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WPA-L November 2005 Part 5

‹ WPA-L November 2005 part 4 | List of November Messages | WPA-L November 2005 part 6 ›

I also tested out of comp; in fact, I never took high school writing either, choosing instead to drop out and get a GED. Before going to college, I had various jobs that required writing, such as writing scripts for telesurvey firms and helping compose employee handbooks, and I also did some creative writing and reviewing. I never heard of the 5 paragraph theme until I reached Graduate school. Despite my lack of schooling, somehow I constructed an awareness of audience before learning the rhetorical concept.

So, to return to the question of transferability, the general skill I learned, it seems, was to recognize audience, and to determine what sort of style, organization, and so forth would help me succeed in a given writing task. Some of these tasks were intimately contextual (writing an employee handbook), some had a loose set of conventions that varied from task to task (freelancing movie and music reviews—different magazines want different styles). In an unfamiliar situation, I would stumble a bit learning the conventions, but I gradually got much better at learning the conventions; to assert that students “revert” to poor writing is not correct, as others have noted already—the stumbling is part of learning, of course.

That is why I’m not sure I agree with Joe Williams, who said, “I’m not optimistic that it can be done with first year students”; the question is not “can it be done,” but how can we help them with an ongoing process. It would help, I think, if an undergraduate education consisted of 2 years of liberal arts and community work, followed by 4 years of more concentrated study. But then I’m a dreamer…

Some people have a knack for writing. An ancient sophist condemned his fellow sophists for using their knack and labeling it an art. But it was really cookery. And it wasn’t Alton Brown cookery, but a “pinch of this a pinch of that and you will be a healthy citizen” cookery.

One who is magically adept at a craft that others have to be taught may be convinced that learning the craft follows steps similar to those s/he has followed. We are ignorant of the difficulty faced by those who are not genetically wired for that craft—in this case the craft of the scribe.

Then, our own experience tricks us. We teach a certain way. No matter how we teach some fail. We find a way to teach that leads some to success. However, the term “lead” deceives us. We rarely have empirical evidence gathered under controlled conditions to support our contentions that our teaching leads to more improvement than chance would predict.

The controlled, empirical studies we do have point in a direction that appears to counter phronesis. Further, much of the best of this from the perspective of replicability is at grade levels far below college. Good research implies that by about age 15 predicting which methods will be most effective teaching a class of students (15 or older) becomes much more difficult—bordering on chance.

But that is another thread, and empiricism is an evil methodology; to conduct a thorough study some students would need to be sacrificed to remain in the terminally dis-scriptic cohort.

Do you really think writing ability is genetically determined? I took an MFA in creative writing, where I was told constantly that some had “it” and some didn’t (no one ever pointed out who was who, of course), but Plato despite, I never bought the “knack” idea.

And, I might add, one who has developed a craft through practical application might be convinced that there is little magic involved. I used myself as an example simply to add a different kind of voice to the discussion; I’ve read much of the evidence on either side of the transferability debate, and while I do think we can locate many of the principals needed to teach it in things as obviously rhetorical as audience, I understand how some could be pessimistic of effectively teaching it. One antidote to this pessimism might be looking at FYC outcomes less in terms of what can be done and more in terms of what ongoing learning processes can be encouraged; not “can transferability be taught” but “can the ongoing process of learning to transfer skills be encouraged.” Might be hard to pitch to accreditation boards, but hey.

And why is empiricism any more “evil” than any other methodology? Doesn’t your critique apply to other kinds of studies as well?

‹ WPA-L November 2005 part 4 | List of November Messages | WPA-L November 2005 part 6 ›