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.

Week 2 Readings

Brereton

This article didn’t make much of an impression on me, except to note that 1) although various English departments seem to have different approaches and offerings, nobody seems to like teaching composition and 2) Professor Scott (the last one) seems really run down and tired, and I can’t blame him. The number of students to professors in this case is truly appalling. I wonder how the professors were ever able to provide adequate grading, let alone any time for students with questions. It is notable though that they seem to be designing custom courses for grad students, so that would seem to indicate that they are able to devote very, very little, if any, time to their undergrads.

Kitzhaber

The Kitzhaber article did a good job of explaining the various problems with freshman composition courses. The descriptions of various courses were enlightening, and I noticed particularly that while most of the descriptions advocated a reading component, sort of as an afterthought, one course specifically stated that reading was to be avoided because it interfered with composition. These course descriptions highlight the problems in defining the content that a composition course should cover – one of the many problems with these courses.

It is interesting that many of these courses seem to be considered almost remedial by the staff – something they don’t feel they should have to teach at all, perhaps, because the students should already come to college with the requisite skills. However, the problem is compounded by the fact that it is often taught by graduate students or new professors instead of the most experienced in the department. It is understandable why nobody wants to teach these courses, but it seems the problem will continue until the courses are made more effective by standardization, instruction by more qualified personnel, and, perhaps, more effort and background on the parts of the students themselves (although this, of course, is a “when Hell freezes over” prospect!).

Macrorie
I like the idea that children can be better writers than adults because they are telling the truth. I found the children’s writing hard to read because of the misspellings more than the grammar problems, but it is certainly more effective than the excessively wordy adult writing, and conveys a clearer message. I had never considered the idea that formal instruction in English could actually make a writer worse, but these examples do seem to show that can be the case. I really do hate the spelling errors though.