First-Year Composition, Social Constructions, and Tradition

Experience is worth a thousand words, or at least the amount found in this article. As a graduate teaching assistant of first-year composition courses at CSU, I have come to identify in the context of FYC courses I teach, what Mike Palmquist in "Information Technology as Other" calls a felt difficulty--"a sense of dissonance, inconsistency, and inappropriateness" (95). Much like the difficulty he identifies, my difficulty, too, has evolved into what I not consider a defined problem. This problem is, I believe, a result of the gap existing between theory and practice. Specifically, I have come to believe that the theoretical approach to writing that we foster in FYC courses at CSU is at odds with the “traditional” classroom that is also prevalent in our writing instruction.

Before expanding on the complications I have experienced in my classroom, it is necessary to provide a brief overview of the rhetorical theories that guide most FYC courses at my institution. At CSU our freshmen composition courses--hereafter referred to as CO150 courses--are founded in a modern rhetorical theory that most closely parallels the ideology of social-epistemic rhetoric, as described by James Berlin in his article “Rhetoric and Ideology in the Writing Classroom.” According to Berlin, writing instruction grounded in the ideology of social-epistemic rhetoric is concerned with the “relationship[s] that involve the dialectical interaction of the observer, the discourse community (social group) in which the observer is functioning, and the material conditions of existence” (19).

Grounded firmly in this theoretical approach, our CO150 courses are designed to highlight the social context of writing and the dialogues that occur between writers and their readers. We frame our notions of writing instruction for students in the context of the “rhetorical triangle,” which acts as a visual and conceptual model that helps students understand the relationship between writers, readers, subject matter, and the social context that frames the processes, the acts, and the texts that occur when writing. Furthermore, because social-epistemic ideology is grounded in the notion that writing is a highly contextual experience and is always changing in response to changing historical, social, and political platforms (Berlin 19-23), our assignments are designed to highlight the transformative and adaptive nature of writing as it changes and transforms across situations. As students move from assignment to assignment, therefore, they are asked to compose in response to varied subjects of interests and in response to shifting needs, expectations, interests, and conventions of various audiences and genres.

Acting to further ground our theoretical perspective on writing instruction is the consideration for collaboration and dialogue that we emphasize. Framed in the perspective that writing is a conversation that occurs between a writer and his or her audience, we accentuate the key role that dialogue plays in the process of composition. Students are encouraged to engage in and reflect on these conversations with their peers--other members of the discourse community we foster in CO150. As a result, we advocate a writing process and instruction that focuses on the highly collaborative nature of composing through the integration of ample group work and opportunities for peer collaboration.

While these are the theoretical perspectives in which we situate and ground our writing instruction, I feel that the "traditional" forms of instruction that occur at large in our institution are at odds with the social context that surrounds writing and which writing is imbricated in that we attempt to illuminate for our students. I am aware that the term "traditional" is rather ill-defined, or broadly defined, in terms of classroom instruction. For my purposes, I am defining it as I see it in the CO150 classrooms I teach. In these classrooms, it is an umbrella term, which refers to all aspects of the classroom from the pedagogies employed, to technologies that are present in the physical classroom, to the textual landscapes in which my students compose. At times, my pedagogies closely resemble those of a "critical" pedagogue; other times, these pedagogies are aligned more closely with Freire's banking model. As a young instructor I am unwilling to relinquish my authority just yet, at least not until I understand the consequences of such an approach.

The physical space of these classrooms, which I might add is both metaphorically and literally defined and confined by the walls, chairs, and tables that we identify with this space, and the technologies found within these classrooms are used to further characterize traditional classrooms. The teacher instructing in these classrooms is rather limited in his or her use of technologies to teach writing. In these classrooms, technologies often consist of an overhead projector, which many of my students have openly ridiculed as being “old school”; a whiteboard, which has recently begun to look like a blackboard from the heavy use it has been subjected to over the years; and the few pens, pencils and pieces of paper that my students bring into the room.

As an experienced (enough) instructor, I realize that the traditional pedagogies and environments that the traditional classrooms foster, offer a multitude of pedagogical advantages and opportunities for both teachers and students. However, I also believe that the tradition of these classrooms seriously limits the possibilities and capabilities of writing instruction in general, but especially instruction grounded in a rhetorical context such as at my institution. With the experience I have gained over the past two years, I have come to believe that notions of audience, of collaboration, and of revision processes are seriously limited and that our teaching practices within these classrooms are at odds with not only the theoretical perspectives of writing that we foster, but also with the rhetorical situations that define writing as a process and act as it exists outside the university. And without intending to discredit the work done within these classrooms, I have come to perceive these practices as forwarding a somewhat pseudo-rhetorical writing context that is partial and suggests an "all encompassing" perspective of writing that is in fact narrow. At the very least, these classrooms do not fully take into account the possibilities for new processes as they occur in other social contexts outside of educational institutions as a result of new technological advances and innovations. As a result they elicit an understanding of writing that is narrow, and that neglects the dynamic nature of writing in our wired society, which coincidentally fosters opportunities to compose in new textual landscapes, new possibilities for collaboration, and new ways of envisioning the various processes that surround writing.

In the next section entitled The Limitations of Tradition, I explore the limitations and constraints that the traditional textual landscapes we tend to compose within have on students' understanding of audience theory, collaboration, and revision in writing courses such as CO150.