1/30

This morning, in a very distracted way, I continued to work on the material around John Beech. I was driving home and thinking about this project and feeling really anxious. There seems to be a good deal riding on me making something out of this work and I think there is something to be made out of this work, but the project still eludes me sometimes. I want to offer this clarification to myself, for the next time I feel like a fake and idiot:

Audience: Imagine that you are writing to teachers, perhaps at a community college, who have no real knowledge of the field of professional and technical writing. These people have degrees in English or have a very expressivist orientation toward writing. There is no shortage of these folks out there.

Purpose: Your purpose is A) to show these people a little bit about the role that literacy or writing plays in the lives of some of their students and B) to help them think through the struggles those who are accustomed to professional writing face as they attempt to write for teachers again. There are ideas here that seem important--genre theory, activity systems, professional/academic literacy. Imagine that you are providing an introduction to this material, first. Because, if they are going to understand what you are writing about, they are going to need to own some of this background. So, perhaps, I might explain that I intend to borrow some of what we have learned about the differences between professional and academic writing in our efforts to help traditional-age undergraduates prepare for the workforce to help those who work with non-traditional students understand the transition such students are making as they return to the classroom.

It really is that simple. I need to bear in mind that audience: community college teachers, teachers/administrators in programs of continuing education, perhaps those who prepare future teachers of writing. A key point here will be about the issue of writing being embedded in systems of activity at work and perhaps not at school...Tony and John, especially, are members of professional communities and much of their writing stems from this. 

I think that when I try to enter into the scholarly discussion I just get a bit lost. I'm still not so good at this kind of writing, I suppose. 

This morning, I'm still working away at John and making a bit of progress. I've shifted my focus a bit, so that I'm doing the same thing with him that I did with Tony--what are the hats that he wears? Perhaps I should borrow from the scene/situation/genres framework that Devitt et. al have developed to frame the discussion of the writing that these people do on the job. I think in terms of hats and roles. But perhaps scenes/situations/genres would be better. I might need to think about this some more. 

In any event, with John, the focus seems to be on a sort of compare and contrast thing--look at the genre that he writes at work all the time, the proposal, and then look at the literary analysis essay, and compare and contrast them so that someone can appreciate the difference--the gulf separating the two kinds of writing. This seems to be where I'm headed with John. 

So, to sum up:

Tony: a writer's own goals, antecedent genres

John: also antecedent genres, but more of a compare and contrast of genres--professional vs. academic

Jennifer: