Issues of Identity and Writing in ENGL 378

Ivanic proposes that we make our study of writing and identity an explicit part of our teaching and she proposes a method for doing so under the heading of "raising learners' critical awareness of the nature of writer identity, so as to give them maximum control over this important aspect of writing" (339).

The full passage is here:

I mentioned critical language awareness (CLA) in chapter 5 as a research methodology; here I am recommending it as a pedagogy. CLA focuses on the critical discussion of discourses, discourse practices, and the way in which they position language users. In relation to writing it means recognizing that writing in a particular way means appearing to be a certain type of person, as discussed in Part Two of this book; that is, it involves raising awareness of the discoursal self and gaining control over it. CLA also involves action as a result of awareness. it is based on a view of language in which discourses do not mechanistically determine what people say and write, but are open to contestation and change. Learners are encouraged to make choices as they write which will align them with social values, beliefs and practices to which they are committed, if necessary opposing the privileged conventions for the genre and thereby contributing to discoursal, and thus social, change.

Learner writers need to be aware that writing is an extremely complex social act, and it is not their weakness which causes them to get stuck with it. Not just people who are construed as 'learners', but everyone has to face the difficult task of deciding how to present themselves in writing: which discourse types and associated identities to accept, and which to reject. Students ned to develop a critical awareness of their own life-histories, and the sorts of social constraints which may be responsible for any difficulties they have with acquiring particular discourse types. If someone is able to blame the inequities of society for the fact that a certain discourse doesn't' come easily to them, and recognize the political implications of this inequity, they are likely to stop taking the blame on their own shoulders for the difficulties they face. This might be a lot more enabling than thinking that they must just try harder. (339)

There is more. Basically, start reading on p. 335. The section is "Putting writer identity on the agenda in the teaching and learning of academic writing" (338-343)

Linguistic abilities and challenging assignments

students have been shown to regress in writing performance at the level of sentence grammar when first attempting more complex cognitive and rhetorical tasks (Has well, 1991; Kitzhaber, 1963), making a neat, linear progression of linguis tic skills unlikely. Rather, writers' growth in linguistic abilities is likely to resemble a spiraling process that allows for regression and plateaus in learning as well^as forward progress (Haswell, 1991). (Beaufort, WRW, p. 139)

Importance of Genre and Discourse Community Knowledge

All faculties can benefit from being grounded in the research on transfer of learning and in genre and discourse community theories, the two most important organizing frameworks for understanding writing in social contexts. (Beaufort, College Writing and Beyond, p. 150)