What Counts as Writing (to me as a student)

In ENGL 514 (Computers and Writing) I realized that “writing” is not simply an action done with a pen or pencil.  “Writing” can include cave drawings, time capsules that children bury in schoolyards, formulas in Biology or Chemistry  class, hieroglyphics, engineering drawings … the engineer's second "draft"/re-draws, pencils, pens, and lipstick on paper, a message in a bottle, a love note or a thesis for a Ph.D. , a composition or an equation in Chemistry class.  It can be applied to loose leaf paper or card stock,  drafting sheet  or white board, painted on canvas,  carved on metal bracelets to identify a patient with a defibrillator or latex allergy, a limestone wall to articulate the life of a great pharaoh, or a greeting card to welcome a new baby.  It can be transferred via the Internet, Facebook, blogs, U.S. Mail, Pony/Federal Express, or scripted on a lllllooooonnnnnggggg sheet of toilet paper (really) and handed off in a high school classroom.

“Writing” attempts to communicate thoughts and ideas, to make meaning (or we’re just drawing symbols”), and capture them to “make ideas permanently visible, so it can be stabilized and re-examined at a later date (Winsor).

Blog Use for Winter 2011

How I've use my 515 blog:

Originally invited to create a blog to reflect on the articles being read for ENGL 515 class during the winter term, I was happy to participate.  I’ve created blogs before … mainly for classes at EMU.   I’ve actually kept hard copies of my blogs as they grew under the weight of the text involved.  These “archives” have come in handy as references for studies in my current classes.  I have the intention of doing the same with this blog from 515.

I enjoy cruising on-line for curiosities related to my classes.  I regularly post conference information for anyone interested in literacy/written literacy/ and writing centers.  It provides me with the chance to research additional opportunities for professional development.  I love quotes, so I’ve included a posting to capture quotes on literacy and writing.  I think writers are inspired to write, and sometimes it just takes a few words of inspiration to get them started. 

Also included in the blog is information about literacy related organizations, books and writing center programs at area colleges and universities.

I've used the blog as a sort of educational journal.  Many of the articles read, conferences reviewed, and inspirational quotes taken to heart have helped me learn and immerse myself in theories about writing that I didn’t know existed.  It’s humbling to read the thoughts and ideas of so many writers, who have questioned and/or augmented current practices with the hopes of helping other writers improve their own theories and practices.  

Blogging gives me more tech experience too … which is after all another form of “writing”. 

Do you have a favorite INSPIRATIONAL QUOTE about education/literacy/writing/the teaching of writing? Post it here!

Please include author's name!

Emig, James. “Writing as a Mode of Learning.” College Composition and Communication 28.2 (May 1977): 122-128.

Emig breaks down language into two major “orders”.  First, talk/listen – both natural elements of language that requires no formal instruction.  Second, read/write – both found in systematically learned instruction.   He continues to define brain functions (left and right hemisphere) but attests to the fact that “writing involves the fullest possible function of the brain that requires full participation of both left and right hemisphere."

He suggests to the reader that writing is: a slower method of learning, but a powerful learning strategy that uses a higher cognitive function of analysis and synthesis.

Murray, Donald (1991). All Writing is Autobiography. College Composition and Communication 42.1 (Feb 1991): 66-74.

Murray provides a demonstration of how he puts himself into all he writes, in a sense becoming what he writes … fiction and non-fiction ... through a peculiar way of looking at the world and his own way of using language to communicate what he sees.  He explains that the autobiography grows from deep tap-roots set down in childhood, and cites Graham Greene as saying “For writers it is always said that the first 20 years of life contain the whole experience – the rest is observation.”

Murray summarizes by reflecting on the origins of his writing process as:

·         What I experience

·         What I heard later

·         What books say

·         What I need to believe

Reflection:  It’s all rhetoric … even our autobiographies.

Quote:  The present comes clear when rubbed with memory (Donald Murray)

Quote:  We become what we write (Donald Murray)

Quote:  My spellcheck hiccupped at “squenched” and “companioned.”  As an academic I gulped; as a writer I said, “Well they are now.” (Donald Murray)

The Neglected ‘R’. The Need for a Writing Revolution. National Commission on Writing, 2003.

The cross-generational writing project (senior citizens and first grade students working together in an on-line writing project) was a perfect example of what can happen when teachers think outside the classroom when considering the process of writing.

This article is also full of wonderful quotes that should inspire teachers of writing as well as their students.  

• Quote: Writing is everybody’s business.
• Quote: Writing is how the student connects the dots in their knowledge.
• Quote:  Writing has helped to transform the world.  Revolutions have been started by it.  Oppression has been toppled by it.  And it has enlightened the human condition … when pressed, many of us, young and old alike, still turn to pen and ink in an effort to make sense of our grief, pleasure, rage or happiness.
• Quote: Writing today is not a frill for a few, but an essential skill for the many.

Reflection:  I agree that teachers need more PD in written communication.  They need to understand the width and breadth of writing in all circumstances in their students' lives and they should address it to gain a larger (more energetic) following of students.

SUB(conscious)REFLECTION:  I need more time to write.

Scherff, Lisa & Piazza, Carolyn. “The More Things Change, the More They Stay the Same: Survey of HS Students’ Writing Experiences. Research in the Teaching of Engl 39.3 (2005): 271-204.

The authors run through a recent historical brief of reforms and changes that took place in the late 20^th century in Teaching of English.  From experiences in their junior year in high school to being pre-service teachers and beyond to “teaching to the test."  Sherff and Piazza cite Miles Meyers (NCTE Executive Director in 1996) in his pleas for  a more supple, multiplistic set of tools and strategies to allow students to meet contemporary demands of life beyond the classroom.  Their methods, data, results and reflections of student responses to surveys show that students truly want to learn by “explicit modeling”, and find that teachers do not teach to a writing process consistent with needed life-disciplines, but rather to the expectations of “the test”. 

Reflection:   I’d like to see a more concise process for writing across the curriculum at community colleges and universities that teach the students how to apply what is being learned to whole life learning.  Performance Based Learning is the term used at our school.  The idea is “it’s not WHAT you know, but what you DO with what you know.”