Faculty Teaching Writing Across the Disciplines

While English and language arts teachers have a disciplinary advantage in understanding and applying writing process principles, teachers in other disciplines have more problems. Their impulse is to use the model they remember form their own high school or undergraduate schooling rather than the process(es) they engage in as publishing professionals. Typically, they assign specific topics, providing few if any directions on how to write the paper. They read and comment only on the final draft, using intermediate drafts (if any) to ensure against plagiarism. Revision opportunities are few. Instructors in Writing Across the Curriculum faculty development programs often have to spend considerable time convincing participants of the inadequate pedagogy of this approach; even when teachers are unhappy with the papers written in this traditional manner, they are often reluctant to change--usually on the grounds that responding to drafts is too time consuming. ("The Great Paradigm Shift," Bloom, p. 44).

And so, you ask, what are those "writing process principles" to which Bloom refers in that first sentence? Here they are:

1. Writing is an activity, an act composed of a variety of activities.

2. The activities in writing are typically recursive rather than linear.

3. Writing is, first and foremost, a social activity.

4. The act of writing can be a means of learning and discovery.

5. Experienced writers are often aware of audience, purpose, and context.

6. Experienced writers spend considerable time on invention and revision.

7. Effective writing instruction allows students to practice these activities.

8. Such instruction includes ample opportunities for peer review.

9. Effective instructors grade student work not only on the finished product but on the efforts involved in the writing process.

10. Successful composition instruction entails finding appropriate occasions to intervene in each student's writing process. (Olson, qtd. in Bloom, p 33)

Bibliography (Legal Writing)

All of these are from the book

Matalene, Carolyn B. Worlds of Writing: Teaching and Learning in Discourse Communities of Work. New York: Random House, 1989.

In the Law the Text is King (Teresa Godwin Phelps)

To English Professors: On What to Do with a Lawyer (John Warnock)

Rhetoric and Bricolage: Theory and Its Limits in Legal and other Sorts of Discourse (James C. Raymond)

White, James Boyd, "The Invisible Discourse of the Law: Reflections on Legal
Literacy and General Education." In Literary for Life: The Demand for Read- ing and Writing, ed. RichardW. Bailey and Robin Melanie Fosheim, 137-50. New York: Modern Language Association, 1983.

White, James Boyd, "The Invisible Discourse of the Law: Reflections on Legal
Literacy and General Education." In Literary for Life: The Demand for Reading and Writing, ed. RichardW. Bailey and Robin Melanie Fosheim, 137-50. New York: Modern Language Association, 1983.

Bazerman, C. (1994). Systems of Genres and the Enactment of Social Intentions. In A. Freedman & P. Medway (Eds.), Genre and the New Rhetoric (pp. 79-100). London: Taylor and Francis.

Writing Videos

Peter Elbow -- On Writing

Peter Elbow -- On Spelling and Grammar

50 Years of Research on Writing: What Have We Learned?

What Does Revision Look like? Ask Obama

From Fallows.

The blow-up version.

Masters and Doctoral programs

Here are a couple I've bookmarked:

Rhetoric Society of America's listing of grad programs in rhetoric: http://associationdatabase.com/aws/RSA/pt/sp/resources_gradprograms

Doctoral Consortium in Rhetoric & Composition: https://www.msu.edu/~ahaas/consortium/members.htm

There's also the Master's Degree Consortium of Writing Studies Specialists:
http://www.mastersinwritingprograms.com/programs.html. The list is hardly
comprehensive, but maybe others will add their programs to the list because
of this discussion.

There's actually a new website for the Doctoral Consortium of Programs in
Rhetoric and Composition: http://www.cws.illinois.edu/rc_consortium/

Internships (sources)

ILL Request:

Freedman, A. & Adam, C. (2000). Bridging the gap: University-based writing that is more than simulation. In P. Dias & A. Pare (Eds.), Transitions: Writing in academic and workplace settings (pp. 129-144). Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press.

Hill, C.A. & Resnick, L. (1995). Creating opportunities for apprenticeship in writing. In J. Petraglia (Ed.) Reconceiving writing, rethinking writing instruction (pp. 145-158). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.

For more resources, see Beaufort in Research in Composition, p. 236 (top)

Anson, Chris M., and L. Lee Forsberg. "Moving beyond the Aca demic Community: Transitional Stages in Professional Writing," WC 7 (1990): 200-31.

For ENGL 230 (next time)--from Beaufort

THIS COURSE NEEDS TO START WITH A LITERACY NARRATIVE: literacy and work...students will reflect on the role that writing played in a specific workplace. Most of them have some experience with work--what role did writing play in this workplace? What did you write? What did others write that you read? The purpose is to help them begin to see the action-oriented nature of most workplace writing.

The Beaufort chapter, "Writing in the Professions" in Research on Composition is chocked full of interesting ideas for readings for a Business/Professional writing class.

"Framing" Quotes

"No amount of preparation in school can equip one fully for context-specific writing tasks in professional life" (229).

"The writing classroom is only one school for writers" (234).

Academic vs. Business Writing

An others (Rivers, 1989; Woolever, 1989) offer general observations about the differences in purpose, structure, and style of academic writing compared with most business-oriented texts. Although such generalizations are perhaps too broad, they nonetheless confirm socially driven textual features and give in broad strokes some of the differences between academic and business writing.

The citations are:

Woolever, K. R. (1989). Coming to terms with different standards of excellence for written communication. In C.B. Matalene (Ed.), Worlds of writing: Teaching and learning in discourse communities of work (pp. 3-16). New York: Random House.

Rivers, W.E. (1989). From the garret to the fishbowl: Thoughts on the transition from literary to technical writing. In C.B. Matalene (Ed.), Worlds of writing: Teaching and learning in discourse communities of work (pp. 64-79). New York: Random House.

Discourse Community/Activity System Matters

English teachers read expository texts by students and workplace writers and grade the professionals lower, thus demonstrating the effect of discourse conventions on the evaluation of writing:

Freedman, S.W. (1984). The registers of student and professional expository writing: Influence on teachers' responses. In R. Beach & L.S. Bridwell (Eds.), New directions in composition research (pp. 334-347). New York: Guilford Press.

(PE1404.N48 1984 )

Kain, Donna & Elizabeth Wardle. "Building Context: Using Activity Theory to Teach About Genre in Multi-Major Professional Communication Courses." Technical Communication Quarterly 14.2 (2005): 113-139.

Ethnographies of Writing in Workplace Settings

Brown, R.L. & Herndl, C.G. (1986). An ethnographic study of corporate writing: Job status as reflected in written text. In B. Couture (Ed.), Functional approaches to writing: Research perspectives (pp. 11-28). London: Frances Pinter.

Doheny-Farina, S. (1986). Writing in an emerging organization. Written Communication, 3, 158-185.

Doheny-Farina, S. (1989). A case study of one adult writing in academic and nonacademic discourse communities. In C.B. Matalene (Ed.), Worlds of writing: Teaching and learning in discourse communities of work (pp. 17-42). New York, Random House.

Doheny-Farina, S. (1992). The individual, the organization, and kairos: Making transitions from college to careers. In S.P. Witte, N. Nakadate, & R.D. Cherry (Eds.), A rhetoric of doing: Essays on written discourse in honor of James L. Kinneavy (pp. 293-309). Carbondale: SIUP.

Tech Tools

MacSpeech Dictate