Terri Tims
Dr. Brent Lynn
Teaching College Composition
11 February 2014
Knowledge
is Power: Mine and Refine Your Own Resources
What should the college composition
course be? Should instructors focus on
literature, completely ignore literature, concentrate on teaching modes of
writing or let students develop skill with the modes naturally? Should students be encouraged to develop
their own unique voices in writing, or should they learn language that will
serve them in their own very insignificant places in the world of
academia? The questions listed here
serve only as a mention of the many issues that surround the teaching of
composition and rhetoric on college campuses.
As I approach the teaching of composition and rhetoric, I find my
philosophy of teaching rooted in the student and the student’s need to
understand the value of writing as learning and the value of his or her own
words. I believe the adage that
“knowledge is power,” but I fear that students’ stores of power will remain
untapped resources until students learn the process of mining and refining that
knowledge through writing.
I believe that students must gain more
confidence in their abilities to think rationally. I believe that teaching writing is teaching
thinking. A student may read a book that
is full of novel ideas, but if that student does not actively engage in the
process of reading, none of those ideas will become a part of the student’s
understanding. Writing is a bit different
from reading in that the student must be engaged at some level in order to
write. Instructors are challenged to
encourage and require students to more actively engage in their writing so that
deeper concepts are explored and expressed in writing. Through thinking more deeply about topics as they
write, students gain new understanding and more knowledge.
Students must also overcome the idea
that their writing is unimportant or simply a process that must be
endured. Some may propose that students
should be made aware of the reality of all of the thought that has come before
them and will come after them in the academic world (Bartholomae 64). However, I believe that stressing the
insignificance of the student’s work in the scheme of academia only discourages
students’ desire to attempt to contribute anything meaningful in writing at
all. I agree with Elbow in his opinion
that students have something to say and have a right to be heard through both
academic and more personal authorship (80).
Furthermore,
I believe that students struggle with making meaning in writing enough without
being discouraged. Often students string together “merely a series of scraps of
thought” (Miles 7), in hopes of meeting the word count requirements and
appeasing a teacher who might not read the written response, anyway. Students should be helped to realize that
their written words demonstrate their thinking processes and that, in fact,
students’ written words assist in the learning process. Wolcott reminds us that writing is a “means
of thinking and learning” (43), and Strong reminds teachers to be faithful in
encouraging revision of student work because more often “meaning is often
shaped through revision than through prewriting agony in which one tries to
‘get it right’ in a first and final draft” (23). Teaching writing is about teaching thinking
and helping students learn how to tap into their thinking processes to make
sense of the knowledge they are gaining.
As students attempt to learn and
incorporate more meaning into their writing, they must develop their own inner
critic to evaluate their work. Strong
very well stated the purposes of students’ inner voices: seeking connections
among ideas but also asking the hard questions about how the audience will
perceive the work. Even Dawkins in his
essay on punctuation stressed the fact that students make decisions about
intended meaning and should be supported in expressing the intentions of their
inner voices through changes to the strictures of punctuation. Miles described the need for an inner voice
that criticizes a student’s own work when she discussed students’ lack of
“individual responsibility of thought” (7).
How can teachers assist students in
developing these inner voices that challenge meaning and criticize flawed
writing? I believe that teachers can
best help students attain these voices by being these voices for the students
at first and by requiring students to resubmit work that can be improved. Classroom writing needs to become more of a
process in which teachers give work back repeatedly, asking students to give
more thought and express ideas more clearly and logically. Students should also be exposed to the
criticism of their peers. Through
hearing both the teacher’s voice and peers’ voices of critique and suggested
improvement, students will be more able to develop those voices for themselves.
Finally, I believe that teachers can
also help students in the process of becoming good writers by providing a
variety of examples of good writing for students to read. Teachers must carefully consider what
readings assignments they give students and must have a reasoning behind those
assignments. If a teacher is going to
assign literature to a class, the teacher should not be assigning that reading
merely because he or she loves literature or is inspired by the content. Composition and rhetoric is not a literature
class, and though some may argue that literature teaches imagination and style
and helps students explore their place in humanity (Tate), the reality is that
the purpose of composition and rhetoric is to teach students to write
effectively. Though literature can be
used to inspire effective writing, many other types of writing can serve that
purpose and give students experience in reading a variety of types of writing
(Lindemann). Lindemann also reminds us
that often, because of their love for literature, instructors who use
literature in the composition and rhetoric class may talk too much and have
students write too little (313).
As Miles reminds us so clearly, students have
access to worlds of data (especially through connections to the internet
today), but students struggle with being able to interpret that data. Writing instructors need to help students
develop confidence in their writing, challenge students with a variety of sources
of information, and require multiple revisions of work so that students can tap
into the vast resources of their minds and create a finished written product
that is refined and truly represents the depth of thought of which they are
capable.
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