On behalf of writers in unfamiliar discourses everwhere....

David Bartholomae’s “Inventing the University” deconstructs the challenges students, particularly students he considers “basic writers,” encounter whenever they are asked to write in a university or academic setting. It’s a pretty dense article, but in essence he argues that a “central problem of academic writing” occurs when instructors ask students to write in a discourse they are unfamiliar with (610). Doing so puts students in a tricky rhetorical space because

“To speak with authority they have to speak not only in another’s voice but through another’s code; and they not only have to do this, they have to speak in the voice and through the codes of those of us with power and wisdom; and they not only have to do this, they have to do it before they know what they are doing, before they have a project to participate in, and before, at least in terms of our disciplines, they have anything to say” (622).

In other words, it’s sort of really kind of unfair. What beginning students need, Bartholomae claims, “is to extend themselves, by successive approximations,” into the discourse (614).

I have to say that reading Bartholomae’s article was illuminating as both an instructor and student. It got me thinking whether English 120 is too big a “successive approximation” for those students whose experiences with the class are less positive, and how much that may have to do with things like course material/teaching style/student maturity. It also got me thinking about my own experiences as a student, and how uneasy it makes me to have to make claims and whatnot in a discourse I have taken one class in.

Questions:

1) Does anyone else feel as though, despite already having at least one degree, that you still experience the challenges Bartholomae highlights, i.e. being required to write as an authority in a discourse you are unfamiliar with? If so, who feels like sharing coping mechanisms?

2) Bartholomae seems to be advocating for students to “bluff” and “mimic” the academic discourse until they actually get it, but doesn’t really discuss how to help students get it. What happens if/when students graduate and still don’t get how to write in their discourse, or that there is a discourse to be learned?

3) What can/should we be doing, or doing more of, in our 120 classrooms to get students to get it?

4) Still lost on the whole writing is a skill or tool?