2/25 - Cognitive Theories

"To achieve expression effectively, of course, the musician has to have interiorized the technology, made the tool or machine second nature, a psychological part of himself or herself." (Ong 24)

"The larger point to be made here, however, is that no scientific research, no matter how rigorously it is conducted, possesses the kind of authoritative certainty inner-directed theorists are seeking....The strongest appeal of certainty, however, is its offer of a solution to our new students' problems that will enable us to undertake their socialization into the academic discourse community without having to consider the ethical and political dimensions of this act." (Bizzell 406)

"To encourage students to take on the same stance--to share some of the same knowledge--as the instructor is not the same as having them contribute to the work of the institution in the way that employees at the various institutions do. To put it simply, the captain needs the information provided by his most subordinate navigator. The Governor of the BOC needs the lowliest analyst's report. The professor, however, does not need any specific student's essay in the same way. A student who does not hand in his work does not impede the operation of the university. (In fact, he eases the instructor's task of grading.'" (Dias et al. 148)

Flower and Hayes, "A Cognitive Process Theory of Writing" (1981)

• Stage process models vs. cognitive process model
• Protocol analysis
• Task environment, long term memory, writing processes
• Goal-setting patterns

Bizzell, "Cognition, Convention, and Certainty: What We Need to Know about Writing" (1982)

• Inner-directed vs. outer-directed language theory
• Discourse community/interpretive community
• Discourse analysis
• Sociolinguistics
• Situated
• Certainty
• Hidden curriculum

Kellogg, "Training Writing Skills: A Cognitive Developmental Perspective"

• Stages of cognitive development of writing ability: knowledge-telling, knowledge-transforming, knowledge-crafting
• Executive attentional control
• Training methods: relative automaticity, deliberate practice, cognitive apprenticeship

Dias, Freedman, Medway, and Pare, "Distributed Cognition at Work"

• Distributed cognition

Russell's "Rethinking Genre in School and Society"

• Dialogism
• Activity theory
• Activity system(s)
• North American genre theory/genre
• Cultural-historical theory
• Contradictions/double-binds

2/18 - Product Theories

"Little wonder that in such a sea of confusion [the new teacher] clings to his handbook as a shipwrecked sailor clings to his raft, and by an interesting human weakness, soon comes to believe that these rules, which only yesterday were unknown to him, are the sole criteria of good writing." (McCrimmon, qtd. in Connors 69)

“More than any other enterprise in the teaching of writing, responding to and commenting on student writing consumes the largest proportion of our time. Most teachers estimate that it takes them at least 20 to 40 minutes to comment on an individual student paper, and those 20 to 40 minutes times 20students per class, times 8 papers, more or less, during the course of a semester add up to an enormous amount of time. With so much time and energy directed to a single activity, it is important for us to understand the nature of the enterprise.” (Sommers 148)

"It would not be so bad if students were only commanded to correct errors, but, more often than not, students are given contradictory messages; they are commanded to edit a sentence to avoid an error or to condense a sentence to achieve greater brevity of style, and then told in the margins that the particular paragraph needs to be more specific or to be developed more." (Sommers 150)

A bit more on responding to student papers:

• “Average Time on Course for a Writing Teacher,” Richard Haswell http://www.comppile.org/profresources/compworkload.htm

• “The Complexities of Responding to Student Writing; or, Looking for Shortcuts via the Road of Excess” by Richard Haswell http://wac.colostate.edu/atd/articles/haswell2006.cfm

• What are the reasons Connors gives for teachers' (and society's) emphasis on grammar and correctness?
• Why is direct instruction in grammar ineffective means to improve students' writing ability?
• What are the main findings of Sommers'  and Connor and Lunsford's study of teacher comments on student writing? 
• What (again) is the aim of the freshman college writing course?
• Why teach non-academic discourse?
• Teach academic discourse, yes, but what is academic discourse?
• What are the stylistic features of academic discourse?
• But how much should one focus on style? Or how should style be taught?

2/11 - Process Theories

"Year after year the student shudders under a barrage of criticism, much of brilliant, some of it stupid, and all of it irrelevant. No matter how careful our criticisms, they do not help the student since when we teach composition we are not teaching a product, we are teaching a process." (Murray 3)

• Do you agree with Murray’s estimate: 85% prewriting, 1% drafting, 14% Rewriting?
• How does one teach writing as a process?
• What is the role of the teacher when teaching writing as a process?
• What are the criteria for judging "good writing," according to Elbow?
• What is the role of the teacher when using Elbow's "method for teaching writing"?
• How is Elbow's approach a "process" approach? (How does it fit with Murray's guidelines/implications?)
• What are the four language processes discussed by Emig?
• What are the biggest differences between talking and writing, according to Emig?
• What are the “unique correspondences” between writing and learning, according to Emig?
• What are the implications for teaching writing when it is understood as a mode of learning?
• Describe the methodology used by Perl
• In the case study of Tony which mode (extensive or reflective) did did Tony perform better in and what
• What are some significant findings from Perl’s study regarding the phases of prewriting, writing, and editing?
• What is the methodology of Sommers' study?
• Why does Sommers study revision, or what fault does she find with composing process models?
• What are inexperienced writers concerned with during revision?
• What are experienced writers most concerned with?
• What do inexperienced writers need more practice in based on the studies by Perl and Sommers?
• How are student (print) journals and weblogs related to process pedagogy?
• What are the pros and cons of journals vs. blogs?
• What are some other possible electronic tools discussed by Lowe and Williams?
  
  

2/4 - Basic Writing Theory

"But as we come to know these students better, we begin to see that the greatest barrier to our work with them is our ignorance of them and of the very subject we have contracted to teach." (Shaughnessy 317)

“…[W]e need to look closely at these claims and at the theories used to support them, for both the theories and the claims lead to social distinctions that have important consequences, political as well as educational…Social and political hierarchies end up encoded in sweeping cognitive dichotomies.” (Rose 346)

"The rising tide of discourse on plagiarism does not necessarily indicate a rising tide of plagiarism." (Zwagerman 678)

• What is “Basic Writing”?
• What is wrong with current models/scales of student writing development, according to Shaughnessy?
• Define each of the four stages of her “developmental scale” for basic writing teachers? What question does the teacher ask at each stage?
• What are the problems with applying the following theories to writing development:
• Cognitive style: field dependence-independence
• Hemisphericity
• Piaget’s stages of cognitive development
• Theories of orality-literacy
• 
  What is a “behaviorist approach to writing”?
• What is the problem with defining writing as a “skill”? 
• What is the problem with associating the term “remedial” with writing ability?
• What’s problematic about saying college students are “illiterate”?
• What is the “myth of transience”?
• What steps does Rose recommend to change discourse on writing instruction in higher education?
• How does Bartholomae define “basic writers”?
• What are the stages of development of the academic writer, according to B.?
• What research method did B. use in this paper?
• How might B’s notion of “commonplaces” be applied to the teaching of academic writing/style?
• What are some "reductions" and problematic assumptions in the "war on plagiarism"?
• What are some problems with electronic plagiarism detection services?
• What motiviates cheating?
• What are some alternate/successful models for basic writing instruction (Goen Salter, Glau)?
• What are some ways to measure writing success/effectiveness in college?