Still trying to make myself clear . . . thanks, Philippa. Let's see. First, writing _to_ me is different from writing _for_ me. Students _do_ write to me (email asking for further explanations or complaining about draconian demands, or asking to set up a meeting or inviting me to sit in on a group meeting as a referee, or even arguing with me about -- gasp! -- a poem). But the rhetorical structures they deploy there are very different from what they'd be expected to use in "an essay." And they use them in the knowledge that any response they get will be a rejoinder, not an assessment or advice about improvement. > when a student writes to you or, at least, to me as a > representative of a university institution whose job is to judge > students' abilities to demonstrate knowledge, I think that they > are writing to "me"-- Well, I don't quite think so, but I don't mean to question the identities or personae involved; I mean to make a distinction between "to" and "for." Were she writing _to_ you she wouldn't preface it with a contextualizing explanation of who the author is and why she's important or interesting; she wouldn't offer summary; she'd foreground and background information in a very different pattern. Everything about that essay -- if it's a good one -- will be structured as though she were writing to _someone else_ (for you). > I'm all for questioning the rhetorical contexts/exigencies/ > motivations which our educational instutitions structure and > perpetuate, but precisely for that reason I think we need to > acknowledge them as very real--both for ourselves and for our > students. I don't for an instant deny their reality. The point I want to make is their peculiar relationship to the rhetorical structure of the essay. And to the difficulties they pose for students who haven't already, somehow, internalized the markers of the academic register. > We can't just decide to be outside them and, oopla, there we > go--we're out of them. It's not that easy, for sure, but I think it can be done. > For students, as far as I know, the desire to secure good marks by > successfully performing a classroom genre is a terribly real > motivation, one that so many aspects of the worlds they live in > validate above other motivations. No question. But "successfully performing a classroom genre" is a very peculiar, artificial, and complicated thing to do, and one that doesn't foster learning very well. So most of them don't do very well at it, and don't learn to do better in ways that stick. I think there are ways to unhook writing from the poisonous infection of marks, and hook it to the need to be a valued member of a community -- by persuading, informing, amusing, etc. -- and put students in a position to learn language by using it in the service of that more effective need. -- Russ __|~_ Russell A. Hunt __|~_)_ __)_|~_ Aquinas Chair St. Thomas University )_ __)_|_)__ __) PHONE: (506) 452-0424 Fredericton, New Brunswick | )____) | FAX: (506) 450-9615 E3B 5G3 CANADA ___|____|____|____/ [log in to unmask] \ / ~~~~~~~~~~~~ http://www.StThomasU.ca/hunt/ ~~~~~~~~~~~~