Week 7: Harris Article Summary

The two articles for this week's reading were both pretty good reads!

The Harris article focused on continuously critiquing a student's writing for the purpose of growth as a writer.  One way in which students can 'grow' is by working in groups and receiving feedback from classmates on what works well and what does not. This group is essentially the student's audience and helps to clarify for the student what a typical audience may experience.  The audience can answer questions such as whether or not they enjoyed the writing, what made it enjoyable, and how it could become more effective.  The teacher's role is to facilitate the process.  At the end of the process, the student should have accomplished some skill in his or her writing and is now able to revisit the paper and refine it using new and improved writing skills.

The Faigley article was quite interesting.  This article also viewed the teacher as a judge or coach.  One interesting thing was that the article looked at a College Entrance Examination Board's review of 2 student's writing.  This review had taken place in 1929!  Faigley analyzed their reviewd and found that at that time, writing teachers were more concerned with how well students could interpret popular literature at the time.  In fact, a student who was unable to analyze literature (using their standards for good vs. bad) was essentially denied entrance into the school.  Overall, the student's analysis must show the correct attitude so that he can fit in with the elite social class.

Fast forward to 1981, where 48 writing teachers entered one example of great writing from one of their students.  Faigley found that not one essay was a research paper. Instead, the papers represented writings about very painful aspects of the students' lives.  For example, one student discussed a rape! What made these papers so valuable, though, was the brutal honesty of truthful experiences.  Instead of the students using literature to obtain that sense of awareness, their used their own writing , or "self" to understand life.  It is interesting to note that neither Harris nor Faigley discussed the importance of good grammar; they focused more on how well the student communicates with the audience through writing.