Composition: History & Theory: 1960 - 1969
College English, Volume 31, No. 2: November 1969
Description
CONTENTS
Teaching Writing (George P. Elliot): Elliot’s main argument is: “Your job as English teacher is to get the students to use language your way in large part as a result of wanting to, not having to, be together with you” (130). Elliot sees the creation of classroom community as essential to first-year composition. He also views the instructor’s role as one based on intellectual and creative rigor. He writes, “To teach English well is to conspire within and to some extent against the system that employs you, however good it is” (133). Simply accepting and abiding by the goals of a writing program leads to disengaged, monotonous teaching. Elliot highlights several cultural influences that have influenced the literacy of college students, including mass media and technology. However, he credits freshman English with preserving some “vigor of language.”
- “in this age of electronics and mass semi-literacy only a certain sophistication in language among large numbers of citizens can safeguard it. The language of ecstasy is used to sell perfumed toilet paper, words of passion to name automobiles, the tongue of trust and family intimacy to persuade the oppressed that they want this rich man instead of that to govern them, the vocabulary of all elevation has been repeated into triviality” (129).
- “One of the reasons some vigor of language is still with and of us in the United States is freshman English, which has been at war with clichés, distortion by innuendo, great vacuous assertions, quicksand logic (129).
Some of the advice Elliot offers to instructors (130):
- “The teacher who stays alive is the one who is always learning something new, about his subject, about students, about teaching itself”
- “When studying a text in class, let the students know your likes and dislikes, your ignorances, your shortcomings.”
- “commend every spark of imagination they show on paper and in class.”
- “In formulating topics for themes, exert all the imagination you have; seek counsel from books and colleagues; ask your students to help you”
- “Always hold in mind: much that is old to you is new to them. Speak to their freshness, that your weariness at making a point for the seven hundredth time may not show”
- “Think of yourself as an actor or rhapsode who must say the same thing over and over, yet each time afresh”
- “Learning language by rote from books is to the intercourse of living speech as masturbation is to marriage” (130).
Why I Gave Up Teaching Freshman English (Charles Moyer): Moyer asserts that he is abandoning traditional composition pedagogy and restructuring his first-year composition course as a workshop, in order to reframe his and his students’ relationships to writing. He writes, “Both of us need to free ourselves from the idea that one writes primarily in order to win the approval of someone else, for this thwarts our very feebly nourished tendency to look upon writing as a means of self-exploration and self-discovery” (172). Although Moyer had not yet attempted this classroom model, he proposes spending most class periods having individual conferences while the rest of the class writes independently. The focus of the first-year composition course: In the ‘50s, the first-year writing course was more focused on discussion of religion, science, and culture—not on improving students’ writing. The course introduced students to new ideas and serious discussion. “But of course,” Moyer notes, “Freshman English cannot seriously be conceived of with such purpose in mind. The aim of one course in the curriculum cannot be identical with the aim of the entire collegiate experiences” (179). “Furthermore,” he notes, “even if such a course is to be taught, one may seriously doubt that it should be taught by English instructors” (170). Contemporary instructors, Moyer notes, question the generalist texts and goals of first-year composition: “Most of us seem to have recognized that grammar and linguistics, while they have great intrinsic value and are of crucial importance for those who are learning English as a second language, have only an indirect and hypothetical relation to the writing problems of our freshman” (170). Contemporary instructors, according to Moyers have started focusing on literature: “Now we seem to be replacing grammar and linguistics with literature, not because we seriously believe that a brief introduction to literature will improve our students’ writing ability but because we enjoy talking about literature and think that the students should be exposed to it” (170).
The crux of the problem with first-year composition:
- Moyer asserts that regardless of the focus of his courses (general introduction to academic discourse, grammar, linguistics, or literature), his students’ writing abilities do not noticeably improve by the end of the course.
- “In our schools and colleges the teaching of writing has by and large been entrusted to people who do not themselves write” (171).
- Writing instructors don’t enjoy writing: “we who teach writing try to persuade our students to take pleasure and pride in their writing, and yet it seems clear that we ourselves do not take pleasure in writing and have very little writing to be proud of” (171).
Best Quote (from Julie N.) : “I came increasingly to feel that much, perhaps most, of what I said in the classroom was either irrelevant (“Kierkegaard is the future of religion), or obvious (Begin with an introduction of some sort”), or false (“Concrete words are better than abstract words”; “Good paragraphs have topic sentences”)” (171).
Other article titles: “Freshman Composition: The Circle of Unbelief,” William Coles ; “Hydrants into Elephants: The Theory and practice of College Composition,” George Stade; “Some Tentative Strictures on Generative Rhetoric,” Sabina Thorne Johnson; “Writing for Nobody,” Ed White; and “The Traditions of Complaint,” Leonard Greenbaum
Date of Upload
3/14/09