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.