Introduction

Studied and engaged reading practices can be a springboard for effective writing. Knowing how to read specifically as a writer can help to identify features and forms of new genres, to implement those features in writing, and to ultimately be a self-directed, adaptive, and successful writer of new genres. I believe that using reading in conjunction with writing can be an effective cornerstone to English 101 curriculum for two reasons: first, it ensures that new college students all know how to engage productively with college-level texts; and second, it prepares them to encounter new genres of both reading and writing in the university and beyond. In this study, I aim to investigate whether strategic reading-writing workshops can accelerate understanding of genre, as well as whether repeatedly practicing structured, genre-centric reading and writing can prepare students to identify and write for new genres under self-direction. My study would use both guided reading/writing workshops and self-reflective evaluations of writing in new genres to gauge students’ understanding of genre. Ultimately, my research question is: can intra-genre compositional studies (i.e. targeted reading coupled with same-genre writing exercises) improve overall quality of and attitude towards writing, particularly with respect to tackling unfamiliar genres?

 

 Summary of Scholarship

Bakhtin, Mikhail. “The Problem of Speech Genres.” The Rhetorical Tradition: Readings from Classical Times to the Present, eds. Patricia Bizzell and Bruce Herzberg, 2nd ed., Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2001, pp 1227-1245.

As I was reading other articles and excerpts, many researchers continued to refer to Bakhtin, whose essay on genre helped define genre in the post-structuralist world of literature and composition. While much of this essay has to do with semiotics and rhetorical theory—which is not of any explicit use to my study—reading it helped me to solidify and justify the way that I use the concept of genre in the classroom. He ties genre in to the foundation of communication by labeling it as the means of categorizing and identifying functional types of communication. He describes the characteristics of genre as “relatively stable types” of communication which stem from “thematic content, style, and compositional structure…and are equally determined by the specific nature of the particular sphere of communication” (1227). These concepts of content, style, and structure are the fundamental tenets of the reading-writing workshops in my study. The essay also helped me understand the stakes of my research as it relates to this historically significant field of genre studies.  Bahktin conceives of genres as a tools which allow speakers to identify themselves as individuals: “the better our command of genres, the more freely we employ them, the more fully and clearly we reveal our own individuality in them … the more flexibly and precisely we reflect the unrepeatable situation of communication” (1239). He defines them as categories which are specific to given circumstances into which certain groups/styles of communication fall, saying that “A particular function (scientific, technical, commentarial, business, everyday) and the particular conditions of speech communication specific for each sphere give rise to particular genres” (1230). This use of the concept of function ties in to the ENG101 curriculum’s focus on literacy and the use of literacy to achieve agency and authority in different fields (a la Deborah Brandt); focusing on genre not only ties in to the academic stakes of genre studies, but it also has high stakes for students who, if they can become better at identifying and maneuvering through new genres, may find that they “function” in a wider variety of fields.

Bowen, Tracy and Carl Whithaus. “’What Else is Possible’: Multimodal Composing and Genre in the Teaching of Writing.” Multimodal Literacies and Emerging Genres, ed. Tracey Bowen and Carl Whithaus. University of Pittsburgh Press, 2013, pp. 1-12.

In this introductory essay to their anthology of mode and genre related pedagogical essays, Bowen and Whithaus offered some insight into the importance of using multi-modal and multi-genre composition in the classroom, as well as inspired me to consider how to use unconventional genres in the reading-writing workshops. They say that “when students are given access to pedagogical spaces and learning opportunities for experimenting with different ways to make meaning, they are drawing on the stuff of everyday social interaction to rethink the shape of written academic knowledge” (1-2). This feedback loop between academic and social literacies is part of the inspiration for this research. My hope is that the study will show that intra-genre studies will have a positive effect on students’ writing abilities, in large part because the ability to engage in new genres constitutes learning new literacies—which can be valuable in every area of life. While this essay describes genre and why its diversified use in composition is important, it focuses primarily on multi-modal communication in forms which do not particularly suit my study: they discuss reconstituting established literature in new mediums, using video games for classroom activities, and working with Youtube videos. However, multi-modality is integral to the curriculum as a whole and this essay underscores the importance of “understanding the interactions and relationships between different expressive modes [which] is integral to understanding the composing process and enabling students to develop their own writing techniques fully” (7). The essay concludes by summarizing some of the features of the book it introduces, such as the history of genre and multi-modal studies in composition programs and the potential impact of continued, deliberate implementation of new genres/modes for the future of composition pedagogy.

Salvatori, Mariolina. “Conversations with Texts: Reading in the Teaching of Composition.” College English, vol. 58, no. 4, 1996, pp. 440–54. JSTOR, doi:10.2307/378854.

In this article, Mariolina Salvatori addresses the tendency of introductory college composition courses to minimize traditional literary readings and to focus on writing practices, and posits several alternative reading practices that she believes can do specific service to the development of writing habits. She argues that a specific model of reading—reading which is done self-reflexively and with particular attention to the factors which make up the process of reading, rather than the text of reading—engages in the same acts of deconstruction, argumentation, and communication that writing does. I intend to put her notions to the test by implementing self-reflexive reading responses both in the reading-writing workshops, as well as through reflective blog posts post-projects where students are asked to identify the features of their writing in relation to features of model texts from that genre. Salvatori also introduced another and perhaps more poignant use of reading practices: to examine with students what seems relevant or irrelevant about a text, why they believe that is so, and how their answers to those questions constitute an argument. These are exactly the sort of questions I will use to direct discussion during our reading-writing in-class workshopping. Rather than teaching reading as simply a way to engage in identifying the rhetorical situation of a text and applying that to their own writing, reading can be used to highlight the internal process of analysis, the act of reflection, and even the biases that the process of reading has in common with the process of writing. The specifics of the reading and writing process can be hard to delineate and to teach, but by using them in tandem she posits (and I agree) that we can understand both better. As she says, “I try to teach readers to become conscious of their mental moves to see what such moves produce, and to learn to revise or to complicate those moves as they return to them in light of their newly constructed awareness of what those moves did or did not make possible.” I hope that the results of this study will be that teaching students to think like that as readers will positively impact their writing.

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.

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). Essentially, she argues that slow writing and reading promotes student ownership in the writing process and teaches 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. 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. In effect, I am in many ways mimicking her research, in that I am testing the effect of reading on writing. However, my study will explicitly link many of Tremmel’s RAAW practices with guided and unguided writing practice, in order to test exactly how strong of an effect these structured reading practices can have on writing. I particularly appreciate (and hope to emulate) her commitment to developing students as writers first, using readership as a means more than an ends, like when she says that, “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). Not only does this kind of 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). The structure of my study aims to involve students in this mutual mentorship by asking them to define the parameters of their free-writes in the reading-writing workshops as well as asking the to define the structural components of their own project rubrics through their observations of genre. I hope to see that their writing outlooks improve by their end-of-quarter surveys. I hope to find that the more agency and legitimacy a student has, the more likely they are to be engaged—a value I believe 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).

 

Methodology

My methods for conducting this research will include several basic tools:

• surveys
• Reading/writing workshops
• Student reflection and self-evaluations

At the beginning of the course, I will have students fill out a survey (approx. 10-15min.) asking several types of questions around genre. First, for them to identify genres which they prefer and to describe the characteristics of that genre. The goal is to see—based on the language they use and the sophistication of their descriptions—what their baseline understanding is of genre. Then, there are a couple questions about how students go about writing in new ways—again to determine their initial understanding of genre. Finally, there are a few scale-of-one-to-five questions which ask students to self-identify their confidence towards writing in different genres. This same survey will be administered later in the quarter to my students and to students from other ENG101 classes. Asking other ENG101 students late in the quarter about how they identify genre and themselves as genre writers will constitute a control group to mitigate whether my specific mode of genre study is more helpful, less helpful, or equally helpful to students compared to the original curriculum. By asking my own students to take the survey at the end of the class, I can measure whether their outlook towards genre-specific writing has improved and whether they are able to identify the features of genre in a clearer and more sophisticated way than they were at the beginning of the quarter.

Reading/Writing workshops will take place in odd-numbered weeks of the quarter (except in the first week of the quarter, when we will have an annotations lecture and exercise to prepare students for strategic reading practice). They will consist of essentially three parts: in-class reflection on the genre, at-home reading plus a response worksheet, and in-class discussion plus same-genre free-writing. The in-class portions will take place over two consecutive days in the class (though, altogether, they should take no more than a full class period, 80min). After in-class reflection on their preconceived ideas about the genre, students will, as homework, read their given example of that genre and complete a worksheet directing them to reflect on the reading, find its structural features, and identify its rhetorical situation and choices. After in-class discussion to find some consensus on the structural and rhetorical features which are characteristic of their readings as a genre, they would do an in-class writing in that genre, utilizing as many of the features that we identified as a class as possible. Possible genres for these workshops include: short fiction, comic strips, poetry, procedural writing, screenwriting, emails, field notes, author statements, and/or newspaper articles. These workshops will largely aim to equip students with practice identifying the structural, formal, and content features which help to define a genre.

Finally, students will have to engage in new, unfamiliar genres (in the form of their class projects) with little to no formal guidance as to what constitutes that genre. In lieu of lectures and detailed prompts explaining the genre’s formal expectations, students will be given several examples of successful models in that genre and a standardized worksheet (similar to the one in the reading/writing workshops) to help them organize their observations. However—unlike the workshops—we would not explicitly spend time in class identifying the features of the genre of the project. They will then, in addition to completing the project, have to write a reflection in the form of a blog post explaining what formal features they believe constitute that genre, how they decided that, and why their work meets those expectations. Since this is already a homework assignment, it’s difficult to say how long it will take individual students, but they will be asked to complete reflections for each of the five projects (which will take place approximately each even-numbered week of the quarter) While it is my hope that the research will show—through sophisticated and genre-sensitive products of their writing—that they are able to identify and mimic the important features of the genres they are asked to engage in, it is also possible that this will lead to final products which are varied and inconsistent—which would indicate either that they are unable to identify and mimic important features of genre, or possibly that they are predisposed to lean in to specific, potentially unimportant features of the genre or of the specific examples given to them.

The final data set would consist of their surveys, their genre-reflections for their projects, and their final writing products for those projects, which would be evaluated for student growth, specific and correct identification of genre features, and overall quality and conformance to genre, respectively.