Reading Response(9/23/09)

While reading Durst's obsevation essay and having a group discussion, a couple of question have haunted me for so long. The first questions is what the nature and the goal of college writing class are in universities? If the course is necessary, what makes students in compostion class have a trouble? (Many writiers including Durst have pointed out some problems in writing course, troublining students.)

Significantly enough, such fields as mathematics, geology, or biology are not required but only writing course is mandatory. Also, it is distingused from any other kind of writing courses in creative writing department. Why is it so? One possible answer is that it aims at familiarize students with general academic writing. However, as the term, "general" implies, it is not easy to define what academic writing is in general. I admit that surely regardless of subjects, the institutionalized writing share certain common features in its formality. Following this logic, then, college writing is and should be focused on "how" one should write and failing to connect it to "what one wants to write about." In other words, from my perspective, writing course tends to separate writing strategies and styles from writing contents. It is this generality or "neutrality" of college writing course that makes students less engaged and enthusastic. By analogy, it is like an attempt to teach how to be a "generally" good cook without asking one "what kind of food one wants to make."

Therefore, I like to suggest that college writing course should be combined with more specific subjects and let students have a chance to choose one among them instead of taking general writing course. For example, each class can have one theme such as film critics in popular culture, gender issue or even the interesting theories of the origin of the universe. Then, before registering for the class, students can negotiate their interests with these topics. In this way, I believe they can have more specific expectations and goals of that course, which results in eliciting more engagement and enthusiasm from them.


p.s I was struggling with the blog posting. I made a couple of different accounts here with different email address. I feel like this is another process of learning. Sorry for the late unploading.