“Contemporary Composition: The Major Pedagogical Theories” by James Berlin
Berlin states that, rather than debate different theories for an accepted, singular composing process as they usually do, compositionists should be exploring the theories that stand behind the many processes for writing. Berlin points out pedagogical methods for writing have always been “grounded in rhetorical theories” (256), so teachers need to know how the various rhetorical theories shape the way writers view audience, knowledge, etc.
In demonstrating what he means, Berlin does an excellent job of explaining how each major pedagogical theory compares to the others. In Neo-Aristotelian, or Classicist, theory, truth and knowledge is something we can gain through our senses, and our primary rhetorical concern is figuring out how to use language to invent this knowledge for others. The Current-Traditionalists, or Positivists, base their theory on a type of scientific knowledge that can be observed objectively. As opposed to the deductive approach of Neo-Aristotelian theory, Current-Traditional theory relies on language to arrange and style an inductive argument. Neo-Platonist, or Expressionist, theory posits knowledge as a perfect form residing outside of us and asserts that we must work together to chip away at the errors that prevent us individually from reaching the truth. Finally, Berlin explains the New Rhetoric theory – his personal favorite – to show how knowledge can only be created through the social construction of language.
I like Berlin’s essay because it helped me understand the underpinnings of the major pedagogical theories. I know I’ve said this many times this semester, but I wish I had read some of our readings – like this essay – at the beginning of my graduate study. I think I would have approached writing instruction with a more informed teaching strategy.
“Post-Process ‘Pedagogy’: A Philosophical Exercise” by Breuch
While she sees potential for post-process theory in teaching, Breuch feels the post-process theorists actually do themselves a disservice with their current focus on separating themselves from process theory. Rather than concentrating their efforts on discrediting process theory, Breuch wants theorists to highlight the post-process concepts of: 1) writing is something that cannot be mastered and 2) teachers and students should be collaborators who use dialogue to work together. If post-process theorists do this, Breuch sees a future where writing in a classroom is more similar to writing in a writing center – writers work one-on-one with tutors to develop their skill.
While Breuch’s essay is interesting, I kept wondering why we have to now come up with a new term – post-process theory – for concepts that have been covered in composition and discourse analysis theories for some time now. The idea of writing with students in a collaborative partnership, for example, sounds like Elbow’s Writing Without Teachers, except I think Elbow actually does a better job with the concept. Where Breuch advocates student writers working with “mentors” (120), Elbow suggests students work with other students. I think Elbow might be closer to writing as something that cannot be mastered because the interaction between student writers would not carry with it an implied power dynamic. Mentoring, on the other hand, implies that one person in a dyad is more knowledgeable or skillful, and therefore has a higher “power” position than the other. Even Breuch’s writing center analogy is slightly naïve because, as a consultant in the UNLV writing center, I know that students still saw me as an authority figure of sorts even while we worked one-on-one. Overall, this essay frustrated me because it seemed as though people are just trying to come up with something new to write about versus finding something that can actually be useful to teachers. I agree with Fulkerson’s assertion that writing about post-process theory might just be a “way of showing yourself to be au courant” (670).
“Composition at the Turn of the Twenty-First Century” by Fulkerson
Speaking of Fulkerson, his essay points out what is probably already common knowledge in composition theory – that there is a lot of division and debate within the discipline. To see what had taken place since his earlier study of metatheory, Fulkerson compared recent events to his work of 1990. In doing so, Fulkerson noted three primary “axiologies” (655) that form the basis of most contemporary teaching strategies: 1) Critical/Cultural Studies(CCS), 2) Expressivism, and 3) Procedural Rhetoric. Like Berlin, Fulkerson feels that each pedagogical theory looks at process but not in the same way.
I thought this essay was very interesting in the way Fulkerson explained his view of each axiology, but I especially agree with Fulkerson’s conclusion that “Preparing our graduate students in composition for the discourse…is becoming increasingly difficult” (680). From my own experience, all of the various ideologies have confused the way I see my own teaching philosophy – perhaps this is a good thing. I know I am not comfortable teaching from a CCS stance because I don’t want to unduly influence a student’s political/sexual/religious beliefs. Like Fulkerson, I often wonder if the goal of a CCS class is to develop writing or to push an agenda. I also am not happy with the expressivist ideology because I’m not sure that this method really prepares students for writing beyond the composition class. However, I do feel certain elements, like freewriting, can be very helpful to students. I suppose I most easily fit within the good old rhetorical camp because I want students to: “invent” through social interaction with each other (not with me – I prefer the students collaborate with their peers); “arrange” their writing in the best possible way for an audience and context because it’s not enough to express oneself if no one can figure out what is being said; and “style” their words in the most appropriate way for their specific purpose. Call me old-fashioned….
“Teaching about Writing, Righting Misconceptions: (Re)Envisioning ‘First-Year Composition’ as ‘Introduction to Writing Studies’” by Downs and Wardle
In a very thorough treatment of their proposed pedagogy, Downs and Wardle attempt to demonstrate how changing FYC to a writing studies course would not only develop better writers but also bring more awareness to the composition discipline. The authors begin by questioning the conceptions that “academic discourse” is universal or transferable (or even exists) and asserting that students need to understand that writing content has to work within a specific context. To resist current misconceptions about writing, Downs and Wardle argue that a writing pedagogy has to involve students on a foundational level in which students would be slowly invited into the composition discourse community through interaction with published research, etc. In this manner, students would begin to care about writing on both a cognitive and affective level. Ultimately, I believe Downs and Wardle would like to see FYC evolve into a sort of combination rhetorical, discourse analysis, and composition theory course.
Wow, I absolutely loved this essay! Although there are some problem areas with Downs and Wardle’s pedagogical theory, which they openly acknowledge later in the essay, I thought their ideas were very refreshing. I think they actually may have come up with a resolution to the dissonance I expressed earlier about my preferred style of teaching. By heightening students’ awareness of rhetoric, discourse analysis, composition theory, and previous works in those areas, I feel FYC as a writing studies course could show students how writing has different dimensions that change with the context. This approach could also change the way many students accept published works as fact – without questioning the rhetorical appeals or construction of the discourse – and empower students to join the conversation.
Even though Downs and Wardle discount that writing about “what makes good citizenship” (568) and other topics that are being used in many FYCs could work as well as writing about writing research, I do think even those topics that Downs and Wardle disparage could be worked into a writing studies course. For example, students could choose to respond not to their stance on stem-cell research but to the writing strategies of various authors on the topic. In this way, even the rhetoric of scientific discourse could be illuminated for students. Overall, I think this is a fascinating proposal for writing instruction, and I wonder if Downs needs any help up in Utah.
Saturday, May 3, 2008
Sunday, April 27, 2008
Reflection on Creating My Website
Like some of you, I was a little apprehensive at the beginning of the semester when I realized we had to create a website as part of the requirements for this class. While it is true that I have been maintaining the content of the English Department’s website for a couple of semesters, I had nothing to do with its creation. In fact, when Dr. Tillery (the professor who designed the website) asked me to take on the responsibility for updating the content last semester, I had never even used Dreamweaver or any other software to work on a website. I can only say that I have come far from where I began, and I hope to learn more about website design in the future. That’s why I’ve attended several TLC workshops already; I recommend these workshops to anyone!
So, for this class, I decided to use what I had learned in Dreamweaver to build a website that would highlight my experience and skills for prospective employers. Since I don’t intend to be a full-time teacher, I didn’t want to spend a lot of time on teaching philosophies, etc. Instead, I wanted to use the space for a fairly clean presentation of information that would give employers insight into my professional and academic background. I hope that I have achieved my goal. You can see my efforts at http://complabs.nevada.edu/~garci296 (or use the link at the top of this blog site).
So, for this class, I decided to use what I had learned in Dreamweaver to build a website that would highlight my experience and skills for prospective employers. Since I don’t intend to be a full-time teacher, I didn’t want to spend a lot of time on teaching philosophies, etc. Instead, I wanted to use the space for a fairly clean presentation of information that would give employers insight into my professional and academic background. I hope that I have achieved my goal. You can see my efforts at http://complabs.nevada.edu/~garci296 (or use the link at the top of this blog site).
Response to Readings for 28 Apr 08
“The Adult Literacy Process as Cultural Action for Freedom and Education and Conscientizacao” by Freire
Freire advocates the need for critical consciousness on the part of both teachers and adult students in his essay. First, Freire speaks to teachers and asks that they be aware of their methodology and praxis for teaching. Using examples of “good” and “bad” primers, the author asks teachers not to sustain the “digestive concept of knowledge” in their instruction (617) because, (my use of a biblical analogy here), this way of teaching only feeds the illiterate for a day and does not help them fish for themselves in the future. Instead, teachers should find ways to help adult students facilitate their own learning experiences.
Then Freire explains the steps of the National Literacy Program that he began in Brazil prior to 1964. Each phase takes the illiterate participants through the cognitive stages of learning to include a higher level of synthesis (when they learn to first analyze and then synthesize syllables of words). The first phase of this program touches on some of our readings from last week in that Freire demonstrates how student-centered literacy has to take the students’ lives and environment into consideration. During the first phase, researchers studied the orality of groups and determined what might be the most meaningful instruction for their needs. From there, subsequent phases built upon this orality and slowly added literacy to the program.
When Freire points out at the end of the essay that the “ex-illiterate” became more political after going through the program, I thought of Ong’s assertion that purely oral people cannot really reflect on their lives, etc. I think Freire’s essay refutes Ong’s idea fairly well because I believe the illiterate of Brazil had already considered the political environment but did not previously have a way to communicate their concerns.
“Rhetoric and Ideology in the Writing Class” by Berlin
Berlin deconstructs cognitive, expressionistic, and social-epistemic rhetoric to demonstrate how each supports an inherent ideology. In doing so, Berlin cautions us, as teachers, to be fully aware of the implications of the practices we choose to engage in with our students because “teaching is never innocent” (735). Berlin first examines cognitive rhetoric illustrating how the ideology of this practice tries to assume a scientific objectivity. What often happens, however, is that this rhetoric reinforces the power dynamics of societal classes because it uncritically accepts the status quo. In his explication of expressionistic rhetoric, Berlin shows how the struggle to fully individuate oneself actually works to bolster the very system it purportedly fights against – capitalism. Making no secret of the fact that he most appreciates social-epistemic rhetoric, Berlin admits that this is the most difficult ideology to master. The potential for analysis of self and society is high in this rhetoric, but the ever-changing dynamics of dialectics does not provide us with a set of rules to follow.
Berlin’s essay was eye-opening for me in that it suddenly made connections between the various rhetorical theories that I had not made before. (I know…I’m a little slow on the uptake sometimes!) For example, I find cognitive processes to be very interesting, but I hadn’t really considered their shortcomings (despite the fact that we read Bizzell…okay, I’m REALLY slow on the uptake sometimes!) At the same time, I am very interested in social-epistemic rhetoric because I believe that our thinking is deepened through our interactions with others. Who knows…maybe I’m a socio-cognitivist?? I guess I should have figured this out by this point in my graduate study, right? That’s the problem with taking a theory course in the last semester of a program.
“Monday Morning Fever: Critical Literacy and the Generative Theme of ‘Work’” by Shor
Extending Freire’s use of generative words in the National Literacy Program to North American classrooms, Shor details how he has used social-epistemic ideology to help students become better writers and thinkers. Rather than use generative words, however, Shor uses idea-sparking topics, such as workplace experiences, to reach students on a personal level. In addition to assisting students in the invention stage of their writing, the interactive exercises that Shor uses, like the “dictation” drills and the “voicing” sessions, help young writers learn more about the arrangement and style of their texts.
Wow, Berlin wasn’t kidding when he said Shor provides a very comprehensive and detailed look at social-epistemic ideology in this reading. Shor’s explanation of the importance of his voicing exercises especially hit home with me because I saw what he meant every day when I worked in the UNLV Writing Center. We, as consultants, always had students read their work aloud to us. It never failed that students I helped would either correct their wording or add missing words as they read to me. When I would stop the students and ask them why they had vocalized something other than what was on the page, they would shrug their shoulders or look at me with no awareness of what they’d done. Reading aloud to others or yourself is definitely a helpful tool in becoming more self-aware. I just wonder, as I usually do, how we can implement Shor’s detailed process in the limited time we have with our students.
“Diversity, Ideology, and Teaching Writing” by Hairston
Opposing the ideology of writers like Freire, Berlin, and Shor, Hairston believes that freshman composition is no place for teachers with a political axe to grind. Hairston sees danger in a teacher taking social-epistemic rhetoric too far with students because the teacher might inhibit a student’s writing and voice with a “prescribed political content” (709). Acknowledging that freshman composition has seen an increase in teachers who want to push a certain agenda because of a rise in student diversity and political turmoil, Hairston feels we can fight against this trend by allowing students to write from their own experience.
I understand the concern that prompted Hairston to write this essay because I don’t like the idea of anyone pontificating to students about a personal belief. But, I’m not sure I agree with the way she typically extends her points to the worst case scenario. I don’t know about anyone else, but I guess I’ve been lucky in that I never had a college professor who made me feel that his/her political stance was the only correct – or “prescribed” – one. Most of my teachers have been willing to discuss their views but have also challenged me to find my own stance on issues. I feel like I learned how to do this better by seeing how someone else who is passionate about an issue speaks and writes about it. (Again, I like the practice of modeling writing for students.) In the end, I think Hairston also comes across as politically motivated as some of the writers she criticizes when she speaks rather condescendingly of composition teachers fighting for a place with the literary teachers and calls for an upheaval of the power struggle in the conclusion of her piece. As Berlin points out, sometimes a writer’s call to action can actually work to reinforce the status quo.
“Students’ Goals, Gatekeeping, and Some Questions of Ethics” by Smith
Smith argues that compositionists who fight against or deny gatekeeping miss the essential point that gatekeeping is already intrinsic to the system in which they operate. Students are only in teachers’ university classrooms, for example, because there were checks and balances along the way that decided which students would go on to college and which would not. As a result, Smith believes teachers should recognize that students have come to the university “not to resist but to join an elite” (304) in their efforts to pursue professional/managerial positions after college. Therefore, rather than trying to influence students’ political or social beliefs in the few weeks they have with students, teachers should focus on helping students achieve the long-term goals they set for themselves.
I have very mixed feelings about Smith’s essay because I found myself both cheering and jeering along the way. I thought it was refreshing to hear someone in composition speak about teaching writing for foundational and practical reasons versus as a way to expand an audience for some current literary theory trends. I completely agree that teaching cannot and should not always be done using “the motherheart” (306) approach. In the military, for instance, the most effective way for me to help someone learn how to think strategically under extreme pressure was not to treat them in a warm and fuzzy manner. And, in my business writing classes, I don’t think any of my students would call me maternal because I hold them to the same tough standards that their future bosses will probably maintain. (Maybe that’s why the drop rate for my classes tends to be high.) I do believe, however, that my students would say that I am firm but fair.
At the same time, I don’t agree with Smith about certain aspects of his discussion. First, gatekeeping cannot be universally applied in the same way that he uses in his essay. In his example of Felicia, for instance, Smith acts as though gatekeeping in the medical arena has the same meaning as gatekeeping in the classroom. I don’t think we can equate removing doctors from the field who might be putting patients’ lives at risk in the same category as ensuring someone in a writing class does things a certain way. Second, I disagree with Smith’s assertion about people being used instrumentally to achieve a higher goal as being “the only way things can work, period” (312). Companies like Google have shown that treating employees well and as “ends in themselves” has a beneficial effect on all aspects of an operation. I think the best we can do as teachers is to be aware of what our students’ plans for the future are and try and help them achieve those goals within the standards we set for our classroom.
Freire advocates the need for critical consciousness on the part of both teachers and adult students in his essay. First, Freire speaks to teachers and asks that they be aware of their methodology and praxis for teaching. Using examples of “good” and “bad” primers, the author asks teachers not to sustain the “digestive concept of knowledge” in their instruction (617) because, (my use of a biblical analogy here), this way of teaching only feeds the illiterate for a day and does not help them fish for themselves in the future. Instead, teachers should find ways to help adult students facilitate their own learning experiences.
Then Freire explains the steps of the National Literacy Program that he began in Brazil prior to 1964. Each phase takes the illiterate participants through the cognitive stages of learning to include a higher level of synthesis (when they learn to first analyze and then synthesize syllables of words). The first phase of this program touches on some of our readings from last week in that Freire demonstrates how student-centered literacy has to take the students’ lives and environment into consideration. During the first phase, researchers studied the orality of groups and determined what might be the most meaningful instruction for their needs. From there, subsequent phases built upon this orality and slowly added literacy to the program.
When Freire points out at the end of the essay that the “ex-illiterate” became more political after going through the program, I thought of Ong’s assertion that purely oral people cannot really reflect on their lives, etc. I think Freire’s essay refutes Ong’s idea fairly well because I believe the illiterate of Brazil had already considered the political environment but did not previously have a way to communicate their concerns.
“Rhetoric and Ideology in the Writing Class” by Berlin
Berlin deconstructs cognitive, expressionistic, and social-epistemic rhetoric to demonstrate how each supports an inherent ideology. In doing so, Berlin cautions us, as teachers, to be fully aware of the implications of the practices we choose to engage in with our students because “teaching is never innocent” (735). Berlin first examines cognitive rhetoric illustrating how the ideology of this practice tries to assume a scientific objectivity. What often happens, however, is that this rhetoric reinforces the power dynamics of societal classes because it uncritically accepts the status quo. In his explication of expressionistic rhetoric, Berlin shows how the struggle to fully individuate oneself actually works to bolster the very system it purportedly fights against – capitalism. Making no secret of the fact that he most appreciates social-epistemic rhetoric, Berlin admits that this is the most difficult ideology to master. The potential for analysis of self and society is high in this rhetoric, but the ever-changing dynamics of dialectics does not provide us with a set of rules to follow.
Berlin’s essay was eye-opening for me in that it suddenly made connections between the various rhetorical theories that I had not made before. (I know…I’m a little slow on the uptake sometimes!) For example, I find cognitive processes to be very interesting, but I hadn’t really considered their shortcomings (despite the fact that we read Bizzell…okay, I’m REALLY slow on the uptake sometimes!) At the same time, I am very interested in social-epistemic rhetoric because I believe that our thinking is deepened through our interactions with others. Who knows…maybe I’m a socio-cognitivist?? I guess I should have figured this out by this point in my graduate study, right? That’s the problem with taking a theory course in the last semester of a program.
“Monday Morning Fever: Critical Literacy and the Generative Theme of ‘Work’” by Shor
Extending Freire’s use of generative words in the National Literacy Program to North American classrooms, Shor details how he has used social-epistemic ideology to help students become better writers and thinkers. Rather than use generative words, however, Shor uses idea-sparking topics, such as workplace experiences, to reach students on a personal level. In addition to assisting students in the invention stage of their writing, the interactive exercises that Shor uses, like the “dictation” drills and the “voicing” sessions, help young writers learn more about the arrangement and style of their texts.
Wow, Berlin wasn’t kidding when he said Shor provides a very comprehensive and detailed look at social-epistemic ideology in this reading. Shor’s explanation of the importance of his voicing exercises especially hit home with me because I saw what he meant every day when I worked in the UNLV Writing Center. We, as consultants, always had students read their work aloud to us. It never failed that students I helped would either correct their wording or add missing words as they read to me. When I would stop the students and ask them why they had vocalized something other than what was on the page, they would shrug their shoulders or look at me with no awareness of what they’d done. Reading aloud to others or yourself is definitely a helpful tool in becoming more self-aware. I just wonder, as I usually do, how we can implement Shor’s detailed process in the limited time we have with our students.
“Diversity, Ideology, and Teaching Writing” by Hairston
Opposing the ideology of writers like Freire, Berlin, and Shor, Hairston believes that freshman composition is no place for teachers with a political axe to grind. Hairston sees danger in a teacher taking social-epistemic rhetoric too far with students because the teacher might inhibit a student’s writing and voice with a “prescribed political content” (709). Acknowledging that freshman composition has seen an increase in teachers who want to push a certain agenda because of a rise in student diversity and political turmoil, Hairston feels we can fight against this trend by allowing students to write from their own experience.
I understand the concern that prompted Hairston to write this essay because I don’t like the idea of anyone pontificating to students about a personal belief. But, I’m not sure I agree with the way she typically extends her points to the worst case scenario. I don’t know about anyone else, but I guess I’ve been lucky in that I never had a college professor who made me feel that his/her political stance was the only correct – or “prescribed” – one. Most of my teachers have been willing to discuss their views but have also challenged me to find my own stance on issues. I feel like I learned how to do this better by seeing how someone else who is passionate about an issue speaks and writes about it. (Again, I like the practice of modeling writing for students.) In the end, I think Hairston also comes across as politically motivated as some of the writers she criticizes when she speaks rather condescendingly of composition teachers fighting for a place with the literary teachers and calls for an upheaval of the power struggle in the conclusion of her piece. As Berlin points out, sometimes a writer’s call to action can actually work to reinforce the status quo.
“Students’ Goals, Gatekeeping, and Some Questions of Ethics” by Smith
Smith argues that compositionists who fight against or deny gatekeeping miss the essential point that gatekeeping is already intrinsic to the system in which they operate. Students are only in teachers’ university classrooms, for example, because there were checks and balances along the way that decided which students would go on to college and which would not. As a result, Smith believes teachers should recognize that students have come to the university “not to resist but to join an elite” (304) in their efforts to pursue professional/managerial positions after college. Therefore, rather than trying to influence students’ political or social beliefs in the few weeks they have with students, teachers should focus on helping students achieve the long-term goals they set for themselves.
I have very mixed feelings about Smith’s essay because I found myself both cheering and jeering along the way. I thought it was refreshing to hear someone in composition speak about teaching writing for foundational and practical reasons versus as a way to expand an audience for some current literary theory trends. I completely agree that teaching cannot and should not always be done using “the motherheart” (306) approach. In the military, for instance, the most effective way for me to help someone learn how to think strategically under extreme pressure was not to treat them in a warm and fuzzy manner. And, in my business writing classes, I don’t think any of my students would call me maternal because I hold them to the same tough standards that their future bosses will probably maintain. (Maybe that’s why the drop rate for my classes tends to be high.) I do believe, however, that my students would say that I am firm but fair.
At the same time, I don’t agree with Smith about certain aspects of his discussion. First, gatekeeping cannot be universally applied in the same way that he uses in his essay. In his example of Felicia, for instance, Smith acts as though gatekeeping in the medical arena has the same meaning as gatekeeping in the classroom. I don’t think we can equate removing doctors from the field who might be putting patients’ lives at risk in the same category as ensuring someone in a writing class does things a certain way. Second, I disagree with Smith’s assertion about people being used instrumentally to achieve a higher goal as being “the only way things can work, period” (312). Companies like Google have shown that treating employees well and as “ends in themselves” has a beneficial effect on all aspects of an operation. I think the best we can do as teachers is to be aware of what our students’ plans for the future are and try and help them achieve those goals within the standards we set for our classroom.
Sunday, April 20, 2008
Response to Readings for 21 Apr 08
“Protean Shapes in Literary Events: Ever-Shifting Oral and Literate Traditions” by Heath
Heath argues that, rather than seeing orality and literacy as having fluid meaning in contexts of their own, traditional theories have set orality as a binary opposite to literacy. In other words, orality has traditionally been placed at one end of a continuum that had fixed points which worked up to literacy. In contrast, Heath believes orality and literacy should be points along their own individual continuums because communities decide when and to what extent they will practice either one.
In a very interesting example, Heath explains the “literacy events” (445) that took place in Trackton, a town in the Carolinas. Although the people of this community knew how to read and write, they typically chose oral communication to discuss events and experiences. They were able to gather more information and meaning through social interaction (talking to neighbors instead of simply reading a letter or instruction manual). As Heath mentions, reading was mainly done on a functional level, meaning the Trackton residents only read what they absolutely needed to in order to gain information about addresses, street signs, etc.
I like what Heath had to say because I have always felt that people want to know the practical value of anything they learn. For example, I think students retain information better when they know how the topic is directly applicable to their lives. Otherwise, they often see no need to practice writing, etc. I was also particularly struck by the transcription of the prayer that Heath included in the article. The fact that the Trackton schoolteacher took the time to write out a version of the prayer in SWE but delivered the prayer in AAVE shows that Heath is correct in placing orality on a parallel line with literacy. Even thought the vernacular would have been considered lower on the traditional orality-literacy continuum, the schoolteacher used a higher level of ability (on a purely oral scale) by using complex sentences and phrasing.
“Sponsors of Literacy” by Brandt
Brandt’s conceptual approach is that economic development goes hand-in-hand with a person’s literacy development. Coining the term “sponsors of literacy” (166), Brandt explains how the people and factors in our lives have a huge influence – and thus sponsor us – on the literacy that we acquire (or do not have the opportunity to acquire) throughout our lifetimes. To illustrate her concept, Brandt uses several real-life case studies which bolster her argument that the sponsors of literacy can both help us grow and hold us back.
I found myself relating to Brandt’s article because I know my own literacy has been influenced in ways that sometimes worked in opposition. For example, as a military dependent, I moved quite often as a child. In fourth grade, I moved (once again) to a new town and found myself in a classroom with a teacher who automatically assumed that, since I moved around so much, I was probably an average reader and put me into a corresponding reading group. This group used very basic flash cards to learn new words, etc. What this teacher didn’t realize was that I had a powerful literacy sponsor in my mother. (My mother always insisted that we travel from one base to another with a box of challenging books in the back of our station wagon. My siblings and I were required by my mother to read a certain number of books by the time we arrived at our new residence.) After about a week, my new fourth-grade teacher saw my actual level of literacy and moved me to the most advanced reading group in the class. In this advanced group, we used a machine (a very early form of computer) that helped increase our reading speed, etc. I often wonder about how the differences between the methods used in my fourth-grade reading groups affected the literacy of the students.
“Hearing Other Voices: A Critical Assessment of Popular Views on Literacy and Work” by Hull
Hull takes popular assumptions of literacy in the workplace to task because they discount the experiences of the very people – U.S. workers – that they profess to be helping. Hull points out, for example, that a lack of literacy in U.S. workers is often blamed for a sluggish economy when other contextual elements are really more often the culprit. Researchers and curriculum designers then compound this misconception by designing literacy education that completely misses the objective. As a result, workers spend hours in expensive literacy training that offers no real functionality for their personal lives.
I’m sure it will come as no surprise that I found Hull’s examples of literacy testing in the military to be an interesting part of this reading. Hull’s comment that “literacy performances that appear flawed on the surface do not necessarily imply a lack of intelligence or effort by the writer” (671) matches what I saw in the people with whom I worked. I know people who scored low on verbal and reading tests, for instance, who were excellent leaders because they intuitively knew how to relate to workers in a manner that inspired others. Conversely, the military has its fair share of educated officers and enlisted personnel with multiple graduate degrees who cannot function well in a leadership role because they only have “book knowledge” and don’t seem to be able to translate this education into action.
I believe what Hull is saying is that we need to pay attention to the first rule of Instructional System Design (ISD) – accurately determine what type of education is truly needed to fill a void – before we move on to curriculum preparation. We can only do this if we talk to the people who will be receiving this instruction and really listen to their concerns.
“A Stranger in Strange Lands: A College Student Writing Across the Curriculum” by McCarthy
Using an inductive approach, McCarthy conducted a two-year study of one student’s experience with writing as the student progressed through three different college courses. McCarthy admits that she had “no hypotheses to test and no specially devised writing tasks” (236) at the outset of the study. Instead, McCarthy observed what the student, Dave, wrote and thought about as he was writing for each class and talked to Dave’s friends and teachers.
McCarthy’s conclusion is that academic writing is “context-dependent” (261) in a couple of ways. First, different classes often do have different ways of writing as they construct meaning within a particular discourse community. Students will feel as if they don’t fit into this community if teachers do not offer some assistance. Second, even when academic writing is similar between classes, students will often perceive the writing as being unfamiliar. In that case, teachers can help students by reminding them of other situations in which they wrote successfully.
I thought McCarthy’s article was useful, and she explained her study and methodology well, but I wondered why she chose to follow Dave’s writing in his Cell Biology class. The Freshman Composition and Introduction to Poetry classes were entry-level courses and easily showed Dave’s discomfort with what he perceived as being a new form of writing. The Cell Biology class, however, was Dave’s “third semester of college biology” (236). Wouldn’t Dave have felt a little more comfortable with the writing in the biology class? If so, this might explain – along with his interest in the field – how Dave could be more “successful” in that course.
Heath argues that, rather than seeing orality and literacy as having fluid meaning in contexts of their own, traditional theories have set orality as a binary opposite to literacy. In other words, orality has traditionally been placed at one end of a continuum that had fixed points which worked up to literacy. In contrast, Heath believes orality and literacy should be points along their own individual continuums because communities decide when and to what extent they will practice either one.
In a very interesting example, Heath explains the “literacy events” (445) that took place in Trackton, a town in the Carolinas. Although the people of this community knew how to read and write, they typically chose oral communication to discuss events and experiences. They were able to gather more information and meaning through social interaction (talking to neighbors instead of simply reading a letter or instruction manual). As Heath mentions, reading was mainly done on a functional level, meaning the Trackton residents only read what they absolutely needed to in order to gain information about addresses, street signs, etc.
I like what Heath had to say because I have always felt that people want to know the practical value of anything they learn. For example, I think students retain information better when they know how the topic is directly applicable to their lives. Otherwise, they often see no need to practice writing, etc. I was also particularly struck by the transcription of the prayer that Heath included in the article. The fact that the Trackton schoolteacher took the time to write out a version of the prayer in SWE but delivered the prayer in AAVE shows that Heath is correct in placing orality on a parallel line with literacy. Even thought the vernacular would have been considered lower on the traditional orality-literacy continuum, the schoolteacher used a higher level of ability (on a purely oral scale) by using complex sentences and phrasing.
“Sponsors of Literacy” by Brandt
Brandt’s conceptual approach is that economic development goes hand-in-hand with a person’s literacy development. Coining the term “sponsors of literacy” (166), Brandt explains how the people and factors in our lives have a huge influence – and thus sponsor us – on the literacy that we acquire (or do not have the opportunity to acquire) throughout our lifetimes. To illustrate her concept, Brandt uses several real-life case studies which bolster her argument that the sponsors of literacy can both help us grow and hold us back.
I found myself relating to Brandt’s article because I know my own literacy has been influenced in ways that sometimes worked in opposition. For example, as a military dependent, I moved quite often as a child. In fourth grade, I moved (once again) to a new town and found myself in a classroom with a teacher who automatically assumed that, since I moved around so much, I was probably an average reader and put me into a corresponding reading group. This group used very basic flash cards to learn new words, etc. What this teacher didn’t realize was that I had a powerful literacy sponsor in my mother. (My mother always insisted that we travel from one base to another with a box of challenging books in the back of our station wagon. My siblings and I were required by my mother to read a certain number of books by the time we arrived at our new residence.) After about a week, my new fourth-grade teacher saw my actual level of literacy and moved me to the most advanced reading group in the class. In this advanced group, we used a machine (a very early form of computer) that helped increase our reading speed, etc. I often wonder about how the differences between the methods used in my fourth-grade reading groups affected the literacy of the students.
“Hearing Other Voices: A Critical Assessment of Popular Views on Literacy and Work” by Hull
Hull takes popular assumptions of literacy in the workplace to task because they discount the experiences of the very people – U.S. workers – that they profess to be helping. Hull points out, for example, that a lack of literacy in U.S. workers is often blamed for a sluggish economy when other contextual elements are really more often the culprit. Researchers and curriculum designers then compound this misconception by designing literacy education that completely misses the objective. As a result, workers spend hours in expensive literacy training that offers no real functionality for their personal lives.
I’m sure it will come as no surprise that I found Hull’s examples of literacy testing in the military to be an interesting part of this reading. Hull’s comment that “literacy performances that appear flawed on the surface do not necessarily imply a lack of intelligence or effort by the writer” (671) matches what I saw in the people with whom I worked. I know people who scored low on verbal and reading tests, for instance, who were excellent leaders because they intuitively knew how to relate to workers in a manner that inspired others. Conversely, the military has its fair share of educated officers and enlisted personnel with multiple graduate degrees who cannot function well in a leadership role because they only have “book knowledge” and don’t seem to be able to translate this education into action.
I believe what Hull is saying is that we need to pay attention to the first rule of Instructional System Design (ISD) – accurately determine what type of education is truly needed to fill a void – before we move on to curriculum preparation. We can only do this if we talk to the people who will be receiving this instruction and really listen to their concerns.
“A Stranger in Strange Lands: A College Student Writing Across the Curriculum” by McCarthy
Using an inductive approach, McCarthy conducted a two-year study of one student’s experience with writing as the student progressed through three different college courses. McCarthy admits that she had “no hypotheses to test and no specially devised writing tasks” (236) at the outset of the study. Instead, McCarthy observed what the student, Dave, wrote and thought about as he was writing for each class and talked to Dave’s friends and teachers.
McCarthy’s conclusion is that academic writing is “context-dependent” (261) in a couple of ways. First, different classes often do have different ways of writing as they construct meaning within a particular discourse community. Students will feel as if they don’t fit into this community if teachers do not offer some assistance. Second, even when academic writing is similar between classes, students will often perceive the writing as being unfamiliar. In that case, teachers can help students by reminding them of other situations in which they wrote successfully.
I thought McCarthy’s article was useful, and she explained her study and methodology well, but I wondered why she chose to follow Dave’s writing in his Cell Biology class. The Freshman Composition and Introduction to Poetry classes were entry-level courses and easily showed Dave’s discomfort with what he perceived as being a new form of writing. The Cell Biology class, however, was Dave’s “third semester of college biology” (236). Wouldn’t Dave have felt a little more comfortable with the writing in the biology class? If so, this might explain – along with his interest in the field – how Dave could be more “successful” in that course.
Saturday, April 12, 2008
Response to Readings for 14 Mar 08
“Taking Control of the Page: Electronic Writing and Word Publishing” by Sullivan
Citing what were innovations in word-processing and desktop publishing software at the time (1991), Sullivan explains to writers and teachers how the “visual page” will set its own agenda if they do not fully understand and control the “published page” (44). Sullivan maintains that writers had not previously had to concern themselves with the publishing or visual aspect of writing because this task was usually performed by someone else. Thus, there was some distancing between creation of text and the formal publication of it. With the advent of computer software, however, the writer was now essentially performing multiple roles (writer/editor/designer/publisher), working on more than simply the content of a manuscript.
Although the article is a little dated, and some of Sullivan’s concerns have probably been overcome by events, I think the author did a nice job of explaining how writers and writing pedagogy had (up until that point) viewed computer technology as either an alien concept that had no valuable purpose in writing or merely a “tool” (45) for achieving the greater purpose of producing text. I particularly liked the way Sullivan practiced what she preached by using images, bullets, etc., to emphasize the importance of a writer’s rhetorical skill in using the spatial component of writing. With today’s market for e-books and websites, Sullivan’s points still have relevance. In fact, I saw parallels between Sullivan’s argument and my research topic – technology’s impact on group-authored texts – for this class.
“The Internet-Based Composition Classroom: A Study in Pedagogy” by Harris and Wambeam
Harris and Wambeam explain the impetus for and results of the empirical study they conducted to study the impact of Internet-assisted assignments on writing development. Using two geographically separated composition classes – one class in Pennsylvania and the other class in Wyoming – Harris and Wambeam established requirements on overlapping syllabi wherein students had to interact synchronously (on MOO) and asynchronously (on Internet journals). The students’ progress was monitored and then compared quantitatively with the performance of a control group – a traditional class in Wyoming.
The study’s findings were very interesting in that they show how engaged students can be through meaningful (and fun!) interaction with their peers. In addition, the study shows how students often don’t realize they can actually enjoy themselves when writing. Ironically, this aspect actually troubled me in a way because Question 4 on the “Journal Attitude Survey” (363) indicates the students still were not cognitively aware of how valuable writing is to their everyday lives. Although the students stated they thought journaling was enjoyable and helped them with ideas, they did not seem to make the connection that the process was also building their writing skills. How do we help students appreciate and value writing on an affective level then?
“The politics of the program: MS WORD as the invisible grammarian” by McGee and Ericsson
McGee and Ericsson explore the transparent (and insidious) way in which grammar instruction is forced upon writers as they use word-processing software, such as MS Word. The authors explain that we, as writing teachers, do not critically examine the forces behind this software and the impact of these elements on our students. For example, we do not often ask about the rationale behind the programming language. And, we do not question how having a constant reminder of grammar affects the way our students compose. As a result, the article challenges us to look more closely at the intricacies of these programs and then urges us to determine the best way to harness the power of the grammar instruction.
This is the type of article that I probably never would have read if I had not been in this class. When I saw the title, I thought, “Wow, these authors must really be desperate for something to write about.” But, I am so happy that I did read the article because McGee and Ericsson brought up points that I had never thought about before. For instance, I have become so familiar and complacent with the grammar and spell checker in MS Word that I never realized it could be affecting my writing process. I have to admit that I often stop while composing to check out what the little green line under a phrase is complaining about.
The authors’ statement that MSGC “could well have a negative effect on the development of writing ability” (454) also made me imagine MSGC as an irksome collaborative partner, of sorts, working with a student writer. It would be as if a student writer were trying to freewrite the content of a passage while an irritating co-writer kept focusing on only the mechanical issues. The two cognitive processes would definitely be in conflict, degrade the writing development, and probably end a relationship. As the authors point out, this conflict could also be detrimental to non-native English speakers who are trying to generate ideas before they switch the final version into SWE. This is a very interesting topic!
“Undistributing Work Through Writing: How Technical Writers Manage Texts in Complex Information Environments” by Slattery
Using a quantitative research approach that studied the writing processes of five Senior Technical Writers at a technical documentation services firm dubbed “Document Services Unlimited (DSU)” (314), Slattery outlines how the participating technical writers had to call upon both their technological and rhetorical skills to produce texts. For example, since the writers did not have a hand in creating the products described in their work, they had to rely on Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) for much of the content. This meant that the technical writers spent a considerable amount of their time coordinating with geographically separated SMEs via e-mail and instant messages and assembling comments from other personnel into the documents. In addition, since portions (or at times, all) of most technical manuals, etc., are boilerplated into other similar materials, the writers had to know where to find existing materials that could inform their current project and when to use this previously approved content in the new project.
I found Slattery’s article interesting in the way that he shows both the problems as well as the opportunities that distributed work brings to the field of technical writing. On the one hand, Slattery seems to feel that distributed work has the potential to relegate the technical writing profession to the lower ranks of an assembly line, thus endangering the future of the profession. This could happen, as Slattery points out, because advanced technology might one day be able to accomplish the technical aspects of pulling material from one document and inserting it into another with little intervention from a human. On the other hand, Slattery is right to point out (as did some of the other authors from this week’s readings) that machines cannot be programmed to think rhetorically about the implications of what they are doing. So, a technical writer’s expertise in considering audience and context would be an absolute necessity to the production of texts.
Citing what were innovations in word-processing and desktop publishing software at the time (1991), Sullivan explains to writers and teachers how the “visual page” will set its own agenda if they do not fully understand and control the “published page” (44). Sullivan maintains that writers had not previously had to concern themselves with the publishing or visual aspect of writing because this task was usually performed by someone else. Thus, there was some distancing between creation of text and the formal publication of it. With the advent of computer software, however, the writer was now essentially performing multiple roles (writer/editor/designer/publisher), working on more than simply the content of a manuscript.
Although the article is a little dated, and some of Sullivan’s concerns have probably been overcome by events, I think the author did a nice job of explaining how writers and writing pedagogy had (up until that point) viewed computer technology as either an alien concept that had no valuable purpose in writing or merely a “tool” (45) for achieving the greater purpose of producing text. I particularly liked the way Sullivan practiced what she preached by using images, bullets, etc., to emphasize the importance of a writer’s rhetorical skill in using the spatial component of writing. With today’s market for e-books and websites, Sullivan’s points still have relevance. In fact, I saw parallels between Sullivan’s argument and my research topic – technology’s impact on group-authored texts – for this class.
“The Internet-Based Composition Classroom: A Study in Pedagogy” by Harris and Wambeam
Harris and Wambeam explain the impetus for and results of the empirical study they conducted to study the impact of Internet-assisted assignments on writing development. Using two geographically separated composition classes – one class in Pennsylvania and the other class in Wyoming – Harris and Wambeam established requirements on overlapping syllabi wherein students had to interact synchronously (on MOO) and asynchronously (on Internet journals). The students’ progress was monitored and then compared quantitatively with the performance of a control group – a traditional class in Wyoming.
The study’s findings were very interesting in that they show how engaged students can be through meaningful (and fun!) interaction with their peers. In addition, the study shows how students often don’t realize they can actually enjoy themselves when writing. Ironically, this aspect actually troubled me in a way because Question 4 on the “Journal Attitude Survey” (363) indicates the students still were not cognitively aware of how valuable writing is to their everyday lives. Although the students stated they thought journaling was enjoyable and helped them with ideas, they did not seem to make the connection that the process was also building their writing skills. How do we help students appreciate and value writing on an affective level then?
“The politics of the program: MS WORD as the invisible grammarian” by McGee and Ericsson
McGee and Ericsson explore the transparent (and insidious) way in which grammar instruction is forced upon writers as they use word-processing software, such as MS Word. The authors explain that we, as writing teachers, do not critically examine the forces behind this software and the impact of these elements on our students. For example, we do not often ask about the rationale behind the programming language. And, we do not question how having a constant reminder of grammar affects the way our students compose. As a result, the article challenges us to look more closely at the intricacies of these programs and then urges us to determine the best way to harness the power of the grammar instruction.
This is the type of article that I probably never would have read if I had not been in this class. When I saw the title, I thought, “Wow, these authors must really be desperate for something to write about.” But, I am so happy that I did read the article because McGee and Ericsson brought up points that I had never thought about before. For instance, I have become so familiar and complacent with the grammar and spell checker in MS Word that I never realized it could be affecting my writing process. I have to admit that I often stop while composing to check out what the little green line under a phrase is complaining about.
The authors’ statement that MSGC “could well have a negative effect on the development of writing ability” (454) also made me imagine MSGC as an irksome collaborative partner, of sorts, working with a student writer. It would be as if a student writer were trying to freewrite the content of a passage while an irritating co-writer kept focusing on only the mechanical issues. The two cognitive processes would definitely be in conflict, degrade the writing development, and probably end a relationship. As the authors point out, this conflict could also be detrimental to non-native English speakers who are trying to generate ideas before they switch the final version into SWE. This is a very interesting topic!
“Undistributing Work Through Writing: How Technical Writers Manage Texts in Complex Information Environments” by Slattery
Using a quantitative research approach that studied the writing processes of five Senior Technical Writers at a technical documentation services firm dubbed “Document Services Unlimited (DSU)” (314), Slattery outlines how the participating technical writers had to call upon both their technological and rhetorical skills to produce texts. For example, since the writers did not have a hand in creating the products described in their work, they had to rely on Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) for much of the content. This meant that the technical writers spent a considerable amount of their time coordinating with geographically separated SMEs via e-mail and instant messages and assembling comments from other personnel into the documents. In addition, since portions (or at times, all) of most technical manuals, etc., are boilerplated into other similar materials, the writers had to know where to find existing materials that could inform their current project and when to use this previously approved content in the new project.
I found Slattery’s article interesting in the way that he shows both the problems as well as the opportunities that distributed work brings to the field of technical writing. On the one hand, Slattery seems to feel that distributed work has the potential to relegate the technical writing profession to the lower ranks of an assembly line, thus endangering the future of the profession. This could happen, as Slattery points out, because advanced technology might one day be able to accomplish the technical aspects of pulling material from one document and inserting it into another with little intervention from a human. On the other hand, Slattery is right to point out (as did some of the other authors from this week’s readings) that machines cannot be programmed to think rhetorically about the implications of what they are doing. So, a technical writer’s expertise in considering audience and context would be an absolute necessity to the production of texts.
Saturday, April 5, 2008
Response to Readings for 7 Apr 08
Well, I typed up my responses to the first 3 readings while I was in New Orleans, but I didn’t post them until today. I was a little busy, to say the least, so I’m just happy that I did some reading and writing while I was at the conference. Regarding the conference, I can honestly say that the 4Cs convention was a very educational and interesting experience. I heard some really great speakers, and I had the opportunity to speak to Lisa Ede, Andrea Lunsford, and Kathleen Blake Yancey about my project for this class. They were very helpful!
Anyway, if my responses don’t make very much sense this week, please understand that I was suffering delirium as a result of the 100% humidity in New Orleans….
“The Writer’s Audience Is Always a Fiction” by Ong
Ong appears to have two primary purposes for writing this piece: 1) to illustrate how writers – regardless of what they might believe – create an audience as they are creating a text and 2) to promote future research for “a study of the history of readers and their enforced roles” (57). The latter purpose is clearly stated several times in Ong’s piece, although the author does take it on himself to provide a brief timeline in Section Four of different ways in which audiences were fictionalized in the past. In this timeline, Ong covers such methods as “frame stories” (66) and “hyperrhetoricizing” (67) to explain how writing to audiences has evolved with time.
Ong accomplishes his primary purpose, however, by explaining how “audience” was originally a rhetorical function of oral communication. In Ong’s view, audience cannot mean quite the same thing in written communication because the act of writing distances the writer from the necessary social interaction with others. Writing to an imagined audience lacks both the immediacy and relevance that is an intrinsic element of speaking. Therefore, the writer must not only imagine a possible audience but must also find a way to instruct readers as to the roles they will play.
The question that kept coming to my mind while I was reading Ong’s article was: “As a writer himself, what instructions is Ong giving us as far as our roles in his piece?” I generally like Ong’s ideas and his writing, but at times in this article he seemed to imply that we, as his audience, should all take the position that oral communication does not invent and assign roles to an audience like writing does. The one exception to this is when Ong admits that an “oral narrator calls on his audience to fictionalize itself to some extent” (66). I agree that writers must work harder to create a connection with a discourse community than a speaker does, but speakers have also used plenty of rhetorical devices in the past to create situations in which to establish roles for their audiences. For example, don’t epideictic speeches ask audiences to place themselves into a state of suspended reality at times?
“Intertextuality and the Discourse Community” by Porter
Porter asserts that all writing is intertextual to some extent because writers always draw upon previous works to develop their own texts. As Porter points out, a writer’s connection to precursor works can range from the “explicit citation” (34) that we see in research papers to the subtle influences of one writer’s ideas upon another writer’s work.
In defining what he means by “intertextuality,” Porter specifies two types: iterability and presupposition. Through iterability, texts show “traces” (35) of other works by using repeatable clichés, phrases, etc. Presupposition moves beyond the surface features of iterability and carries an indication of a writer’s beliefs about an audience. In terms of Ong’s article, I see presupposition as indicating how a writer might fictionalize his/her audience through the assumptions made in the writing.
I know that I am in the minority who actually liked the Flower and Hayes article last week, but I feel that Porter’s example of Jefferson’s borrowing from other texts while he was writing the Declaration of Independence (36) is one example of how we pull things from our “long-term memory” (Flower and Hayes). We cannot help but be influenced in some way by all of the materials that have come before us. This is why I am always slightly uncomfortable when I am doing creative writing. I often wonder if I am unconsciously including elements that are not truly of my own invention.
“Collaborative Learning and the ‘Conversation of Mankind’” by Bruffee
At a time when collaborative learning was just beginning to interest writing teachers, Bruffee advocates the value of teamwork in the writing classroom. Bruffee asserts that since knowledge is a socially constructed activity that leads to introspective thought – and, as a result, externalized cognition through writing – students will be able to develop their understanding of a project, etc. through their working conversations with their peers. Bruffee provides us with the principles behind collaborative learning, as well as a little history, but does not try and prescribe any specific practices for teachers.
Interestingly, one of Bruffee’s points about collaborative learning – the idea that “human conversation takes place within us” (419) conflicts sharply with the view Ong espoused about diary writing. Whereas Ong feels “we do not normally talk to ourselves” (Ong 73), so a diary audience is extremely fictional, Bruffee believes that we do talk to ourselves in order to make sense of our everyday social interactions with people. To me, that is the best reason for keeping a diary because you have a chance to reflect back on conversations with people and work out any tension you might have so you can learn how to improve your life, etc.
Anyway, it should come as no big surprise that I enjoyed Bruffee’s article. As I have already mentioned in previous blogs, I try to use collaborative learning in my classes as much as I can. I have personally seen how a student’s knowledge can be enhanced through conversations with his/her peers and how social interaction can increase the “buy-in” factor for less motivated students. In fact, at times I know that students are much more adept at explaining some concepts to their peers than I am.
“Consensus and Difference in Collaborative Learning” by Trimbur
Trimbur seeks an expanded view of consensus in collaborative learning – one which welcomes dissensus as a way to help students understand how and why “outsiders” of a discourse community might have difficulty entering a discussion. Noting that the usual criticism of collaborative learning includes the concern that the practice “stifles individual voice” (461) and “overlook[s] the wider social forces that structure the production of knowledge” (462), Trimbur argues dissensus would actually empower students to express themselves more fully and allow them to see how past attempts to access a discourse community have failed.
Like Trimbur, I like collaborative learning because it focuses less on the teacher and more on the students. While working together, the students’ ability to hash out differences and create solutions to problems prepares them for the “real world” better than any lecture I could give them. I also feel working in groups provides students with another audience for their texts besides myself – the students must consider and write to each other as they try to complete a document. As much as I like collaborative projects, though, I still have to remind myself to pull back a little when students are engaged in collaborative learning. It is very easy for me to slip into the authoritative role because I want to know that things are going as planned.
“Plagiarism, originality, assemblage” by Johnson-Eilola and Selber
Comparing a writer’s natural tendency to call upon precursor texts and images in the creation of a new document to “remix” (376) tapes made by musical artists, Johnson-Eilola and Selber maintain that our traditional – and stagnant – ideas of plagiarism need to be changed to include “assemblages” (380). The authors explain assemblages as a textual mosaic of sorts wherein a writer would be allowed to freely mix his/her own ideas with the text from other authors. Instead of worrying about percentages of writer contribution to a paper, the authors argue that teachers should focus more on a student’s rhetorical ability to decide when and how often other writers are worked into his/her classroom assignment.
Well, I read this article on the plane as I was flying back from New Orleans yesterday. Unfortunately, I was not very helpful to the lady sitting next to me because I kept saying “WHAT?!?” as I read through the piece and disturbed her naps. Okay, I can see the authors’ point about showing students the rhetorical value of knowing when it might be appropriate to bolster their own ideas with the ideas of others without requiring citations, etc. A teacher could even have students do an exercise in which they must support their reasons for including certain material and so on. And, I understand the value of benchmarking available tools (like pre-existing webpage templates) to build a document.
But, even I think collaboration, iterability, and intertextuality can be over privileged in a classroom. In my view, Johnson-Eilola and Selber’s belief that “assemblages” are “a powerful form of rhetorical invention” (388) is inaccurate. To me, assemblages would be more similar to the canon of arrangement than invention, especially if students were working on “complete assemblages” (400). After all, if students are simply moving around pieces of other authors’ work, aren’t they just organizing and arranging rather than composing? And, how would we go about helping first-year composition students in assembling their work with other texts when the students often don’t have an idea of what they want to say to begin with?
Anyway, if my responses don’t make very much sense this week, please understand that I was suffering delirium as a result of the 100% humidity in New Orleans….
“The Writer’s Audience Is Always a Fiction” by Ong
Ong appears to have two primary purposes for writing this piece: 1) to illustrate how writers – regardless of what they might believe – create an audience as they are creating a text and 2) to promote future research for “a study of the history of readers and their enforced roles” (57). The latter purpose is clearly stated several times in Ong’s piece, although the author does take it on himself to provide a brief timeline in Section Four of different ways in which audiences were fictionalized in the past. In this timeline, Ong covers such methods as “frame stories” (66) and “hyperrhetoricizing” (67) to explain how writing to audiences has evolved with time.
Ong accomplishes his primary purpose, however, by explaining how “audience” was originally a rhetorical function of oral communication. In Ong’s view, audience cannot mean quite the same thing in written communication because the act of writing distances the writer from the necessary social interaction with others. Writing to an imagined audience lacks both the immediacy and relevance that is an intrinsic element of speaking. Therefore, the writer must not only imagine a possible audience but must also find a way to instruct readers as to the roles they will play.
The question that kept coming to my mind while I was reading Ong’s article was: “As a writer himself, what instructions is Ong giving us as far as our roles in his piece?” I generally like Ong’s ideas and his writing, but at times in this article he seemed to imply that we, as his audience, should all take the position that oral communication does not invent and assign roles to an audience like writing does. The one exception to this is when Ong admits that an “oral narrator calls on his audience to fictionalize itself to some extent” (66). I agree that writers must work harder to create a connection with a discourse community than a speaker does, but speakers have also used plenty of rhetorical devices in the past to create situations in which to establish roles for their audiences. For example, don’t epideictic speeches ask audiences to place themselves into a state of suspended reality at times?
“Intertextuality and the Discourse Community” by Porter
Porter asserts that all writing is intertextual to some extent because writers always draw upon previous works to develop their own texts. As Porter points out, a writer’s connection to precursor works can range from the “explicit citation” (34) that we see in research papers to the subtle influences of one writer’s ideas upon another writer’s work.
In defining what he means by “intertextuality,” Porter specifies two types: iterability and presupposition. Through iterability, texts show “traces” (35) of other works by using repeatable clichés, phrases, etc. Presupposition moves beyond the surface features of iterability and carries an indication of a writer’s beliefs about an audience. In terms of Ong’s article, I see presupposition as indicating how a writer might fictionalize his/her audience through the assumptions made in the writing.
I know that I am in the minority who actually liked the Flower and Hayes article last week, but I feel that Porter’s example of Jefferson’s borrowing from other texts while he was writing the Declaration of Independence (36) is one example of how we pull things from our “long-term memory” (Flower and Hayes). We cannot help but be influenced in some way by all of the materials that have come before us. This is why I am always slightly uncomfortable when I am doing creative writing. I often wonder if I am unconsciously including elements that are not truly of my own invention.
“Collaborative Learning and the ‘Conversation of Mankind’” by Bruffee
At a time when collaborative learning was just beginning to interest writing teachers, Bruffee advocates the value of teamwork in the writing classroom. Bruffee asserts that since knowledge is a socially constructed activity that leads to introspective thought – and, as a result, externalized cognition through writing – students will be able to develop their understanding of a project, etc. through their working conversations with their peers. Bruffee provides us with the principles behind collaborative learning, as well as a little history, but does not try and prescribe any specific practices for teachers.
Interestingly, one of Bruffee’s points about collaborative learning – the idea that “human conversation takes place within us” (419) conflicts sharply with the view Ong espoused about diary writing. Whereas Ong feels “we do not normally talk to ourselves” (Ong 73), so a diary audience is extremely fictional, Bruffee believes that we do talk to ourselves in order to make sense of our everyday social interactions with people. To me, that is the best reason for keeping a diary because you have a chance to reflect back on conversations with people and work out any tension you might have so you can learn how to improve your life, etc.
Anyway, it should come as no big surprise that I enjoyed Bruffee’s article. As I have already mentioned in previous blogs, I try to use collaborative learning in my classes as much as I can. I have personally seen how a student’s knowledge can be enhanced through conversations with his/her peers and how social interaction can increase the “buy-in” factor for less motivated students. In fact, at times I know that students are much more adept at explaining some concepts to their peers than I am.
“Consensus and Difference in Collaborative Learning” by Trimbur
Trimbur seeks an expanded view of consensus in collaborative learning – one which welcomes dissensus as a way to help students understand how and why “outsiders” of a discourse community might have difficulty entering a discussion. Noting that the usual criticism of collaborative learning includes the concern that the practice “stifles individual voice” (461) and “overlook[s] the wider social forces that structure the production of knowledge” (462), Trimbur argues dissensus would actually empower students to express themselves more fully and allow them to see how past attempts to access a discourse community have failed.
Like Trimbur, I like collaborative learning because it focuses less on the teacher and more on the students. While working together, the students’ ability to hash out differences and create solutions to problems prepares them for the “real world” better than any lecture I could give them. I also feel working in groups provides students with another audience for their texts besides myself – the students must consider and write to each other as they try to complete a document. As much as I like collaborative projects, though, I still have to remind myself to pull back a little when students are engaged in collaborative learning. It is very easy for me to slip into the authoritative role because I want to know that things are going as planned.
“Plagiarism, originality, assemblage” by Johnson-Eilola and Selber
Comparing a writer’s natural tendency to call upon precursor texts and images in the creation of a new document to “remix” (376) tapes made by musical artists, Johnson-Eilola and Selber maintain that our traditional – and stagnant – ideas of plagiarism need to be changed to include “assemblages” (380). The authors explain assemblages as a textual mosaic of sorts wherein a writer would be allowed to freely mix his/her own ideas with the text from other authors. Instead of worrying about percentages of writer contribution to a paper, the authors argue that teachers should focus more on a student’s rhetorical ability to decide when and how often other writers are worked into his/her classroom assignment.
Well, I read this article on the plane as I was flying back from New Orleans yesterday. Unfortunately, I was not very helpful to the lady sitting next to me because I kept saying “WHAT?!?” as I read through the piece and disturbed her naps. Okay, I can see the authors’ point about showing students the rhetorical value of knowing when it might be appropriate to bolster their own ideas with the ideas of others without requiring citations, etc. A teacher could even have students do an exercise in which they must support their reasons for including certain material and so on. And, I understand the value of benchmarking available tools (like pre-existing webpage templates) to build a document.
But, even I think collaboration, iterability, and intertextuality can be over privileged in a classroom. In my view, Johnson-Eilola and Selber’s belief that “assemblages” are “a powerful form of rhetorical invention” (388) is inaccurate. To me, assemblages would be more similar to the canon of arrangement than invention, especially if students were working on “complete assemblages” (400). After all, if students are simply moving around pieces of other authors’ work, aren’t they just organizing and arranging rather than composing? And, how would we go about helping first-year composition students in assembling their work with other texts when the students often don’t have an idea of what they want to say to begin with?
Saturday, March 29, 2008
Response to Readings for 31 Mar 08
“Writing Is a Technology that Restructures Thought” by Ong
Ong reminds us that, even though we have become very accustomed in today’s world to writing and the notion of literacy, the act of writing is still an external form of technology that helps us think more deeply. For example, Ong asserts oral, or pre-literate, societies have a functional way of relating to their everyday environments, but they cannot be reflexive or philosophical about their lives because they can only speak to what is going on within the present context. In other words, writing gives us the ability to separate ourselves from and transcend above our immediate surroundings. To help illustrate his point about this technology, Ong lists 14 ways in which writing has changed the way our thought processes have evolved over time and further distanced “knower from known” (24).
Every time I have read something by Ong I have been completely amazed by his ability to make me re-think my ideas of orality, writing, and cognition, and this reading is no exception. Ong’s example of the different ways in which literate and illiterate people would consider the word “nevertheless,” for example, really reminded me that the sound of words and the words themselves would have either great meaning or no meaning at all depending on the person involved. As a member of Ong’s targeted audience, I too forget that writing is not always a large part of everyone’s existence and that it really does allow us to think about life on different terms.
As usual, I liked Ong’s writing a great deal, but one curious area for me was in his assertion that we “grasp truth articulately only in events….Full truth is deeper than articulation” (20). I’m sure he doesn’t mean “truth” in the Platonic sense, but he does make it appear that truth is something outside of ourselves here. Or does he mean that writing, as a technology for helping us discover how we feel and think about life, allows us to obtain our own interpretation of truth?
“A Cognitive Process Theory of Writing” by Flower and Hayes
Flower and Hayes acknowledge that the traditionally accepted “stages models of writing” (275) give us a general idea of what a writer does during the writing process but assert that they don’t really allow us to understand how a writer thinks while writing. To provide a starting point for more research on this issue, Flower and Hayes study think-aloud protocols to determine the cognitive patterns of writers and explain the results of their analysis.
Using four key points to sum up their cognitive process theory, Flower and Hayes suggest the writing process is made up of discrete ways of thinking that function together within a hierarchical organization. Based on the goals – process and content – that writers establish during the writing process, authors can access the different cognitive processes and organize them into whatever form best fits the current situation. In other words, writers do not think in a linear way but in a recursive fashion and pull “tools” from their toolbox as needed.
I found this article to be very interesting, and I have rarely read through a cognitive analysis as quickly as I did this time. I have to say that I admire the way the authors took an abstract theory and made it more clear and concrete. The model (278) the authors provided for their theory of writing was very helpful in showing how the different cognitive processes interact over and over again as a writer develops a text. I can definitely see, for example, how the “generating” process not only ties to “planning” as a writer composes but also is a factor in the “reviewing” phase as a writer decides what he/she needs to revise about a text. As I think about my own writing, I know that I often – to my own detriment at times – “evaluate” sentences and paragraphs as I am “translating” them. I need to learn to turn off the “monitor” in me sometimes.
I also now understand what Flower and Hayes mean about long-term memory and its influence on the schematics we might have for writing. I believe this is why some students have problems adjusting to an assignment and say, “But, this is how I write (or have done it).” I think we often become locked into writing a certain way based on “muscle memory” rather than accommodating whatever task we need to do.
Flower and Hayes make me now wonder, though, how a writing teacher’s comments on a student draft would affect the writer’s cognitive processes. Off the top of my head, I would think a teacher’s comments would re-activate the “planning” and “evaluating” cognitive processes as well as impact the overall goals the writer sets for the task. For example, a student’s new goal might be to fix whatever perceived problem exists in the text. This would be a very intriguing study, I think.
“Cognition, Convention, and Certainty” by Bizzell
Interestingly, Bizzell appears to try and answer the question I raised after reading Flower and Hayes. Bizzell, for example, believes that the purely “inner-directed” (388) cognitive theories of writing, such as Flower and Hayes’s, do not adequately address questions like mine regarding how a student’s thinking would change based on interaction within a social context (i.e. discussions with a teacher). Similarly, Bizzell asserts that purely “outer-directed” (388) cognitive theories do not provide a good answer either. Instead, Bizzell ultimately calls for a combined cognitive approach which would contain elements of both inner/outer theories.
I could certainly see Bizzell’s point of view in her article, but I was a little disappointed in the way she took Flower and Hayes’s theory a little too literally at times. For example, Bizzell frequently states that Flower and Hayes feel their theory is the only one that will work and that it is “superior to other theorists’ work” (394), but I did not comprehend that to be Flower and Hayes’s point in their piece. In fact, early on Flower and Hayes referred to their efforts as at attempt to “lay groundwork for more detailed study of thinking processes in writing” (Flower and Hayes 274). So, obviously Flower and Hayes were leaving room for future theorists.
Another way that Bizzell oversimplifies Flower and Hayes’s work is in her assertions that Flower and Hayes’s theory separates “planning” and “translating” with no thought to how they correspond. Again, I don’t think Flower and Hayes ever said that the cognitive phases remained separate and distinct when a writer is working. They simply had to show the cognitive processes as distinct elements in order to easily explain the components of their model. In fact, Flower and Hayes repeatedly showed how the “planning,” “translating,” and “reviewing” processes continually melded with each other during the writing process. I can understand Bizzell’s desire to illustrate the weaknesses of what she believes is an undeveloped theory, but I think she did a disservice to Flower and Hayes.
“Distributed Cognition at Work” by Dias et al.
Dias et al. argue that distributed cognition in a university classroom cannot have the same meaning or goals as distributed cognition in a workplace. They assert that, since students do not work in cooperation with the higher levels of academic hierarchy to move toward a common goal, the university is not able to duplicate what takes place in the distributed cognition of a business such as the Bank of Canada (BOC). The BOC must rely on many different employees from various levels to produce thinking and text (which include specialized genres, styles, and modes of argumentation) so the bank can function within the corporate discourse community and achieve the institution’s ultimate goals. The authors conclude that the cognitive processes which involve students should be thought of more as “socially shared knowledge” (137).
I always try to find something positive to say about our readings, but I’m having a difficult time with this one. I found myself repeatedly thinking “Okay, so what?” to most of the points that Dias et al. make in their extended analysis of the BOC. I don’t know about other readers, but I never really thought in the first place that employees – whose primary responsibilities are to further the interests of a company – were very comparable to university students whose primary goal is more personal and ego-centric. Maybe I could understand the need for this reading better if I had read it in context with the rest of the book from which it came. This could help because Dias et al. consistently refer the reader to previous sections.
Ong reminds us that, even though we have become very accustomed in today’s world to writing and the notion of literacy, the act of writing is still an external form of technology that helps us think more deeply. For example, Ong asserts oral, or pre-literate, societies have a functional way of relating to their everyday environments, but they cannot be reflexive or philosophical about their lives because they can only speak to what is going on within the present context. In other words, writing gives us the ability to separate ourselves from and transcend above our immediate surroundings. To help illustrate his point about this technology, Ong lists 14 ways in which writing has changed the way our thought processes have evolved over time and further distanced “knower from known” (24).
Every time I have read something by Ong I have been completely amazed by his ability to make me re-think my ideas of orality, writing, and cognition, and this reading is no exception. Ong’s example of the different ways in which literate and illiterate people would consider the word “nevertheless,” for example, really reminded me that the sound of words and the words themselves would have either great meaning or no meaning at all depending on the person involved. As a member of Ong’s targeted audience, I too forget that writing is not always a large part of everyone’s existence and that it really does allow us to think about life on different terms.
As usual, I liked Ong’s writing a great deal, but one curious area for me was in his assertion that we “grasp truth articulately only in events….Full truth is deeper than articulation” (20). I’m sure he doesn’t mean “truth” in the Platonic sense, but he does make it appear that truth is something outside of ourselves here. Or does he mean that writing, as a technology for helping us discover how we feel and think about life, allows us to obtain our own interpretation of truth?
“A Cognitive Process Theory of Writing” by Flower and Hayes
Flower and Hayes acknowledge that the traditionally accepted “stages models of writing” (275) give us a general idea of what a writer does during the writing process but assert that they don’t really allow us to understand how a writer thinks while writing. To provide a starting point for more research on this issue, Flower and Hayes study think-aloud protocols to determine the cognitive patterns of writers and explain the results of their analysis.
Using four key points to sum up their cognitive process theory, Flower and Hayes suggest the writing process is made up of discrete ways of thinking that function together within a hierarchical organization. Based on the goals – process and content – that writers establish during the writing process, authors can access the different cognitive processes and organize them into whatever form best fits the current situation. In other words, writers do not think in a linear way but in a recursive fashion and pull “tools” from their toolbox as needed.
I found this article to be very interesting, and I have rarely read through a cognitive analysis as quickly as I did this time. I have to say that I admire the way the authors took an abstract theory and made it more clear and concrete. The model (278) the authors provided for their theory of writing was very helpful in showing how the different cognitive processes interact over and over again as a writer develops a text. I can definitely see, for example, how the “generating” process not only ties to “planning” as a writer composes but also is a factor in the “reviewing” phase as a writer decides what he/she needs to revise about a text. As I think about my own writing, I know that I often – to my own detriment at times – “evaluate” sentences and paragraphs as I am “translating” them. I need to learn to turn off the “monitor” in me sometimes.
I also now understand what Flower and Hayes mean about long-term memory and its influence on the schematics we might have for writing. I believe this is why some students have problems adjusting to an assignment and say, “But, this is how I write (or have done it).” I think we often become locked into writing a certain way based on “muscle memory” rather than accommodating whatever task we need to do.
Flower and Hayes make me now wonder, though, how a writing teacher’s comments on a student draft would affect the writer’s cognitive processes. Off the top of my head, I would think a teacher’s comments would re-activate the “planning” and “evaluating” cognitive processes as well as impact the overall goals the writer sets for the task. For example, a student’s new goal might be to fix whatever perceived problem exists in the text. This would be a very intriguing study, I think.
“Cognition, Convention, and Certainty” by Bizzell
Interestingly, Bizzell appears to try and answer the question I raised after reading Flower and Hayes. Bizzell, for example, believes that the purely “inner-directed” (388) cognitive theories of writing, such as Flower and Hayes’s, do not adequately address questions like mine regarding how a student’s thinking would change based on interaction within a social context (i.e. discussions with a teacher). Similarly, Bizzell asserts that purely “outer-directed” (388) cognitive theories do not provide a good answer either. Instead, Bizzell ultimately calls for a combined cognitive approach which would contain elements of both inner/outer theories.
I could certainly see Bizzell’s point of view in her article, but I was a little disappointed in the way she took Flower and Hayes’s theory a little too literally at times. For example, Bizzell frequently states that Flower and Hayes feel their theory is the only one that will work and that it is “superior to other theorists’ work” (394), but I did not comprehend that to be Flower and Hayes’s point in their piece. In fact, early on Flower and Hayes referred to their efforts as at attempt to “lay groundwork for more detailed study of thinking processes in writing” (Flower and Hayes 274). So, obviously Flower and Hayes were leaving room for future theorists.
Another way that Bizzell oversimplifies Flower and Hayes’s work is in her assertions that Flower and Hayes’s theory separates “planning” and “translating” with no thought to how they correspond. Again, I don’t think Flower and Hayes ever said that the cognitive phases remained separate and distinct when a writer is working. They simply had to show the cognitive processes as distinct elements in order to easily explain the components of their model. In fact, Flower and Hayes repeatedly showed how the “planning,” “translating,” and “reviewing” processes continually melded with each other during the writing process. I can understand Bizzell’s desire to illustrate the weaknesses of what she believes is an undeveloped theory, but I think she did a disservice to Flower and Hayes.
“Distributed Cognition at Work” by Dias et al.
Dias et al. argue that distributed cognition in a university classroom cannot have the same meaning or goals as distributed cognition in a workplace. They assert that, since students do not work in cooperation with the higher levels of academic hierarchy to move toward a common goal, the university is not able to duplicate what takes place in the distributed cognition of a business such as the Bank of Canada (BOC). The BOC must rely on many different employees from various levels to produce thinking and text (which include specialized genres, styles, and modes of argumentation) so the bank can function within the corporate discourse community and achieve the institution’s ultimate goals. The authors conclude that the cognitive processes which involve students should be thought of more as “socially shared knowledge” (137).
I always try to find something positive to say about our readings, but I’m having a difficult time with this one. I found myself repeatedly thinking “Okay, so what?” to most of the points that Dias et al. make in their extended analysis of the BOC. I don’t know about other readers, but I never really thought in the first place that employees – whose primary responsibilities are to further the interests of a company – were very comparable to university students whose primary goal is more personal and ego-centric. Maybe I could understand the need for this reading better if I had read it in context with the rest of the book from which it came. This could help because Dias et al. consistently refer the reader to previous sections.
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