Fulkerson mentions Ede and Lunsford's distinction between "real audiences," or audiences of actual human beings, and "fictionalized audiences the writer attempts to create through textual cues." How would your writing be different if you wrote for a real audience vs. writing for a fictionalized one?
Tobin quotes Graves, who advocates that we design a pedagogy that "built on the skills, strengths, and interests [students] already possessed." Then Graves claims children are born wanting to write because they mark up walls and papers. Do you buy Graves's argument about children's inherent interest in writing? In any case, are there benefits to founding a pedagogy on universal claims about peoples' natural skills and interests? Are there downsides to doing this?
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ReplyDeleteAs far as writing for a "real audience" versus a "fictionalized one" I imagine the different would manifest in terms of the philosophical approach I adopt for my piece of work. To reference Fulkerson's mentioned philosophies, a fictionalized audience might offer me more perceived creative freedom due to the fact that I am more or less determining the nature of my audience. My writing might exemplify an expressionist viewpoint where my voice becomes more clear and opinions bold, versus if my piece is directed towards a specific audience for which I might adopt really any of the four philosophies in order to compromise between how I desire to write and how to best address my audience. This goes along with the WPA Outcomes Statement for First Year Comp. where two of the intended goals for first year Rhetoical Knowledge are "Respond appropriately to different rhetorical situations" and "Use conventions of format and structure appropriate to the rhetorical situation."
ReplyDeleteI do not buy that people are born with an inherent interest in writing. I think it's risky to use terminology like "inherent" and "natural," and to make "universal" claims about anything at all. In particular, founding a pedagogy based on "natural" skills and interests seems to feed into the idea that writing is a special, unique, gift that people are born with. In other words, it reinforces the faulty idea that writers are born, not made. Though I do think that pedagogy that emphasizes writers' strengths is important, it is just as critical for students and teachers to recognize that strengths and weaknesses with writing are not inherent, but shift and develop based on experience and practice.
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