A Brief History of Composition

Matt Barton

Some Preliminary Questions

• What is the best way to teach writing, assuming it can even be taught?– How can we fairly and accurately assess good

student writing? (Are our programs working?)– How can we make the teaching of writing less

culturally and socially biased (or even racist?) – How much should we adapt our practices to

accommodate new technologies such as the internet?

To Learn How to Write Well

• 150-200 words every week (2 paragraphs)• Occasional 600-1000 word essay for

developing good paragraph-grouping skills• Study rhetoric textbook to learn rules of

expression and invention• Study literature to corroborate statements in

the textbook

Reading

• “Good reading is the most general antidote for the malaria of vulgarity and slang to which we are incessantly exposed.”– 1895!

RemediationBanking ModelProduct-Focused

This is English

Good Writing Defined

• To write well means:– To spell correctly, to discriminate in the use of

words, to arrange words in proper grammatical relation, to group sentences in a paragraph organized around a central thought or opinion, to co-ordinate half a dozen or more paragraphs so as to indicate, approximately at least, some evolution of the thinking faculty.”• (qtd. by Hart 1895)

Modern Thought

• Contemporary readers expect words to be spelled in a standardized way, for punctuation to be used in predictable ways, for usage and syntax to match that used in texts they already acknowledge as successful. They expect the style in a piece of writing to be appropriate to its genre and social situation. In other words, it is important that writing that goes public be “correct.” (NCTE 2004)

SciencePositivismCommon Sense

Cognition.

Authenticity

Social Construction

Johnny can’t write.Johnny can’t write.Johnny can’t write.

Rhetoric and Reality

Future of Composition

• Can anyone with an English degree teach comp, or do you need special training?

• Does comp scholarship (conferences, papers, books) have a quantifiable impact on writing programs?

• Should comp be a skills, content, or service course?