Re: Hello? Hello?

["Meg Larson" <mgl@tardis.svsu.edu>]

"Too many textbooks and discussions leave students free to make up their
minds about things"
                                  --- Mel Gabler, Texas textbook critic 

Meg Larson
Saginaw Valley State University
mgl@tardis.svsu.edu              

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> From: Josie B Davis <josieb@boisdarc.tamu-commerce.edu>
> To: Multiple recipients of list <wcenter@ttacs6.ttu.edu>
> Subject: Re: Hello? Hello?
> Date: Monday, March 03, 1997 4:46 PM
> 
> Dear Steve,
> 	I have just recently subscribed to this list, so you are the first
> person I have decided to talk to. My name is Josie B. Davis, and I am a
> graduate student at Texas A&M University-Commerce, TX. My specialty is
the
> field of rhetoric and composition, and I am interested in the
> role that ones environment (culture, religion, class, and family
> structure) plays in the cognitive development of Basic Writers (BWs). I
> feel (as well as others here at A&M) that we should begin teaching BWs by
> using novels in the coursework. I am a firm believer that if we use
> writing or reading assignments which have little or no relevance to a
> BW's personal life or experience, we get back an assignment which has
> little or no relevance to what we want to know.

I agree with you 100%--the best writers, in my opinion, are avid, even
voracious readers.
  
My main objective is to 
> try to find out what role (if any) ones environment plays in the
> BW's cognitive development or ability to do a deeper than surface reading
> or writing. Can a BW benefit from reading a longer text or can they
> benefit more from reading short (2 or 3 page) text? Or, as Mike Rose
> brought out in his book, __Lives on the Boundary_, should we keep the
> canon from BWs?  

Hold the phone--I haven't read this book, but I will now.  If you keep the
canon from BW's, then what are they reading?  What are they writing
about/responding to?  And which canon does he suggest we withhold from
students?

(snip snip snip) 
> > 
> > 
>