I always appreciate a warm up when about to receive new information of which I may or may not have background. For that reason I enjoyed Rebecca's "write-around," the thinking that came from the written discourse, and thus the social construct activity. Also the meaty hand-out was organized and easy to follow.
Erika Lindemann is a leader in Writing Program Administration. As such she is concerned about what will dominate the content of freshmen composition classes. She argues that it should not be literature as the time students would need to discuss the issues of the literature will take away from a focus on writing. In addition students would only earn to respond to literature and not other forms of writing.
However, she will not debate whether or not under-prepared students should be attempting to complete a degree program. Instead, Lindemann says the university should be asking these students, "what should we teach them and how?" I champion her statement that the university has accepted students and now it should support them academically with tutors or writing centers or both.
Rebecca quoted Lindemann to say that instead of having a literature centered freshmen class,,
"we ought instead to appreciate - the varieties and excellences of academic discourse." I may not disagree but it is still not clear to me what exactly she would have as content in the composition class. Yes, they will focus on planning, drafting, revising, using data etc., but about what will they write?
Through her concerns and questions that she uses to create assignments, Lindemann is clearly in tune with the needs of freshmen students, especially those who are not quite "s0-called college level writing."
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Nancy, thanks for your comments. Lindemann believes very much in social examination and suggests that students use all kinds of materials from inside and outside the academy to get students to evaluate and analyze many kinds of textual selections and get experience in making rhetorical choices in different situations. This include nonfiction readings on different topics, such as materials from popular culture or about pop culture. There are many possibilities for examination in folklore, lectures, campaign speeches, archival writings or historical documents, just to name a few. Lindemann contends that most students in the academy will not continue into English and therefore, need experience in the forms of discourse that they will meet in their other courses and in their lives outside school.
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