Downs and Wardle
I like the notion of intro writing courses being taught like intro courses in other disciplines. But I think that we have to keep in mind that not all students are going to go on to be academics. Yes, they will have to write in their academic field, but after college, not everyone will go on to graduate school. Scholarly writing is very useful but so are other types of writing. An introductory course on writing should expose students to more than scholarly writing. Even if the majority of the class is devoted to scholarly writing, research and discussion, it should also make mention of creativy writing, technical writing etc. Part of the value of introduction courses is that it exposes students to all the possibilities that exist in a field. A lot of the writing taught, beginning in academic school is “scholarly writing.” If my exposure to writing was focused only on scholarly writing I might be very turned off by it. I suppose it all goes hand in hand since more research would have to be done in the field of writing on other types of writing in order to have enough material to work with. In a way it is exciting being at this stage in the development of comp studies. It’s not old and crusty. It’s fresh and looking for new directions to go in.
May 12, 2008 at 8:31 pm
This is a good point, one that returns to the old question of what is the aim of the firstyear writing course. Most people assume it is either to teach basic writing (read mechanics) or, slightly better, be some introduction to college writing (i.e., college survival skills: essays, research papers, even exam writing). Many in our field argue it can be and should be more, e.g., a critical approach that teaches students to be aware of how language is used to society (mostly for domination and control). Even when we do want to do more with writing classes, the outside constitutents like professors and employers will always try to “narrow” the aims of the course.
I think Downs and Wardle would share you view and would be open to letting students explore writing from their own interests, e.g., an English major who would want to do a project on creative writing/poety…