Downs & Wardle, 2007 (Notes)

Downs/Wardle (2007):

Organization:

• Introduction
• Myths and Misconceptions about FYC
• Rationale and Description of WAW
• Case Studies (2)
• Challenges and Critiques

Core Beliefs

The first of our shared beliefs corresponds with James Reither’s assertion that writing cannot be taught independent of content. (559)

Second, the course is forthcoming about what writing instruction can and cannot accomplish; it does not purport to “teach students to write” in general nor does it purport to do all that is necessary to prepare students to write in college. (559)

Third, the course respects students by refusing to create double stan- dards or different rules for student writers than for expert writers. (560)

In sum, then, the course does not teach from principles that contravene writing studies research. Instead, it draws on research from the field and prin- ciples and ethics that shape the field to help students understand the nature of writing and to explore their own writing practices. (560)

Features of WAW

1. Readings

In the writing studies course, we use readings that report research about writ- ing and theorize ways of thinking about writing to raise important questions and to provide examples of various textual moves related to scholarly writing based on primary research (560)

2. Reflection

"Class time spent on readings focuses more on students’ reactions to them than on the readings themselves..." (561)

3. Research

The most noteworthy feature of the course is that students conduct primary research, however limited, on issues of interest to both themselves and the field of writing studies. (562)

Other

Conducting primary research helps students shift their orientation to research from one of compiling facts to one of generating knowledge (562)

...the course about writing be- comes a writing course in which students study writing to learn more about it and potentially improve their own. (562)

One conception of writing we strive to help students shift is imagining “writ- ing” essentially as merely drafting a paper. The course design helps us show students that most scholarly researched writing in fact begins with becoming curious and establishing a question and moves through research. What stu- dents traditionally imagine as writing is actually only the final move in a much larger series of events. However, in our courses, students do arrive at this final move, presenting their research in both a significant written report and an oral presentation. (563)

...the writing studies pedagogy answers Reither’s and Kleine’s calls for communities of inquiry. (564)

our goal remains to help students learn more about writing and become more successful writers in the university. (574)

Proven means of facilitating transfer include self-reflection, explicit abstraction of principles, and alertness to one’s context (576)

While faculty in other disciplines are expected to teach the content and methods of their fields even in the most introductory courses, many (if not most) FYC classes throughout the country allow students to write on any range of topics, topics which often fall outside the writing teachers’ specialization. Writing teachers and students alike are better served by focusing specifically on topics teachers know. (577)

(similar problems with procomm classes 1) in the same way that students are going off to major in numerous disciplines, students in procomm classes are going off to pursue numerous fields of practice--the majority of which we know and can know nothing about. 2) The generalist approach, focused on generic genres of prof writing, flies in the face of everything we know about teaching writing and the significance of context.)

To argue otherwise accepts and perpetuates the myth that content is separable from writing—that an FYC instructor need not be expert in the subject matter of a paper in order to evaluate the quality of writing in that paper, or need not be a subject expert on writing in order to teach writing. (577)

Methods

• discourse analysis of small corpuses
• interviews and surveys of manageable numbers of subjects
• small-scale ethnographies and case studies

Outcomes

(evidence: student's end-of-semester reflections)

• increased self-awareness about writing,
• improved reading skills,
• a new understanding of research writing as conversation.

Challenges and Critiques

Challenges:

• The course is demanding and different. (574)
• Few appropriate resources exist for first-year students. (574)
• Students will produce imperfect work. (575)
• Instructors must be knowledgeable about writing studies. (575)

Critiques:

• Teaching about writing may not improve student writing. (576)
• The course simply represents the instructor’s desire to teach about things she knows and enjoys. (577)

Benefits of WAW Pedagogy

• this pedagogy overcomes the problem of contradictory research and practice: rather than purporting to teach students “academic writing” and claiming to prepare them for writing in their disciplines, the course teaches students what we as a field have learned about writing as an object of study. (578)
• the pedagogy teaches potentially transferable conceptions of the activity of writing rather than “basic” writing skills that are in fact highly spe- cialized and contextualized. (578)
• the course has the added benefit of educating first-year students, adjuncts, and graduate students about the existence and content of the writ- ing studies field. (578)