Michelle Pulls a Palin
Blogging, blogging. This is a very late post. Thankfully, the new post is not up yet.
Part of me wants to pull a Sarah Palin and not answer the question posed to me, even though it was a fun question. There are lots of grammar rules that I struggle with, and I sort of move through them all circularly - finally getting one rule down just to forget the one that plagued me two summers ago. I am in a never-ending fight with comma rules.
But I really want to talk about the link Dr. Rogers posted. It fascinated me! Not only does this guy who write term papers for a little extra cash, but he also includes a moral on the failings of the university at the end of his essay. He raised so many interesting issues. First, I was intrigued by the idea that he looked for quotes/arguments, and then just sort of filled up the middle with words. I can imagine a person really trying to write a paper on a book they hadn't read going crazy, but as he said, if you just write whatever comes to mind, chances are you could get pretty fast at it after a while. I also think anybody who has ever been stuck for time and doing one of their own papers has probably fallen into that sort of rhythm.
What really intrigued me, however, was the idea that most college students have never actually read a research essay. They hear about them, they get told to write one, and they go home and stare at a blank screen and (here comes in Bartholomae and Ong), they are forced to invent the language they think they are expected to be using, and write for an audience which is largely an illusion. Nobody ever teaches college students to write this way. But as Mr. Term Papers pointed out, college students are expected to write like it. He also pointed out that a lot of these kids probably should not be at college, and that they are the big chunk of kids who ask him for papers. His second and third group of people who came to him were very thought provoking, however. A chemistry major stuck in a poetry class (or the other way around), that has never been taught and has no real interest in what they are supposed to be doing. They can either fake it, or they can pay someone else to fake it, but as he pointed out, there really isn't much "teaching" going on about how to actually write for the discipline. Why? Is it because nobody really knows how? Do we just expect it to be intuitive? Is it because they people who become teachers are those for whom the subject was interesting and at least a little natural (I would argue that few people become college professors in a subject they hate) and therefore they don't know how, or at least forget that they are supposed to teach it? And most importantly, what is the solution? Do we just try to keep these kids out of the universities, or can we improve the way composition is taught so that there are less people who feel they have to fill Mr. Term Paper's pockets in order to survive their college experience?
Fascinating article, very thought provoking...
Part of me wants to pull a Sarah Palin and not answer the question posed to me, even though it was a fun question. There are lots of grammar rules that I struggle with, and I sort of move through them all circularly - finally getting one rule down just to forget the one that plagued me two summers ago. I am in a never-ending fight with comma rules.
But I really want to talk about the link Dr. Rogers posted. It fascinated me! Not only does this guy who write term papers for a little extra cash, but he also includes a moral on the failings of the university at the end of his essay. He raised so many interesting issues. First, I was intrigued by the idea that he looked for quotes/arguments, and then just sort of filled up the middle with words. I can imagine a person really trying to write a paper on a book they hadn't read going crazy, but as he said, if you just write whatever comes to mind, chances are you could get pretty fast at it after a while. I also think anybody who has ever been stuck for time and doing one of their own papers has probably fallen into that sort of rhythm.
What really intrigued me, however, was the idea that most college students have never actually read a research essay. They hear about them, they get told to write one, and they go home and stare at a blank screen and (here comes in Bartholomae and Ong), they are forced to invent the language they think they are expected to be using, and write for an audience which is largely an illusion. Nobody ever teaches college students to write this way. But as Mr. Term Papers pointed out, college students are expected to write like it. He also pointed out that a lot of these kids probably should not be at college, and that they are the big chunk of kids who ask him for papers. His second and third group of people who came to him were very thought provoking, however. A chemistry major stuck in a poetry class (or the other way around), that has never been taught and has no real interest in what they are supposed to be doing. They can either fake it, or they can pay someone else to fake it, but as he pointed out, there really isn't much "teaching" going on about how to actually write for the discipline. Why? Is it because nobody really knows how? Do we just expect it to be intuitive? Is it because they people who become teachers are those for whom the subject was interesting and at least a little natural (I would argue that few people become college professors in a subject they hate) and therefore they don't know how, or at least forget that they are supposed to teach it? And most importantly, what is the solution? Do we just try to keep these kids out of the universities, or can we improve the way composition is taught so that there are less people who feel they have to fill Mr. Term Paper's pockets in order to survive their college experience?
Fascinating article, very thought provoking...
posted by Michelle Jeffs at 6:59 PM
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