What is the "End of Composition"? How do we get there? What are the principles of good writing instruction that will get us there?
Students should leave the classroom with newfound confidence in their ability to write. It is difficult to track what students have learned in a writing class, because there's no reliable or legitimate method of harvesting future work for evaluation. The instructor must learn to teach skills and not assignments, or continue to do so. In other words, students should leave composition not simply knowing how to summarize or paraphrase, but knowing what situations they should / could be used in. Students should feel confident, not necessarily comfortable when applying the methods they learned in class to more complex articles / works of literature.
Formative commentary is a step in the right direction. The ideal teacher / student learning situation would be an independent study. Since this is not possible in every situation for obvious reasons, then teachers can do their best to teach general skills as opposed to specific assignments. Teaching mechanics can be very helpful. Skills that are "universally transferrable" should be taught as opposed to something for a grade.
I'm not sure how it is possible to track student progress after the classroom experience ends. Voluntary communication on the student's part is the only solution I see as viable.
Sunday, September 30, 2007
Friday, September 21, 2007
Sept. 21
What is a philosophy of composition or a philosophy of teaching? Are there different types of philosophies? What teaching and learning strategies do you think might go into your philosophy?
A philosophy of composition seems to me to be systematic way of combining one's ideas and beliefs about composing into a unified method. It is a set of personal guidelines that produce a desired outcome in composition. If you think about Poe's philosophy of composition, It was basically his way of producing a desired effect in the reader. To oversimplify: Poe believed that you must first know the end of the story before you begin writing it. All things in a composition then must work toward producing what he called the Unity of Effect.
It seems to me, a teaching philosophy is an organism. It feeds on experience and evolves. Having never taught before, my own teaching philosophy is highly geared toward my current experience as a DI. For example, I think of the role of commentary in the formative development of student writing, but give less consideration to peer group work techniques simply because I am not in the classroom yet. For my own teaching philosophy I prefer a strong foundation of understanding. I agree, for example, with Mike Rose in Take 20, who speaks about the necessity to view your classroom as a group of unique and nuanced minds. I believe in formative commentary, and disagree with the harsh penalization of students for grammatical error. I also agree with Nancy Sommers on the benefits of sequenced assignments. Sequenced assignments create a structure conducive to formative commentary as well as to creating a sense of ownership and pride in student work. They also allow teachers to track progress and force students to start thinking about ideas early in the semester. It's interesting how this blog prompt is doing that very same thing.
A philosophy of composition seems to me to be systematic way of combining one's ideas and beliefs about composing into a unified method. It is a set of personal guidelines that produce a desired outcome in composition. If you think about Poe's philosophy of composition, It was basically his way of producing a desired effect in the reader. To oversimplify: Poe believed that you must first know the end of the story before you begin writing it. All things in a composition then must work toward producing what he called the Unity of Effect.
It seems to me, a teaching philosophy is an organism. It feeds on experience and evolves. Having never taught before, my own teaching philosophy is highly geared toward my current experience as a DI. For example, I think of the role of commentary in the formative development of student writing, but give less consideration to peer group work techniques simply because I am not in the classroom yet. For my own teaching philosophy I prefer a strong foundation of understanding. I agree, for example, with Mike Rose in Take 20, who speaks about the necessity to view your classroom as a group of unique and nuanced minds. I believe in formative commentary, and disagree with the harsh penalization of students for grammatical error. I also agree with Nancy Sommers on the benefits of sequenced assignments. Sequenced assignments create a structure conducive to formative commentary as well as to creating a sense of ownership and pride in student work. They also allow teachers to track progress and force students to start thinking about ideas early in the semester. It's interesting how this blog prompt is doing that very same thing.
Friday, September 14, 2007
Facilitators
We've talked some in class about how teachers in ICON are facilitators. What do they facilitate? How is what they are doing similar to writing center approaches to teaching writing?
Having worked in a writing center as an undergraduate I can say that tutors focus on heuristic questioning as a means to facilitate growth in a student's abilities as a writer. I would open a session asking the student what the assignment was. I would proceed to question their level of comfortability as a writer, their methods of composing, and how they felt about this particular assignment. Based on their response to these questions I had a template for the session. I then worked to synthesize their perceived concerns with my own informed opinion and guide the session accordingly. They gained a sense of ownership over their work and at that point I could proceed to gently lead them in the right direction, or swiftly draw their attention to a major error or confusing pattern within their writing.
TOPIC is far less personal than a tutoring session. It requires me to assign a grade, and the expectations are far different from a student's point of view. There is a similarity between a tutorial and a grading session in the writing concern option, which I believe should be mandatory for students. The fact that students have the option to simply submit a summary without telling me as an instructor how they feel about the process inhibits me from knowing essentially anything about the student. It makes the process of grading much more difficult, in that it requires me as grader to realize patterns from the text itself with no guidance. I do understand that students can take advantage of the writing center but many simply never do or ever will.
I think it necessary to say that while I do take into account student's own concerns, I hardly use them as the only method or even a very reliable method of grading or tutoring. A lot of students don't know what their writing problems truly are. They tell you they have problem with grammar because they have been told so their entire lives. I usually found that when a student told me they worried about grammar they had much more severe problems in other areas. So while grammar might be an overarching issue to them, I might disregard that and instead focus on their complete lack of thesis or say, on transitions and organization.
Within TOPIC I feel I must facilitate student's growth through commentary, commentary that is an entirely different, and largely impersonal version of a tutorial. The more experienced I become with TOPIC the more I realize that I am not just the student's tutor or grader, but simultaneously a weaker version of both.
Having worked in a writing center as an undergraduate I can say that tutors focus on heuristic questioning as a means to facilitate growth in a student's abilities as a writer. I would open a session asking the student what the assignment was. I would proceed to question their level of comfortability as a writer, their methods of composing, and how they felt about this particular assignment. Based on their response to these questions I had a template for the session. I then worked to synthesize their perceived concerns with my own informed opinion and guide the session accordingly. They gained a sense of ownership over their work and at that point I could proceed to gently lead them in the right direction, or swiftly draw their attention to a major error or confusing pattern within their writing.
TOPIC is far less personal than a tutoring session. It requires me to assign a grade, and the expectations are far different from a student's point of view. There is a similarity between a tutorial and a grading session in the writing concern option, which I believe should be mandatory for students. The fact that students have the option to simply submit a summary without telling me as an instructor how they feel about the process inhibits me from knowing essentially anything about the student. It makes the process of grading much more difficult, in that it requires me as grader to realize patterns from the text itself with no guidance. I do understand that students can take advantage of the writing center but many simply never do or ever will.
I think it necessary to say that while I do take into account student's own concerns, I hardly use them as the only method or even a very reliable method of grading or tutoring. A lot of students don't know what their writing problems truly are. They tell you they have problem with grammar because they have been told so their entire lives. I usually found that when a student told me they worried about grammar they had much more severe problems in other areas. So while grammar might be an overarching issue to them, I might disregard that and instead focus on their complete lack of thesis or say, on transitions and organization.
Within TOPIC I feel I must facilitate student's growth through commentary, commentary that is an entirely different, and largely impersonal version of a tutorial. The more experienced I become with TOPIC the more I realize that I am not just the student's tutor or grader, but simultaneously a weaker version of both.
Saturday, September 1, 2007
Week 1: 3 most important concepts of composition
I have never taught in a classroom setting before so I can only theorize a top three list of important composition concepts. The most important would be for students to write logically. Secondly, they must practice the process of revision and prewriting. Lastly, they must have the ability to pull pertinent pieces of information from outside sources to bolster their own arguments without having such information speak for them within the paper.
In simpler terms, I value the ability of a student to articulate ideas, compose and fine tune the same ideas through revision, and to perform basic and effective research to support and develop those ideas. I have given a lot of thought to the practicality of these concepts given that I have yet to teach. However, I believe if you enter a classroom and set the bar at any certain level, you can encourage students to rise to your expectations. This may indeed be my naiveté on display.
As a document instructor, I plan to look for evidence of these three elements of composition within appropriate student assignments, in addition to any other information or grading criteria provided by my CI to arrive at a just and deserved grade.
I realize that my three concepts seem fairly cold but the last thing I want as a teacher is to be regarded as a pushover, whose ideas on teaching are so far from traditional that students do not take them seriously. On some level I understand that by emphasizing prewriting, revision, and research students might 'turn-off' their ability to enjoy the class. But with the new interdisciplinary approach to composition I don't think it would be hard to bring many of them back in with content as opposed to process. I think a teacher should try to meet each student's individual needs as a writer as best they can given the motivation of the individual student.
To me it is the student's responsibility to find their own authentic voice. A teacher's role in its formation should be to stimulate interest through heuristic questioning. The student should always approach the teacher wanting to improve. The teacher should not approach the student with suggested ways of becoming more authentic. I guess I place a lot of responsibility with the student.
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