Composition Concentration Take-Home Sample Question

Again--if you are in 658 and choose to ignore this due to the fact that I am exploring 612, you have probably already done so. If you have chosen to read on, you may find it to be an unfinished ramble. I plan on adding to it for the next couple of days when I get a few minutes here or there. I am just trying to work out my thoughts. Feel free to comment for whatever reason...

The question: "As the new writing program administrator at a community college, you have been asked to create a "new focus" or "updated face" for the writing program. Upon your arrival, you discover that the old program lacks coherence and the teachers, while dedicated, are largely teaching from untheorized pedagogies. Please write a comprehensive memo to your faculty that provides a theorized vision for the program. While you do not want to hinder the faculty's curricular and pedagogical freedom, you do want to make sure their efforts are consistent with the knowledge of the field. Thus, you should design your memo to provide both a compositionist education in a nutshell and a rationale for the program. In your memo, (a) discuss the social and ideological terrain of literacy generally; (b) indicate some pedagogical orientations to the teaching of writing that would be sound in light of contemporary theory, explaining why these are useful ways of approaching the teaching of writing; and (c) offer the faculty an overview of some best practices for the classroom."

The Dartmouth Conference brought profs of English from the UK and US together, where the US profs found that UK profs taught students to write for the purpose of situation, for reasons other thhan literary purposes, writing for other purposes and as "self discovery" (Villanueva 1). Writing as a process came from this conference. Teachers needed to get away from analyzing student work as if it were a piece of polished literature to analyze. The process(es) used in writing toward the finished product needed attention, and after the Dartmouth Conference, process gained that attention.

Post-process theory disputed process, that it was being taught as subject matter. That is--because teachers who were teaching process were often spending only a few sessions modeling "the writing process," it seemed that process was not being taught as an activity, but it was being taught more as a thing. What I would include in the memo would be that teachers should be sure to do more than model. Their teaching would be better served to include actual steps in the process, or processes. I say processes because there is not just one series of fixed procedures that occur in the same way in the same sequence every time. Teachers might be reminded that "the writing process" should not be taught as if it can't be modified by the student each time he/she writes. Some key figures to acknowledge are Donald Murray, Janet Emig, Ken Macrorie, and Peter Elbow.

Teachers are to be aware of the rhetorical triangle (ethos, pathos, and logos), but they should also make students aware of the context of their rhetoric.

Cognitive development and composition- Piaget...Moffett...Vygotsky. "language plays a crucial role in [Vygotsky's] developmental scheme" of cognitive development and therefore is important for composition (Villanueva 271). Vygotsky extends upon this role of language in congnitive development. To Vygotsky, "language is central [...] for our conceptions of reality" (Villanueva 271). It is here where Vygotsky's idea of internalizing speech begins to show importance, which will prove to be an important element of collaboration, where students wiill vocalize with peers what they want to say before writing it. But as far as the stages of cognitive development go, it seems that when students' writing was not developed to the expectations of teachers, "intellectial development in college, gain[ed] new attention" (Villanueva 272). Key figures in the study of basic writers: Mike Rose, Ann Berthogg, Mina Shaughnessy, and Batricia Bizzell. Shaughnessy, Flower and Hayes were also important figures for cognitive development. Bizzel even calls "the whole turn to cognition into questions" (Villanueva 272). What I think I'd pull from here for the memo is the internalization of speech, which is thought to make writing more natural. That is--if students can say what they want to write and close to how they want to write it, they will have better success in writing it. I'll need to refresh my memory on cognitive develoopment to see how I can use that in the memo.










Social construction--Kenneth Bruffee theorizes that if we learn collaboratively, we are able to learn more effeciently, if I may keep it simple. Greg Meyers and John Trimbur added that consensus can be problematic and that challenging the group might make for a richer product. Knowledge is thought to be socially constructed. Writing can be socially constructed. Certainly, I can suggest collaboration in composition classes (in the memo). Teachers might be advised to give their students an immediate audience, which is essential to caring about what they write. Although an immediate audience would be their peers, they should also imagine another audience for which their work should be aimed.

Because knowledge is socially constructed, voices have great power. Voices from "other" viewpoints, who have not been recognized in the past, have vocalized their PoVs. Women, for one, have banded together in many ways. They have voiced their story, or stories. Anzaldua writes Borderlands, which related to race, class, gender, and sexuality, voicing concerns for perhaps everyone who has been disowned or ignored traditionally. These "other" voices were able to express themselves, perhaps in part due to the "expressionist" movement (Macrorie, Murray, Elbow, and others). What I can take from this for the memo is that students should be allowed, or even expected, to exercise their inner voices in composition in their journeys in composing.

An actual memo would need quite a bit of revision, but this is a start.
I'll start over...

Dear Writing Program faculty,

As our campus is growing along with our student population, we must be sure we are well aware of the theory behind our methods of teaching. Literacy is complicated and our new students are more and more evident of that fact. We have a larger number of L2 students each year. Furthermore, it is known that L1s often benefit from the same methods. The "'California Pathways' second language proficiency descriptors of reading" gives a quick overview of the levels of L2 students, from "novice-low" to "distinguished" speakers (but this is applicable to L1 speakers as well). And so when brushing up on methods, it will be helpful in identifying the levels of the students. This will also come in handy for adjusting teaching strategies to particular students or classes, especially within the first week or two.

We need to be aware of the different best methods for our novice, intermediate, and advanced students. Novice students, for example, need prereading strategies in order to tap into their schemata that may help in comprehension of a reading. If this sounds like a hassle, the theoretical basis that knowledge is made socially will interest you. You might find the theoretical foundations of collaboration beneficial. Knowing how to utilize advanced students in pulling along the beginners is a godsend. As I am sure you all know, once a person has to teach something, it is then cemented in memory.

I'll try to get back to this later...