Gopen's “Why So Many Bright Students and So Many Dull Papers?"

Gopen, George.  “Why So Many Bright Students and So Many Dull Papers?: Peer-Responded Journals as a Partial Solution to the Problem of the Fake Audience.” WAC Journal 16 (Sept 2005): 22-48.

Gopen identifies several problems with writing assignments: students dread them, teachers dread grading them, and our traditional mode of feedback—comments in the margin and at the end of the essay—does “not accomplish nearly enough of the intended good” (24).  Like many others, Gopen blames the fact that students are often asked to write for no audience or for the teacher.  Obviously one solution is to build a specific audience into the assignment (“you are the commencement speaker at a…”), but Gopen seems concerned not only with awkward attempts at joining a discourse community, as Bartholomae’s sample essays showed, but with students’ intellectual engagement based on their perception of the audience.  Gopen believes that if a student writes for a teacher, she aims to demonstrate her own (partial) knowledge for an expert whose knowledge she imagines to be complete.  Instead, Gopen points out , we want our students to write to communicate, to exchange information, which they cannot do if they believe the audience to have it already. 

  

As a solution, Gopen suggests a series of journals for a peer audience.  In the model version he presents, students are placed in groups of three to four, which should change a few times during the course.  If a course meets Monday and Wednesday, the students complete their reading and respond in a 500-word journal entry.  Students bring hard copies to class for each group member and the professor (who reads but neither comments on nor hands back the papers).  On Monday, group members bring a 500-word response to each journal entry, which must engage with ideas, not make teacherly comments.  This pattern repeats every week that formal writing is not due and, with repetition, creates a real sense of audience for the student writers—audience that can learn from them and offer genuine responses to them.  At the end of the term, the professor assigns a high-percentage grade to each student’s journal and response work based not only on quality but on improvement. 

Gopen’s concept seems a bit simple for a 27-page article, but the length allows him to provide all the information one needs to apply it, including consideration of a teacher’s reservations and warnings against pitfalls.  While I do not teach a two-day-a-week course, the many advantages of this system—especially the increased intellectual engagement, in which students take their own thinking seriously—convinced me that it’s worth trying.  In fact, it could offer solutions to some problems I have faced regarding the balance of work at night with the speed of our progress in class.  Assigning readings and these journals at two- or three-day intervals would automatically give me several days with each reading, while also making me feel less guilty if I cut back on the amount of reading we do.  Thus I could model analysis of our readings at the depth I would prefer and students would not lose chances to write because of our slower pace.  I might even use Gopen’s passage (37-40) demonstrating a student’s intellectual progress through one cycle of journals and responses to show students the honesty and engagement they should aspire to.  

Kellogg and Moskovitz's “Primary Science Communication in the First-Year Writing Course"

Kellogg, David and Cary Moskovitz.  “Primary Science Communication in the First-Year Writing Course.” College Composition and Communication 57.2 (Dec 2005): 307-34.

Only three years into teaching this course, I own review copies of at least fifteen textbooks and anthologies; one could say that I’ve struggled to identify readings that will best achieve my course goals.  I have gotten some of the best mileage from non-literary essays (Neal Osherow’s “Making Sense of the Nonsensical: An Analysis of Jonestown” is a favorite), but time and uncertainty have kept me from hunting for individual essays that might suit my purposes.  For this reason, several articles on science writing have recently caught my attention.  The most immediately applicable is Moskovitz and Kellogg’s case for reading primary science communication in the classroom.

Their article identifies and demonstrates the lack of true science writing (as opposed to science-related texts from general interest sources) in composition anthologies.  They go on to respond to reservations instructors might raise to teaching such texts.  Some may object to PSC because it is too discipline-specific, preventing students from transferring understanding of it to other texts, but the authors contend that this is a problem with teaching context and transferability, not a problem of PSC; indeed, they see the same problems with all texts, including literary ones.  Others may be concerned that PSC is distinctly different from other texts and cannot be smoothly integrated with them, but Moskovitz and Kellogg point out the rhetorical functions found in PSC texts that resemble those in other arguments (claims, evidence, qualification, etc.).  A table they provide convincingly demonstrates this point.  In discussing the readily recognizable features of argument found in scientific writing, with its reliance on IMRAD organization, as a benefit for students new to analyzing arguments, the authors recognize another potential objection: that science writing encourages formula.  They note, however that 1) they propose that students read, not write, PSC, and 2) IMRAD responds to “the rhetorical needs of the scientific community,” unlike the five-paragraph essay (317).  The authors make several different responses to objections regarding the difficulty of scientific texts, then conclude this section with a warning that instructors’ own interest in and understanding of the humanities should not blind them to students’ abilities and interests in other areas.

After a discussion of schoolwide implications of introducing PSC in composition courses, the authors address the details of doing so. They offer criteria for selecting texts, which are commonsensical (accessible, understandable, no high-level math), and provide general advice on topics (global warming: no, memory: yes).  They suggest examining the bibliographies of general interest science articles to find PSC on topics the public can understand, as well as using such secondary scientific communication in conjunction with PSC.  Finally, the authors offer general but useful suggestions on assignments that invite students to work with PSC in practical and thought-provoking ways.  The article’s impressive completeness, from the idea of including PSC to effective execution, has convinced me that my students could benefit from my inclusion of one reading and assignment (which might seem too little had the authors not specifically mentioned a single assignment as a valid option).  I am intimidated, however, by the prospect of finding an appropriate text for such an activity.

Patton's "Situated Writing Lessons: Putting Writing Advice In Disciplinary Context"

Patton, Martha. "Situated Writing Lessons: Putting Writing Advice in Disciplinary Context." The Writing Instructor 2004: n. pag. Web. 30 May 2011.

In conducting writing-in-the-disciplines workshops, Patton notices that faculty’s desire for ways to teach “good writing” is often rooted in a theoretical mindset that is about fifty years out of date by a compositionist’s standards.  They hold with “something close to current traditionalism, a rule-bound pedagogy giving unqualified prescriptive advice” (Patton).  While the workshop attendees recognize other attendees’ suggestions as more valuable than theory, Patton seeks to offer sound theory or at least theoretically sound practices.  She aims to help the faculty recognize that writing is rhetorical, determined by “audience, purpose, and context,” and, moreover, that “by over-generalizing one’s own writing conventions, one might inadvertently perpetuate prejudices about other disciplines that for good reasons have different writing conventions.”  This concern is what attracted me to Patton’s article.  At the secondary school in which I teach, the English department has not prioritized composition instruction, allowing literature to dominate course content.  At the same time, the history department has developed a strict formula for writing a thesis-driven essay and applied it department-wide. As a result, students absorb that oft-repeated formula as a prescriptive model of how to write, and they inherit the belief that the conventions of that department are universal.  Since becoming department chair, I have been searching for solutions to this and related problems.

Patton says that writing-intensive faculty tend to give writing advice in two ways: in “absolutist terms” that prescribe one correct method, or in no terms at all.  She says that even some composition teachers are so uncertain about conventions that they do not deal with “issues of grammar, mechanics, and formatting.”  Patton argues that both approaches are inappropriate because neither offers students an accurate understanding of discipline-specific conventions.  “Particularly at risk,” she writes, “are English as Second Language (ESL) students or any students new to an academic discipline” who, according to Silva, Leki, and Carson “’need grammatical input that is unavailable in sufficient quantity from their peers.’”  Patton explains that this input should not be correction but “context-specific alternative[s].”  This sounds lovely, but I do not know what it means; without further explanation, it sounds like a non-threatening label for corrections—“You know, one alternative here would be to use a subject and verb that agree.”  Pretty transparent.

Having established the need for writing-intensive faculty to recognize the rhetorical nature of writing and teach based on composition theory, Patton somewhat awkwardly transitions into a lesson type that she has used successfully: situated writing lessons.  These lessons take only a few minutes and include examples, context, rationale, and counter examples.  In her appendix, Patton offers several samples.  The best example, one on thesis statements, demonstrates how a teacher can offer specific instruction on writing without sacrificing much class time and without implying that the method taught is universal.  In my particular case, I see great value in creating several versions of such lessons to offer faculty in other disciplines.  A well-designed situated writing lesson seems an effective way to connect theory to practice—even when the teacher does not see value in (or even know about) the theory. 

MacDonald's "Erasure of Language"

You may notice that my article selection seems a bit disconnected.  My narrow goal in this course is to reflect on and improve the way I teach my AP English Language course, which is designed to replicate (I’m sure many college instructors would challenge my word choice!) first-year composition, so my interests have to do both with what happens (and doesn’t) in FYC classrooms and with the relationships between college and high school composition instruction.  In accordance with the stereotype of secondary teachers in our field, I am most interested in how ideas are applied in practice—pedagogy growing from theory and research, not theory or research for their own sake. I see the value of the latter, but they’re not for me.  And so, when I choose an article for this blog, it somehow fits within these interests—realities in FYC classrooms, the relationship of that reality to high school instruction, and ways I can practically apply knowledge of that reality to my own secondary classroom.

 MacDonald, Susan Peck. “The Erasure of Language.” College Composition and Communication 58.4 (Jun 2007):585-625. Web. 16 May 2011.

I find that working at the sentence level of both students’ and other authors’ work has far greater benefits than a grasp of grammar or style; if students understand that meaning arises not from the writer’s genius or the text’s Gestalt, but from the precise combination of words and sentences, then they come to see both analysis and writing as within their reach.  In this article, MacDonald traces the declining interest in language within the rhet/comp community and notes that current trends have minimized the value of working with language, emphasizing instead “theory and the social” (issues of race, class, and gender) (590).  These current trends have long made me feel guilty about my own interests, so MacDonald’s article offers a sort of permission to care about language use. 

MacDonald continues to win my heart by presenting quantitative research on the topic (another unfashionable practice I appreciate).  She searched the titles of CCCC sessions over fifty years and found a dramatic decrease in those regarding language.  She compares the way our field defines its problems—in a fluid, shifting way—with the way hard sciences define theirs—in a way that allows consistent work toward increased knowledge.  She does not argue that our approach should change, but does note what is lost: we “have a tendency to throw out good, past work whenever a new preoccupation attracts our interest” (592).  MacDonald also shows that what attention has been paid to language in the 21^st-century has focused on problems—problems for ESL students, for nonstandard English speakers, for students unprepared for academia.  MacDonald laments that language study “does not, for instance, include a love of the melodies … of English, a theoretical interest in how language functions, … or a scholarly interest in the verbs of Shakespeare and the verbs of public documents” (595).

MacDonald then argues that the 1974 resolution on students’ right to their own language created binary thinking that has persisted: either teachers teach Edited American English, or they “recognize and…value nonprestige dialects” (600).  She reveals resulting problems in reduced grammar instruction and makes a case for teaching clauses and punctuation explicitly.  She also notes complications arising from the demographic shift in American colleges and from disconnects between linguistic and English studies.  All of these problems point to a need to return to grammar instruction, out of fashion since the 1960s, albeit through different methods.

In her conclusion, MacDonald recommends goals for our teaching of language, three of which sound similar to my own values:

•  Recognizing parts of sentences and how they function—without being overwhelmed by metalanguage but also having the metalanguage required for understanding and choosing options to communicate
• Understanding the variations of "plain" versus nominalized language, active versus passive constructions, scholarly versus popular prose style that the rest of the working world grapples with every day and has few tools for discussing
•  Understanding how both literary and nonliterary writing achieve their effects (617)

At the heart of MacDonald’s argument is the point that language instruction has been marginalized because of assumptions that its intent is unfair and judgmental remediation. In my own practice, I have found value in exactly the kind of language instruction that she advocates as an alternative.

Joseph Jones's "Muted Voices: High School Teachers, Composition, and the College Imperative"

Jones, Joseph. "Muted Voices: High School Teachers, Composition, and the College Imperative."  The Writing Instructor Sept 2007: n.pag. Web. 22 May 2011.

In “Muted Voices,” Joseph Jones explores how the teaching of English in high school has evolved as a means of preparing students for college English, explains that FYC began as a “stopgap measure” to remediate student writing until secondary schools could improve their instruction, notes the continuation of the attitude that FYC is a response to secondary schools’ failure, and finally presents the results of his own survey of high school students and teachers regarding their perception of secondary English and college English. 

Among other things, Jones’s survey reveals that students see their secondary writing instruction as having emphasized the five-paragraph essay (form) and the research report (mechanics of citation), not the development of ideas or arguments.  Similarly, they had fully grasped the idea that an essay should have a thesis, but understood no other writing skill as more important than any other.  Not surprisingly, these students discovered later that college composition emphasized analysis.  They also found that a thesis was still important, but saw the ‘college version’ of a thesis—“one’s ‘central argument’”—as wholly different from the high school version—“one’s ‘main idea’” (Jones). There were also notable mistakes on the students’ part regarding the amount of classic literature and literary analysis college would demand.  Jones sees these and other discrepancies between high school instruction, perception of college writing, and actual college writing as results of high school teachers’ misunderstanding of college instruction. 

Jones is careful not to blame teachers for their lack of knowledge regarding college writing, and he acknowledges that adolescent development plays a role in instruction.  He also blames tradition and history for inappropriately designed secondary curriculum.  Although his judgments are left unstated, I recognize and agree with many of them and was gratified to find that, in my own secondary instruction, I attempt to avoid many of the traps he describes.  My one beef with his viewpoint is that, as he notes, most students will not go on to become English majors.  I agree that we should therefore not emphasize literature so heavily, but I also see high school English as the place to be exposed to all parts of the English spectrum in the same way that we require students to take a variety of subjects in high school—exposure is key to development of intellect and interest. 

Jones seems to bemoan the fact that college composition drives high school teaching, implying that secondary education should not be so beholden to what happens on the college level.  On the other hand, his survey implies that imitation of FYC is his standard for a successful high school writing education (or does he mean it should replace FYC, verifying that FYC is remediation to make up for high school’s failure?).  While I see more value in my AP English Language class, which directly imitates FYC, than in most secondary offerings, I also do not see what that course offers as the sole or even primary aim of the secondary English classroom, in terms of writing or otherwise.

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A note to Dr. Depew: I have much more to say in response to Jones and in response to potential counterarguments to my own points, but, alas, am out of room!  Please be aware that I acknowledge many subtleties of this topic that I couldn't make space for.

He made me do it

I'm not a blogger.  I had an online journal once, before there were blogs, and after a while I came to think my life and opinions were far more interesting than they were.

Fortunately, this (required) blog is limited in scope, and that scope does not include my personal non-adventures.  It relates instead to composition pedagogy.  Because that's way more interesting.