Re: Re(2): Discourse structures

Martin Nystrand (nystrand who-is-at ssc.wisc.edu)
Tue, 13 Jan 1998 15:47:28 -0600

Paul is certainly right to point to the developmental importance of play and
fantasy with an imagined audience, and there are rich rhetorical and poetic
possibilities in addressing fictitious audiences. Nonetheless, most school
writing remains problematic because the ostensible purposes (persuade,
inform, etc.) of assigned writing tasks typically diverge from the actual
purposes (evaluation). In English composition, students rarely need to
actually persuade an instructor about the argument they make; they must
merely present a paper that the teacher judges to be a passable example of
the genre. And how likely is it that students might really inform their
teachers when the questions are test questions, both in class and in
writing? The most instructive challenges for beginning writers are
persuading someone open to persuasion and successfully explaining something
to someone who needs to be informed.

When I learned to play tennis, I found my teacher's technical comments from
the sidelines quite helpful as I batted a bucket of balls (just the balls,
eventually) over the net. But it was no substitute for actual play with
someone on the other side of the net. Writing in school is too much like
the former, and student writers get all too little experience with readers
taking their purposes at face value "on the other side" of their texts.

At 06:59 AM 1/13/98 -0600, you wrote:
>Marty wrote:
>
>>The problem of addressing a community--and a fictitious one, at
>>that--without the possibility of conversing with anyone particular face to
>>face is pretty much the problem of writing in school, isn't it. Usually
>>this problem is formulated as one of including the (reified) Reader (in the
>>suggested guise of everyone). A more practical approach, however, is
>>writing in such a way that one does not _exclude_ those particular people
>>one hopes to address. This approach, no doubt, includes a wider audience de
>>facto.
>
>And Rachel responded in part:
>>But that's just the point! Writing in school is performing a set task
>>with no meaning outside of performing the task for the sake of receiving
>>a (hopefully favorable) evaluation, i.e. an good grade. There is usually
>>no further purpose or use to it. This we were all inured to by the time
>>we escaped from high school. One might call this text production for
>>its own sake, or discourse for discourse's sake.
>
>I wonder if the questions of invented (or elided) audience and the lack of
>external purposes for writing are the problems of writing in school. I
>guess in part I want to question the commonplace that school is somehow a
>uniquely unreal social site. School seems as real as anything to me and
>most sites involve strong internal orientations and motivations. How much
>of what happens in family life at home results in products for distribution
>outside the home? How often are children expected to act in light of
>imagined audiences (whether in the context of religion--a god watching your
>actions--or extended fantasy play)? If fantasy play is a developmental
>leading activity as Vygotsky suggested, then why is it a problem writing to
>fictious audiences?
>
>I'm not arguing that typical writing pedagogy in school is functioning
>wonderfully. In fact, I argue for the kind of whole language, workshop
>approaches, writing-to-learn/WAC activities that I assume Marty was
>suggesting at the end of his message. However, I think the problem of
>writing (and many other activities) in school has to do with the kind of
>socialization that schooling promotes and with complex/holistic (generic)
>configurations of writing contexts.
>
>I also think a central problem is that writing is not as supported as
>reading is in other key cultural sites like home and community (i.e., the
>problem of reading would look like the problem of writing if it weren't for
>fairly widespread practices and resources like bedtime stories, children's
>literature, libraries and their programs, TV shows that promote reading,
>etc.). When I read the literacy autobiographies of the English/English
>Education students in my classes, most report, especially between 3rd and
>10th grade, some intensely negative experiences with reading and writing in
>school. My sense is that most become readers in spite of or in opposition
>to school (through intense self-directed reading of some genres or topics).
>In contrast, very very few developed comparable self-directed writing
>practices.
>
>Paul Prior
>p-prior who-is-at uiuc.edu
>University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
>
>
>
>

Martin Nystrand
Professor, Department of English/ 608 263-3822
Director, Center on English Learning and Achievement (CELA)/ 608 263-0563
Editor, Written Communication/ 608 263-4512