August 27, 2008

Right on, Katie: the first post is always somewhat disconcerting, just like the first class of the semester gives me butterflies in my stomach. I suppose it’s much worse for incoming freshman (I know it was for me), and I hope that as a teacher, I can help students to be comfortable with and perhaps enjoy learning about (and doing) writing.

Zebroski makes an interesting point: “Composing can be seen as the intersection of context, text, self, and society. But then too composing is simultaneously the active (if partial) (re)constructing of these discursive universes of context, text, self, and society” (5). The idea of intersectionality is interesting to me because it really hones in on writing as a social practice. This allows us to see writing as the intersection of the things noted by Zebroski, and the diverse ways in which we go about making meaning. My (often messy) theory of writing goes beyond script and typing, and I think this concept of intersectionality helps to clear a few things up for me. When I attempt to answer the question “What is writing?” I find myself scrambling to fit together a seemingly endless array of answers with as much coherence as possible. So far, I’ve been able to “define” writing as a social practice that includes many different modes of representation and meaning-making, but I think I’ll have to include the idea of intersectionality now, because it points to the fluidity and connections within a theory of writing.

Durst’s argument that the first year writing course should go beyond teaching the basics of composition, but also should “provide a kind of intellectual orientation to university academics and a set of strategies, or dispositions of mind that will help prepare students for not just the writing but also the kinds of intensive, rigorous thinking, reading, speaking, and problem solving that make up a university education” (73). Since the first-year writing course, generally, is required for every student, it provides an opportunity to introduce first-year students to the kind of rhetorical “intersectionality” Zebroski discusses. The course also serves as an introduction to academic thought and activity, as mentioned by Durst, and provides the students with theory of writing that goes beyond the five-paragraph essay.

I agree with Durst’s argument that first-year writing must introduce students to an academic mindset, but I also think that the course should allow students to see the importance of these skills outside the academic world. What we, as writing teachers, are doing is teaching students how to communicate through different ways of, again, making meaning of their world.