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?