digital digs - Latest Comments in should we teach composition in composition?

Re: should we teach composition in composition?

digitaldigs — Sat, 29 Aug 2009 13:35:08 -0000

Thanks Derek. I agree with you here. Of course TA-delivered FYC is only one flavor and not the most common across higher education. Two-year and comprehensive 4-yr colleges have different challenges, which can also vary greatly depending on how much they rely upon contingent faculty (not that contingent faculty are necessarily better or worse than TT faculty, but they are obviously in a different institutional position).

Anyway, I agree that the fear with TA-delivered FYC is that it occurs in the kind of cynical context you describe, where the faculty don't care about it except as a way to fund their graduate students. In such a situation, no one would win. The grad students don't get the kind of teaching experience that they need, and certainly the undergrads aren't receiving the kind of curriculum we'd hope them to get.

Derek, I think you're also right on about the best possibility... where TA's are converted. Not necessarily converted to become "rhet/comp" specialists, but where they come to see that value of teaching writing and the value of rhetoric as a foundation for humanistic pedagogy. Just as the cynical version arises from a department ethos (or lack thereof), the best version also relies (I would think) upon a department commitment to the value of composition for both the undergrad students and the graduate TAs.

As to how that ethos would be expressed, I don't think I could say. That is, I think individual faculty would need to figure it out individually. We wouldn't need to agree (which is a relief since that's not likely to happen), except beyond the recognition of this basic ethos.

I think ... maybe... even Fish and I could get that far... That we could both recognize that teaching composition is something that ought to be done well and that we ought to put some more energy toward that goal.

Re: should we teach composition in composition?

Derek — Sat, 29 Aug 2009 11:20:20 -0000

Re: "We have to remember that the vast majority of instructors in FYC courses have minimal knowledge of the field of rhet/comp."

This seems to me to be the key to Fish's opening gambit in the NYT piece, Alex. He's looking into "composition" over the shoulders of literature TAs who may or may not have much interest in teaching writing, who may or may not have much training beyond the focus of their lit-focused programs of study. In certain respects, his contention--that grad students studying literature have insufficient grounding in writing pedagogy--says far more about the program and institution he was in than it does about the TAs whose syllabi looked nothing like the narrowly cast, current-traditional writing courses Fish prefers. Jeff refreshed the "what will they learn?" question in his entry the other day. In this context, might also be recast as "What will the graduate students in literature learn about composition in a program so permissive as to have them teaching the course without sufficient training in that area?" At its worst (and in my most cynical reading of Fish's complaint), composition becomes a programmatic throwaway, a money-maker, and a space for potentially reckless free-wheeling. And at its best, composition attracts and even converts the TAs, particularly those who are energized by teaching, who take seriously grounding themselves in the teaching of writing, writing contextualized in a variety of practices, knowledge domains, processes, and so on.

Re: should we teach composition in composition?

Jane Kokernak — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 12:26:22 -0000

I really like this idea, of a composition course about rhet/comp. As someone with an MA in English, who took one teaching writing course in grad school, I also recognize how challenging it might be for an FYC curriculum to be retooled this way. Not impossible though.

Earlier this summer I attended a wonderful 3-day professional workshop at Landmark College, on teaching reading, writing, and study skills. One of the workshop participants asked our instructor, Linda Hecker, about Landmark's first year reading/writing course. Interestingly, the content of that course meshes with the tasks of the course: While practicing college-level reading, writing, and studying, students encounter neuroscience, psychology, cognitive development, etc. In other words, as they learn, they study how people learn. Linda Hecker brought some of that into our workshop, and I found the content fascinating. It sounds like all their instructors teach a variation of the same curriculum. It's good material, and it promotes self-awareness as well as topics for the individual research/writing projects the students take on.

I wonder how they did it. (I didn't ask.) The curriculum change seemed recent, and there must have been a professional development aspect, to bring all the instructors on board, up to speed, etc.