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.