response to Zebroski 9/9

Response 2 (Zebroski)
Arthur T. Zheng
9/8/2009

Zebroski’s articles cleared almost all my misgivings over the teaching of writing as a theoretically supported endeavor. In my classroom of College Composition over the past years, I had done a series of experiments which were totally practical and, at the same time, insufficiently supported by the department at the university where I taught, let alone the academia back in China. I had this big question over a career as a teacher of writing. Now, I feel the eagerness to integrate my practical experiences into a theoretical framework.

Zebroski’s definition of theory opened my eyes to the possibility of theorizing the work I have done. It is my understanding that to theorize is to place our practice in a philosophical background so that we could establish a coherent structure to lead our experiments, changes, and activities in the teaching of writing. At the moment I am considering how to position students and the teacher in a classroom context against a philosophical background, how to establish classroom activities to reflect the relationship between students and teachers, and how to position both in the larger context of the community and society.

The assumptions Zobroski makes about students having already a “theory” of writing before they start a writing class are highly insightful. In fact, in my writing classes I was often confronted with students’ questions, sometimes, challenges, to my rationales, methods, and perspectives of teaching writing. It would have been highly valuable if those responses were treated more seriously. Now I would like to construct the class activities into a “secondary” content to help students reinforce and perhaps change their primary content. Thus I could activate meaningful interaction between students and me.

Zebroski’s concept of metawriting also clarifies what I was confused with. In my class of writing, seldom were students asked to reflect upon their own writing through either responding to my comments or peer reading. Also, though group discussions took place in my class, they were not as regular and student-centered as described by Zebroski. Lack of what Vygotsky terms as “the zone of proximal development”, both the scope and depth of the writing experience are compromised.

I did an experiment similar to Zebroski’s theme-based organization of an introductory writing class. But instead of organizing the entire course under one theme, I introduced themes for each class and relied heavily on extensive reading. The benefits of multiple themes are two fold. For one thing, they provide the class, usually 50, with possible fields of interests so that they could be engaged in the entire reading-writing process. For another, as my students learned English as a foreign language and did not have enough input of vocabulary, the reading part also provided them with a context to relate reading to writing as a preparation in terms of vocabulary and writing stimulus. But, compared to Zebroski’s more intensive theme-based class, I found that class organization could benefit in rooting the writing process in a richer context of the community, which, unfortunately, is only a burgeoning concept in China. For the method of ethnography, which is possible and perhaps equally engaging in China too, I could extend the scope my class to include much more interesting and coherent activities. To place students and the writing content in real life will definitely make both the writing process easier and the writing class more rewarding. That may be the remedy to the problem of writer’s block among students of the firs-year writing course. They do produce much “vague and lifeless” writing.

Though I find Zebroski’s experiences and theory overwhelmingly convincing, I do have a small question over the way he introduces a structure to the assignment. In what looks like a blank-filling model that he gives out to students, he might limit students’ creativity in designing their own style of organizing their writing by implying a stereotype.

Overall, Zebroski’s articles have been inspiring to me and deserve more reading.