(Not) Teaching Writing
You can hold a baby up and balance on it on tiny toes, but the child is ultimately responsible for the first step. During this process, the baby is going to fall down. A lot. The baby is going to cry. Eventually, the baby will master the skill of balancing on two feet, and others can begin to model improvements (running, skipping, or walking gracefully in heels, for example).
I feel the same is true with writing. When posed with the question "how did you learn to write?" most people will shrug their shoulders and say they "dunno...just did." You could read and discuss a thousand pages of compositional theory, but the fact of the matter is that good writing comes through a process of trial and error. If you haven't fallen on your ass and cried a little, you haven't learned enough about writing. Our job as tutors is not to hold students up and teach them to walk, but keep them from tipping over when they try to run. We can offer explanations or examples, but we cannot teach them to write. This ability belongs to them long before they ever compose a college essay. We can only try to help them improve it.
Often students find themselves exercising this ability in an unfamiliar discourse. This is understandably frustrating. They are expected to transform their personal writing style into something unfamiliar and seemingly more complex. This is the point at which it becomes possible to "teach" writing. We teach ways of writing, whether they are academic, creative, technical, etc. Each comes with its own set of rules and conventions that a student must master if he wants to be successful within a specific discourse. The incongruities between new conventions and a familiar style are manifested as mistakes in diction and structure. It is not that students can't write in a variety of discourses; they just don't know how. As writers conduct trials, teachers must point out meaningful errors in hopes of shaping the finished product.
Bartholomae's statement that "writing is an act of aggression disguised as an act of charity" reminded me of this, for some reason. Most of us would never admit it, but deep down in our hearts we value the idea of using our knowledge to frighten someone. We English majors are more cruel than anyone might suspect. Try to keep that a secret.
I feel the same is true with writing. When posed with the question "how did you learn to write?" most people will shrug their shoulders and say they "dunno...just did." You could read and discuss a thousand pages of compositional theory, but the fact of the matter is that good writing comes through a process of trial and error. If you haven't fallen on your ass and cried a little, you haven't learned enough about writing. Our job as tutors is not to hold students up and teach them to walk, but keep them from tipping over when they try to run. We can offer explanations or examples, but we cannot teach them to write. This ability belongs to them long before they ever compose a college essay. We can only try to help them improve it.
Often students find themselves exercising this ability in an unfamiliar discourse. This is understandably frustrating. They are expected to transform their personal writing style into something unfamiliar and seemingly more complex. This is the point at which it becomes possible to "teach" writing. We teach ways of writing, whether they are academic, creative, technical, etc. Each comes with its own set of rules and conventions that a student must master if he wants to be successful within a specific discourse. The incongruities between new conventions and a familiar style are manifested as mistakes in diction and structure. It is not that students can't write in a variety of discourses; they just don't know how. As writers conduct trials, teachers must point out meaningful errors in hopes of shaping the finished product.
Bartholomae's statement that "writing is an act of aggression disguised as an act of charity" reminded me of this, for some reason. Most of us would never admit it, but deep down in our hearts we value the idea of using our knowledge to frighten someone. We English majors are more cruel than anyone might suspect. Try to keep that a secret.
posted by Anonymous at 2:22 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home