I thought Royster and Pratt's articles both very directly reflected the presentation by ALANA students. Royster reflects on her personal experience, combined an academic view, to pinpoint the way in which her voice, along with other of her race, becomes silenced in the classroom setting. ALANA students highlighted this same point of feeling that their particular language and experiences are largely not taken into account. Marginalized groups feel so invisible and taken for granted, it is no wonder why non-white students feel the desire to get their degrees, get out, and never look back at Ithaca College.

Like Ava, I appreciated Royster's examples of the reason's she so often feels she has to resist"speaking without clenching her teeth." It puts the misunderstandings and subtle acts of racism that often are swept under the rug. She presents us with the idea of the "hybrid person" who has the ability to understand a variety of discourses. She claims that we all have this ability if we engage in better practices that allow us to exchange perspectives and negotiate between differences in language.

Hairston: Diversity, Ideology, and Teaching Writing

In her article, Hairston explains her concern that, after the major gains college introductory writing courses have had over the years, that they have begun to regress. Instead of the classes being about allowing inexperienced writers to become competent in their writing skills and be able to effectively express themselves, she fears that classes have now become politically charged. By forcing students to write about a specific social issue in their essays, rather than about what they know, "...they are likely to take refuge in generalities and responses that please the teacher" (189). Not only is individual expression denied, but they will have learned only that there is a "correct way to think" (189).

While I agree with Hairston that basic writing classes should be strictly student-centered and kept away from the political realm, I think she goes a bit overboard in her argument, and I have issues with the majority of page 188 of the article. Although it is dangerous to allow teachers to hold a power that they could abuse by forcing their political opinions upon students, I doubt that the majority of teachers have that kind of motive. Hairston almost makes it sound like every writing teacher who assigns essays about social or racial injustice is attempting to recruit their own little political army. I highly doubt this is the case. Even if the teacher did express his or her opinions upon the class, Hairston has to realize that college students aren't as impressionable as she is assuming them to be. If they made it to the college level, chances are many of them have their own political opinions, so if anything, the classroom setting would turn into more of a heated political argument amongst the students.

Also, I know Hairston was talking specifically about intro writing classes, but I don't see how writing essays about current social and political events in writing classes is necessarily a bad thing. In fact, I found that I've applied concepts I learned in my women's studies and sociology classes to some of my writing classes, in both discussion and papers. Isn't that the point of college? To bridge that gap between all of the disciplines (in their respective "ivory towers") and apply them to the real world?

Cushman: The Public Intellectual

Cushman presents a rather idealistic theory in order to resolve the social issue of disconnect between "intellectuals" and "common people." She believes that by making social service part of the university curriculum, it would bridge the gap between the elite, educated people and those in our community who do not have access to the same educational activities. By doing so, the educational system will better serve the community as a whole, by creating a mutualistic learning experience for both educated and uneducated people.

I like the idea that Cushman presents as a way to connect the community and benefit those who would not otherwise have access to educational opportunities. However, although she makes a point to say that participating students should not act the "savior role," I can't help but shake the feeling that they play a superior role in the interaction with other community members. It feels like a front, like the students aren't as genuinely invested in learning from others as they are in pouring their own "superior" knowledge into the minds of others.

Not to be a downer, but I do feel like on the whole, the relationship between the "intellectual elites" and "common people" will always be a little strained. Still, attempting to bridge the gap is bettwe than allowing the gap to become wider, and I have hope that eventually, if this system of mutualistic learning persists, Cushman's theory and ideals will stand on their own in our society.

Anson: Writing in a Culture of Technology

It was interesting for me to compare Anson's article on implementing technology ino the classroom with the article I found by Webb, which discusses almost the exact same concept, except TWELVE YEARS LATER. The main difference is that Anson's article is mostly theoretical, things he believes will happen in the years to come based on our rapidly developing era of technology.

Maybe it's just me, but I've always been a little wary on becoming too dependent on technology. Anson's ideas of individualized learning, though seemingly ideal for a person attempting to foster his or her own writing style, somehow just doesn't appeal to me. Of course, after meeting face-to-face with other students and a professor in all of my writing classes, I go home and apply what I've learned to my own style and ideas, so the independent writing process is still in place (and I believe writing alone IS one of the most important aspects of learning about one's own thought process). However, losing that group discussion and interaction, the ability to comepare oneself with the works of other students and learn from their ideas (and even their mistakes), well, I just don't think we'd be doing ourselves any favors, and in the end, technology is really only about efficiency rather than improvement.

I can't remember if it was Anson or Webb who claimed this, but yes, I do agree that accessible technology makes people want to write more often, but that does not necessarily mean it makes us write better. In fact, thanks to Facebook, Twitter, and other social networking sites, our grammar has gone to shit, and we have trouble having thoughts that are any more than 160 characters. Call me old fashioned, but I think that, as valuable as technology is in terms of researching, convenience of emails, and having a template on which to organize one's thoughts, there is no replacement for face-to-face interaction. Technology should remain a back-up, not a substitute, for dicect contact, both student-to-student, and student-to-teacher.

Article on Writing & Technology

"Rhizomatics": Following the roots in writing and research heuristics." Adam Webb.

Webb basically takes someone else's theory (referred to as Cormier), which is called a "rhizomatic model of education," and applies it to the classroom setting. "Rhizome" is a concept which provides a "flexible conception of knowledge for the information age" (3). Cormier beleives that knowledge can be negotiated and that learning is a contextual, collaborative endeavor, and using web-based programs, students can greatly expand their ability to research and write. With this kind of information technology now commonplace in society, students can now explore different perspectives of an issue or topic, develop their own perspectives, create a narrative that allows the audience to come up with their own perspective on the subject. Webb provides questions for students to ask themselves, as well as activities for teachers to conduct in the classrooms to make the shift into a more technology-based classroom learning experience.

The article is significant in today's world because, unlike my generation, who grew up as this technology was first becoming available to us, kids and adolescents today are expected to know how to use the technology that they've always known to exist, as well as be able to utilize the information that is so easily accessible. Classrooms absolutely need to make this shift (if they haven't already) to incorporate this type of learning in the classroom.

Rose and Apstein

In his article, Rose targets the issues that face unskilled writers in the college setting (what a new and intriguing topic!). He claims that today's writing curriculum focuses on only improving the technical skills of these writers through remedial drills and practices. What is wrong with this system, Rose says, is that "such work is built on a set of highly questionable assumptions: that a writer has a relatively fixed repository of linguistic blunders that can be pinpointed and corrected through drill..." (345). In reality, this offers only a simplistic understanding of where the problems truly lie, which are within the institution itself, and the scientific, quantifiable way in which it deals with students who are not adequately prepared for college-level writing. There is inherent danger in this method, because it focuses only on technical errors, rather on how we are able to present the knowledge we have gleaned from various courses through our writing.

I remember taking short-answer or short-essay tests in high school, and even in some finals for college classes, and I cringe at how bad my writing probably was. The only thing I (and most other students) concentrate on is getting the facts down on paper, to prove our understanding of a subject. This method, however, completely trivializes the discipline of writing, because isn't part of learning about the ability to not only restate what you have learned, but to eloquently write about how these facts relate to the real world, or even questioning what you've learned? The alternative is basically regurgitating facts out of a textbook, and let's face it, anyone can do that. Higher education is about applying what we've learned to our lives outside of the classroom, and writing aids us in doing just that.

All I really learned from Apstein's short article was how she agreed with Rose's article, but believes that, in order to give merit to his argument, he would have to specify the type of writinghe means, the kind in which one interprets the curriculum, which ilustrates how one actively engages in building one's knowledge on a subject.

Brooke: Underlife and Writing Instruction

I found that Brooke's argument overlapped with a few of the key ideas from Delpit's article, as well as from Elbow's article about ignoring audience. Brook argues, like Delpit, that all students feel the need to distance themselves from the classroom, to express themselves as people with interests and personalities that extend beyond the identity of "student." Current institutions, however, tend to be in conflict with the student/writer's need to express him or herself as an individual, in the same way that a teacher's desire to teach writing as a "freeing process" has gone against the "idealogical purposes of the institution" (149).

Brooke offers a suggestion to shift the identity roles in the classroom, to make students into writers in order to facilitate original thinking, as opposed to what they believe a teacher would want. He makes a good point to say that in order for writers be become good at what they do, they absolutely need to see themselves as more than just "good students," because in the real world outside the classroom, what they learned about their underlife identity is what will really matter.

Delpit: The Silenced Dialogue

Delpit describes in her article the "culture of power" that is reflected from the outside world into classrooms. She believes (and I agree) that the power group, namely white, middle-class people, as well as their spoken language and teaching methods, have taken over the classroom setting, which in turn has silenced the poor and/or non-white community and their culture. As a result, there is a language barrier of sorts between the white teacher and the Black students because the language the teacher uses in the classroom is based on the "process-oriented" method, and it ignores the "skills-oriented" learning method that the child has experienced at home. Those in the power group already understand the language, and therefore they are able to be more successful in the classroom. By having a "one-size-fits-all" teaching method, teachers are ensuring that the status quo remains intact.

Of course, Delpit isn't saying that this culture of power is an intentional move by white teachers, but she is saying that the system needs to take these things into account. She argues that it is not the parents of the children who need to change their home teaching methods. Rather, it is the school that needs to make changes. Delpit understands that this is a "top-down" issue to be addressed.

What I appreciated most about Delpit's article were the solutions she offered for this division of language in the classroom. She stresses the importants of students being "taught the codes needed to participate fully in the mainstream of American life...within the context of meaningful communicative endeavors; that they must be allowed the resource of the teacher's expert knowledge, while being helped to achknowledge their own "expertness" as well" (296). In this way, both approaches, process and skill oriented, can ideally be used, which would level the playing field in the classroom.

Scattered Thoughts

Many of the articles we’ve read, I believe, are expansions of Murray’s question about why and how we teach something as abstract as the process of writing. From this question stem many different and contradicting theories, the most intriguing one I found to be Elbow’s argument for writing without a specific audience in mind, and rather emphasizing the act of freewriting, at least in the initial stages of the process. Often I feel that when I concentrate too much on how audience will perceive my writing, that I will push away certain ideas, and in this way I restrain my thoughts on a subject and direct them only towards what I believe my audience wants to hear. By directing our writing in this way, not only are we actively limiting our thought process, but setting ourselves up for a rather boring piece of writing.
In terms of how to teach writing in the classroom, I think the emphasis should be not on how to construct a sentence or an essay; those things will come with time. Rather, the emphasis should be on putting pen to paper and simply getting thoughts out so writers can visually see where they what they’re trying to say. Refining said thoughts should come later, and this is the core of Elbow’s argument. As he says, “…it’s hard to disguise something while engaged in trying to figure it out.” Writing should be regarded as a process rather than a product; a writer is never really done with a piece of writing, because there is always a new perspective to take, a new way of stating something, a new idea to bring forth. “In short,” Elbow says, “ignoring audience can lead to worse drafts but better revisions.”
Still, I find myself going back and forth about which method is the most effective when it comes to teaching students how to write coherent and concise academic papers: is it better to allow them to forget audience and write what they know, allowing the technical skills to come later? Or
The question that I may want to explore in my longer paper is how to change the way students view their writing process in the classroom. I want to theorize on the how and why students should view writing as a means of self-expression, rather than as a way to prove themselves to an outside (often intimidating) audience, like a teacher. I think back on Ong’s example of how teachers have students write the generic essay, “What I did on my summer vacation,” when I consider how writing is taught now. The only occasion students can give for writing this essay is “because the teacher told me to.” How can a young person find joy in the creative process of writing if teachers insist on removing the creativity?
I think teachers have the power to either hone their students’ creative skills, or turn them permanently away from them. The trick is to get students to understand the beauty of writing, which is that one has the freedom to say whatever comes to mind, and then to go back and edit one’s thoughts, an aspect lost in verbal communication where, once an opinion is stated, it is much more difficult to change or take back. If teachers can achieve that initial value of writing within students when they are at an early age, we would see many less “basic” writers, or students who truly feel as though they have “nothing to say” on a subject later on in their academic careers.

Flynn: Composing as a Woman

In contrast to Fleckenstein's social argument, Flynn takes more of a psychological approach to the differences between how men and women develop language through their separate experiences which, in turn, influence how they write. She claims that women are programmed from birth to identify with their mothers, while men are eventually denied this association, and therefore their "identification processes stress differentiation from others" (Chodorow, 176). Thus their experiences are entirely different, a facts that results in the seemingly black and white differences between men and women.

Examples, hooray! After reading Fleckenstein's article, I appreciated the fact that Flynn presents examples from students' prose to back up her claims of how differences in men and women's experiences are reflected in their thinking and writing processes.

As straightforward and accessible as Flynn's article was, I don't feel like I learned anything that I didn't already know. Yes, we are brought up with gendered identities, and we assume these roles in our lives and our writing styles. Yes, it is important to inform and encourage male and female students alike about these differences and to put them in social and psychological contexts. For me, though, I don't believe she presented any sort of revolutionary ideas about where the problems originated and how to call attention to them in the classroom.

Fleckenstein: Resistance, Women, and Dismissing the "I"

Fleckenstein puts forth in her article an intriguing argument claiming that when Bartholomae offers insight to how writing should be taught in classrooms to the idealized "student," he ignores that people's experiences differ depending on their gendered identities. Fleckenstein indicates one of Bartholomae's key arguments, the dismissal of the writer outside of the text, thereby eliminating subjectivity and allowing the text to stand on its own. However, Fleckenstein says that "a writer outside the text is always embedded within a cultural system that dictates and constrains options for material and rhetoric identity, and women writers are culturally situated in circumstances sharply divergent from men" (110).

If I had never taken a sociology or women's studies course in college, I don't think I would've understood much of Fleckenstein's article. Personally, I understand what androcentrism is and how being a man is the norm, while anything associated with feminism or women is considered "other," but I'm not sure that this article is accessible to everyone, because often she spoke in such abstract terms. There were several times that I found myself desperate for some concrete examples. It rather annoyed me because I think she had some great points, but she definitely needed to back them up to avoid confusion.

I have to say that this article kind of ripped the rug out from under me. I've experienced sexism in all sorts of ways outside the classroom, but I never considered that I was in a subordinate position when it came to my own voice in my writing. Am I just oblivious to my own cultural boundaries? Am I just so used to this role that I play in my everyday life that I fail to recognize the signs of my own limitations? Or, as Josh says in his blog, since I never acknowledged the privileged/subordinate issue between men and women writers, does that make me just a writer?

I suppose the real question here is the difference between how I think about myself in my own writing verses the how other people, either consciously or subsonsciously,make judgments about my writing as they consider that I, a women, wrote that piece of prose.

What would happen if all writing were gender anonymous?

Bartholomae: Inventing the University

In his article, Bartholomae explains how first-year college students attempt to get a feel for the various languages of academia in their writing. He claims that in order to do this, students must imagine an academic audience and "mimick" the language as they begin to learn how to use it.

Ah, the old "fake it 'til you make it" strategy. I remember it well. I was intensely nervous when I got my first essay assignment my first semester at college. I began the paper at least a week before it was due, and I specifically remember spending hours on it, contemplating every word of every sentence in my attempt to elevate my writing to this academic level that I had in my head. It seemed forced and out of place for me to be writing from this place because I couldn't quite grasp the discourse yet, but I had read enough academic writing to understand that this was how I was supposed to write.Needless to say, I butchered my first few attempts at imitating academic discourse.

I'd like to say (or at least, I certainly hope) that my writing has gotten exponentially better since freshman year, and I think it can be attributed to the "fake it 'til you make it" stradegy. The act of imagining an educated, university audience reminded me somewhat of Ong's stance on fictionalizing an audience while you write, but with several key differences. While Ong seemed to be trying to take pressure off the writer by advising that he or she write with the idea that the reader is already adapted to their specific writing style, Bartholomae seems to demand that writers imagine an audience that most likely knows more about the subject than the writer, which I think is a pretty intimidating place to be writing from.

Still, I like the conclusion that Bartholomae come to in the end, how it is better to be writing from a place of creativity, even if it is "muddier and more confusing prose," than to attempt to write a quick and efficient paper, devoid of creative thought. Sometimes, one must lose oneself in compicated thoughts before they can find the right way to express them.

Shaughnessy

I'm not sure why, but I read the first part of Shaughnessy's article very sarcastically. I laughed out loud when she discussed the teacher's initial, inherent need to protect the academy and exclude certain people who are clearly outside of the realm of education, such as the students the teacher first encounters. The teacher conciders the consequences of failing an entire class, as opposed to deciding the best way to go about teaching students who are so far behind. The initial judgments tickled me, though I'm sure Shaughnessy's assessment is not far from the truth. "Converting the natives"...now that's just being racist and condescending. Still funny though.

I like how Shaughnessy's essay focuses on converting the teachers as opposed to the students, because I do think that education is a give and take relationship. Students can only sustain cognitive arguments as far as they are taught to think in such a manner. She says, "For [students] the injuction to 'be more specific' os difficult to carry out because the conditions that lead to specificity are often missing" (238). Students are always taught just to find the answer, but no one seems to teach them how to specify WHY they think an answer is correct, or how to QUESTION the answers they are given, or CHALLENGE what they are taught in classrooms. Isn't that the "point" of education? To inspire original, thoughtful ideas about the world?

This leads me to Bizzell's essay. I agree with Caitlin that by the time college rolls around, students should not be looking to teachers for all the answers, but rather should be actively participating in their own education by actively participating in what goes on in classrooms. I do think that in many ways, college has helped me become a much more critical and analytical thinker. I no longer just take what people say as fact, but I have the ability to challenge and BACK UP my claims. While I'm not sure if that's just me being overopinionated or more mature since I was in high school, but I think college has had a lot to do with why I now think this way.

Elbow & Ong: Audience

I found myself agreeing with many of the things Elbow had to say in his essay. Often when we concentrate too much on addressing our language in our writing toward a certain audience in our heads (or an audience who we know will eventually be reading our work, like a teacher), it becomes difficult to work out what we are trying to say because our concentration is not in the right place. As Elbow says, "[Writers] are actung too much like a salesman trained to look the customer in the eye and to think at all times about the characteristics or the 'target audience.'" Elbow argues that, at least in the initial draft, writers should forget about who they're writing to, and instead write for themselves. His theory is that the best way to figure our what we're trying to say is to forget about how readers will receive the writing; otherwise, the writing has a tendency to become thin and contrived. The writing becomes much more genuine when the writer doesn't settle for taking what they believe to be the reader's point of view, but rather attempts to make the reader see from their perspective.

The paradoxes that Elbow mentions when it comes to teaching writing in school were intriguing. While it is important for students to "try harder" in their writing, they also must "just relax" and forget about who they're writing for. This paradox reminded me of the girl who claimed to have nothing to say about Catcher and the Rye in Mirskin's essay. Students often mistake not being able to sustain private discourse by forgetting about audience with having nothing to say.

Ong takes a slightly different view about how writers should consider their audience. He claims that the best way for writers to succeed is for them to imagine an audience that has adapted to their writing style, as opposed to thinking about the people who will actually be reading their work. Ong also takes on the idea that the readers must take an active role in becoming the type of audience that the writer is writing for. Readers must learn "how to conform themselves to the projections of the writers they read, or at least how to operate in terms of these projections" (12).

Overall, I think both Elbow and Ong have some original ideas that break away from one of the golden rules that writers have always been taught: to think about the audience to whom they are writing. By freeing ourselves from the mental constrains of writing to anyone in particular, we allow our best ideas to come forth without any regard for how anyone else might receive the information.

Mirskin: Writing as a Process of Valuing

I found that Professor Mirskin's essay related very directly to Tuesday's discussion of how we internalize conversation with others and use that to form our own thoughts and opinions. In this way, we come to understand our own values through social context. Mirskin states that "...because others' language language comes at the world from a valuative perspective, our own language use naturally inflects value as it functions within that dialogic arena" (391). Because of this understanding of shared values, often we have to go no further than stating "It's sunny out today," because it implies that the sun being out is a good thing.

When writers are composing, they are constantly meditating between their own and society's system of values and applying it to their work. I found it interesting that often we do not apply this process consciously, but rather we have learned through our social development to do this in conversation, and therefore we are able to transpose it to our writing style. No matter what kind of writing I'm doing, whether it be poetry, a personal essay, an expository essay, or a simple email, I am acting on either an understanding of shared values between myself and my reader, or the notion that I must try to convince my reader to share what I value. If I cannot find a way to allow the reader to understand my stance, even if they don't agree with it, then I have ultimately failed in my process.

I found the "Catcher and the Rye" reference at the end of the essay to be very interesting. The girl who claimed she had nothing to say about the book really meant that she didn't agree with aspects of the text. The key, then, was not changing her value of the book, but rather finding a way for her to express her attitude through her writing. In the end, it turned out that the girl had plenty to say about the book, it was about "knowing how to elaborate one's own process of writing" (410).

Bruffee:Collaborative Learning

I would certainly agree with Bruffee's overarching argument that students learn better when they work in groups, as opposed to when they work independently. First of all, unlike Lumsford's rather codescending tone in her essay, Bruffee argues that students, though somewhat inexperienced, are never COMPLETELY idiotic, but rather always have something useful to bring to the group, simply by having been involved with other things in their lives, which they use indirectly in their learning process. I appreciated Bruffee saying this, and it certainly gave him some credibility in my book.

As my education at Ithaca has progressed over the years, I've experienced more and more individual/group work in the classroom, as opposed to class discussion, in which the professor guides the direction in which students should be thinking. I think this gradual lead into more group-directed learning certainly has had a positive impact on my own education, though I cannot speak for anyone else.

Although I've never done any formal tutoring, I have helped friends with their papers before, given them feedback, edited, made grammatical corrections, etc., as I've done in numerous writing classes in which we workshop our fellow students' written work. Each time I gie feedback on work, I feel like I'm consciously beginning to realize things I already learned how to do, but was never aware of until that moment. It's strange, but I have experienced first-hand just how effectively the collaboration of two or more inexperienced students can help to spark a productive, intelligent conversation.

Lunsford: Cognitive Development and the Basic Writer

In her essay, Lunsford attempts to analyze the reasons that basic writers are unable to "get out of their own heads" in the classroom, and abstract the concepts or draw inferences from the material they learn. She then offers ways in which teachers of basic writers can adjust the structure of the classroom in order to address and alleviate these issues.

One idea I absolutely agree with in this essay is that writing classes (especially for unskilled writers) should not be lecture-based, but rather should be intensely focused on student participation through their own writing. The example Lumsford offers is, instead of simply explaining what a semi colon is and its function within a sentence, have students perform exercises in which they must place semi colons in the appropriate places. This is, by far, a much more effective teaching method. Student engagement is essential in the subject of writing in the same way it is essential in learning to ride a bike or play piano: you can't just idly observe others doing it and expect to learn how to do it yourself, rather you must pick up the pencil, grab a piece of paper, and actively engage yourself in your own learning/teaching.

Flower and Hayes

The part I found most interesting about Flower and Hayes' discussion was when a writer "monitors" their work, switching between one process and another. I never realized it, but that process (along with many of the other processes they mentioned) is something that I do all too frequently when I'm writing. I'm never afraid to say to myself, "Well this is trivial" or "This sounds cliche," and I suppose in a way I was telling myself, "Don't write trivially," and "Don't use cliche language." In this way, although I often feel as though my writing process is disorganized, there is some kind of subconscious method to the madness.

The experiment the authors conducted in which they instructed writers to compose their thoughts out loud was also intriguing. I'm not sure I would be able to verbalize exactly what goes through my head as I plan my process, because I often feel as though it's chaotic (although Flower and Hayed did prove otherwise). Even as I write this paragraph, I'm concidering what I would say out loud if someone were to ask me to explain what I'm thinking and where I plan to go with the rest of the blog, and to be honest, it probably would sound like I have no idea what I'm doing. When I start to think too hard about my writing, it begins to feel forced. I'm much better at figuring out what I'm trying to get across by seeing my ideas on paper. Of course, this wouldn't be the first time that I've believed that the thoughts in my head are better left unsaid.

Literary Autobiographies: Part Deux

Caitlin: First of all, I think it's incredible that you were writing books as a kid, and I think you could expand on that a lot. Do you remember what your writing process was then, and how does it compare it to now? I also really liked how you rebel against the idea of an "important book," because I think that through all of the English and writing classes we take during the course of our education, we learn to search for things like theme and tone and structure and we lose that ability, I think, to just sit down and enjoy a well-written book.

I think you could definitely use more scene/dialogue dispersed throughout your essay, just to change it up between anecdotes. Were there any specific moments when you realized something about your own abilities or specific style? Any important moments with your parents or a specific teacher?

Sam: I definitely feel for you when you were talking about your first real struggle as a writer coming from attempting to write a personal essay. I know we discussed this in class, but I always find it so difficult to explain my own life on paper without it sounding false or cheesy. (I think that's why I enjoy fiction so much, you can get as personal and in-depth as you want with someone you make up.) As for the list you made, instead of just putting them out there with no explanation, maybe just choose one or two and create a scene with them. Like Caitlin's, I think your autobiography needs a scene or two to break up the anecdotes. They can get rather weary.

Liam: I was intrigued by your paper from the very first paragraph, as you discuss the feeling of being in control of a stickshift car. I think it sets up your whole discussion very nicely. I think it's really interesting how you had such a frustrating time learning how to read as a kid. Like Josh, you didn't take to words the old-fashioned way, and I think it says something that you are both now such strong writers.

You have such a unique writing style, and I very much enjoyed the way you tell your stories. I could relate to your feeling that your thoughts and ideas came out of some "nowhere" place. I often feel that my best writing comes from when I just relax and and allow the slow process to manifest on its own.

I'd like to hear a little bit more about your family, specifically your mother. I could see you exploring the very sad statement she made about forgetting words (I'm assuming she means words in German), which I think signifies a kind of loss of culture, loss of her past. That's just me, though. I think we can learn a lot about ourselves by looking at our parents.

Literary Autobiographies: Part One

Ava: At first, your autobiography seems to be moving chronologically, starting with your parents' insistence that you speak properly (an experience I can attest to), then moving on to reading and eventually writing. It takes kind of a sudden turn when you go back to talk about where your parents came from. Although I've heard you tell me the story of how your parents ran away together before, seeing it on paper makes me love it even more. I especially like how you say that if it weren't for your grandmother's wrath, you and your siblings might never have been born. It's strange sometimes to think in those terms, but it's totally true, and the whole anecdote is well-written.

Although I think your transition into your parents' history came a tad out of left field and away from your story, I think you transitioned back to yourself very well. Your parents are a big part of how you came to be you, and I think their story IS necessary in there. Overall, your whole story came full circle, and I feel like I've gotten to know your whole family. =] (oh yeah, an emoticon was needed)

Josh: I think you probably had the most unorthodox educational experience ever. Just to think that your could crochet and speak French before you could read English is just astonishing. I love the theater story, as you already know; it's an adorable and relavent story, and I like how you tie in your ability to be a "talented listener" as your way to beat the system.

I'm interested to know what exactly you thought about going to the "gifted" school. We know that your mother blames it for your lack of interest in reading, but you don't seem to take a stance on it. Do you think things would've turned out differently if no one had ever refered to you as "gifted"?

Also, when you're telling the story about the parent-teacher conference, I had a couple of questions. I wanted to know how old you were by this time, and also whether you COULD read and chose not to, or if you were still illiterate at this point. I think if I knew these things, I'd have a better idea of just how serious a reading problem this was.

Alex: I thought it was so funny how you were one of those troublemaking little kids who was only a troublemaker because you were smarter and therefore bored with the lessons. Totally misunderstood! I also found it interesting how many similar experiences you and I have had, like the love of scaring the shit out of our friends at sleepovers, or playing "pass the story" over a campfire, which I did with my brother and cousins when I was little. All of these little anecdotes about your Dad's lessons illustrate a lot about how your writing skills developed, and I liked the angle you took that most of your abilities came from outside of the classroom.

There was one small thing that bothered me. When you said, "I got a C- even though I'm sure my creativity level was far above the other 8th graders..." it sounds a little pretentious. I'm sure your Charles Manson essay WAS much more interesting to read than the others, but you might just want to tweak your wording.

Writers of all kinds! Perl & Sommers

I found that Perl's research, though clinical and difficult to wrap my head around at times, brought a new light to our common misconceptions about unskilled writers. She says, "Since the written products of basic writers often look arbitrary, observers commonly assume that the students' approach is also arbitrary," which is a mistake that can lead to inneffective ways of helping them improve. We assume that they simply lack the basic knowledge about the rules of syntax, spelling, punctuation, etc., when the problem is much more complex, and therefore attempting to teach (or reteach) these rules would be futile. The rules are there; the participants demonstrate a knowledge of the basics. What needs to be addressed is not what is on the page, but rather what the mental process is that converts thoughts to writing. For instance, there is a disparity between what the students would say aloud verses what came out on the page, that participants would "read in" words, or edit their work so often that they would impede upon their own writing process by losing their train of thought.

I think this study relates back to our discussion about how we teach (or don't teach) the process of writing. There is no one-size-fits-all when it comes to learning how to write effectively; each individual has his or her own needs, and therefore their process or forming thoughts and converting them to writing will be different depending on the person, as well as the subject they're writing about.

It was interesting to make that jump between Perl's research of unskilled writers to Sommers' article about much more experienced writers. The comparison between student and professional writers was clear: students think revision means, essentially, editing. When they've written something, they think the work is done, that the idea is already there, and it just might need tweaking. Professional writers, however, never appear to see their writing as complete. Their revisions are drastic, and each draft presents new ideas.

Maybe it's just me being a lazy "student writer," but I found their whole process exhausting. I got tired just from reading about it. I suppose, though, that their process does have merit; a true writer should never get too attached to a first draft, but should see it as something that is full of potential.

Why and How We Teach Writing: Murray & Emig

Have you ever been having an intense discussion with someone and started saying something without having much of an idea about how you were going to end your statement, or the point you were going to try to make? We all have. There's always this vain hope that, if we just keep talking, the point will eventually come to us, and we will be revered for our intellectual greatness. Obviously, sometimes the situation doesn't work out that way, but what I'm saying is this is an important form of learning that both Murray and Emig discuss in their articles, a technique that writing so successfully endorses. Writing provides a way for us to slow down a little, to discover the meaning in what we're trying to say, and unlike speech, allows us to go back, reformulate and bulk up our statements. Writing, indeed, is a completely unique form of learning in that it gives us the time and freedom to say what we really mean, rather than passively taking in information through reading or listening, or blurting out the first thing that comes to our minds when we speak.

Writing, of course, is a completely individual process, so the main argument appears to be: How can it be taught? What's the point of becoming a good writer?

My main argument is that the ability to think for ourselves is invaluable, that the creative process that we each experience is an art, and is what makes us individuals with very different things to say. Suddenly we are more than just people who can take in information and regurgitate facts and figures; we become our own voices with opinions and ideas that have never been seen before. Of course we think communication is essential in our society. Why not, then, is being an articulate communicator valued in the same way? To answer the main question: yes, not only can writing be taught, it can be SELF-taught, and can allow us to come up with ideas we wouldn't be able to otherwise.

Brandt: Remembering Writing, Remembering Reading

In Thursday’s class, when we went around the room explaining what our parents did for a living, I specifically remember saying that, since my parents have such prestigious careers, I was “surprised they actually let me become a Writing major.” Reading Brandt’s essay brought a new understanding to me as to why I, as well as almost everyone else it appears, think of writing in such a strange, almost negative, light. Writing, especially creative writing, has always been an ambiguous subject because it’s not something that can readily be taught outside of the technical sense (such as grammar or syntax). If one does happen to develop an affinity or talent for writing, it is even more difficult to develop an identity as a “writer,” seeing as society seems to have tabooed the word to have negative connotations (the term “penniless writer” comes to mind). The irony in the way we don’t value writing in the same way we value reading is that we all can appreciate a good book, newspaper article, or essay. But someone had to write that!

The way I see it, it is the “chicken and egg” debate: it’s not so much a question of “which came first,” but that we can’t have one without the other.

Thinking back, reading was always an important part of my curriculum, both at home and at school. I always had books at my reading level readily available in my home, and was always encouraged, I suppose because there is the assumption that reading is an important skill, not only in the practical way, but in terms of intellectual growth. My writing skills were never encouraged in the same way, outside of my parents making sure I knew the alphabet and could write out the words and spell correctly. My affinity for writing, therefore, had to have come solely from within myself, and from the encouragement of college professors, many of whom gave me positive feedback on my writing early in my college years.

I enjoyed the individual anecdotes of the people Brandt interviewed for her research to back up her essay. It’s amazing really to understand just how much children are affected by the behavior of their parents. We tend to want to do what they do, so we have a tendency to associate reading with pleasure and relaxation, but writing with things like paying bills or balancing checkbooks. Our early desire to write, then, comes from an individual source, “involving feelings of lonliness, secrecy, and resistance.”

Although I enjoyed Brandt’s essay, I didn’t find it to be nearly as controversial as Rodriguez’s, mainly because it seemed much more objective and factual, very A + B = C. Still, I think we could still have a provocative discussion on the way our own individual affection for writing has come about.

Rodriguez: The Achievement of Desire

Rodriguez explores in his personal essay just what it means to become educated in our society, while coming from a working-class family background that doesn't inhibit academic success. He goes back and forth between referring to himself in first-person and changing over to the notion of being "scholarship boy," a writing technique that he uses to illustrate his inability to find a balance between a part of his family and the educated person he desires to become. He struggles with the idea that he must separate himself from a life he lived as a child, feel ashamed of his "uneducated" parents and cultural background (and therefore guilt caused by this shame). Several times throughout the essay, Rodriguez refers to his education as both a success and a failure, even going so far as to call it a "miseducation" (254) because what he failed to realize, as he dedicated himself to his books and memorized all the facts, was that he was absorbing the facts without understanding what they meant in order to apply these ideas in the real world. He had all the makings of the "good" student: Rodriguez claims he was "highly ambitious, eager, desperate for the goal of becoming 'educated'" (240). In the end, however, it appeared his blind desire for an education got in the way of his ability to achieve knowledge.

Unfortunately (or maybe not so unfortunately for me), I cannot say that I've had many similar experiences as Rodriguez when it came to my education. My parents are both very educated people with respectable careers and, therefore, with high expectations for me. College was never a question, it was always the understood next step. In fact, I think that on some level, their constant reminders about how important my education was ultimately tuned down my once passionate desire for learning. Towards the end of my high school career, I became a closet underachiever, doing the minimal amount of work so as to not allow my grades to drop too alarmingly low for my parents to notice. Desire can be weird that way...we seem to want things more when we're facing adversity. But when opportunity is right under our noses, when it becomes an expectation, it seems somehow less desireable.

Although Rodriguez is speaking as an adult looking back on his childhood, in his writing he seems to have a very childlike understanding of why he feels the need to break ties with his identity in order to become "scholarship boy," especially since his parents seemed so supportive of his desire and proud of his academic achievements. My biggest question, I suppose, is how much the sacrifice of his former life is self-imposed, and how necessary it really was. Was there really no happy medium?