Week 5 Readings

Bruffee

Brufee’s views on collaborative learning brought up some interesting points for me. I can definitely see how collaborative learning has a place in the modern classroom. I recently attended a Project Management seminar in which we talked about different generations and their particular styles of working. Gen Y, the students currently in college and entering the work force, were identified as needing the most emotional validation, but also as the best team workers. It makes sense that a generation with a heavy reliance on their peers and the ability to work well in a team or group would also be able to learn well in a collaborative setting. I can’t say it is my ideal situation in many cases, but it does make sense for some people, and the current crop of students appears to thrive in just such an environment.

In response to Brufee’s assertion that collaborative learning can be “the blind leading the blind,” I would agree with that if the students were left with absolutely no supervision. However, a professor could still have a highly collaborative class while still providing enough guidance to keep students on task and on topic. In a collaborative environment, the professor becomes a guide instead of an instructor.

Hartwell

I found the study Hartwell discussed on p. 578 particularly interesting. I would expect to see different errors in the writing of non-native speakers of English based on their native language and its similarity to English. Hartwell points out that this is not the case. It is very interesting that mastery of spoken English is so different than mastery of written English. I suppose it must be because when speaking we tend to ignore many of the conventions that we are used to putting in writing (or think we ought to put in writing). So should we try to speak more correctly, or relax our standards for writing? I’m not sure. Most people’s conversational English, while not necessarily correct, flows easily and is readily understood (not so in some cases though!). In fact, if they spoke in an entirely grammatically correct manner, it would likely seem stilted. I’m not willing to give up on standards for written grammar yet, but this did give me some food for thought.

Berlin

I was surprised by Berlin’s description of cognitive psychology and its claim that it is possible for rhetoric to be objective/neutral. In my view, rhetoric always has a persuasive element, so it would be nearly impossible for it to be objective. Most of this article seemed like common sense to me – of course we must teach students to look for the ideological elements of rhetoric – ideology is inherently a part of rhetoric.

Week 1 Readings

Parker

Parker's description of English as the child of speech and linguistics is interesting, and certainly makes it easy to remember the history he is detailing, but it seems to me that he takes it a little too far – although he only writes about this for a couple of pages, by the time he moves on the metaphor seems a little tired. However, if he is using this metaphor to convey the hostility, or at least suspicion, between departments of speech, linguistics, and English, he has certainly done that well. I believe the reason the metaphor bothers me so much is that it conveys so much negativity.

I did enjoy his history of the teaching of English. I never considered that so much of literary criticism (even of English works) was conducted in Latin. It is also interesting that poetry was considered separately from other forms of literature. He makes a good point in showing how the increase in the number of universities was a reaction against elitism and exclusiveness, and that this same reaction caused an increase in the study of modern literature and language as opposed to only the classics.

It is somewhat ironic that freshman composition, the course no English professor seems to want to teach, is what finally enabled English professors and departments to become fully entrenched in the university structure. What is perhaps least important to English professors is the very thing that enabled their continued existence. This seems like a good parallel to the metaphor of English as the ungrateful child of speech and linguistics.

Horner

Horner makes a very interesting point in relating how religion affected the development of education in Britain. However, I did find it odd that the educational institutions that were exempt from religious edicts were the first to teach in English – it seems it would be important for future clerics to learn in English, since they would be trying to reach the English people with their message and the common people would be much more likely to relate to someone who was well versed in their various dialects and colloquialisms (however, I can also easily see how an association with religion would tie education to Latin).

I have to wonder what the purpose was for women to attend a university when they were (at first) not allowed to obtain a degree. Of course learning for its own sake is an admirable pursuit, but it doesn’t seem that a lot of women would have been able to take advantage of the availability of higher education since they would be incurring cost but would not receive any kind of degree or ability to advance. Was this just a way to warehouse women (I would assume upper-class) for a few years?