Writing Educators Online

As information proliferated, educators became involved in Internet; many began to see the value of Internet for information gathering. However, other proponents began to see the medium as more than just a place to gather information. Cooper and Selfe (1990), Costanzo (1994), Daiute (1983), David, Gordon, and Pollard, (1995), Harris and Wambeam (1996), and Kinzie (1990) remind us that writing teachers particularly foresaw the potential of computers where students would have to communicate only through the written word when they made use of email, bulletin boards, or any of the other text-based utilities. Cooper and Selfe (1990) stressed that computer-mediated discussions

are powerful, nontraditional learning forums for students not simply because they allow another opportunity for collaboration and dialogue but also because they encourage students to resist, dissent, and explore the role that controversy and intellectual divergence play in learning and thinking. (p. 849)

This exploration leads to one of the goals of the writing class: to help students develop their writing ability.

In working toward this goal, teachers encourage students to evaluate texts of authors, to comment upon one another's drafts, and to write and revise their own texts. All this is done with an eye to that which is deemed "good writing" (Harris & Wambeam, 1996, p. 353). It is difficult, however, to define what constitutes "good writing." This is a dilemma teachers of rhetoric/composition have struggled with for centuries.

Defining what "good writing" means began with Aristotle (384-322 B.C.), the Father of Rhetoric, as many compositionist call him. The successful ingredients depended upon the rhetorical situation, where the speaker, who had established his ethos, would, through a process of invention and discovery and with a range of topoi, convince his audience about his message. "He sought to categorize objectively the various facets of rhetoric, which he defined as 'the faculty of discovering in the particular case what are the available means of persuasion'" (Foss, Foss, & Trapp, 1991, p. 5). If the rhetor practiced and followed through with his means, then the speech act would be transcended and true communication would occur.

Throughout the years, others have added to his venue -- Cicero (106-43 B.C.) sought to bridge rhetoric and philosophy. Quintillion (35-95 A.D.) was the first to purport that rhetoric should be taught and practiced from birth until death. During the Middle Ages, when rhetoric fell to disfavor, St. Augustine (354-430 A.D.) sought to teach that writers needed to attend to the rules of expression, thus discover truth. Ramus was the next rhetorician to add to Aristotle's menu. Ramus (1515-1572), however, sent rhetoric in an entirely different direction. Stripping organization and invention from the field, leaving only style and delivery, which are easy to teach and to master, he helped rhetoric on a downward spiral. Francis Bacon (1561-1626), a man of many talents, rescued rhetoric from its lowly place. Bacon put rationality back into the realm of rhetoricians. However, it was George Campbell (1719-1791), followed by Robert Whately (1758-1859) who brought about the change in rhetoric that still exists today.

These two rhetoricians "combined their knowledge of classical rhetoric and contemporary psychology to create rhetoric based on an understanding of human nature" (Britton, Burgess, Martin, McLeod, & Rosen, 1975, p. 9). Whately and Campbell passed on the belief that students need to learn categorical forms of rhetoric: narration, description, exposition, and argumentation (p. 3). This has stayed with the field until after World War II, when another paradigm shift was added to the rhetoric mix.

Prior to WWII, first-year composition teachers, more often than not, taught a homogeneous blend of high school educated, English speaking 18-20 year olds. After the war, policies were created to adjust to the influx of non-traditional students into the realm of higher education: G.I.s returning from the war with their educational benefits. However, as Shaughnessy (1977) claims, many of these students,

are those who had been left so far behind the others in the formal education that they appeared to have to have little chance . . . they were strangers in academia, unacquainted with the rules and rituals of college life, unprepared for the sorts of tasks their teachers were about to assign them. (p. 33)

Composition teachers were unprepared for these students and those who followed them when colleges threw open their doors as "the right to an education" movement swept the nation, and more "non-traditional" students began to return to the classroom (Gappe, 1984, p. 13). Colleges that obtained funds from federal and state sources were encouraged to "open" their doors to these students of different cultures and backgrounds. Educators became aware that the old ways of teaching writing did not work with this group of students. Britton, et al. (1975), forerunners of rhetorical theorists, believe,

Since the fifties there has been a steadily growing awareness of the relation between language development and learning, so that studies of languages have crept into a central position in diverse disciplines. Our evident need, however, was to characterize whole written utterances on as broad a basis as possible, taking into account as much as we could of the psychological processes and the social setting. (p. 6)

However, other theories with different perspectives abounded. Vygotsky (1962) theorizes,

Thought and language which reflect reality in a way different from that of perception are key to the nature of human consciousness. Words play a central part not only in the development of thought but in the historical growth of consciousness as a whole. A word is a microcosm of human consciousness. (p. 153)

Thus, at present there are three primary contrastive schools which underpin the field of first-year composition: (a) the literary, (b) the cognitive, and (c) social theory (Faigley, 1986, p. 15). Each of these plays a significant role in the realm of the online educator.

The literary model follow two tenets: (a) the purpose of invention is discovery of truth, and (b) truth can be learned but not expressively taught. Authentic voice is an individual gift, proponents like Elbow (1988) and Mcrorie (1968) would have us believe. Conversely, in the cognitive view of composing, students should model "real writers" who do not sit down and write the perfect masterpiece, rather they gather information, think, and brainstorm, then they sit down to write. This is often called the process model, championed by Hayes and Brandt (1992), Emig (1971, 1988), and Flower (1989), among others. After letting their words gel, writers should go back to their written discourse and edit. They may find they have to research more or throw out some ideas; however, that is not a problem, as writing is a recursive process which is really never finished. A student must problem-solve her work, seeing it as a puzzle that can be formed as a whole.
Searle (1995), a social theorist, grappled with: "How do we get from the physics of utterances to meaningful speech acts performed by speakers and writer?" (p. xi). Social theorists believe writing happens in context. Here the writing concern lies within the community, the influence of the social situation and intertexuality. The individual and her problem-solving abilities are not the focus, rather her discourse community dictates the writing situation.

No matter the theory, one of the primary goals in the writing classroom, most practicing first-year, college composition instructors would state, is to help students become better writers through the writing process, in order to write "good writing." In practice then, most writing students are to understand the first draft is not the final draft. They are told to revise, revise, and revise again. They are shown how to do this by discussing model essays, through peer-editing each other's drafts, and through offering formative feedback on their drafts. Then they are asked to rewrite what they thought was the final product and are shown areas that could be strengthened. This process approach was introduced by Emig (1971).

Despite the post-WWII awareness that writing instruction needed to be changed because of the new breed of college student, not many changes had been instituted in the college writing classroom. Previous to Emig, theories abounded but little actual research had been conducted about how writers compose.

What she unearthed was startling: student writers were proscribed to write in the way the teacher perceived they should write; the product was the purpose, with little attention to planning or invention; teachers who did not write themselves, thus, did not understand the process of writing were teaching it. All of this led to a cadre of students who expected nothing more on their papers than a summative grade in a field of red marks. After Emig's initial discovery, others soon took to the field, foremost among them were Britton, et al. (1975). This group studied five hundred writers under the age of eighteen. Their results echoed Emig's. Students obeyed their teachers by writing transactional writing with no sense of audience.

They were jumping hoops, informing their teacher about a topic she already knew about. What these researchers also discovered was that students have disparate composing processes when allowed free reign. However the researchers agreed that writers wrote in stages: (a) prewriting, (b) writing, and (c) revising. This discovery set the stage for the next major movement in the field of composition, as many doubted the "three-stage theory," stating it was "too, neat, too simplistic and just plain wrong no matter what writer was studied" (Sommers, 1985, p. 5). Flower and Hayes (1981), whose work draws upon problem-solving strategies in the field of cognitive psychology believed writing to be recursive and idiosyncratic.

Flower and Hayes (1988a) theorize that there are four writing processes. Moving away from the process model, they believed that the phrase 'stages of writing' is not an accurate depiction, as any of these stages can be employed when needed. Writers draw upon different processes of planning, translating, reviewing, and monitoring, depending upon their goals.

Today all of these are the methodological tools writing teachers are handed when learning to teach writing. Indeed they are essential as syllabi are planned. Teachers set up a hierarchy of concerns, first teaching content, then organization, then surface level problems, i.e., grammar and punctuation (Garrison, 1981; Huff, 1983). Writing teachers know that a writer must have something to say before she can organize it. After she has her ideas down on the page, then she can attend to form and logic. Finally when her ideas are organized, she can turn to the mechanics of the draft: are her commas used correctly? Did she use her citations in the right form? Is her spelling traditional? However, Secor (1992) cautions us, "Like language acquisition, writing ability is a discrete skill that develops over time and incorporates many subskills, new dimensions, and applications that continually require more learning" (p. 172). Yet, the college writing instructor must teach students the process of writing in a set unit of time, such as a college quarter.

As previously noted, another role has also fallen within rhetor's domain: she must help students learn the socialization skills of the university (White, 1985). Somewhere along the line English teachers have taken on the role of teaching students about themselves in relation to others (Burke, 1969; Smith, 1992; White, 1985). To say the least, "English classes provide linguistic etiquette" (White, 1985, p. 13). Shaughnessy (1977) observes most of us learned through "such a long subtle process of socialization that we cannot remember how it happened" (p. 317). Add to that the modern pedagogy of rhetoric which insists upon peer-group and community learning, and we find that English classes, in particular first-year composition classes, teach students how to be members of those peer communities (Harris, 1989). Bizzell (1982) writes of this variation in community:
Let us emphasize not only discourse but also community. I do not mean that we should seek to eliminate the conflicts that arise from our coming from different historical and cultural situations. We should recognize that being so situated is the most important thing we have in common. (p. 239)

This bridge between "different historical and cultural situations" enables students to understand others who are not like them, those who may be older, younger, perhaps of a different nationality or culture. Learning to accept another's viewpoint is pivotal in communication, especially with those who are not of one's own ilk. In addition, this type of interchange increases the likelihood of increasing one's worldview which is a necessity in the academic world. Computers are now helping us along that path.

With this overview in mind, "good" writing, then, attends to audience and purpose. It shows the writer has spent a certain amount of time in the process of revision, which the audience is able to discern because the piece under consideration displays: (a) a logical progression of thought, (b) adequate development and support, (c) a generous use of transitions, (d) appropriate diction and language suited for the purpose, and (e) attention to the conventions of mechanics and grammar.

Subsections of Chapter II in Order of Apperance
[Distance Education] [Writing Educators Online] [Computers and Compostion] [Opposing Points of View] [Where Online Composition Fits] [The Need for the Study]

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Last Updated 10/20/01

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