FYC Ch. 11: Looking into Writing-about-Writing Classrooms By Elizabeth Wardle & Doug Downs Elizabeth Wardle

Elizabeth Wardle

● Howe Professor and Director of the Howe Center for Writing Excellence at Miami of Ohio.

● Earned her PhD at Iowa State University, and her research on transfer there led her to write Writing about Writing, her best-selling textbook.

● Co-edited Naming What We Know.

Source: https://engl.iastate.edu/2018/11/13/elizabeth-wardle/ Doug Downs

Doug Downs

● Associate Professor at Montana State University

● Helped found the Writing major there

● Focuses on research on writing-about-writing, writing instructor preparation, writing in the disciplines, etc.

Source: http://www.montana.edu/english/directory/1524045/douglas-downs

Threshold Concepts

1.0 Writing Is a Social and Rhetorical Activity.

1.6 Writing Is Not Natural.

4.3 Learning to Write Effectively Requires Different Kinds of Practice, Time, and Effort.

4.4 Revision Is Central to Developing Writing Values & Assumptions Wardle & Downs Values.

Values &  Assumptions

VAlues

● “Students . . . engag[ing] with rigorous texts about writing” (p. 289)

● Practicality (p. 285)

Assumptions

● Students haven’t learned critical reading skills in many years (p. 290).

 Values

● Writing to learn (p. 283)

● Genres are flexible (p. 286)

Assumptions

● Students require flexibility in the classroom--meet them where they are (p. 291) Values & Assumptions Downs.

Values

● Creativity (p. 288)

● Writing to Communicate (p. 285)

Assumptions

● Students will meet you where they need to (p. 291)

Discussions

● Do students need more flexibility? Are you willing to be more flexible in the classroom on things like readings--adjusting to where your class is and what they might be willing to talk about? Or is it their responsibility, as students, to engage with the material in a class regardless? 

● What do you think about their (especially Wardle’s) emphasis on practicality? They both want students to think about how “working writers” work and what their processes are like, and Wardle even avoids giving specific forms/requirements within assignments. Is this something you’d want to implement in your classes? Why might it be helpful to require students to think about these decisions vs. giving them clear instructions?

● What would benefit students most: a large writing project, or multiple small assignments? How are you going to implement that in your class?

● As a teacher, what can you do to get your students out of the traditional belief they have that “writing is natural”?

● Wardle & Downs talk about the issue of giving students different models on writing to make them more clear, but, they have a tendency to take those models as “recipes.” How would you make them understand that those are only a few examples, and that they shouldn’t follow those as a formula?