Basic Writing

Shaughnessy, Mina P.  “Diving In: An Introduction to Basic Writing.” CCC 27 (1976): 234-39. Villanueva 311-18.

Bartholomae, David. “Inventing the University.” Villanueva 623-54.

Goen-Salter, Sugie. “Critiquing the Need to Eliminate Remediation: Lessons from San Francisco State.” Journal of Basic Writing 27.2 (2008): 81-105.  

Glau, Gregory R. “Stretch at 10: A Progress Report on Arizona State University's Stretch Program.” Journal of Basic Writing 26.2 (2007): 30-48.

Rose, Mike. “The Language of Exclusion: Writing Instruction at the University.” Villanueva 547-70.

Rose, Mike. “Narrowing the Mind and Page: Remedial Writers and Cognitive Reductionism.” Villanueva 345-86.

Zwagerman, Sean. “The Scarlet P: Plagiarism, Panopticism, and the Rhetoric of Academic Integrity.” CCC 59.4 (2008): 676-710.

I found the reading for this week very slow going, as every few paragraphs, I found myself staring off into space, considering my own pedagogical practices. The more theoretical reading selection, particularly Bartholomae's, Rose's, and Zwagerman's, especially prompted this interrupted attention. This introspection came with baggage: there's nothing like guilt about all the things I may be doing wrong, or not doing, or haven't considered to distract me from the many things I should be doing, like reading the assigned articles.

Finally, I found a quote to quash that guilt, but unfortunately didn't find it until the penultimate article I read: Glau's "Stretch at 10." He cites Shaughnessy's comforting observation about basic writers that "they are beginners and must, like all beginners, learn by making mistakes" (qtd in Glau 32). Though in my classroom, I am an instructor and not a student, the lesson holds true. I will learn by making mistakes. That thought brings with it a different flavor of guilt though, predicated on the idea that my mistakes can have major consequences for the students who expect to learn from me. My knee-jerk reaction to this guilt is to remember that I am not responsible for a student's education; students are responsible for their own educations. I am however responsible for creating a space in which that education can happen, for pointing in particular directions, for encouraging critical thought, for making them comfortable enough to make their own mistakes. In a student-centered classroom, I don't have to worry about always having the "right" thing to say. I do have to worry, though, about not making the kinds of assumptions that Rose, Bartholomae, Shaughnessy, Zwagerman, and Goen-Salter critique.

But then, in the midst of this worry, I worry that I am not being as critical as I ask my students to be. On the one hand, I aim to be a receptive reader, willing to entertain new, unfamiliar, or even unpalatable ideas. On the other hand, I can't just sponge up everything every composition scholar has to say. That just leads to, well, leaking, likely in a confusing and unattractive manner. How then to make sense of so much information? How to wade through it and come out with a clear sense of what rings true, what is useful, what overextends or undertheorizes or oversimplifies?

In considering this question of missing criteria, I found Rose's survey of cognitive theories highly elucidating. I have a passing familiarity with three of the four cognitive theories and approaches he critiques (the exception being field dependence-independence), although not entirely from their connections to comp theory. Thinking back over my various encounters with cognitive theories, I realized that I tended to accept them, often uncritically and wholly admiringly. Ong's work in orality-literacy in particular stood out as a theory that I found mind-bending and persuasive and explanatory and shockingly predictive. (In contrast, hemisphericity always seemed a little too neat for me but perhaps that arises from my distaste for labels that include the term "brained.") Despite my prior positive assessment of Ong and Piaget, Rose's detailed critique swayed me. To some extent, my sense of being but a barometer of whatever I'm currently reading was mollified by Rose's major argument that it is not necessarily these theories that are problematic, but rather their applications to comp theory. I love the idea of unifying fields through transdisciplinary research, but completely accept the need to exercise great caution when borrowing terminology or generalizing conclusions.

Given this perhaps overwrought background, I chose to use this response space to track attempts at being critical of what I was tempted to merely accept from others of this week's readings. I'll start with Bartholomae. The concept of "inventing the university" holds great appeal for me, as it jibes with my own experiences as student and writer. Certainly, arriving at grad school and delving far more deeply into academic discourse than ever before has been as much an education in topoi as in anything else. The role of commonplaces and the idea of students having to learn particular discourses also fits with my own conviction that genres are an indispensable way to talk about, teach, and learn writing. The very term "writing" is so broad as to be pedagogically useless without reference to particular disciplines or genres. My efforts at critically considering Bartholomae did lead me to one concern, though, based on the way in which he recommends embracing the act of inventing the university. This recommendation would have us recodify certain ways of thinking and talking that are traditional and insular. Such reification of modes of writing precludes critical pedagogies that aim to shake at the foundations of "how it's meant to be done." (I'm thinking especially of Anzaldua here.)

On to Zwagerman's discussion of plagiarism, in which he questions the current discourse about plagiarism that constantly reinstitutes a system that encourages plagiarism even as it laments the plagiarism's apparently rampant increase. His attention to the language used to discuss plagiarism is incisive and revealing. Since when are students infectious disease carriers? Similarly, his connection of policies meant to discourage academic dishonesty to policies commonly found in punitive institutional spaces gives life to a tiny embryo of discontent I've been carrying around for a while about sites like turnitin.com. In short, I agree that the ever-escalating measures to detect and combat plagiarism don't create the trusting learning environments we all yearn for. However, Zwagerman's own analysis of the antagonistic evaluation-obsessed system that makes dishonesty a good bet leaves me wondering how to make change from the ground up. Certainly, the suggestions to get students invested and to create process-focused assignments make clear, practical sense. What about the bigger picture though? What does a world without grades or grade obsession even look like? Certainly, this isn't meant to be a critique of Zwagerman's article; he does a phenomenal job of exposing the current system's flaws and finding little cracks between those flaws where things can be done differently, and hopefully better. I'm still left unsettled by the article, however, as it so deftly underscores the seemingly irreconcilable tension between the university as a place of learning and education and the university as the bestower of credentials for success in a capitalistic society.

As a whole, these readings draw attention to large-scale, systemic issues rooted in the discrepancies between different visions of the goals of the university and of composition instruction. While discord is often the currency of public life, these discrepancies have huge consequences for the thousands of students passing through composition courses, often without any awareness that these courses are anything but universally supported and consistent in content and form. That's all--I have no take-home message about this observation, other than, maybe where we are right now is not in fact the best place to be.

Comp Studies Origins

Readings
Hill, Adam Sherman. "An Answer to the Cry for More English." 1896
Phelps, Louis Whetherbee. "The Domain of Composition." 1986
Nystrand, Martin, Stuart Greene, and Jefrey Wiemelt. "Where did Composition Studies Come from?: An Intellectual History." 1993
Brereton, John C. "Introduction." The Origins of Composition Studies in the American College. 1995
Yancey, Kathleen Blake. "Made Not Only in Words: Composition in a New Key." 2004
Juzwik, Mary M., Svjetlana Curcic, Kimberly Wolbers, et al. "Writing Into the 21st Century: An Overview of Research on Writing, 1999-2004." 2006

Response(s)
I arranged the above references in chronological order to get a better sense of how the conversation about composition has shifted over time. This organization seemed particularly appropriate for a batch of readings largely concerned with providing historical, social, and intellectual contexts for composition, or some aspect of it, at any given moment in time.

Hill's "An Answer to the Cry for More English" is both the most historical and the least historically inclined of the readings. While he does begin by looking to past deficits in writing and elocution instruction, Hill focuses far more on current efforts to address current deficits, specifically Harvard's use of a written entrance exam. required sophomore writing course, and other strategies for elevating the role of writing in higher education. Because Harvard is trying so hard, Hill argues, students' inability to write clearly and correctly must be the fault of their previous schooling. I expected to be off-put by Hill's prescriptivist tendencies, and so was surprised at how convincing I found his description of correct and stylistic writing as "that without which knowledge is but sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal" (46). The question for me then becomes, what knowledge can writing instructors use to show students how to make a symphony rather than cacophony?

In the introduction to The Origins of Composition Studies in the American College, John Brereton mentions, almost in passing, that students were frightened of Hill's curriculum and bored by alternatives such as theme writing. In a lengthy overview of the historical changes undergone by composition between 1870 and 1945, perhaps its not surprising that this point about student reactions gets but a few lines. However, the brevity of that description--and its contrast to Hill's glowing praise of his own program--did draw my attention to the fact that not only Origins, but also the majority of the other readings, fail completely to tell us anything about student involvement with or reactions to the various theories and views of composition.

For a few of the readings, the elision of student response makes sense. Phelps' concerns are highly theoretical and take the classroom as the starting point, rather than the ultimate goal. In mapping out the conceptual center and boundaries of composition, Phelps makes sense of how people studying everything from scientific journal articles to Kindergarten games to laptop case decorations can all claim to be working within the same field. Although I get this general drift of Phelps' argument, it is the reading I had the most trouble making sense of and connecting to previous knowledge and other readings. To some extent, I think the reading dates itself by its heavily theoretical bent and casual use of complex ideas, such as "written discourse as interaction" (184). In the end, I'm not sure what to walk away with from this reading, other than a sense that it's ok as a comp researcher to stray into other fields. Ultimately, how does or should this discussion of composition inform my understanding of how people write and how we talk about how people write? Ironically, though, I do get the sense that this reading could be the most fruitful ground for considering potential dissertation topics, which makes me want to discuss it the most out of the Comp Studies Origins readings.

Then again, the Nystrand, et al. reading is peppered with stars noting points that relate to my interest in genre theory and the use of genre to teach writing. This semi-revisionist history of composition actually felt very not-new. To a large extent, I felt like many of the connections they draw between composition and broader intellectual movements were already intimated or explicitly discussed by Berlin in Rhetoric and Reality. Then again, perhaps their view of intellectual history simply maps so naturally onto the familiar history of 20th century rhet-comp's division into epistemological camps that I just thought I had read it before. At any rate, the article provides one of the most succinct and clear explanations of dialogism that I've ever read. I thought I understood the concept, but now I understand it better. I think. In particular, also, the contrasting of formalism and structuralism, along with the tracing of unspoken similarities between various versions of them, was quite helpful for understanding how we have moved so far from current-traditional writing instruction (at least in theoretical discussions).

Although Juzwik, et al's study came chronologically after Yancey's CCCC address, I'll save Yancey for last. I'm very glad to have read this study because it mirrors to some extent a project I'm working on in rhetoric of science with Denise. For that project, we've been scouring journals to find articles on rhetoric of science and have been coding them (somewhat haphazardly) as we go. Next comes the paring down stage and refinement of categories, a more formalized coding process, and then the writing of a literature review. While I've read tons of lit reviews in my time as a grad student, none previously has taken the form of the research report. While I'm not sure we'll be writing a traditional research article with all the methodology bells and whistles, I do appreciate reading a lit review that also surveys a broad and amorphous field and doesn't have the word literature in the title. I'm also feeling inspired by their methodology coding categories and might borrow some of them that map well onto the rhetoric of science research.

So. That brings us to Yancey. With whom I take issue. And then feel guilty for taking issue. And then get mad about feeling guilty. If I don't follow her into the realms of multimedia and circulation, I am old-school and unable to let go of unfashionable and intenable views of what it means to be a writer. If I don't follow, I risk becoming outmoded. If I don't follow, I'm out of touch and will never truly connect with my students. Yancey seems to have a built-in defense against anything I might say. Yet, it's not that simple. Why should I rush into the new and shiny plaything of multimedia? If I do, I have to forget what I know and start from scratch. If I do, how do my students learn about printed text and making those work? What's wrong with taking things slowly? Also, on a final note, isn't it a bit presumptuous to say that all of our students are so savvy with multimedia that we can just tell them "go"?