[Teaching_Composition] Academic Discourse

[Richard Haswell]

Phyllis,

I'm happy to see someone questioning the focus on "academic writing" in
the current college-writing curriculum, and questioning it in the
interest of the kinds of writing students will do after college. More
than a decade ago, I made the same argument, using life-span
developmental theory as my grounds for caution:  "Good lifework
sequences will not adulate educational disciplines. . . . By their very
nature, life-span sequences lead beyond college, the student soon
viewing many of the endemic ways of 'higher' education as contradictions
to surpass" (Gaining Ground in College Writing, p. 311).

But empirical evidence--that's hard. One place to look is opinion
surveys of college graduates. There are scores around but no review of
them in terms of writing instruction. But the ones I have seen often
show alumns remembering their first-year general writing course as the
most influential, not later writing courses in their major.

There are bits and pieces (I haven't seen Weisser's book--maybe he
provides some data). In Writing in the Real World:  Making the
Transition from School to Work, Anne Beaufort reports the comments of
four college-graduate participants, women all working in a job
replacement center. Their view of their past college writing is pro and
con. They learned to follow the "weird agendas" of their teachers (which
didn't help them in later writing) but did learn to write about ideas
and to gain some authority over their writing, which did help (see pp.
150-162). Sounds like "contradictions to surpass," if I don't say so
myself.

Rich Haswell

Phyllis Ryder wrote: "why is it more important to devote a first-year
writing sequence to preparing them for upper division courses rather
than preparing them for other kinds of public literacy (which, we would
hope, they will also continue after college.)?  I suppose that if the
upper division courses were making an explicit link between their course
work and how to code switch between academic writing and public writing
in the discipline, then I would not feel such pressure to consider
public writing in a first year writing course.  But I fear that if they
don't get it with us, they won't have a chance to consider and practice
the rhetorical abilities they will need as public citizens."