1. Yancey notes that we can't accomplish everything in FYC, explaining, "First-year composition is a
place to begin; carrying this forward is the work of the major in composition and rhetoric." For the students who enter our classes hoping to bail out after the course ends, how do we help inspire more long-lasting writing publics? What can we do to encourage long-term advocacy?
2. Arola's concerns about design, specifically in her use of MySpace and Facebook as examples, reveal similar limitations to imposed writing structures such as the five-paragraph essay. In the last section, Arola examines "Bringing design back." Similarly, for the students who have what Yancey (stealing from the other class) calls a "fixed sense of writer identity," how do we remove barriers so that they can write more freely?
Hi Aram!
ReplyDeleteI think the question of how we remove the barriers, which have been in place for so long, that limit students writing, is a multifaceted one. One simple thing to do is try to make writing fun and be respectful of the different kinds of products we are presented with. It is so difficult to bring down some of those barriers because our students have been writing within them for so long, and they were taught as if there was nothing outside them. While K-12 teachers can want to change things the same way we do, they are bound by the tests they are forced to give, as are so many college instructors too. Our program seems to have the mindset that individual expression is something to be cherished and encouraged, so I say we get as creative as we can with our students and openly praise the works they create which might not fit the model of traditional classroom writing.