solution and that this discourse is “bridging conversations that seek out diverse perspectives for the purpose of reaching mutual ends” (Peck, Flower, and Higgins 1102). The practical implications of intercultural conversations is that this will bring about a strategic approach that supports the new discussions (Peck, Flower, and Higgins 1102). And finally, the fourth component of community literacy is the shared experience of inquiry which means to “purposefully examine the genuine conflicts, assumptions, and practices we bring to these new partnerships” (Peck, Flower, and Higgins 1102).

From these two articles on community, we as instructors can see the difficulties that arise from this commonly taught approach to writing as a communal activity. Community is not an altogether bad thing for us to teach in composition. We just have to approach this idea with caution and propose a meaningful idea of what community actually is for our students. They do not need to completely jump from one discourse community to another but rather we need to teach them the meaningful tools to integrate their ideas and who they are as writers to develop their own writing voices and styles which address their given writing context. They do not need to completely forget their prior knowledge and abandon their own opinions when they write but instead, they need to be taught how to integrate their prior experiences and given opportunities to develop their understanding of what constitutes community.

We cannot leave all the pressure on our students. We as teachers must also strive to build our own writing to be more welcoming for conversation. Much of the academic world is somewhat off-putting to newcomers. By practicing community literacy and building our own skills in writing, we can share those tools for bridging different discourse communities with our students who are new to academic situations which call for integration and conversation, not merely summarization.

Works Cited

Harris, Joseph. “The Idea of Community Literacy in the Study of Writing.” The Norton Book of Composition Studies. Ed. Susan Miller. New York: W. W. Norton, 2009. 748-758. Print. 

Peck, Wayne Campbell, Linda Flower, and Lorraine Higgins. "Community Literacy." The Norton Book of Composition Studies. Ed. Susan Miller. New York: W. W. Norton, 2009. 1097-1116. Print.

Image borrowed from: 

 http://aaronswank.com/2012/11/15/what-prevents-us-from-getting-into-communitygroup/

A Possible Love Letter to Expressivism: What Can We Use as Teachers?

http://booksaroundthetable.wordpress.com/2014/02/14/love-that-old-macguffin/

What is expressivism? James Kinneavy, in Expressive Discourse, wrote, “Expressive components enter into all discourse, but in some discourse they become the dominating components,” (372). Seems fair enough, right? We write something and in some capacity, whether we intend it or not, our “author’s” voice comes out, right? Right. We see it all the time when we read so this seems like a pretty solid statement. Kinneavy listed the expressivist writing examples of diaries, suicide notes, and certain book reviews and discussed them all as having elements of expressive discourse. Beyond this list, I would add that some of the more prominent genres where we can see this “blatant” author is in newspaper articles (specifically editorials and opinion pieces), in blogs (yes, even this one!), social networking sites, and online fan-bases. This is obviously not an extensive list but you get the idea.

We can obviously see the author when reading any of the above examples. I would argue then that everything we write has an element of expressivism. When we write, we shine through our words as the author. Yet expressivism has received a lot of grief in the academic field. Why? Well, for starters, there does not seem to be a real definition or solid underlying idea for expressivism. Beyond expression as an integral part of communication, there does not appear to be a solid basis for this line of inquiry. Indeed, “it is easy to take the expressive component of language for granted precisely because it is so fundamental,” (Kinneavy 373). So what are we to do with this contested means of understanding?

I propose that we learn from what expressivism has to offer and apply some of its more important elements to writing instruction. Many contemporary classrooms are experiencing a shift towards understanding of audience. It makes sense in so many ways, yet I think we are missing a piece of this puzzle by not including more study on the author. 

Towards the end of his introduction, Kinneavy proposed a definition of style as “the symptom of true expression” (382). I believe this really gets at the heart of how we need to view the author and audience in the classroom. So many students come to us, the teachers, as some sort of master of writing knowledge, when in all actuality we are on the same path as our students...we just happen to be a little farther down the way. They come to us looking to learn how to write effectively. How are we supposed to accomplish this monumental task in a semester or two? It simply cannot be done...period. 

What a depressing task then to be a writing teacher. We are given a mission that we cannot complete and have no hopes of ever completing. I propose that our task is not quite as hopeless as it might first appear to be. Expressivism has to be a means of reaching out and developing their ability to create meaning for their audience whatever the rhetorical situation. Many people come to the table with the idea that writing is a “discovery” experience and somehow through practice and instruction they will find some magical method for writing that will always succeed. In their article “The Cognition of Discovery: Defining a Rhetorical Problem,” Linda Flower and John Hayes combat this misinterpretation of the writing experience and claim that it “obscures the fact that writers don’t find meanings, they make them,” (467). With this view in mind, we can constructively move ahead to developing effective strategies to help students become more aware of rhetorical moves they can make to become better writers. By giving them the tools of  understanding “rhetorical situation” and “goals” (Flower and Hayes 470) we can better prepare them to overcome the stumbling blocks of new writing scenarios and unfamiliar genres. 

Those tools allow writers to reach their audience. But wait! What does audience have to do with the whole expressivist view and self? I think that we need to have a clear understanding of who we are as writers to effectively communicate to a wider audience. Writing activities that practice different rhetorical moves are helpful in grasping how to reach an audience. More personal writing assignments will grow a sense of self, or at least begin to untangle a sense of self from some of the rules that have been forced on many students from earlier writing instruction. Knowing how we write and our style (Kinneavy 382) are crucial for clear writing. 

By merely imitating an academic style of some long dead scholar that we don’t even understand, we create a false self that does not understand our thoughts and what we need to communicate to our audience. Now that being said, I think there are some benefits to studying how others approach any given writing task. In his review “Some Thoughts on Expressive Discourse: A Review Essay,” Peter Elbow concluded that “students need to understand the centrality of the notion of discourses in writing: that there are different kinds of discourse, that none are inherently right or wrong, superior or inferior, but that some are better or worse for certain audiences and purposes,” (942). 

We can study how others address their audience, what types of rhetorical moves are expected or necessary, what type of language and syntax are used, as well as what kinds of information can be shared within a given genre. There are many different benefits of studying writing and imitating how others have accomplished writing but truly good writers emerge from the chaos when they have “discovered” their own voice and are aware of how they write in relation to others. They know how to reach their audience and express their ideas effectively and grow in the ongoing conversation. 

We as teachers need to instruct our students in ways that will grow their voices and develop their styles. Writing exercises that emphasize reflection can help them gain insight. Varied readings and directed analysis of genre and prominent writers within genres could also be a valuable tool in developing better writers. It is hard to say what we need to do to accomplish this task of teaching writing. I propose that we need to work together to create a more effective and lasting curriculum that builds writers from the mess of imitation and develops their sense of self in connection with community while giving them the necessary tools to effectively express their ideas to one another.

                                                                      Works Cited

Elbow, Peter. "Some Thoughts on Expressive Discourse: A Review Essay."The Norton Book of Composition Studies. Ed. Susan Miller. New York: W. W. Norton, 2009. 933-942. Print. 

Flower, Linda and John Hayes. "The Cognition of Discovery: Defining a Rhetorical Problem." The Norton Book of Composition Studies. Ed. Susan Miller. New York: W. W. Norton, 2009. 467-478. Print. 

Kinneavy, James. "Expressive Discourse."The Norton Book of Composition Studies. Ed. Susan Miller. New York: W. W. Norton, 2009. 372-386. Print. 

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Planning, Writing, Revision?

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Every good writer goes through the following steps: planning, writing, and revision...right? That is what we are taught in school and that is pretty much how we think of ourselves writing, right? Maybe we come to the table with those ideas in mind. When we set out to write a paper of some sort, no matter what level of writing, we have this preconceived idea in our mind that we are going to plan out what we want to say, say it, and then go back and revise our work. But is that really how we write?

Within the last forty to fifty years we have started to experience what Thomas Kuhn terms a paradigm shift. Maxine Hairston in her article “The Winds of Change: Thomas Kuhn and the Revolution of Teaching Writing” (1982) described this phenomenon of the shift in teaching pedagogies of composition. She explained the shift from composition as some sort of underrated subject to one of rising importance as more students are passing through the system and teachers feel that “Their students come to them writing badly and they leave writing badly. Handbooks won’t solve their problems, and having them revise papers does no good” (Hairston 444). By teaching students that there is a formulaic approach to writing they are simply learning those formulas for writing and not learning how to apply those formulas to situations outside of their academic career.

Writing and composition instruction has been on the rise in recent years given the need and push back from employers and instructors alike. Students are going through their academic careers without learning the needed and very necessary skills to apply their writing knowledge to the “real world” and even within the classroom itself throughout their academic careers. How do we address this ever-growing issue of how to teach applicable writing habits and “genres”?

David Foster in “What Are We Talking About When We Talk About Composition?” (1988) acknowledged this lack of direction in composition studies and teaching pedagogy and proposed that part of the struggle with this field is due to the fact that composition does not have one singular path that it follows throughout history. Rather, it comes from a messy mash of “perspectives and methodologies arising from vastly diverse sources” (Foster 452) and this lack of distinctive history lends itself to confusion. How are we to teach writing if we do not know where it comes from or where it is going?

I do not think that history of composition is the real issue, we can trace bits and pieces of the course of study to different fields such as rhetoric, psychoanalysis, and other such bits and pieces of academia. I think the real issue is that we need a direction. Where do we need to take composition?

This is a key factor in the paradigm shift that we are experiencing right now in the classroom regardless of level of study. Perhaps we can see this shift most apparently in the college classroom but it happening everywhere as we see the need for a change in how we view and approach writing practices.

Perhaps the most prevalent view on composition studies that I have experienced personally is the “social view” as described by Lester Faigley in his article “Competing Theories of Process: A Critique and a Proposal” (1986). He outlined the social view of composition as “human language (including writing) [that] can be understood only from the perspective of a society rather than a single individual” (Faigley 659). And more importantly, “The focus of a social view of writing, therefore, is not on how the social situation influences the individual, but on how the individual is a constituent of a culture” (Faigley 659). How we view writing in the classroom flows over into how our students view writing in the workplace, at home, and everywhere that writing and reading take place. There are no distinct boundaries in writing. How we interact with each other through writing is crucial to how others see us and how we see others, especially given how integral writing and communication is in our world today.

The concepts that play into the paradigm shift in composition teaching and writing itself as a social practice influence how our students will interact with each other for the rest of their lives. As writers, we grow and come to understand through how we interact with others. Therefore, writing has a huge impact on how we will act as a society and shape our culture.

In the classroom, we need to not focus on how we can prescribe writing techniques and formulaic approaches to how to write an effective piece but instead we need to approach writing with how this will carry over beyond the classroom. We need to teach our students how to take what they learn with us beyond our classroom and apply their rhetorical knowledge and practical writing skills to everyday writing tasks. So maybe not saying “plan, write, and revise” but take into consideration that very rarely does someone write this way. Writing happens through the act of writing. We never write in a vacuum nor do we actually ever write exactly what we expect to when we set out to write something. We may have a general idea, we write some, take a look at what we have done, think some more, write some more, rewrite some, go back change that, write some more, revise some more, talk pieces over with other people, write again, revise again, and at some point say that our writing has accomplished what we hoped that it would. 

Nothing is ever really “finished” because there is always room for improvement. No paper should ever get 100% because there is always room for improvement. How better could that one bit here have been said? Maybe this piece should have been moved down to the end...there is always room to improve or approach the topic another way. 

We need to teach students skills that will carry over from the classroom to whatever walk of life that they choose to follow. This is where I think our composition studies is shifting to but we as instructors need to make that shift happen so our students can benefit from meaningful writing tools that actually matter and reflect how writing actually happens.

Works Cited

Faigley, Lester. “Competing Theories of Process: A Critique and a Proposal.” The Norton Book of Composition Studies. Ed. Susan Miller. New York: W. W. Norton, 2009. 652- 666. Print.

Foster, David. “What Are We Talking About When We Talk About Composition?” The Norton Book of Composition Studies. Ed. Susan Miller. New York: W. W. Norton, 2009. 451-460. Print.

Hairston, Maxine. “The Winds of Change: Thomas Kuhn and the Revolution in the Teaching of Writing.” The Norton Book of Composition Studies. Ed. Susan Miller. New York: W. W. Norton, 2009. 439- 450. Print.

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