Language of Exclusion

I take a bit of exception with Rose's suggestion that English departments treat freshmen writing courses as intellectucally a "second-class pursuit" (549). Not that they don't, but rather that this is, in some way, unavoidable. Unless you're at a small (extremely small) institution, the sheer number of freshmen makes it impossible for the entire freshmen writing program to be a "first-class" operation - by which, Rose appears to mean the quality of the instructor, ie, that the best professors should be teaching this course. I don't see that happening, nor does it need to. Writing isn't solely the concern of writing classes - it's a concern in every class. Writing should be stressed across the board, in all courses, and the overall cumulative effect of a university that stresses writing works better, IMO, than one that would have the best profs at a school tied up teaching freshmen how to write 3-5 page papers.

I admit that much of what Rose argues is above my head. Not literally - I can understand what he's arguing - but in the sense that he's primarily talking about and to people in power and not the instructor themselves. When he talks about the historical baggage that "remedial" and "illiteracy" have, Rose is getting at institutional problems represented in the attitudes of entrenched faculty. It's only at the end, in the discussio about interpretation (565) that I feel like he's speaking to me - or, rather, that I can have any effect on the issues he raises.

To the issue of "interpretation vs. circling" when it comes to student errors, I believe we need both. Interpreting is fine, but a mistake is a mistake. I favor limited circling (say, circling a common mistake the first few times a student does it, and not each and every time through the paper), but I don't see any reason why a mistake can't be pointed out as a mistake. I like the way we're handling these issues in the sense that we downplay low-order for high-order. I keep reminding myself that the goal is to make these kids better writers, not treat every paper like it's their final dissertation. There's no reason that I see to be an unrepetent hard-ass when it comes to grading papers, but that doesn't mean that I think we shouldn't circle or flat-out say, when the situation calls for it, that the student did something wrong. Explain their mistake, yes, but make sure they know it's a mistake. And conversely, it's important for me to know when their "mistake" is simply my "preference" about how something "should" be done.

-- Mark Bousquet ...

The language of Exclusion: Writing Instruction at the university

This time no personal experience :) !!! Rather I have two questions regarding this article.

First, according to the author, the concept of "remediation" or "remedial paradigm" (p558) originated from the medical tradition. Yet, is it wrong or inappropriate for me to think that this notion of "remediation" comes from the traditional prescriptive pegadogy itself such as hegemonic relation between teaching (teachers) and learning (learners)?

Second, in p565 the author cited Mina Shaunessy's words saything that we should "interpret errors rather than circle them, and to guide these students, gradually and with wisdom, to be more capable participants within the world of these conventions." My question regards some practical concerns: Exactly "how" can we interpret my students' errors, and "how" can we guide my students? Let's say I found a lot of run-on sentences in my students' writing. "How" can I interpret it in a different way (What does it mean by "interpret" here?) and "how" can I guide them into the world of writing conventions instead of circling the run-on errors and making them looking at the grammar reference book? Are there any productive alternatives?

As a "stduent" writer and "student" teacher I want to tell my stories related to this artice.


Professor A's case: Last year I took Professor A's class. As usual, I had three big and about seven small writing assignments. I put my every effort to make my writing appear good and "smart", however, when I got my paper back, I was surprised to look at what Professor A had corrected on my paper. Professor A corrected every single grammar mistake (I want to call it "mistake" instead of "error" because I know what's wrong with it). Sometimes I got my paper back with full of her comments and corrections. I felt stifled and scared whenver I got my paper back with full of punctuational, grammatical, and stylistic mistakes being corrected. Professor A used "But Sandwich" technique at the end of my paper, yet that sandwich was hard to chew and swallow because the good part was only one sentence("I appreciate your efforts on this but..."), and the bad part consisted of about ten sentences, which made me feel discouraged to revise it. I felt like I was "being cast as that of someone lacking knowledge and expertise in formal and idomatic English" (p497) as a "foreign student writer"(p496). One after another, I started to lose my taste in writing for Professor A's class. To make things worse, I had to pay super-ultra attention to my grammar and punctuation rather than to my development of "ideas" and my own "voice". Toward the end of the semester, I gave up revising my papers, and naturally I didn't get a good grade.

Professor B's case: Last year I took Professor B's class. As usual, I had two big and about seven small writing assignment. I put my every effort to make my writing appear good and "smart", however, when I got my paper back, I was surprised to look at what Professor B had done on my paper: Professor didn't do anything. Professor B only left check mark to show that Professor B had read my paper. At first, I thought Professor B didn't read my paper or didn't care about whatever I wrote for Professor B's class. Sometimes I felt furious that she didn't respond anything to my paper which I spent a lot of time to come up with. One after anther, Professor B started to comment on my paper. Professor B underlined or made some comments at the end of my paper saying that "I found this very interesting", " I think you can develop this idea further. It will be good for you to research more when you are starting to put ideas for your dissertation" or "May I have a copy of this for my portfolio?"..etc. Professor B had never corrected my grammar or punctuation or suggested the right usage of English to better my writing. She didn't "treat the idiosyncratic style of the not yet perfectly educated sole in terms of error" (p492) or didn't punish me for not following "the conventions of written English" (p496). To make things better, I could pay super-ultra attention to my development of "ideas" and my own "voice" rather than to grammar and punctuation. Toward the end of semester, I gained confidence in my writing and writing "style" and I could have opportunity to "re-construct" (p497) my voice as a student writer, and naturally I did get a good grade.


Sue as an instructor of ENGL 106: In spite of knowing the advantageous way of Professor B, I unconsciously and paradoxically chose Professor A's method in teaching writing. I have stifled my students by correcting their every single grammatical mistakes. I have used "But Sandwich" which students couldn't chew and swallow. I have exactly followed the practices of Professor A because it's easy and convenient or I can't take the risk of ( or I don't have the ability to handle) my class being "dynamic, heterogeneous, and volatile" (p 501) Toward the end of the semester, as a natural result, students may lose their taste in writing just like I had experienced in Professor A's class.

Min-Zhan's Lu's "Multiculturalism"

While Lu's article makes some solid points, I was initially struck most by her examples of Stein and Dreiser, who are novelists. Creative writing and academic writing are two different beasts and the "idiosyncratic style" that's okay in creative writing isn't in academic writing. That might not always be the case, of course - Lu points to Anzaldua's "borderlands" texts which are finidng a place (if not a dominant one) in English classes, but for now, and especially for freshmen, we're clearly working towards developing a "norm" or foundational style for the students to emulate. Stein and Dreiser have the right, in a creative form, to ignore (as Steing did) or accept (as Dreiser did) editorial interference/assistance, just as their publishers have the right to accept or reject their manuscripts. In a class, however, it's different. The students are writing to accomplish a stated objective, with a given audience. In that vein, they have to accept a limitation on their creative freedoms. Which isn't a bad thing. If we don't show them "standard" writing, if we don't show them how to do it, they'll be at a disadvantage as they move through their academic careers.

While I love, personally, to read creative literature that employs differing styles, I do expect academic writing to conform to some kind of norm. If I was to pick up an issue of the Journal of American History and find an article written in a highly "idiosyncratic style," I wouldn't like it if the idiosyncracies detracted from the argument/analysis. Which is really the line that can't be crossed - the goal should be for the style to enhance, rather than distract, from the overall writing.

The use of Anzaldua brings up an interesting point, though. I've read/"read" "Borderlands" and I don't know what I'd do if I received a paper written in that half-English/half-Spanish style. Is there a "must be written in English" criteria for papers handed down by the English department for 106?

One of the things I've tried to do is allow students to develop and explore different styles in their writing, so long as they conform to certain recognized standards of academic writing. The goal, for me, is to encourage individual style while not giving the students a false impression of what's expected of them in their writing in the university as a whole.

As for Lu's "contact zone" classroom, I know I wouldn't feel comfortable at this stage in my career to employ it to freshmen in a course like 106. Lu's three goals (493) are fine, and can be judiciously employed in 106, but in a course that stresses foundational techniques, I think Lu's techniques would be too advanced. Lu admits she waits until mid-semester to introduce the multicultural approach, and she's had a heck of a lot more experience teaching comp classes than I have.

-- Mark Bousquet ...

Posting pictures to web and my own question

Sorry that this is a new blog, but the system won't let me respond to Bethany's question for some reason. All you need to do is go to Hello.com and download the program and type in your blogger.com ID and password. When the system comes up, you choose blogger bot. Then you can click on "send pictures" to access pictures from your drive (it's easiest to do this by choosing the windows program...picasa expires quickly). You can go to settings to choose which blog you'd like to post the picture to. You can also set the resolution. It's cool stuff.

My question: How do I keep my blog posts from getting archived? The Teachable Moments has no archived posts.

Alice

Can Somebody help me??

Can somebody tell me how to put up pictures up on the blog.

Thanks,
Bethany

NCTE's Position Statement-SRTOL

Here is a link to the pdf that I would like for you to read for next week. Read it in it's entirety, annotate it heavily, and think about what it means for us as teachers of Composition.

to the window

Kinneavy gives us a metaphor on p. 136 that wraps up his views on the aims of discourse, concluding that "Windows, like language, can be used expressively, persuasively, referentially, and esthetically." But are windows the only fit here? Couldn't we say that any object may be used to those ends, if we interpret it as such? If so, then the matter is one of subjectivity, and this constitutes the "affective fallacy," doesn't it? I agree that there is such a thing as the "intentional fallacy," because once a work leaves the author's desktop it needs to stand alone--but not in a vacuum. I suppose my opinion is that discourse only has the meaning one assigns to it, because language is really too incomprehensible all by itself, so these cleavages, or adverbs that describe the way language works, can be seen in ANY discourse. If a poem can inform and an expository essay can contain beautiful language, then I don't know if it's useful to categorize texts so much as it is useful to understand that any given text--to varying degrees--satisfies these descriptions.

The basic amis of discourse

Just like Samantha told us on last Thursday, I had a hard time in reading this article since it's really dense and full of the terms or words that I'm not familiar with not to mention the philosophers. Kinneavy has analyzed the diffent aims of discourse based on the schools and principles of division, and he identified himself with the school of Buhler and Jakobson. He has further elaborated the basic purposes of composition in Figure 2. The author's main arugument is that not only literary aims, but also other aims such as expressive, referential, and persuasive aims should be included in the liberal arts writing curriculum so that students can develop their thoughts and composition through harmonious and balanced combinations of those distinct four aims.

Then does introductory composition at Purdue make students exercise the basic aims of discourse through its syllabus? This question made me look at again the syllabus whether it fits into four basic aims of discouse : The first technology narrative belongs to Literary. The writing assignment (writing argumentatvie essay) belongs to Referential. Making a personal ad assignment goes to Persuasive. Online blogging definitely posit itself in Expressive.
However, I didn't realize that our syllabus are following the author's basic aims of discourse before reading the article.


P.S. What is the difference between probability and "seeming" probability on p 131?

On Kinneavy's article

Kinneavy's article is very informative to understand previous studies on the aims of discourse. He made a interesting chart to compare and contrast the different established norms on the aims of discourse from the ancient, and demonstrated how they are differenciated but at the same time, how they are mostly overlapped. It is interesting to find out how people struggle to redefine and rearrange the almost similar categories from Artistoteles, even if they all have diffent principles to divide them. The most recent category Kinneavy himself suggests is elaborated further in the second chart, which is based on the three components of a encoder, a decoder, and reality surrounding a signal. I found it interesting that his division almost parallels with a triangle serving for literary criticism consisted of author, reader, text and social or cultural background. As literary critics produce different perspectives or critical theories according to the component they focus on, Kinneavy's system also shows different purposes of composition each component presents. I cannot but think of the necessity to have a comprehensive view on a literary text by remarking overlaps or interactions of each component, when Kinneavy concluds the article by suggesting an important lessen that "no composition program can afford to neglect any of these basic aims of discourse(137)".

Kinneavy and Hartwell

In looking at the chart on 132, I wonder just how much progress has been made since Aristotle & Aquinas. Breaking language down into scientific, dialectical, rhetorical, and poetic categorizations seems to work as well as any system people have come up with since. My feeling, which remains unchanged after reading Kinneavy and Hartwell, is that trying to lock down how language (and all its components: writing, speech, discourse, whatever) works is a Holy Grail quest. I don't think we're ever going to get there - at least in terms of being able to write down rules that cover everything. I'm always a little wary when the arts go so far down the science road that they can't find their way back. So when I read "If Grammar 2 knowledge effected Grammar 1 performance, then linguists would be our best writers" (Hartwell, 216), I tend to agree. Not that I find teaching grammar to be without merit. But I do think that you don't need to know how a tv works to flip channels. You just need to know how to operate the remote control. Language is like that - there are plenty of people out there without as much formal education as me that can use language better than I can. I agree with Hartwell, too, when he talks about how one masters "print" (224) - that people learn it from a top down, pragmatic POV and not a botton up, grammar focused POV.

Grammar, Grammars, and Grammar/z/

Ok...I think this essay is just trying to further drive me up the wall of doom I began climbing back on August 16th. I fail to follow Hartwell's argument and his claims that grammar is "common sense" rather than learned. To me, grammar is adapted to, and adaptation involves learning. Hartwell cites errors and deficiencies in plurals, and claims, as I read it, that a person's grammatical ability is based on that person's "literacy." But what is literacy if not learned and adapted to? Where would the students of our students' reading ("Crossing Boundaries") this week be without proper grammar instruction? Isn't grammar the basis of learning in any foreign language?

I concur that much of grammar is indeed memorization, but that memorization must be applied to papers in order to...yes...the ugly word...conform to the standard protocols of American English. I am no composition instructor; everything I've learned has been through direct teaching experience. But I do know that my students turn in papers in which are wrought with runon sentences as well as fragments, lack of clarity in noun and verb choice, and very little grammatical cohesion, all claiming that they had never learned grammar from previous institutions. I've always explained to students that I view "grammar" as the "mathematics" of language. It is difficult and precise, changing only when theories or formulas change. Students detest it for this precision. But what would Chemistry be if we "naively assumed" that metrical and weight conversions were "common sense?" What would Calculus be without functions? What would Biology be without its standard order of KPCOFGS? Art without basic lines and shading? Music without theory?

I don't know. Maybe I'm just bull-headed and ignorant. And maybe I'm not made to teach composition. But I do know that of the students matriculating from my remedial through introductory composition classes at community colleges and four-year institutions alike, a handful have returned and thanked me for my concentration on grammar instruction, for taking the time to direct them toward perfecting their essays and resumes. I just don't get it.