Keywords: Identity

"Reexamining Basic Writing: Lessons From Harvard’s Basic Writers" by Cheryl Armstrong

Letters for the Living: Teaching Writing in a Violent Age by Michael Blitz and C. Mark Hurlbert

"Empowerment and the Problem of Identification and Resolution Strategies of Basic Writers" by Brenda M. Greene

"Negotiating the Contact Zone" by Joseph Harris

Representing the 'Other': Basic Writers and the Teaching of Basic Writing by Bruce Horner and Min-Zhan Lu

"The Reification of the Basic Writer" by George Jensen

Armstrong, Cherryl. "Reexamining Basic Writing: Lessons From Harvard’s Basic Writers." Journal of Basic Writing 7.2 (Fall 1988): 68-80.

Armstrong opens with the relativity of the definition of a Basic Writer, since Writers will only be Basic relative to the campus of which the student is a part. However, the need for, and justification of, Basic Writing programs is the same for Harvard as it is for Cal State. Armstrong’s gist is to argue that we should not look at problems in the written text, but at the conditions which caused the text to be written that way. She identifies nine basic writing problems:

• Lacking confidence in one’s ability to write.
• Having trouble getting started on writing tasks.
• Becoming easily discouraged during writing tasks.
• Composing by what Peter Elbow calls "the dangerous method,"(39-46) trying to get it right, paragraph by paragraph or line by line, the first time.
• Attempting to write a one-draft version of a paper.
• Thinking of writing assignments as tests one will either pass or fail.
• Trying to write down only what seems already clear or known rather than using writing as an aid to learning or to discovering ideas.
• Believing that one’s writing problems are primarily the fault of poor vocabulary, inadequate style, difficulty with "grammar," or the inability to write quickly.
• Having greater concern for form and appearance than for meaning in one’s writing.

Blitz, Michael and C. Mark Hurlbert. Letters for the Living: Teaching Writing in a Violent Age. Urbana, IL: NCTE, 1998.

The co-authors of Letters for the Living ask these questions: How can we "stop pretending that our real lives are secondary or irrelevant to the work of teaching? How can we make these stories [of students' and teachers' lives] . . . integral to creative, collaborative pedagogy? And how can we best involve our students in shared, collective projects that offer at least one less lonely, less overwhelming way for students to seek relevance for themselves?" (2). Blitz and Hurlbert's narrative structure--an interspersing of personal e-mails addressed to one another, samples of students' projects, and reflective pieces drawing on the authors' and others' thoughts--is itself an example of how our writing and teaching is connected to our personal lives.

Many of the authors' emails to one another center around the collaborative project they designed for their students. This project involves Blitz's students in Brooklyn writing to Hurlbert's students in Pittsburgh. The authors describe the frustrations and difficulties of such a project (e.g., how to assess the project, what to do if the paired students do not get along), but they agree that the overall outcome was positive: "During the course of the semester, the two groups developed a kind of friendship in which they taught each other about the places and ways in which they live. In many cases, what each learned about the other was surprising, sometimes shocking. In every case, correspondence between students was the favorite part of the class" (96).

Throughout the book, a reader gets the impression that the authors are compassionate, concerned teachers who struggle to engage their students in matters and ideas relevant to the students' lives. The co-authors agree that violence is, unfortunately, a large part of the students' everyday lives. Blitz and Hurlbert do consider the ethical dilemma involved in engaging students in such personal writing; however, they also agree that, as teachers, it would be unethical to ignore the violence that is part of their students' lives. Hurlbert tells Blitz, for instance, that the purpose of composition courses should be to "serve our students by helping them to address the important epistemological, political, and cultural needs of their and our day" (7). Both authors agree that "to ignore violence as a reality in the lives of our students and ourselves, to see peace and freedom as irrelevant goals of education, is to invite a living death into our classrooms, to encourage an insensitivity to living in the culture and a numbness to death" (22). Further, both authors acknowledge that teachers will probably be unprepared for what arises from engaging in such writing activities. However, they believe that teachers can and should instill a sense of social responsibility in their students. The collaborative project proposed and discussed by Blitz and Hurlbert seems to help instill this sense of responsibility, but not in a didactic way.

This book provides a good overview of the students' collaborative project, as well as a great deal of reflection on that project. It is certainly not just a "how-to" book describing how teachers can engage students in relevant collaborative projects with other groups; rather, the book provides an intense look at the ethical and intellectual problems and advantages of exploring personal, relevant issues in the writing classroom.

Greene, Brenda M. "Empowerment and the Problem of Identification and Resolution Strategies of Basic Writers." Journal of Basic Writing 11.2 (1992).

Greene’s theory of empowerment is based on the idea that basic writers become empowered when they realize they possess "strategies that will enable them to become more responsible for the evaluation of their own writing." In this article she provides information on research and scholarship by Shaughnessy, Bartholomae, Flower, Perl, and Hull, and uses this background to place her own research in the larger body of work. Greene conducted a case study of basic writers as they conducted self- and peer-reviews of their own writing and the writing of their classmates. Her analysis suggests that basic writers are capable of learning the reading and writing strategies that allow them to evaluate both surface errors and rhetorical problems in their own writing.

For basic writing instructors, Greene’s research suggests that it is necessary to offer basic writers the opportunity to make connections between knowledge they have of the language as users of that language and writing strategies they need to develop in order to become fluent writers of the language. The dichotomies of "knowing that" and "knowing how" (outlined by Bruner in Toward a Theory of Instruction) are at play in basic writers. While they have an intuitive awareness of problems in the texts they produce, the strategies they have for "correcting" those problems are limited. Greene suggests that basic writing instructors "should provide basic writers with opportunities to use their intuitive awareness about textual problems as a springboard for identifying recurring patterns in their own and peers’ writing and increase their knowledge about the structure of the language." Greene’s findings suggest that guiding the instruction of basic writing students in such a way as to allow them to develop their "knowing how" skills, and giving them the opportunity to write for real audiences, are the crucial elements of student empowerment.

Harris, Joseph. "Negotiating the Contact Zone." Journal of Basic Writing 14.1 (1995): 27-42.

Harris begins by suggesting that theories of teaching writing have, over the past twenty years, focused on the competing metaphors of growth, initiation, and conflict. Basic writers, in particular, have been viewed as being "stuck" at the low end of linguistic development; this view calls for basic writing courses designed to help them grow into linguistic adulthood. Such conclusions, however, ran counter to the experiences of many writing instructors; their students were articulate adults whose language "troubles" seemed to center on their unfamiliarity with academic discourse, not discourse in general. The goal of the writing instructor, then, is to initiate students into the peculiar ways texts are read and written at the university. Students need to learn how to shift from their familiar discourse strategies to those of the academic community. This led to another conflict, however: If students acquiring a new discourse are viewed as moving from one community to another, learning becomes equated with assimilation, acculturation, and conversion. If you want to become an insider, you have to leave your old self behind. This creates the third metaphor guiding writing theories: conflict.

Mary Louise Pratt's discussion of "contact zones" (spaces where conflicts between discourse communities are made visible) guides much of Harris' discussion. Harris finds fault with Pratt's perspective, however, because it does nothing to address the issue of community within the contact zone. Pratt's "importation" of difference into the classroom, through the use of multicultural texts, never addresses the issue of the differences (and commonalities) between the students who are discussing the texts. Students do not feel allegiance to the "contact zone" when it is not a space for dialogue and real exchange. What is missing, says Harris, is " the sense of how to make such a meeting of differences less like a battle and more like a negotiation. We need, that is, to learn not only how to articulate our differences but how to bring them into useful relation with each other" (35).

The politics of teaching is also at issue in the contact zone. Harris' concern is that only those who voice "politically correct" viewpoints and readings will be heard. Allowing the contact zone to exist as a forum for negotiation, intervention, and compromise creates the dynamic that allows it to become more of a process or event rather than a physical space. As such, it needs to be theorized as a local and shifting series of interactions among perspectives and individuals.

Such negotiation, intervention, and compromise can lead to a more valuable intellectual life, one that promotes a sense of what we all hold in common and focuses less on the conflict between individuals and groups. Harris calls for a more expansive view of intellectual life: "one that admits to the ways in which we are positioned by gender, race, and class, but that also holds out the hope of a more fluid and open culture in which we can choose the positions we want to speak from and for" (39).

Horner, Bruce, and Min-Zhan Lu. Representing the 'Other': Basic Writers and the Teaching of Basic Writing. Urbana, IL: NCTE, 1999.

Horner and Lu say that their essays written for this book "participate in an ongoing debate over how to represent basic writers and basic writing." The essays are divided into two broad categories. "Discoursing Basic Writing" contains essays that "situate Basic Writing in various discursive fields and historic moments to examine the complex material conditions mediating its production and reception." The second category, "Professing Basic Writing," contains two essays which attempt to apply the knowledge discussed in the first section to classroom teaching, focusing primarily on dealing with the concept of "error" in writing.

Essays from the first category include Horner's "The 'Birth' of Basic Writing," which discusses the impact of CUNY's Open Admissions policy. Horner describes this time, the early 1970s, as a time when Basic Writing emerged as "an academic field," and, according to many, revitalized and changed the field of composition in general. Unfortunately, Horner and others feel that the insights gained about composition and students at that time are "at risk of being lost," and must be re-learned within their full political context. As Horner writes, "Until discourse on the teaching of writing recovers the specific historical, material, institutional, and political context of that teaching and that discourse, it will be difficult for us to hear what study of the historical experience of literacy has to say, including the historical experience of basic writing, forcing us to re-learn what that history should have taught us long ago."

Lu's essay, "Importing 'Science': Neutralizing Basic Writing" discusses the powerful effect that science has had on defining Basic Writing. Lu notes that many social sciences during the 1970s accepted many of the practices and ideologies of science. Lu's essay "approaches Basic Writing's success in establishing itself as a legitimate academic field in terms of its ability to use 'science' to promote the 'objectivity' of teaching, research, and writing at an historical period and in classrooms where the dominant found issues of diversity and power most difficult to contain." Lu uses Mina Shaugnessy as an example of someone who maintains an "objective" tone when describing basic writers and uses "science" to support her arguments.

The essays contained in the second category of the book-"Rethinking the 'Sociality' of Error: Teaching Editing as Negotiation" and "Professing Multiculturalism: The Politics of Style in the Contact Zone"-attempt to view "error," a concept that has always remained at the forefront of the field of Basic Writing, "not as a phenomenon located on the page but a negotiated social power relationship between specific readers and writers."

Jensen, George H. "The Reification of the Basic Writer." Journal of Basic Writing 5.1 (Spring 1986): 52-64.

Jensen uses the MBTI indicator to demonstrate that there is no typical basic writer, in contrast to the common belief that the basic writer is more of a concrete thinker, little given to reflection or analysis. Rather, basic writers can be any personality. The danger in assuming a sameness in all basic writers is that our teaching methods may not be conducive to their learning methods. That is, we teach to individuals, not groups. Assuming that all basic writers are the same prevents us from adapting our teaching through lessons and assignments to the needs of these students. Furthermore, looking at the different personalities allows us to see strengths alongside the weaknesses of these writers.