Why Is It Easy for Me but Not Them?

I really just don't get it. I don't get why a B student would plagiarize 90% of his paper, even after participating in both workshops. Inadequate paraphrase is one thing. I probably did it myself when I didn't realize it. But copying and pasting entire websites into your paper with only a few sentences actually in your own words? How is a B student that desperate? If you don't have time to do the work, can't you at least write something crappy and short in your own words? At least you'd pass the course then. I've turned in papers several pages under the minimum, turned in papers I felt were C or even D quality because I was tired of writing. But I'd never dream of fleshing out a paper with Ctrl+v.

Teaching and tutoring make me realize that writing was a lot easier for me than it was for a lot of people. In peer review workshops, I used to assume that the upperclassmen knew something I didn't, so if they didn't use much evidence to back up their claims, I actually thought I must have been overdoing it. I stopped using so much textual evidence. It never occurred to me that maybe I got better grades than they did.

I never had to be told not to "drop" quotations in without a signal phrase--at least, I never remember being told. Yet I find this is very difficult for many of my students and common among even upperclassmen in the writing center. I almost always rather easily grasped the goals of the assignment, whereas this is a major hangup for students in all majors visiting the writing center.

I want to get into people's heads, to be able to sympathize. I understand using imprecise pronouns or not being good at paragraphing, because I still work at those things. But there are some things that to me seem so obvious that I never thought of them as even needing to be taught. And I can teach them, but I can't sympathize. I can only go through the motions of explaining in a way that I hope will facilitate my students' understanding.

Using Myers-Brigg to Teach Writing: Part 1

I just read "Personality and Individual Writing Processes" by George H. Jensen and John K. DiTiberio. I really should have read it before making my final blog post for English 620, as it relates importantly to my own teaching philosophy.

I'm splitting this post into two parts because I have entirely too much to say. Part 1 is just going to be me analyzing myself and part 2 is going to be me applying type theory to teaching writing. At least, that's the current plan. I have a tendency to become dissatisfied with my initial choices in organization.

All right, first, I don't like thinking of the four dimensions (Introversion/Extraversion, Intuition/Sensing, Thinking/Feeling, Judging/Perceiving) as functining independently. Jensen and DiTiberio, though they point out the problem in doing so (296), do so throughout the entire paper. I also disagree with the way they present "interaction"--as a simple hierarchy--but I understand the limitations of the scope of their paper.

I do not believe that Introversion/Extraversion and Judging/Perceiving are "functions"--I don't believe that they are ways of approaching the world or the self. Rather, I believe that they are ways of using the actual functions, Thinking/Feeling and Intuition/Sensing. Hence, I think it's problematic to speak of a "judging" way of writing.

I usually identify as an INTJ, but that's more than simply being introverted/intuitive/thinking/judging. Instead, let's divide it into the functions and how they are used (in order):
Introverted intuition
Extraverted thinking
Introverted sensing
Extraverted feeling

Major disclaimer: That's not the "proper" INTJ personality profile, it's my personality profile.

You see, it doesn't simply matter what order the functions come in. It's not that I go around prefering to using introverted intuition. I actually hate to use that function--in extraverted contexts. The direction of the functions is crucial.

For example, my husband is an INTP (again with a slightly rearranged profile). So we have the same preferences but in different directions:
Introverted thinking
Extraverted intuition
Introverted feeling
Extraverted sensing

As an extraverted thinker, I have to talk out every decision. I have to reason out loud why one brand of salsa is preferable to another, which annoys my husband, an introverted thinker. On the other hand, he is much better at theorizing in extraverted contexts, having extraverted intuition, where in an extraverted situation I stick closely to analysis, as an extraverted thinker.

I think the theory has a lot more predictive value when you think contextually. Preferences have a lot to do with the situation. Everyone is able to use each function (T/F/N/S) (though their fourth function usually causes or results from anxiety). But we often almost lack the ability to use a function in the opposite direction from our preference.


Work Cited

Jensen, George H., and John K. DiTiberio. "Personality and Individual Writing Processes." College Composition and Communication 35.3 (1984): 285-300.

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.

Balancing Expression with Structure

One of my students interviewed me a few weeks ago for another class. She asked me what one thing I’d tell freshmen. I told her that freshman needed to know that they have good ideas. My students might not always have brilliant ideas, but they always have something worth saying. They can’t write like scholars until they think like scholars. And scholars don’t think “I wonder what my professor wants my to say.” They consider their audience, but they write with the mantle of authority.

This week two of my students handed in papers with entire plagiarized paragraphs, and a third with plagiarized sentences. I had hoped that if I showed I believed in them they would take responsibility. I don’t know to what extent the plagiarism was intentional. But either way, it shows that my teaching philosophy isn’t fool-proof.

How do I know that they plagiarized if I showed trust in them? You’d better believe it was painful to get up and walk over to the computer to plug a student’s sentence into Google when my suspicion was based on the quality of the writing.

Either my students didn’t care that I trusted them or they didn’t believe that I cared about their ideas.

I sound like an expressivist. I want my students to use their unique subjectivity to tell the truth as they understand it. Although I like expressivism, I don’t know that it adequately describes my feelings about writing.

I believe that expressivism doesn’t work for all writers. I happen to find Peter Elbow’s methods helpful, but Muriel Harris cinched it for me--some people write just fine when they start with outlines and write every sentence carefully. Others don’t. So I can’t just teach them how to get in touch with themselves through writing. And I’m teaching academic writing. My course is designed to help students in future courses. So I owe it to my students to help them learn to write for teachers, not just for themselves.

I have tools to offer my students. I help them learn how magically topic sentences work to help your reader follow your argument. I can show them how important it is to keep lifeless words out of sentences. I can even give them outlines for how to structure their papers. I don’t think an expressivist would do that. But I don’t force my students to follow strict guidelines for how to write a paper. If they can come up with another way that works, I accept that. I rejoice at that. I write comments on their papers about how well they’ve expressed their subjectivity.

I don’t think that models suppress creativity. If I use models as tools while encouraging students to make their own way, I give them a starting place. Creative genius can be found when writers twist models to serve their own purposes or when they use readerly expectations to trick an audience. Even if there is mystery behind good writing, there are still tricks of the trade worth teaching. On the other hand, even if good writing is based in following conventions, playing by the rules too strictly without an attempt at creativity won’t result in something worth reading.

I'm disappointed that we're not going to be able to talk about Matt Barton's "The Future of Rational-Critical Debate in Online Public Spheres," because I felt this article was saying more than the previous articles this week.

Barton compares online writing to public communication in the 18th century, using Juergen Habermas's analysis of the past to explain the present. Blogs compare to letter writing and diaries (185). Blogs are directed to an audience, but have a very subjective nature. I hate blogging. Blogging requires being able to talk at length without input from others. I need interaction to have something to say. Sure, people can comment, but comments on a blog aren't a particularly good way to have a conversation. Blogs (according to Barton) build subjectivity, a necessary condition for the ideal public forum (185).

You want a conversation, use a message board. I still post at a message board for classes at Drury. Message boards encourage discussion, debate. People talk to each other, not at each other as in a blog. Message boards privilege arguments, not people. For this reason, Barton feels that blogs should come before boards. Before one gets caught up in arguments, one must have a clear sense of self. I think this is an issue of personality type. I think many people do fine jumping straight to argumentation. I feel that my time spent on Dr. Panza's discussion board helped clarify my sense of self quite well, as I'm an argumentative type. But I'm sure there are people who are more comfortable with a sense of ownership that comes with blogs.

But I love the lack of ownership in wikis. After a couple of weeks editing Wikipedia, I noticed that I didn't feel attached to my contributions. I was just giving my input, doing what I could to further the goal of the encyclopedia. But not every contributor feels that way, hence Wikipedia has a policy on the "ownership" of articles, to explain to newbies that it is not "their" article simply because they have worked on it.

I think these are great categories, but we can also remember that they overlap. Some blogs have active comment sections which behave much like discussion boards, with people talking to each other. I've participated in discussion boards which made use of "journal" threads, creating a thread author/owner, much like a blog. And Wikipedia has a strong behind-the-scenes community that features user pages (owned like blogs) and talk pages (for debates like discussion boards). So clearly we can't get away from all the different needs.

Pedogogy of Mixing Up the Epistemology

You could say it's a cop out that when asked whether I teach writing to emphasize subjective, objective, or transactional theories of knowledge of truth (as James Berlin categorizes them) that I say, All three. But it's more than just teaching them in balance, it's teaching them which style is appropriate when, and how to mix them.

I think the assignments in my English 110 class lend themselves to teaching a variety of approaches. Some of the assignments are implicitly subjective, some objective, and some transactional.

The memoir assignment is basically subjective. The student writes about how a personal event shaped who they are. The subjective approach captures inner knowledge and records it. The epistemic end of subjectivists would have the process of writing also be a process of learning, but at it's core, the knowledge is inside the writer and is transcribed. When I grade memoirs I look for students to express their feelings.

The annotated bibliography is basically objective. After researching a topic, the student creates a list of sources which summarize and evaluate the material in the source. Objective approaches use language to document external reality. The use of language is very similar to the subjective approach--language is fundamentally a passive medium used to record truth. But the truth is not based in the writer's psyche, it's based in the outside world. When grading bibliographies, I'm looking for sufficient information about the sources. The sources exist apart from the writer (I pretend that summary is not an act of interpretation), and the writer records what is in them.

The position paper is basically transactional. The transactional approach is not a mix of objective and subjective, but it is a bridge. Objective and subjective use language to record truth and secondarily to find truth, but in the transactional approach the truth that is found is not internal or external, it's in the exchange. The position paper requires the writer to set forth their opinion, based on a research of external reality, conveyed in a way to convince a reader. If the position paper was subjective, it would be an op/ed. If it was objective, it'd be a research paper. Instead it bridges the two and finds truth in the communication among writer, reader, and reality.

It's the mixes that can be an unexpected hangup. Students often want to take one approach and stick with it, but they can't. The I-search teaches students to cross boundaries within a single piece. It is a research paper (objective). But it also about the writer's experience with the research (subjective). The I-search isn't really transactional, though. Primarily the students are recording truth, they aren't using language to find truth.

I want my students to be able to do it all, because for most majors, they'll have to. We can say all writing outside the English department is objective, but that's not true. Subjective assignments are given by all kinds of teachers from art history to math. But even if my students only go on to write "objective" research papers, I want them to be able to do it without being boring. That involves moving your focus beyond recording external reality and thinking about how human beings actually interact with it.

Grammar

This is related to composition theory, if not related to the readings for the class.

I suppose I could talk about audience awareness in reference to the guest speaker in 603 this morning, but I'd rather talk about grammar. I'd usually rather talk about grammar. (Do I mean I'd rather talk about grammar than talk about something else, or do I mean I'd rather talk about grammar than listen to a talk about grammar?)

One thing that concerns me is a near dismissal of value-related questions. Tim Hadley made a reference to "African American English" and how he won't devalue it as a spoken language, but he would teach speakers "standard written English." There's a couple things that concern me about this (which I'd've loved to have discussed at the time, given the chance).

1) What is standard written English? Am I to believe that all professional and academic forms of written English are the same? I know better. I suppose I could counsel business students in the writing center to take on the discourse of the creative writing students. But it seems that there is no one standard written English. The professional English in business is different from the professional English of creative writing, on the level of the word, the sentence, and organization. So which written English should I be teaching?

2) Is is really value neutral to teach children which form of English is "standard"? My dad would say yes. But I think if you're obligated to accept the child's spoken language as valuable, then the same goes for their written language. Why do we say that spoken language can't be judged? Well...we didn't talk about that. I'd like to know exactly what Hadley thinks about that, to be sure. My inclination is that it's because the accepted dialect is accepted for social reasons. There's nothing inherently better about the different ways of talking.

So...what's inherently better about the different ways of writing? Writing tends more towards standardization because in print, you can't go back and explain your meaning if your audience is confused. And you can't share nonverbal clues about meaning (beyond such things as scare quotes). So there's more incentive for standardization. The problem is, I don't believe there is a single standard. So while I think we should teach standard forms of written English, I don't believe we should act as if they are value neutral and not based on social convention.

In conclusion, I really want to know what the difference is between teaching a student to use a standard dialect in writing and teaching students to avoid split infinitives. Both are social rules, aren't they? Why is one okay and not the other?