Author Archive for Anthony

Knowledge and Writing

Published
by
Anthony
on May 4, 2006
in Uncategorized
. 0 Comments

To what extent should the acquisition of knowledge be a goal in education? In his article “How Knowledge Helps,” which appears in the Spring 2006 American Educator, cognitive psychologist Daniel T. Willingham argues, against much current opinion, that knowledge is more than just “grist for the mill”—raw material important only “because if we want our students to learn how to think critically, they must have something to think about.” According to Willingham, numerous studies in fact show a direct correlation between the amount of knowledge someone possesses and the degree to which she is successful in taking in, thinking about, and remembering new information. “The rich get richer,” as Willingham puts it.

For those of us involved with communications education, this would clearly be an argument in favor of content-rich initiatives like Writing in the Disciplines. Yet I can’t help but wonder what the “matter” of effective writing actually is, outside of the content the writer is attempting to control. More importantly, if there is writing knowledge per se, how is it acquired? I would guess that it is learned in the same way that spoken language is: through imitation. If so, the richer our contact with good writing is, the richer our writing will be (at least potentially).

Is there anything to this? Does anyone know of any studies investigating the relationship between how well one writes and how much one has read? What role should reading play in our efforts to improve writing skills?

Writing and Identity

Published
by
Anthony
on April 7, 2006
in Pedagogy
. 0 Comments

In his article “Underlife and Writing Instruction” (first published in College Composition and Communication, Volume 38, Number 2, May 1987), Robert Brooke makes some fascinating observations about writing and identity. Using the sociological concept of underlife—defined (by Brooke) as “those behaviors which undercut the roles expected of participants in a situation”—the author describes writing as a form of resistance, inasmuch as it “involves living in conflict with accepted (expected) thought and action.”

He then discusses his observations of underlife in the writing classroom, noting the creative aspects of what might seem like disruptive behavior: in many cases, private conversations during class, for example, showed students applying class concepts quite accurately to their own interests. The suggestion is that these “disruptions,” actually assertions of creative independence, are vital steps in the process of building identity, which, in the end, is “the business we [as writing teachers] are in.”

The question is how to foster this tendency toward creative distancing, how to capitalize on the underlife so essential to writing. Brooke’s answer is that the institutional model has to be changed, from one where students learn from the “authorities” to one favoring more “student-directed projects, peer interaction,” and so forth.

I wonder, though, whether such reform is necessarily in the best interest of students. If learning to write is a process of building identity, couldn’t one argue that students in fact need the authority figure, with all of her rules and judgments, in order to find their own voices? Isn’t separation effected most successfully when one knows precisely what he is separating from? Is there a danger here that by dulling the sharp points of resistance we may be engendering a new kind of conformism?

“Thin Slicing” Student Writers

Published
by
Anthony
on March 8, 2006
in Assessment and Pedagogy
. 0 Comments

In his book Blink: The Power of Thinking without Thinking, Malcolm Gladwell has an interesting chapter entitled “The Theory of Thin Slices: How a Little Bit of Knowledge Goes a Long Way.” “Thin slicing,” writes Gladwell, “refers to the ability of our unconscious to find patterns in situations and behavior based on very narrow slices of experience.” The concept is demonstrated in the work of psychologist John Gottman, who for decades has been analyzing videotaped conversations of married couples, in an effort to understand the “language” of the subtle cue.

Gottman has become quite adept: after viewing only a short segment of a conversation, he is able to predict with 95 percent accuracy whether the couple will still be together in 15 years. Often Gottman’s analyses defy common expectations. An apparently healthy relationship may turn out to be essentially unhealthy, and vice versa. Gladwell writes that when he (Gladwell) tried his hand at analyzing conversations he was able to predict correctly only 50 percent of the time, that he “would have done just as well by flipping a coin.” The difficulty is that the cues–guarded words, fleeting expressions, frowns, changes of tone, and so forth–are numerous, subtle, and often ambiguous. What makes Gottman so accurate, Gladwell discovers, is that he simplifies his task, focusing not on every last detail, but on the more obvious, and more obviously important, cues, which he calls the “Four Horsemen”: defensiveness, stonewalling, criticism, and contempt.

Perhaps I’m just obsessed with communications pedagogy, but I’m wondering if any of this could be applied to the teaching of writing. Gladwell doesn’t mention (at least in this chapter) whether Gottman applies thin slicing prescriptively, and of course Gottman’s subjects wouldn’t be able to change behavioral patterns as easily as Gottman can recognize them. Yet it would certainly be helpful (I would think) for a marriage partner to know when s/he is being contemptuous, and to know that such behavior can undermine a relationship.

Similarly, it would be extremely helpful for student writers to know what they consistently do that undermines their writing. Might there possibly be writers’ “Horsemen,” tendencies that could be verbalized in more concrete terms than “unfocused argument,” “gaps in logic,” “organizational problems,” and the like? Might it be possible for an instructor to “thin slice” student writing, to quickly read through a short passage and be able to recommend, in a phrase or two, something that would have far greater consequence for the student than a close reading of, and copious commenting on, an extended essay? This would greatly reduce the labor-intensiveness of teaching writing, as well as more efficiently addressing the needs of the student. But perhaps this is an overly “pipey” dream.

Confessions of a Writing Teacher

Published
by
Anthony
on December 6, 2005
in Pedagogy and Process
. 4 Comments

I’ve been working my way through Laurence Sterne’s wonderfully comic novel about writing a novel, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman , and recently came upon the following passage (from Volume 8, Chapter 2):

Of all the several ways of beginning a book which are now in practice throughout the known world, I am confident my own way of doing it is the best—I’m sure it is the most religious—for I begin with writing the first sentence—and trusting to Almighty God for the second.

Sterne goes on to speak of how the “plan follows the whole” (as opposed to the work following a plan, presumably) and though admitting that he “intercept[s] many a thought which heaven intended for another man,” he obviously prefers intuitive, discursive writing to something more planned or ideologically driven. (Pope seems to be his target of criticism here.) The approach Sterne describes is pretty much mine too (even in academic writing), though I generally don’t invoke God unless I’m trying to meet a tight deadline.

This brings up a tension I’ve just begun to think about: I teach my students to write a thesis statement, plan ahead, outline paragraphs, etc., yet I’ve never written a paper that way. Could I do an informal survey? How many of you out there begin a paper with a plan, and how many begin by simply starting to write? (I don’t mean free writing here; I mean writing something with the intention of making it work somehow.) Does anyone have any success stories about teaching academic writing in non-traditional ways?

The Vernacular Divide

Published
by
Anthony
on November 14, 2005
in Language and Non-Standard English
. 1 Comment

John R. Rickford’s article “Suite for Ebony and Phonics” contains an interesting discussion of Ebonics, the “vernacular or informal speech of many African Americans.” Rickford’s project is to explain how the Linguistic Society of America came to support the Oakland School Board’s resolution recognizing Ebonics as “the primary language of African American students.” In brief, the society considers Ebonics not “lazy English”–a common misconception (to put it kindly)–but rather a bona fide, i.e., systematic and rule-governed, dialect.

The upshot of the resolution is that the Oakland School Board adopted an approach to teaching Standard English that takes “students’ vernaculars into account,” rather than “ignor[ing] the vernacular altogether,” as conventional approaches have done. The success rates of this approach have been impressive: the “Contrastive Analysis approach in which SE and Ebonics features were systematically contrasted through explicit intruction and drills showed a 59% REDUCTION in [students'] use of Ebonics features in their SE writing after eleven weeks, while a control group taught by conventional methods showed an 8.5% INCREASE in such features.”

There are some striking parallels here to the arts. I don’t know if Rickford intended to imply such a connection through his title, but there is certainly an Ebonics/SE kind of tension between, say, African American “vernacular” musics (jazz, rap) and the canonic “Standard” still commonly offered in introductory music classes for the non-major. Does anyone out there have any experience in (or ideas about) applying the Contrastive Analysis linguistic approach to other disciplines?