…so here’s my post:
It’s funny that Emig was reporting on students being unable to move out of the prescripted five-paragraph essay into different forms that fit their inquiry more authentically. 35 years later, I’m still telling my students to think beyond that. When will this end?
I do see the good in the 5-paragraph form for teaching students how to write a constructive analysis or argument. It shows them that they must be able to extend an argument and have sufficient background material. I wonder if it is just a step in growing as a writer – overcoming that comfortable model – that all writers will have to face in the later grades in high school and in college. Is that just now a natural progression?
I also wonder why boys are more hesitant to be reflexive in their writing. Is it because the assignment or the person handing out the assignment doesn’t strike them? Or is it in their nature as boys? Nature or nurture? I know there’s lots written about the literacy practices of boys, but a thought…
Emig’s comments about the boys resisting the reflexive writing caught my attention, too. As did the whole bit about the students not wanting to write about their feelings. It’s easy for us to generalize and fall into the narrative of arguing that girls/women will write about connections and men/boys about individual achievement. There is actually a lot of early research on gender and composing that suggest these kinds of responses. Of course, this work has been severely questioned for its essentializing of gendered traits. But Emig is trying to note an actual phenomenon that she witnessed: the boys didn’t really want to do this assignment. She speculates that it might have something to do with her being a woman, noting that maybe they have been associations with female teachers. I love Susan Miller’s comments that female writing teachers can get read as being Barbarella or as the nurse maid. Or as the uncomfortable female researcher experiencing sexist responses from male research “subjects.”
Anyway, I don’t have the answers to your response to Immy, and I think Emig’s response is a pretty honest one: she tries to figure out what makes the boys resist that kind of writing.
Comment by Eileen E. Schell — October 1, 2006 @ 9:17 pm |