“Ranking, Evaluating, and Liking: Sorting Out Three Forms of Judgment” Precis September 9, 2008

Peter Elbow

So often assessment drives teaching.  It dictates what teachers spend their time on, what teachers emphasize, and what students think is important.  Students begin to live to see that number or letter written at the top of their paper, to compare with their classmates after class.  Do we put too much emphasis on ranking?  I would say yes.  Ranking has the severe disadvantages of being inaccurate, not generating any real feedback or criticism and can affect the students’ and teacher’s feelings towards the class.  Instead, we should consider evaluation as a flawed, but better, alternative.  When evaluating, it may take a little longer to comment to a greater degree on students work. But the students can learn more from those sentences or phrases then they can from seeing a “C” printed at the top of their page.  

Another thing to think about is “liking.”  No, this is not a subjective thing.  But those people that like what they are writing are liable to work harder to try to better it, so that others will like it to.  And when teachers like student writing, they are apt to finding it easier to comment on student writing.  If they are excited about the piece, they will be excited to see where it goes next.   You can certainly like something without it being good writing, but if you are able to apply this, in addition to evaluation students’ work, it will help you to offer better and more understanding advice.

“Toward an Excess-ive Theory of Revision” Precis

Nancy Welch

Revision can be such a rewarding process.  Unfortunately, some students see it only as  a punishment or a chance to fix up their grammar.  Part of the problem is that teachers are not asking the right questions, such as “What if?” or “How about this?” or “Can you add more to this?”  When all the students see are corrections and rewrites, they are not going to think positively about revision and thus, not be able to take advantage of it to its fullest.  Revision should be taught to students so that they actually understand what it is about.  If students learn to question the completeness of their work and to ask themselves if their text is reaching their audience, then they will be on their way to understanding revision.  Nothing is ever perfect; there is always more that can be done.  And it’s not necessarily something that was missed, uncorrected – but there are more possibilities for the work to be communicated to others, to be turned into new and more fabulous texts.  

“Closing My Eyes as I Speak: An Argument for Ignoring Audience” Precis

 

Peter Elbow

Many times I find myself closing my eyes as I speak before an audience.  The same practice could certainly be applied to writing.  Many times, we get so focused on the audience and it is debilitating and does not get us anywhere.  There are valid arguments for writing with the audience in mind, such as the worry that one would never write to an audience and thus not communicate as well, or the fact that writing would not fluctuate if it wasn’t written to a specific audience.  However, the point is that not everyone is ready to write to an audience when they first sit down, and most especially not to one that is overbearing and intimidating.  Instead, it may be best for the writer to simply write for him/herself and then go back into a revision with an audience in mind.  This may make for worse first drafts, but much better second drafts in the long run, after the author has gotten all the logistics and order worked out.  

Overall, we should work to improve (in ourselves and in our students) our use of private writing, our desert island writing.  This can help us focus our thoughts and ideas and get them out, even in a very messy way.  It helps us to become better thinkers so that we can become better writers.  It is an act of not just responding to what is going on around us, but what is going on within us.  

“Expressive Pedagogy: Practice/Theory, Theory/Practice” Precis

Christopher Burnham

Expressivist pedagogy rose as a response to the dominating current traditionalism.  The latter mostly focused on writing for the academy in certain standard formats, using correct grammar.  However, it did not fully comprehend all the pieces of the rhetorical triangle and so expressivism stepped in to try to fill that void.  There must be communication and interaction between four things:  the writer, the audience, the message and language.  Usually, the writer will be found at the center of a triangle built out of the other four.  This means that the writer is the central focus – he/she has the highest value in the text being creating.  By allowing everything to revolve around the writer, the writer is able to use their voice to make their point heard.  

Expressivist pedagogy further shook things up by invading classes with a more process-based perspective.  They turned to freewriting, journaling and peer-revision to help writers develop their own voices.  Whether students were writing to inform, persuade or relive past experiences, they are encouraged to consider their roles as both the see-er and the do-er, the observer and the participant.  

Meanwhile, in between my discussion of what expressivism really is, I will name drop about lots of people in the field and the books that they have written (of which I have no doubt read almost everyone) as well as tell you all of my significant contributions to the cause.  Perhaps you shall want to check out more of my work?