Moran's overview of the impact the computer and technology had on writing in "Technology and the Teaching of Writing" was pretty fair in showing the negatives and positives of the relationship between technology and writing.
For one, the whole aspect of the application of word processing to writing provided further insight to the endless debate of the difference between writing on the computer and writing on paper first. Does writing in say, Microsoft word, hinder writing? Moran tried to find a suitable summary for this issue and came up with:
We found that students might or might not be revising more online than they had on paper; that writers might be having difficulty seeing their text whole, might be spending less time planning before they wrote, and might be helped or hindered by spell checkers and grammar checkers (Moran 207)
As Moran continues on, he notes that because essentially, writers WRITE differently. There are so many different things that goes into everyone's writing process, that it seems impossible to come up with definitive proof on either side.
I also liked his idea that all writers can, to a degree, control their writing environment by manipulating the program they are working with (208). By say, turning off auto correct functions that would other wise drive us crazy, we are creating an environment where words can flow freely unto the page. And for someone like me, who is distracted easily by the terrible inconsistency of my handwriting, writing in a word program is a welcomed change, because it is one less thing I have to worry about as I write.
As several authors noted, we are living in a technological-multimedia driven world, and there is a "growing percentage of students who believe their ability to communicate using new media will be critical to their futures" (Faigley, 179). I can really see this happening, especially as I once considered myself "technology savvy" (well at least compared to my family) and even now I cant keep up with whats going on, what with blogging and myspace and facebook. Of course, many of you have seen this already with my futile attempts at linking websites and you tube videos!) Therefore, I appreciate Faigley's concern about writing teachers simply not knowing enough about web writing, and it being a sometimes overwhelming force to consider putting into their curriculum when it (the curriculum) is demanding enough already.
Even with this negative notion, there is "pedagogical reasons for considering web publishing as an option for students. The ability to compose multimedia documents gives students an awareness of text over other media. Many ideas cannot be translated well into other media..."
I can certainly agree with this idea. I think that the visual literacy movement that is happening is a worthwhile cause to get invested in. Multimedia essays and documents are an encouraging way for students to express themselves in ways they couldn't on a plain text Microsoft word document, or even using a plain pen and paper. This (visual literacy) plays part into empowering them and by giving them a sense of empowerment, we are also encouraging them to use this to continue to express themselves through their writing and their "space" on the internet.
Thursday, March 27, 2008
Thursday, March 20, 2008
Basic Writing
Deborah Mutnick's article "On The Academic Margins: Basic Writing Pedagogy provided useful insight into the politics of basic writing classes in Universities. I did always get the feeling that, while not my own opinion, basic writing classes were looked down upon by some at the University level, and from what I implied from Mutnick, many feel that basic writing classes were only created due to the Open Admissions movement created in the late 60s/early 70s.
This was reinforced by Andrea Lundsford's study at Ohio State University, where she describes the students as:
Poor readers whose writing was marked by syntactic immaturity, abundant error, and ineffective writing strategies...In light of the study's findings, she finds several implications for remedial writing instruction: language skills are related and need to be integrated into the college curriculum; the level of reading difficulty should not be diluted for basic writers; sentence-combining exercises should be redesigned to foster abstract thinking, and teachers need to be better trained (Mutnick 189).
I feel like these are important elements to be taken into consideration. And while I do think its important to foster abstract teaching, and language skills should be integrated, I struggle with the level of reading difficult. I'm certainly not saying make it "easy" for students, but I think about the types of students taking a basic writing class. Often times ( at least in my experience as a tutor) these are students who are a bit lacking in self confidence and struggle in this new world. (At the same time, count that be said for any freshman entering college)
What I am trying to get at here is that while reading this, I couldnt help but reflect back on several of the different pedagogies as I read this. In regards to critical pedagogy,I don't think we should dumb down material for basic readers (as I agree with Mike Rose, and don't think its a entirely cognitive problem, more so a mixture of different factors, such as accessibility to good k-12 education, socio economic factors, etc) I don't think we should make the material totally inaccessible to these "at risk" students. Basic writing should provide the foundation for writing, critical reading, and critical thinking in college, not scare them away or turn them off to the whole process itself.
Could it be then, that Peter Elbow's "yogurt model" is an viable option for a basic writing class (or any writing class)? Elbow's idea is that basic writing would be like a writing studio, where students work on their writing as long as they need to produce a passing portfolio, where "at which point they would receive three credits and complete the course" (Mutnick 198).
I like the idea of creating a portfolio and being graded on your overall achievements (an idea we have played around with in our own class) is a possible idea. But I'm not sure how I feel about the uncertainty of time in it all. There should be a destination in terms of production, only because I could see this going two ways: one, that some students would be faster than others, and this may foster jealously and or further the self confidence or also that students may take a super long extended time which might delay the rest of their education.
Its obvious that when it comes to basic writing pedagogy, there is no easy answer or solution. The one thing I do hope for is that the Open Admissions era does not come to an end, because I feel like that would be a step backward, not forward...
On a last note, I wanted to do a little ode to Todd and his "juicy" language that he encourages his students to produce. Its all the more fitting because I know Todd is one of our discussion leaders tonight. Whenever Todd talks about this, I always think of one of my favorite bands, Better Than Ezra. On one of their albums, they have a song entitled "Juicy" which is a little silly ditty they do (you may have heard it in ads for Applebee's and Desperate Housewives) So, I thought it would be fun to post some kind of video with the song. (lets hope my linking powers actually decide to work!) I hope you all enjoy !
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YhrCqvMfj3A
*and as a side note, Better than Ezra has other really really great songs that are nothing like this :)
** and as another side note, I just thought this was a really funny video interpretation of the song, I coudnt find any really good live performances
This was reinforced by Andrea Lundsford's study at Ohio State University, where she describes the students as:
Poor readers whose writing was marked by syntactic immaturity, abundant error, and ineffective writing strategies...In light of the study's findings, she finds several implications for remedial writing instruction: language skills are related and need to be integrated into the college curriculum; the level of reading difficulty should not be diluted for basic writers; sentence-combining exercises should be redesigned to foster abstract thinking, and teachers need to be better trained (Mutnick 189).
I feel like these are important elements to be taken into consideration. And while I do think its important to foster abstract teaching, and language skills should be integrated, I struggle with the level of reading difficult. I'm certainly not saying make it "easy" for students, but I think about the types of students taking a basic writing class. Often times ( at least in my experience as a tutor) these are students who are a bit lacking in self confidence and struggle in this new world. (At the same time, count that be said for any freshman entering college)
What I am trying to get at here is that while reading this, I couldnt help but reflect back on several of the different pedagogies as I read this. In regards to critical pedagogy,I don't think we should dumb down material for basic readers (as I agree with Mike Rose, and don't think its a entirely cognitive problem, more so a mixture of different factors, such as accessibility to good k-12 education, socio economic factors, etc) I don't think we should make the material totally inaccessible to these "at risk" students. Basic writing should provide the foundation for writing, critical reading, and critical thinking in college, not scare them away or turn them off to the whole process itself.
Could it be then, that Peter Elbow's "yogurt model" is an viable option for a basic writing class (or any writing class)? Elbow's idea is that basic writing would be like a writing studio, where students work on their writing as long as they need to produce a passing portfolio, where "at which point they would receive three credits and complete the course" (Mutnick 198).
I like the idea of creating a portfolio and being graded on your overall achievements (an idea we have played around with in our own class) is a possible idea. But I'm not sure how I feel about the uncertainty of time in it all. There should be a destination in terms of production, only because I could see this going two ways: one, that some students would be faster than others, and this may foster jealously and or further the self confidence or also that students may take a super long extended time which might delay the rest of their education.
Its obvious that when it comes to basic writing pedagogy, there is no easy answer or solution. The one thing I do hope for is that the Open Admissions era does not come to an end, because I feel like that would be a step backward, not forward...
On a last note, I wanted to do a little ode to Todd and his "juicy" language that he encourages his students to produce. Its all the more fitting because I know Todd is one of our discussion leaders tonight. Whenever Todd talks about this, I always think of one of my favorite bands, Better Than Ezra. On one of their albums, they have a song entitled "Juicy" which is a little silly ditty they do (you may have heard it in ads for Applebee's and Desperate Housewives) So, I thought it would be fun to post some kind of video with the song. (lets hope my linking powers actually decide to work!) I hope you all enjoy !
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YhrCqvMfj3A
*and as a side note, Better than Ezra has other really really great songs that are nothing like this :)
** and as another side note, I just thought this was a really funny video interpretation of the song, I coudnt find any really good live performances
Thursday, February 28, 2008
The 'Tridicity' of It All!: Musings on Critical Pedagogy
Within the first two-three pages of her work, "Pedagogy: Dreaming of Democracy," Ann George makes a convicing and alluring introduction into what critical studies is. We find out that critical pedagogy "reinvents the roles of teachers and students in the classroom and the kind of activities they engage in critiquing the "banking" concept of education, thanks to Freire and his book Pedagogy of the Oppressed where he says, "students are seen as "receptacles" waiting to be filled with the teacher's offical knowledge..." (qtd in George 93).
The oppositional forces of these two statements, I thought, while very valid and exciting, did seem to sound like Cultural Pedagogy, to an extent...Then I turned the page, and lo and behold, it seems Critical Pedagogy is the optimistic answer to those doldrumic pessemistic guys in Cult. Pedagogy (something i had to laugh out loud at, since it feels like we were just discussing this very issue in Monday's class)(94).
One clearly optimistic move is in the role of the school. While cultural studies, thanks to Althusser and many others, define schools as "mechanicms that reproduce dominant culture", Aronwitz and Giroux defend schools saying that "while schools are reproductive, they are not MERELY reproductive...schools are arenas characterized by struggle bt ween competing ideologies, discourses and behaviors" (96).
I really like the inclusion of the community college place in all of these matters, and Ira Shor's argument that community colleges are great places for using critical pedagogy, as they are a institution where everyone is somewhat in tune with where they stand socio-economically (96). No longer are community colleges a " warehouse for surplus workers" but instead they are "[places where]people[are] fighting for their humanity without quite realizing how they might reclaim it" (George 96-97).
Further along, George writes about Freire insisting that a critical teacher must never impose topics or politics on students. I felt this was addressed much more in depth in Ann Berthoff's "Is Teaching Still Possible: Writing, Meaning, and Higher Order Reasoning." One of my favorite lines from this article was "Assigning topics-the essential strategy of the pedagogy of exhortion-is no substitute for instruction" ( Berthoff 341). Im not sure if its just the way she writes or the meaning, but I just thought it was great. In explaning this, Berthoff writes about research that reports students being good at narrative but not with exposition or arguement and hypothesizing that it must be a developmental issue. But what really should be look at in analyzing the issue is what tasks are assigned to the students. Freire ( or is it Berthoff through Freire) finds that students do fine on all different sorts of essays but terrible on the persausive mode--because they were assigned "euthanasia" as their topic.
I feel this fits well into almost all pedagogy we have learned so far, the idea of not writing about things you are passionLESS about. Here it becomes even more important in Critical Pedagogy, because it is all about the leveling of fields between teacher and student, and what would make a student feel more powerful than chosing their own topic? Likewise, what would make them feel more powerless than being told what to do and write about, something they may feel they have been told their whole life long.
As a side note as I end this post, I am curious about the connection between a pedagogy someone told me about years ago: emancipatory pedagogy and critical pedagogy. Are they the same thing, different name? Or are they different nuanced pedagogies?
The oppositional forces of these two statements, I thought, while very valid and exciting, did seem to sound like Cultural Pedagogy, to an extent...Then I turned the page, and lo and behold, it seems Critical Pedagogy is the optimistic answer to those doldrumic pessemistic guys in Cult. Pedagogy (something i had to laugh out loud at, since it feels like we were just discussing this very issue in Monday's class)(94).
One clearly optimistic move is in the role of the school. While cultural studies, thanks to Althusser and many others, define schools as "mechanicms that reproduce dominant culture", Aronwitz and Giroux defend schools saying that "while schools are reproductive, they are not MERELY reproductive...schools are arenas characterized by struggle bt ween competing ideologies, discourses and behaviors" (96).
I really like the inclusion of the community college place in all of these matters, and Ira Shor's argument that community colleges are great places for using critical pedagogy, as they are a institution where everyone is somewhat in tune with where they stand socio-economically (96). No longer are community colleges a " warehouse for surplus workers" but instead they are "[places where]people[are] fighting for their humanity without quite realizing how they might reclaim it" (George 96-97).
Further along, George writes about Freire insisting that a critical teacher must never impose topics or politics on students. I felt this was addressed much more in depth in Ann Berthoff's "Is Teaching Still Possible: Writing, Meaning, and Higher Order Reasoning." One of my favorite lines from this article was "Assigning topics-the essential strategy of the pedagogy of exhortion-is no substitute for instruction" ( Berthoff 341). Im not sure if its just the way she writes or the meaning, but I just thought it was great. In explaning this, Berthoff writes about research that reports students being good at narrative but not with exposition or arguement and hypothesizing that it must be a developmental issue. But what really should be look at in analyzing the issue is what tasks are assigned to the students. Freire ( or is it Berthoff through Freire) finds that students do fine on all different sorts of essays but terrible on the persausive mode--because they were assigned "euthanasia" as their topic.
I feel this fits well into almost all pedagogy we have learned so far, the idea of not writing about things you are passionLESS about. Here it becomes even more important in Critical Pedagogy, because it is all about the leveling of fields between teacher and student, and what would make a student feel more powerful than chosing their own topic? Likewise, what would make them feel more powerless than being told what to do and write about, something they may feel they have been told their whole life long.
As a side note as I end this post, I am curious about the connection between a pedagogy someone told me about years ago: emancipatory pedagogy and critical pedagogy. Are they the same thing, different name? Or are they different nuanced pedagogies?
Thursday, February 21, 2008
Intersecting Ideas
Reading about Cultural Studies in relation to Composition Studies was especially exciting for me this week. As some of you may know, I am also in a class which is focusing on Stuart Hall and the Cultural Studies phenomenon he created in England. I have been trying to wrap my head around all the readings that I have done in that class, reading and beginning to try to understand the words of Althusser, Williams, Hall and Gramsci, I've been unsure as to how to implement it in any of my other areas of interest.
So naturally, in the Berlin piece last week, the idea of "ideology" piqued my interest in that not only is ideology a terribly confusing mass to navigate sometimes, but I saw the intersection of my two classes really begin.
Reading the George and Trimbur helped established some main connections as to what cultural studies is, but more importantly, how we can connect it to writing. The most pure and basic connection between cultural studies and writing is the "encoder/decoder" relationship, which both as a separate entity engage in. The question that George and Trimbur raise then, is how to mix these encodings and decodings together. It seems that they pointed to Berlin for the answer as he:
designed assignments to help students understand the performative rules that code the production of messages (such as privileged dichotomies, denotation and connotation, underlying narrative, and preferred meanings as well as the variable positions (dominant, negotiated and oppositional) available in decoding at the point of consumption ( qtd in Tate 82).
To understand how these things function in the world, especially in media studies, can really help a writing student understand how their voice can CHANGE the world. If they understand how the social world constructs this meaning, then they can change those meanings in their writing. So naturally, it would seem, that cultural pedagogy can go hand in hand with expressivist pedagogy, especially in terms of voice. This is why the idea of voice was so important for me to understand and probe in last week's discussion.
Mike Rose's article "The Language of Exclusion: Writing Instruction at the University" delved more into the semantics or structuralist side of Cultural Studies. By applying specific words such as "Developmental" or "remedial" to certain writing students, there is a certain stigma attached with is. I think it shows just how powerful word choice can be, because as we saw many times throughout the article, so many word choices can marginalize all sorts of different people, with regards not only to race, ethnicity, gender, etc, but how their writing skills are judged.
I especially liked how he broke down "English as a Skill" and linked the value of skill "but it is valuable as the ability to multiply or titrate a solution or use an index or draw a map is valuable" to English as a "skill" thereby coming to this conclusion: "So to reduce writing to second class intellectual status is to influence the way faculty, students, and society view the teaching of writing" (qdt in Villanueva 554-555).
I think this whole passage fit well into our discourse of just how difficult it is to teach writing, when we now know how many perceive the teaching of writing to be "so easy" and that "anyone can do it." mentality.
Furthermore, I just want to plug Mike Rose a little more. I was first exposed to him in my Advanced Writing Course at Millersville (see now even looking into that course name is making me wonder....) when we read Lives on the Boundaries: A Moving Account of America's Educationally Unprepared. I credit this book as one of the factors in making me interested in teaching writing.Im not sure how well known Rose is (to me before this particular class, I had never heard of him) but this book is just a great read on so many levels! I would highly recommend it to everyone in our (English 507 class)
(Again, I tried to upload the image, but I just must be doing something wrong...)
So naturally, in the Berlin piece last week, the idea of "ideology" piqued my interest in that not only is ideology a terribly confusing mass to navigate sometimes, but I saw the intersection of my two classes really begin.
Reading the George and Trimbur helped established some main connections as to what cultural studies is, but more importantly, how we can connect it to writing. The most pure and basic connection between cultural studies and writing is the "encoder/decoder" relationship, which both as a separate entity engage in. The question that George and Trimbur raise then, is how to mix these encodings and decodings together. It seems that they pointed to Berlin for the answer as he:
designed assignments to help students understand the performative rules that code the production of messages (such as privileged dichotomies, denotation and connotation, underlying narrative, and preferred meanings as well as the variable positions (dominant, negotiated and oppositional) available in decoding at the point of consumption ( qtd in Tate 82).
To understand how these things function in the world, especially in media studies, can really help a writing student understand how their voice can CHANGE the world. If they understand how the social world constructs this meaning, then they can change those meanings in their writing. So naturally, it would seem, that cultural pedagogy can go hand in hand with expressivist pedagogy, especially in terms of voice. This is why the idea of voice was so important for me to understand and probe in last week's discussion.
Mike Rose's article "The Language of Exclusion: Writing Instruction at the University" delved more into the semantics or structuralist side of Cultural Studies. By applying specific words such as "Developmental" or "remedial" to certain writing students, there is a certain stigma attached with is. I think it shows just how powerful word choice can be, because as we saw many times throughout the article, so many word choices can marginalize all sorts of different people, with regards not only to race, ethnicity, gender, etc, but how their writing skills are judged.
I especially liked how he broke down "English as a Skill" and linked the value of skill "but it is valuable as the ability to multiply or titrate a solution or use an index or draw a map is valuable" to English as a "skill" thereby coming to this conclusion: "So to reduce writing to second class intellectual status is to influence the way faculty, students, and society view the teaching of writing" (qdt in Villanueva 554-555).
I think this whole passage fit well into our discourse of just how difficult it is to teach writing, when we now know how many perceive the teaching of writing to be "so easy" and that "anyone can do it." mentality.
Furthermore, I just want to plug Mike Rose a little more. I was first exposed to him in my Advanced Writing Course at Millersville (see now even looking into that course name is making me wonder....) when we read Lives on the Boundaries: A Moving Account of America's Educationally Unprepared. I credit this book as one of the factors in making me interested in teaching writing.Im not sure how well known Rose is (to me before this particular class, I had never heard of him) but this book is just a great read on so many levels! I would highly recommend it to everyone in our (English 507 class)
(Again, I tried to upload the image, but I just must be doing something wrong...)
Thursday, February 7, 2008
Thoughts On Process Theory
Murray's short but sweet article, "Teach Writing as a Process Not Product" was really refreshing. I know we have mentioned this idea before, especially in last week's class, but this article refined those ideas. The first quote that drew me in was:
Our students knew it wasnt ltierature when they passed it in, and our attack usually does little more than confirm their lack of self respect for their work....the product doesnt improve, and so, blaming the student--who else?--we pass him along to the next teacher, who is trained, too often, the same way we are...(qtd in Villanueva 3).
I liked this quote because I am already seeing much of its relevance, and it is one of my largest concerns as a future teacher of writing. As many of you many know, I am a English/ESL tutor at HACC, a job which i love for its challenging work and the amazing diversified student population I meet. What frusterates me is that I do see this first hand, students (especially ones with ESL problems) literally passed through English courses (normally with C's) only to find themselves in a more advanced writing course when they realize what they are producing isnt "good enough" for the teacher. Of course, this is a larger problem at whole, but the idea here is, how can we fix this? Can it be fixed?
I enjoyed the fact that Murray gave a list of implications of teaching process. For me, this seemed like a list where I may not have agreed 100% with every method, it was a practical starting ground for me to take into the classroom. Now my new think quest, so to speak, is how am I going to take some of these ideas and use them? Moreover, how to you apply the teaching of "process" w/ limitations and pressure to conform to a more standard approach (especially in an adjunct world) I'm certainly not trying to be pessimistic here, just again, trying to find that illusive middle ground.
Lad Tobin's article also provided an excellent foray into the world of process theory. I enjoyed that he looked at both sides of the matter, what he calls the "binary opposition, the distinction between content and non content" (of course, that was in reference to the conference that he attended proclaiming "process is dead")
(Tobin 14). He wasnt afraid to acknowledge the issues and problems he had with process theory, "criticizing process theorists for idealizing their results" (Tobin 13). At the same time, he wasnt afraid to say he hadnt completely abandoned process writing, just that we have entered a new era of process writing.
Towards the end, I really appreciated the thoughts posed by Tobin.."Should a writing course be organized around production or consumption? It is around this very basic question that (at least) two paths diverge, and how a teacher chooses usually makes all the difference" (Tobin 15)
For this is really at the center of the debates, our heart strings tugging at us in two different ways. How do we cope as teachers? In his closing paragraphs, Tobin suggests that it is a balance of the two: he hasnt abandoned his belief in process theory, but he also uses some current traditional methods and "post process" methods. (as a side note, I really liked his idea of weekly conferences... this was actually something I was thinking about long before I read this essay!)
Lastly, I just wanted to send wishes of good luck to Justin and Melanie as our first
Discussion Leaders tonight!
Our students knew it wasnt ltierature when they passed it in, and our attack usually does little more than confirm their lack of self respect for their work....the product doesnt improve, and so, blaming the student--who else?--we pass him along to the next teacher, who is trained, too often, the same way we are...(qtd in Villanueva 3).
I liked this quote because I am already seeing much of its relevance, and it is one of my largest concerns as a future teacher of writing. As many of you many know, I am a English/ESL tutor at HACC, a job which i love for its challenging work and the amazing diversified student population I meet. What frusterates me is that I do see this first hand, students (especially ones with ESL problems) literally passed through English courses (normally with C's) only to find themselves in a more advanced writing course when they realize what they are producing isnt "good enough" for the teacher. Of course, this is a larger problem at whole, but the idea here is, how can we fix this? Can it be fixed?
I enjoyed the fact that Murray gave a list of implications of teaching process. For me, this seemed like a list where I may not have agreed 100% with every method, it was a practical starting ground for me to take into the classroom. Now my new think quest, so to speak, is how am I going to take some of these ideas and use them? Moreover, how to you apply the teaching of "process" w/ limitations and pressure to conform to a more standard approach (especially in an adjunct world) I'm certainly not trying to be pessimistic here, just again, trying to find that illusive middle ground.
Lad Tobin's article also provided an excellent foray into the world of process theory. I enjoyed that he looked at both sides of the matter, what he calls the "binary opposition, the distinction between content and non content" (of course, that was in reference to the conference that he attended proclaiming "process is dead")
(Tobin 14). He wasnt afraid to acknowledge the issues and problems he had with process theory, "criticizing process theorists for idealizing their results" (Tobin 13). At the same time, he wasnt afraid to say he hadnt completely abandoned process writing, just that we have entered a new era of process writing.
Towards the end, I really appreciated the thoughts posed by Tobin.."Should a writing course be organized around production or consumption? It is around this very basic question that (at least) two paths diverge, and how a teacher chooses usually makes all the difference" (Tobin 15)
For this is really at the center of the debates, our heart strings tugging at us in two different ways. How do we cope as teachers? In his closing paragraphs, Tobin suggests that it is a balance of the two: he hasnt abandoned his belief in process theory, but he also uses some current traditional methods and "post process" methods. (as a side note, I really liked his idea of weekly conferences... this was actually something I was thinking about long before I read this essay!)
Lastly, I just wanted to send wishes of good luck to Justin and Melanie as our first
Discussion Leaders tonight!
Thursday, January 31, 2008
Creativity vs. Functionality-- Thoughts on Hartwell
After reading Hartwell's article, I thought long and hard. I thought to myself... "Can I make some sense, or f ind common ground, with an article that had my blood boiling three sentences in?" The answer is both yes and no.
I have no problem with Hartwell's thesis, that, "for me, the grammar issue was settled atleast twenty years ago with....the teaching of formal grammar has a negligble, or, because it usually displaces some instruction and practice in composition, even a harmful effect on improvement in writing" (205). I acknowledge that everyone is entitled to different opinions on different subject matter. Such is the nature of being human beings. More so, sometimes these different perspectives can make for englightened reading, especially if the thesis is argued convincingly. Hartwell's problem, therefore, is the way he tries to argue his thesis.
For the most part, I found Hartwell to be particurially condescending to those who believed grammar is an important component of good writing. He labels those who defend the teaching of grammar as, " [having] a model of composition instruction that is rigidly skills centered and rigidly sequential" (208). Hartwell seems to find no middle ground in composition instructions: teachers are either grammar control freaks, or they aren't.
If that wasnt enough, Hartwell really lost me with the identification of someone commited to teaching grammar a "hostile reader". He says he "tr[ies] to think of ways to hammer in the central point of this distinction..." (215). The word choice here is really revealing, and seems to continue with the controlling grammar teacher motif.
Hartwell's main reason for disliking grammar seems to be his belief in the grammar's hindering of the writing process and the creativity within it. He points out a college writing handbook with instructions to test each sentence for completness, make sure each sentence has a subject and predicate, etc. Okay, now, while this make seem to be unnesecary for someone in English 101, we do not know who the book is aimed for. It could be used for a 015 class, ESL classes. What I am trying to say is that I agree that there should not be this level of control in a higher English class. But as an English tutor, I can assure you I have come across many English papers that need help in this area.
What if Hartwell took his own advice? What is he wrote this article without any thought to grammar, usage, coherance, etc. The article could become terribly articulated in these terms. Could we take Hartwell's argument seriously in an essay laden with errors?
Or rather, what is Hartwell wrote his article with this kind of language:
http://icanhascheezburger.com/
(please click link, I tried everything to upload the picture, but to no avail...)
I know this may be a drastic example, but the world as a whole is seeing an increase in "webspeak" "textspeak" and this "lolspeak". If you have time, there is an interesting article on the page I got this from about the evolution of language on the internet
http://icanhascheezburger.com/2007/05/08/a-special-in-depth-analysis-by-david-mcraney-l337-katz0rz/
I have no problem with Hartwell's thesis, that, "for me, the grammar issue was settled atleast twenty years ago with....the teaching of formal grammar has a negligble, or, because it usually displaces some instruction and practice in composition, even a harmful effect on improvement in writing" (205). I acknowledge that everyone is entitled to different opinions on different subject matter. Such is the nature of being human beings. More so, sometimes these different perspectives can make for englightened reading, especially if the thesis is argued convincingly. Hartwell's problem, therefore, is the way he tries to argue his thesis.
For the most part, I found Hartwell to be particurially condescending to those who believed grammar is an important component of good writing. He labels those who defend the teaching of grammar as, " [having] a model of composition instruction that is rigidly skills centered and rigidly sequential" (208). Hartwell seems to find no middle ground in composition instructions: teachers are either grammar control freaks, or they aren't.
If that wasnt enough, Hartwell really lost me with the identification of someone commited to teaching grammar a "hostile reader". He says he "tr[ies] to think of ways to hammer in the central point of this distinction..." (215). The word choice here is really revealing, and seems to continue with the controlling grammar teacher motif.
Hartwell's main reason for disliking grammar seems to be his belief in the grammar's hindering of the writing process and the creativity within it. He points out a college writing handbook with instructions to test each sentence for completness, make sure each sentence has a subject and predicate, etc. Okay, now, while this make seem to be unnesecary for someone in English 101, we do not know who the book is aimed for. It could be used for a 015 class, ESL classes. What I am trying to say is that I agree that there should not be this level of control in a higher English class. But as an English tutor, I can assure you I have come across many English papers that need help in this area.
What if Hartwell took his own advice? What is he wrote this article without any thought to grammar, usage, coherance, etc. The article could become terribly articulated in these terms. Could we take Hartwell's argument seriously in an essay laden with errors?
Or rather, what is Hartwell wrote his article with this kind of language:
http://icanhascheezburger.com/
(please click link, I tried everything to upload the picture, but to no avail...)
I know this may be a drastic example, but the world as a whole is seeing an increase in "webspeak" "textspeak" and this "lolspeak". If you have time, there is an interesting article on the page I got this from about the evolution of language on the internet
http://icanhascheezburger.com/2007/05/08/a-special-in-depth-analysis-by-david-mcraney-l337-katz0rz/
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