10-31 in class

Whom could I talk to who could provide me with information that has factness about this question?

Staff members at the writing center are one group of people that would provide factness about the issue. They could explain why they use different strategies when working with students. Students who actually use the writing center are another group of people that I could interview to provide factness. Do they find the approach taken by the staff at the writing center different than the approach taken by professors in class? What strategies used at the writing center are helpful? What strategies aren't helpful? It might also be useful to interview English professors working with freshman or struggling writers at the college level. Do they see improvments in writing when students visit the writing center? Are there situations where they feel the writing center is more helpful than it is in other situations? (would there be a reason not to have a student seek help outside the classroom?)



What could I read that would provide me with information that has factness about this question?

Other than searching for interviews/testimonials from students, writing center employees, or professors that aren't available for me to interview directly I don't know if there is a lot of material which relates to "factness" that I could read. I have a feeling that more of the information that I will read will fall under the term fact as opposed to "factness". If I'm not quite understanding the definition or the question please let me know.




What else could I do besides talk to people and read to acquire information or factness about this question? (Jolliffe 75)

I'm not feeling particularly creative. I'm not sure how to answer this question. I talked to Maria and she mentioned she might do some type of survey of peers. I don't want to promise that I'll do a survey (I'm usually pretty unreliable about putting them together) but if I really found it necessary I suppose I could ask peers if they'd ever used writing centers and what their experience was? I could create some different type of survey for staff members at the writing center but I'm really not 100% sure what I'd ask.

WOW-Mike Rose-Reading for 10-31

Before reading our article assigned for Wednesday I went onto the website and looked at other people's responses. Lindsay (I think it was Lindsay) was the only person who had written about the article our syllabus had suggested for reading. Reading her response helped me understand what the article seemed to generally be about and it didn't seem to really relate to my topic. I looked through the cross talk book for articles that seemed to relate more to my topic. Mike Rose's article "The Language of Exclusion: Writing Instruction at the University" caught my eye and seemed to at least partially relate to my topic, writing centers and other outside sources college students might use when trying to learn to write for the academic discourse community.

Rose does talk about writing centers a little in his article. When he discusses writing as a skill he mentions that we have established writing skill centers. The inclusion of the word "skill" might be a keyword which I could use to get more useful returns on my online searches. To my knowledge when we talk about "The Writing Center" at Elmhurst College we're not dropping the word "skill" from the title. I'm just starting my research but I now question why that particular choice was made. I don't necessarily have the answer and I guess ultimately it may not prove to be that important but my gut tells me there's something worth following up on.

Rose really seems to attack fellow colleagues as well as university "higher ups" for their treatment of writers who struggle at their early attempts to master the conventions of academic discourse. He gives some suggestions for how to solve the issues at the end of his article but I was disappointed he didn't offer more solutions. It did make me feel confident that I wasn't misinterpreting a lot of the articles and assuming that the authors seemed to look down on students who struggled. Of all the articles we've read in this course I think it's possible that the lessons/theme of this article will most likely be carried with me for the longest period of time.

I can't help but relate a quote in this article to an idea that was presented in our discussion about the Lu article. On page 565 Rose talks about the work of Mina Shuaghnessy and says "she told us to interpret errors rather than circle them". I think that Lu was trying to interpret the errors of her students. I am 110% behind this idea and I think we as a class worked to interpret the errors or uniqueness of the 106 student's writing at the end of class and YEAH for us to do that and YEAH that Dr. O'Rourke was willing to do it.

revision/questions about inquiry project

Dr. O'Rourke at 9:45 I wasn't ready to post the questions. Once I've taken a little more time to think I'll post to the blog. Hopefully before Tuesday afternoon. Thanks for your patience.

multiculturalism/contact zones

This article by Min-Zhan Lu builds off Mary Louise Pratt's article "Arts of the Contact Zone". Both authors suggest that part of the problem with the idea of multiculturalism in writing and education is that it seems to require extra effort to incorportate it. Lu suggests that there may be ways to incorporate the ideas of multiculturalism into an English class which haven't been explored yet.
"Academic Discourse" has a set of conventions that most teachers work hard to adher to, students who struggle to follow these rules are sent to outside sources such as a writing center where instructers work with them on "mastering correct usage" of English grammar. Reading this particular passage should disturb most people in this class after we've discussed the drawbacks to teaching writing as if there was only one correct way for a person to express their ideas.
Lu discusses two examples of people who were intelligent who because of their backgrounds weren't prepared to adapt to the academic discourse in universities. Both of these cases are examples of the problems that occur when we assume that sticking to established conventions is the best way to write.
To combat this problem Lu provides students with papers where there are grammar errors which seem easy to fix. Rather than fixing them though the class is encouraged to discuss why the person might've expressed themselves in this particular manner.


Lu's students seemed to feel that traditional academic discourse was better than the less traditional writing but being exposed to both styles allowed students to have a better
understanding why they preferred one approach to the other.


I'm not sure I 100% understand the definition of contact zones. It seems that they are areas in writing where the way a person learned to use English grammar relates to how grammar is used in academic discourse. Does a contact zone have to include a difference in how grammar is interpreted?

inquiry project

Identify the issue or problem that you plan to focus on in your Inquiry Project.

This issue comes about from a few different articles. Reading Royster’s “when the first voice you hear is not your own”, as well as Bartholomae’s “inventing the university”.

I’m not 100% sure whether my paper will focus more on how students are taught to modify their natural dialect to fit into academic discourse or whether my paper will focus on how what happens to students who aren’t able to adapt to the style of academic discourse.

If I choose to pursue the natural dialect fitting into academic discourse I might also look at whether or not academic discourse stifles creativity of students.

2. What is your personal connection to and interest in this topic?

After we discussed Royster in class I was prompted to think more about her article. I carried the article around with me for a few days and sort of tried to think how it applied to experiences I had and other things that we read. Ultimately this connection to Bartholomae came to my mind.

3. What opinions do you already hold about this topic?

I guess with either approach to the topic I’m a little disappointed in the way that the academic community seems to interact with students. I’d work on the assumption that some creativity is lost when students are taught to modify their writing for an academic community. (although even as a I type this I’m starting to think how someone might argue that creativity isn’t lost).

Personal experiences in addition to the way the attitude the theorists seem to have about less experienced writers makes me pessimistic about the chances students have to succeed in academic writing if they struggle at first to adapt their writing to academic communities.

4. What knowledge do you already have about this topic. What are your main questions about this topic? What are you most curious about?

I think I’ve already at least partially answered this question in some of the above questions. I’d expand my thoughts by discussing a place I might conduct some research for either topic. Elmhurst College’s writing center would seem like a place that I might get some valuable information for this topic. What type of interaction takes place when students bring papers into the writing center? How does the aid that takes place here make the students conform to academic conventions? What other resources are available to students who are struggling?

5. How might composition theorists and researchers approach or study this topic? Does this approach differ from those of other related disciplines (such as communication studies)?

Yikes. I’m really not sure how to answer this question.

6. How could you research this topic outside the library (for example, through interviews and/or observations)?

Please see number 4. Once I focus more on my topic I'll be able to answer this better.

class discussion

I didn't say anything in our class discussion on a "scene" where we related to Jacqueline Royster's article. I was able to talk about the discussion a little more after class with Dr. O'Rourke and I think I was able to clarify my thoughts. I can relate to what Brett said in class "I don't feel like I can contribute because I don't think I've had an experience like the one Royster describes". The thought that went through my head as I read the article by Royster and listened to the stories that people shared in class was "This makes me appreciate being a white male who lives with, goes to school with, and works with people that are pretty much like me". I could sit here and list theoretical situations where I might be in the minority and as a result feel that I had to alter my voice because of the environment/people around me but I find it hard to believe I'd ever regularly be in that type of situation.

One solution to the issue Royster raises would be to have white men only discuss white men, black women only discuss black women etc. etc. I can't help but think that if we did this it would take away the unique perspectives that we get when we try and put ourselves in the position of people who come from a background different than our own. A series of question is flowing through my head:
1) Who is allowed to talk about who? Should we only speak about our own race? our own sex? our own religion?
2) Hopefully we would recognize that we're allowed to talk about people from different situations than our own. What are some guidelines that could be established to work torwards not offending people?

I had finished this blog and was ready to leave this topic alone for a while. I had a few extra minutes so I read everyone else's blogs. Signing off the computer and walking back to the dorm I started to feel guilty. I thought to myself that's part of the problem with a discussion like this. I personally shouldn't feel guilt about the other situations because I'm a white male. SHOULD I? I can't believe that Royster was attempting to invoke this response. If she was I'll have to yell at her like she yelled at the panel.

if you read this please feel free to comment. I may update this before Friday/this weekend depending on what else we talk about or if I can find more ways to explain my thoughts. part of me fears that I'm complaining or sending out some type of elitest attitude in this post and neither of those are my goal.

Royster

"What is gained or lost when participating in an academic discourse community" was the question Dr. O'Rourke posed to us to think about when reading Royster. My own opinion was that, wth ideas such as templates being advocated for, and scholars looking down on writing which doesn't fit into certain established conventions the voice/style of individual authors might be taken away by participation in an academic community.

I think that the Jacqueline Jones Royster and I have a similar idea about losing one's voice in an academic setting but she attributes the loss to different reasons that I would.

In Scene 1 Royster discusses how she finds herself as an African American woman forced to listen while colleagues, most likely white colleagues, discuss things about the African American race. Royster seams to yearn to scold her colleagues for talking authortatively about something than they haven't truely experienced but being a member of the discourse community makes her hold back.
- I'm not 100% sure what point Royster is trying to make when she discusses home training. are there situations when she would feel comfortable speaking up about the discomfort she feels? Is home training in some way the training of how to reign one's self in when participating in academic discourse?
In an interesting way I think Scene 3 can be linked to Scene 1. Royster doesn't seem to want to specifically say it but she seems to be suggesting that there are times where she allows what people would consider more traditional African American dialect to work together with traditional academic discourse language. She's upset when a colleague suggests that when she does this she is sounding more "natural". Royster suggests that it is natural for her to be able to speak both as an academic and an African American. She seems to be pointing to an underlying racist attitude of her friend. Her main point in Scene 3 is that a person can have multiple "natural" or "authentic" voices.
Royster's idea of natural voice and mine are different. It seems to her that if you've been in a discourse community for a certain period of time that the conventions of that community are as natural to you as the conventions of the community you grew up in. I limited my thoughts on what is a natural voice to the conventions one grew up speaking. I suppose I can understand why if a person has for a long period of time been a participated in a community with different conventions they might eventually consider those natural too. I'd question Royster as to when she felt that academic discourse conventions became a natural way of speaking for her.

Scene 2 I'm not 100% sure how to fit scene two into my argument. Royster is saying that when she attempts to speak about her history as an African American, and as a result digs deeper than some of her colleagues might, she finds that people at first don't believe everything she presents to them. Royster says she is trying to straddle the line between participating in the African American discourse community where she her ideas will likely be accepted and the academic community where she must prove herself. It seems like she's possibly responding to scene 1 and trying to suggest if she speaks about the same topics she isn't granted the same authority as her white colleagues are. I have a hard time making sense of why this might happen. Is there some reason other than that she's African American that people are waiting for her to prove herself? She's either not telling us the entire story or she's accusing the entire academic community of being racist.

Bizzell

Early in her article Patricia Bizzell makes the comment that some teachers of English have begun to take the attitude that in addition to teaching writing they have to teach some of the student's to think as well. Judging by some of the terms for less experienced writers that other authors have used it wouldn't surprise me if that was exactly the attitude they had. On a brighter note the main focus of this article was to describe two different ways that theorists have tried to understand writing. Bizzell points out the strengths and flaws of each way of analysis and then lays out a way to combine the theories that might create a more productive method of inquiry into the writing process.

Bizzel suggests that one of the main groups of theorists is more interested in the structure of language learning and/or thinking processes. She calls this group inner-directed. Since this was written in 1982 it's not a surprise that she mentions Flower and Hayes as prominent members of this group. Understanding the writing process for each individual is of more importance to this group than understanding/acknowleding the society or writing situation that might also influence a writer. These theorists think that there are certain univeral fundamentals of thought and language which can be taught. The models in our They Say/I say book might be examples of universal fundamentals which can be taught. As Bizzell states the goal is to first learn a model then change/alter ones wording depending on the situation.

Bizzell defines their oppositon as outer directed theorists (surprise!). The social context is most important for these theorists and thinking and language are always connected to it. One claim these theorists make that seems like it might be interesting to think about more is that even an infant learning a language is in a discourse community because he/she will likely understand the language in a way that unique to her surroundings. Bizzell hammers home the point that outer-directed theorists want to study conventions of different discourse communities.

Once this basic setup is complete Bizzell critiques Flower and Hayes. Bizzell says that ultimately Flower and Hayes develop the assumption that the mental activities of an individual don't change no matter what problem they are trying to solve. When the theory is described that bluntly I find that I have a hard time agreeing with the theory of Flower and Hayes. In one of the blog's I read someone mentioned that it seemed like Flower and Hayes just renamed a lot of the same terms. We did discuss the term "The Montior" as if it were a new concept and I'm not sure we as a class reached a concensus on what exactly it was. Bizzell points out that their study is a mix of daunty complexity and disappointing familiarity but I think she feels it is mostly too familiar. Reading her explanations for terms such as translatting and goal-setting I agree that we've heard these terms maybe even before taking this course. Even the monitor, when Bizzell breaks down the theory, proves not to be some awe inspiring discovery of Flower and Hayes. The problem with Flower and Hayes' research and with most inner-directed theory is that it fails to explain where knowledge came from.

Bizzell says that while Flower and Hayes would like to place poor student performance on insufficient cognitive development perhaps we should also examine how familiar students are with the discourse community. A professor should take time to make student's familiar with conventions of writing expected in their school.

Flower and Hayes have provided the form of the composing process but left out the content. Conventions of the discourse community are the content with is missing.

One study we read compared student writers to professional writers. Of course the study suggested the revising process of the professional writers was superior. Bizzell suggests the composing process might also be superior because students don't feel their writing will have an impact on the real world. I agree with this argument made by Bizzell and would suggest in response to the revising study that perhaps the reaon student's simply revised grammar was because they believed that was the easiest way to earn a good grade.

Unfortunately we can't simply focus on outer-directed theories. The teaching of them seems unrefined, at least in the process which is described by Bizzell. (what exactly is happening with the computers?!?!)

Bizzell ends by arguing against seeking certainty or commonplace in the teaching of writing. It seemed to me that she was making an argument outer-directed theorists would make. My question to Bizzell would be- could a teacher presented a theory as common place and then have the students work to prove the theory wrong. It would be a powerful expereince for the student's if they could prove that a way something was previously judged should be reexamined or discarded altogether.

Bartholomae's response to Flower and Hayes

Bartholomae seems to disagree with Flower and Hayes on how the processes of discovery, creativity and invention take place in the writing process. For Flower and Hayes they seem to be internal tasks where energy is devoted to the subject itself. Bartholomae makes the point that the professor writing for Seventeen magazine must also consider the audience reading the magazine and the content of the magazine. He says the writer must know where his piece will fit in the history of what has been written. The professor will likely compose his article much differently for the magazine than he would for an academic journal. While Seventeen may not have elaborate or complicated conventions for it's writing style, articles in the magazine will still have a unique presentation. It is useful from Flower and Hayes's article to note that a break through came when the professor identified the type of people he was writing for, teenage girls. Unfortunately we see very little of the writing that comes after the author has developed his plan.
I agree with the criticism Bartholomae presented in his article. While it would be foolish to completely throw away the work the Flower and Hayes did in their study it seems like they failed to take the next step after learning what happened during the mental part of writing for their author. I think we've mentioned a few times that different situations where a person is writing will impact the way that a person presents their argument. Looking at how a writer crafts their argument based on addressed and invoked audiences might be another place that we find an author not simply planning based on ideas in his/her head but taking into account outside factors as well.

Flower and Hayes

Linda Flower and John R. Hayes explored the series of decisions and choices (the cognitive process) of a writer during the writing process.



The first major point of the article is the examination of stage models of writing. Ideas about pre-writing, writing and re-writing were explored. Flower and Hayes referred back to the article by Nancy Sommers and agreed that it appears that most students don't view these as separate tasks but instead they seem to flow together. Most theorists have been unable to answer the question how do good ideas relate to good prose.

Flower and Hayes' cognitive process model is one way that might help answer this. Understanding the "task environment", writing process specific to an individual and the "long term memory" of a writer are all parts of this process.



Task environment was a new term to me. It is defined as anything outside of the writer's skin such as the problem/assignment and the text itself (277). From observation the authors remark that things which seem less important, such as the title of the paper, can put invisible barries on how a student will write their paper.





Long term memory as it applies to this article is the knowledge a person has stored which might possibly be useful for the assignment they are completing. Outside resources such as books can contribute to long term memory. Knowledge about the audience is also categorized under long term memory, I thought this might fall under a task environment since the audience is usually outside of the writers skin (unless writing a personal, private diary). Is the audience referred to in this piece audience addressed or audience invoked? I'm not entirely sure how to answer that question but it is something I'd like to think about over time.



While not completely rejecting the notions of prewriting, writing and rewriting it seems that the writing process is examined in a slightly different way by Flower and Hayes. Concepts such as planning, translating, reviewing and "The Monitor" are taken into account here. Planning is an internal task where the writer might generate ideas and organize them before writing them down. Setting goals for a paper is part of the planning process which likely impacts the way an author would organize his or her paper. At this point the writer is working on the process only for himself. Translating is when the writer must also consider the conventions of the English language and the audience he/she is writing for. Reviewing has two subpoints, evaluating and revising. Further translation may occur during this stage but it isn't inherent to this step. Flower and Hayes say that what is unique to this step is that it might interrupt any other part of the writing process. Another new term introduced in this article was "The Monitor". It seems to be an internal quality that writers have. It filters ideas in and out but also makes sure that the process isn't simply bogged down in goal setting or translating or at any other point. A writer doesn't create "the monitor" it seems to be a part of being a writer but it can be fine tuned.

Understanding this process is a tool for researchers to pose more questions about the writing process. One might be: How do these different actions interact with each other, how are they organized? The authors suggest that there may be a hierarchy at work but that the hierarchy isn't fixed. While they had previously laid out a possible order for the process the fact that reviewing can take place at any time and that "The Monitor" is constantly present suggests that the hierarchy described isn't incredibly rigid. In fact the goals of the writing process may change the way the process takes place. Process goals and context goals are distinguished. Process goals relate to the way the writer plans to carry out the different tasks in writing while context goals are what the writer means for the finished product to do (convey?). Context goals are also flexible as a writer works.

Pages 291-296 elaborate on 3 different types of context goals 1) explore and consolidate, 2) state and develop and 3) write and regenerate. These goals are fairly straight forward and since it doesn't seem like part of the assignment to go into elaborate detail on them I'll hold off. If more questions/interest come out of further discussion of these distinctions I will look back at this section.

Inventing the University

Bartholomae takes an approach I wish Ede and Lunsford had in their article. He quickly lets the reader understand his argument. Alright I'm done blasting Ede and Lunsford.

Bartholomae states that each time a student sits down to write he has to invent the university for the occasion or at least a particular branch of it. Right away he points out that when writing a paper in an academic setting the student must learn to speak the language of the community he is writing for.

Bartholomae suggests that students can feel the pressure to write as a literary critic one day and experimental psychologist the next day. I haven't had many radically different fields to write in at Elmhurst but I do notice a difference in the way I write depending on what subject I am writing about. If the course/subject matter was unfamiliar to me I could understand the argument that trying to find patterns in the language a particular communities uses and doing my best to mimic that style.

It was pointed out that some student's have learned simply to memorize certain names and places or even canonical interpretations and will just repeat this. While this is a good starting point for academic discourse it should probably move beyond this as well.

The author obviously was looking at the finished products of the student's but it is important to understand that the process is still important. Bartholomae admitted a few times that he could only speculate about what might be happening during the process.

Freshman students provided answers to the question "Describe a time when you did something you felt to be creative. Then, on the basis of the incident you described go on to draw some general conclusions about creativity" and Bartholomae used the responses as examples of many positive and negativies qualities of writing throughout the essay. Bartholomae came close to providing too many examples to make his article enjoyable/understandable but overall I think that his examples made his argument more clear.