English 600A Blog: Teaching Revision

Horning and Becker’s Revision, History, and Practice brings into discussion the important observation that composition instructors need to cultivate metarhetorical metastrategic, and metalinguistic awareness in students as much as writing skills. They contend that professional writers are more efficacious because they have high levels of such metacognitive awareness while producing writing. Horning and Becker recommend reflective writing, particularly in portfolios, as a means of generating these meta-level awareness. Reflection might be one means of cultivating this form of metalinguistic cognition, but I would argue that we can also foster metarhetorical awareness by having students engage with issues and debates in community engaged pedagogy. These experiences engender the critical thinking and perhaps emotional connection necessary to stimulate rhetorical and linguistic analysis. Another great means of inculcating metalinguistic awareness that I have found constructive is teaching poetry and creative writing as process elements of a composition course because students cannot help but become metalinguistically aware of aspects such as word choice and connotation when they have to analyze or create poetic or literary works. Incorporating such techniques would then build student capacity in the revision process of writing. On the whole, I concur with Horning and Becker that instructors should allot more time to fostering metarhetorical and metalinguistic competence than drill-teaching writing skills. These capacities of course, develop over time, more time than the typical freshmen writing course affords.

Berkenkotter also speaks of the “cognitive basis for alterations in the macrostructure or ‘gist’ of text” (163) that in the revision process that separate expert adult writers from others. In this respect he shares with Horning and Becker the recognition that meta-cognitive awareness is an important capability that perhaps aught to be cultivated in novice writers as well. What I find most interesting in Berkenkotter’s observations of Donald Murray as a writing subject is the fluidity of the revision process that Murray undertook. Revision for Murray was not a linear process; he shifted back and forth between planning, editing, reviewing, and giving his thoughts linguistic expression in words. Berkenkotter relates that Murray at times felt free to “reconceive” his writing “when he recognized something missing from the text and identified a major rhetorical goal” (163) in the revision process. I would concur with Berkenkotter that the final intent of expression in writing often comes through in the revision process itself, that thoughts take shape through the writing and revising activity. Therefore, this process has to be flexible enough to enable the writer to reformulate what she has written, perhaps continually until she brings the process to a tentative closure. Berkenkotter also argues that in this recursive process of writing and revision the writer is conscious of his audience and adjusts his writing accordingly. While this consciousness may be the case in many instances, I would proffer that there are writing contexts in which the writer herself might constitute her own audience.

In line with the reflections in Berkenkotter’s article, Sommers attests that revision is part of a meaning-making process in writing.   Arguing that “revision processes are more than communication; they are part of the process of discovering meaning altogether” (51), Sommers relates expert adult writer view revision as a fluid space for meaning construction and clarity cultivation while student writers are perplexed by the prospect of thinking they have to fit in pre-conceived meanings into a final written product. She contends that the recursiveness and meaning-making function of revision has gone unrecognized in composition scholarship because of the logocentricism or dominance of speech over writing in Western communication. Because writing has often been conceived as an extension of speech, it has been ascribed a linearity (of pre-writing, writing, and revision) of discrete stages that does not reflect that actual experiences of writing and revision. Like Berkenkotter states of Murray’s revision methodology, I concur with Sommers that students need to be encouraged to see revision as process of discovery and meaning construction, a space where they can feel free to the “exploit the lack of clarity, the differences in meaning, and dissonance, that writing as opposed to speech allows in the possibility of revision” (52). I would argue that, in this manner, students can conceive of revision as creative process with many possibilities for self-expression.    

English 600A Blog: ESL and Translingualism

Horner et al. contend that composition studies is still dominated by English monolingualism but is badly in need of revision given that many composition students are now multilingual or speak different varieties of Englishes. They concentrate on reforming composition scholarship and the preparation of academic practioners in terms of addressing the latter issue. For Horner et al., the field of composition scholarship must transition from monolingualism to adopting translingualism in disciplinary practices such as publishing in academic journals and incorporation in conferences. They propose that the field of composition scholarship inculcate translingualism by including multilingual perspectives, writing in different Englishes, non-Anglophone writing and translation from other languages. While maintaining a disciplinary focus, Horner et al. share Canagarajah’s concern with composition pedagogy being responsive to the needs of students’ linguistic diversity. Both Horner et al. and Canagarajah contend that multilingualism tends to be the norm amongst speakers of English wordwide and that global English speakers are continually adapting their language fluency and modifying their language use. Canagarajah asks us to consider these factors in teacher-training of professionalization of composition instructors, calling for greater sensitivity and responsiveness to translingual students in pedagogical practice. According to him, translingual composition instruction requires teachers to be flexible and attuned to student diversity, as well as the contexts, genres, and semiotic resources helpful to multilingual students. The teaching standards and formulas for instruction in monolingual classrooms may need to be modified for translingual classrooms, to include more multimodality, for instance.     

Matsuda and Hammill likewise attempt to provide a portrait of the second language learners in order promote greater understanding of their needs. Coming from diverse cultures and languages, they impress upon readers that second language students are learning a new language at the same time that they are expected to learn concepts and write for diverse courses. Second language learner are also developing communicative competency in that they are discovering how to sustain social relations with an audience and learning meta-writing strategies while at the same time becoming familiarized with basic elements such as sentence structure and grammar. What I gathered most from Matsuda and Hammill’s discussion is that second language learners often carry a much larger labor burden in terms of coursework and acculturation. Additionally, if composition pedagogy is not inclusive for second language learners, they may become alienated from the writing process. I would be very interested in pedagogies that foster a sense of inclusiveness for second language learners. Some strategies put forth by Matsuda and Hammill include having second language learners reflect on their own cultural experiences, but not all students may be comfortable with talking about their differences. One teaching and assessment strategy that I have found useful is reading second language student essays for meaning and intention rather than attention to form according the language standards. When I have adopted this practice with my own second language students’ writing, I have found their papers to be much more enriching and modified my assessment rubric accordingly.

English 600A Blog: New Media

In this week’s readings, Brooke suggests that, in keeping with the times and the audience, instructors need to engage with new media and incorporate it into their courses. I appreciate the strategies he offers for mediating between the conflict of having to according to teach print-based outcome requirements and the urge to experiment with digital and new media in the classroom. He suggests that while academic and outcome standards might discourage the use of new media for writing assignments, teachers could employ new media as part of a process-based learning component rather than an end product. This suggestion prompts me to think of how I can use online Moodle postings or digital forums as part of the process-based dialogue component of my progressions while working toward a final essay as an end product required by outcomes stipulations. Brooke also relates how new media has its own literacy and affordances, and cannot be assessed in the way we traditionally assess printed texts. The difficulty lies in fact that there is no established rubric for assessing new or digital media productions. Hence, instructors might be hesitant to assign new media assignments. However, Brooke offers some advice for assessing these productions such as reflection activities and rhetorical analysis of student work that considers both visual as well as textual rhetoric in new media creations.

Selfe underscores the importance of allowing students the freedom to express themselves aurally and visually through the incorporation of new media. Ignoring multimodal composition means ignoring alternate means of personhood and cultural expression. For Selfe, the aural and visual are part of a sign system or semiotic field that widens the terrain and modalities available to students for composing. In a reversal of Derrida’s perspectives, she argues that western pedagogy has privileged writing and the written word over speech/sound and the visual. Her arguments are compelling in that I never really considered denying students the opportunity of composing aurally as a deprivation of meaning-making through “semiotic resources” (616). Perhaps some students can express themselves more effectively and produce better content when they are allowed the means to compose through multimodal texts. This is especially relevant to the contemporary generation of first-year composition students which may be more comfortable with and enthusiastic about digital production rather than traditional written text assignments.

In “Composing Multimodal Texts” Beach et al. not only stress the importance of multimodal literacy for present pedagogy, they offer pragmatic means for creating multimodal assignments that stimulate student learning as well as meeting the requirements of instruction such as teaching rhetorical analysis, using images, audio and video, through the process of multimodal composition. In response to Brooke’s concerns about meeting outcomes requirements, Beach et al. assert that new Common Core Standards now require the integration of new media technology in coursework. I found the assessment criteria they provided for evaluating student video productions a very helpful tool, and the example of students using multimedia implements to create digital poems and stories to be a fantastic assignment template. Beach et al., moreover, helped me recognize that the use of multimodal composition can be an effective means of teaching audience awareness in rhetorical study because such productions require knowledge about the impact of audio-visual editing and design choices on audience reception.

English 600A Blog: Invention Pedagogy

I found Lauer’s exhaustive study on the historical evolution of invention thought-provoking. She appears to intimate that invention is a fluid concept and there has always been debate over the “nature, purpose, and epistemologies” of invention (119). Her discussion on poststructuralist critiques of invention is particularly interesting given that poststructuralist epistemology challenges the existence of the inventing subject at all. We are then forced to consider whether a subject is actually inventing something original during the writing process or whether “discourse constructs the writer” (116) and individuals cannot really invent or add anything new to our understanding through writing because they are just the products and mediums of a wider social discourse. One question that arises out of this depiction of the inventing subject is that, even though writers may be embedded in social discourses, people can be immersed in different and competing discourses simultaneously. Perhaps something original and inventive can come from the writer’s interaction with the multiple discourses that constitute her selfhood, in this context. In any case, whether writers are products of discourse or autonomous creators expressing new and individual perspectives, it appears to me that writers must use invention strategies to compose during the writing process. Just how to cultivate effective invention pedagogy for students is another contentious issue that Lauer considers.

Lauer contends that invention pedagogy has historically, since the time of Greek Antiquity, focused on four means of assisting students to “investigate their subjects” and generate ideas (120). A Romantic pedagogy concentrates on the student’s natural ability to foster invention, discourages teachers from intervening in this process, and encourages them to instead provide a conducive environment to cultivate student interests and offer feedback on final drafts. Imitation pedagogy encourages having students imitate samples and activities as models or stimulants for invention. Practice pedagogy stress the importance of constant writing exercises to generate and explore invention. Instructors using art pedagogy guide students through writing process by teaching invention strategies. One issue that emerges out of a particular preference for any of the above pedagogies is the degree to which we cultivate or curtail originality by choosing a specific invention pedagogy. I guess we could argue that the natural ability or Romantic approach appears to stimulate the greatest amount of originality, but even natural ability has to rely on imitation at some point to enter into the discourse that students are embedded in given that invention takes part in a social setting and writers are not isolated individuals divorced from social influence. On the other hand, too much reliance on models for imitation and drilling in practice can cause students to fall in to the pattern of formulaic writing and stifle creative paths to invention that they might otherwise engage in on their own. I think we, as instructors, need to find the right balance between these four pedagogical models according to our own teaching philosophies. As teachers, we routinely use art pedagogy to guide students with invention strategies in composition courses, but sometime it might be helpful to step back, when necessary, and see what develops out of students’ own invention processes before intervening with suggestions.  

English 600A Blog: Evaluation and Assessment

This week’s authors critique the practice of associating error with student competence. Inoue, for instance argues that students should be graded on the effort and time spent on activities rather than the assumed quality of their output. She points out the difficulty of assessing error in students of ESL backgrounds, speaking different Englishes. Inoue stresses that instead of concentrating on errors, composition instructors focus on encouraging students to make the learning process their own in order to derive individual and personal value from it. I concur with her methodology because, in my own experience, I have found that when I concentrate on the value of the work and my own learning process, instead of a final grade, I tend to benefit more from a course general. Inoue further advises entering into a partnership with students in actualize this process of personalized learning through a process-based approach that grants students authority in the assessment process, but I wonder if this is applicable in institutions based on standardized assessment methods.

Like Inoue, Anson is concerned with assessing students from diverse socio-linguistic backgrounds, arguing that errors may reflect the students’ lack of emersion in the prevailing social conventions of writing. He cautions instructors to refrain from passing judgment on students’ competence due to errors in writing. Anson impresses the importance of alerting students to the fact that errors are socially constructed. By becoming aware that errors arise from social conventions lessons the fear associated with formal or grammatical writing, for example, making students recognize that their writing is not faulty, just stylistically different. I find Anson’s contentions useful in that she identifies that what we perceive as errors is constantly in flux given society’s linguistic prescriptions at certain time in history. He encourages instructors to be self-reflective and identify their own potential biases in grading errors and offers practical guidance in terms of how much they should concentrate on error, how to respond or comment about it, and deciding how much value to place on errors in the larger writing and teaching process.

Sommers similarly asks how instructors can moved beyond error assessment and offer feedback to students that are more suited to the students’ own purposes and meaning rather than imposing their purposes on students. For Sommers, the classroom activities and comments we offer on student papers need to be connected. Just as the whole composition course is not based on grammar and errors, the evaluation of papers does not have to be concentrated on these elements as well. Her comments compel me to consider how we can offer specific commentary to students centered on meaning instead of making error corrections due to our preconceived prejudices about student writing. One suggestion I have, following the Sommers reading, is to have student submit two copies of a draft and focus on the intended meaning, organization of parts, and logical clarity during the first copy review. Instructors can then use the second copy for evaluating sentence mechanics and grammar, etc. separately. Another aspect I appreciate about Sommers’ reflection is her observation that we need to encourage a sense of revision, as a process of rediscovery, and illustrate to students the process of development implicit in writing. Like Inoue and Anson, she advocates encouraging students to see their work as a whole and not just fixate on correcting parts of it for sentence structure errors—which can detract students from developing writing for in depth meaning. I agree with her emphasis on the need to show students that writing is always an unfinished product malleable to revision. This can be very liberating for students traditionally pressured by academia into assuming their writing has to result in a perfected product.