Reflection: Writing Center Pedagogy

I am a fan of Writing Center pedagogy but a version of it that works alongside the classroom. I think the pedagogy of the writing center needs to interact and cooperate with the classroom pedagogy as a way of making the transition between these spaces smooth for the student. If the writing center is not ultimately helping the student improve the things the teacher is trying to improve (based on learning objectives and outcomes) than the student is not succeeding (even if the writing is getting better on some level). At the end of the day, students will be assessed and the things happening in the writing center should be reflected positively in that assessment.

Reading Response: Writing Center Pedagogy

Writing Center pedagogy is different yet similar to classroom based pedagogies. They are similar in the goal they are trying to achieve; improve writing (even going so far as to consider higher order issues over lower order issues). Where they differ is the type of interaction and the nature of that dialectic relation. Student-tutor is much different than student-professor, and for several reason. Tutors are not grading the paper. Tutors likely do not have as many students whose work they need to evaluate. Tutors can often empathize better because they are likely also students. On the other hand, teachers will likely know more about the subject and thus NOT need to be taught the material as much. Teachers know what they are looking for as well, so the feedback can be more directly appropriate to that which will be graded. Teachers also have many more students whose work they must evaluate.

Writing Center pedagogy is important, particularly for students who seek out the writing center of their own volition. I agree, however, that the writing center cannot be forced on students and thus the pedagogy cannot be forced on students either. It is important to have a system in place for the students who use the writing center though, particularly ESL students (and thus some incorporation of ESL pedagogy). A combination of pedagogies that operate and develop based on the space in which they exist can only be good for those spaces. Pedagogies influence spaces and having separate pedagogies for separate spaces is logical.

Reflection: Activity Theory

This article highlights the issue of WAC versus discipline-specific teaching. The ball-handling analogy is spot on but I wonder if a good analogy makes up for the advantage of learning to write a genre within the context of that genre. Certainly, I am looking for a justification of a comp course (especially if I plan to be teaching comp courses), and the idea of teaching "about writing" is a good direction. Rhetorical approaches to teaching a comp course continues to feel like the right approach. Teach students how to look at a new genre, give them tools and skills, then use as universal of a genre as possible to let them apply those skills (research paper since almost everything will need some sort of research).

Reading Response: Activity Theory

Activity Theory is the analysis of human behavior and consciousness, and is a theory which can be applied to composition and writing. Activity Theory has five parts:

• Historical Development
• HIstory is essential to the working of an activity. Culture (sometimes phylogenic) maintains the tools and gives them historical context
• Tool Mediation
• Changes in human behavior and consciousness is mediated by other human beings through the use of tools. History is human interaction with tools over time.
• Dialectical Structure
• Change is not one directional. One discipline may borrow and transform a tool of another discipline, and this may change how the original discipline views or uses that tool.
• Relational Analysis
• Unit of analysis in AT is the relations among the participants and their shared cultural tools. Perspectives range from individual to broad cultural views
• Zones of Proximal Development
• One can not achieve an object(ive) alone, and thus they must change themselves and their tools dialectically

The idea is that because writing is not an autonomous activity (that is, one does not learn to write in a vacuum), AT can be applied to writing because of the dialectic nature of writing. We can look at the tools of writing, the historical context of writing (say, within a particular discipline), the dialectic that occurs between students or between student and teacher, we can analyze that relation, and we can consider the places in which one learns to write (home, school, tutor session, etc.), and with this information we can consider how to improve an Activity System which has as its objective the improvement of one's writing.

There are two sides to composition theory though: WAC and discipline-specific. WAC looks for universal skills that a comp course could teach a student regardless of their major, skills that will apply no matter where they end up. This is similar to a "ball-handling" gym class; if you can teach a student how to handle a ball, he can theoretically apply some arbitrary skill to any ball (baseball, basketball, football, etc.). Others, however, say writing a genre cannot be learned outside of the discipline for to which that genre applies.

The solution to the WAC versus discipline-specific argument suggested by Russell is teaching "about writing" as opposed to teaching one "to write". That is, what can we teach students about the act of writing that isn't specific to one genre, and can what we are teaching be sufficiently universal enough to apply to any writing the student may do from creative writing to research writing? 

Reflection: Genre Pedagogy

Genre pedagogy will play a big part in my teaching portfolio primary because of the "genre awareness" approach. As a future teacher of composition, and being aware of the WAC conversation, I think it is important to provide student with tools and strategies for appropriating genres rather than teaching a specific genre outside of its natural environment. Our students need to learn from us a tool (writing) that will be used in any discipline they pursue. This is a vastly different dynamic than other disciplines have with English...other disciplines aren't really teaching things that the English-focused student needs to know. That isn't to say it isn't fair, rather that a teacher needs to be aware of what he or she is being asked to accomplish.

Using genre awareness, the class can focus on making a student's transition from the FYC classroom into their discipline of a choice a little easier. By providing tools and strategies, we are giving them more than just tips and tricks to get by; we are giving them confidence in their ability to analyze, participate, critique and transform the genre(s) they will be operating in both inside and outside of the university.

Reading Response: Genre Pedagogy

Genre pedagogy is a very influential method of teaching that influences a lot of composition classrooms, and for good reason. When you consider genres the way Carolyn Miller does (Genre as Social Action, 1984), that is, writers in recurrent situations taking similar rhetorical actions and creating typified expectations, you begin to see genres in everything from "grocery lists to hypertexts" (Devitt, 146). However, there isn't just one approach to teaching a genre pedagogy. Devitt outlines three unique approaches:

• teaching particular genres
• give students access to and control of particular genres
• teaching genre awareness
• help students learn how to learn unfamiliar genres regardless of medium or context
• teaching genre critique
• help students see the cultural and ideological nature of genres to make their own choices and gain critical understanding

While Devitt describes each of these approaches as having "value and limitations for different students," she concludes that combining the three approaches will "help students act rhetorically and consciously within and beyond the situations they will encounter throughout their lives" (147).

That brings us to the pedagogy itself and the choice between teaching individual genres versus teaching genre awareness. The difference is one of distance, that is, interacting with tools versus just knowing about them. Both angles have pros and cons depending on who you ask. When it comes to teaching individual genres, one group may say that doing so provides students with explicit rules and tricks that will be useful during writing while another group may say that a genre is too complex to be learned outside of where it naturally occurs.

When it comes to teaching genre awareness, it is no longer about interacting with a genre but rather about gaining tools and strategies for appropriating a genre when the need arises. As with teaching individual genres, there are pros and cons to teaching genre awareness. While it does teach meta-cognitive reflection (thinking about your thinking) and discourages formulaic writing, there is a lack of control when it comes to source material since teachers will often give students control over their genre of choice. This means students are gathering their own samples and, in some cases, the samples aren't very good.

Reflection: Process Pedagogy

I really like process theory, at least at first glance. I think the shift in focus from end product to the process of production is what sells the theory so well. It meshes very well with my core belief that the unique voice of the writer must be preserved above all else. If the end product is all that matters, students may be tempted to regurgitate that which has worked in the past instead of trying to fit themselves into the discourse. My opinion is that if you are not presenting yourself as a unique capsule of experience with an authentic view and important contribution, you are only learning how to follow, how to remain silent. Standing on theories and pedagogies that draw on one's unique background and focus on one's development is a key part of my philosophy.

Reading Response: Process Pedagogy and Assessment Practices

In the article "Process Pedagogy and Its Legacy" in A Guide to Composition Pedagogies, Chris Anson offers a comparison between pre-process and process pedagogy (216). He points to the change of focus from product to process, from text to learner, from teacher-centered to student-centered, and from individual effort to social dynamics. This change of focus from product to process necessarily puts the student and his development at the center of the classroom because it shifts the focus from what the student produces to how the student produces. This requires the instructor to put more attention on the student; how does the student think?; what interests the student?; what motivates the student?; what informs the student?

In a sense, this moves the academic setting in a direction of improving the basic writer as opposed to merely fostering the advanced writer. If an institution only focuses on honing the product, it is assuming that the content is already of high quality. If, however, an institution focuses on improving the writer, both the content and the product will improve as well as the student.

Concerning assessment, the two points that Yancey brings up about reliability and validity in assessment plans seems so obvious that one might forget about them. Validity means you measure what you intend to measure and reliability means you can do so consistently. If either of these measures are not present within a plan, you can neither be confident that what you measured is answering the questions you are asking nor that you have taken your measurements adequately.

Reflection: Collaborative Writing

My primary concern with this reading really started on the first page with Bruffee's three principles of collaboration. I can't get over the feeling that thought and conversation don't accomplish the same goals and thus do not operate in the same way. Thought allows clarification within the scope of knowledge or experience that is unique to the thinker, whereas conversation allows clarification among the pool of knowledge collective among those conversing. Thought is collaborative, but thinking is confined to that which is remembered by an individual...conversation has the advantage of several memories. Perhaps, then, what is meant is that both are a form of conversation, but not the same thing. One is a conversation with one's own memory while the other is a conversation between memories.

Reading Response: Collaborative Writing

Bruffee's three principles for collaborative learning:

1. Because thought is internalized conversation, thought and conversation tend to work largely in the same way
2. If thought is internalized public and social talk, then writing of all kinds is internalized talk made public and social again. If thought is internalized conversation, then writing is internalized conversation re-externalized.
3. To learn is to work collaboratively to establish and maintain knowledge among a community of knowledgeable peers the process that Richard Rorty calls ‘“socially justifying belief.”’ (37)

The core of this rests on our belief that thought and conversation operate "largely in the same way." I may need to do further readings to understand what is meant by this, but it doesn't intrinsically strike me that thought and conversation serve the same purpose. Further, I would suggest that there is a difference between a conversation in which one person functions as "both parties" conversing and a conversation where two discrete minds (which cannot know thoughts of the other) function as separate parties.

Still, perhaps the point is not so much the outcome of thought and conversation but merely the act itself. That is, they operate "largely in the same way" only in that a conversation occurs. From this, I suppose there can be some usefulness in mapping similarities between thought and conversation as a way of bridging a gap between those who work alone and those who work together such that we can make the two feel similar and thus help students take advantage or either mode of collaboration (assuming we call thought collaboration...which I suppose we do given our social nature). If we can make them FEEL the same while acknowledging advantages of either mode, we can help students comfortably switch between modes depending on their needs.

Reflection: Feminist Pedagogy

While I don't think my entire pedagogy will find basis in the feminist approach, I am a fan of the inclusiveness that feminist pedagogy strives for. The unique lens that each student brings to the classroom can be nothing but incredibly diverse, and having aspects of your pedagogy incorporate that diversity is important. Given my interest in incorporating creative writing into the composition classroom, I also think that allowing emotion to have some presence alongside facts and analysis can also play an important role in helping students adjust to academic writing and care about what they write.

The aspect that I don't favor is the seemingly heavy emphasis that feminist pedagogy seems to place on the political.While I wouldn't stop a student who wanted to use his or her voice in a political setting, and would in fact encourage that purpose of wielding, I wouldn't place any more emphasis on that purpose than on self-exploration or philosophizing. The important thing is that whatever the student is writing, whoever they are writing for, they are able to appropriately judge the genre and audience and compose their text accordingly.

Reading Response: Feminist Pedagogy

According to Laura R. Micciche, the following are values of feminist teachers she had encountered are:

• the personal and political
• theoretical, political, intellectual, and emotional understanding of intersectional identities
• systemic analyses of inequality aimed at uncovering the production of knowledge, meaning, power, and belief in particular contexts
• writing as a tool for self-revelation, critique, and transformation
• distributed agency through collaborative practices and alternative classroom arrangements
• content focused on women's experiences and contributions to knowledge-making
• teaching and mentoring as forms of professional activism

I would like to believe that it is less chauvinism on my part and more simple ignorance of the basis of feminism, but I certainly expected more about women in terms of values. I'll qualify this by saying that the term feminism is about women's rights and equality, but perhaps there is a difference between feminism and feminist pedagogy.

In fact, the above difference is certainly there. Feminist pedagogy seems to take into account not only the worthiness of women but all fringe identities that have trouble finding a voice. There is, too, a very big emphasis placed on the personal voice in both private and public spaces. More than anything, however, the primary word I find myself associating with feminist pedagogy is disruption; disrupting power structures, disrupting perpetuated stereotypes or assumptions, disrupting norms which are detrimental to fringe or voiceless groups. In this light, it is a necessary tool to incorporate into a pedagogy if for no other reason than because the students that we teach will not only come from dominant dispositions. If a structure for teaching can be setup that better incorporates ALL students as opposed to favoring one group over another, it is obvious that the inclusive structure be established.

Reflection: Who Owns Writing?

This article was full of witticism and quite fun to read. However, I was perplexed to hear about "the essay generator" (Norton, 1249) and the fact that is could be successful when a teacher uses a digital grader. In fact, I was shocked to even consider that a teach would use a digital grader for essays. I don't want to suggest that grading hundreds of essays is easy, but isn't intimacy (at least on some level) with the progression of student work vital to improving their composition? Isn't that why we are teaching composition, to help students improve the transcription of their voice to paper in any given genre? I cannot fathom a scenario where a digital grader is appropriate; it either voids the purpose of the teacher (judging human perception of a piece) or it is not optimal (it may pass judgment on grammar but correct spelling is hardly the point of writing essays). I suppose my primary takeaway from this essay is two-fold; intimacy with a students work may be exhausting but it is necessary for improvement, and asking the question "who owns writing" is not as important as helping a student improve what it is they are writing in the first place.

Reading Response: Who Owns Writing?

To clarify the question of ownership of writing as Douglas Hesse does, we are not considering the property rights of "textual acreages" but "the conditions under which writing is taught" (Norton, 1248). The reflexive response to this question is professors, for aren't they the ones who determine the structure and material of the course which teaches one to write? Not only the course which teaches one to write but the course which teaches one to read, and reading is an important part of learning to write, is formed under similar confines; the teacher decides the structure and material.

Hesse would suggest that "those who teach writing must affirm that we, in fact, own it" (1249). Prior to this statement, however, he does cede that the answer one has to the question might find ancestry in Wordsworth, Barthes, Althusser, or Rorty (though hopefully one is not merely parroting the opinions of another as though the endurance of a thinker's name somehow lends credence to his opinions, as students might be inclined to do...I digress.) If, as Hesse suggests, we must affirm that those who teach writing own writing (or must, at least, believe that we do), it is likely because students will look to us for evidence of control or mastery in writing, and in their osmosis of those sentiments might find confidence in their own. We might assert that we own the conditions of writing but a student must feel that they own the "textual acreage" they produce...and perhaps be proud of the land they till.

Or maybe we should go the route Wittgenstein suggests and not ask the question in the first place. Perhaps it is best to focus on improving production instead of fiddling over ownership.

Reflection: The Basic Writer

The consideration about BW that struck me the most was the idea that the title "remedial" could itself be disheartening to a student. It identifies the student as someone who is "bad" at something that the he or she should be "good" at by now. It has an inherent tone of disappointment, as if the rich history they have lived through has somehow failed them. For this reason, I imagine any class I teach with a "remedial" purpose must treat students like they have the ability to do what is asked of them and that my purpose is simply to show them they have that ability. What is learning but the exposure of a person to a thing, experience, idea, or theory? Is it possible that the only reason they are in a "remedial" course is simply lack of exposure? Is there any reason to believe that, after exposure and encouragement, they would continue to fail for some inherent reason? There is already an admission of grit and determination by the mere presence of a student in the course. They understand that the power structure has deemed them in need of "remediation" and they not only accept their deficiency but desire to improve. That itself speaks a lot about the students, and should be made clear to the students.

Reading Response: Basic Writing and Genre

Concerning the BW pedagogy, I marked four views:

1. Error-Centered
2. Academic Initiation
3. Critical Literacy
4. Spatial

My notes on them look something like the following:

1.1 - Grammatical conventions

1.2 - "From where one is going (meaning) to how one is getting there (code) [22]

2.1 - Inventing the university; attempting to speak as a member of a discourse community without having learned that community

2.2 - Facts, artifacts, and counter-facts

3.1 - Sociocultural power struggles between asymmetrical power relations

3.2 - BW classification is a product of cultural background

3.3 - Social contexts; "outsider" status is a strength

3.4 - Argument: Politics > Day-to-Day

4.1 - Where should learning take place and what is the impact of that location

4.1.1 - BW spaces marginalize BW from mainstream

4.2 - BW courses are given negative connotations by power structures

Concerning genre, I have always been aware of different forms of written communication but never considered how employing a particular form in the classroom might affect the view a student has on that form, or on the concept of "correct form". It is interesting to note that some forms are likely never used in an English classroom, forms that are commonplace in other communities (Criminal Justice incident reports or Engineering reports). It seems to me, then, that it is important to consider what commonalities exist between forms, or more precisely, what can I teach a student that will help them regardless of the genre they end up using most?

Reflection: Inventing the University

This reading brought to my attention the reality that students will come into the classroom expecting to learn "the right answer" or "the right way", but also that these things don't exist like they do (to some extent) in a curriculum like math. When considering the creation of my draft assignment prompt, and the scaffolding that will accompany that prompt, I want to be sure I'm taking every opportunity to identify the structure and purpose of the assignment while also making it clear that the structure I am using is not the only structure. There are many genres, many audiences, many discourses, etc., and the structure we are using will have advantages and drawbacks based on those factors. Identifying those advantages and drawbacks (critically analyzing the structure itself) will hopefully help students realize not just HOW something can be done but also WHY (or WHY NOT) it should be done that way.

Reading Response: Inventing the University

The concept of Inventing the University is described as when a student "has to learn to speak our language, to speak as we do, to try on peculiar ways of knowing, selecting, evaluating, reporting, concluding, and arguing that define the discourse of our community," and has to do so "as though he were easily and comfortably one with his audience, as though here were a member..."

All of this is to say, a student has to adopt the structure of a discourse community he has likely never been a part of and do so in a way that makes it seem like he was born there. This isn't a one-time event either; he must do it for several different communities in the first few years of higher education. The obvious question (to me) is whether or not that is a GOOD thing for the student to do. On the one hand, providing a starting point for entering into a discourse professionally gives students a foundation from which they can learn about the discourse and contribute (however minimally) in an effective way (or at least more effective than simply throwing them in with their high school tendencies). On the other hand, you have to wonder how controlling such a restriction can be on the voice of the student who is likely going to perceive a structure (or anything in college) as objectively correct (as opposed to "one way of doing things").

It seems to me that providing a base for students to begin their gradual transition into a member of an academic community is beneficial if the teacher makes a point of showing it as an option, not a rule. One way I think of showing this is by presenting several options for engaging the discourse content and highlighting what each option does correctly and what each option lacks. The downside to this is that students may become confused if they are holding onto notions of looking for "the right way to do things" while you are trying to present multiple "right ways of doing things."

Reflection: Language of Exclusion and Critical Pedagogy

I've taken a class before with a teacher who loved the Paulo Freire view, and he used the Pedagogy of the Oppressed book. I think I still own it. It was nice to see that book placed in context with other views and, down the line, it will be nice to be able to hold that view up against radically different views. I wrote the word view five times in this paragraph.

I am still fairly set in some of the ideas I've latched onto from the beginning such as using grammar as a means to an end (editing is important but it is not the goal) and writing essays in cycles. The cycles approach entails having students redraft essays as much as they need to, focusing on revision of ideas in early cycles and focusing on editing in late cycles (when the ideas have been developed). One interesting idea I've come up with is making word counts higher in early cycles and lower in later cycles to see if that pushes students to revise ideas through cutting and narrowing.

Reading Response: Language of Exclusion and Critical Pedagogy

We are coming into these readings at the same time that we are beginning to think about our teaching philosophies. A big choice these readings suggested I make was whether to see English as a quantifiable skill or as an essential underpinning of knowledge. As a quantifiable skill, English can be measured in terms of grammar and structure, taught as a set of tools, and improved to the point of definite mastery. As something more fundamental, English becomes attuned to the subject it interacts with, and mastery becomes a fluid combination of how and why. It becomes important not only how something is structured and written but why something is structured and written specifically in that way. A third factor is also introduced, what. The many discourse communities that exist each have their own how and why and what. Can English be taught in a way that accommodates such wide-reaching arenas?

The critical pedagogy approach has several variations from Freire to Burke, and many good notions come from it. Freire's critique of the banking model of teaching is something I agree with completely; students need to be more than receivers. A student treated as a receiver of knowledge for too long may develop habits of receiving that make them LESS PRODUCTIVE members of a democracy if those habits replace critical thinking with blind following. One part I am less fond of, however, is bringing any form of politics into the classroom as a basis for assignments. That said, I don't think politics can be completely removed; the act of teaching is political in itself. Still, bringing traditional political views of republican/democrat, liberal/conservative, etc. may also bring with a form of separation among students (and yourself as the teacher) that isn't beneficial to the course. I'd rather teach composition as a way of giving your own voice shape and influence SO THAT you can go into the world arena equipped to make the changes you want. If that is the goal, it is best that my own voice does not oppress the very voices I seek to empower.

Reflection: Composition and What We Need To Know

The running trend in my growth on the subject of composition seems to be consider all the arguments and sit somewhere in the middle. At some point, it all starts to feel like semantics and point of view; I believe that a heuristic is closer to scientific than humanistic, but how can I argue against someone who points out a heuristic that isn't applicable to every situation? Doesn't that necessarily undermine the universal nature of the heuristic and therefore the scientific nature of it? Does that even matter in the end?

Part of me feels a comfort in the idea that there are concrete structures and conventions that a student can be taught that will outright make them better at composition. It is simple and straightforward; I teach you this and now you can do that. That comfort is eroded, however, by the looming shadow of variability, that little devil on the shoulder that constantly chirps "but what about...?"

• But what about the student who doesn't write expressively?
• But what about the different social origins of even one class of students?
• But what about the heuristic that has variable success among students?
• But what about the never-ending "but what about" comments you can come up with?

It is apparent that teaching is a malleable ball of good intentions that needs to be general enough to not exclude any students but somehow specific enough to push the students to the next level of writing. It is the general, outer-directed, humanistic side that points out the social variance and community aspects of writing while it is the specific, inner-directed, scientific side that prays for something universal to teach all students a useful skill regardless of the social context they bring.

Reading Response: Composition and What We Need To Know

Composition was born out of rhetoric and draws life from a diverse set of sources including Cognitive Psychology, Discourse Theory, and Text Linguistics (among several others). With a diverse set of sources comes a diverse set of theories on how to best approach the subject of composition. Is it closer to scientific or closer to humanistic? Is knowledge about composition universal and verifiable or is composition entirely dialectic, requiring multiple views for any one view to gain life? As has become a trend in my responses, the answer likely lies somewhere in the middle of these dichotomies.

Before explaining my position on the scale, it is important to consider what the extremes of the scale are suggesting. Between scientific and humanistic approaches, one is considering the difference between composition practices which are either verified to exist in every situation and which can be taught as universal, or composition practices which are immortal due to their dialectic nature such that a view is never disproved but only disputed. Positioning oneself on this scale requires a few questions to be answered: is the accumulation of "best practices" scientific due to the verifiable benefit they are providing? Is teaching a universal heuristic for engaging discourse communities scientific due to its limitless application? I suppose my conclusion on this scale would have to be that the heuristic structures a teacher instills in a student can be scientific (here is how you engage a discourse community, here is how you discover discourse conventions, etc.), but those structures have to be flexible enough to accommodate a perpetually distinct rhetoric and community of readers and writers.

In a sense, the same argument is being had when you view writing as either inner-directed or outer-directed. The inner-directed theoretical camp seeks the writing processes which are so fundamental they can be universally applied, and lexical differences based on your location all stem from innate mental structures. The outer-directed theoretical camp places all language, thought, and writing within a social context. Therefore universal structures cannot exist because the communication structures are based on the ever-changing social structures within which one finds oneself. True to form, I will suggest that something in the middle is the best approach. Along the same lines as the scientific versus humanistic argument, it is all about the heuristics being taught. The end goal has to be that a student can move on without his teacher and engage any discourse community using the heuristics he was taught as long as he is given enough time. The heuristics themselves should be malleable enough to be universally applicable since the content one is approaching is always framed in the social structures and conventions native to it, but the processes one goes through are likely to look very similar regardless of the discourse community being approached.

Reflection: Errors and Expectations

The article by Shaughnessy compounded the view I took from Sommers; editing is NOT revision and can be a trap for beginning writers. Students who spend a lot of time editing their first idea (instead of revising) feel a false sense of progress; they are improving their paper in the same way that one might improve a flat tire by cleaning the rim. When I begin teaching any course that involves writing, I'll make it a point to differentiate editing and revising. It is becoming more and more apparent that proper revision early on can make a world of difference in the quality of a paper.

I am a proponent of the approach that DOES NOT grade any draft or cycle early on. I feel that marking grammatical errors early will cause the student to focus on the wrong things. Instead, I believe it will be more beneficial to poke and prod the IDEA so that students are focusing on the argument, support, detraction, etc. that make the paper worth reading (and writing!)

Reading Response: Errors and Expectations

A majority of the Shaughnessy article was historically informative, and it put into perspective both the path composition has taken and the direction composition needs to go. From a crash course in grammar and syntax to a complete consideration of both form and idea, composition is moving away from mere editing and into a comprehensive package of lexical and conceptual revision.

It is interesting that Shaughnessy describes a basic writing student as one who "resents and resists his vulnerability as a writer" (391). She suggests that the basic writer is more comfortable in spoken communication because one can grope or back up, pitch and pause, use body language, and hide within the dialog. However, as we have considered previously, writing offers something that speaking cannot; an opportunity to revise. While body language isn't a factor in writing, the ability to push or pull, pitch or pause, hide what you don't know and show what you do know is enhanced greatly by the revision process.

Properly demonstrating the positive impact that revision can have on writing may be the key to helping students improve. Within revision, one can infinitely change their writing and, while that may seem daunting, guiding the students through that process and helping them understand its purpose is vital. It is important to differentiate editing (grammatical fixes) and revising (conceptual changes), and to move away from a linear model of writing (brainstorm > rough draft > final draft) to a cycles approach (cycle one > cycle two > cycle three > etc.). Earlier cycles focus on revising while later cycles focus on editing. Within the cycles, a student can go through as many cycles as they need, and graduate away from revising and toward editing when the ideas and support becomes clear to them. This way, students aren't confining their revision process to a specific set of drafts, but can cater their cycle count to what is on the paper.

Reflection: Competing Theories of Process

The study of different theories of composition is foreign terrain. Prior to reading this article, I had a very basic idea of what composition was and its purpose. I believed composition to simply be about the proper format for writing a sentence (verb goes here, noun goes there, etc.) and that its purpose was to standardize a structure that everyone could understand and expect.

After reading Competing Theories of Process, I acquired a better understanding of the position of composition within the scholastic setting. If its original purpose was to move certain individuals from a mode of composition ignorance to a mode of functioning written structure, it is now going beyond a basic ability. It is now in a place of answering not only how (with several different answers to how) but also why; how should composition be taught and why is it important to teach it that way?

Expressive views advocate spontaneity and originality, favoring creativity over strict rules. Cognitive views advocate a structure within which all writing can improve and be assessed based on criteria. Social views extol the idea that language is communal (not individual) and that all writing has a basis within a community setting (poststructural, sociological, ethnographical, and/or marxist).

As of yet, I am not convinced that any one view is the "right" view to take. In the same way that I think political parties are an over-simplification of human opinion, I think these views of composition are attempting to compartmentalize philosophies that would work much better in coordination with one another. I believe that the social view is present in every pedagogy (whether or not is designed specifically around the social view), and that both expressive and cognitive views have scenarios where one or the other is more applicable.

Reading Response: Competing Theories of Process

The most logical place to begin responding to the competing theories of process would be to list and outline the theories of process:

• Expressive View
• Focuses on the romantic ideals of sincerity (integrity), spontaneity, and originality (natural genius over potential). It doesn't follow rules; rather, it reflects processes of creative imagination
• Cognitive View
• Introduces the "science consciousness" to composition. This view would include any heuristic approaches, as well as a sense for the audience and an awareness (and deconstruction) of egocentrism. It also points to benefits from a process of pre-writing (brainstorm) --> writing --> re-writing (revision).
• Social View
• Considers human language to be only understood via societal perspective (language is not individual). This view is further broken down into four lines:
• Poststructuralist: Introduces discourse communities to composition discussions
• Sociology: Any effort to write about self or reality comes in relation to previous texts
• Ethnography: Accounts for where one  is learning to write (family/school/work)
• Marxist: Any act of writing/teaching must be understood within a structure of power related to modes of production
• (Postprocess View is valid but not discussed)

All of the views outlined above have completely valid applications. If one is expected to teach composition to a variety of students, it is important to understand the different ways that this or that structure will apply to their future use of the tools provided. A creative writer is likely to use composition in a much more expressive way, focusing on original content and allowing narratives to develop spontaneously. However, an engineer is much more likely to require a structure with an underlying "science consciousness", and to focus on composing for audiences that may vary on the spectrum of scientific acuity.

In all cases, the writer needs to have a sense of their audience (whether it is the self or the other), and all writers can benefit from heuristic tools which allow them to adjust their composition fluidly when moving between audiences. In every case, undertones of the social view is massively present in writing. Whether you are writing for others or for self, the community you exist within (regardless of your level of interaction with that community) will have an influence on your output.