Guide to Composition Pedagogies-Tate, Rupiper, & Schick
Perhaps you’ve received your texts and have already started reading “Guide.” I’ve only read the first essay on process pedagogy, but already think this book will be useful for all of us. There is an essay toward the back about writing centers, so that should help me.
Since I’m surrounded (happily) by teachers in this class, I look forward to picking all your brains. I’ve never studied pedagogy, so tell me what you think about process pedagogy, as discussed in the first essay. As the essay unfolded, I finally started to understand the difference in how I was taught to write and what my children experienced in school during the 1980s and 1990s. We have butted heads for years. All the lack of structure and freedom to “create” that they seem to enjoy has annoyed the heck out of me. I wanted them to have to write a decent five-paragraph essay with proper grammar, etc., as I had to do. BUT, apparently I was out of step with the educational process in vogue during their school years. In my opinion, the result is that none of them can write well. For instance, as I was finishing reading the essay in “Guide” last night, my high school senior wanted to read me an assignment from her college writing class–a children’s book that she and another girl authored with barely any narrative and very few pages. They got 100/100. I was floored. But is that type of thing part of process pedagogy? Am I a complete fossil to expect that she should know to stick with one verb tense throughout a piece or that colored pictures can’t take the place of actual writing? Is process pedagogy still considered the way to go, or as the author suggests, has it been tempered with a little old-fashioned structure?
One other question; then I’ll climb off the soapbox: how do you feel about peer review, which according to the essay seems to be a significant part of process pedagogy? I don’t like peer review. Never have. I don’t feel I have ever received any truly honest feedback, let alone any brilliant criticism to help me edit. How do you feel? Can you use it to advantage in a classroom?
Looking forward to your comments…Nan
May 26th, 2008 22:26
While I haven’t yet looked at the book, your opinions on the topic intrigue me, Nan. I, a 1997 graduate myself, had a different experience from your children. My writing instruction was fairly traditional, and I don’t remember doing much peer editing until college. My freshman year teacher drew us a picture of a funnel to illustrate the introduction, and I do the same for my College Writing students today. (Draw the reader into the essay using general ideas, funneling to the more specific thesis statement.) My most memorable writing experiences in high school were in my American Studies class, a class that required a fully-researched and documented essay every other week on a topic in history. I learned quite quickly the research process and the formula for a good essay (5 paragraphs or no), and my writing has changed little in form since then. I do not consider myself to be that creative, and I therefore struggle personally to teach students in ways that do not follow traditional organizational patterns. My least memorable and effective writing class was my creative writing class in high school. I received what I considered to be little feedback other than “Great job!”
That being said, I don’t think process-based writing necessarily prevents or creates learning. Drafting is highly productive if students take the time to really look at it–not just print twice for the sake of the draft points, knowing full-well they will not revise. Further, peer editing is productive only if the reader has a vested interest in the product. I’ve had both unsuccessful and successful peer-editing experiences in my classroom, which I’ll share at a later date. I am tired now and feel I should actually read the book before saying too much more!
May 27th, 2008 13:48
Katherine, thanks for your feedback. I, too, remember the funnel approach, so that method must have been around for a long time, since I have a son about your age. One other composition method, which I learned in Eng. 101 at Black Hawk from an adjunct instructor whose day job was teaching English at a Davenport high school, is called creating a “seed paragrah.” In a nutshell, it’s not a traditional introductory paragraph, but a paragraph that summarizes the whole essay as a starting point for writing. I think of it as including a topic sentence (which relates to the introduction), and one sentence to express the main point of each paragraph in the body, plus one ending sentence to capture the conclusion. It’s sort of a Reader’s Digest version of the whole piece and is usually about a half page long.
As you read through Tate, you’ll see so many different pedagogies, which may not be new to you, but they surely are to me. It’s interesting how many different approaches there are to teaching composition. Do you feel that you follow one theory more than another, or have you developed your own pedagogy during your teaching career?
Any time you and Katie want to get together to discuss in person, let me know. We can certainly meet at your house; I’d love to see your children anyway!
Nan
May 27th, 2008 17:14
Nan, I think you hint at the answer in your comment: it’s not that teaching writing as a process necessarily means setting aside structure, just that many of the folks who argue for the former also do the later. One shouldn’t need to set aside attention to formalities to set aside particular forms such as the funnel intro or the five paragraph essay (both of which I explicitly counsel against in FYC). Tobin fails to see that, and I think he sometimes presents the particular approach to process he favors as if it were the only way. (In that regard, Burnham is a lot better).
Peer editing is massively difficult, not only from high school but up to graduate level. That carries over to writing workshops. It’s very hard to get people to provide effective feedback on writing, in part because so many correlate writing and intelligence, heck, and well-being. But it’s still worth the time, I think, though I haven’t mastered getting students to do it yet.
May 28th, 2008 07:42
Good morning all!
I am so excited to be reading the comments. I have finally received the book and have cracked it open with great anticipation. I am only through the first chapter, but I can feel the questions and the good discussions formulating.
Just wanted to let you know I am alive…thoughts on peer editing. The most rewarding aspect I have found with peer editing is when a student recognizes something that is missing in his/her own writing rather than necessarily correcting a peer’s mistakes. I consistently see students who hand in papers with peer edit sheets that advise certain changes or missing elements that go unaddressed by the author. Why? I believe maturity has alot to do with it. Some students are just not at the point where they can identify their own shortcomings and seek the knowledge to fix it. They don’t necessarily know the questions to ask and therefore don’t seek the answers. This is where samples help—and I don’t mean polished professional samples. Showing students how professionals edit their own work, the extensive process to really crafting a work helps. Having a student say “It just doesn’t work. How do I fix it?” is great. Knowing the product isn’t working is half the battle. Then we take a look at their process. I rarely give answers—just probing questions to help them think about what it is they really want to say, and then push them to say it. I love it when I see the fear dissipate and the willingness to work kick in. Writing is intimidating because they fear being misunderstood or sounding stupid. If we focus on the misunderstanding part, the feeling stupid part seems to fade away.
Guess that “note” got a little long-winded. Looking forward to sharing ideas. Five more days of school before finals!
Katie
June 8th, 2008 15:33
I was really drawn to Howard’s essay on collaborative writing.
Collaborative writing: Howard references Charlotte Thralls in claiming all writing is collaborative if the writer accounts for how the audience will react to his/her writing. In this sense, I wish my students were more collaborative, and my brain is swirling with ways to increase collaboration in class. Too many of my students write for me alone, not considering any goals of their writing beyond a grade. They do not seem to consider or care about how their writing will make others feel or how the writing process itself is a step towards personal understanding.
As of right now, I use minimal collaboration in my College Writing class, some invention and some peer-response. I’ve found that the most successful form of peer-response is not the written peer-editing but the method of having students read aloud their essays in hopes of illiciting comments from the class. Howard’s essay presents this approach as more effective than the typical peer-edit, where the student takes on the “teacher” role, determining right and wrong, rather than the role of the reader. How, though, is the teacher/student to react when the answer to the question “How did the writing make you feel?” is “Bored”? How does the teacher facilitate a safe community where students can balance honesty and sincerity with respect and empathy?
I absolutely believe that to work together leads to understanding. I have never asked students to do any collaborative writing, mainly due to my anticipation of the problems Howard suggests, but I’m willing to give it a shot. My experience in writing curriculum this year within a larger academy of teachers presented the same issues collaborative writing presents: we had difficulty with equal work loads, with bruised egos, and with emotional attachment. However, the process was certainly worth the risks, and the product in the end was by far better than what each of us on our own would have created.
I have a lot more to say, but my laptop battery is dying . . . I think I might pursue collaborative writing as a potential topic for this summer. I have much practical experience with how I and other teachers have attempted collaboration through writing, both successfully and unsuccessfully, and the study will help me in developing curriculum for next year as well.
Battery’s dying . . .