SIGNATURE EXPERIENCE FOUR—AN EMPHASIS ON ELEGANT WRITING
If we were to get organized—by examining our University-wide programs and forming partnerships to break down the barriers that divide us by schools and colleges—our students could become among the most polished writers at any major university!Deborah A. Freund, Vice Chancellor
Syracuse University
[A]s everyone used to know before the cult of self-expression triumphed, the ability even to have certain kinds of thoughts depends on the prior ability to produce (and comprehend) certain kinds of sentences.Stanley Fish, Dean
College of Liberal Arts
University of Illinois-Chicago
[Writing program administrators] have followed the money. They give deans and taxpayers what they want: clarity, brevity, sincerity. They have no truck with invention, allusive styles, and most certainly do not contemplate any such nonsense as a critical relation to grammarSharon Crowley
"Judith Butler, Professor of Rhetoric," p. 166
[M]ost college teachers have little tolerance for the kinds of errors [basic writing] students make . . . they perceive certain types of errors as indicators of ineducability, and . . . they have the power of the F.Mina Shaughnessy
Errors and Expectations, p. 8
[A]sk anyone outside the field [of composition studies] what they expect students to learn in a composition course, and you are likely to hear a good bit about issues of proper form and correctness.Joseph Harris
A Teaching Subject, p. 85
According to the [National Commission on Writing in America's Schools], recent analyses indicate that by the first year of college, more than 50 percent of the freshman class are unable to produce papers relatively free of language errors. . . .Tamara Lewin
"Writing in Schools is Found Both Dismal and Neglected"
[B]ased on who uses them and when they are used, linguistic varieties become associated with certain sets of psycho-sociological features. For example, in Nairobi, speaking English well is associated with education and the results of education (a well-paying job, authority). Thus a linguistic variety becomes the unmarked medium for carrying out a certain speech event because of its association with the socio-psychological features which are most salient in that event.
Carol Myers-Scotton
"Making Ethnicity Salient in Codeswitching," pp. 96-97
Because [the writing teacher] recognizes the burden on those at the fringe of having to "prove" themselves to those at the center by meeting the standards set by the latter, she cannot but take seriously students' anxiety to master "correct" usage.
Min-Zhan Lu
"Professing Multiculturalism," p. 443
Research demonstrates "that the internalization of the 'rules' of grammar gives students the ability to express themselves. . . . ."
W. Ross Winterowd
"Style: A Matter of Manner," p. 166
Very often dominant groups in a society apply rather constant tests of the fluency of the dominant Discourses in which their power is symbolized; these tests become both tests of natives or, at least, fluent users of the Discourse, and gates to exclude non-natives—people whose very conflicts with dominant Discourses show they were not, in fact, "born" to them and who can often show this even when they have full mastery of a dominant Discourse on most occasions of use.
James Paul Gee
Social Linguistics and Literacies, p. 146
The mark of the educated [in the late nineteenth century] was the use of a certain version of the native language, a version that tended to coincide with the dialect of the upper middle class, the group that had customarily attended college. Children of the lower orders were now asked to prove their worthiness for a place in the upper ranks of society—now defined by profession as well as income—by learning this dialect. Composition teachers became the caretakers of the English tongue, and more important, the gatekeepers on the road to the good things in life, as defined by the professional class. . . . Usage and, later, grammar were deep and abiding concerns of composition books during this time.
James Berlin
Writing Instruction in Nineteenth-Century
American Colleges, 72
Grammar, virtue, and class were so interconnected [by the nineteenth-century grammarians] that rules were justified or explained not in terms of how language was used but in terms of reflecting a desired type of behaviour, thought process, or social status.
Olivia Smith
The Politics of Language 1791-1819, p. 9
[T]eaching a prescriptive body of rules designed to induce correctness appears blandly technical and humanly naïve. The student is being asked, in effect, to prefer the dialect of a speech community to which he does not belong and to disavow, in some measure, the way of talking that he learned from his parents and from other people upon whom his sense of personal and social identity depends.
James Moffett
Teaching the Universe of Discourse, pp. 156-157
A history of English studies demonstrates that there never was a time in which students wrote correctly and that after two hundred years of trying, we still haven't come up with a means of making them do so.
Robert Scholes
The Rise and Fall of English, p. 6
In view of the widespread agreement of research studies based upon many types of students and teachers, the conclusion can be stated in strong and unqualified terms: the teaching of formal grammar has a negligible or, because it usually displaces some instruction and practice in actual composition, even a harmful effect on the improvement of writing.
Richard Braddock, Richard Lloyd-Jones,
and Lowell Schoer
Research in Written Composition, pp. 37-38
[E]mpirical research does not support the widespread belief or hope that teaching formal grammar systematically and in isolation improves students' writing, or even their ability to edit their writing for conventions of grammar, punctuation, and usage.
Constance Weaver
Teaching Grammar in Context, p. 102
Weak writers seem to make more progress in generating ideas, improving fluency, and organizing and developing arguments than they do in sentence correctness. It may well be, in fact, that competence in editing and correctness is a late-developing skill that blossoms only after students begin taking pride in their writing and seeing themselves as having ideas important enough to communicate.
John C. Bean
Engaging Ideas, p. 54
The grapholect bears the marks of the millions of minds which have used it to share their consciousnesses with one another. . . . Where grapholects exist, "correct" grammar and usage are popularly interpreted as the grammar and usage of the grapholect itself to the exclusion of the grammar and usage of other dialects. . . . . [L]inguists today commonly make the point that all dialects are equal in the sense that none has a grammar intrinsically more "correct" than that of others. But [i]t is bad pedagogy to insist that because there is nothing "wrong" with other dialects, it makes no difference whether or not speakers of another dialect learn the grapholect, which has resources of a totally different order of magnitude.
Walter Ong
Orality and Literacy, pp. 107-108
The idea is not to hand out a lot of F grades but to teach students that, to function in the outside world, they will have to master Edited Standard Written English (ESWE), or their work will be tossed aside before the reader has even dealt with the writer's ideas. Walvoord wants to teach students the care required to bring a paper to a polished use of ESWE and to develop habits of attention and time management that will allow students to meet those criteria.
Barbara E. Walvoord and Virginia Johnson Anderson
Effective Grading, p. 76
As Donald Stewart . . . put it . . . the challenge is 'how to respect the dialect the student brings to school yet not avoid the responsibility of teaching him or her alternative dialects and editing skills for coping with different language situations."
Geneva Smitherman
"CCCC's Role in the Struggle for Language Rights," p. 364
[The CCCC document "Students' Rights to their Own Language"] created two mutually opposing positions. One, teachers are responsible for ensuring that students learn standard English. Two, teachers should not teach standard English. [Teaching Standard Written English has become] synonymous with reactionary politics.
Stephen Parks
Class Politics, p. 242
As critical educators, we are faced by something of a dilemma between student, curriculum and institutional requirements on the one hand and our own visions of critical pedagogy on the other.
Alastair Pennycook
The Cultural Politics of English as an
International Language, p. 316
Just as words like "the people," "government," and "the state" serve as sites of contest rather than of unified meanings, so "teaching writing" provides a locus for conflicting public views.
Anne Ruggles Gere
"Public Opinion and Teaching Writing," pp. 268-269
Socially contested terms [are those] describing social relationships which one can choose to use in any of several different ways and where such choices carry significant social and moral consequences.
James Paul Gee
Social Linguistics and Literacies, p. 15
So far this has been an essay of epigraphs, as I have endeavored to show the
range of strong, irrefutable, and irreconcilable positions on an issue variously
called "grammar," "usage," "correctness," and
sometimes "writing."1
Now it becomes an essay of argument, as I offer the claim that composition teachers
and composition curricula should, notwithstanding the irreconcilable contradictions,
actively engage the issues that the participants in CCR 760, Fall 2002, decided
to label "sentence-level correctness" (see Howard).
No writing program has ever succeeded in teaching its students to write correctly,
but every writing program is nevertheless expected to do so and berated for
its manifold failures. In response, many compositionists have endeavored to
persuade their students, colleagues, administrators, communities, and legislators
that "writing" involves far more than sentence-level correctness and
that "writing instruction" not only involves far more than grammar
drills but actually cannot succeed at grammar drills.
Successes at this collective effort at persuasion have been notably scarce.
The belief in grammar and grammar instruction is not a result of misinformation
but of deep-rooted cultural formations that resist logos-based persuasion. Compositionists
have therefore turned to critical pedagogy, cultural studies, and civic participation,2
devising instruction that often directly endeavors to divest students of the
false consciousness that makes them want grammatical correctness. In place of
that false desire, critical pedagogy encourages students to become agents of
institutional and social change,3
working against the hierarchical social structures that valorize a code that
cannot be taught and whose acquisition is by itself insufficient credential
for acceptance in the domains of privilege. A sense of ease with the power code
results not just from instruction but also from social origin and environment.4
Successes at this collective effort at persuasion, too, have been notably scarce.
While some practitioners in the first case can claim to have persuaded individuals
in localized arguments5
and while some practitioners in the second case can describe satisfying pedagogy
that enlightens students and spurs them to social action (see, for example,
the many works of Paulo Freire), state hegemony continues unabated.
Valorization of the standard written language remains an instrument for naturalizing
the operations of state hegemony. Nowhere does this operation show more plainly
than in the required American college composition course and its offspring,
the institutionalized writing program.6
Recognizing this fact, compositionists are all over the map in their suggested
remedies. Sharon Crowley advocates doing away with the composition requirement
entirely, thereby ending unfair labor practices in which armies of teaching
assistants and adjuncts are underpaid for impossible work ("Composition's
Ethic"). Princeton University responds by putting more full-time faculty
in the composition classroom (see Bartlett).
The Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC) addresses the
issue head-on, with the document "Students' Right to Their Own Language"
(SRTOL). This document, released after several years' work by a blue-ribbon
committee, says, "If we can convince our students that spelling, punctuation,
and usage are less important than content, we have removed a major obstacle
in their developing the ability to write" (8). Clearly the committee realizes
that composition students themselves desire instruction in sentence-level correctness.
But the committee disagrees: "[G]ood speech and good writing ultimately
have little to do with traditional notions of surface 'correctness'" (12).
The effects of SRTOL have combined with the concurrent process movement in composition
to relegate sentence-level pedagogy to the writing center. For the past quarter
century, writing teachers have, moreover, understood that writing instruction
must begin at the global level of idea generation (invention) and that premature
attention to the sentence level will cause writers' block. For the past quarter
century, writing teachers have also understood that demanding sentence-level
correctness compels students to privilege the standard code over that of their
home, even though instruction in the standard can guarantee partial success
at best and even though mastery of the standard code is insufficient to the
social privileges that students hope to gain by it. The SRTOL document serves
as benchmark for both these beliefs, and the result is the bracketing or exclusion
of sentence-level pedagogy from college composition classrooms.
Ironically, as Stephen Parks' remarkable history of the document details, this
was not the intended outcome of the SRTOL effort in the CCCC. The CCCC intended
that SRTOL would serve as a philosophical guide to concrete pedagogies that
would be devised by a subsequent committee, but that second step was never accomplished
(Parks 206-210). This observation bears repeating: It was never the intention
of the SRTOL committee that composition teachers abandon the sentence as an
object of instruction, but only that they do so with full pedagogical and social
awareness. The model pedagogies were never developed by the group charged with
the task, and in that vacuum, composition teachers began to skirt the issue
entirely. With such a huge, complicated task left for each individual teacher
to figure out for herself, most opted out. No one wanted to implement pedagogy
that her discipline was telling her was bad or unfair. And then, for so many
composition teachers, there were the labor issues involved in a heavy courseload
for part-time wages.
And that's where we teachers in the Syracuse Writing Program find ourselves
now. Our administrators, colleagues, and students want us to teach sentence-level
correctness. Our scholarship has persuaded us of the difficulty and dangers
(both pedagogical and social) of that task. And CCCC, our professional organization,
having led the way in identifying the difficulties and dangers, has failed to
model solutions.
A distinctive feature of the SU Writing Program, however, is its collective
expertise. Ours is a program substantially staffed by long-term part-time professional
writing instructors; full-time faculty; and doctoral students in composition
and cultural rhetoric. This core teaching faculty provides a quality of pedagogical
expertise and imagination in composition and rhetoric that is seen in few universities
in the world. Contributing to the teaching of writing are teaching assistants
from other departments in the university, people who bring their disciplinary
expertise to bear on issues of course design and classroom teaching.
The vitality of this group was demonstrated in Fall 2002 in two endeavors: a
doctoral course in writing program administration (see Howard) that explored
possibilities for curricular engagement of sentence-level pedagogy, and a faculty
development seminar involving a dozen teachers interested in exploring pedagogical
possibilities for sentence-level pedagogy. Some of the results of these efforts
are included in this issue of Reflections, shared with you as a way of beginning
a conversation that is very much needed in our discipline and that the Syracuse
writing teachers are well positioned to address. We will not find "solutions,"
but we can find honorable, well-informed, significant places in our pedagogy
for instruction on the sentence level.
Works Cited
Bartlett, Thomas. "Why Johnny Can't Write, Even Though He Went to Princeton."
The Chronicle of Higher Education 49.17 (3 January 2003): A39. <http://chronicle.com/free/v49/i17/17a03901.htm>.
Accessed 3 January 2003.
Bean, John C. Engaging Ideas: The Professor's Guide to Integrating Writing,
Critical Thinking, and Active Learning in the Classroom. San Francisco:
Jossey-Bass, 1996.
Berlin, James A. Writing Instruction in Nineteenth-Century American Colleges.
Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 1984.
Bourdieu, Pierre. Distinction: A Social Critique of Judgment and Taste.
1979. Trans. Richard Nice. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1984.
Braddock, Richard, Richard Lloyd-Jones, and Lowell Schoer. Research in
Written Composition. Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English,
1963.
Crowley, Sharon. "Composition's Ethic of Service, the Universal Requirement,
and the Discourse of Student Need." Journal of Advanced Composition
15.2 (1995): 227-40.
Crowley, Sharon. "Judith Butler, Professor of Rhetoric." JAC:
A Journal of Composition Theory 21.1 (2001): 163-167.
Crowley, Tony. Language in History: Theories and Texts. New York:
Routledge, 1996.
Cushman, Ellen. "The Rhetorician as an Agent of Social Change." College
Composition and Communication 47.1 (February 1996): 7-28.
Fish, Stanley E. "Say It Ain't So." The Chronicle of Higher Education
(21 June 2002). <http://chronicle.com/jobs/2002/06/2002062101c.htm>.
Accessed 27 June 2002.
Freund, Deborah A. "A Strategic Partnership for Innovative Research and
Education." Address to the faculty of Syracuse University. 28 March 2001.
<http://acadplan.syr.edu/speech.html>.
Accessed 25 June 2003.
George, Ann. "Critical Pedagogy: Dreaming of Democracy." A Guide
to Composition Pedagogies. Ed. Gary Tate, Amy Rupiper, and Kurt Schick.
New York: Oxford UP, 2001. 92-112.
George, Diana, and John Trimbur. "Cultural Studies and Composition."
A Guide to Composition Pedagogies. Ed. Gary Tate, Amy Rupiper, and
Kurt Schick. New York: Oxford UP, 2001. 71-91.
Gere, Anne Ruggles. "Public Opinion and Teaching Writing." The
Politics of Writing Instruction: Postsecondary. Ed. Richard Bullock, John
Trimbur, and Charles Schuster. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 1991. 263-276.
Harris, Joseph. A Teaching Subject: Composition Since 1966. Upper
Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1997.
Howard, Rebecca Moore. Syllabus. CCR 760, "The Writing Program Administrator
as Negotiator." Fall 2002. <http://wrt-howard.syr.edu/Syllabi/CCR760F02.html
>. Accessed 25 June 2003.
Lewin, Tamara. "Writing in Schools Is Found Both Dismal and Neglected."
New York Times 26 April 2003. <http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/26/education/26WRIT.html>.
Accessed 30 April 2003.
Lu, Min-Zhan. "Professing Multiculturalism: The Politics of Style in the
Contact Zone." College Composition and Communication 45.4 (December
1994): 442-58.
Moffett, James. Teaching the Universe of Discourse. Portsmouth, NH:
Boynton/Cook, 1968, 1983.
Myers-Scotton, Carol. "Making Ethnicity Salient in Codeswitching."
Language and Ethnicity. Ed. James R. Row. Philadelphia: John Benjamins,
1991. 95-110.
The National Commission on Writing in America's Schools and Colleges. "The
Neglected 'R': The Need for a Revolution in Writing Instruction." The
College Board. April 2003. <http://www.writingcommission.org/>.
30 April 2003.
Ong, Walter J. Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word.
London: Methuen, 1982.
Parks, Stephen. Class Politics: The Movement for the Students' Right to
Their Own Language. Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English,
2000.
Pennycook, Alastair. The Cultural Politics of English as an International
Language. London: Longman, 1994.
Rhodes, Keith. "Marketing Composition for the 21st Century." WPA:
Writing Program Administration 23.3 (Spring 2000): 51-70.
Scholes, Robert. The Rise and Fall of English: Reconstructing English as
a Discipline. New Haven, CT: Yale UP, 1998.
Smith, Olivia. The Politics of Language 1791-1819. Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1984.
Smitherman, Geneva. "CCCC's Role in the Struggle for Language Rights."
College Composition and Communication 50.3 (February 1999): 349-376.
"Students' Right to Their Own Language." College Composition
and Communication 25.3 (1974): 1-32. <http://www.ncte.org/cccc/positions/right_to_language.shtml>.
Walker, J. Grace, Nell F. Bartels, and Mary E. Marye. Higher Levels. Rev.
ed. New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1932, 1942.
Walvoord, Barbara E., and Virginia Johnson Anderson. Effective Grading:
A Tool for Learning and Assessment. Jossey-Bass, 1998.
Weaver, Constance. Teaching Grammar in Context. Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook,
1996.
Winterowd, W. Ross. "Style: A Matter of Manner." Quarterly Journal of Speech 56 (1970): 160-67.