Weekly Response: Selfe's "The Movement of Air, the Breath of Meaning: Aurality and Multimodal Composing"

Selfe is arguing that FYW and Composition courses need to include other modes of communication besides writing. I am most certain that they contain discussion and often presentations. Many colleges now use CMS that allow for digital reading and writing, videos, tweets, linked readings, and online references. I understand her argument: that students now create aural compositions. If they are doing this on their own, do they need more in-class instruction? Why teach them what they already know? It seems that their writing skills are significantly weaker than their media skills. I have noticed that while students write electronically, compose in mixed media, and read tweets and texts, they lack the ability to read deeply and write clearly. Therefore, that is where teachers should be focusing their efforts in the classroom. Can we use pieces of other modalities? Sure, but they should not be the focus.

Weekly Response: Yancey's "Made Not Only in Words"

Yancey poses thought-provoking questions about writing at the beginning of this paper.

In the first "quartet" of her address to the CCCC, she talks about all the writing that is going on outside of school, and how the public is awakening to writing as the public awoke to reading during the industrial revolution. She references shifts in monetary allotment from schools to students, and how this changes education. She then discusses changes in writing, and that literacy is now screen based and media oriented.

Weekly Response: Wiley's "The Popularity of Formulaic Writing"

Wiley has some good points. I understand that she is not happy with the formulaic nature of Schaffer's pedagogy in her program that teaches the multi paragraph essay. She suggests, per Collins, that teachers should use the formula as a strategy, not a formula per se. I would hope that teachers could use the formula, but add more to it, so it isn't exactly a recipe.

"To develop as writers, students must develop a repertoire of strategies for dealing effectively with various writing tasks presented to them in different situations. They must also learn to make choices about genre, content, structure, organization, and style; and they must learn to hone their judgments about the effects of the choices they make as writers." Yes, but using Schaffer's program doesn't precluded teaching situational writing also.

Weekly Response: Fister's "Why the Research Paper is Not Working"

I agree and disagree with Fister. She is right that the research paper doesn't work. In HUM 101 we just finished doing a research paper, and the results are somewhat disappointing and just as Fister says: no one can cite sources correctly, and students skim the surface of the sources they read anyway, picking quotes out after the paper is written. Further, the students seem to be able to do "everyday research" much better than academic research. She suggests that we should scrap the formal research paper in freshman year because the students don't like it and aren't successful with it. Hmmm, maybe we should also scrap first year sports, as many students are uncoordinated and not star athletes when they first try a new athletic endeavor. Ridiculous, of course, but the comparison makes sense. 

Weekly Response: Yancey's "Looking Back as We Look Forward: Historicizing Writing Assessment"

Yancey reviews the history of writing assessment and describes three waves: testing, holistic scoring, and portfolio and program assessment. She asks what we can learn from writing assessment. That is a question we are addressing in our FYW program now in the Writing Committee meetings. Further, Yancey discusses the different realms of educators and testing specialists.

In the first wave, Deiderich seems overly confident in the assessment professionals' abilities to quantify good writing. Educators, on the other hand, were more concerned with validity than reliability and efficiency. However, it took 20 years for their concerns to create change in the system.

Weekly Response: Straub's "The Concept of Control in Teacher Response"

This article concentrated on explaining the difference in teacher comments on writing assignments, and how facilitative comments allow students to maintain more control over their writing than directive comments.  (The examples were very useful.) I felt that the author flip-flopped a couple times, seeming to feel that facilitative comments are superior to directive comments, and then explaining that teachers will have different styles and ways of using directive comments that are appropriate for certain teachers and in certain settings. Straub clearly prefers facilitative comments, but didn't want to be directive in telling teachers how to comment.

It was in the end notes that Straub best explained the difference between facilitative and directive responses.

In directive commentary, the teacher says or implies, 'Don't do it your way; do it this way.' In facilitative commentary, the teacher says or implies, 'Here's what your choices have caused me to think you're saying-if my response differs from your intent, how can you help me to see what you mean?'

I tend to like a mix of both, when I use comments at all. (I prefer conferences or rubrics.) My students would not appreciate completely facilitative responses. They want to be told what to do to "fix" the paper; they want clear instructions. However, giving them only directives does not teach them to think and become better writers.

Weekly Response: Yancey's "Writing Assessment in the Early 21st Century"

Yancey gives background about how writing was assessed leading up to the last decade or so.  The questions asked are thought-provoking--who should be in charge of assessment, administrators or teachers? What are we assessing? How? I think sometimes the "testing" folks and the teachers don't really stop to think about these things. It's like a machine that just rolls, and no one stops to ask questions about why is it rolling and in what direction and who's driving??

One thing I love about this class is that it's so relevant to everything I'm doing right now. The Writing Committee at NJIT was just tasked with reading the most recent WPA Outcomes Statement. We were asked to write a response to the statement taking into consideration our department, our current syllabi and pedagogy, and our student population. So cool to have just done that and now read about how and why it came about, and what has happened since. I am certain that no one else on the committee except the director has read any of the scholarly articles regarding assessment that we have in this class. There is no one in the department with a background in Composition. Interesting. Yancey says some schools use them as-is, while others adapt them. We have never used the outcomes (or even acknowledged their existence as far as I know), but we're hoping to use them as a guide for a new NJIT Outcomes Statement as we rewrite the curriculum for our FYW program. Am I a nerd, or is that kind of exciting?