RE: Against Formulaic Writing

[Katherine Fischer <kfischer@keller.clarke.edu>]

I agree, Neal.  There are often unspoken presumptions that even if they
are boring, at least if students use academic and traditional forms, they
will attend to logical thinking and "doing the job" (whatever that is).  I
think those presumptions need to be re-examined.

Is "the job" launching a writer as apriori authority essay?  Is "the job"
making sure the essay could be torn apart and put into some sort of
outline thus "proving" its logical thinking?  Is "the job" attending to
Aristotelean rules for argumentation and thinking?  In a post modern age
in which we try to prize mutliple answers as well as multiple questions,
where learners and teachers/writers and readers aspire to share the space,
what place does both the structure as well as what it engenders have in
institutions that hope to inspire thinking?

I went through high school in the 70's when I was Ok and the teacher was
Ok and anything we wrote or thought was OK.  Consequently, I never
learned, as a student, to write according to the dictates of an academic
form.  By the time I had to write that way, I already knew about writing,
already was strong enough to try on the various styles and forms to suit
my purposes or to make the teacher happy.  I *can* write that way, but I
doubt I'll ever chose to, not even in the academic press.  Why should I
ask so little of my students?

Katie

On Mon, 1 Jun 1998, Lerner, Neal wrote:

> Formulae and such for writing (whether the 5P essay or the 1P essay)
> seem to me to carry powerful assumptions for how one learns to write.
> Sure, some students need to have a sense of "how" they might say
> something before they can get those words down, and sometimes it's a
> 5-paragraph deductive structure that we offer.  But I think it's easy to
> assume a building-block approach to writing development w/ such
> strategies, the kind of thinking that has given us textbooks on sentence
> and paragraph mastery.  After all, the thinking goes, those students
> aren't "ready" for essay writing! (And, yes, I've taught the lowest
> level basic writing and ESL writing where students certainly had little
> mastery over syntax and such). An anecdotal aside:  In the first writing
> center I worked in, basic writing students were assigned a "paragraph"
> to write and then work on with a tutor.  We (tutors) spent a great deal
> of time trying to assure students that if their topics lent themselves
> to more than one paragraph, it was okay--despite the assignment.
> 
> I mean, why do we assign the darn tasks anyway?  Is it for students to
> learn some sort of technical prowess?  It's like knowing fifteen
> different languages but having absolutely nothing to say in any of them.
> I drone on and on in my classes about how form and content are
> intertwined, inseparable.  Sure, some topics lend themselves to certain
> set forms (e.g., compare/contrast, cause-effect), but I think it's real
> important for students to discover both what they have to say and how to
> say it.  In class, we read a great deal to examine how others have dealt
> with issues of structure/content, but for me to dictate structure is as
> stultifying as for me to dictate content.  I've done it in the past, but
> now I'm trying to learn from those mistakes.  Too many deathly boring
> student essays to read (and for them to write).  I'm drawing a line in
> the paper pile.
> 
> 	Neal
> 
> Neal Lerner
> Mass. College of Pharmacy & Allied Health Sciences
> nlerner@mcp.edu; 617-732-2824
> 
>