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English 306
Short Formal Reflection
Twas the night before Christmas, and all through the house, not a creature was stirring,
not even a mouse. I was curled up on my mothers lap, I turned the page. The stockings were
hung by the chimney with care, in hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there At just two
years old, I recited the entire Christmas poem word for word, and turned the pages of the book
at just the appropriate times. The love for the written word was instilled in me almost from birth.
I could write and recite my ABCs at three years old.
My skills as a writer progressed quickly because I had such supportive teachers in grade
school, middle school and high school who emphasized what I did right every bit as much as
what I did wrong, if not more so. The most important tool my teachers used was this positive
feedback. I wrote papers in grade school that were honest attempts to follow the teachers
directions and were fairly graded based on those directions. The content of my grade school
compositions might have been completely inaccurate, but they graded on the grammar, form or
style that the assignment was designed to teach us. Fulkerson would praise my teachers for this
because they did not fall victim to his idea of modal confusion (434). Instead, my teachers
encouraged me to find my own voice and to write it the way I would say it. Peter Elbow would
also praise them because they recognized that everyone learn[s] to use language almost
automatically in his first years and learn[s]to be very skilled at using words to make certain
things happen and used this concept as a foundation to build upon (115). I continued to develop
different voices for different genres of writing as my education progressed.
Any poor grades I have received on college level papers have been a result of habitual
procrastination. I normally sit down and just put words on paper. I dont do any outlining. I
dont use note cards. Occasionally I use a thesis statement, but the majority of my college
writing is a sort of formalized free writing, which I have somehow more recently developed into
a specific process. Some would say that my omission of the formal prewriting steps that were
taught to me in high school makes me a weak writer. Perhaps I am just lazy. However, I think
that my shortcomings involving the prewriting process result from continuously failing to see the
value in utilizing these steps. The question that echoes through my mind in so many
circumstances is why. Why do we learn to write in these steps? It was a question that was never
addressed in high school. Teachers forget that students dont know the educational standards and
anchors, and that even if we make students aware of these anchors, they mean nothing to
students. They need motivation other than okay, were going to write this paper in steps, this is
what were going to do, this is how were going to do it. The how was always readily apparent,
but the why was never addressed. For secondary students, Whys that they understand and agree
with will result in motivation and eagerness to learn and engage in classroom activities.
Knowing why would have helped me greatly because I would have seen a future use for them in
the real world.
Ignoring the why question leaves instruction on writing very dry and mechanicaland
exercise without a purpose. For me, it was so mundane that it actually promoted bad habits, such
as the procrastination and lack of prewriting, that prevent me from reaching my potential as a
writer. I am extremely fond of expressionistic writing pedagogy because the why question, in
freewriting, gives students the opportunity to motivate themselves and define their own purpose
for writing. Peter Elbow says in A Method for Teaching Writing that the students best language
skills are brought out and developed when writing is considered words on paper designed to
produce a specific effect in a specific reader (119). He further explains that students who dont
write well can miraculously achieve a high degree of truth, a strong, clear prose on certain
occasions when they somehow involve their selves and get turned on, (Elbow 124). In
translation, if we get our students interested in the topic of their writing and they stand something
to gain from it, it will leave them eager to learn to express themselves effectively because they
feel like they have something important to say. However, my favoritism towards expressionism
does not mean I do not find positive qualities in approaching writing instruction from other
angles. After all, part of what makes writing good are the concepts of grammar, style, tone,
organization, logic, reasoning and purpose, to name a few. I could not by any means be
persuaded to adhere to any one of the types of pedagogy that I have thus far encountered. All the
views we have visited in class fall short of my goals in the composition classroom.
WHY DO WE NEED TO TEACH WRITING?
As potential teachers, we will need to teach writing because it is our job. But why is it
our job? Some of the most obvious answers to this question begin with: Well, the Department of
Education says, or The Keystone Tests require, or Students have to be able to.
Why? Why, Why, Why?
The true answer is that the ability to write is a fundamental skill for success in the big
world that our students will be introduced to upon high school graduation. More precisely, it
doesnt matter whether a student aspires to be a professional athlete, a politician, or a novelist,
writing will be a necessity in their journey toward the achievement of that goal, dream or desired
career path. However, what constitutes good writing will vary. The concept of good writing is
relative; good writing is defined by the writer and their audience. To say that good writing is
subject to a certain set of standards would be to ignore the many roles writing plays in our
society. What makes a good writer, on the other hand, is the ability to distinguish which societal
role applies in each instance. Therefore, we must teach students all these applications, and more
importantly, to distinguish the differences between these instances. At the very minimum,
students should be able to take the approaches they have been taught in our composition courses
and be able to apply them effectively to produce clear communications. That ability alone will
make our students writing adaptable to societies many functions for writing.
This sociolinguistic view leaves composition teachers with a very big job to do. The very
discussion of what constitutes good writinga discussion, I might point out, that I dont
remember having in my high school yearsis therefore a discussion that should be ongoing,
beginning in the lower grades all the way up to the high school years. The concept of good
writing is something students should build upon, year after year, as their reading, writing, and
thinking skills grow. Furthermore, it is not a linear concept, but one that could most effectively
be illustrated by mapping.
The study of writing will be undervalued if we fail as teachers to show them its value.
How do we convince our students that learning to write is so valuable? Well, certainly we could
lecture all day long on the many functions of writing in our society, but I suspect it would be to
no avail. As many of us might remember, during high school, students think they know
everything about everything. A prominent reason for the lack of motivation I have already
visited stems from their inability to make a connection between writing and its real-world
applications. By the time high school graduation rolls around, students should be able to
effectively meet their needs for writing and composition when they enter college and the real
world. What I am proposing in my theory of Writing for Life is a way of teaching writing that
will continually show students new ways in which they will be using writing in the real world,
and in the process, also give them practice in each of the focuses of the four philosophies of
writing instruction that Fulkerson identified in his article Four Philosophies of Composition:
Formalist, Expressionist, Rhetorical, and Mimetic pedagogies (431). I will call my approach
Writing for Life.
BRIDGING THE GAPS BETWEEN THE REAL WORLD AND WRITING
It is only recently that I have discovered a source of motivation for myself. I have a
wonderful course schedule this semester, and each one of my classes is giving me a different
piece to the puzzle that will result in my goal of becoming an English teacher. I find myself in
many instances intrigued, where previously I am not sure I would have made the connections. I
want more than anything in the world to teach. With that goal as my conscious motivator, I have
notes scattered throughout my notebook on how I would teach or ideas for lesson plans. Most of
these brainstorms have derived from two or three of my classes in collaboration. I feel like I
have learned more in the last three weeks by discovering these connections than I had learned
collectively in my first nine semesters of undergraduate education.
Our goal as educators should be to guide students to discovering these connections for
themselves. How does that relate to writing instruction? Writing instruction is how we can
bridge the gaps for our students. We can prompt them into discovering for themselves, through
their own voices, connections between the real world, their also very real goals and ambitions,
and class content. The students use of their own voices to discover these connections and
parallels will ultimately be more valuable and promote deeper learning because their own voice
is a voice that they trust, at a time in life when they are questioning everything around them. In
this way, expressionist approaches can allow the teacher to get to know the student and establish
rapport with them by letting them know that educators are interested in them and their goals, not
just our own state-dictated objectives, and thereby provide teachers with helpful information
when considering how to teach students and how to build their curriculums.
So, what do all kids want more than anything else in the world? Two things: 1) Kids
want to grow up, to be older. They subconsciously seek adulthood and independence, and they
understand that these aspects of aging are accompanied by their entrance into the work force. As
they get older their goals and dreams will change, but for however fleeting a moment they have
any particular ambition, this ambition can be utilized by teachers as a useful tool for motivation.
Investing our efforts in their futures and interests is the best way to reach out to them. 2) They
want to talk. I neither agree nor disagree with the idea that students want to write (Tobin 6).
However, if we leave students alone in the classroom, they are not going to pass notes to one
another, they are going to use spoken language to communicate because it is our primary mode
of human communication. Teachers can use the excuse of constricted time though, to get them
to talk through the written word.
In Writing for Life, we should start by urging our students to initiate with us a
conversation about something they are interested in. If we have the opportunity to work with
teachers from other disciplines, we can use that other discipline to give them a slightly less broad
area to derive topics from. So, we should ask students to initiate a conversation by journaling
about their topic of choice, where they should write down what they know and what they want to
know and let their pens take them wherever they will. In turn, we should collect the journals and
write responses to each student individually. We can ask honest questions that will help them
narrow their topics of interest, provide resources to help them continue developing their
thoughts, and through positive reinforcement, urge them to keep thinking about their topic and
help them develop a voice for the opinions they are forming. Once these opinions become more
deeply developed, and students have discovered, through the expressionist exercises of
freewriting and journaling, ways in which to support and defend their positions, we have arrived
at the mimetic stage. We have led students thus far to the development of a chaotic and
disorganized argument and a voice by which to present it. To cite Elbow, [voice] is a root
quality of good writing, he continues by explaining that the grammar can be poor and the
structure can be haphazard all while conveying meaning through a developed voice or self that is
revealed in the students writing, thus making it more convincing and lively (120).
At this point in the lesson we would need to shift our focus to organization and formation
of a clear argument, the goals of Fulkersons mimetic theory. We prompt them to throw out all
the junk, pull out all the important information, and use mapping, graphic organizers, note cards,
summarizing and outlining to turn chaos into what Fulkerson calls good thinking. Fulkerson
explains that a clear connection exists between good writing and good thinking. The major
problem with student writing is that it is not solidly thought out (432). This is the issue that we
attempt to tackle throughout this phase in the process. The different phases highlight and
emphasize different values that urge students to discovering different ways to both develop and
convey their thoughts.
From here, we have to discuss who the audience will be for the final product of the
assignment and begin our approach to the rhetorical phase. If we are working with another
teacher , or attempting to convince an individual to come to class to speak to us, those
individuals will be the audience. The effect is intended for them, and we have to focus our
writing and exercises more towards the trappings of persuasion.
After this, we should teach revision strategies. This is the only time I will suggest peer
workshop because students will have been revising as they write. Students will do a final revise
before letting their peers peruse their essays one time just to catch whatever they might have
missed. My function for peer review is to reinforce the teachers values, criteria and criticisms.
This role is in opposition to Elbows emphasized use of peer review, but addresses his concern
that [students] have to put up with the teachers judgement; but really it is often resisted (117).
So, through peer review, the teachers guidance will be reinforced by the students peers and it
will further establish rapport. This is the last step before composing a final draft to be submitted.
Now wait a minute? I bet you noticed that I have failed to mention the formalist
perspective. Fulkerson explains formalism as the belief that writing can be determined to be
good or bad based solely on the construction of the written sentence (431). By the time our
students hit high school, they should have had enough grammatical exercise to allow us to nearly
exclude grammar from our grading rubrics. Yes, we will have students that still need practice in
grammar, and in those instances we should make sure to highlight mistakes that they make
repetitively, but points should not be awarded or deducted for these types of errors. Furthermore,
the final revision that students do with their peers should help students find grammatical errors
and correct them before turning the paper in. So, although we shouldnt ignore our responsibility
to the student in need of further practice, grammar belongs in grammar school. For our
purposes, it is obviously present, but only as an afterthought.
In Lad Tobins article Process Pedagogy, he discusses the whole language movement,
which approached elementary writing instruction beginning with the expressivist freewriting
exercises and emphasizing the process of writing as I wish to do in the high school composition
classroom (6). However, I find this is much more ineffective at the elementary school level
because students will not have previously developed the grammar skills as a basis to build upon.
My experience brings me to agree that building on the skills and interests that they already
possess is a natural starting point, but in early writing instruction, developing grammatical skill
needs to be the focus. If those skills are not developed in grade school, they become so laborious
to older students that they dont want to learn it anymore, thus stripping teachers of the criteria
that can be used most commonly for positive reinforcement.
unmotivated students whose papers will be flooded with red ink, and a whole lot of wasted time
and effort. Those papers end up in the trash. Nothing will be learned from them because they
are a source of disappointment to the student, who wont be anxious to revisit his mistakes if he
is overwhelmed by the number of them, making him feel like he cant do anything right.
IN SUMMARY
Ultimately, Writing for life can be mapped out in layers. The ultimate goal will always
be rhetorical, encompassed by mimetics, which are, in turn, encompassed by expressivism.
Therefore, the way to initiate the writing process should be with expressivist tools. From that
starting point, we can question our students into the mimetic approaches, and then ask them to
rewrite from a rhetorical approach. If a composition teacher can accomplish this, they can teach
a much more applicable, well rounded writing process. However, to do it incorrectly, that is, to
not approach the final rhetorical product with exercises from expressivism first, and mimetics
second, the result would be very similar to Fulkersons examples of modal confusion. I believe
that the process I have developed may have been what the teacher Fulkerson mentions as the
worst instance of modal confusion [he had] come across might have been trying to accomplish
(435.) Therefore we must be careful to provide some type of assessment at different intervals
during the writing process. It makes the writing process slightly less painful for students who
dont necessarily enjoy writing
This short formal reflection is a perfect example of the types of writing that a student
should be doing in high school. A high school students final draft may not be quite as advanced
or intricate, but they will have some well thought out ideas from which to build upon that relate
directly to themselves, their interests, and their goals. The goal is to inspire students to compose
ideas and adopt a process that will be useful to them. Because this class is for our major, we do
not need to consider an interdisciplinary approach, for we are already interested. However,
utilizing an interdisciplinary approach would be beneficial in teaching high school composition
because as English teachers, we cant expect to have the expertise that our students interests
require. Asking the shop teacher, art teacher, or science teacher to assist and do cooperative
projectswhere due dates and very broad topics are assigned by the cooperative teacher and the
process of writing is facilitated in their composition classeswill give students opportunities to
develop their thinking skills utilize the other parts of the brain in their learning process. This
utilization of the other parts of the brain in congruence with students relating their learning to
things they already know and are interested in, they will actually learn more and learn more
quickly and effectively.
Successfully practicing a series of writing assignments from a Writing for Life approach
introduces students to many different audiences and purposes and prewriting exercises to assist
them in the writing process. They will develop critical thinking skills, different voices, ways to
conquer writers block, and different tactics of persuasion without realizing they are learning
even half of that. Because this method of writing instruction is dependent upon what the student
knows or is interested in, they will learn more, and learn more quickly and effectively. Similarly,
because this method of writing instruction will give students a broad exposure to different genres
of writing, they will become able to distinguish between the different societal roles of writing.
Elbow says they will learn that for certain kinds of writing [spelling and grammar are] not so
important, and this will better free them to see how it is necessary in most other situations to
produce certain effects and behaviors (118). What he means is that students will learn to
distinguish which writing criteria are important in different sociolinguistic situations, which is
central to our approach. Graff and Berkenstein would say then, that they are well on their way
to becoming accomplished writers, with some level of mastery of an inventory of basic
moves (1).
Works Cited
Elbow, Peter. A Method for Teaching Writing. College English Vol. 30, No. 2. (Nov 1968):
pp. 115-25. Print.
Fulkerson, Richard. Four Philosophies of Composition. The Norton Book of Composition
Studies. Ed. Susan Miller, New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2009. 430-35. Print.
Graff, Gerald, and Cathy Birkenstein. They Say, I Say: The Moves That Matter in Academic
Writing. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2010. Print.
Tobin, Lad. Process Pedagogy. A Guide to Composition Pedagogies. Ed. Gary Tate, Amy
Rupiper, Kirk Schick, New York: Oxford University Press, 2001. 1-18. Print.