In the 60's, scholars at a CCCC conference began to investigate the relationship between rhetoric and composition. They determined that rhetoric helps students develop their composition skills. It helped them raise questions, choose topics, and develop and strengthen arguments. Scholars turned to writings of classic orators to further their research and theories. Then, scholars at the newly formed Rhetoric Society of America began to question the administrative practice of hiring part time instructors for college composition classes and the pedagogy used in those classes.
We study ethos, logos, and pathos in my Humanities 101 class, which focuses on advertising and consumerism, at NJIT. Here is one of the videos that the students especially like.
The process of writing was scrutinized closely when Rhetoric and Composition was starting to become a field of study. There were various theories and pedagogies to challenge the traditional ways of teaching writing which included teaching grammar and grading only the finished product. This old way of teaching was called the current-traditional paradigm. Process became the new focus, including idea generation, consideration of audience, and multiple draft revisions. Focus was on the cognitive process of writing, and how writing can reflect knowledge or create knowledge.
At Essex we taught prewrite, plan, draft, revise. We had a textbook that helped teach this method.
The section about teaching writing addresses the following topics:
Invention and audience
It is important to consider audience further than the teacher who is grading the paper, and expository writing should not be the only mode at the expense of narrative or persuasive.
Modes of discourse and genres
Narrative, persuasive, expository, descriptive), These are the 4 genres we teach in HUM 101 at NJIT, with one paper per each genre in the first semester freshman year. This method of teaching (called EDNA) was considered inadequate. Scholars say that many teachers still use this method because they are uneducated and unwilling to change. Further, book companies continue to produce texts based on this method and the constructs of the classroom work well with this system. I teach it because the department requires it. We must have the students produce a final work in each genre. The final drafts are used for student and program evaluation.
Style, Voice, Ethos, Ethics, and Affect
Style never went out of style, but in the 60's scholars began to examine the traditional rules of style and deemed them outdated. New rules and new pedagogies emerged. To reach authentic voice in writing, journaling and other tactics were suggested. Also, the standard literary/academic voice was no longer considered the only acceptable voice in which to write. Voice and ethos are closely related, and with an acceptance of different voices comes a reexamination of ethos in terms of class, race, and gender.
Responding to, Revising, and Evaluating Texts
Writing is a process, so giving only a final grade on a final paper no longer made sense in the new paradigm of Rhetoric and Composition. It became important to respond to student writing throughout the process, offering feedback deeper than just error correction. Revision became a focus of the writing process. Grading came under scrutiny as well. Single grades on final papers and computer based grading were considered inadequate. Holistic grading, analytic grading, and portfolio based grading all came into use. I use peer-assessment, review processes with Writing Center staff, rubric based grades on final papers, and holistic portfolio assessment at the end of the semester. This addresses the problems of feedback, multiple drafts, and revision.
Literacy Development, Writing Dysfunction, and Writing Diversity
Scholars began discussing literacy development and differences.
"With the introduction of open admissions policies at many universities, students brought a range of writing problems with them to college writing courses."Ah, open admissions. I can talk about the "range" of writing problems they can bring!
So schools started studying how to address the problems of the underprepared writer. Urban, African-American, and other students were identified as needing remediation. Writing Centers were often used to serve unprepared students. The requirement to use Standard American English was questioned, and other forms of English including "regional and social dialects" started to become acceptable. I have strong opinions against this, and saw an article by Peter Elbow in which he eloquently expressed my thoughts. I will look for the article to include it here. ESL became an emerging field of pedagogy.
In the 80's, scholars began to think that writing was too individualist, and they began viewing writing as collaborative. Writing is social and creates social knowledge and meaning. Classroom collaboration and writing groups ensued. Writing also expanded out of freshman composition courses and became useful in classes that wrote across the curriculum, used computers, and examined social, business, and specific discipline examples of writing. Writing programs, professional writing, digital and electronic writing, civics, and gender/race writing grew as areas of study.
Debates in the field of Rhetoric and Composition include:
Disciplinarity
Too narrow? Should writing be broader based, or should it be limited by the discipline of the students' interests?
Writing Processes and Pedagogies
How do we teach invention? Is there too much emphasis on individual reflection? How do we teach audience when the only reader is the teacher? Should we continue teaching genres and modes of discourse? Is it proper to teach grammar, spelling, and punctuation? YES!! Some studies point to the return of grading a final paper and leaving the process to the student.
Ideologies
Three competing ideologies are expressive, cognitive, and social. Some say a mix of all three would be a solution. Expressive and cognitive focus on the individual, while social is a construct of "writer, society, and language." Some teachers started using cultural inquiry to develop consciousness in writing and knowledge building. The method of teaching writing should use multiple modes of inquiry and have various audiences. Students should be literate in all modes.
Currently, there is still research and scholarship surrounding pedagogy in Rhetoric and Composition. Writing Centers, writing across disciplines, writing about race and culture, peer editing, process based teaching, and technology and visual writing are all integrated and accepted in many writing programs. Writing has gone from the current-traditional model to a variety of different models, all with proponents and detractors. More study must be done, especially to examine and quantify claims of certain pedagogies. Indeed, this field of study continues to grow and change as more research is conducted to develop and discuss new ideologies and pedagogies.
Reflection:
This article was dense and informative, leaving little room for reflection per se, and demanding absorption. While the reading was full of names and scholarly studies, it was very useful in providing a background and history for the field of Rhetoric and Composition. I teach in the field and was not aware of the historical perspective. I took for granted that Writing Centers existed. I assumed that everyone always taught EDNA and agreed upon it. Peer editing and portfolio evaluation seemed logical to me, without knowing why and how they came into existence. I was surprised that there was so much discussion and research, and I was able to think about other ways to teach writing that could be just as useful. Also, the explanation and history on the use of process-based pedagogy in teaching helped put my experience with process-based teaching at Essex in perspective. While this reading assignment was neither easy nor entertaining, I am glad I read it and took notes. In fact, I went back and read it through a second time because I felt the information was so valuable.
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vocabulary:
enthymemes- an argument in which the premise or conclusion is unexpressed
hegemony- leadership, predominance
rhizomatic- having a thick underground stem, rootstock
heuristics- based on experimentation, evaluation, trial-and-error
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