11. Do
you agree with Lerner in “Writing Is a Way of Enacting Disciplinarity” that “the
relationship between disciplinary knowledge making and the ways writing and
other communicative practices create and communicate that knowledge are at the
heart of what defines particular disciplines” (40)? Why or why not? I got the
sense that he was specifically referring to formatting conventions within a
discipline (his examples were just citations and formatting). What do you think
shapes a discipline’s boundaries?
22. Reading
Shipka’s article made me finally realize what many of the readings have been
proposing—a fundamental restructuring of the ways we view, and therefore teach,
composition in our contemporary context. What are your opinions on this? Do you
think we should completely move away from the traditional writing/typing on
paper mode of composition to this more open-ended kind of pedagogy? Or do you
think there is some merit to the traditional ways of teaching composition that
we are all used to and have experienced that such an uprooting lacks?
Esther,
ReplyDeleteI like how you phrased your second question. I hadn’t thought about multimodality as a movement away from typical composition course assignments. Maybe this is because I am open to these kind of crazy projects and don’t question what counts as composition as much as I ought to. In response to your question, I think there’s value in variety. Students shouldn’t just be taught to write essays, although it’s a useful skill as they continue their higher education. I think we should pull away from just writing essays, though. I guess my reasoning is partially from our earlier readings about involving technology in the classroom. Students often do multimodal projects in grade school without even realizing it (in a group project we made a video in ninth grade and in seventh grade we did a project that involved making a brochure and a presentation). I think it’s best that we continue to encourage these creative compositions that involve skills beyond typing in a word document. Teaching this in a composition course has another layer of value to it because we can address why we might choose a particular method of presenting our work rather than assuming a norm.