Response to 3/24 Readings

Narrowing the Mind and Page: Remedial Writers and Cognitive Reductionism
Mike Rose

In his essay, Narrowing the Mind and Page, Mike Rose catalogues interdisciplinary studies of cognition, as well as investigating their usefulness in teaching remedial writers. Rose discusses the theories and areas of field dependence/independence, hemisphericity, Piaget’s theory of cognitive development, oral-literacy, literacy and society, literacy and cognition, and literacy and language.

Out of these theories, it is clear that Rose finds Piaget’s the most relevant. I found the section dealing with training interesting, as students who were weak in formal-operational tasks showed improvement after training.

Although Rose may not believe that orality-literacy theory holds as much relevance as Piaget’s theory, I found it insightful and interesting. The similarities and differences between oral and written language are fascinating to me, and this field in particular interests me. Rose’s most insightful statement in this segment is that “[w]riting transforms human cognition." (368) As in much his discussion of theories, Rose goes on to caution that racist and biased assumptions have distorted this theory, which seems to be a common theme and occurrence in Rose’s article


The Language of Exclusion: Writing Instruction at the University
Mike Rose

In his second article in this textbook, Mike Rose looks at both attitudes towards remedial composition/students, and the motivation for these attitudes. Rose begins his essay by quoting numerous memos and reports from California that deal with remedial English courses. As Rose points out, many of these quotes contain thoughts commonly held in regards to writing, including that “[w]riting ability is judged in terms of the presence of error and can this be quantified [and that] [w]riting is a skill or a tool rather than a discipline.” (547) These are assumption that have often appeared in our previous readings, aside from the older ones (such as those in the Harvard era), the articles we have read have disregarded such views. So why do non-composition professors and the public still believe that they valid?

Rose goes on to look at current attitudes towards “remedial” writing courses in general; among them is the belief that they are eroding the boundary between secondary schools and college. Throughout his article, Rose gives numerous other examples of the negative attitude towards composition courses, while highlighting the dichotomy between these beliefs and the demand for improved writers in all academic fields.

One of the more revealing parts of Rose’s article deals with a chemist’s reaction to composition studies. The chemist in question dismisses composition studies, thinking that it is merely “ a transcription skill” (555) This is an attitude I commonly encounter, an alarming number of people don’t realize the complexity of writing.

Inventing the University
David Bartholomae

In his paper, David Bartholomae looks at the various obstacles new students face when attending college. He begins by saying that a “student has to learn to speak our language […]to write, for example, as a literary critic one day and as an experimental psychologist the next […]” (624). Bartholomae argues that this, and an inexperienced writer’s difficulty with transitioning between “writer-based” and “reader-based” papers.

Bartholomae insists that when he assigns students a paper entailing literary criticism, he doesn’t expect his students to be literary critics; rather, he expects them to invent themselves as literary critics. I have a problem with this, Bartholomae seems to desire students to simply imitate, and not come up with new ideas of their own.

I did find Bartholomae’s examples of student writing insightful and appropriate, as they did illustrate the very issues that student writers face. I also found his ideas on “commonplaces” relevant, as he did provide numerous examples in the student essays. Bartholomae notes that higher ranking essays are “framed and completed by a commonplace” (640).

Coherence, Cohesion and Writing Quality
Stephen P. Witte and Lester Faigley

Stephen P. Witte and Lester Faigley’s article scrutinizes both the research and methods used in writing instruction. Witte and Faigley mainly look at the two “approaches to this question, examining errors and syntactic features” (235), and note that most of the research doesn’t examine coherence in writing that extends beyond the surface level.

Similarly to what we have seen in numerous other articles, this focus on errors does little to improve student writing. Witte and Faigley cite research that shows this focus doesn’t help, and go on to state that cross-field research shows that cohesive ties determine the quality of a paper.

Witte and Faigley define a cohesive tie as “a semantic relation between an element in a text and some other element that is crucial to the interpretation of it” (236). They go on to list five classes of cohesive ties, and many subclasses (and sub-subclasses). The classes are as follows: substitution, ellipses, conjunction, and lexical reiteration and collocation.

After outlining the five cohesive ties, Witte and Faigley discuss reference cohesion, conjunctive cohesion, and lexical cohesion in regards to how the effect overall coherence in papers. The cohesive ties born out of these different forms of cohesion play an important role in Witte and Faigley’s analysis; they state that “the high rated essays are much more dense in cohesion than the low-rated essays.” (243)

Witte and Faigley end by imploring that more research in cohesion be undertaken. Interestingly enough, they mention that sentence combining offers “much [practice in forming cohesive ties” (249), which would correlate to Hillock’s study of effective composition instruction practices.

Although Witte and Faigley don’t delve too deeply into methods of teaching students cohesion, they do make a very good case for its importance in writing. During a time when the composition field is examining (incorrect) teaching methods long used, research like this is vital in the evolution of composition instruction.