Great idea about the 3M Fellowship mention!--I agree 100%
Betsy
At 09:56 AM 3/31/2008, you wrote:
>This is great -- I look forward to circulating
>it to others at U of T, starting with colleagues
>in writing centres and writing programs as a much-needed spring tonic.
>
>Just one more suggestion: Susan should list her
>3M Fellowship in her signature line. That will
>remind people of the excellent article about/by
>her published at the time of the award, and will
>strengthen the idea that writing studies are worthy of respect.
>
>Many thanks once again, Susan!
>
>Margaret
>
>--
>Margaret Procter, Ph.D.
>University of Toronto Coordinator, Writing Support
>Room 173, 15 King's College Circle
>Toronto ON M5S 3H7
>
>416 978-8109; FAX 416 971-2027
>[log in to unmask]
>www.utoronto.ca/writing
>
>
>
>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
>t
>>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
>e
>>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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