The Process Project... - For Feb 15

Okay, this blog is being composed simultaneously with a chat being completed online for our ENGL 486 class. Also...to put this out there, I've launched a Geocities website to go along with my blog...
www.geocities.com/theoriesofcomp .

I received an e-mail saying that my geocities website has been shut down because it violated some rules apparently (supposedly you aren't supposed to link to other pages within your page) So scratch the geocities page for now. Anyway, the discussion on the process essays was quite interesting...I don't think that the online class did these readings justice. When discussing the essay within "A Guide to Composition Pedagogies," the largest point made here would be "are we post process?" And if so, is that really a bad thing? [Now is the time that I get on my soapbox] It seems that (and I relate this to the journal task) over time writing has undergone several transitions throughout history. To go so far back as early British Literature, obviously the style/subject matter of this writing was considerably different from Renaissance Literature, and still different from Victorian Literature. Why use these different periods to illustrate my point? Writing changes over time. So what if we are no longer focusing on the process but more on content? That brings another point, that post-process what do we focus on now for content? Lets take the idea of focusing on any topic, be it mathematics, chemistry, computers, technology, biology, Shakespeare, Romantic Poetry, and then apply the idea of the process movement to that. How so? Have students examine the process that they used to write the papers on various topics. How does writing a paper on a topic that the student likes influence their writing style. To continued along with this, also within the same chapter, under the heading, "Process pedagogy has become so regimented that its has turned into the kind of rules-driven product that it originally critiqued." I think that unfortunately for process to have been successful for so long, it would take a great deal of "tweaking" and modification until teachers finally got it right. This does require some regimentation. To finish up on this set of readings, a few of my feelings about the Landmark Essays. One of the key questions I had that the text discussed was the idea of a "composition handbook" in comparison to a rhetorical text. These "composition handbooks," were they modeled on the "MLA" rules for writing handbooks that we have in classrooms today? According to the essay they were designed to "help younger students of both sexes in the middle and lower classes achieve a basic written literacy." The largest question that came out of these readings for me was "are we post process?" I have to say we are...and this is an unfortunate thing. It seems to me that when students are "in touch" with their writing, they have a better understanding of the rhetorical/literary devices they are using, which typically generates "better writing" (I also know this is a very "loaded term"). An additional interesting fact I found was the essays in "Landmark Essays" were written a while ago (though the Faigley essay was written in '86, the Emig article was written over 30 years ago) and the Emig article really heavily focused on the process movement itself while the essay in Guide to Composition Pedagogies (written much later) focuses on what we need to do now that we are, in fact, "post process." My last comment...really isn't a comment but more of a question. I really had a hard time understanding the section relating to "social view." Any insight to this would be greatly appreciated.