The articles we read for today all incorporate an idea of striking a balance. Perl talks about balancing the recursive writing processes with the "projective structuring," or balancing the personal writing process (writing for the self) with writing for an audience. Booth's article describes a balance in more of a strictly rhetorical sense. He mentions balancing the the subject, the audience, and the character of the speaker--reminiscent of the logos/ethos/pathos triangle of rhetorical strategies. And Rose describes striking a balance between the confining structure of writing rules and the freedom to just get something out on the page. All of these different concepts take slightly different topics involved in the writing process. But it is striking to me that balance is key to successful writing in all of these authors' minds.
How do we teach balance to our students? Is it the sort of thing they can only learn through practice and experience? Or through reading balanced writing? I am working on teaching rhetoric now. I am thinking about how to illustrate the importance of balancing argument logic, audience and writer character. And with that, talking about their own writing processes and how to keep rules in mind, but not let them hinder the writing process. It seems like a difficult thing to explain.
Zanna, it is an insightful reflection you have here on our readings. Yes, like you said, all three authors including the ones we read for our previous classes, Bartholomae, Elbow all revolve around the idea of purposeful writing and process, balance stance, though they all have different approaches.
ReplyDeleteYou raise a very important question: How do we teach balance to our students? I don't know if there's a definite answer to this depending on who we talk to. I would go more with Pearl's theory of recursive writing, retrospective structure and projective structure as the writing progresses. In addition, Elbow's approach of writing with closed door helps to have those ideas on paper. These steps I think help especially beginner writers where they have the freedom of going back to their ideas, redeveloping structures and re-reading their writing in the process. For any kind of writing we do need a framework of some kind and all writers (novice or expert) have their own process of writing. Some learn by seeing where as some by reading and some by doing. If the instruction is made in student friendly language just off the strict academic norms, for student will feel freer to express and develop their 'felt sense' at some point. I feel that when strict academic structures are formatted students are stifled from the interest of writing.
And to get this far, practice is a must I believe strongly. It's all a process to learn to write better. Since, everyone's writing process is different, I don't think any set of 'balanced writing rules' would work.
I've been thinking about the same thing myself, how do we teach balance to our students. And the answer I've come up with after these readings is to stress, above all else, that an engaging, thoughtful, enthusiastic argument must be made. I think everything can spring from this simple goal. A thesis is the core of the argument being put forth. And an argument generally always requires support, as well as a closing statement. Structurally, does it need to get any more complicated than this? I don't think so. As far as the process goes, a recursive, backwards-looping strategy strikes me as the right idea. The tightness of these loops, though, likely depends on the student. Some writers write entirely new drafts, each freshly composed (with the aid of the previous draft). Others loop back sentence after sentence, and some wait for paragraphs, or pages to pass before looking back to see if what's currently happening one the page makes sense with what was written earlier. But the idea is revision. And I think that might be the hardest thing to teach. Not that the repeated passes at a project are necessary, but knowing what to keep, what to try to save, and what to toss, these are the hardest parts of revision. I still struggle with them myself. And I struggle even more to define my current process, which mostly means re-reading and cutting and filling in where I judge the writing to be particularly atrocious, which is most of it. I'm not sure how to answer the question, what is good writing. I don't know that anyone can, other than falling back to generalities like those I mentioned before: engaging, thoughtful, enthusiastic.
ReplyDeleteIn the end, I think we can only encourage our students to engage with an argument and to let the words flow, with the understanding that these words will need to be trimmed and shaped like a large block of clay, so that in the end what is left strikes a beautiful figure. The confidence to "let it flow" will, I think, come with encouragement and practice.
I've been thinking about the same thing myself, how do we teach balance to our students. And the answer I've come up with after these readings is to stress, above all else, that an engaging, thoughtful, enthusiastic argument must be made. I think everything can spring from this simple goal. A thesis is the core of the argument being put forth. And an argument generally always requires support, as well as a closing statement. Structurally, does it need to get any more complicated than this? I don't think so. As far as the process goes, a recursive, backwards-looping strategy strikes me as the right idea. The tightness of these loops, though, likely depends on the student. Some writers write entirely new drafts, each freshly composed (with the aid of the previous draft). Others loop back sentence after sentence, and some wait for paragraphs, or pages to pass before looking back to see if what's currently happening one the page makes sense with what was written earlier. But the idea is revision. And I think that might be the hardest thing to teach. Not that the repeated passes at a project are necessary, but knowing what to keep, what to try to save, and what to toss, these are the hardest parts of revision. I still struggle with them myself. And I struggle even more to define my current process, which mostly means re-reading and cutting and filling in where I judge the writing to be particularly atrocious, which is most of it. I'm not sure how to answer the question, what is good writing. I don't know that anyone can, other than falling back to generalities like those I mentioned before: engaging, thoughtful, enthusiastic.
ReplyDeleteIn the end, I think we can only encourage our students to engage with an argument and to let the words flow, with the understanding that these words will need to be trimmed and shaped like a large block of clay, so that in the end what is left strikes a beautiful figure. The confidence to "let it flow" will, I think, come with encouragement and practice.
I would love to see how you connect these three readings to other readings that have been assigned. Maybe your questions would be good places to start.
ReplyDeleteI'm super interested in your ideas on balance to tie in all of these pieces because I hadn't thought of it in those terms before...but yes! That's exactly it. It's teaching our students how and when to balance their writing and revision process no matter when method they use. Right now, Perle is still on my mind (probably a continuation from class this afternoon) but I'm thinking of how students can strike a balance with this a more holistic approach of, say, recursive rather than nonlinear revision. Can we teach something like this to students that have already had a different method (revision by way of linearity) pounded into their heads since day one of writing papers in high school? I'm not sure. But, either way, how do we then strike this balance of figuring out how to get them to see more broadly? Thanks, Zanna!
ReplyDelete