Ideologies

I loved reading all of your blogs this week, and was happy to see that you all recognized Williams' biases. We all have them, of course. After years of teaching writing I'm apt to agree with him (as you might have noticed) that teaching grammar doesn't do a lick of good in terms of helping writers improve their writing. Jess points out that teaching grammar (or usage? or mechanics?) within the context of a student's writing is helpful, and this is so true. But abstract grammar drill and exercises are completely useless unless the student is studying a new language or linguistics.

Williams' other biases stem from his preoccupation with the Composition scholar James Berlin, who he mentions briefly at the beginning of the chapter. Berlin wrote an article about ideologies in the writing classroom and, after blasting current-traditional and then expressive (what Williams emphasizes as "Romantic," although it's rarely referred to by that term) writing pedgogies, Berlin described a social rhetoric (his invention, according to his article) which, of course, trumped the other two. Williams follows Berlin's design and also the flaws in Berlin's argument, treating expressivism as if it has no other place in the curriculum except to use as forced "confession" or "fun" writing. I'd argue that expressive writing provides an opportunity for student writers to write about what they know (as opposed to being "tested" on some other content), and gives them the chance to develop fluency and clarity. Correctness comes later, in the form of the prescribed formats which some of you mentioned. These might include a memo format or a lab report, an MLA formatted research paper or, a brief one page introduction to a portfolio. Once a writer has achieved fluency, they can write in any one of these formats. Simply learning the format, however, (i.e. a five paragraph essay) will not help to enhance their fluency. Many of you mentioned these issues in your blogs, and also added that it should be part of every teacher's objectives (not just "English" teachers) to guide student writers in understanding the formats and conventions of their particular disciplines.
The other great thing about an expressive writing pedagogy is that it's a wonderful tool for writing to learn. We all learn as we write (writing the verb, not writing the noun) and writing through a problem (personal or academic) helps to solve it. We're not sure why it does this, but it does.
Williams (like Berlin) also confuses "expressive" with "personal." The two do not necessarily go together. Kineavy's triangle (the copy I gave you) shows that expressive simply means that the emphasis is on the writer (as opposed to being on the audience or the signal); one example being The Declaration of Independence. We'll talk more about this after we read about some "best practices." Thanks for the great online and in-class discussions.