Teachers may develop their version of this course in several ways, although it should have at its core two primary objectives. First, the course should help students develop their skills at each stage of the writing process. Second, it should introduce students to the discourses of various academic communities and help them begin to develop the skills and versatility they need to be effective writers for these communities.
The writing-as-process approach to composition maintains that effective compositions are written in three overlapping stages: prewriting, writing, and rewriting. At each stage, writers employ a variety of skills. For example, in the prewriting stage, writers analyze, synthesize, relate, and generate ideas; in the writing stage, they translate ideas into written words and organize these words into a composition; in the rewriting stage, writers become critical readers and editors as they judge and then improve the effectiveness of what they have written. The progression from one stage to the next is not, however, a smooth one. Writers frequently return to prewriting activities after they begin to write, just as they may jump to rewriting activities before completing the first draft of an entire composition.
The best way for students to become comfortable with this writing process is to practice it. Teachers should give students an opportunity for this practice by designing assignment sequences that emphasize each stage of the writing process and by engaging students in small-group and whole-class tasks that focus on particular skills. In all of the units, students should have an opportunity to read classmates' drafts and to offer suggestions for revisions. Moreover, students should write in class almost every session.
Underlying English 102 is the premise that members of the different communities have different ways of knowing and that these ways of knowing shape the ways members of the communities write. For example, an anthropologist and an English professor may examine the same text, but their interpretations of the text and their presentations of these interpretations to their peers may differ significantly. Frequently, students are asked to write for professors from two, three, or even four different academic communities in the same semester. Before they can communicate effectively in all of these communities, they must become sensitive to the different ways of knowing and must learn to recognize how these ways of knowing shape writing conventions.
In addition, it's useful for students to recognize that two rhetorical positions significantly influence all writing: That is, writers are either insiders or outsiders vis-à-vis a given community. The resulting rhetorical relationships between writers and their audiences are straightforward and easily identifiable in most texts:
insider to insider
insider to outsider
outsider to outsider
outsider to insider
Of these four rhetorical relationships, the first three are the most common in real writing situations. In many classrooms, however, writing is used as a means of examination. Such use necessarily involves the last rhetorical relationship.
Finally, teachers need to understand that many professors ask students to adopt different rhetorical positions, depending on the nature of the course and the assignment. Some professors will ask students to develop a paper using the insider-to-insider rhetorical relationship because assuming the role of an insider is an important part of the initiation process of all disciplines. Other professors will do just the opposite, asking students to write as outsiders to outsiders. English 102 teachers, therefore, incorporate the following goals into your writing assignments and class activities:
- introduce students to the ways of knowing in different communities;
- illustrate how ways of knowing shape ways of writing;
- and give students opportunities to practice knowing and writing as members of the different communities.