Recopying

My own writing experience has taught me that recopying is a valuable process. I, like Peter Kratzke, am a speedy typist, so it's really no big deal to retype a paper. I have had issues with versions of Word, and have ended up retyping things. I am always surprised how I improve the piece as I go along, not really having any intention of doing that. Another form of recopying, I think, is reading aloud. How often do we not notice poor grammar or multiple uses of the same word until we read aloud?

Any time I completely lose something I wrote, I figure it wasn't good enough anyway - it was a first draft, a pre-visioning of the final product. It can be so very empowering to get some words on a page. In some ways, it doesn't matter how good they are - it's just about getting started. I think, though, that there is a bad side. Sometimes I can never completely get away from what I have written - it hangs around and drags down my work. It resists my efforts to edit. I can change around the word order or substitute in another word that makes more sense, but ultimately I feel stuck with what I first wrote. There have been times I was glad to lose work so I could really start over.

Peer Review: Invaluable or Invalid?

The whole idea of peer review of writing has always given me a sick feeling - one similar to the feeling I get when contemplating collaborative writing. I'll admit that I want it both ways. I want to be the smartest and the best in the group (so my ego gets stroked) and I want to be in a group with the most brilliant individuals (so I get the benefit of that brilliance).

But peer review needs to seek a middle ground. It helps to be clear about the purpose of the peer review. I am still surprised that people don't know the difference between reading and commenting, proofreading, editing, and evaluating. Sometimes when students hand me a paper and ask me to edit it, what they really want is for me to read it and then praise them. They don't really want to discuss the content, and they certainly don't want me marking on the paper with a red pen.

As a freelance writer and editor, I often get "proofreading" jobs which turn out to be complete rewrites of someone else's work. Most amazing is how people think that my "little bit of proofreading" has made their work exactly as they intended. But I digress . . .

Perhaps a good first step is to define our goals. For example, what does the writer want when she asks someone to "read over" her paper? Will this step in any way improve the paper, or is the writer just eager to share her accomplishment with someone? I don't believe that a "read-over" is proper work for a peer review group.

What is the writer hoping to get when he asks for proofreading? In the professional world, proofeading is a job - a very specific, technical job - and not everyone is suited for it. Writers should proofread their own work carefully and repeatedly before they ask others to do it. After the proofreading has been done, writers must make a commitment to consider all proofreading notes and make the appropriate corrections. Writers must also be thorough and consistent in applying corrections. This is also not a step that I believe is suitable for a peer review group.

Editing is as much an art as writing is. Some say that the works of F. Scott Fitzgerald would have been nothing without the editing genius of Maxwell Perkins. I think their association probably reached the level of true collaboration. It seems to me that peer review groups can act as a many-headed editor, and can be enormously helpful to a writer. The editing stage is where you must ask yourself if you have fulfilled your aims for the piece of writing, and if you have done it in the most artful way, If you have not, you have work ahead of you.

Finally, there is evaulation, which to me means that the writing job is done, and someone is going to pronounce judgment on the piece. Of course, the writer may decide to rewrite (or burn the damned thing in the fireplace!) after evaulation, but that would be a new process. Our writing will be evaluated at some point, and it is never really finished. There comes a time when we have to decide to move on to something else and let earlier works lie as they are.

Patricia Bizzell

Bizzell's great conglomerated theory really appeals to me. I am interested in her ideas about discourse communities. I've been noticing over the last week how true this is. At our school, we work extensively with our students on culture. Lots of time is spent in exploring and mapping out teen culture, the family's culture, our school culture, and our community's culture. We use Venn diagrams (overlapping circles) to help the kids see that some of how they behave and express themselves with their families or their peers is appropriate for school or the workplace, and some is not.

People who are able to judge what sort of behavior is required in a social situation have more confidence and, usually, more success. I believe it would be a great gift to our students to help them identify the type of writing required in a situation, and help them gain the tools to do whatever kind of writing will succeed. This definitely hearkens back to the rhetorical triangle of audience-purpose-occasion.

I am eager to start working with kids to identify their various discourse communities (including the ones they don't yet know they will belong to) and really nailing down the types of writing required in each. It's a tantalizing idea, and one that I think could actually help out all our students, even the "good" writers.

Thank for a great presentation, Shaynee.

David Bartholomae

Thanks to Emily's presentation, I now have a clearer understanding. It seems that Bartholomae is advocating a more formal approach to writing, one that strives to be academic. It is a common problem among high school students that they are unfamiliar with the formal tone or register required for academic and professional writing. They learned well in elementary school to write like they speak, for the sake of getting something on the page. Somehow that is all the instruction they got or remember.

I have seen a lot of high school essays that start, "Hi, this is my essay about the Civil War (World War I, World War II, etc.)." Maybe some of the problem lies in the fact that people so rarely speak in the formal register. Most kids have not heard this sort of discourse, and so they don't know how to imitate it in their writing.

This is an example of the "cultural commonplaces that sometimes predetermine how and what they write" (Mlynarczyk). If our students don't have any idea that speech could be more proper and formal, how could they ever adopt a more formal tone in their writing? Furthermore, I wonder if they know that thought can be more or less formal. That's a topic for Patricia Bizzell, who I will get to in a while.

Dr. Donna's Pedagogy Statement refers to her desire to be, at all times and in all endeavors, self-conscious. Bartholomae favors students positioning themselves, self-consciously (or purposefully) against the "common" discourse. I like this idea. I think our students should be taught to discern what level of formality is required in a writing (or speaking or thinking) situation, and them set themselves, on purpose, contrary to the way the general public might approach it. Self-consciousness, I believe, leads to being very present to the situation, and surely would lead to better writing.

Gerald Graff

Gerald Graff’s 2003 book Clueless in Academe has a chapter titled Unlearning to Write, in which I found solace. Graff advocates for plainer language, even in academic discourse.

I second that motion. My friends, you are killing me with your jargon. Between the comp-speak, rhet-chat, and teacher-talk, I’ve got quite a list of words to look up. Sometimes I am looking up the same word more than once. No doubt, I am the only one who is struggling. I believe that the function of jargon is to provide a shortcut among people who are in the know. Some day I will be in the know too, I hope.

Graff seems to be pulling back the curtain to expose the little man behind the wizard. He admits that he at first didn’t dare to write in a more vernacular tone because that would endanger his carefully-constructed persona. Now that he is an established academic, Graff is secure enough to abandon many of the academic conventions, and even says academics should write so that a non-academic could understand. He assures the reader that this is not the same as dumbing down.
I wonder where such suggestions would lead. Would simplicity in language lead to simplicity in thought? Would academic pieces of writing become longer because they wouldn’t use jargon as a shortcut to the ideas in question? Would the public become interested in reading academic writing? Would the public become interested in engaging in academic discourse?

I find it refreshing that one of the “gray-haired men” is willing to be critical of his field and his peers. On the other hand, it’s easy for him be critical. Graff is not trying to build a career and a life, and he is beholden to few. I’d love to know what some young academics think. Dr. Donna – what do you have to say?

Donald Murray

Thanks to Tony's engaging presentation, I was inspired to look at some of Donald Murray's published work. That guy wrote a lot about a lot of stuff.


In Write before Writing (College Composition and Communication, Vol. 29, No. 4 (Dec., 1978), pp. 375-381), Murray offers this suggestion for teachers of writing, "We may need, for example, to reconsider our attitude towards those who delay writing. We may, in fact, need to force many of our glib, hair-trigger student writers to slow down, to daydream, to waste time, but not to avoid a reasonable deadline." This sounds to me like brilliant advice. I would bet that most people who end up in graduate English programs are the kind who can write on command - 500 words on any subject or on no subject at all. Maybe all of us "good writers" don't really know how most people feel about writing. And perhaps we "good writers" are too quick to fling a bunch of big words on the page, not paying enough attention to content and artistry.

In the previously mentioned article, Murray comments that, as a journalist, he looks for the lead, and then the writing takes shape from there. I have experience in magazine and newspaper writing, and I take the same approach. Sometimes it leads me down blind alleys, but it always gets me started.

I am all for further exploration of Murray's Pre-Writing or Pre-Visioning concept. I think an awful lot of bad writing can be blamed on the lack of preparation.

Andrea Lunsford

After Nancy's interesting presentation on Andrea Lunsford (thanks, Nancy), I remained intrigued by the idea of collaboration in writing. I'm not much of a collaborator. When faced with group work, my preference has been to split it up, count on everyone to his or her best, then somehow mash it together. Maybe that's not really collaboration - maybe it's job sharing.



I went to a paper by Andrea Lunsford and Lisa Ede, Why Write... Together: A Research Update (Rhetoric Review, Vol. 5, No. 1 (Autumn, 1986), pp. 71-81) for to learn more about collaborative writing. Their survey of writing in the professions produced some pretty surprising results. For instance, those surveyed said they spend 81% of their writing effort alone, 10% working with one other person, 9% in small or large groups. When working in collaboration, the least-favored strategies were: team plans and writes draft, which is revised by one or more persons who do not consult the writers of the draft; and one person plans and writes draft, which is revised by one or more persons who do not consult the writer of the draft. The most-favored collaboration stragety was team plans and outlines, then each member drafts a part, then team compiles and revises.

Clearly, I am not the only person who is uncomfortable with collaborative writing. I admire Lunsford and Ede's strategy of Talk-Write-Talk-Read-Talk-Write-Talk-Read, etc., and would like to try it out. It seems to me that their process is a true collaboration, and not just a melding of individual work. I imagine that it is not easy to find someone with whom to write in this way. First of all, both would have to have deep interest in the subject (to make all that talking bearable). Additionally, both would need to have high regard for the other's abilities and experiences. Finally, both would have to be able to put ego aside for the sake of the work.

Walter Ong

I’m fascinated by Walter Ong’s idea that writing has changed how people think, and has therefore changed culture. One of the main differences between writing and speaking is that writing can be revised, while speech can never be taken back once it has been heard. Speakers live in the moment, and it is unlikely that one will be made to answer for each and every word that was spoken. On the other hand, writing could be around for longer than the writer lives, so the writer will always be responsible for what has been written.

The speaker’s advantage has disappeared with the advent of technology to record the spoken word and the ability to share it. These technologies are like writing – they forever capture speech, removing it from time and putting it into history.

Gerd Baumann, interpreting Walter Ong’s Orality and Literacy, says, “Writing takes language out of the evanescent act of speaking and fixes oral utterance, an event in time, to written signs, objects in space. It thus removes language, and with it, thought, from an immediate personal, social, and cultural contingency.” (Introduction. The Written Word: Literacy in Transition. Ed. Gerd Baumann. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986. 1-22.)

Writing is a brave act. It is a way of committing to a particular thought and to a particular way of expression. The writer has no way to know how the writing will be received, while the speaker knows immediately if a misstep has occurred, and may take corrective action. Writers can be barking up the wrong tree and not know until the piece is published.

My grandmother hated talking on the phone because she couldn't see the person - she didn't feel sure she was getting her point across and couldn't be sure they were really paying attention to the conversation. When I first began to use email, I was uncomfortable with not being able to hear people's voices and judge how the conversation was going. In time, I felt more able to pick up a person's tone or mood - although email communications often seem very bland to me -trying very hard not to offend. I don't own a cell phone, so I don't text and don't get texts, but I imagine it is even more difficult to know how a conversation is going when texting is the means of communication.

Peter Elbow

Tim's great presentation was my first experience with Peter Elbow. I can't help it, I like the guy. He seems caring and sincere (you too, Tim).

At first I thought Elbow's ideas would be applicable only to creative writing, but the more I have consdiered them, the more I think they apply to expository writing as well. In the article from College English, "Comment and Rebuttal", Elbow addresses a critic of his emphasis on sincerity. He admits that sincerity and pragmatism are contradictory and yet both absolutely necessary, and therefore must both be addressed to attain success.

In Elbow's later discussion of the writer's voice, I got a glimmer of how his processes could work for expository writing. Every week I review student essays and research papers with students. Our school requires that students do a first draft, go over it with a teacher, revise, then submit the paper to another teacher and 2 other students for comments, then do further revisions, and finally go over it again with the first teacher. I am usually the first teacher, so I usually get the first draft. I had not been able to put it in words until reading Elbow, but what is usually missing is the student's voice. Although they have considerable latitude in choosing their subject, the students tend to choose topics that they think teachers will like. When a students does choose a topic that he or she feels personally passionate about, the paper is much better, even when it is filled with errors.

I now see several things we need to do at our school to improve the writing process. First of all, we need a conference to talk about the topic and direction of the paper. This will ensure that the student cares about more than getting the grade. Next, we all (students and teachers) need to come to consensus on how to read student writing and offer constructive comments. Most of us are so concerned about hurting anyone's feelings that we just mark mechanical errors and don't address the issue of whether or not the student has actually said anything. We need to stop letting students get by with correctly-written but meaningless work. Maybe we need some sort of standard rubric for this.

Elbow also addresses the issue of grades, when he says, " . . . the goodness or badness in a piece of writing is an 'unknown' and that the only trustworthy measuring instrument we have is the reaction of as many real readers as possible." (594) What if grades were based more on students' participation in the composition process (conferences, revisions, more conferences, collecting and considering comments from teachers and fellow students) than on the perfection of the final version? It seems to me that education is about improving one's skills, not about producing a perfect final product.

As I prepare for school tomorrow, I will be thinking about Peter Elbow's suggestion on page 595 of the article: "Try asking yourself if you are really sure you know the sources of goodness and badness in papers."

James Kinneavy

Let me say first of all that I found Klayton's presentation brilliant. Having looked into Kinneavy's work a little bit, it seems to me that doing 30 minutes on him is like writing the history of the world on an index card.

I have spent the week trying to get my brain around Kinneavy's concepts. Here's where I am: that Rhetoric is not exactly about any thing in particular - it's about how to use critical thinking and communication to approach particular things. Those who practice rhetoric successfully will be able to enlighten and persuade others, and possibly bring an understanding of some truth to the conversation. Those who don't will be flapping their jaws. That's why it was important for Kinneavy to be such a well-rounded and well-educated person. He was able to see how crucial rhetoric was in any field.

As an experienced jaw flapper, I'm starting to see the wisdom in considering Kinneavy's triangle. On some level, most successful communicators are taking notice of audience, purpose, and occasion. Some people have talent. The rest of us would be well advised to start taking rhetoric more seriously; and even the talented could improve.

I am not so bothered by Kinneavy's backpedaling and contradicting of his theory. Right now my visual of Kinneavy's work is more like a Venn diagram than a triangle. That way a piece of writing could be in more than one category. I feel certain that most writing contains at least some elements of all four Aims of Discourse.

Composition and Biotechnology

Sorry, Michelle Sidler, but I'm not buying your thesis that the rise of biotechnology is going to change the way we write. The content of our writing will be changed, and the methods we use to accomplish the writing will change. But I'm not afraid, and here's why.

Ultimately, writing is an activity that demands abstract thought. Mapping the human genome, while an impressive feat of science, is not going to change that fact. Perhaps science will find a way to improve people's capacity for abstract thought, as a result of the HGP's research. Perhaps science will find a biotechnical way for people to be better readers.

I can't go along with people who fear technology, and worry that it will "get ahead of us." Computers are awesome, and they can do a boatload of work in a short time. But this ability to do math, check spelling, or change formatting in the blink of an eye is processing work. It is not creative work. No computer can make the creative, intuitive, and non-logical leaps that the human mind can make. No computer can innovate. No computer can create true art. At best, computers can copy what they have been programmed with. They don't have the ability to think abstractly, or to think at all. They process information.

Certainly we will all have to get used to new words and phrases, and there's no denying that technical language is poised to flood our vocabularies. Of course we write about science in ways that betray our culture and create an "imperialist" view of the world - that's what we know how to do. Without doubt we can expect that technology will create more ways to read and write, which may be very helpful to those with limited language skills.

I believe we can withstand the onslaught of technology and still make art with our words, which is, after all, the job of the writer.

Matsuda on Process & Post-Process

Paul Matsuda's article is not really about the principles of Process and Post-Process approaches to writing, it's about who calls it that, and why. As we can see from the study of history, most things are reactions to the things that were before them.

And so Process was a reaction to Current-Traditional, and Post-Process is a reaction to Process. But Matsuda is quick to point out that not all are in agreement that these "movements" were truly paradigms. After all, the Comp/Rhet police do not travel around enforcing the approved approach of the day. As is often true, what is being practiced by most people is considered old news by those in academia, who have moved on to the next big thing.

It is not as though the Process folks invented the concept of student conferences, and we definitely have not discarded the study of grammar, even in today's Post-Process environment. There have been a "multiplicity of perspectives" (67) since people started paying attention to these things.

Matsuda next addresses these concerns as they apply to second language learners. It seems that writing is the next big thing for these individuals, in reaction to emphasis on listening and speaking that second language. This has led to a Process approach to second language writing, which, oddly enough, is resisted by Process proponents because they insist on their "rigid formulation of the Process approach." (78)

I wonder why Comp/Rhet people are so hungry for labels. Are academics required to identify themselves as one thing or another, and then align themselves with the others who are similarly inclined? And what if they should lose their faith or desire to convert to another approach - will they be shunned or excommunicated?

The Evil Grammarian

I would not have imagined that people are being "taught" by the MS WORD grammar checker. I ignore it until I'm almost done with my document. Then I run spell check and also get the grammar suggestions. I am glad to be forced to stop and think about how I have written something, but I rarely accept the suggestion. I thought everyone worked this way.


Today I surveyed (very informally) about a dozen high school students on the topic. I did not find a single one who pays much attention to the green squiggles. A few of our best writers use it like I do, but only to point out places where they might want to reconsider wording or construction. Most kids said something along the lines of, "I have a lot of green squiggles in my documents. I don't feel like I know where to start to get rid of them, so I ignore them." All have had the experience of taking the Grammar Checker's advice, and then getting something marked wrong (by a real teacher) so they are wary.

At my school, our students are required to take Technology Applications. One of the things we stress is that the kids have to be in charge of all their work, and not let a computer lead the way. We take them through exercises showing how the AUTOCOMPLETE feature can get them into trouble, and how to use Spell Check to their advantage and not to their detriment. We also encourage them to read carefully everything they are considering turning in, because we don't accept excuses like "the computer messed it up."


I enjoyed the article by McGee and Ericsson because I never gave any thought to how the grammar checker came to be. It made me wonder if it is possible to have a truly great grammar checker, since context is everything in writing. Even a simplistic algorithm would have to be quite complex. There can be great honesty in work that is not precisely grammatically correct, and it seems to me that art is almost always about breaking some rules.

I'm hard pressed to be alarmed by MS WORD's ubiquity, or by the near-invisibility of the Grammar Checker. It is a tool. It is only doing the job it was designed to do. We don't think a hammer is evil if it smashes our toes when we drop it. We understand that it is heavy and that gravity works even when our toes are underneath hammers.

As to the claim that MS WORD's grammar checker is only programmed by computational linguists, I feel certain that Microsoft is always working to improve its products, and is probably more responsive to the market than we know. Articles such as McGee and Ericcson's cannot have escaped notice, and perhaps right now there are composition teachers, linguists, and programmers working to improve the product. Microsoft is a behemoth, but potentially disruptive innovations are constantly coming along; it would only take the right one to upset the balance of power.