Paula Mathieu proposes that a writing course must be focused on some open ended question that focuses discussions and exploration so that the experience of “searching” for answers can be broad enough to include many interests while also narrow enough to explore a small facet of the issue. I also agree that even with such focusing, her woes about “the reality of how insufficient it all seems” in a single semester is my reality too, even though I have a year to teach a curriculum (125). Never enough time seems to exist to cover everything, so great care must be taken as to what will be presented. Currently my focus in my Brit Lit survey class is the focus on the power of the word. The mid-term and final exams must answer the same question (only cover more material in the final): Trace through the literature we have studied from Anglo-Saxon to modern the changing conscious of humanity about one certain issue. I “preach” that the “word” always comes before the physical manifestation. Literature, I firmly believe, functions as a harbinger of what is coming as society grapples with current concerns. So my focus will be on the power of language, of the “word.”
I also concur that a college level writing class must make students comfortable with scholarly research, including primary sources, and so I like her idea of teaching interviewing for the sake of research. Primary research and library skills are imperative, but without the ability to ask good questions, no amount of research will develop good writing. So having a meta-cognitive understanding of research helps students to consider “research” beyond the internet. Lots of mental doors could open up in such conversations as interviews or through “created experiences” or primary sources, leading to lots of questions to research.
Yet, Teresa Redd insists that students must be able to do more than scholarly writing to feel comfortable with their own writing skills. I also agree. All writing in one form or another is research. Some is “lived experience,” some is “created experience” as Douglas Hesse suggests, and some is searching “textual and empirical research” on the same topic (53). Either way, writing is sharing what one has experienced, discovered, or understood. So a writing class must also allow for writing done for different audiences and purposes with different mediums. Ultimately, the one goal for me, as it is for Chris Anson, is for students to be able to think with a meta-consciousness about how to explore and discover knowledge, how to consider that knowledge from an overview (twisting and turning the facts to see new perspectives and be conscious that one is doing just that), and how to communicate that knowledge in such a way that it matches the audience.
Developing these skills covers all five of Redd’s goals in her writing classes: develop authority within one’s own voice that can adapt to any situation; understand the relationships in thinking between writing, reading and research; understand how to research effectively; understand relationships between purpose, audience, and medium; and learn how to use all technologies from pen and paper to digital (147-151). Redd also stresses, as does Asao Inoue, the need to include students as the assessors to help develop that sense of meta-cognition abut their own writing, but she mixes student assessments, portfolios, and summative statements with formative assessments using rubrics and personal conferences. I love the idea of having students read their own papers before a mark is on the paper to “hear” if their errors are from proofreading (because they self-check as they read) or from a lack of knowledge (errors go right past them). That student reading offers two opportunities to assess: what writing knowledge (grammar, syntax, vocabulary, etc) are they not understanding or what value lies in proofreading. Both are excellent indicators of need for improvement.
Redd’s formal assessments, like Mathieu’s, focus on “grading” the portfolios and self-assessments, which avoids hindering the “labor” of creation as Inoue fears if formal grades are placed on the writings that move towards a finished product.
My writing class will be focused on an interdisciplinary research focus, will use portfolios and student assessments, will cross mediums for different audiences and environments, and will focus on Redd’s five goals, for they are mine also.
An aside I would like to share is the sublime feeling of being part of this collegiate research world on the pedagogy of writing when seeing Joe Harris’ text Rewriting quoted and forwarded as an argument to further improve writing classes. So cool.
Coxwell-Teague, Deborah and Ronald F. Lunsford. First Year Composition: From Theory to Practice. Parlor Press, 2014. Print.
Harris, Joseph. Rewriting: How To Do Things With Texts. U of Colorado, 2006. Print.