My classmates wrote about many interesting issues in
composition studies. I am going to focus on two concepts. The first is the
concept that there is a place for writers that do not fit the mainstream norm
in composition classrooms. This applies to speakers of dialects, such as African
American English, as well as second language learners or L2 writers. I will
focus on the latter, as my peer group referred to this demographic more
frequently in their article reviews. The second concept is the idea that
writing has a purpose of social engagement and interaction.
I plan to incorporate different
forms of communication in my future composition classroom. By this, I mean that
students will not just be exposed to, or expected to produce, what is
considered typical academic writing. I hope to have a course design that allows
them to celebrate their unique linguistic character while also preparing them
for their future, be it academic or out in the workforce.
In Prue’s first blog post she
brings up the idea of English as a lingua franca (Salasky). Wang recommends
that instructors take into account their students’ diverse “cultural, academic
and ideological” background, specifically when assessing student work. Most of
my own blog posts were also related to assessment of student work and an
exploration of what types of assessment are most helpful to students. My first
blog post describes how teachers should determine their own philosophy of
teaching and frequently refer back to it to assure that their practices
actually reflect their philosophy (Tyson). Prue’s third post describes an
article arguing for individual focused feedback for L2 writers (Salasky).
Lincoln & Edris make a case for the importance of errors for L2 writers.
The process of correcting these errors is crucial in their cognitive
development and their understanding of writing as a process. They also
emphasize having the L2 students analyze the cultural influences that
contribute to the errors. Prue’s fourth blog post on Mansfield & Poppi
proposes a need for more emphasis on language awareness intercultural
communicative competence (Salasky). Students should be made aware of the
diverse Englishes as a way to show them what is out there and that written American
Academic English is not the only standard.
Prue’s final blogpost of Kalan’s
article spoke to me. Many of the ideas that he synthesizes from composition
scholarship are ones I would like to use in my class. He cites ideas from
Foucault, Matsuda, Hyland and Canagarajah (Salasky). Though writing is indeed a
process, teaching it as this alone is not enough. Kalan describes how to go
beyond writing as a process models of teaching to post-process models which
combine the role of the writing process with an understanding of the
sociocultural nature of writing. This incorporates the ideas of teaching genre
awareness, sense of audience, purpose or goal of a piece of writing, etc. He
promotes students comparing their home discourse to school discourse and
recognize that while neither is wrong, there are appropriate times and places
for both. Taylor’s final post, reviewing Magnifico, also addresses the importance
of audience awareness (Walther). He, like Kalan, refers to the fact that the
process of writing is both cognitive and sociocultural. There are many
strategies for helping students to understand the purpose of writing in general
and give them an individual purpose for the writing they are engaging in.
Service-based learning is one way
to give students a sense of purpose for their writing. Instructors have to be
creative in order to accomplish this. Many students still have the idea that
writing equals an assignment which equals a grade. Lynda’s final two blog posts
address this technique (Horn). The first describes a case study by Maria Mikolchak.
Mikolchak has her students work on a project with a local women’s shelter. She
finds that the students, though not required to write about this experience for
their final research paper, were almost all inspired to relate it in some way.
While Mikolchak acknowledges that a service learning project must focus on the
actual needs of the community at large, Lynda’s second post on this subject
describes a study where the researchers went a step further (Horn). Kincaid &
Sotirou posit that a service learning project will be even more effective if it
narrows its focus to the campus community. They describe a project where L1
composition students mentor L2 composition students. This project also relates
to meta-commentary on writing as a process. Kincaid & Sotirou found that it
helped both L1 and L2 writers become more analytical of their own writing. Such
projects can also be good additions to students’ CVs, and when presented as
such can be extra motivation to put in the necessary effort to make them a
success.
Some of the other interesting concepts
my classmates explored are creativity in the classroom, transfer (both of
existing skills and of L1 to L2 language) and the use of technology in the
classroom. Taylor and Will both have posts related to the importance of creativity
in the writing classroom, both in actually engaging in creative writing and
writing about fine arts or creating their own art outside of writing as Will’s
post reviewing the Sullivan article suggests (Yarbrough). Taylor’s posts refer
to giving a voice to the human experience as a purpose for creative writing,
and that sometimes in a personal narrative, it is the author who is the true
audience and the act of writing can be cathartic in itself (Walther).
While I focused more on the
concepts of appreciation for the diversity of students and the purpose of
writing as social interaction, there are many other factors to consider, such
as the writing-as-a-process model, genre studies and audience awareness, which
I only briefly touched on. The more recent scholarship seems to be moving away
from a purely process-driven theory of pedagogy, though teaching writing as a
process is not completely dismissed. The general advice from these articles and
many of those we read for class seems to be an idea of a marriage of the
sociocultural, interactive aspects of language as communication and the
cognitive aspects of writing as a process.
References
Salasky, Prudence. #664 Teaching College Compostion.
http://tccfall2016.blogspot.com/
Tyson, Lisa. Teaching College Compositon. https://linity664f16.blogspot.com/
Walther, Taylor. Teaching College Composition.
http://shamelesspleaforleniency.blogspot.com/
Yarbrough, William. Will Yarbrough’s blog on Teaching College
Composition.
http://wyarbcollegecomp.blogspot.com/
Horn, Lynda. Blog for ENG 664. https://lenglish664blog.blogspot.com/
