Do you think that the insistence that every paper should have a thesis, along with the related insistence that everything is an argument, has come as a reaction against Bain's "modes of discourse" and all the many textbooks that incorporated that theory? As i understand it, the modes artificially and reductively turned the functions of persuasion, description and exposition into separate genres which often seemed vacuum-packed rather than overlapping or interpenetrating. So some students learned that a "thesis" was only needed in something called a "perusaisve essay" or a" thesis-support essay"--and this, in turn, seemed to mean that other kinds of writing, like description or personal narrative, didn't need a point or a sense of rhetorical purpose.
This assumption--or rather, learned belief-- on the part of students was one of my pet peeves when I started teaching writing; so I tried to get students to have some kind of "thesis" in everything they wrote. Now I still try to get them to have a sense of rhetorical purpose in pretty much everything, except maybe journals written only for themselves; but I try to be clearer that this purpose doesn't always (depending on genre on rhetorical situation) have to be something that could easily be summarized in a sentence or two.
Brian
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From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar [[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Peter Adams [[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Monday, June 08, 2009 11:04 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Necessity of a thesis; was ATEG Digest - 7 Jun 2009 to 8 Jun 2009 - Special issue (#2009-143)
Scott raises another issue which I have never really understood . . . although I have taught writing for more than 30 years. What do people mean by expository writing? Is it different from argument? I used to think I understood. Argument has a thesis, proves a point. Expository writing simply informs. But then does it have a thesis too? And if it does, doesn't that make it an argument? How is esposiition different from argument? Does it try to prove a point, a thesis, but in a less argumentative way? Is it an argument that is more balanced? Or, as Lunsford and Ruszkiewicz put it, is "everthing an argument"?
Peter
On Jun 8, 2009, at 10:24 PM, Scott wrote:
Expository writing uses a thesis; descriptive writing, a motif.
In Senior English the mid-term examination included a descriptive
writing assignment. I started, “Once a man passed by and saw a
field of weeds, then I passed by and said, ‘Yesterday’s flowers
am I’, for what is a weed but a flower that no one loves.” I
continued in the same motif. It may sound silly today but it was
genuine when I wrote it. No thesis needed.
N. Scott Catledge
P.S. The longest string of garbage in the posting to which I am replying
was my previous post—-almost 20 pages.
I wonder about dropping digest and getting them one at a time.
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