Since this is a different forum than the classroom, and ostensibly offers a different sort of freedom in discourse, I'm going to take the opportunity to blatantly disregard two "ground rules" (or perhaps not ground rules as such since they were explicitly stated) put in place by our dear professor in class: I'm going to be hard on an author we read, and I'm going to go off on something of a tangent. I hope my irreverence for said rules won't be too harshly judged, but I've been a-itchin' to do some gripin' on this subject (this is the internet, so we're allowed to be less than grammatically perfect, right? [insert obligatory abbreviation or winky smiley here]).
My beef lies with Durst's understanding of the role of the freshman composition course. My own understanding is that this course prepares students for writing at the college level and is required for all incoming freshmen because writing is a universal requiremet of every department. What I don't like about Durst's stance, and that of many freshman comp professors, is the "expectation that students will learn to extend and complicate their writing process" (72). He later references "the requirement that students extend and develop their writing processes, making greater use of prewriting and revising" (81). He repeatedly mentions "invention techniques" and, naturally, rails against procrastination.
What bothers me about all this is that it assumes a certain "correct" way of writing that necessarily entails a beginning, middle and end to the writing process and involves a series of mechanical exercises that supposedly help the students become better writers but, to my own sensibilities, stifle creativity more than they help it. Granted, for some students, such as Rachel (88), lengthening the process and doing certain exercises helps. But for many others, such as myself, writing is a chaotic sequence which does not lend itself to neat and tidy steps along the way. I hate prewriting with a passion, and much prefer to gather my ideas in my head, read some sources, sit down at a computer and spew forth whatever enters my consciousness, developing a structure and flow as I go along and looking back to sources as necessary. I revise, in the sense that I re-read the paper after I've written it and sharpen and rearrange ideas, but I definitely don't go through the kind of concrete steps many professors seem to think are requisite to any kind of successful writing.
My point in all this is that, at least to me, the freshman composition course should be focused more on helping students develop their own system of writing instead of requiring them to use certain steps along the way which may accomplish nothing more than frustrating them with the entire concept. Presenting students with possible methods of pre-writing and revision makes sense, but assuming that if they don't embrace these ideas they have somehow failed to grasp the point of the class does not.
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5 comments:
I also write in an "unconventional" (not textbook) manner. Little pre-writing, and almost no post-editing because I have a bad habit of being unable to write setence two before sentence one is "perfect."
I agree that teaching formulaic writing style to writers is similar to teaching phonics to kids who can already read.
That said, I think we might be in the minority, and a lot of students can benefit from some basic writing style structure. Sell out, I know. But when I am retooling paragraphs and losing my organizational structure, I *sometimes* wish I started with an outline.
Teaching numerous "best practices" can help students find flexiblity and their own voice inside some basic structure of the academy.
I'm not unilaterally opposed to the idea of teaching structured exercises. What I don't like is the assumption that it's absolutely necessary. I agree with many of the students Durst references who complain that rigid structure undermines their flow (I'm not close to my course pack or I'd leave a page reference). Telling students how to do something like an outline and demanding that they turn in outlines are very different ideas.
Of course, I know many students who could stand to use more of a process simply won't out of laziness or resistance to structure. My current feeling on the matter is that they can deal with the consequences (lower grades) of their decisions. I will, however, allow that this stance may change as I get into teaching.
As Katie pointed out, I am also somewhat of an "unconventional" writer. Speaking with total honesty, I must admit that the very notion of pre-writing used to drive me crazy. I do, however, think it is important to teach various techniques for prewriting at the freshman level.
Coming out of high school, I had virtually no useful tools for writing. I learned the five paragraph structure for essays and nothing else. I wonder now, if this is why I was so incredibly resistant to learning different techniques and ways of approaching prewriting. Maybe I thought I already knew all there was to know, considering that was the way that my teachers in high school seemed to approach it. I think for the students who have been led to believe in high school that the five paragraph structure is all there is, learning new ways to approach prewriting and structuring their essays is particularly beneficial.
Granted, I am still an unconventional writer on some level, but I do utilize some techniques that I learned way back when in undergrad as a means to get me going. Many things, like map clustering, that cater to the visual learner are not any more beneficial to me than simply brainstorming or writing lists, and actually tend to distract me, but I think that has to do with the type of learner I am. Everyone is different. This is the crux of my point, I think that students should be exposed to many different methods of prewriting in the hope that they will give each a try. In the best case scenario, they will find strategies that work for them and will use them. I think it doubtful that everyone uses every technique all of the time, or finds them all even marginally useful. I guess what I mean is, "it can't hurt to try." A student will never know if a technique will be helpful if they never try it. Some strategies will probably not be helpful, but it's worth trying all of them to find out which techniques will be useful for their particular style of learning. An introductory college writing class is the perfect environment for beginning this type of experimentation, and by exposing students to many different ways of prewriting, the teacher raises the probability of their students finding techniques that do work for them and that they will utilize in the future.
I agree, Anita, that it is a good idea to teach a variety of (pre)writing techniques to our students. While it is dependent on what I am writing, I do have a writing process that helps me to work through (most) problems I encounter along the way. We all have a writing process, whether it is strict and disciplined or more of a free-wheeling hippy that freewrites until enlightenment, our processes are diverse. Again, this points to the importance of teaching our students a variety of ways to go about writing. For example, the student handbook we received discusses the writing process on pages 45-52. If we look a few pages earlier, the question, "What is good academic writing?", is discussed. The answer given on page 39 is that "there is no generic, one-size-fits-all-model." Again, this emphasizes the importance of a context-based writing process that fits the student, the assignment, the audience, the rhetorical task at hand, etc. Therefore, I think it is important to assess the entire writing process undertaken by each student over the course of a semester: how they perform research, brainstorming, discuss the critical context, perform communicative and rhetorical tasks, etc. Whether each student turns in a web diagram is not the point, but rather, the importance lies in the entire process of critical thinking, pre-re-writing, learning to hone their writing skills in a variety of modes, and making effective rhetorical choices in order to communicate.
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