Just to make it easier, I've formatted Susan's "final" version
in HTML and put it on the Inkshed25 Web site, here:
http://www.stu.ca/inkshed/inkshed25/uapiece.htm
I'm increasingly sure that we're going to want to talk about
this in Fredericton in May.
-- Russ
> Hello all,
> Since Tosh asks - I'm pasting beloe the version that Peggy Berkowitz
> and I agreed on. She's the editor of University Affairs. She says that
> she is going to "do her best" to see it appear in June as an "in my
> opinion" piece. We'll see.
>
> And Theresa, yes, I'd love to see what you had to say at CCCCs.
>
> Susan
>
>
> ***
> Opinion- marche response
>
> Head: Who cares about writing? We do!
> Deck: A writing studies professor offers a spirited reply to a
> rhetorical question from an associate dean of graduate studies
>
> by Susan Drain
>
> 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, online discussions or in-class responses, to give
> practice in uncovering and articulating ideas. AS E.M. Forster (almost)
> said, "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 scholars in writing studies 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 composition 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 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 - and over
> time.
>
> 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 teaching
> assistants 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
> Dr. Drain is a 3M Teaching Fellow and writing coordinator in the
> department of English at Mount Saint Vincent University. She wrote this
> piece on behalf of and in collaboration with members of the following
> professional associations for writing studies in Canada:
>
> Canadian Association for the Study of Language and Learning
> Canadian Association of Teachers of Technical
> Writing/Association canadienne des professeurs de rédaction technique et
> scientifique
> Canadian Society for the Study of Rhetoric/Société canadienne
> pour l´étude de la rhétorique
> Canadian Writing Centres Association/Association canadienne des
> centres de rédaction
>
>
>
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>
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>
> For the list archives and information about the organization,
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Russ Hunt
Department of English
St. Thomas University
http://www.stu.ca/~hunt/
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
To leave the list, send a SIGNOFF CASLL command to
[log in to unmask] or, if you experience difficulties,
write to Russ Hunt at [log in to unmask]
For the list archives and information about the organization,
its newsletter, and the annual conference, go to
http://www.stu.ca/inkshed/
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