Real people write for real reasons...

I found this section to be very interesting. There is so much information to absorb. The first thing I took interest in was the statement, “writing as thinking.” Does this mean teachers have to teach their students how to think? Is thinking something that can be taught? I am not sure I agree with this. Thinking is just something that comes naturally. You think all the time without realizing it. I think we can teach someone how to go about critical thinking. General thinking is simply something that is just done.
I also found it interesting when the author said that teachers grade papers as if they were preparing a manuscript to be published. Teachers are so worried about grammar and punctuation, rather than the actual content. I think Elbow would definitely not agree with this. Even though grammar is very important, it does not necessarily improve their writing skills.
Some approaches to help teach students how to write include, the five paragraph essay, the funnel introductory paragraph, and seven easy steps to composing. The only approach that I learned in school was the five paragraph essay. This was when the teachers would say that an essay was not complete if there aren’t five paragraphs. This really did not teach us anything but to make things us to fill the page. This doesn’t seem like the right approach.
New rhetoric is more involved with the content rather than the style. The triangle theory comes hand in hand with this. It has the encoder, decoder, and reality. It basically says that people write with reason.
I am sure everyone used the stages of writing. The stages include prewriting, planning, drafting, revising, editing, and publishing. Do we agree with these stages? How did you learn how to compose an essay? What methods were you taught, and did they work? There are many forms of planning. I remember using a web filled with my ideas I came up with during the brainstorming period.
Romantic rhetoric is using the imagination and gives you the freedom of expression. Then WAC was introduced. Real people write for real reasons. It has the intentions of making writing more realistic. WAC is used throughout elementary, middle, and high school. WAC has different purposes in each grade level. I think it is a great way to link all the subjects together. This will only work when the teachers and administration cooperates. One of the goals is to make the non English teachers better writers. WAC is great! It only takes a few teachers to get together and decide that they want their students to become better writers. On the other hand, WAC has its downfall. According to the author it doesn’t give the writer a voice. I am not so sure I agree with this. It might be more limiting, but the writer can always express themselves.
This section was much easier and more tolerable to read. I did feel as if the author was somewhat redundant. Maybe this was his way to get his point through to us. He says we write for real reasons on several occasions throughout the book. This must have been a point he wanted us to remember.