In response to Johanna Rubba, whose comments I love reading, and the ensuing discussion about how to motivate basic writers, I’d like to share what has worked for me.
When I first began teaching basic writers at community college level, I knew that they wrote the way they talked, but I did not know how to use that knowledge as an approach. Reading Wallace Chafe set off the lightbulb: Chafe explains that the structures of writing differ from the structures of talking. Over the years I have developed that approach, one that my students (south suburbs of Chicago) appreciate and enjoy.
The easiest way to explain this approach is to copy a section from the draft of the preface of my textbook, which will be coming out in June. I apologize for seeming to toot my own horn, but I believe the approach is important and one that others can use in developing their own material.
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Three dynamics of language inform this book’s content and approach: the structure of talking is different from the structure of writing; language is processed and produced in phrases and clauses, and language is acquired by internalizing patterns.
1. The structures of writing and talking are different. Basic writers string along phrases and clauses. Often they connect thoughts with commas and "and’s", they stop too short and punctuate a fragment as a sentence, and, in the process of articulating complex thought, they conflate and garble phrases and clauses. Wallace Chafe, in his research on the structure of spontaneous talking, maintains that talking consists of phrases and clauses often strung together with and. After the idea has been communicated, the voice drops. Those speaking patterns are evident in basic writing. Basic writers punctuate phrases and clauses as sentences: fragments. They tie ideas together with and, placing a period at the completion of thought: run-ons. Unfamiliar with and intimidated by the structures of writing, basic writers write the way they talk. Their sentences reveal their struggle with the difference between the oral and written patterns of communicating. Rhythms of Writing, therefore, begins with an Introduction that explains the differences between talking and writing.
2. Language is processed and produced in phrases and clauses. Current cognitive science research proposes that phrases and clauses are not only the organizing principle of talking, they are the organizing principle of language itself. Language is processed (reading, listening) in phrases and clauses and produced (speaking and writing) in phrases and clauses. These patches of thought are more than external aberrations; they are both the internal and external structures of thought. Basic writers write in phrases and clauses because that is how language is processed and produced. Therefore, Rhythms of Writing focuses on the ideas of talking (thought), shows students how those ideas are patterned in writing, and guides them in writing those patterns.
3. Language is acquired by internalizing patterns. Recent research suggests that we learn how to write, not by learning the rules, but by learning the patterns. Rules are descriptions of language, not the determiners of language. Rules don’t generate language; patterns do. From exposure to language, people internalize the patterns, learning, for example, the subject-verb-object pattern, not the subject-verb-object rule. The pattern model reaffirms what we know about how children acquire language: they internalize the patterns of the language spoken around them. Because patterns are integral to language acquisition, Rhythms concentrates on sentence patterns.
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This approach makes sense to students. Thanks, Johanna for beginning a valuable discussion.
Pam Dykstra
English Department, South Suburban College
South Holland, IL 60473-9978
Tel: 708-596-2000 Ext. 2648
Email: [log in to unmask]