This week's readings introduce the cognitive theory approach to writing. While the week’s scholars vary in opinion to the exact degree cognitive theory should have in altering the “current” approach to understanding the composition process of the 1980s, it is clear that these scholars are working to refine and expand upon the process theory described and developed by Elbow, Emig, and Sommers.
We begin with Ong’s revolutionary 1985 lecture “Writing Is a Technology that Restructures Thought.” In it, Ong carries two critical tenants of the cognitive theory camp: first, that writing is technology, and second—perhaps more importantly for our purposes, that writing restructures thought. Comparing the technological, artificial act of writing to the organic, living act of speaking, Ong argues that writing is “imperious,” (19) “simply a thing, something to be manipulated, something inhuman, artificial, a manufactured product … foreign to human life” (21). The argument, he compares, to the one made in the 80s (and still today) against the technological advances of the computer—and I might add—the internet.
But a more pressing claim Ong makes for a cognitive approach to composition theory is that “technologies are artificial, but—paradoxically again—artificiality is natural to human beings. Technology, properly interiorized, does not degrade human life but on the contrary enhances it” (24). It is here, then, that Ong suggests the master writers interiorize writing as a technology and exploit its abilities as a dead monument to paradoxically create something so poignantly human from the artificial.
Interestingly, I couldn’t help but notice our debate over whether composition is a skill (science) or an art came back up. Ong seems to be in favor of composition as an art, comparing it to a musical tool or a part of an orchestra. However, as Bizzell puts it later, Ong might be suggesting a two-part understanding of composition; it is both a skill and an art form. We can study and practice the skill and science of the technology; however, composition is artistic in that we must then apply our skill to rhetorically erasing the evidence of the technology from our written artifact and make it seems as if is natural, alive, human.
Flower and Hayes’s 1981 article develops more cognitive theory to Ong’s cultural observations on the oral-aural and the written word. It is clear from the start that Flower and Hayes are reacting from the inadequacies they feel are present in process theory. Rather, they suggest a process of cognitive processes in composition, which can be summed by their four key points: (1) that writing is a set of thinking processes orchestrates by the writer, (2) that these processes are hierarchical and related, (3) that writing itself is goal-directed, and (4) that writers create both high-level and sub-levels goals which may change as the writer learns during the act of writing.
The most interesting point I found Flower and Hayes made in this article is that of goal-making as “the keystone of the cognitive process theory” (286), “intimately connected with discovery” (287). It’s a little bit funny, but as I was reading this article I found myself tracing the unrecorded processes of my own writing. I often do carry out episodes when composing similar to the “write and regenerate” process described by Flower and Hayes: I tend to think and set goals for myself as if I were still writing, perhaps to keep a fluid voice throughout my writing process.
Goal-setting seems to me to be the most important part of the writing process; however, as Bizzell will bring up in her article, it seems to have been relegated to a subsection of the writing process for Flower and Hayes. But the claim that goal-setting and its connection to discovery should seem to be at the forefront of Flower and Hayes’s argument, as it is Bizzell’s 1982 article. She argues that composition studies must be influence both by cognitive theories but also by convention: “to help poor writers, then, we need to explain that their writing takes place within a community, and to explain what the community’s conventions are” (402). Bizzell suggests the best composition course would utilize an understanding of the inner-directed (cognitive/process) and outer-directed (product) theoretical schools to develop a synthesized method for understanding composition.
Our final three articles for the week are all modern implementations of the cognitive theory into the past decade (or so) and also seem to me to be reactions to Bizzell’s call for a synthesized theory where cognition is both inner-directed and outer-directed. Dias et al. expounds on ideas of a distributed cognition where—quoting Salomon “social and artifactual surrounds alleged to be ‘outside’ the individuals’ heads [are understood to be] not only sources of stimulation and guidance but … actually vehicles of thought” (qtd. on 136). Dias et al. then traces the influence of distributed cognition in the university, the work place, the Bank of Canada, and finally in genre analysis.
Kellogg’s 2008 article, the most recent of the six, claims that cognitive apprentice programs are a potential solution for poor writers during their adolescence who are moving through stages of knowledge-telling to knowledge-transforming to knowledge-crafting. As it stands, Kellogg argues, there is severe limitations in composition courses that constrain skill development. Creating better writers includes systematic (product) training as well as training that will allow students to utilize their “knowledge effectively during composition” (22).
Russell, too, seeks a theory of composition that is a synthesis of the more conventional cultural-historical activity theory of Engeström and the more cognitive theory of genre systems developed by Bazerman. This synthesis, Russell argues, is essential in understanding the mediation of writing across multiple fields of life and adds to cognitive theory by suggesting once again that composition does not take place within the vacuum of our minds but rather in the collective, distributed cognition of our multiple, specialized communities.
2.25.2010
2.18.2010
Product over Process
This week’s readings—encircled with the title product theories—takes a step back from our prior week’s readings on process theories to look at its counter-argument and why (especially as Americans) we have encapsulated composition studies in the evaluation of grammars and styles.
Connors outlines the history with which we have become all too familiar of this hundred-plus-years worth obsession with correctness; however, ends by pointing out that by the 60s composition courses were beginning to be reshaped by scholars who challenged the product over process theory. Hartwell continues that teaching grammar in the classroom improves students’ writing abilities. Interestingly, these theories directly contrast those we read about last week. And while it serves as no surprise (after all, we are reading about product over process) it seems as though more contemporary and especially early contemporary attempts to revolt against product theory simply based themselves around dispelling the notions product theory holds dear. In other words, product theory seems obsessed with two things: grammatical (conventional) correctness, and—as Butler describes—the imitation or adopting of the genius’s style.
Process theory, on the other hand, deeply stresses delaying the teaching of conventional and grammatical correctness in order to aid a student to find or develop a style or voice unique to him/herself. This especially seems to ring true in Elbow’s article, where the academic writing of students begins to be seen as a part of an anthology of writing students compose in and outside of the classroom—remember Elbow also contributed to last week’s series and I suspect he is a process theorist through and through.
The final two readings for the week—Sommers and Conners—then, are examples of the reactions we should take to the products of students writing. Interestingly, it serves to display that it is impossible to critique student writing without commenting on the conventional errors one might make in a final draft of a paper. However, I choose to side with the process theorists who choose to see student work (and all writing) as a work in progress, never finished.
This reminds me, again, of an experience I had while tutoring as an undergraduate in college. One particular student would continually schedule her appointments a half hour before her class when her papers would be due. I recall the director of the writing lab exclaiming that in such circumstances it would be best for a tutor to cut out the main part of the paper and focus on one section to improve instead of glancing over the entire paper and making last-minute superficial corrections to grammar. This, of course, would not teach the student anything. So, I continually did this for this student: I would focus on one section and suggest she come in earlier next time so we could look over the whole paper before it was due. Finally, she asked if I would just be a proper tutor and make corrections with a red pen on all the words misspelled and sentences that didn’t make any sense. I was a bit shocked but told her that I wasn’t that kind of tutor. Needless to say, she never scheduled an appointment with me again. I have to consider, especially after reading these articles, that we are indoctrinated into thinking from a very early age that writing grammatically is the best possible writing one can produce. We are taught to assimilate to the style of a genius and told that we must learn the rules of mechanics before we can break them. But do we ever get to really break them? I say no, and unfortunately I suspect that many others would agree with me. We certainly still live in the world where product triumphs over process, and I’m not entirely sure when that will change … but surely, it must.
Connors outlines the history with which we have become all too familiar of this hundred-plus-years worth obsession with correctness; however, ends by pointing out that by the 60s composition courses were beginning to be reshaped by scholars who challenged the product over process theory. Hartwell continues that teaching grammar in the classroom improves students’ writing abilities. Interestingly, these theories directly contrast those we read about last week. And while it serves as no surprise (after all, we are reading about product over process) it seems as though more contemporary and especially early contemporary attempts to revolt against product theory simply based themselves around dispelling the notions product theory holds dear. In other words, product theory seems obsessed with two things: grammatical (conventional) correctness, and—as Butler describes—the imitation or adopting of the genius’s style.
Process theory, on the other hand, deeply stresses delaying the teaching of conventional and grammatical correctness in order to aid a student to find or develop a style or voice unique to him/herself. This especially seems to ring true in Elbow’s article, where the academic writing of students begins to be seen as a part of an anthology of writing students compose in and outside of the classroom—remember Elbow also contributed to last week’s series and I suspect he is a process theorist through and through.
The final two readings for the week—Sommers and Conners—then, are examples of the reactions we should take to the products of students writing. Interestingly, it serves to display that it is impossible to critique student writing without commenting on the conventional errors one might make in a final draft of a paper. However, I choose to side with the process theorists who choose to see student work (and all writing) as a work in progress, never finished.
This reminds me, again, of an experience I had while tutoring as an undergraduate in college. One particular student would continually schedule her appointments a half hour before her class when her papers would be due. I recall the director of the writing lab exclaiming that in such circumstances it would be best for a tutor to cut out the main part of the paper and focus on one section to improve instead of glancing over the entire paper and making last-minute superficial corrections to grammar. This, of course, would not teach the student anything. So, I continually did this for this student: I would focus on one section and suggest she come in earlier next time so we could look over the whole paper before it was due. Finally, she asked if I would just be a proper tutor and make corrections with a red pen on all the words misspelled and sentences that didn’t make any sense. I was a bit shocked but told her that I wasn’t that kind of tutor. Needless to say, she never scheduled an appointment with me again. I have to consider, especially after reading these articles, that we are indoctrinated into thinking from a very early age that writing grammatically is the best possible writing one can produce. We are taught to assimilate to the style of a genius and told that we must learn the rules of mechanics before we can break them. But do we ever get to really break them? I say no, and unfortunately I suspect that many others would agree with me. We certainly still live in the world where product triumphs over process, and I’m not entirely sure when that will change … but surely, it must.
Dissonance Paper
Choosing a topic of inquiry within composition studies for this course’s final research project is—personally—both a simple and difficult task. It is on the one hand simple because I have already developed a deep interest in composition studies, specifically in the possibilities of hypertext and new investigations of the global public sphere. It is because of this interest that I feel at ease picking a topic and trusting that I can adequately research and write on this topic. However, it is at the same time a difficult task because as this course has begun and continued new methods of inquiry and new topics within composition studies have sprung up and captured my interest. If anything, it will not be that I struggle to find a topic on which to study, it will be that I have too many. Therefore, this dissonance blog seems incredibly timely: it will serve as a means to flush out the many interests and methods of research I have become acquainted with over the past weeks and help solidify the one area and one question I hope to research further during the coming months.
First, when considering my past experience in composition studies, I cannot forget that my greatest passion is with Ong’s stages of literacy. As an undergraduate, my capstone project within the English department majoring in rhetoric and composition was to compose a forty-page paper on any subject of relevance to my major and which would display the sum of what I learned while attending college. The paper would be bound up with the three other students majoring in rhetoric and put on permanent display in a series of similar work done by all English students who ever attended my college at the school’s library. A trivial assignment, really, especially as an undergrad. But placed under that pressure, I chose for my topic Walter Ong and his age of secondary orality, eventually titling my final work “Wikitruth: The Post-Public Sphere in Ong’s Age of Secondary Orality.” In it, I explored the notion of omnilogue, where hypertext plays with language as it could be spoken from all voices, and began to suggest how Truth (as both a religious and logical notion) changes with contemporary methods from literary-bound dogma to an active presence available within the seemingly limitless lexia of connected hypermedia.
This thesis was, by far, the most scholarly project on which I’ve ever worked. I took deep cues from literary theory and especially the deconstructionists in claiming in my abstract that “we are fast approaching an age where closed dialogue is impossible, an age where the ideas of private and public are colliding unlike ever before, an age where even the methods of communicating through the written word are changing through impulsive and unlinear works of community-driven hypertext.”
But if there was one area over any that I would fault myself in this work it would be that it was too much theory and no substance. It energized me to commit to a profession in composition studies, but it was not a project that felt complete or was anything but the excited ravings of a twenty-one year old student who felt like he just stumbled upon the secret to the universe. Of course, that is kind of how I felt, but I had no support, only scholars I pitted against each other and their published essays. If I had the opportunity to revisit this paper I would build upon what I theorized and see it actively taking place in the world around us.
So this brings me to the current day. Where is there evidence that hypertext is building new reality which threatens the established truths of high literacy? Certainly online education is a prime example. So, too, is the site I’ve always had my eye on: wikipedia. There seems to be a lot of scoffing at the online encyclopedia that claims to allow anyone (or at least anyone who registers for the site) to edit any entry on any subject anywhere on the site. Pretty groundbreaking. There is no canon, no authority, no explicit structure, no author, no time limit, no page limit, no rules. All you need is internet access and a computer (which is available for free at any library), and you have the ability to define Truth in the age of secondary orality. But this seems too easy, too quick. If this is the subject I choose, which more and more I feel like it should be, it might be an analysis of the discourse of wikipedia’s site and their guidelines, as well as perhaps other sites like online educational sites. Or perhaps I could conduct a study on the threads of other contributors and see if any power struggles emerge from the posts they create and sustain or create and then lose.
First, when considering my past experience in composition studies, I cannot forget that my greatest passion is with Ong’s stages of literacy. As an undergraduate, my capstone project within the English department majoring in rhetoric and composition was to compose a forty-page paper on any subject of relevance to my major and which would display the sum of what I learned while attending college. The paper would be bound up with the three other students majoring in rhetoric and put on permanent display in a series of similar work done by all English students who ever attended my college at the school’s library. A trivial assignment, really, especially as an undergrad. But placed under that pressure, I chose for my topic Walter Ong and his age of secondary orality, eventually titling my final work “Wikitruth: The Post-Public Sphere in Ong’s Age of Secondary Orality.” In it, I explored the notion of omnilogue, where hypertext plays with language as it could be spoken from all voices, and began to suggest how Truth (as both a religious and logical notion) changes with contemporary methods from literary-bound dogma to an active presence available within the seemingly limitless lexia of connected hypermedia.
This thesis was, by far, the most scholarly project on which I’ve ever worked. I took deep cues from literary theory and especially the deconstructionists in claiming in my abstract that “we are fast approaching an age where closed dialogue is impossible, an age where the ideas of private and public are colliding unlike ever before, an age where even the methods of communicating through the written word are changing through impulsive and unlinear works of community-driven hypertext.”
But if there was one area over any that I would fault myself in this work it would be that it was too much theory and no substance. It energized me to commit to a profession in composition studies, but it was not a project that felt complete or was anything but the excited ravings of a twenty-one year old student who felt like he just stumbled upon the secret to the universe. Of course, that is kind of how I felt, but I had no support, only scholars I pitted against each other and their published essays. If I had the opportunity to revisit this paper I would build upon what I theorized and see it actively taking place in the world around us.
So this brings me to the current day. Where is there evidence that hypertext is building new reality which threatens the established truths of high literacy? Certainly online education is a prime example. So, too, is the site I’ve always had my eye on: wikipedia. There seems to be a lot of scoffing at the online encyclopedia that claims to allow anyone (or at least anyone who registers for the site) to edit any entry on any subject anywhere on the site. Pretty groundbreaking. There is no canon, no authority, no explicit structure, no author, no time limit, no page limit, no rules. All you need is internet access and a computer (which is available for free at any library), and you have the ability to define Truth in the age of secondary orality. But this seems too easy, too quick. If this is the subject I choose, which more and more I feel like it should be, it might be an analysis of the discourse of wikipedia’s site and their guidelines, as well as perhaps other sites like online educational sites. Or perhaps I could conduct a study on the threads of other contributors and see if any power struggles emerge from the posts they create and sustain or create and then lose.
2.11.2010
Process over Product
This week's readings—aptly titled under the heading Process Theory—have my full support in being placed in Villanueva at the start, under the section entitled: “The Givens in Our Conversations: The Writing Process.”
Aside from Elbow and Lowe & Williams, all readings appear in this section for the week and all seven writers deal with a continued look at writing as process rather than product, specifically when teaching “unskilled” freshman writers.
Murray begins with a short, concise, and beautiful call for teaching writing as process and not product and ten implications that can arise from such a paradigm shift. Included in Murray’s implications are that the student will find his/her own subject, that all genres are fair game in the classroom, and—most importantly in my opinion—writing becomes a process of finding alternatives, never adhering to rules. For how short this essay is, I am struck with Murray’s eloquence and “voice,” as Elbow discusses later, throughout.
I have to admit I loved it so much I had to look up Murray on wikipedia, only to find one of his final quotes published five days before his death a few years ago: “Each time I sit down to write I don’t know if I can do it. The flow of writing is always a surprise and a challenge. Click the computer on and I am 17 again, wanting to write and not knowing if I can.” This is so true! Every time I sit down to start “committing” my thoughts into words, I am all at one terrified and exhilarated.
One point I especially find useful in Murray for the rest of this collection in process theory is the Three Stages of Writing. Particularly looking at prewriting, which Murray attributes about 85% of the writer’s time, there is a huge disconnect between what is judged in writing (product) and how to write (process).
Elbow picks up where Murray leaves off (to a point) and suggests a couple methods for teaching writing that will begin to embrace process, assuring that improving product will magnify itself when the students (as a classroom entity) is ready. The first, my pick of the two, “Writing as Producing a Specific Effect in the Reader,” integrates many characteristics of real-life writing into the classroom: it encourages writing for a tangible effect, writing for and within a community, writing that is generated and stimulated by the writer. One caveat I see in this method, however, is that many teachers will be hesitant in adopting this model because, even as Elbow states, it is an excellent model for teachers without conventional “English teacher” training. This is a slippery slope, and one Elbow is much less afraid of than I: if really anyone can sit in a teacher in this setting, why even hire PhDs? Why have class in a classroom? Why have teachers? Why have colleges? Can’t these students just meet on their own time if they are really that interested in improving their writing and clearly don’t benefit from having a teacher? I think obviously we can all agree this is preposterous since learning does not usually happen (especially for “unskilled” writers) in this manner. I don’t know if I would be quite as loose with these standards as Elbow. (Odd metaphor with “elbow” there, eh?)
Our next writer, Janet Emig, emphasizes writing as a process that develops into a heuristic, or method for learning. Interestingly, Emig—as does our next two writers—begins to see the implications of seeing writing as distinct from speaking as it pertains to learning. This is a distinction with which I am extremely interested and one I hope comes up more in the future. Emig’s major point in her article, however, is that the process of writing teaches us more about learning and incorporates multiple methods for understanding our actuality, both hemispheres of our brain, and—to paraphrase from Polanyi—“the person knowing what is being known.”
The next two articles in this week’s sequence provide more empirical studies on the process of writing. Perl significantly makes a contribution to the field by coding the entire process of composition. Studying five “unskilled” writers and coding their experience writing (both on paper and orally) finds that composing is not a linear process but one that continually starts and stops to revise, edit, and change itself. Interestingly, Sommer follows a similar study (coding the writing experiences of student writers) but also juxtaposes this with the coded experience of adult writers. Sommer also finds composition to not be as linear as many believe; however, she also remarks that adult (or “skilled”) writers break up their revision in order to preserve what Perl often finds “unskilled” writers loose: voice. One adult writer even mentions the revision process as similar to turning city-wide generators on and off: “In first and second drafts, I try to cut off as much as I can of my editing generator, and in a third draft, I try to cut off some of my idea generator, so I can make a deadline” (52).
Lowe and Williams end off this week’s reading by suggesting the blog can be an important tool in continuing to view composition as a process, specifically because it can be placed within many different social spaces outside of the academy and offers the student the opportunity to publish their work online. Interesting … do I send such motives latent within our own blogs?
Aside from Elbow and Lowe & Williams, all readings appear in this section for the week and all seven writers deal with a continued look at writing as process rather than product, specifically when teaching “unskilled” freshman writers.
Murray begins with a short, concise, and beautiful call for teaching writing as process and not product and ten implications that can arise from such a paradigm shift. Included in Murray’s implications are that the student will find his/her own subject, that all genres are fair game in the classroom, and—most importantly in my opinion—writing becomes a process of finding alternatives, never adhering to rules. For how short this essay is, I am struck with Murray’s eloquence and “voice,” as Elbow discusses later, throughout.
I have to admit I loved it so much I had to look up Murray on wikipedia, only to find one of his final quotes published five days before his death a few years ago: “Each time I sit down to write I don’t know if I can do it. The flow of writing is always a surprise and a challenge. Click the computer on and I am 17 again, wanting to write and not knowing if I can.” This is so true! Every time I sit down to start “committing” my thoughts into words, I am all at one terrified and exhilarated.
One point I especially find useful in Murray for the rest of this collection in process theory is the Three Stages of Writing. Particularly looking at prewriting, which Murray attributes about 85% of the writer’s time, there is a huge disconnect between what is judged in writing (product) and how to write (process).
Elbow picks up where Murray leaves off (to a point) and suggests a couple methods for teaching writing that will begin to embrace process, assuring that improving product will magnify itself when the students (as a classroom entity) is ready. The first, my pick of the two, “Writing as Producing a Specific Effect in the Reader,” integrates many characteristics of real-life writing into the classroom: it encourages writing for a tangible effect, writing for and within a community, writing that is generated and stimulated by the writer. One caveat I see in this method, however, is that many teachers will be hesitant in adopting this model because, even as Elbow states, it is an excellent model for teachers without conventional “English teacher” training. This is a slippery slope, and one Elbow is much less afraid of than I: if really anyone can sit in a teacher in this setting, why even hire PhDs? Why have class in a classroom? Why have teachers? Why have colleges? Can’t these students just meet on their own time if they are really that interested in improving their writing and clearly don’t benefit from having a teacher? I think obviously we can all agree this is preposterous since learning does not usually happen (especially for “unskilled” writers) in this manner. I don’t know if I would be quite as loose with these standards as Elbow. (Odd metaphor with “elbow” there, eh?)
Our next writer, Janet Emig, emphasizes writing as a process that develops into a heuristic, or method for learning. Interestingly, Emig—as does our next two writers—begins to see the implications of seeing writing as distinct from speaking as it pertains to learning. This is a distinction with which I am extremely interested and one I hope comes up more in the future. Emig’s major point in her article, however, is that the process of writing teaches us more about learning and incorporates multiple methods for understanding our actuality, both hemispheres of our brain, and—to paraphrase from Polanyi—“the person knowing what is being known.”
The next two articles in this week’s sequence provide more empirical studies on the process of writing. Perl significantly makes a contribution to the field by coding the entire process of composition. Studying five “unskilled” writers and coding their experience writing (both on paper and orally) finds that composing is not a linear process but one that continually starts and stops to revise, edit, and change itself. Interestingly, Sommer follows a similar study (coding the writing experiences of student writers) but also juxtaposes this with the coded experience of adult writers. Sommer also finds composition to not be as linear as many believe; however, she also remarks that adult (or “skilled”) writers break up their revision in order to preserve what Perl often finds “unskilled” writers loose: voice. One adult writer even mentions the revision process as similar to turning city-wide generators on and off: “In first and second drafts, I try to cut off as much as I can of my editing generator, and in a third draft, I try to cut off some of my idea generator, so I can make a deadline” (52).
Lowe and Williams end off this week’s reading by suggesting the blog can be an important tool in continuing to view composition as a process, specifically because it can be placed within many different social spaces outside of the academy and offers the student the opportunity to publish their work online. Interesting … do I send such motives latent within our own blogs?
2.04.2010
REinventing REmedial
This week's reading gets to the heart of what it means to write, what it means to write well in the academy, and why there are so many students within our universities who are becoming disenfranchised from collegiate integrity: in a word, this week’s scholars attempt to define and redefine what it means to be remedial.
Shaughnessy begins by illustrating the inherent medical metaphors that proliferate composition instruction: that students who write poorly can be diagnosed and cured of remedial writing behaviors. Proposing instead four stages “of the teacher’s emotional energy” in the basic writing classroom, Shaughnessy begins to recast remediation through the eyes of the writing teacher and not on the student. Interestingly, these stages of teacher interaction with her students remind me of how a writing student might interact with his audience: guarding the tower, converting the natives, sounding the depths, and diving in. Just as we learn later from Rose the importance of audience in writing, Shaughnessy proposes that the best writing instructor is one who does not distance herself from her students. Rather, she learns to remediate herself and reconfigure her own thinking on the power dynamics of instruction to become a student herself.
Bartholomae and Rose continue this line of reimaginging the ways in which a professor views a remedial writing student. Bartholomae suggests that remedial students write “poorly” as a symptom of entering a discourse with which they are not familiar or writing without giving thought to what their audience might know and how they might respond to their writing. It is here that I believe we receive a great pearl of wisdom restated from Flower and Hayes, that writing is located “solely within the mind of the writer.” Just as art is the process and a painting is the product, writing is the hard part and text is merely its product.
Rose, too breaks apart modern notions of remedial by dispelling five incorrect assumptions implicit in university dialogue on remediation: that writing can be judged based on error, that writing is a skill, that students lack this skill, that the lack of this skill makes students illiterate, and that there will be a golden era in which this skill can be taught in secondary school. Furthermore, Rose dispels some of current comp studies’ remedies for remediation as cognitive reductionism, as remedies that help only to continue dichotomies of the gifted and ungifted, the learned and the unlearned. Such binary opposites, as we might remember from Derrida, generate power struggles.
Zwagerman and Goen-Salter provide some field support for this week’s readings. Goen-Salter outlines a program used in California that has completely radicalized the way a university deals with remedial writers. And Zwagerman’s illustration of the current state of university reaction to plagiarism suggests that we not only need to rethink what it means to plagiarize but what exactly plagiarism is. This reminds me of the advent of Web 2.0. What does plagiarism look like in an age where we can alter another’s text so easily? Check out this video I remember from a course I took a few years ago:
Interestingly, working with remedial students one-to-one is an experience with which I am pretty familiar. As a writing center tutor, I was constantly in dialogue with students who has varying command over the English language. Most were, as I think might be common in writing centers, ESL students who looked for a native-speaker to magically transform the most muddled parts of their papers from choppy sentence fragments to eloquent prose that oozed confidence and authority. At first, it was very simple to diagnose the ill-use of language in these student’s papers: don’t forget your articles, does this paragraph really support your thesis, a conclusion should be a snapshot of everything major you told in your paper with a little something extra to make us think.
But as I became more familiar with being a tutor and even gained regular appointments with the same students, I began to realize that they were in fact all cognitively aware of their subjects and could often speak with much more authority than they could write. I remember one student in particular whose paper I could not even believe was accepted in college. Her spelling was atrocious, she has very little command over her train of thought within her writing; however, when I met with her in person she stood by her topics and was completely unaware that anything could be wrong in her papers. She was surprisingly articulate and could easily organize arguments for her thesis when she spoke, but when she wrote became tripped up by her nerves and fear of making sentence-level mistakes. She was my most difficult student because at that time I had little tools in my toolbox to help her aside from going through her papers, sentence by sentence, and reorganizing, rethinking, rewriting every word. It was mind-numbing work, and I doubt it did much to help her.
If I was to instead have focused our energies on exploring the possible methods of writing available to her through prewriting or outlining or brainstorming or even bubble-mapping, she might have been able to better see how to persuasively organize her thoughts without the fear of the final draft. Following in the line of Rose, I had a teacher who once said that the hardest part of writing is to start. We are so obsessed with perfection that we forget writing is a process, and we even more often forget that writing is a social process: we peer-edit, yes, but more importantly we are writing to an audience.
I believe it is because of this teacher that I was so fed up with writer’s block one day I posted a large print-out of the words JUST WRITE above my computer.
Shaughnessy begins by illustrating the inherent medical metaphors that proliferate composition instruction: that students who write poorly can be diagnosed and cured of remedial writing behaviors. Proposing instead four stages “of the teacher’s emotional energy” in the basic writing classroom, Shaughnessy begins to recast remediation through the eyes of the writing teacher and not on the student. Interestingly, these stages of teacher interaction with her students remind me of how a writing student might interact with his audience: guarding the tower, converting the natives, sounding the depths, and diving in. Just as we learn later from Rose the importance of audience in writing, Shaughnessy proposes that the best writing instructor is one who does not distance herself from her students. Rather, she learns to remediate herself and reconfigure her own thinking on the power dynamics of instruction to become a student herself.
Bartholomae and Rose continue this line of reimaginging the ways in which a professor views a remedial writing student. Bartholomae suggests that remedial students write “poorly” as a symptom of entering a discourse with which they are not familiar or writing without giving thought to what their audience might know and how they might respond to their writing. It is here that I believe we receive a great pearl of wisdom restated from Flower and Hayes, that writing is located “solely within the mind of the writer.” Just as art is the process and a painting is the product, writing is the hard part and text is merely its product.
Rose, too breaks apart modern notions of remedial by dispelling five incorrect assumptions implicit in university dialogue on remediation: that writing can be judged based on error, that writing is a skill, that students lack this skill, that the lack of this skill makes students illiterate, and that there will be a golden era in which this skill can be taught in secondary school. Furthermore, Rose dispels some of current comp studies’ remedies for remediation as cognitive reductionism, as remedies that help only to continue dichotomies of the gifted and ungifted, the learned and the unlearned. Such binary opposites, as we might remember from Derrida, generate power struggles.
Zwagerman and Goen-Salter provide some field support for this week’s readings. Goen-Salter outlines a program used in California that has completely radicalized the way a university deals with remedial writers. And Zwagerman’s illustration of the current state of university reaction to plagiarism suggests that we not only need to rethink what it means to plagiarize but what exactly plagiarism is. This reminds me of the advent of Web 2.0. What does plagiarism look like in an age where we can alter another’s text so easily? Check out this video I remember from a course I took a few years ago:
Interestingly, working with remedial students one-to-one is an experience with which I am pretty familiar. As a writing center tutor, I was constantly in dialogue with students who has varying command over the English language. Most were, as I think might be common in writing centers, ESL students who looked for a native-speaker to magically transform the most muddled parts of their papers from choppy sentence fragments to eloquent prose that oozed confidence and authority. At first, it was very simple to diagnose the ill-use of language in these student’s papers: don’t forget your articles, does this paragraph really support your thesis, a conclusion should be a snapshot of everything major you told in your paper with a little something extra to make us think.
But as I became more familiar with being a tutor and even gained regular appointments with the same students, I began to realize that they were in fact all cognitively aware of their subjects and could often speak with much more authority than they could write. I remember one student in particular whose paper I could not even believe was accepted in college. Her spelling was atrocious, she has very little command over her train of thought within her writing; however, when I met with her in person she stood by her topics and was completely unaware that anything could be wrong in her papers. She was surprisingly articulate and could easily organize arguments for her thesis when she spoke, but when she wrote became tripped up by her nerves and fear of making sentence-level mistakes. She was my most difficult student because at that time I had little tools in my toolbox to help her aside from going through her papers, sentence by sentence, and reorganizing, rethinking, rewriting every word. It was mind-numbing work, and I doubt it did much to help her.
If I was to instead have focused our energies on exploring the possible methods of writing available to her through prewriting or outlining or brainstorming or even bubble-mapping, she might have been able to better see how to persuasively organize her thoughts without the fear of the final draft. Following in the line of Rose, I had a teacher who once said that the hardest part of writing is to start. We are so obsessed with perfection that we forget writing is a process, and we even more often forget that writing is a social process: we peer-edit, yes, but more importantly we are writing to an audience.
I believe it is because of this teacher that I was so fed up with writer’s block one day I posted a large print-out of the words JUST WRITE above my computer.
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