Comp Quotes to Live By:
What are we finding out? One point is becoming clear is that writing is an act of discovery for both skilled and unskilled writers; most writers have only a partial notion of what they want to say when they begin to write, and their ideas develop in the process of writing…. Another truth is that usually the writing process is not linear, moving smoothly in one direction from start to finish. It is messy, recursive, convoluted, and uneven. Writers write, plan, revise, anticipate, and review throughout the writing process, moving back and forth among the different operations involved in writing without any apparent plan. No practicing writer will be surprised at these findings: nevertheless, they seriously contradict the traditional paradigm that has dominated textbooks for years... (Maxine Hairston, p. 12, "Winds of Change")
To sum up: Writing is a complex act, integrally related to learning and knowing, and performs a variety of functions. It is not a discrete clearly definable skill learned once and for all; moreover, both in school and at work, writing is seldom the product of isolated individuals but rather and seldom obviously, the outcome of continuing collaboration, of interactions that involve other people and other texts. Writing practices are closely linked to their sociocultural contexts, and writing strategies vary with individual and situation. (Worlds Apart, Dias et al. p. 10)
"Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or your self confidence."
-- Robert Frost --
The most valuable political act any teacher can perform is not to impose particular political views but to teach students to see the words that society tries to inject into them unseen. (Wayne Booth, The Vocation of a Teacher, p. 154)
"The teacher of writing, first of all, must be a person for whom the student wants to write." (Donald Murray)
George Cambell: rhetoric is the attempt to "to enlighten the understanding, to please the imagination, to move the passions, or to influence the will."
In the end, however, the underlying philosophical assumptions still seem less significant to me than the way in which a writing teacher answers this question: should a writing course be organized around production or consumption? It is around this very basic question that (at least) two paths diverge, and how a teacher chooses usually makes all the difference. (Lad Tobin, "Process Pedagogy", p 15 in A Guide to Composition Pedagogy)
Everyone teaches the process of writing, but everyone does not teach the same process. The test of one's competence as a composition instructor [...] resides in being able to recognize and justify the version of the process being taught. (James Berlin, "Contemporary Composition: The Major Pedagogical Theories", p. 777 in College English, Dec. 1982)
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