Brand (706-714)

Brand (706-714)

In this essay, Brand discusses the presence of emotion in the writing process.  She states that most writers believe that emotions motivate writing, however, they also believe that emotions do not have much of a role in composing a piece or in the revision of that piece.  Brand, however, believes that emotion must be considered during the composition of a piece of writing.  She says that while critical thinking results in outlines, summaries, deciding what belongs and what doesn’t, etc., it “stops too soon and leaves out too much” (Brand 707).

Brand discusses a cognitive model of writing and the limits of such a model.  She says that composition research needs to look at how much data was lost, what it was, and where it was.  This process would reveal, according to Brand, “imagistic and free associative thinking and connotative commentary” (Brand 709).  Brand believes that this information is necessary to understand the mental process that is behind writing.  There are a few other problems with the model that Brand addresses.  She states that the model suggests that it is possible to distinguish which writers are good and which are weak by looking at their loyalty to the model.   She also states that the model assumes motivation when there is none and that there are not different styles of writing, but rather that one is better than another.  This is not actually true.

In addition to these problems of the cognitive model of writing, Brand also points out the benefits of studying how the emotions affect writing.  She states that by looking at how the emotions effect writing, it may be possible to help people understand why some problems occur during writing and how to solve them.  In addition to this, she also believes that research about “how personality influences the way writers function” (Brand 711) is also important and that it is the future of composition research.  Researching the “affective and cognitive styles through which their writing occurs” is also important to composition research, according to Brand.  This research will help researchers determine why some people are successive in activities related to language while others are not.  While it is known that “effective traits and personality overlap conceptually and empirically” (Brand 711), it was only recently discovered at the time this essay was written that personality had an influence on writing style.  Brand believes that it is important to understand how emotion and cognition work together to form writing.

Bizzell v. Flower/Hayes

The relationship between thought and language is where Patricia Bizzell starts in her article “Cognition, Convention, and Certainty: What We Need to Know About Writing.” While composition specialists may agree about certain fundamentals regarding the development of thought and language, there is a distinct split when it comes to deciding what part is relevant to composition studies (480). Bizzell uses Flower and Hayes’ inner-directed model of the composition process, which is more concerned about “the structure of language-learning and thinking processes in their earliest state, prior to social influence,” and contrasts/supplements it with the outer-directed model, which is “more interested in the social processes whereby language-learning and thinking capacities are shaped and used in particular communities” (480).

Once she expands upon the primary differences between the inner- and outer-directed models, Bizzell moves onto an explanation of how the two could possibly work together, particularly in the planning and translating stages of Flower and Hayes’ model. Citing Vygotsky’s work, Bizzell contends that planning and translating “should not” be separated, and further that “we should understand them as conditioned by social context” (487). Turning to the work of sociolinguistics, she next cautions composition specialists to avoid the “bottom-to-top” fallacy, or “the notion that a writer first finds meaning, then put it into words, then organizes the words into sentences, sentences into paragraphs, etc.,” and consider instead that it is the discourse that gives meaning to the words (487). In acknowledging the role of a contextually situated discourse, and its corresponding interpretive community, as an integral part of the writing process “a whole range of possibilities for making meaning” emerge (487).

Bizzell’s larger critique of inner-directed composition models appears towards the end of the article. She claims that the kind of scientific research Flower and Hayes are so famous for cannot “possess the kind of authoritative certainty” they are searching for because “we cannot formulate universal rules for context-bound activities” (494). Even though inner-directed models can appeal to instructors for various reasons, they ultimately lead instructors away from questioning the political and ethical implications of the job. Discourse analysis would help to “foster responsible inspection” of the “hidden curriculum” in the composition classroom, and ideally lead to students having a “conscious commitment” to world views instead of “unconsciously conforming” (496).

While Bizzell appears at the outset of the article to not want to completely tear apart the Flower and Hayes model, by the end she is making it clear that this model “cannot alone give us a complete picture of the [writing] process” (491). It’s pretty clear she favors an outer-directed model, particularly when it comes to thinking about those some would consider “poor writers.” Inner-directed model composition specialists would consider a student who has difficulties writing or using the language to have a cognitive deficiency, whereas outer-directed thinkers would believe the same to student to simply be unfamiliar with the discourse (488, 489). I find myself leaning more towards Bizzell’s side in this debate if only because some of the underlying assumptions made by Flower and Hayes make me uncomfortable.

Flower/Hayes and Discovery

In their article "The Cognition of Discovery: Defining a Rhetorical Problem," Flower and Hayes explain the methods of a study they conducted. They define the term discovery by stating, "writers don't find meanings, they make them" (467). This is an important distinction that seems to typically be misunderstood by many students. After giving the writers an assignment, the participants were "asked to compose out loud into a tape recorder as he or she worked" (469). The two main groups  being studied were categorized as "novice" and "expert" writers. However, throughout the article, they were referred to as "good" and "poor" writers. At the end of the article, Flower and Hayes explain, "If we can teach students to explore and define their own problems, even within the constraints of an assignment, we can help them to create inspiration instead of wait for it" (477). I wonder how I can help encourage this perspective in my students.

After I assign a paper to my students, I often wonder how they will get started. How do they select a topic? This is where finding meanings versus making meanings becomes relevant. Each students needs to decide what would make an important topic for their paper. How should we be encouraging them at this point?

When starting a new unit, I initially spend some time in class going through the assignment sheet and grading rubric. At that time, I hope the students begin to understand the "rhetorical situation." After that, I sometimes ask the students to participate in short brainstorming sessions. However, I think these sessions often make it seem like a topic can be found and selected from a list without specific reasons. Maybe I should add a step to the brainstorming process that asks students to reflect on the importance behind some of their options.

Then, once the students start writing, we need to consider how they view their purpose. Throughout the writing process, the reason for writing the paper should be understood by the students. In their study, Flower and Hayes viewed some major differences between the "good" and "poor" writers. For example, the good writers seemed to consider audience while the poor writers "seemed tied to their topic" (473). Although the audience is mentioned when the assignment is introduced, why does it get pushed aside when novice writers start writing?

Additionally, Flower and Hayes explain that the writers' observed purpose impacts their own voices as writers and the meaning they create. Overall, we need to be conscious of the differences with our own students who fall into the "novice" category in the article and attempt to encourage further exploration of their own writing.

Shaughnessy

"Introduction to Errors and Expectations" 

Mina P. Shaughnessy

Pages 387-396

In this introduction to her 1977 text Errors and Expectations, Mina Shaughnessy describes the learning struggles of students who are often identified as needing remedial work due to the level of error (grammatical, syntactical, and structural), in their work. To Shaughnessy, these students are not beyond learning, or uneducable, but are beginner writers who commit errors simply “because they are beginners” (390). In other words, this particular category of students is unprepared, unfamiliar with academia, and confused how to use written language. In order to enable students to write with less errors, Shaughnessy proposes that teachers should resolve to understand why students are making the kind of errors that they are in order to assist them with their development as a writer. Additionally, writing problems should be molded to the needs of a particular college’s student population, and not as an answer to “learning problems” (391).

In her discussion of error, she observes that BW (basic writing) students are haunted by an awareness of their errors while they’re writing. Shaughnessy’s insight that BW students equate “ ‘good writing’ ” to “ ‘correct writing’ ” (392) is still true today. My students that identify themselves as poor writers are always more concerned with their grammar and spelling rather than the content of their paper. Out of a paper worth 125 points, I make grammar and spelling worth 15 points. I stress that I’m more concerned with the content and professional presentation of their paper, rather than grammatical and spelling errors. Nevertheless, some students still confess their anxieties about their errors during conferences.

However, perhaps they still do this because they are aware of what Shaughnessy identifies as “the economics of energy in the writing situation” (394). In the relationship between audience and writer, each party wants to dedicate as little energy as possible to the other. While with using verbal language we can utilize gestures, facial expressions and more to get our point(s) across, written language is one-dimensional. What a reader reads on the page is all the writer can say at that moment.  A reader’s attention is distracted when encountering errors, as “they demand energy without giving any return in meaning” (395).

As Shaughnessy notes, it’s easy for instructors to say that errors don’t matter in the end because language structures are arbitrary in nature (392). However, this isn’t true--errors do matter, because we use the presence of errors as a meter for judging the quality of writing. Shaughnessy makes an excellent point when she notes that students who are beginning writers have more obstacles to overcome than more advanced and prepared students(395).  Additionally, students need to write without errors in order to represent themselves as intelligent and intellectually developed individuals to others, including future employers. These errors are not just a problem for the classroom, but also beyond the classroom. 

Lester Faigley

Lester Faigley’s 1986 article “Competing Theories of Process:  A Critique and a Proposal” discusses three competing views on writing as a process:  the expressive, cognitive, and social.  Faigley offers what he sees as a “synthesis” of these three views:  a historical view.  Understanding the history of the three perspectives would allow for integration and reinterpretation of the competing theories; writing processes would not be seen as “psychic states, cognitive routines, or neutral social relationships” but as “historically dynamic” (Faigley 662). 

I will focus my discussion on the social view.  The social view sometimes recognizes historical context, but not necessarily all the time.  For instance, “Raymond Williams observes that the term community has been used to refer to existing social relationships or possible alternative social relationships, but that it is always used positively, that there is no opposing term” (Faigley 663).  This offers a rather misleading picture of what a community might entail.  Historically, communities have oppressed groups of people with written documents.   Foucault has pointed out how the “exercise of power” is often what is not discussed, and the social view, according to Faigley, has neglected to confront the invisible or taboo topics within a community. 

Within the community of the university classroom, I feel that I have, in some ways, reinforced certain ideologies by telling my students topics they are not allowed to write about.  When it comes to the commentary unit, I have outlawed the topics of same-sex marriage, abortion, lowering the drinking age, and legalizing marijuana  My reasons for “topic outlaw” have very much to do with my own biases.  Essentially, what I am doing by outlawing these topics is telling my students that within the classroom community, students are not allowed to discuss topics the instructor feels passionately about (I would not be happy, for instance, reading a paper about how discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation is ever ok), deems to be unworthy of discussion (I really don’t think whether or not an 18-year-old can go to a bar is worth talking about), or is uncomfortable discussing with students (I do not want to hear about how much Johnny loves marijuana).  I am therefore reinforcing some sort of teacher-student hierarchy (the teacher’s passions dictate what cannot be spoken and the students must obey). 

I can’t help but notice how at least 3 of the 4 topics I have listed (perhaps not the lowering of the drinking age?) are topics that are commonly discussed in today’s cultural climate:  This past November, abortion was a hot topic, Minnesota voted against banning same-sex marriage, and Colorado and Washington voted to make recreational use of marijuana legal. I want my students to understand that writing takes place within a specific context, but I am denying my students their voices in the context we currently live in.  

Bazerman

Bazerman argues that any investigation into writing requires a interdisciplinary approach, including such fields as sociology, philosophy, history, psychology, linguistics. Such a inclusive approach contextualizes writing within the larger framework of meanings in which the writing serves as significant activity. Scientific writing does not simply happen, i.e. the recording of facts; rather it is a rhetorical accomplishment that contributes to knowledge.

Bazerman wants to know what a text does, how it does it, and where it does it. To do so, he examines the rhetoric of genre, specifically the experimental report which has "developed as a favored solution of the problem of how to present empirical experience as more than brute fact, as a mediated statement of inquiry and knowledge" (504). That is, the experimental report has achieved institutional force because it has addressed successfully the rhetorical problems that scientists confront. However, Bazerman notes that genres are not panacea that students can follow slavishly; rather, students "must understand and rethink the rhetorical choices embedded in each generic habit to master the genre" (8). Students must understand how writing works; as Bazerman states, "Writing is choice making, the evaluation of options" (507). The more students understand, the more they will be able to control their writing and make intelligently persuasive choices. They become better writers.

The problem, I think is convincing future scientists, engineers, etc. to think of themselves as writers and communicators. Ostensibly, this is why we have Writing in the Sciences. We can help them develop a praxis of rhetorical activity. As Bazerman points out in a later chapter, they do not need to know everything about rhetoric; they just need to know enough to know when they might need help with their writing.

Britton, et. al. (461-466)

Britton, et. al. (461-466)

This essay talks about “shaping at the point of utterance” (Britton, et. al. 461).  The authors believe that having a better understanding of “how a writer shapes at the point of utterance” (461) will lead to a greater understanding of invention.  During speech, we shape sentences as we are speaking them.  We start a sentence, not necessarily knowing where it is going to go but hoping to reach closure eventually.  Occasionally, we pause and think (structure) in the middle of a sentence, uttering “um” or “ah” while we are thinking and structuring.  Another observation made by the authors is that many times a student will come in with a problem and while they are talking to us about it they find the solution by themselves just because they were able to talk about it out loud with someone.  When a writer writes words on a page, it becomes a stimulus to write further, but not to rewrite or revise.

The authors provide some of the views of Barrett Mandel.  According to the authors, Mandel states that he has three steps that occur in his personal writing process.  Those three steps are: 1) having an idea of something to write about; 2) writing anything; 3) look at what is written, judge it, and edit it.  The first step, according to Mandel comes before writing.  It “establishes a frame of mind in which the writing is likely to occur” (463).  Discoveries are made through writing itself.  Britton, et. al. state that when we write, what is written is in part already shaped by how we perceive our surroundings and based on our own experiences.  Perl and Egendorf, according to the authors of the essay, state that when they are observed writing students appear to write “by shuttling back and forth from their sense of what they wanted to say to the words on the page and back to address what is available to them inwardly” (464).  Now that I think about it, it seems that is true in my own classroom.  When I observe my students writing, I can see the pauses and realize they are considering the words they know, what they have written on the page, and what they are trying to say.

The authors also talk about a “presetting mechanism” (465) that can be set up and that, once it is set up, affects the writing as the writer keeps writing.  This mechanism may help a writer find his or her voice when writing a particular piece.

A Century of Confusion

Frank D' Angelo

"Nineteenth Century Forms/Modes of Discourse: A Critical Inquiry"

p. 347-357

(In case you haven't already, check out Vicki’s response to D’Angelo. 

In this article, D’Angelo argues that composition teachers should not only become familiar with the influence (and problems), of nineteenth century ideas on current composition theory, but also to consider alternative approaches to teaching writing, as the “nineteenth-century forms/modes of discourse ought to be discarded[…] because they confuse forms of discourse with modes of discourse”(348). Additionally, D’Angelo also argues that the categories of narration and description are not equal to exposition and argumentation, contrary to what nineteenth century theorists suggest (352). Lastly, he points out that this particular era of composition studies was highly influenced by what are now considered outdated psychology theories (351).

With these points in mind, D’Angelo’s criticism of these four categories is justified, and necessary. It doesn’t make any sense that writing classes often rely on these categories, and I highly doubt that doing things out of “tradition” can be such a reliable strategy, especially if every decade contains some sort of haunting literacy crisis. Doing things because “we’ve always done it that way” isn’t the most effective or innovative way of solving matters.

I found D’Angelo’s discussion of the recent developments in psychology to be really interesting, as it presents several possibilities for changing the way we teach writing. (Additionally, I also became aware of how little I know about educational psychology.) He explains that knowledge is stored in the memory in “schemas”, which are “a mental framework into which new facts are fitted” (354). I like thinking of the brain as something that can expand--the four categories can be arbitrary, and that doesn’t match how the brain works, as recent psychology theory suggests. I also thought it was interesting to learn that as we learn new things, our brain will actually morph “the knowledge structure to account for the experience”(355). That means that we have so many possibilities for how to teach writing!  

However, I’m not exactly sure how we would change the way we teach writing. We rely on nineteenth century discourse because we know it, we’re comfortable with it, and justifying change to other audiences (that provide funding), can be difficult. I agree with D’Angelo that doing more reading and historical work in composition studies would be useful for attaining a better understanding of the nature of contemporary composition theory and teaching. 

Joseph Harris (748-758)

The Idea of Community in the Study of Writing (748-758)

Joseph Harris

Harris identifies a common concern with how we teach writing as a community, and how we have various communities within our lives.  When we look at the academic community, Harris describes this need, sometimes, to assimilate students toward one community of writing and language.  Harris proves that we should think about students adding another discourse community or writing in the academia instead of trying to replace the students “common” discourse with a “privileged” one (752).  A key factor to consider is that “We write not as isolated individuals but as members of communities whose beliefs, concerns, and practices both instigate and constrain, at least in part, the sorts of things we can say” (749).  Even how we teach, as individuals within a community, we are influenced by our own experiences and communities of discourse from previous schools, professors, work environments, etc.  What we bring as instructors to the classroom varies from our own experiences, whereas, what the student brings to the class depends on his or her own experiences in the academic atmosphere.  I think this concept is harder to accept as a teacher when we have many expectations and rules to follow (more so in the secondary settings than the college setting) or standards to meet.  Can we intermix what we are required to teach and students’ own discourses from various communities?  I think this is a common struggle for most teachers, and the students feel disempowered when their own writing does not fall as accepted into the “academic community.”

Harris does bring up the point that even if we look at an “academic” discourse versus a “common” one, students are learning those aspects of the “common” discourse while in school (for some part) that we must realize that these languages or discourses are already “academic” (755).  We must consider in all discourses and communities, that we are still a community of teachers, students, learners, etc.  Before teaching study of writing, we must understand that we are not simply writing as individuals or communities, but “Rather, one is always simultaneously a part of several discourses, several communities, is always already committed to a number of conflicting beliefs and practices” (755).  To conclude Harris’ thoughts about communities in discourses, we can think about how we do not need consensus.  He states that “Matters of accident, necessity, and convenience hold groups together as well” and that changes or struggles are common activities in discourses (756).  Therefore, we need to work together to allow additions to discourse communities, and not the replacement of an individual’s beliefs. 

Bartholomae, week 7

In “Inventing the University,” David Bartholomae discusses how students are required to write in the language of the university before they really know how to do so.  Many students end up imagining their audience as apprentices, offering words of wisdom as opposed to engaging the academic audience in a scholarly discussion.  Bartholomae identifies the central problem of academic writing that many assignments fail to recognize:  “A student must assume the right of speaking to someone who knows more about baseball or ‘To His coy Mistress’ than the student does, a reader for whom the general commonplace and readily available utterances about a subject are inadequate” (610). 

Bartholomae analyzed many pieces of student writing and came to the conclusion that the best writers are those who are able to imagine privilege, imagine that they know as much as or more about a subject than the audience.  Students who do not imagine this privilege will often write “safe” essays that are perfectly grammatically correct but are rather boring and lack depth and analysis.  Students who are able to imagine the privilege may produce “sentences that fall apart not because the writer lacked the necessary syntax to glue the pieces together but because he lacked the full statement within which these key words were already operating” (625).  These students do not fully understand the discourse they are attempting to speak within (and are thus “faking it,” as Gee might say).  Bartholomae states that the student with the crumbling sentences is actually more prepared to enter scholarly conversation than is the student who sticks to writing safe, grammatically correct essays.  I cannot fully agree with Bartholomae’s statement here. 

I have seen both the safe paper and the daring-but-crumbling paper before, and I had the most difficulty trying to wrap my head around how to respond to the latter. The safe paper needed to push ideas further, but the crumpling paper needed to pull back and untangle ideas.  There were many sentences in the crumbling paper that I did not know how to interpret at all—the meaning was completely lost.  When discussing the ideas presented in both papers, therefore, I could at least ask pointed questions to the writer of the safe paper.  The questions posed to the writer of the crumbling paper, however, could be summed up as “What are you saying?”  The safe paper had a base to build off; the crumbling paper needed to be torn down altogether. 

I am of the mindset that the number one goal in writing is to clearly communicate ideas—as Bartholomae points out, the code is more important than the intention (622).  Although the student with the crumbling paper may in fact have the better intention—to participate in the discourse—the code ends up in worse condition than the student with the less-noble, playing-it-safe intentions. 

Bartholomae states that it would be more difficult to convince the safe student to step out of his or her comfort zone than it would be to convince the daring-but-crumbling paper writer “to continue what he [or she] has already begun” (627).  I want to briefly discuss how Bartholomae understands “easy” and “difficult.”  I do agree that the student with the crumbling paper may be more motivated and willing to work harder than the student with the safe paper, and therefore it may be “easier” to convince him or her to do something.  However, I do not think that the student with the crumbling paper has an easier task set before them (and more motivation is not such a blessing if the given task is also more difficult).  I do not think you would want to convince the daring student to continue on the same path at all, as Barholomae states you should.  On the contrary, I think it would be better to convince such a student to go backwards on the path and perhaps get a map (i.e., understand the discourse within which certain words operate) before starting the journey.  The safe student, on the other hand, has no such backtracking and, I feel, and easier task set before them.