1. Citation

Tremmel, Michelle. “Forget Formulas: Teaching Form through Function in Slow Writing and Reading as a Writer.” Composition Studies, vol. 45, no. 2, Fall 2017, pp. 113–129. Web. 

 2. Summary 

In this article, Tremmel makes a case for a composition pedagogy that focuses on regular, slow writing practices that involve a reading component which she calls RAAW (reading as a writer). She begins by identifying the two biggest schools of pedagogical thought in regards to composition: “the current-traditional paradigm and its grammar-, product-, and template-centered practices” which insists that students follow a particular set of rules and formulas to turn out academically valid essays; and the expressivism practices espoused by Peter Elbow, Donald Murray, and the like which promote recursive, personalized, self-reflective writing a means to engage and elevate students as writers. Essentially, she argues that slow writing and reading as a writer marry the best of both of these schools of pedagogy by both promoting student ownership of the writing process and teaching students to identify for themselves, through structurally analytical and self-reflective reading, the tools and formats that lend their writing authority in relation to other texts. Tremmel enumerates the details of her own RAAW classroom activities, continuing to draw attention to the ways they relate to historical composition pedagogy and concludes by restating what she believes to be the value in this method: that by teaching students to engage in reading as writers, they are then equipped to not only engage earnestly in writing, but also to extrapolate the structural demands of their writing for themselves by knowing how to identify and situate it within the context of other like texts.  

 3. Quotations 

“A slow-writing pedagogy and one of its techniques, reading as a writer (RAAW), can help novice writers in high school and college accomplish what ‘seasoned writers’ do ‘naturally’ with little direction: ‘pick up [key intellectual] moves unconsciously through their reading’ (Graff, Birkenstein, and Durst xxv), as well as encourage them to organically discover essay structure (or other rhetorical techniques they need to learn).” (114) 

 “RAAW creates a reading-writing reciprocity in which each aspect of literacy enhances and develops the other through an intentionally textual interaction.” (115) 

 “…studying comics, websites, speeches, performed pieces, photos, drawings, paintings, and so on using RAAW can help novices develop a broad multimodal understanding of organization and other textual features.” (116) 

 “RAAW is part of this hands-on tradition of students learning to view texts (including essays and organization) through a writer’s (rather than a reader’s) eyes.” (117) 

 “RAAW (reading as a writer) conceptualizes novice writers as equal to those whose texts they study. As such, novices interact with mentor texts as writers already, rather than occupying a subservient position from which they must model the behavior of someone they have yet to become.” (118) 

 “In a slow writing environment, novices have time to build faith in form by first building faith in content, becoming confident and passionate about ideas that then guide composing decisions that are always subject to revision through interaction among peers, teacher, and other texts.” (124) 

 “With slow writing we can forget formulas, which move too quickly to solving the problem of arrangement, and can attend to what really matters: students learning to direct their own composing processes, discovering composing tasks that engage them, and inventing and arranging material for rhetorically meaningful purposes on a path to mature writing development.” (125) 

 4. Responses 

What I particularly liked about this article was that I could immediately situate it in relation to our 101 curriculum and values. She says things like, “RAAW is part of this hands-on tradition of students learning to view texts (including essays and organization) through a writer’s (rather than a reader’s) eyes” (117) which sounds a lot like the language the curriculum uses to talk about teaching our students “to think like writers.” By her admission, Tremmel is leaning on a lot of the same texts we are: namely, she has been heavily influenced by Peter Elbow’s pedagogical texts and Donald Murray’s emphasis on process over product. As our group project looks like it will involve a joint reading-writing exercise, and as my pedagogical research design will likely also focus on reading-for-writing activities, I’m encouraged by the seamless way that Tremmel’s pedagogical values line up with our ENG101 values, even if we are not currently attempting to achieve those ends in the same way. 

 I’m trying to be wary of the compromise to my own objectivity around the position of being pro-reading-in-composition. I’m aware that the enormous personal benefit that reading as a writer has had on, particularly, my professional career perhaps blinds me to the drawbacks of this approach and even to the universal applicability of this skill for all students. I’ve been given several writing projects in the course of my career (from FAA licensing applications, to comprehensive corporate safety programs, to employee handbooks, etc.) that I had no specific grounding or experience in. It was my ability to read as a writer—to observe examples of similar work in conjunction with formal requirements and to extrapolate the necessities of writing such a text—that allowed me to be successful in those ventures. In my specific case, I can empirically say that RAAW is a valuable skill. But I have to ask myself, am I seeking to legitimize my own experience at the expense of my students? Is this skill widely applicable for my students, even if their personal and professional tracks look nothing like my own?  This article assuaged some of my fears by asserting that composition always exists in conversation between the author, the reader, and other texts, and that reading is just as legitimate an access point to that conversation as writing. 

 This article related closely to the last article I read, which primarily advocated the use of reading in writing classrooms and posited that a “new” kind of composition-conscious reading that focused on students’ reflections towards readings ostensibly making them more self-conscious of their own writing. Tremmel’s article also described a non-traditional, arguably non-literary reading of texts that centers on both reflection and structural analysis. She does spend a great deal of the essay sort of making a case for slow-writing in general (as opposed to the current-traditional templates of writing that are typically taught in high school and which value efficiency and timeliness in writing), which isn’t exactly valuable to me as a person who has already bought in to slow-writing. However, I believe that I may be able to implement some of the specific slow-writing and RAAW techniques she describes in to the structure of my pedagogical research design. I’m considering how to design a study of the impact of close readings which focus on different aspects of writing and/or of close readings of different modes/genres of texts  on the revision process and outcomes of rough draft workshops and this article speaks specifically to some of the ways I may begin to imagine doing that.  

 Not only does reading potentially have an impact on writing outcomes, it may also have a positive impact on writing outlooks—that is, how students feel about writing and themselves as writers. Tremmel, like Peter Elbow, feels that it’s important to validate students as writers. She says that, “RAAW (reading as a writer) conceptualizes novice writers as equal to those whose texts they study” (117) and discusses what this assertion does for the classroom: it dissolves part of the hierarchical relationship between students and instructors and constructs a “mutual mentorship among students, teacher, texts produced in the classroom, and published texts, with all having equally legitimate ways to shape practice in a writer-among-writers space” (118, emphasis hers). This not only complements Elbow’s attempts to make the student feel like a legitimate voice and a valid writer, it also serves my own outlook. I feel acutely aware of the forced hierarchy of being the instructor and, while the power that it gives me is often valuable, it suits my values as a person and as an instructor to elevate, if possible, the idea a student has of themselves in the classroom. I assert in my syllabus that I believe writing is an empowering practice, but I must admit to myself, at least, that this kind of empowerment is easier said than done. I believe that the more agency and legitimacy a student has, the more likely they are to be engaged—a belief that Tremmel echoes in part when she says that “[reading as a writer practices] allow novices time for self-discovery and confidence-building, that lack of which often causes them to give up on writing” (118).