Contrasting Culham and Dornan's Writing Texts
The purpose of this brief posting is to compare the textbooks 6 + 1 Traits of Writing: Grades 3 and Up, by Ruth Culham, and Within and Beyond the Writing Process in the Secondary English Classroom, by Reade Dornan, Lois Rosen, and Marilyn Wilson. Generally speaking Culham’s text is a fine introductory text into the process of writing for students at a very young age, but Dornan, Rosen, and Wilson present a more sophisticated presentation of ideas that contrast older methodologies with current best practices in teaching writing to older students becoming young adults.
Dornan, et. al., reference the work of reputable scholars, provide appropriate references to other resources (see Scholastic Art and Writing Awards website referred to on page 75) and address standards in the standard curriculum. Most importantly, and most distinctly, the introduction in Dornan’s text takes into consideration all the conventions focused upon in the other text, in addition to stressing the importance of students’ writing about personally meaningful issues, as well as using writing for a social purpose.
My greatest problem with Culham’s text is that it seems to be oversimplified, or dumbed down, for a mass audience, which tends to strip a text of its richness and depth of thought. The inclusion of presentation as a meaningful aspect of writing seems somewhat old-fashioned, but not entirely useless. And the distinction between the processes of revision and editing in Chapter One succeeds in showing how teachers ought to be able to explicitly convey these different processes to students. Overall, I feel like Culham’s text would benefit from a stronger presentation of the whole process of grading in this method – should teachers be expected to grade papers in a holistic sense, or should we isolate each of the 6 characteristics when grading?
As I intend to be teaching high school English, I cannot help but to question the appropriateness of Culham’s text in a graduate school course. Too much of this text seems a little too fluff, or simple to the point of being irrelevant. Refer to sections of the text referred to below to judge for yourself:
• “Beware All that Glitters” section (p. 30-1)
• Opening introduction with one teacher’s story (p. 7-9)
• Sapphire mining metaphor at beginning of Ch. 2 (p. 33-4)
• “Cat/Dog” writing sample, unbelievable (p. 42)
Comments
David-
I noticed that you criticize and question the use of the 6+1 Traits writing text (Culham). I just wanted to let you know that Candance probably selected this text because it is the writing curriculum for most of the public schools in the area. I agree that Dornan, et. al, is far superior as far as information, but the Culham text is a little bit more accessible. I noticed that the teacher whose creative writing class I will be student teaching used this book today, going so far as to hand out a packet explaining the 6+1 theory. Predictably, the students immediately threw this into their folders, probably never to be seen again. Because 6 +1 is so silly, and unwieldy, and frankly, unrealistic, do you think there is something better out there? I can see why schools use this program (it seems like it would appeal to an administrator far more than anyone actually interested in teaching writing), but what can we use "on the side" so that we actually do teach our students how to write?
Posted by: emily ward | January 30, 2008 07:26 PM
Aw... I really liked the part about digging for sapphires. Don't read my blog!
Posted by: Angela | January 30, 2008 07:56 PM
dave, i guess i have to disagree with you on the culhan text, for the most part. i will say that it does lack depth. but as the reccomended assessment methods go, i gathered that you should focus on 1 trait at a time, and i do appreciate the explicit instruction methods and the breakdown of the revision process. overall, i think that 6+1 does a good job at what it sets out to accomplish, but the proof is certainly in the pudding and i imagine more than one way to serve this method to students. angela's experience demonstrates one that i would definitely avoid...
Posted by: laura | January 31, 2008 11:25 AM
As mentioned in class today, it's not that there aren't several good points made in Culhan's text. We should be assessing students style, mastery of standard English grammar/spelling conventions, flow, and most importantly ideas. It's clear that at the end of chapters, we get a few pretty good examples of focusing students on improving specific aspects of their writing. I even liked the distinctions between revision and editing (which Dornan's text more succinctly describes, with equal if not greater success).
Rather, despite any disclaimers that Culhan may attempt to make within the text, the text is fundamentally designed to present a proscriptive method of how to teach a language arts curriculum. The image on the cover page, the title of the book, the essential premise of there being 6 MAIN POINTS to consider when teaching writing -- these things just don't ring true to me. Teaching anything, especially writing, is just more complex and nuanced than Culhan suggests in her design of this text, and I think that it does a disservice to teachers not to suggest that they ought to be cognizant of these other nuances that go into making great teachers and avid learners.
Posted by: David | February 1, 2008 12:41 AM