This is
what my writing process used to look like:
I would receive the prompt and get right to work – no woolgathering or
lollygagging. If it was a research
paper, I would gather more than the required number of sources and start
reading and annotating texts. If it was
literary analysis or poetry explication, I would look up every g-d damn word in
the OED, but avoid reading outside the text for fear of violating the laws of New
Criticism and plagiarism. To begin
writing, I would construct a rigid, formal outline that included my thesis
statement and every topic sentence of my fiveish-paragraph essay. That was the extent of my prewriting or
invention. Next, I would sit in front of
my computer for an hour or so, the prompt taped to the wall next to me, trying
to craft the perfect introductory paragraph.
Then, I would proceed through my argument, one paragraph at a time, like
General Sherman advancing on Atlanta. Occasionally,
I would move paragraphs around, but not often.
Over several days, adding, deleting, substituting, and rearranging were
done as part of the drafting process, so that my completed draft was, very
nearly, my final one. At last, I would
let it “marinate” overnight and, perhaps, replace a word or two with a synonym
before turning in the essay the following day – a mechanically perfect and
rhetorically lifeless masterpiece.
In light of
my Rhet/Comp studies, I have had to reconsider not only the way I teach
writing, but the process by which I compose.
My writing and my thinking have become less linear, more open to being
reassessed and reshaped (194). I have
learned to wool-gather and lollygag. Since
my goal as a teacher is to provide encouragement to students, I have had to
leave prescriptivism behind and (Dare I say it?) learn to love things like free-writing and using double-voiced rhetoric.
Instead of using my Lyceum Workshops to drill the class on grammar and
syntax, I have students free writing, reading a variety of texts, and thinking
about style. My comments on their papers
have more to do with their content and logic, than with their abundance of
comma splices. I have yet to read the
finished papers they just turned in, but the drafts I saw were promising. Some students actually seemed to enjoy the
process.
What will you do about the comma splices though? Out of curiosity, I'd like to hear how you will handle the grammar issues. A lot of times, students who are unfortunate victims of strict process pedagogy struggle to compose clear sentences. This becomes a serious issue when I encounter this student at the freshman comp or critical thinking and rhetoric levels because I don't want to clog the hours with grammar in these classes. At a university, students can afford to focus exclusively on process; many of these students already write with, at least, a fair degree of clarity, but--at the community college, where students are overwhelmingly assessed into basic skills courses because of their inability to demonstrate a knowledge of grammar and syntax rules--this exclusively process pedagogy is a luxury we cannot afford. I would love to hear your ideas on how to address this issue with students at, say, Compton College.
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