Fulkerson
Fulkerson’s article helped me identify some of the things that have been bothering me about the way writing is taught. He classifies writing as expressive, mimetic, rhetorical and formalist. In many of the articles we have been reading, it seems that formalist writing is belittled in favor of expressive, mimetic and rhetorical. While I understand the emphasis on rhetorical writing – it is, indeed, quite important to be able to communicate accurately and effectively to your audience – I do not necessarily believe that expressive and mimetic writing are more important than formalism. To me, grammar and spelling are still important.
After reading this article, I believe the reason I feel this way is because formalist and rhetorical writing are the two forms I see as most important to technical writing, as opposed to creative writing. However, creative writing is what is usually taught in high school English classes and freshman composition classes. Since many of these articles regard how to teach or improve freshman comp classes, they naturally devalue formalist writing. While their emphasis now makes more sense to me, I still do not agree with it. Without formalism, English devolves into unstructured, no-rules drivel that can be so hard to read that it interferes with the conveyance of the message.
Hairston
I like Hairston’s description of the new paradigm for teaching writing. Stating everything clearly in a numbered list really makes it easy to understand. However, while this paradigm seems lovely, I feel quite sorry for any instructor trying to grade a paper using this. How is your average freshman comp teacher supposed to be able to, for example, adequately evaluate how a work meets the audience’s needs and the author’s intention? And how would they find the time? While this paradigm seems like a good idea in theory, I think it is impractical at best and impossible at worst in practice.
Dear Rebecca...
ReplyDeleteYou bring up a very good and real-world question: how indeed is the average freshman comp teacher supposed to evaluate how a work meets the audience's needs?
I do accept the premise that meeting the audience's needs is a valid goal. To test that the audience has been satisfied, the student could be required to provide information with their work that identifies the audience and states how the student has met their needs. The teacher could then agree...or not.
Rebecca, to assess whether my students are reaching their audience, I do exactly what Debbie states above… with a twist. I build focus groups and usability tests into my course, where students have to find (or sometimes I bring in) representative members of their target audience. Then the students must conduct usability tests and report on their findings. This is just during their process, and it gives me time to 1) challenge their preconceptions about their audience and 2) demonstrate functionality/engagement problems with their documents based on their audiences’ responses.
ReplyDeleteFor their final product, I also have them include a transmittal report (to me) with a full audience analysis (this part is much more like what Debbie suggests above). Students have to identify specific parts of their documents (phrases, tables, graphics, etc.) that address their audiences’ needs. What I’m really looking for in this document is not always whether I “agree” with the students' assessments of their audiences (that’s what the usability assignment is for) but rather whether they’re making intentional decisions about their document. Since a transmittal report is usually only one to three pages, it’s not hard for me to grade, and it REALLY helps me grade from a rhetorical standpoint.
Rebecca,
ReplyDeleteLike others I want to touch on the final point, about how Hairston's ideas would work in a FYC course (or better yet, in the five sections of comp that is the minimum load at my college). I think the only way this could be done effectively and in a manner that's repeatable year after year (without burnout) is to move a lot of the responsibility off the teacher and onto the students. One small way I'm considering doing this is to split the class into several groups which would serve as the audience for each others' papers. I would further have to delegate some of the feedback work to these groups, and frankly I think they might do well on several levels. First, I think they'd respond critically because I'd be drawing on their expertise not as academic writers (which is what most peer review demands) but simply on their perspective as an audience. The other benefit is that I absolutely believe, as many others have suggested, the best way to learn something is to teach it. The catch here is that much of this is a fiction demanding a willing suspension of disbelief. I was roundly mocked in an early class for suggesting students might have some capacity to grade each other, and while I still believe to be true, despite the mockery, I likely won't be implementing it any time soon, if ever (there are privacy issues too). So in reality we're back to the teacher as the audience, and what Dr. K criticizes as performance.