Re: formulaic writing, a different take?

[Robin R Wright <rrwright@utkux.utcc.utk.edu>]

Thanks, Mike--I needed that!

Robin

On Wed, 3 Jun 1998, Mike Keene wrote:

> 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
> 
>