Clarity, Conciseness, and Nonbigwordednessocity

Lynn Z. Bloom's article "Freshman Composition as a Middle-Class Enterprise" actually points out a lot of useful guidelines for student writing, guidelines that make sense and that should probably be followed by students, teachers, and writers in general. I've often talked about accessibility in the texts that I read, and whether or not a text is accessible is determined by most of these factors, demonstrated by Benjamin Franklin, Polonius, and The Elements of Style.

It seems as though many academic texts that I read for class nowadays could use some of this advice. They are often not the most accessible reading materials, and many tend to violate these very basic rules of writing and discourse:

• Be concise: "Nothing should be expressed in two words that can be as well expressed in one."
• Avoid extremes: I'm often guilty of this myself, and it closely ties into having enough evidence to support a writer's claims.
• "Place yourself in the background"/"Do not inject opinion": This really depends on the kind of writing one is doing. If the goal is to remain completely objective and informative, then yes. But it's hard not to inject opinion if one is trying to persuade others.
• "Be clear"/"Avoid fancy words"/"Use figures of speech sparingly"/"Avoid foreign languages": Here's where I really wish certain academic writers should pay attention. We get it; you have a Ph.D., you're very smart, and you know several French and Latin words. But your audience might not. Therefore, you'd be writing over their heads. Simplicity is conducive to clarity, and if your writing is not clear, then you are a bad writer, if nothing else simply due to the fact that your audience cannot understand you. Blaming your audience for not being intelligent or esoteric enough to know what you're talking about won't help matters, either; the responsibility of clearing up confusion and making yourself understood rests with you as a writer.

As far as this debate between using and avoiding the first person and a more informal tone in academic texts, I think certain professors are opposed to this for the wrong reasons. This links back to clarity: if a student's audience consists of their peers, then this might be the most appropriate method of writing to get their point across. Obviously if students are expected to write personal literacy narratives, they would need to use first person pronouns, and it might be more appealing to tell their story in an informal way. It would certainly make other students interested in reading the text. Informality is not necessarily a bad thing, but it does have its place. It all comes down to audience.

So...what the hell am I supposed to write?

Chapter 3 of The Way Literacy Lives effectively describes our writing program here and has given me some useful insight as to why first year composition courses have this curriculum. The argument against Russell Durst's study and conclusions on FYC courses and how they should be taught brought up some important points about, not only objectivity in the classroom, but also the prompts for student papers.

I think it is important to emphasize the fact that no student--particularly those who are unaccustomed to thinking critically for themselves--should feel they are being "force-fed" any ideology, liberal or otherwise. It is not the role of the teacher to train students to think like him/her; rather, the teacher's responsibility is to train students to think, period. We merely give them the tools they need to express those thoughts. Therefore, we as teachers need to remain objective in the classroom, no matter what. We need to be careful about how our personal, political, or religious beliefs might influence the way we present ourselves as educators, as well as to refrain from letting any potential bias show.

That having been said, keeping those beliefs entirely out of the classroom seems needlessly limiting for a group of students who are just learning how to express themselves via writing. And while it is true that most freshman students on this campus come into the program without any real idea about what they'd like to major in or do for a living, not writing about any interests that could potentially be a part of their future careers seems weird. If our goal is to make students better writers--or more to the point, to show them that writing WILL be involved in their future careers at some point--then why not focus more on that aspect when teaching? It might not be beneficial to spend too little time on rather advanced topics such as these--ultimately doing too much and overwhelming students--this is true. But is it practical to focus on one topic and one topic only all semester long, a topic which is not only advanced itself for a freshman class, but that also applies to only a small percentage of students?

So what do we have our students write? What are they going to need to write in the future? How can we prepare them for this?

It seems that, if they are going to write for a career--and if they are lucky--it will be for a career that they are passionate about, perhaps even on subjects that they are interested in. Or, career aside, if they merely want to express themselves in a very formal, argumentative way, of course they will be passionate about what they are writing about. And if they are writing, they are thinking. This time, for themselves.

Dr. Jacobs Interview

Due to archive.org's dysfunctional website, I have so far only managed to post the first two parts of my interview with Dr. Kathryn Jacobs. Whenever their site starts working again, I'll post the 3rd part, as well as my interview with Dr. Derek Royal.

http://www.archive.org/details/Dr.JacobsInterviewPart1

http://www.archive.org/details/Dr.JacobsInterviewPart2