The Audience Project: Writing for readers rather than writing for teachers Research Question: Students are used to producing writing that will be evaluated by a teacher or other authority figure. My research design focuses on altering student perspective on writing by focusing on audience and response. Bluntly: Can focusing on audience help students free their […]
Self
Invisible Impacts on Identity
We know that writing is intimately connected with issues of authority, identity, power, and confidence, and that if students are to become more sophisticated thinkers and writers, they should be both challenged and taken seriously. (Brueggemann et al., 379, emphasis mine) While I would have to question some of the ethics and ideologies concerned with […]
An Idealistic Microcosm
Many possibilities present themselves as I consider an idealistic imagination of the impact of a first-year writing course on any given student. I think, necessarily, my ideals will differ from others in my position, and I am constantly reminded of the various issues present when labeling anything as “good” or “bad”, especially, when it comes […]
Removing the Taught & Enforced Distance in Writing
In “Some People Are Just Born Good Writers” Jill Parrott attempts to explain the prevalent myth that is the “genius writer.” I know that throughout my own history as both a student and aspiring writer, this was one of the more overwhelming societal assumptions: that, like all great writers before you, the gift of writing […]
Romanticized Ideas About Writing (And How Do I Teach Them?)
My notion of writing pedagogy (much vaguer a few months ago than it is after having practiced it to some extent) mostly consisted of informing, and in many ways enforcing, “writing structure.” The holy 5 paragraph essay, or the elements of traditional rhetoric that have been taught to us since well before adolescence. So in […]