Thinking About the Iceberg

Both of Monday's readings, the Shuy and Hartwell, were quite illuminating for me. The iceberg metaphor, though it is something I had never thought about previously, it is something that I did realize in a tacit way. Hartwell's distinction between the "dumb" ways of viewing literacy and "those of us who see literacy as instead embedded in social relationships, a matter of metacognition, metalinguistic awareness and deep experiential learning" (6) was particularly illuminating for me. I was particularly struck by the idea of "metacognition" and "repair procedures." This is something that I would characterize as being "below the iceberg," and of crucial importance to any type of learning involving literacy. I'm sure that all of us have experienced this at some point. I am especially thinking about reading Theory...and I mean Theory with the big T. Although it feels, at the time, like a most horrifying experience, not understanding, I've always felt that by realizing that you are not understanding, that on some level you must be learning something. This is also a skill that, at least in my experience, I have always taken for granted. So I like the distinction that Hartwell makes between these ways of approaching literacy. I wholly agree with the above-quoted statement. I have an extremely difficult time thinking that by simply marking up essays with red pen, (which I think only serves to escalate student anxiety levels) and not finding a way to offer real avenues toward improvement for students, and harping hour after hour about comma splices is going to give a student what they've come to a freshman writing class to learn.

I have also been putting a lot of thought into Shuy's discussion of "natural learning." I find his argument for teaching writing following a more natural trajectory very persuasive, along with his point that traditionally this is taught exactly backwards: "For reasons unclear and almost incomprehensible, we have developed a tradition of teaching reading , writing and foreign language which goes in just the opposite diretion--from surface to deep, from form to function, from part to whole" (107). I think that he couldn't be more right about the fact that the way that we are formally taught these skills is exactly the opposite of how we would acquire them outside of the institution of the school or academy. This led me to think again about the Durst chapters that we read in the beginning of the semester. In Durst discussion of the students' self evaluations in chapter 3, he relates how negative the students are about their writing ability. And what does it all come down to for the students? Grammar, mechanics, usage....I find this intensely interesting. I think this has less to do with the students' actual skills as far as grammar etc. goes, and more to do with their previous experiences with writing and in courses that teach writing, from the very beginning. In my own experience, particularly before college, and even in some beginning English courses in undergrad, quite a bit of emphasis was placed upon surface phenomena and not so much on the deeper aspects of writing--formulating arguments, coherence and cohesion. There was even one time in a freshman writing class (not at Kent) that I was basically informed that an essay was "crap" (in so many words) and that I had to rewrite it or take a D or an F. I was at a loss for what else to do, because I had written it exactly how my high school English teacher had taught me, so I rethought what the essay in terms of argument, not focusing so much on the surface aspects (of course I wasn't thinking about it in those terms now, but in retrospect I see that is what was happening) and I ended up getting an A. The fact that Durst encounters this anxiety about grammar and mechanics, and most often with student essays that are not really that error ridden, tells me that they have probably only been taught in a top-to-bottom way, and deeper skills have been left unacknowledged. I see this as a sort of proof of Hartwell's argument--that this has become a tradition. Students' previous experience with the red pen have probably instilled a fear of grammar within them, and with this kind of fear I question how much attention the students themselves have been able to give to the development of their deeper skill sets, and how much time they can afford to dedicate to the argument itself when so much time seems to be wasted on trying to avoid the red pen. I think it might be a question of anxiety. No one wants to see that red pen all over the place and then sit back and wonder if there is anything at all you could ever do to fix it, especially in the cases where the teacher him or herself is hard-pressed to explain what awk or monot means and what to do to avoid it the next time.

I do not propose any way to avoid what has become a tradition, I think that we will all encounter this (probably repeatedly). I think it will be our challenge as teachers to find a way to remove some of that focus on surface level skills. It's not that I think that grammar is unimportant, but I think that it should not take precedence. I mentioned in another post, a comment to a post of Lindsay's, that maybe using portfolios as an evaluative tool and emphasizing the writing of many drafts and utilizing peer editing and one-on-one or small group conferences in class would provide an opportunity to address, yet not dwell upon, surface level errors that are habitual, both in the class and in individual students. I think that spending a small amount of time of these issues, and possible putting student anxiety to rest in so doing, would be a way to go about a more "holistic" approach to teaching writing. I don't see a good reason for harping on comma splices in a first or second draft, but in the final few weeks of class prior to portfolio submissions, a little attention might be directed to the surface issues, but for the majority of the semester it would be more important to focus on critical thinking, the development of arguments and issues of cohesion...more "big picture" writing issues.