[Teaching_Composition] How to study transfer in Senior Gen Ed Writing Seminar

[Christiane Donahue]

I think we're in complete agreement, Elizabeth. I'm sorry I misinterpreted
the statement! In addition, I think we're both getting at how important it
is to know more, in any case, about what students are writing elsewhere than
in our courses, and I think Kathy's post affirms that too.
Tiane


On 9/25/07 3:30 PM, "Elizabeth.Wardle@notes.udayton.edu"
<Elizabeth.Wardle@notes.udayton.edu> wrote:

> Tiane wrote:
> "This statement from Elizabeth gives me pause, though-- "Have students
> really been taught elsewhere to do the kinds of research and writing that
> you expect of them? The rhetorical situation of your writing seminar sounds
> complex, and my guess would be that students don't encounter anything else
> like it." On the one hand we certainly want what students learn in
> different contexts to be somehow linked or related, but on the other hand
> transfer, to me, is in good part about what kernels (best word?) might be
> drawn upon in new situations, re-employed, even when nothing like what
> someone did before is being encountered."
> 
> Yes, Tiane is completely correct. I did not mean to suggest that the
> students would have encountered that rhetorical situation and could then
> easily take what they learned somewhere else or that they wouldn't have
> encountered it so then wouldn't know what to do. This is the matter of near
> vs far transfer that I think someone mentioned before; it is also a matter
> of generalization and whether the students are able to take what they have
> done to help them do the new kinds of writing.
> 
> What I meant to do was simply suggest an exercise, a list of questions to
> get Heather thinking about where to focus her study. Does she want to focus
> on what students did before, or does she already know a lot about what
> students did before?
> 
> Because her thoughts on students' inability to write in ways appropriate to
> the situation are really interesting, I was thinking it would be useful to
> know what situations the students had written for (successfully) before.
> That way, Heather 1)knows what they have done and how similar or different
> it is from what she is asking so 2) she can determine what she wants to be
> looking at and for in the work students do in her class, which would be
> where she might see if they can engage in near and far transfer, how they
> generalize, what strategies they draw upon to do so, and so on.
> 
> Elizabeth
> 
> Elizabeth Wardle, PhD
> Assistant Professor
> Director of Writing Programs
> Internship Coordinator
> Department of English
> Humanities 277
> University of Dayton
> Dayton, Ohio
> 937-229-3003
> ewardle@udayton.edu
> 
> 
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