Z’s Blog ‘08

Paper #1 Draft

Writing, Teaching, and Roles

Academic writing is a topic pursued by scholars, and has been for years.  There are many questions that are constantly struggled with by both sides of the debate.  Do we write for ourselves or for our audience?  What does our teacher do; are they there to become peers in the classroom or do they drill everything we need to know into our heads?  Academic writing-define it.  There are all of these questions, and they cannot be answered without introducing one, or both, schools of thought.

Elbow and Bartholomae are two leading members in this debate, and their opinions differ in regards writing, teaching, and the role of the teacher. 

Elbow introduced writing for personal gain, the free write, and the teacher less classroom.  He believes that when a student writes anything, they should be writing for themselves.  The writer should only write what they want to read.  Screw the reader.    When writing, you should just write to find a topic.  No stopping.  This helps the student address their fluency, transitions, and the volumes that they speak with personal voice.  Once the personal voice is established, the writer is successful.  In leading the reader to the path of success, there should be no teacher.  In the classroom, the teacher should lower themselves to the level of the student.  Elbow debates that the teacher should write and improve their writing as the student does.  This not only inspires confidence, but it creates competence.  The writer should be completely immersed in their writing.  Academia is difficult to handle.

Bartholomae will fight this with all of his scholarly intellect.  He wants teachers to guide academic writing.  They are the front runners in the educational process and should be the entire reason that students write.  The student should use learn academic writing, the teacher should lead the student, and the student should be mindful of their audience.  Academic writing is strictly business.  The academic writer does not use voice and is completely non-biased in their writing.  They should be able to pull themselves completely out of their writing and join the academic discourse community.  When they do this, the student has truly achieved.  In order to learn this ‘academic writing’ the teacher is strong in their role as the guide.  The teacher has certain things that they must impart upon their students, but their main job in Bartholomae’s eyes is to welcome the student into the discourse community.  Once they are welcomed into the community, the student must write like an academic for other academics.  They no longer own their writing.  The reader does. 

Both sides are true.  In their own ways, they both will help writers.  In order to become a successful writer, one needs to learn a method to write.  They need to write for someone, and they need to write in a certain way.  Once this is learned, the student becomes a writer.  The issue is that the writing is based on the discourse community that the student joined.  I, as a writer, currently am in many academic discourse communities: English, education, and science.  As I participate in each of these communities, I write for different reasons using each style of teaching. 

When I am an English student, I write for myself.  I enjoy writing for any reason, whether it is educational or personal.  Though early English classes guided me through what type of writing I would be doing, I wrote what I wanted.  I consider myself a fairly decent writer, so I would throw in personal voice and my topic would be something I would be interested in.  I have written about things ranging from Batman to the Vietnam War to an entire essay about football.  I rarely use outlines, rarely reread my essays, and rarely throw my essays into the hands of my peers for editing.  Mainly, I use Elbownian techniques, but I sway from some as well.  My Bartholomaen formatting has been drilled in me by teachers in high school and has stuck through all of my composition classes.  I am proud of my writing, and it is hard for me to take into account others’ ideas to change my writing.  I use syntax properly, follow grammatical rules, and use the techniques provided, but I will use a strong personal voice.  I have joined the English discourse community and incorporate both schools of writing.

In my education classes, I use more of Bartholomae’s techniques because that is the method used to teach elementary students.  My essays for education classes are not long, and they should be fairly structured.  They are the simple essays with light form and not necessarily the most dense material.  They are the typical page long essays that begin and end quickly and put my point out in the open.  I try to use my personal voice, but when space is limited, voice is the first thing that is cut out.  This becomes quickly Bartholomaen academic writing.  I try to pull myself out of my writing, and take my opinions out, but it is difficult to do because I am biased because of my experiences. 

Science leaves no room for any bias.  The science community is all about proving things wrong or right.  There is no in between.  When I write for my physics course, I do not use personal opinion.  I write in complete sentences for lab write-ups.  Science requires Bartholomaen teaching.  There cannot be biases because the data proves what the writer is questioning.  The writer writes for the scientific community, but the writer must use academic discourse to share their findings.  Elbow holds no place in scientific writing. 

With the discourse community comes the academic writing.  It is necessary for a writer to master each school of writing.  Bizzell discusses discourse communities as an important reason to master academic writing, and when it is mastered, the writer is welcomed into the community.  In order to find the information needed to master this academic writing, Bartholomae and Elbow are needed.  They debate both sides of writing and methods, but each is needed in certain circumstances to become welcomed into the writer’s discourse community.  When teaching writing, Bartholomae’s philosophy is a good start, but as the writer grows and evolves, Elbow’s introduction is important for future improvements.  These improvements lead to full inclusion into whatever discourse community(ies) the writer chooses to enter.