Process Over Product

In high school I hated English/Language Arts. For the most part it was because of the way writing was being taught. We were given an assignment and it was expected that we knew what we were doing. Sure, I learned "Conjunction Junction whats your function" and other elementary ways of forming words into sentences. However, we were never taught the idea of writing badly. Since my first semester, I have grown incredibly as a writer. Prof. Kearns taught us about the writing process and that writing badly is one of the most important things to remember. Although writing badly isn't a means to an end, it does help you to break free from the perfect writing our high school teachers expected of us. I only hope that my daughter, who has already been seen writing poetry at seven, is taught to write as a process. I think Writing for product severely limits your creativity.

I was not trying to dismiss Mr. King. I enjoy his work. Just that his name has become so well known, like other writers, that his work is taken for granted by the mainstream.

His name has become synonymous with "writer," at least in the mainstream mass media culture. He has a column in Entertainment Weekly magazine and since he has been around so long his name pops up frequently, like Kleenex. You might want a tissue but many say Kleenex. I need a Xerox as opposed to copy. Etc.

What's the deal with Stephen King?

Process over product

In sixth grade I was lucky enough to have experienced a classroom that implemented many of the suggestions listed in 9 Rights. Mrs. Flowers (see, I remember her name over 15 years later) must have specialized in writing and/or literature in college, because those were the subjects that prevailed in her classroom. Writing was a daily activity and the entire class loved it! Additionally, we read no less than six novels that year. Drafting and revision were a constant process. Writing sessions varied in organization; sometimes we wrote together in groups, sometimes (usually for "formal writing") at our desks, sometimes we were allowed to pick any comfortable spot (we really liked this, I remember kids under desks, sitting on top of tables, in closets, etc). Few projects were labeled as "Final," but those were highly celebrated, decorated and prominently displayed.

I did not realize this until I read 9R, but it was during this year of my life that I learned to love writing. On the flip side, the following school year was a real shock. The positive, productive, creative environment I expected did not exist. Emphasis was placed on all things technical. Writing became boring and painful. Proofreading replaced revision. As a mini protest I can remember keeping a creative writing journal, though after a while the enjoyment in that wore off also.

It wasn't until late in my college experience that writing became enjoyable again.

Even technical writing and business writing have a certain amount of customizable material. Personality should be evident in nearly everything that is written. Sacrifices in creativity should not be made in exchange for perfection during the early stages of writing. These are the main ideas that I found between the lines in Chapter 3 of WW.

Who has not gotten hung up on the perfect sentence? This is possibly the biggest mistake I make during the writing process. Dividing that process into two separate parts (composition and transcription) sounds like a solution to this problem. This coincides perfectly with the revelation in Chapter 8 that the author has little control over the word flow. This actually made me laugh out loud. I began to picture myself sitting at the computer to compose. The room is crammed with dozens of words. Some move about rapidly, others are lazy and lull in a corner, one is like a puppy begging for attention. I ignore them all because I am holding out for the "perfect" one, even though I am not sure I would recognize it. No matter what, the words will not give in to me and I do not want to give in to them. Dejected, the words leave me one by one until there are none left. My computer screen stays blank and I wish I had caught at least one of the words, because I know that they multiply quickly. They have won and my paper suffers. Knowing that other people get too caught up in the transcription process be it over spelling, grammar, word choice, or any other detail made me feel better as a writer.

One thing that was completely bizarre in this reading experience was on p. 109 when Smith began to talk about "global intentions," the bank manager, and Aunt Lucy. Maybe by that point my brain was just tired of comprehending, but that paragrapgh made no sense.

"There is no moment of composition" was my favorite quote from this reading selection (Smith, 109).

Yeah, I know...

it's after deadline, but this is a response of sorts, not my original post. Two points I need to address (and most of us will probably hear me blather in class before they read this):

1. You've got it or you don't, We can't teach the next King, Shakespeare, or Grisham. I think this is bunk, the first part anyway. If you don't think we can teach writing, why are you in a writing pedagogy class? Just like to argue, or are you hoping against hope to be proved wrong? Social communication is learned behavior, so if learned it can be analyzed and taught. Can genius be externally implanted? Who knows. But we've all got that talented friend who never got his band out of the basement as well as the "slow tester" that became valedictorian through dedication and practice. It's one thing to have the tools, but you need to keep them sharp and use them.

2. Stories kick butt.

Sept 5th Blog

“All writing is a revision of inner speech for an audience and a purpose.” This James Moffett quote was given to us to discuss in class last Wednesday. It is a very perceptive observation of speech and its intention for self and/or others. The quote works because writing must first be conceived in ones mind, the inner speech guides us merrily or sometimes begrudgingly down the physical act of writing. Obviously unlike some types of art where maybe an artist can begin a piece total void of any idea or purpose and simply just begins or throws paint and is guided from that point. All writing begins with inner thought or speech and is then transmitted to its desired canvas. Inner speech is typically fragmented, does not use proper grammar and can sometimes be down right profane so it must be filtered and revised when it is being transmitted from mind to paper. The desired levels of filtration will in turn affect the audience and purpose. However the convenience of writing unlike some speech is that is can altered and remolded in the revision process before it is officially disbursed to the world. Speech can be retracted and one can claim that they were misquoted, but the original message is lost within the confusion. The revision of our inner speech through the writing process can then be revised once again through the editing process so that the desired audience and purposed is achieved to the authors or editors discretion.

The Hairston piece in WTL analyzes the “paradigm shift” that is becoming necessary in writing instruction. Hairston effectively uses Thomas Kuhn’s observations of the scientific paradigm structure as a model and catalyst to discuss changes in the teaching of writing. These shifts move at slow rates because much of what Hairston writes about is still apparently prevalent today (oh by the way her article was written in 1982). Hairston references a well-attended English conference at Dartmouth in 1966 where changes to the norms were recommended and were well ahead of their time and spot on in their foresight. While I am many years removed from grade school and have little to no recollection of how I was instructed to write, I would probably assume that grammar was stressed and the finished product was the ultimate judge in lieu of the importance of the writing process. I believe it is fairly obvious that teaching writing is a difficult task, also a time-consuming task and ultimately an expensive process (especially for school administrators). I have not experienced any unqualified professors with any of my 4oo level writing classes at Penn State. Dr. Kearney would have more knowledge of this but I believe all 400 level classes are instructed by appropriate PhDs. However on numerous occasions I have recalled hearing stories by some of the very same professors complain about the quality of work in the freshman English classes. There is no quick fix for the observed faults of the young writer, but rather a greater desire by school administrators to accept that change is necessary to spawn improved writing skills.

Murphy spoke about “teacher knowledge” in one of his passages in reference to the knowledge a teacher accumulates with experience. This was the supposed to be the theme of his chapter but somehow along the way I saw it differently. Murphy spoke of a quiet, almost invisible young student who wasn’t particularly active in his class and eventually dropped the class. Murphy only remembers one of her essays. Writing was able to trump her meekness and allow her the strength to speak about a story that previously she was unable to do. The emotions involved her story about discovering a dying seal on the beach even prevented her from reading it aloud. This young girl in the privacy of where ever she wrote the essay allowed her the comfort of releasing this story to its intended audience which in this instance was her grandfather. Her story is a wonderful example of the power of writing. It is such a nice example not so much because of its contents, but rather the freedom and power it afforded this shy girl who obviously could never muster the strength to verbally voice herself.

Blog 1

Smith makes interesting points in WW, that I too agree work well to supplement the ideas we have been throwing around in class discussion. I believe writing to be a continued constant in culture, though the medium may often change, the need for written language will remain the same. Technology does worry me in times where people abbreviate to a degree where they no longer develop a sentence, but I don’t believe it to be a complete detriment to written language, or in any way capable of dropping writing standards.

Hairston’s WTL reading riled me up a bit. When I was being taught to write, the “how to” always seemed to fluctuate. In elementary school, the focus was split somewhere between grammar and addressing a central point coherently. Once I reached middle school, there was a shift to the five paragraph essay form, which all teachers pushed for reasons of structure and clarity. At the time, it made a lot of sense to me to have a standard for essay writing. Once I reached high school however, the focus was changed by one teacher. He sat me down and looked at my ten page paper with only five paragraphs and asked me why I didn’t break with each individual point addressed. So I told him the five paragraph rule, and he said that it’s bunk. He taught me to focus on developing thoughts before emphasizing structure. It was a lifesaver. I’m glad to see the call for change, paradigm shift and what-have-you, it seems to be better for the students and a call for teachers to be much more active in working to develop their students writing abilities. What it made me think of was the politics of education, particularly “No Child Left Behind”. I have always worried that a lot of schools would suffer by focusing on teaching students to test well rather than educate students on how to perform well. I feel like such legislative restrictions may detract from a lot of the teachers working with children who are troubled with writing. In any case, that’s where my mind went.

Spandel’s bit on storytelling of course rings true. Telling people to share a story seems much more motivational than telling them to write a paper. The story telling impulse is a wonderful way to draw out somebody’s inner writer, and gives the perfect base to build off of when teaching writing.

Conventional Wisdom

I apologize if I repeat anything that has been said before but I haven't had enough time to read everyone's post. I began reading the first article without giving any attention to when it was first published until I reached the point where the author claims that the concept of teaching process not product is not "conventional wisdom." I agreed with the author that this method of teaching writing is not replacing traditional forms of teaching in our schools and was surprised to find that 20 years ago people believed that the topic was dead. Being from upstate New York, I am not familiar with the education system in Pennsylvania. As a future teacher I am trying to learn as much about it as I can through my experiences here and through the experiences of my brother, who just began his freshman year of high school. What I do know is that in New York teachers are still teaching from the traditional texts on writing. Further, the standardized tests in New York are set-up to focus on product rather then process.

I don't believe that these teachers and those creating the tests are unaware of the research on how to teach writing. They attend conferences and they read all of the articles. However, it is difficult to start new. For example, one of my high school English teachers was still using the same lesson plans that she used when my father sat in her classroom. Tradition is easier. I am not saying that teachers are lazy but how do you start over when you have been doing something one way for such a long time? As new teachers we also have to face a similar question: How do we incorporate new methods into a school that still relies on tradition? This is a question that we debated in nearly every class when I involved in the Education Department at Hartwick. A major concern for many of us is that we had spent four years developing a pedagogy that we would meet with resistance from our collages, administrators, and parents.


I was taught from the traditional method and I agree with Hairston that the traditional method isn't working. I often enjoy writing yet at the same time it is the one thing that I struggle the most with. So how do we incorporate new methods of teaching?

September 5th

After reading the articles int the Graves book, I was struck by how drastically teaching writing has changed over the 15 or so years that I have been attending school. I remember teachers, and adults saying things like 'you can either write or you can't' or 'some people have it and some people don't.' I was not always a confident writer by any means and I want to say that I am a big fan of this new paradigm that writing can be taught. The problems that I ran into personally were similar to the conflicts described in the Hairston article. Teachers tended to focus on the finished product rather than the process. Once I reached high school there was more and more focus on the process and lucky for me I never lost interest in writing and was able to adjust to this new style easily. I knew it worked because I liked my finished product more and more as I got older. I find it easy to think of writing as a process if I compare it to composing music. It's really easy to come up with a melody, but a song really takes shape when extra harmonies and transitions are added. When writing, your idea is the melody onto which you have to construct supporting harmonies, and solid rhythm. You have to be able to look at your writing as the raw material through which you realize and refine a concept.

I really liked the quote from the Smith book in which he states that "Writing is a form of language and not...simply spoken language written down" (11). In a way, learning to write is like learning a new language. Ways that effectively communicate what we are thinking and feeling when we talk often times look like gibberish when we write it down and inversely, a well constructed sentence that encompasses a large idea can turn out to be a real tongue twister when someone tries to read it aloud. This gives more support to the statement that just because an individual can't write doesn't mean they are unintelligent. I think an effective way of teaching different students how to write would be to find out what they read and what they find easy to understand when they read. Trying to inject these styles and devices into their own writing might make the whole process easier for the student.

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Hairston: It was interesting to think about concepts that we know as the norm at one time being revolutionary or even controversial, especially after I noticed the 1982 copyright date. The new paradigm described, which emphasizes process rather than product, has been in place for as long as I can remember being a student, especially in elementary school. I think the higher the grade level, the more the teacher placed an emphasis on the final product, in terms of proofreading and presentation, as another important part of the writing process. It was also interesting to think about what writing would have been like before the '70s, when the idea of audience and purpose affecting every stage of the writing process was considered a new approach.

Murphy: The reason for writing that I gave on the first day of class was to tell people's stories, so I obviously agreed with the idea of stories being an important representation of knowledge. I think some of the best stories are those that focus on one moment yet represent a bigger picture, such as an entire childhood or entire life. The story about the little boy who kept wanting to look at the articles he'd found at the library while writing his report reminded me of a technique I learned in a journalism class and continue to use today. It's so easy to get bogged down by notes and not know where to begin, but if you just close your notebook and start writing, what you remember without looking is often the most important, and the most memorable, information.

Chapter 2: We've already discussed many different reasons to write, but this chapter made several points that I hadn't considered before. For example, writing gives a reader greater control of rate and sequence and allows readers to experience events they cannot, or would not want to, experience in reality. Also, writing is its own form of language, not simply spoken language written down. Finally, while there are many uses for writing, alternatives always exist and can be more efficient. In my experiences with journalism, sometimes a picture really is worth a thousand words.

Paradigm Shift

I am used to being on the advancing front of a paradigm shift, and have loathed the "old guard" many a time for their refusal to move out of the way. But I fear that as one who has always loved the theories and rules of grammar, punctuation, and style (I often read Strunk and White for the sheer enjoyment it brings me), I may have a difficult time espousing the tenets of the "new way." At the same time, I can not remember anyone teaching me how to write, many of the things inherent to the writing process have seemed intrinsically borne in me, so it may not be such of a stretch to move from an outward-in model to an inside-out model of composition theory.
The new paradigm lends itself well to storytelling. Indeed, I believe that we communicate in short-story form. We tell our friends about our weekend adventures, we relate to the Bursar's office just exactly why we can not pay our tuition bill on time, we tell our professors the reason for our continued tardiness; all in the form of short-stories (introduction, narrative, climax, denouement). Yet I expect that merely helping students express themselves through story in their writing will not solve our crises. Some forms do not lend themselves to storytelling as such. It would be a wonderfully colorful and enjoyable culture if we were to produce an entire generation of creative writers who can express themselves beautifully, but it simply would not do in the business world, scientific community, or economic ecclesia.

9/5 Blog

A former sec-ed major myself, the pressures that new assessments and standardized testing place a huge need on the teaching of writing. The difficulties in teaching something as complex as this have been well noted in other blogs. Harriston notes that most administrators adn teachers of writing take a static approach to writing, defining such courses as "service/skill courses." Problem is, isn't that what these courses are? The process of writing, at least how it's presented to students, is something seen as neccessary for "making it" in today's society. The lack of a different approach leaves us with nothing better to look to than a traditional standard to apply in the classroom.
The prevelant idea in most of our blogs is that talent must be present in the begining. Certainly this makes it easier to teach, but if no talent is there, how then does one go about starting to make a student's writing better. It's almost as if you have to lean of the traditional practices here, unless you're dealing with a motivated writer how wishes to become better.

Ok...I may be confused here, but where is everyone else getting the WW book from? I've spent hours searching online and to my knowledge, the bookstore still does not have it and Amazon is "booked" until October. Oh, and is there a difference between the hardcover (like CD or DVD) vs. the softcover? Well, I won't be able to write about that read now, because obviously, I don't have it. I event tried the online Ebooks option at the library. Still no go.

I would like to discuss Hairston's take on the paradigm theory. While I do agree that composition should be aided by structure, I also have to agree that the conventional method of teaching writing is ineffective and in dire need of reparation. The "shift" is a much welcome and long-awaited breath of fresh air, and an inspiration to our future writers. For those of us who have lived our lives under the constant constraint of limiting our creative energies to the five paragraph essay, with a completed outline showing all of our work ahead of it's own creation, the new paradigm will allow thinking outside the box. After all, didn't our educational system adopt new forms of learning/teaching for a reason? How can we possibly teach our students that their unique learning abilities are appreciated and acommodated, when we cannot provide them with the actual structure and methodology to learn the material? Many (too many) students simply can't or won't learn through the traditional method and we are just now beginning to figure out how devastating the impact of this consequence has on our children and society. We are becoming an illiterate country, one writer at time.

I've known since the time I was seven years old that I not only wanted to write, but also to teach. (although I've spent much time throughout my life in complete denial)I am an artist and have always learned through the process of trial and error. As a young writer, I was never able to provide my teachers with the exact result up front. I needed time to allow my writing to develop on it's own. Most of my projects wrote themselves, regardless of the teacher's futile effort to inform me that I was incorrect in allowing my writing to develop this way. I actually grew up thinking I was different than other people who "got it", and often wondered why began to hate and avoid the one most important thing to me--writing.

To this day, I continue to write the same way, incorporating all of the strategies I have learned throughout my education. Depending on the length and scope of the project, I may require an outline or I may decide to use my word-scramble method (I won't bother to explain). Either way, the teacher gets their "finished product" and I get a damn good paper that was well worth the read and the grade. I can't count the many times this was not possible in my earlier years and after being "critiqued" and graded by professors or teachers who wished to tear my writing apart with their special symbols and witticisms. I realized wasn't writing anymore; I was pacifying and appeasing the ones who would give me the grade. I sold my myself out; entire works of art destroyed and sacrificed for a single letter--my grade. I don't ever want to see this happen to my students. I want them to learn to love writing, unlike many of the adult (former) students who have been taught by the old method, and learned to fear and hate writing. What a shame too, I personally know that many of these same people are brilliant writers. And it saddens me a great deal to know that their voices may never be heard.

P.S. As you can see, I did not use an outline for this blog. Maybe next time...See you in class!!!!

Response to Erin

I believe we are born with our talent. We are born to be writers or musicians or dancers or bankers or architects or whatever, we don't always end up there and I think that is why so many of us are frustrated in our lives. We all have natural gifts and abilities and it is best to follow them, if possible.

As for teaching, we all can learn to be better at/with our talent. Beckham has natural talent but also had to train and work to achieve his status. Pacino and Hoffman took acting classes. Pure natural talent yes, but also honed, refined and taught how to use the body and mind to better achieve which was innate.

Certainly you cannot teach someone to be the next Stephen King if that talent is not already there. Or Rowling, Shakespeare, Clancy, Hemingway, etc.,etc. but they can be taught how to be a better writer. How to better get their point across, how to make the paper or letter or story more coherent, more accessible; unless they are writing philosphy, then all bets are off.

From

Hairston: Really? Even ten (alright, maybe a few more than ten) years ago, I was working on my English degree, with a concentration in Writing. Literature was the other concentration I could have taken, effectively making an English B.A. a degree in "writing" or "reading." I was taking lots of courses on different writing, in addition to the fine time I had in Chemistry for Business majors (we made brownies and ice cream, if that's any hint). I had Magazine Writing, Business Writing, News Writing, Fiction Writing, "Advanced" Writing (1 & 2 !!), Poetry Writing (finagled my way out of that one, pheeew!), and the great-aunt of all writing courses the senior seminar in Writing (nearly failed, why the hell would they schedule it at 8:00 in the morning? we were seniors for f___, sorry, tangent). But let me ask you now, do you see a common theme in these course titles? Looks like a taxonomy of products to me. No comment is meant on my instructors, I refer to the prescriptive layout of the program/institution. Larry and Crystal did care and give focus to process, but within the constraints of a program focused on finished products. Perhaps in that fateful seminar there was more process given, but to quote the social philosopher Lewis Black, "There isn't a goddamn thing you can learn outta one bloodshot eye."

Murphy: Oh, this should get good. My other course this Fall is Peter Kareithi's Power and the Story. I agree with his basic premise that stories are how we relate to experience. Even describing filling out a form is related as a story, albeit a pretty uninteresting one.

To Be Continued, the Coffee Shop I'm in is closing, so I'll finish up in the morning.

Continuation:

The meaning, the knowledge, related by a story is not reducible to a simple didactic proposition. One of the reasons, perhaps the main reason that we relate our lives and others' as stories is for their ability to hold emotional content. This content matters in the classroom because it is emotion that can motivate, disrupt, or simply make a topic enjoyed. Here:

I feel sad today. <<>>

When I woke up this morning, my roommate had already left, which is not unusual, but the cat was still asleep and I didn't need to rush off to work, so I was able to notice how quiet it was. At first I was just calm, soaking up the silence, but then I started to get lonely. The cat woke up and walked over, snuzzling into my lap, but I didn't get cheered up. I called up a friend and he was busy, so I called up another friend. He was busy too.

Which of those has more meaning?

My Smith book isn't in yet either.

blog week sept 3/5

When I was enrolled in EDUC 322, I once said to a friend of mine, "One of the textbooks that I'm reading says that you can teach people how to write, how the hell do you do that?" He said, "You don't, writing is something that you have or you don't." I agreed with him at that moment, but both Smith and Hairston disagree. In the Hairston article, it talks about the vitalist attitude and writing. It says, "The assumption that no one can really teach anyone else to write because writing is a mysterious creative activity that cannot be categories or analyze." What is funny is that I got that book used, and there was a note in the margin that says, "I kind of feel this way." So I guess I am not alone in thinking that it's difficult to teach somebody to write.

In reality, I guess I don't believe that you cannot teach somebody else to write. You can teach them that it's a process, the mechanics of it, how to not bore your readers, and how to be coherent. Even with creative writing like poetry, we can teach people that a poem does not have to rhyme and every word has to count. With that said, I do not believe that you can teach somebody to be the new Shakespeare or for that matter the new Stephen King. Stephen King is a master story teller. Kurt Vonnegut’s writings are brilliant, case in point, I despised the story Breakfast of Champions but his actual writing is genius. These are things that I don't think you can teach because it is art. You can't teach somebody to paint Michelangelo so why would we assume that we can teach people to write like Shakespeare.

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Like Jackie, I too was expecting dull readings, but I have to say I was also pleasantly surprised. I really enjoyed the articles and learned more than I had ever expected to when I began the assignment. I was fascinated to learn that most professors and English teachers had little or no instruction in 'how to write' themselves. When I first began reading Hairston's article I thought the lack of writing expertise couldn't matter that much since English graduates do an awful lot of writing and reading anyhow. As I continued through the article I realized how specialized the art of writing itself is, and how it is a distinct aspect of the English language (and degree). I think Hairston did an excellent job using the paradigm shift theory and applying it to rhetorical theory, and I think she is absolutely correct. I had never previously compared the traditional paradigm with the more modern paradigm (probably because I didn't know they existed until I read the article), but I was very surprised to see such a contrast from one theory to the next. The two theories completely contradict each other and make the opposite theory null and void. The one question addressed in the chapter that Hairston briefly mentioned but failed to supply an adequate answer for (in my opinion) was the question of why this original paradigm worked for so long. I know she talked about open admissions, and students who did not pass graduating exams, but obviously this method worked for a number of people for quite some time. Is it that these "successful" writers were really using the modern paradigm and not questioning the traditional paradigm because they did not know of an alternative? Still thinking that one over.

I like Murphy's article in the WTL book too. I think stories carry great importance, whether written or passed on orally. I'm not 100% clear on the stories vs. case studies distinction the author was trying to make. Maybe rereading this in the morning will help to clarify.

While reading the WW chapter, I was glad to see that many of Smith's answers to the 'why write?' question were responses we came up with in class. I also found the chart on page 14 to be enlightening, and I guess I never realized all the alternative ways of communication that we have available to us instead of writing and speaking. I forgot the importance of non-verbal and non-language communication and I'm glad this chapter helped remind me of its importance. I was also glad Smith mentioned that writing is not always a positive thing, like when it is used to attack or discriminate someone else. That's what struck me while I was finishing the readings. From reading everyone else's posts it seems as if these writings prompted a lot of thought from the entire class.

WTF? PART DEUX

To piggyback on Brian's post a little, I too was glad to see the mention of "negative" along with all the others. As with virtually everything in life, that which is "good" can be made to be "bad" and vice versa. Words can be spun to appear anyway the the writer or editor or even the reader wishes to take them. Phrases out of context can make someone sound like they are endorsing something they are not or said or did something which they did or did not do. (possibly redundant here).

I also liked the table on page 14 for The Uses of Language. It is a nice way to look at a very broad subject and distill it into an easy to follow format. As he notes there are probably more uses but this is a great starting point, and then there are all the "negative" uses which he mentions on 15 in para 2.

This should all be very interesting .

Blog 1

Hairston’s article in Writing, Teaching, Learning, A Sourcebook has opened my eyes to one of the major flaws in teaching writing in the United States. I find it fascinating to learn that many professors who teach writing at the college level are not experts in that specific field. As an undergraduate music major, I would compare it to having a trumpet performance professor giving lessons to a vocal performance major in the correct techniques of singing. Just because that instructor holds a Masters or Ph.D in music, he or she is not necessarily qualified to teach in all disciplines of music. To the same extent, we cannot expect all faculty members with a Masters or Ph.D in English to be proficient at teaching writing.

In regard to the much needed paradigm shift in our approaches to teaching writing, I can certainly recall that most of the English teachers I encountered were more worried about the product than they were about the process. I find the new research being done to study the composing process used by various writers to be very encouraging. It seems to make sense that in order to help students develop a stronger writing process, we must first understand what process they are following when approaching their writing.

This article did leave me with a few questions: How long will it take for a new paradigm to completely replace the existing one? Most of the changes seem to be happening at the college level, so how will these changes make their way into secondary education classrooms? If a student goes from a teacher who is instructing them in the new paradigm to one still employing the old paradigm, how will that student be affected?

From the standpoint of a professional actor, Murphy’s article on writing stories reminded me of the importance storytelling plays in both our culture and in our individual development as human beings. Through stage performing, I have realized the positive effect good storytelling can have on others, not only from the standpoint of entertainment but also from an intellectual and emotional perspective as well. Having students tell stories, rather than giving strict writing assignments, is a great way to help them become more interested not just in what they are writing but in the process of writing as well.

One of my most memorable experiences as a writer was when I was composing a personal essay about working with my grandfather on his farm. My English teacher kept pushing me to be more detailed with my descriptions. Undertaking this exploratory process somehow unlocked in me an ability to narrate events at a deeper level than I had previously been able to attain.

Reading Frank Smith’s chapter on the question of “Why Write” was certainly a great follow-up to the discussions we had both in the classroom and on the blog. I was glad to see that with all of the positives that Smith associates with language and writing, he is also clear to point out “that language can be employed in insidious ways too”(15). While reading this section, I began to question whether one can actually hide behind written language. I have had several experiences in which a friend or colleague will act one particular way in person, but an almost entirely different personality will emerge in written form via emails, letters, or instant messaging. The question becomes whether these individuals are simply trying to avoid conflict when face to face or are they in a way using writing as a place behind which they can hide their true selves and feelings?

WTL, WW, WTF?

Okay, seriously, try to write about this stuff while listening to Frank Sinatra sing The Girl from Ipanema. Go ahead, I dare ya! If that won't encourage the notion of becoming a drunken writer on a beach faraway nothing will.



Are things changing? Excuse my ignorance, but is not outcome based education based on outcome? I have read about teachers complaining of the time necessary to prepare for the end of year tests. There is some chatter in the news that the reason schools start before Labor Day is to get a jump on the requirements. So, two steps forward and one back? Or am I off-base here?



As for the other stuff, I do not recall my high school English classes nor do I remember my first Eng Comp class in college, waaay too far back, thank you very much. The Creative writing classes taken at HACC were a combination of process and product. Dr. G was concerned that we had coherent stories and poems but was also concerned with how we got the ideas from our head to the paper. There is possibly more leeway in the creative aspect of writing that allows the product to come to the forefront, though drafts were required and we engaged in peer review during the process. Eng Comp 2 also at HACC definitely put emphasis on process. Dr. Yelena quizzed us on grammar and sentence structure and all things we should already know and made a point that how you got there is as important as how you end up.



I agree with Hairston's essay, I guess. Again, I don't recall specific teaching styles, except that the ones more recent seem to follow the teaching paradigm she outlines on page 13. I circled number 12 heavily. I also noted paragraph 3 on page 12 as something that caught my attention. I have never been able to "write in a straight line" so to speak. I have phrases and words and scraps that get pulled out and in and then shuffled and replaced, thank God for computers. I can plug thoughts in when they show up a page later.



Murphy's essay appealed to the creator in me. Stories are an important part of our lives and the things we write, whatever they are, and seem to infiltrate and inform our writing. Everyone uses their own life and experiences when they write sometimes the stories are the best way to to find your muse. Or something like that . . . maybe I should post right after reading the text.

I'll get back to you on Smith.

Technology and Writing Process

In our first class, we covered the question "Why write?" That's exactly what Smith is trying to explain in this week's reading in WW. I feel we covered the issue well in class ans through our blogs, but I think brought up a point that needs to be discussed when it comes to technology. "I cannot imagine any technology making writing obsolete, in the sense of providing a complete alternative to writing (Smith, 8)." How true! How many times have you heard that the Internet was going to replace newspapers, magazines, books, etc.? Probably more times than you can count. Sure, the Internet has a lot of wonderful uses, but after being around for more than ten years, it hasn't replaced anything; instead, it's complementing what we already have. I believe later technology would do the same thing, allowing us easier ways to get our writings out to others; not get rid of it completely. Could you imagine just tossing writing out the window? Sure, there's text-to-speech/speech-to-text programs already, and there's ways to connect with people around the world just by slipping on a headset and logging online. But talking into a computer and having it type out your words is still writing, just in a different form. People who don't speak the same language as you do still have the chance to read your words through translating websites. Technology is vital to.. not "develop" writing, per se, but to allow it to evolve.

It's a factor in that "paradigm shift" Maxine Hairston mentions in her essay. When I was in high school, the emphasis was always on the finished essay, the finished paper. The five paragraph essay- Introduction with thesis statement, three supporting points, and a restatement of my thesis as I wrapped up my thoughts. Now there's more of a focus on the process of writing, teaching writing through more writing, but as time shifts, I can't help but wonder if we'll lose something by taking out the focus on grammar. In a first draft, it doesn't matter how you spell, how you format your sentences and punctuate them as long as you get your words flowing onto the page and get out your ideas. However, a finished draft needs to be properly formatted, have that correct spelling. There is a difference between "you're" and "your", between "to" and "too", and between "loose" and "lose," and I firmly believe that people should know those differences. Shift the traditional paradigm all you want, but don't lose hold of the technical aspects that need to be added back in after you have something that you feel can be published or turned in to a teacher. Does that make me old fashioned in the eyes of Hairston? Possibly, since I think we need that focus.

I do agree, though, that the process of writing is just as important as the finished product. On page 12, Hairston says "Writing is an act of discovery." She goes on to describe it as messy, raw, unfinished, stream-of consciousness. That's where the jewels are found. Start your story, your assignment, where you were told to, and then let it flow, jot down whatever you think for as long as you think it. Just get the words out of your head while you can, and then put them in order. Murphy quotes Barbara Hardy, "Human beings cannot keep from telling stories." Tell your story, get it out there on a page, and then make it readable. I'd hate for someone to stumble across the first drafts of some of my own writing. It's scribble, scratching written on the lines, upside-down, in the corner of the page. But once it's out there, it's easier for me to organize it into something real. To tie in with what I mentioned about technology, it's easier than ever to take those randomized thoughts and make them into something worthwhile. I think students would benefit more from something along those lines. Not an assignment that tells them "Write this here, now, what I say", but "write about this topic, tell me what you think, your story, and let's work on building something from your first impressions."

"Write" or Wrong

To back track a little bit and continue on with the discussion we previously had about why we write, I was very excited to see that the chapter in Smith's book that we were assigned to read was titled "Why Write?". My expectations for this chapter were very high as I expected it to solve all of our questions and help justify all the responses that we gave the other day in class. I must admit I was a bit disappointed though. Smith seems to have categorized writing into three basic categories: "The first reason for the persistence of writing is its evident utility as a tool for communication; it conveys information over time and space in a way not open to speech" (Smith 8). "The second general utility of writing is to provide a more or less permanent record, ranging from the accounts in a bookkeeper's ledger to histories and laws whose purpose is not so much to communicate as to institutionalize" (Smith 8). "And the third cultural value of writing is as art, the product of creativity: novels, poems, plays" (Smith 8). By minimizing the broad spectrum of writing into these three vague categories seems to almost belittle the process of writing. I prefer all the other explanations that we came up with in class. I believe someone said that we write because if we didn't, our heads would explode. This example gives the definition of writing life. It makes the definition very vivid almost giving it color and a three dimensional existence. Smith's definitions seem to be very traditional and very black and white. I'm not saying that I completely disagree with him because he does make sense, I think he should look at writing more as a feeling such as compassion more than such a text book answer. I feel that he attempts to achieve this goal or process by later on saying, "I think writing has a utility to all individuals, that anyone who does not write loses both power and potential, comparable to losing a limb or sight or hearing" (Smith 11). I think if he continued to explain writing more in this dramatic sense, that more of his audience would be able to grasp the seriousness of what writing is and how it affects our daily lives.

As far as the Hairston article, "The Winds of Change", I feel like I've been a little bit ripped off. When she refers to teachers teaching composition, I reflected back on all my high school teachers and wonder if they really knew what they were talking about. It makes me feel like my writing is lacking due to the insufficient training and development that secondary educators may have received. Hairston explains, "They are trained as literary critics first and as teachers of literature second, yet out of necessity most of them are doing half or more of their teaching in composition. And they teach it by the traditional paradigm, just as they did when they were untrained teaching assistants ten or twenty or forty years ago. Often they use a newer edition of the same book they used as teaching assistants" (Hairston 6). Here she is referring to college professors, but these exact same college professors are the ones who educated and enlightened our high school teachers. So, as I was saying, how do I know if I have been trained properly because of something my educators' educators were lacking. How do we really know what is considered to be "write" from wrong?

A very interesting point that Hairston brings up later in her article is that mistakes are necessary for the purpose of writing. Being a future educator, I find this very helpful in eliminating some future stress with my students. Mistakes are how writers grow and I can assist them in that process. She explains, "That basic writers write the way they do, not because they are slow or nonverbal, indifferent to or incapable of academic excellence, but because they are beginners and must, like all beginners, learn by making mistakes. . . And the keys to their development as writers often lie in the very features of their writing that English teachers have been trained to brush aside with a marginal code letter or a scribbled injunction to "Proofread!" Such strategies ram at the door of their incompetence while the keys that would open them lie in view. . . The work [of teaching these students to write] must be informed by an understanding not only of what is missing or awry, but of why this is so" (Hairston 10). I think this quote is very helpful in the process of becoming a teacher. We must understand that not all students are going to come "preprogrammed" with their writing skills perfected and with that understanding in mind we must be willing and able to help are students develop their skills rather than becoming frustrated and the only helpful information we give them is to proofread.

With this thought process in mind, we should also understand that sometimes writing just comes directly from a person's thought process. When most people think, there are thousands of possible thoughts going through their minds at one particular time. Students may simply need help to organize, after all according to Barbara Hardy, people are natural born story tellers. She says, "that human beings cannot keep from telling stories. Sleeping and waking we tell ourselves and each other the stories of our days: 'We mingle truths and falsehoods, not always quite knowing where one blends into the other. As we sleep we dream dreams from which we wake to remember, half-remember and almost remember, in forms that may be dislocated, dilapidated or deviant but are recognizably narrative. . . [Stories are the] autobiography we are all engaged in making and remaking, as long as we live, which we never complete, though we all know how it is going to end" (Tellers and Listeners, Athlone, 1975, 4). I absolutely fell in love with this quote. I think it makes a lot of sense and if we were to share this thought with are students, I think it would help them develop a creative writing piece. There are thousands of stories going through are head at one time, the difficult part is just writing them down.

Devil's Advocate

First off I would like to apologize for not having the “Writing and the Writer” book. This problem is mainly due to a situation that actually comes up in the Hairston article in the “Writing, Teaching, Learning” book. That is, I am of the old system of consumer who is afraid of the internet, and does not trust non cash currency.

I believe that I had a completely different experience from the initial writer of this Blog topic. I found myself in constant need of reasserting the need to finish the articles in the “Writing, Teaching, Learning” book. However, despite the constant threat of distraction and potential boredom I did find some of the ideas brought up to be interesting. Unfortunately, I am having a terrible time connecting that interest with the meaning of this course for the simple fact of I do not know much, or as stated on the first day care ,much, about composition writing. Despite this I can see this Paradigm Shift theory at work in the type of writing that I do enjoy, fiction. Comparing a novel written in the early eighteenth century to a novel written in the last fifty years a person see a significant change in the style of writing. However, there has been little to no change in the novel, or at least the popular novel, in the last half century. The conventions that existed in the 1940’s are style, for the most part, in command today. Those authors who attempt to break that mold will be praised by academics and critics but virtually ignored by the general reading population for the outlandish writing styles the author uses. However, slowly change is happening, and the idea of what makes a good novel “good” (in terms of writing, voice, and technicalities) is again changing.

The Murphy article, funny enough, reminded me of something that happened right before I got out of the army. My section officer, a 2nd Lt. who was younger than me, and straight out of college himself, discovered that I was intending to go straight to college after I got discharged. Knowing this he pulled me a side after the final formation of the day to give me some advice. “SGT. De Santo,” he said, looking very solemn. “You need to remember one thing when you get to college.” He paused, I suspect he wanted me to ask what I remembered, however, I just stared blankly at him. “It’s called a BS because everything you do to get it is bull shit.” With that he wished me a good weekend and ran off to his SUV. I have found that imany college students “fluff” their language and their writing so that they can meet even the minimal requirement for a paper, often devolving into what I call "Mojo Jojo" speech. What I have just said my seem cynical or a sign that I am “tempting the devil” but as long as word and page count are the definers of any paper bullshit, fluff, and gunk will exist in a paper. This, however, is not to say that college level papers are not informative, or worthy of praise, only that many college students learn early on that big words, and round about explanations get the job done faster.

I would just like to add as a note that I may or may not fully endorse the above statements fully and that I believe that the title of the post is a clear indicator of that.