EngL5630: Theories of Writing and Writing Instruction Sp06

I was interested, in part because this is the second time I read this (possibly for Ann and Heather as well?), and I had a markedly different perspective on it this go-round.

I feel like I'm doing what they talk about, more or less, in my creative-writing class. But I also feel like creative-writing classes are built this way. I don't have an "ideal" story in mind. What would that look like? Who knows. But, even though I did have drafts and one-on-one meetings and negotiation in my Intro to Multiculti Lit class last semester, I don't think I left any real choices for the students to make. They were trying to achieve the text in my mind, my Platonic ideal, whatever that might have been.

I think there is a tension here between "making real choices" and "learning the forms of power." Yes, okay, there is a real tension between them. It's hard to see how both can be accomplished in a semester, while ALSO teaching content. Maybe each student should have to take a "how to write in the forms of your discipline 3001" class, so "Intro to Psych Writing" and "Intro to Biology Writing," etc. Hmm, yeah, I like that idea.

Because I want the students to have both. I want them to have "rights" to their own writing, and to make real choices. But I don't want a student to graduate from biology who had "rights" to her texts but can't construct a scientific paper. (As Delpit deplores.)

One more thing, about the evaluation Gary mentions at the end. I wasn't sure if Brannon and Knoblauch were suggesting that we evaluate students based on the students' own criteria, or based on our criteria (clearly stated).

Yes, I remember reading this last semester (which must mean that it was assigned early in the course, when I was still doing careful reading, or that for some reason it really stuck in my mind). I think my reaction now is actually similar to what it was in the fall: I like the idea of allowing students to make their own choices, and of course I don't want to impose my "ideal text" on a student. Part of me, though, always wants to respond to articles like this by saying, "Wait a second; aren't we teachers precisely because we have some sort of expertise that the students don't? And don't most students really want us to share that with them?"

Ideally, yes, we should do both. If I have to err on one side, though, I think it would be (here we go again!) with Bartholomae: first teach them the forms (ideal text?) that, it seems to me, will be expected of them in much academic and professional writing.

About the idea of students listing their intentions for each paragaph/section of their writing: maybe it's just my NNS students, but it seems to me that most of the students who could clearly identify their purpose in that format could also probably effectively achieve it in the paragraph, anyway. Ok, not necessarily - but I think that would work more effectively in a face to face conference where students can give an oral explanation of what they were trying to do/say in their writing.

I hesitate to be a contrarian (but I will anyway!), but one question this essay raises for me is what do we do when students don't want we have to offer. In other words, we can give them all sorts of space and freedom and room for them to express their intentions, but there are those students who really do just want those intentions expressed for them, through our making those sentence level corrections, and helping them make their papers "look" good, even if the content is what needs work. They come to us for our "expertise," as Heather alludes to, and at the risk of sounding like the "paternalist" (is that a word?) that the authors refer to, my sense is, for some students, fixing grammar and punctuation equals expertise, not invitations to take their work in new directions (as much as I want to help give students the confidence to do that, and enjoy that more than anything else about my job). I could spend all day talking about revision because I think it's important, but does the student necessarily agree? I guess it goes back to how we present ourselves to students, and stressing that writing is about revision, and we need to find those ways to help students see the benefit of that (related to our conversation last class -- how do we "teach" revision? Can it be taught?)

I do agree with them that grading should only occur after there's been consultation, peer review, etc., but there's still going to have to be some criteria by which to measure their work, and like Marcia I wonder where that's supposed to come from.

I like the idea of presenting a student with the tools to take possession of her writing. However, I think this could backfire in many situations. Students who are very independent in their thinking, and have had experience with navigating ambiguity during their developmental years, will very possibly embrace this type of writing process. But, I think that students that have come from a more paternalistic background want instructors to have an ideal and teach them how to create that text. We know that there is no right or wrong text, just successful of unsuccessful ones, but it can be difficult to convince students of this philosophy. In the end, I’m not sure how to negotiate these different learning styles other than to take the shotgun approach and vary the way I teach.

When I read the article’s statement about the implicit contract between published writers and readers (“in general, readers will assume that problematic text demand greater effort from them, not rewriting from the author� p. 213), I remembered something that happened to me some time ago: I was reading one José Saramago’s novels and I was really upset by his punctuation. Saramago is a great Portuguese, Nobel Prize-winning writer, and I was supposed to accept the “reader contract� with his novel. At this time, however, I was this kind of conservative-ideal-text professor, even more focused on formal aspects of writing as well as proof reading. This was more of a focus than the writing process, and I had developed the annoying and unavoidable “habit� of error hunting. Nevertheless, following my "reader contract" with Saramago’s novel, I start to wonder if Saramago’s punctuation was a literary device. However, I couldn’t finish the novel even though I was engaged with the subject, and I start to wonder if my pedagogical writing practice was under control.
Weeks later I was able to read the published Saramago’s diary in which I learned about his confession with his punctuation problems.
That was the first moment that I started to seriously question my role as a sentence-level-corrections instructor. My learning in this matter, through all these years (including this experience in the United States) makes me think that I became in a liberal-ideal-text instructor. I’m not comfortable enough with this transformation; that is why I find this Brannon & Knoblauch’s article enlightening and inspiring. Even I agree with Marcia about the tension between the "making real choices" and "learning the forms of power� or standard genres for survival in academic or working real life. Again it seems like “when� is the key word.
I see in my future a leap of a trapeze artist in my pedagogical practice, left behind my “ideal text� model:
a) Recognizing that students are authorities about their communicative intentions (and I was really persuaded that “The sense of genuine responsibility kindled in inexperienced writers can be a powerful first step in the development of mature competence� p.222)
b) Accepting that, at least in writing instruction, “attitudes are more important than methods�, as the authors say (p.219)
By the way , in terms of the believing game, it seems like Brannon and Knoblauch take for granted the benefits of multi draft and revision process. Don’t they?

So, okay, back we go to a discussion of some key splits (or balances) (or tensions) we’ve been finding all along. Marcia evokes the “when� question, but is it reasonable or desirable to teach students the “forms of power� before they have to authentically USE these forms (the idea of preliminary courses)? Many of us assume that teaching the ideal or even generic forms of academic genres and standards is what we’re paid our enormous salaries to do. Of course students want us to give them this kind of direct feedback—wanting us to provide document-level or surface level corrections makes absolute sense from their standpoint. That doesn’t mean it is wise for us to provide them, right? If we buy the idea that writing is a means to learning, would it be consistent for us to teach writing divorced from content?

Gary and Edward tell us of students who may not want to take this level on the responsibility of ownership or authority…who “want those intentions expressed for them.� We really need to think this through, it seems to me---where you stand on this is critical to your approaches to writing instruction. We’re not just talking about helping students to put their ideas into correct usage, we’re talking about usurping their authority to invent and shape meaning.

Insisting that students retain authority over the texts they are in the process of writing and understanding, while still insisting that these students not lose credibility with academic readers is a delicate piece of teaching, isn’t it? To my reading, Brannon and Knoblauch present it in overly strident either-or terms…suggesting that students either retain or concede authority, but they do provoke us to really think about how we will manage. Further, B and K assume that students KNOW what they intend to say, and in my experience that isn’t always so.

B and K also insist that the key discussion focuses on the dissonance between what the student wants to communicate and what the student has in fact communicated to a “believing� reader….a kind of closed circuit. Can we add some strands from our understanding of academic discourse into this mix without impinging on students’ ability to make meaning?

That is so fascinating about Saramago's journal...you'll have to tell me where to find that.

Interesting what different expectations we bring to a text. I would never believe that Saramago could err, after reading Blindness. Really.

I appreciate this reminder throughout in the article: The problems we see in students’ writing are caused in part by a lack of motivation and interest, which arises from a lack of freedom and ownership with respect to their writing, which in turn results when instructors view students as having little or no authority to write (even B&K persist, irritatingly, in asserting that students don’t write from a position of authority; of course students have ideas and a wealth of experiences and a sense of how to communicate them!). Student writers are expected to conform to instructors’ choices, beginning with the gilt-edged assignment sheet and ending with the corrective comments that add up to a grade.

Others have noted that the issue of student choice emerges in both Delpit and B&K, and our philosophies of teaching seem to hinge on balancing student and instructor authority. As instructors, should we guide student writers’ choices? Clearly, at a minimum, we make students aware of the types of choices we want them to make. I try to think in terms of *informing* students’ choices, an approach that bridges Delpit and B&K (and one that some of you seem to share): supplying students with whatever expertise I have, including knowledge of conventions that may be relevant to them; providing also some context for critiquing conventions and accepted knowledge; encouraging students to make various choices deliberately and asking them to explain their choices.

If we believe that we can’t eradicate our Platonic discourse, then we should make it as visible as possible—we should tell students what we are reading for. Honesty should supersede our *desire* to allow students freedom; if we know (and we should do the soul-searching to find this out) that we expect certain things from writing, we should truly revise our expectations or spell them out for students, or both.

However, I think our temptation to define writing assignments more narrowly, because we may be more likely to get what we want, is misguided. As we construct an assignment in greater detail, we limit students’ choices and craft a less forgiving Platonic text. Some students will write what they wish to write regardless of our specifications, and then we’ll penalize them for not fulfilling the demands of the assignment. Sure, following directions is an important skill, but haven’t students learned to do this after more than a decade of schooling? Could it be that their impulse to write in ways that are meaningful to them is just that strong?

I share the question about eventual assessment of student writing. What do “satisfactorily conveyed� (390) and “communicative effectiveness� really mean (391)? What if the writer believes she has communicated her ideas satisfactorily? Do we as instructors represent (or believe we represent) a Platonic reader? Absurdity aside, I like the idea of having communication- rather than code-based grading criteria. And surely it’s helpful for writers to engage in dialogue about their intentions and readers’ responses, even if those readers are only a little bit similar to future readers of the writers’ work.

One way to address apathy at the front end of courses is to focus on inquiry, to have students grapple with genuine problems and formulate their own questions. Students need to generate ideas they’re excited about in order to find value in their writing (because writing helped produce and communicate those ideas). B&K’s approach is a way to encourage and demonstrate respect for writers’ ideas. Writing assignments based on inquiry ask students to develop their own topics and to communicate their ideas in the form and style that seem most appropriate. Here, again, we as instructors inform students’ choices by having them read diverse texts as models for writing and by leading a discussion of what we consider in making choices about our writing. I hope to ask my students to write about their intentions (perhaps in a column, as B&K suggest, or in a revision memo, etc.), and I’d like to have students take part in the evaluation. My dream is to have students develop a contract with me and their peers for a substantial project; in the contract we’d agree on criteria for evaluation.

I think that Pamela's point that B and K assume "that students KNOW what they intend to say" is really important. This essay reminded me of Bartholmae's "Clay Model" writer, the student who writes in a tortured fashion because they're struggling to get their ideas straight. In fact, the examples B and K give on page 216 of the teachers who don't get what John is trying to accomplish is actually kind of strange. Those teachers don't get what John is trying to do because they're not familiar with the case that John is working with (or perhaps with the way lawyers make arguments in general). In any case, this is strange because this would be the situation that John's actual instructor would be in; John's actual instructor would probably have been familiar with the kind of argument the prosecutor made. B and K conclude that "this example suggest . . . the value of consulting a student writer about what he or she wanted to say before suggesting how he or she ought to say it" (217); but does John's instructor have to consult John to figure out his intentions? After all, the instructor came up with the assignment. I do, however, think that B and K are correct in suggesting that helping students think about the connection between their intentions and the effects of their writing is a crucial part of helping them to become invested in their writing. At the same time, though, I can't help but wonder if we discourage students from doing things with their writing not only because it doesn't conform to the form we approve of, but also because we sometimes just don't think that what students intend to say merits being said. Implicit in the conservative instructor's reaction to John's sentimental appeal is the idea (I think) that responsible citizens don't make that kind of argument and responsible juries don't pay attention to it. B and K's point that the actual lawyer did make that argument is beside the point. In encouraging students to adopt certain forms of argument are we encouraging them to think about issues in a certain manner, and are we doing this not because we think students will economically profit from thinking about these issues in that way (after all that argument worked for the lawyer), but because this is how we think scholars (should) think? Furthermore, if John thinks (like the actual lawyer) that the jury will find this argument compelling, does this imply that John himself finds this kind of argument compelling? If so, haven't we let John down in focusing on helping him to achieve his intention? I recognize, though, that there's a real tension between helping students care about their writing and calling into question what they're trying to do with their writing.

As an instructor of a second language, I know about the value of asking the students what they want to say in their writings. In my experience most of them know what they want to say but they do not know how to say it. Most of the time I ask them in Spanish and they tend to answer me in English. Knowing what they want to say is the first step they have to take and I need to know it before suggesting how he or she ought to say it. I agree with Brannon and Knoblauch when they say that “Denying students control of what they want to say must surely reduce incentive and also, presumably, the likelihood of improvement�(215)

Saramago: Cuadernos de Lanzarote (1993-1997)

Wow, what jumps out at me about this reading is how much discussion it provoked! I signed on, thinking I had lots of things to say about it, only to discover most of it has already been mentioned. Here's a couple points.

I was relieved and intrigued to discover that the shift B&K advocate is "attitudinal more than methodological." As a teacher in a department where I'm not also a student, I experience a persistent lack of confidence in this area of instructor comments. It's an intriging place to be, a position where the students expect my comments to emphasize the method of their writing, and I feel more confidence in commenting on the content.

A different point. I appreciate the suggestion to consider the students' intentions, and how well they realized those intentions. But I also think there's value in being an uninformed reflector first, that is, I don't want to read an intention statement, and then a paper. I want to read and comment on a paper, so the student can see (and is encouraged/required/forced to consider) how the "average" reader will read their work. It swings the balance of power back to reader-based prose.

I think the idea that teachers should also consider the students' point of view on a lesson is important. Teachers and students should communicate effectively. Communication with listening skills is important to make it more effective.

Thus, as students listen to the teachers to learn, teachers should also listen to the students. The students' view or opinion or maybe ideas that are different from what the book says. Their questions should also be heard.

Communication with listening skills helps the teacher and the students understand each other and the lesson as well.