Thanks, Susan, for pulling together our group concerns into such a
thoughtful, politically astute and classy response!
Cheers,
Victoria
Susan Drain wrote:
> Thanks to everyone. If it weren't the end of term, I could write a
> small dissertation on the challenges and pleasures of writing about
> writing with a bunch of writing people. But it's the end of term, and
> that's probably 'nuff said.
>
> Here is the latest attempt to write a coherent intelligent and
> confessedly incomplete response to the UA piece. It incorporates some
> but not all of the wiki editings, and some of the comments I've received
> publicly and privately through the list serv. I am grateful for every
> bit of advice and the generosity with which it was offered. The last
> paragraphs are new, and I have accepted the suggestion that I sign it as
> myself but "on behalf of and in collaboration with members of..."
>
> I have asked UA about a deadline for such a response. I haven't had an
> answer yet, but I'm guessing it will be "soon."
> So please take a look, make sure that there's nothing there to embarrass
> us, and let me know as soon as you can. I'm also posting it to the
> wikispace.
>
> Cheers
> Susan
> ***
> Those of us in the field of Writing Studies are delighted to find a
> positive response to the question “Who cares about writing, anyway?”
> (University Affairs, April 2008) We are more used to complaints about
> our students’ deficiencies, and faint hopes that someone somewhere (the
> schools? the writing centre? the English department? divine
> intervention?) will rid the university of the plague of error, the
> distraction of disorganization, the scourge of non-standard usage, oh,
> and while we’re at it, could we solve the problem of plagiarism, too?
>
> So it’s a pleasure to read Sunny Marche on the need for commitment to
> writing in our universities, and not only because his writing has energy
> and style. (Love the anaphora in the first paragraph! Great use of
> rhetorical questions. Excellent personal details to make the
> generalizations vivid.) There’s also so much with which we concur.
>
> • Writing matters for most professions.
> • Writing matters even in a digital age.
> • Writing is not an all-or-nothing mysterious gift – it
> can be taught and it can be learned.
> • University faculty are all writers.
>
> But University faculty are not all scholars of Writing Studies. And
> just as we wouldn’t dream of teaching marketing, even though we know
> something about marketing because we are consumers, so we in Writing
> Studies would like to clarify some points in Sunny Marche’s piece.
> These clarifications will help make our ongoing conversations with
> colleagues like Sunny more productive.
>
> “Writing” is an inadequate label for the complex of processes that we
> understand. The one word is used to include everything from recognizing
> the first glimmer of an idea, through the hard slog of researching and
> assembling evidence and drafting to the shaping that we call revision
> and the fine-tuning we call editing. It’s not one thing, it’s not a
> simple thing, and it’s not a mere adjunct to other disciplines. A
> discipline is defined, after all, not by its subject matter alone, but
> by the characteristic processes of both thinking and writing by which
> knowledge is constructed and communicated in that field. So hurrah for
> marketing professors who care about how writing is used in the study of
> marketing, and for math professors, who see that writing can be used to
> solve problems, even those usually expressed in symbols.
>
> That brings us to our second point of clarification. If we agree (and
> we do) that writing needs practice and that writing matters in every
> discipline, then we agree that writing across the curriculum is a good
> way to ensure that students do get writing practice and do see that
> writing matters in all their courses. That doesn’t mean that writing
> for the purposes of evaluation must be assigned across the curriculum:
> no, writing must be used to serve the purposes of learning across the
> curriculum. When we encourage writing across the curriculum, we also
> encourage critical thinking and knowledge sharing. Among the best
> practices of writing across the curriculum are the use of journals and
> reflection pieces, on-line discussions or in-class responses, to give
> practice in uncovering and articulating ideas. “How do our students
> know what they think till they see what they say?” And they are less
> likely to be thinking if their only writing in a course is taking
> lecture notes – and even less if they are downloading webnotes or
> podcasts.
>
> A related clarification has to do with writing in the disciplines as
> opposed to writing across the curriculum. Writing differs from
> discipline to discipline, because writing is so connected to thinking.
> Sociology handles evidence differently from, say, history, and in every
> discipline various writing genres and conventions have been developed to
> suit the intellectual needs of the discipline. These are some of the
> issues that writing scholars concern themselves with – both to theorize
> what they mean for knowledge production itself, and to address their
> pedagogical implications. This scholarship makes us well suited to and
> very interested in collaborating with historians and sociologists, both
> expert and novice, to apply our findings. It is also how we know that
> requiring a “writing” course – whether it’s first-year comp or English
> 1000 or a designated writing intensive course – does not fully meet the
> needs of students who are expected to become expert practitioners in
> their disciplines. Sociologists and historians (and marketing profs and
> chemists and...) do know how writing works in their disciplines. They
> also know how long it took for them to learn how to do it. The
> commitment to writing therefore needs to be not only across the
> curriculum but also in the disciplines.
>
> But English is my second language, one sociologist says. And I don’t do
> grammar, says the historian. Well, says the writing scholar, paying
> attention solely to surface correctness is not what we mean when we say
> writing needs to be learned in the discipline as part of the discipline.
> Explicit knowledge of grammar, we know, does not readily translate into
> effective writing. In fact, what are often called “grammar problems”
> are the symptoms, not the cause, of ineffective writing. And when
> students understand what they are supposed to be doing intellectually
> when they’re writing – how the discourse works and sounds – many of the
> surface problems disappear.
>
> Finally, we have to agree wholeheartedly with Dr. Marche’s view that
> greater support and training is desirable for the TAs upon whom the
> burden of dealing with “the writing problem” is often placed. Teaching
> and learning centres increasingly offer training courses for TAs;
> building on the scholarship of Writing Studies would strengthen those
> courses. Even the TAs in physics, statistics and finance (who, Dr.
> Marche fears, might not be motivated to provide help on the writing
> front) would come to understand that “providing help on the writing
> front” really means teaching the discipline. In fact, all faculty could
> benefit from greater support for and more dialogue with one another
> about teaching and learning to write. And the scholarship is there.
> Though their work and expertise is too often unrecognized or housed on
> the institutional periphery, in writing centres, extra-departmental
> programs, and the like, there are on every campus members of one or
> other of the Canadian professional organizations in Writing Studies
> listed below.
>
> Thanks, Dr. Marche. Let’s talk some more.
>
>
> Susan Drain is Writing Co-ordinator in the Department of English at
> Mount Saint Vincent University, Halifax. She wrote this piece on behalf
> of and in collaboration with members of the following professional
> associations for Writing Studies in Canada.
>
> CASLL Canadian Association for the Study of Language and Learning
> <http://www.stthomasu.ca/inkshed>
> CATTW/ACPRTS Canadian Association of Teachers of Technical
> Writing/Association canadienne des professeurs de rédaction technique et
> scientifique
> <http://cattw-acprts.mcgill.ca/>
> CSSR/SCER Canadian Society for the Study of Rhetoric/Société canadienne
> pour l’étude de la rhétorique
> <http://www.ucalgary.ca/~rcarruth/>
> CWCA/ACCR Canadian Writing Centres Association/Association canadienne
> des centres de rédaction
> <http://www.usask.ca/ulc/writing/cwca/>
>
> ***
>
> Susan Drain, PhD
> Department of English
> Mount Saint Vincent University
> Halifax, NS Canada B3M 2J6
> 902 457 6220
> [log in to unmask]
>
>
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--
Victoria Littman, Ph.D.
Learning strategist
Accessibility Services
University of Toronto
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