Agenda
695C
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Week 5
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Journal Writing
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Please use the time until 4:30 to write in your
journals. If you need to talk, please do so
outside the room.
CATE???
Twp policy documents
Peer Response to Instructional Context
Effective Writing Programs
James Moffett
Expressivist Theories and Pedagogies
Donald Murray
Purpose and Audience
Visual Invention Tools
Peer Response to Instructional Context
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Partners
15 minutes
1
Writing Programs
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James Moffett
Nanci Atwell chapters 4-6
Kelly Gallagher chapters 2-5
Kirbys chapters 1-3
Penny Kittle chapters 1-6
Newkirk-chapter 2
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Influential for both the cognitivists and the
Expressivists
What are these programs like? How might
they work in our classrooms?
James Moffett
James Moffett
I, You, It
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Teaching the Universe
of Discourse
Student–centered
Language Arts and
Reading, Grades K-13
Active Voice: A Writing
Program across the
Curriculum
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Moffett: “I, You, It”
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How might Moffett’s article inform your
assignments or assignment sequences?
What remnants of our current-traditional
past remain in our classrooms?
Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
and cometh from afar:
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home.
William Wordsworth
Expressivism
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Develops in the ’60’s and 70’s as a set of values
and practices opposing current- traditional rhetoric
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18th century “British new rhetoricians (George Campbell
and Hugh Blair
Emphasizes form over content (from Aristotle)
Grammar, syntax, punctuation, mechanics
“modes of discourse”: Exposition, Description, Narration,
Argument (EDNA)
Language is only a medium to translate the mind’s
thoughts into words
Coherence: each them can have only one main topic—
determined before the writing begins
The Values of Expressivism
(Neo-Platonism)
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“Expressivists work to subvert teaching
practices and institutional structures that
oppress, appropriate, or silence individual
voices.” Theorizing Composition. Mary Lynch Kennedy, ed.
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Importance of the individual writer and the writer’s
voice
Relationship between writer and self, writer and
reader
Relationship between writer and instructor
The individual writer working in a community of
writers
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The Values of Expressivism
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Goal: “to raise consciousness to move people
to act against injustice, whether the war in
Vietnam or economic, racial, or gender
injustice.”
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Theorizing Composition. Mary Lynch Kennedy, ed.
The Practices of Expressivists
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Expressive writing (freewriting)
Keeping journals
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Writing is a process of discovering meaning involving an
interaction between the self and the subject,
Workshop classrooms: a “culture-creating
community”
Teacher as writer (National Writing Project: 1974)
Teaching, not theorizing. Use anecdotal narrative to
justify practices (Stephen North’s “lore”). Distrust
theory because it distracts attention from teaching
and students.
Expressivists
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Ken Macrorie
James Britton (a linguist)
Peter Elbow
Don Murray
Ken Macrorie: Telling Writing
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“Most English teachers have been trained to
correct students’ writing, not to read it; so
they put down those bloody correction marks
in the margins. When students see them,
they think they mean the teacher doesn’t care
what students write, only how they punctuate
and spell. So they give him Engfish” (1).
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Ken Macrorie: Telling Writing
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Engfish is “ a tongue never spoken outside the
[classroom] walls….Students throughly trained in
Engfish are hard put to find their natural voices in
the classroom” (3).
“the difference between college students’ writing
and the third grade child is simple: One is dead, the
other alive.” (3).
“In [Engfish] the student cannot express truths that
count for him. He learns a language that prevents
him from working toward truths, and then tells lies.
In this empty circle teacher and student wander
around boring each other” (4).
James Britton
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A linguist
Study in British schools of kinds of writing
students were doing (The Development of
Writing Abilities)
Categories of writing
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Expressive
Transactional
Poetic
Peter Elbow
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Writing without Teachers (1973)
Writing with Power
Embracing Contraries
Argument in College Composition and
Communication (late 1980’s and continuing)
with David Bartholomae about value and
nature of academic writing vs. personal
writing.
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Peter Elbow: Writing without Teachers
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Peter Elbow: Writing without Teachers
“The most effective way I know to improve
your writing is to do freewriting exercises
regularly. At least three times a week….The
only requirement is that you never stop” (3).
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Peter Elbow: Writing without Teachers
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“Editing in itself is not the
problem….The problem is
that editing goes on at the
same time as
producing….The main thing
about freewriting is that it is
nonediting. It is an
exercise…in producing
words and putting them
down on the page….Yes, it
produces garbage, but that’s
all right” (5-7).
“The main usefulness of the
[freewriting] exercises is not
in their immediate product
but in their gradual effect on
future writing” (11).
“Meaning is not what you
start out with but what you
end up with….Think of
writing…not as a way to
transmit a message but as a
way to grow and cook a
message” (15).
Donald Murray
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Pulitzer Prize winning
newspaper writer
“Never a day without a
line.”
“Teach Writing as a
Process Not Product”
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Program Assessment Paper
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Assignment: Prepare an Assessment Commentary
on the writing and language program in at least one
of your classes. Between 6-12 pages long, this
Commentary should provide a demographic context
for the program, summarize its core objectives,
describe your central pedagogical practices, and—
using references to your Masters program course
work, readings, and speakers—assess its
effectiveness for learners.
What are the requirements?
Visual Invention Strategies
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Graphic Organizers
Storyboards
Photographs
Purpose and Audience
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Burke: chapter 8
Dean Strategic Writing chapters 4 and 5
Gallagher chapter 6
Kirby chapters 6 & 7
Murray chapter 4
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