Category: Paper #4

Common Theories in Composition

Composition is a field rife with some of the “newest” methods or theories regarding how students write and interpret texts. Though this constant shifting can be seen as a mark against the field, because composition is still new to the academy, its scholars work tirelessly to provide the proper foundation to legitimate the field. This work requires constantly questioning any particular method or theory that is presented and/or popularized. However, as the field works to continue solidifying its foundation as a discipline, there are a few theories that have become mainstays: genre and transfer.

Genre, as noted by Anis Bawarshi, concerns how “communicants and their contexts are in part functions of the genres they write” (335). With genre comes the idea of a connection between the text and the Meme of Willy Wonka that reads that's a nice theory tell me morewriter/creator and their identities. Though genre is moreso utilized in FYCs in terms of practice for other writing situations, according to Bawarshi, rhetoric/composition is one of the fields in English Studies that has been expanding work on genre studies. In fact, due to the rhetorical nature of genre, many students already get some type of exposure to genre analysis when approaching particular writing assignments, such as how a narrative works: its purpose and audience, etc. As Bawarshi states, “genres do not simply help us define and organize kinds of texts; they also help us define and organize kinds of social actions, social actions that these texts rhetorically make possible” (335). Genre theory is especially helpful in helping students understand how a text operates and understanding a text’s key features and affect.

Though work in genre and genre theory is important within composition, including FYCs, transfer has been getting more explicit attention recently. Writing programs continuously face pressures in producing results in teaching students writing skills for their entire university careers. Despite research showing that teaching “general writing skills” is technically impossible, FYCs are still tasked with giving students the writing skills necessary to write in every writing situation they will encounter past first year/introductory writing. However, although transfer is a leading theory in composition, as Nowacek states, “In the absenceCartoon of two men against a board that reads here with an arrow pointing to the word there with one man stating to the other it's a simple model but it works for me of the empirically grounded theoretical framework, an abiding skepticism about students’ abilities to connect what they’ve learned in one context to what they do in another has taken root” (10). In other words, regardless of how much transfer is deemed necessary, some instructors and institutions fail to see how transfer takes place due to the lack of representative data. However, as Nowacek noted, this skepticism stems from a lack of understanding about transfer/trying to make transference without understanding how it works in the first place.

This lack of understanding of transfer should not come as a surprise considering how theory is typically treated composition pedagogy. Theory is typically treated with suspicion, especially since practice gets so little respect far too often despite pedagogy being a primary focus of FYCs. However, transfer theory is at the root of the purpose surrounding the teaching of writing at the university level. As noted by both Crowley and Coxwell-Teague and Lunsford, Harvard first implemented an introductory writing course meant to prepare entering students for college-level writing. Therefore, transfer has been implied as part of the theoretical framework of FYCs since its inception.

Interestingly, within transfer theory, genre theory is also at play. As Nowacek writes, “Central to this concept of transfer as recontextualization is the role of genre” (18). As Nowacek seeks to improve how transfer is understood, she notes how important genre is to transfer. What this demonstrates is how important these two theories are to the field of composition, but, more importantly, how interconnected many composition theories are. For example, Wardle notes, “The gist of the critiques against FYC as a general writing skills course is this: the goal of teaching students to write across the university in other academic courses assumes that students in FYC can be taught ways of writing (genre and genre knowledge) that they can then transfer to the writing they do in other courses across the university” (766; bolding my own). Therefore, the recurring trend in FYC composition theory is for transfer to occur via genre.

Ultimately, what these two theories demonstrate is the maturing of composition theory as scholars are taking past scholarship and reformatting or retooling them as new knowledge is created within the field. Both authors, in effect, take previous work and either expand upon the concepts, such as with Bawarshi, or reconceptualize a concept, as with Nowacek, thus solidifying these two theories within composition.

Works Cited

Bawarshi, Anis. “The Genre Function.” College English, Vol. 62, No. 3, Jan., 2000, pp. 335-360.

Nowacek, Rebecca S. “Transfer as Recontextualization.” Agents of Integration: Understanding Transfer as a Rhetorical Act, Studies in Writing and Rhetoric,  2011, 10-34.

Wardle, Elizabeth. “Mutt Genres” and the Goal of FYC: Can We Help Students Write the Genres of the University?” CCC, Vol. 60, No. 4  (June 2009), pp. 765-789.

References

Coxwell-Teague, Deborah and Ronald F. Lunsford. “Setting the Table: Composition in the Last Half of the Twentieth Century.” First-Year Composition From Theory to Practice. Anderson, South Carolina: Parlor Press, 2014. xiii-xxvii.

Crowley, Sharon. “Composition in the University.” Composition in the University Historical and Polemical Essays. Pittsburgh: U of Pittsburgh, 1998. Print. 1-18.

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