Re: formulaic writing, a different take?

[Mike Keene <mkeene@utkux.utcc.utk.edu>]

Howdy Folks,

Catching up on the formulaic writing discussion, I want to add a different
spin to it. I teach a dissertation-writing-across-the-curriculum class
each semester, in which most of the writers come from the sciences. A
cynic might say that there's nothing, nothing, more formulaic and rule
governed than dissertation writing in fields like engineering, biology,
chemistry, etc. Bacon's model, if you will, gone berserk. But (maybe
because of this?) it's these students, more than any others I teach, who
are especially susceptible when I talk about finding the pleasure of
writing. You should see their faces when I talk about finding the things
they do as writers that _feel really good_ and doing more of those things
--for one it might be writing stream of consciousness daily research log
entries, for another it might be editing other people's writing, for
another it might be learning how to take the "every sentence is past tense
and/or passive voice" draft into present tense and active voice (and still
have it be acceptable to the committee). If these writers are, on the
surface anyway, the most rule-governed of all, they are also the most
susceptible to being handed the keys out of that prison. And in many
cases, I suspect, they are the quickest to use them. 

Taking that one step farther, maybe it means we should rejoice when we get
students who have internalized the notion that the 5 para theme is the
be-all and end-all for writing--for it's those students, exactly those
students, who are ripest for revolt. (And the teachers who inculcate
students with those notions, if any such teachers there be, are actually
playing into our hands.)


Mike

Mike Keene
mkeene@utk.edu

Office Phone: 423-974-6969
Department Phone:  423-974-5401