Imitating Identity

Robert Brooke argues that imitation is a viable way of learning to write well not because students internalize forms, but because they identify with writers they respect. Students want to write like a specific writer, and they follow the person as a model, not the person's works.

True, the works are usually the only way that they know the person, unless they are imitating a classroom teacher. But it does seem reasonable that social creatures find it more intuitive to model their writing identities after another writing identity than to model their behavior after a written product.

I'm not convinced, however, by Brooke's case studies. He seems to be testing the students, not the pedagogy. For instance, of a student who disliked the text for the class Brooke says, "As a reader and writer, Clark seemed unable to handle the kind of thinking about experience Laurence's book provided" (29). I see. Clark is mentally handicapped; that's why he wasn't as excited about the course as Brooke expected. It might have been more fair to cast the sentence in terms of the pedagogy's failure than of Clark's.

Brooke's conclusion is not entirely prepared for. For the entire paper he's insisted that building an identity based on a successful writer is an effective way to become a good writer. But in the end he says that "the teacher, no matter how exciting a model she presents, just isn't in control of the identity the student will develop" (38), using the fact that the method wasn't as successful as he had hoped to justify giving instructors the job of molding students' identities.

Works Cited

Brooke, Robert. "Modeling a Writer's Identity: Reading and Imitation in the Writing Classroom." College Composition and Communication 39.1 (1988): 23-41.