Sunday, September 27, 2009

About Bartholomae....

Discourse? What do you mean? I don't use the word discourse....ever! But I will talk about Mr. Bartholomae.

Have I ever tried to speak in a different manner in one of my papers? Of course! Who hasn't?! I feel that the composition writing class student is too stressed out by one thing: the grade. For many of them, it is all about the grade. I'm not a fool; I know the grade matters....quite a bit. But many of these students have never learned what it is to write in academia. Do any of us really expect them to learn how to write in high school? I don't. Personally, I don't remember anything that I was taught in my English high school class. All i knew was that I had to get my diploma no matter what.

When I reached WSU, I didn't learn any new discourses in 1010. I actually got a C+ in that class. Can you believe it?! But it was in 2010 that I had to learn a new "discourse". I took 2010 in the summer, so the class just focused on one subject: visual rhetoric. This is where I learned a new discourse because it (visual rhetoric) was a subject that I never knew I was good at discussing about. Persuasive writing grew into my discourse of choice and it still is today. From then on, my writing skills grew because I learned new discourses (I think of my English 3080 class). Eventually, I realized I didn't like literature discourses very much and I moved on to tech writing. It was the best decision I've ever made at WSU. I can't say that I struggled when I learned a new discourse b/c I haven't really struggled in my writing. Not that I am perfect but I do my research when I have an assignment that's not my forte (or that I'm used to).

I will say this: I do feel like we all reach a point when we b.s. a few things because we don't know what we're talking about. I'm not saying it's right but it happens. We naturally try a new discourse because we do not want to feel stupid in the eyes of our teachers and peers. This is a major problem but this problem begins before college. We can;t really stop it; we just have to try and help the student fix the problem.

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