Week 4 Readings

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.