Lindemann, Chapter 8 ("Shaping Discourse")
Is it just me, or are you confused by the chapter's title of "Shaping Discourse"? I thought the chapter would be about controlling/moderating the subject matter of students' writings. Ie, academic discourse, personal discourse, etc. But this chapter is about form. In particular, the importance
of teaching "form consciousness" versus simply learning one particular form. I do like this chapter; especially when she says, "Writing courses rarely take advantage of relevant conventional forms, one reason perhaps why teaching form may be so difficult" (134). She contends that most composition courses focus on "composition, essay, or theme, a type of writing that, on the whole, exhibits relatively few formal constraints"(134). I agree with her that writing calls for many different types of forms, and not just the 5-paragraph essay, for example. Teaching students form-consciousness, then, would benefit the student because it would allow her to understand that different discourses call for different forms. Alas, could it be? The 5 paragraph essay is not a panacea!?
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