10/28

A lot of what Moran had to say concerning electronic composition struck me as applicable to traditionally written composition as well.  The first instance of this was his comment on the different assistance needed by students based on their individual composing processes (208).  This is not isolated to word processing and speaks more loudly against the linear composing models than a difference of teaching methods required when a student works on a word processor.  Students need to be met instructionally at their level of individual needs depending on the process with which they choose to write.  This could run the gamut from learning a writing process in general to learning final editing techniques.  The very individuality of this instruction raises the questions as to the validity of distance education through technology.  But, I’m getting ahead of myself.

I was even more intrigued by Moran’s comment that,  “looking for essential differences between screen text and print text is a dead end, because writers write differently, and even a given writer will write differently on different occasions” (207).  Have all the researchers attempting an empirical measurement of writing process and ability read this comment?  Does it not negate all attempts at such measurements, or merely insert a very larger and uncomfortable variable into the machinations of their research?  Alright, their research isn’t evil. But it’s formulaic products in conjunction with universal standards and, yes, technology have done more to distance composition instruction from the reality of individual and unique learners in need of equally individual and unique instruction. 

At the end of Anson’s article the question, “Is the motivation for distance education financial or pedagogical?” is tucked amongst many.  But this seems the crux of the issue being measured here.  Both Anson and Moran have a hard time finding concrete educational benefits to technology being the center of the classroom.  It may excite the interest of students, but who does it priviledge, who does it educate more easily?  Does it really increase access or does its increased use in education only serve to further restrict and marginalize groups based on social and economic standards?

10/21

This needs to be a quick post for me, so get ready.  Sommer’s comments on the thesis statement and how it limits the development of ideas during student writing, sign me up – I’m a believer.  Too many times I have students approach me in the hall asking how to write a thesis statement.  When I ask what they are writing about, I get the same response – “I don’t know”.  Really?  We give our students assignments on how to write before asking them to think, about anything?  Has the model become that important? 

Mutnick mentions Bartholomae’s work in basic writing as a disciple of Shaughnessy, but centers on his “shift in emphasis of instruction from grammatical to rhetorical concerns-from surface error to semantic and critical content”(184)  Compare this to Sommers analysis of the different areas of focus in revision between student and professional writers.  One focuses on the lexical and the other on the semantic.  Guess which one’s which? Interesting yes?  Yet we still are chained to our desks by curricula that insist a code of grammar and mechanics be taught in place of rhetoric.  Do curriculum specialists read any of the materials we’ve been going over?

10/14

“Thus are we wrecked on the rocks of teaching seen as intervention; of the so-called student-centered classroom; of single-skill correction; of discourse analysis, in which the chief function of discourse is disregarded; in reading instruction in which language is considered solely as a graphic code; of writing as seen as the assignment of topics sequenced according to the commonplaces of classical rhetoric . . .”(Berthoff 336)  Well cheese and rice! This is my curriculum.  Ahhh!  I don’t know what Berthoff means by teaching students “to use what they already do so cleverly in order to learn how to generalize – how to move from abstraction in the non-discursive mode to the discursive abstraction, to generalization”(337).  But I know I don’t want to be inhibited by the former anymore.  I also have an inkling that what students already “do so cleverly” is connected their knowledge of “how to sabotage any process which alienates them”(George 96).  All of which is part of the critical teacher’s project to empower students in the realization of their own voice.  Particularly, having a say in their education, “allowing students to direct their own education” (101)

By far, the part of this weeks readings that interested me the most was the notion that students are so far sold into the American dream that the idea of subverting it is a hard sell.  How fantastic that one would prefer to succeed within the fantasy than struggle to expose reality.  Then Smith argues that teachers have no right to shatter these dreams if it is what students truly want.  Who are we to tell them what they want or need?  But isn’t that just what we are doing when allowing the dominant hegemony to guide or pedagogy.  It would be hypocritical to stand aside when students begin to desire elitist ideals and say we are doing so because they deserve the freedom of choice.

Somewhere done the line, in my many juvenile attempts at rebellion, I must have asked my dad why I have to everything a certain way, or something to that effect, because I remember him telling me that the only way to change the status quo is to be one of the people who sets the status quo.  He wanted me to understand, from his point of view, that I had to be part of an institution, to break it apart, if that’s what I wanted.  Now, I don’t know if he really meant it or if it was just his way of trying to get me to behave, but I’ve never forgotten it.  Reading George’s take of Friere that “the liberatory teacher will, thus, train students yet simultaneously problematize that training – will for instance, teach standard English and correct usage while also problematizing their status as inherently superior to other dialects or grammars”(102) brought this memory back to me.  It raises the question of how dominant critical literacy can become in a classroom when students still need to survive in a world that operates under the dominant ideology?  Because of this, I found Villanueva’s course plan inviting.  The pairing of canonical an non-canonical texts in the classroom so students may “discuss ways their own lived experiences connects the two” (100).

9/16

Let me preface this by saying, I am only two pages into Murray and have hit Implication #2.  I feel as though a great deal of the theory we discuss is wonderful in its application to college level composition classes and to elementary education. In the first case of post secondary ed,  rules of  an aligned curriculum don’t need to be followed and the time schedule is much more flexible for the instructor – ( I don’t know if any of this is true, since I have never been on the instructing side of a college course, but let’s go with it.) On the elementary side, students are relatively untouched by the prejudices and ingrained behaviors resulting from bad or no writing instruction. Perhaps this opinion is being shaped by my current moral dilemna of how to make the grammar unit I am forced to teach relevant in a course where I am to teach literature, writing (not composition), and grammar, all within certain prescribed blocks of time.  

Back to Imp #2, “The student finds his own subject” (5).  At the high school level we have received a group of students saturated with dependancy on their instructors for, well – instructions.  Imp # 5, “The student is encouraged to attempt an form of writing” (6) I picture myself in front of the classroom, “Today’s writing assignment is a search for truth, your truth, any truth that is your own.  You may write in any form, essay, poem, narrative, etc., you desire. Do not worry about spelling, grammar, etc. You may make a list of subjects that interest you or free write until a subject comes to you, whatever you need to do in order to begin writing about something that is true for you.”

Example of student responses:

“How long does this have to be?” (What is the least amount that I can write and still pass?”)

“Is this homework?” (translation: If it is, I’m not doing it now.)

“Is this due today?” (translation: If it’s not due today, I’m not doing it now.)

“When is this due?” (translation: I need to know how long I have until I have to do this.)

“What are we supposed to write?” (translation: If you don’t give me a subject, I’m not doing it.)

Now there are about fifty more, but you all know them already.  My point, I need de-programming  help before I can get my students into these brilliant plans of composition.  Also, how do I integrate the b.s. from the curriculum in order to play a little c.y.a?  Now, Julie, I can hear your common sense advice in my head already. So here is what I was thinking, (preliminary thoughts and asking for suggestions) I give this assignment as a way to teach the elements of grammar once we have finished the writing process and have reached the editing stages. Students can use their work as a substitute for the exercises in the book that are supposed to teach writing clearer sentences.  However, I’m not sure how to give them examples (as a group) of how to find sentences in their work that could use clarification.  Any suggestions?  I know this sounds bizarre.  Wouldn’t they just know by reading their work which sentences need clarification? Answer: No.   Also, still not working out my time restraint problem. To be continued . . .

I read Tobin’s Process Pedagogy and appreciated the history, but appreciated the lists of applicable literature even more.  Wow, is my next Amazon order going to put a hole in my checking account.

“Writing should be viewed and taught as an activity” (4) reminded me of ‘writing’ as a verb, not a noun.  Tobin’s comment that, “writing does not merely reflect what the writer knows but actually generates meaning through the identification of the writer’s own unconscious thoughts” helped me to connect to Emig’s Writing as a Mode of Learning. 

However, what I enjoyed most were two comments, though separate in the text, were connected in topic. First, “the differences in theory are less clear and less significant in the classroom” (10), and while discussing the critiques of process theory, “As a product of contemporary critical theory, these critiques make some sense to me. As a classroom teacher, though, I have my doubts, for while positivists notions of agency, authorship, voice, and self may be philosophically naive, they can still be pedagogically powerful.” (15)  I appreciate these statements as they make a distinction between the worlds of theory and practice.  Often theory seems overly complex and inapplicable to the classroom when minute distinctions don’t apply directly to a student’s or teacher’s treatment of a subject.  Though these issues are important for the further development of a writer, often, when encouraging students to just attempt a more authentic writing, issues like those of a political or social nature can easily be pushed from the forefront of pedagogy.

9/9

As I’m reading Britton, I need to get some thoughts out before I can finish and get the rest in my noggin.  First, this spectator/participant thing.  How does all this tie in to Britton’s goal of distinguishing the “the poetic from non-poetic discourse” (153)?  Perhaps I haven’t made it far enough in the reading, but it seems that none of the produced discourse is purely for it’s own sake. Instead, it is for the sake of the speaker/reader, whether they be constructing or sorting their own moral ground.  Basically, at this point I’m not following the guy.

However, D.W. Hardings’ construction of the onlooker through how he attends, evaluates, etc. does interest me.  We were talking about “the canon” last week, and this concept of attendance to discourse based on interest struck a chord. Could this explain why students do not interpret what “teachers” see as universal literature, as such?  If so, the disinterest in works included in “the canon” is not necessarily due to the student’s inability to evaluate literature for its universally human themes.  Instead, this could be attributed to students disinterest to the “class of objects or events” (156) that are presented in the specific texts. There inability to learn the literature through personal experience, gloabal contextualization?

Considering Britton’s belief that the evaluation process is actually a testing of individual’s value systems, are we not trying to reconstruct our students’ pre-existing value systems with those expressed in classic literature?  Students become resistant to this because they do not identify with these values.  Britton says “a major aspect of a spectator’s response to the events he witnesses will be a concern with the people involved” (156)  But if students cannot recognize, empathize with the people or events presented to them, how are they expected to become invested in the literature let alone respond?

On a completely different branch of the tree, doesn’t Britton’s three major categories of function and the way they operate sound a great deal like Kinneavy’s basic purposes of composition? Britton has the addressor and Kinneavey has the encoder, Britton – addressee, Kinneavy – decoder.  Each system operates based on the emphasis of the message.  The categories practically mirror each other: expressive-expressive, referential-transactional, literary-poetic.  Isn’t Britton going to mention Kinneavy?  Maybe he does.  Maybe I just need to be patient. (does he?)

 

What strikes me as funny – the amount of time spent in the classroom teaching rules of grammar and characteristics of style in various genres of literature.  Then, literature is defined in its purest sense when an author has the ability to manipulate or break those rules.

9/2

I’m trying to see the connections between the concepts discussed in the different readings for this week.  In Bedford, I became focused on the historical influences that caused the link between literature and composition in the classroom.  Did this trend first begin when style, a stage in classical composition, is removed from invention and arrangement, and is linked with the aesthetics of writing? (when ’emotive’ is used in the text referring to the purpose of discourse, can this be taken to mean ‘aesthetic’?) Kinneavy said that the use of language “to call attention to itself” (136) in order that it be “appreciated in its own right”(136) is literature. This use of language can than be considered to have aestheticism as its purpose, correct? And so putting ideas into words, when separated from the production and arrangement of knowledge, trends towards composition’s pedagogical link to literature. 

Despite the binding of these two disciplines in the classroom, Berlin comments that teachers give instruction in composition as though it were a “largely mechanical skill” (257).  Kinneavy comments that expository writing is a major focus of college composition in its being distinguished from literature.  Yet literature  and composition continue to be increasingly taught under the guise of one discipline.  This makes Kinneavy’s discussion on the aim of discourse all the more pertinent to composition pedagogy.  Why are literature and composition being taught as the same subject, English, when composition, as stated in Bedford, is more than “mastery of English-Only” and the mastery of texts?

Hello!

Why EEL? My name is Emily Elizabeth Lentz.  This is not indicative of my personality. I am neither shocking, slippery, nor to be found in the company of mutantly large red canines.  I look forward to blogging with all of you and getting to know you beyond your names and/or initials.