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?