Engaging Ideas. John C. Bean
portfolio assessment or contract grading. Portfolios, almost by definition, ensure significantly revised work. Similarly, teachers using contract grading can build evidence of global revision into the contract requirements. See chapter 16 for a full discussion of portfolio assessment and contract grading.
Conclusion: The Implications of Writing as a Means of Thinking in the Undergraduate Curriculum
As this chapter has tried to show, teaching problem‐based analytical and argumentative writing means teaching the thinking processes that underlie academic inquiry. To use writing as a means of thinking, teachers need to make the design of writing assignments a significant part of course preparation and to adopt teaching strategies that give students repeated, active practice at exploring disciplinary questions and problems. Additionally, it is important to emphasize inquiry, question asking, and cognitive dissonance in courses and, whenever possible, to show that scholars in a discipline often disagree about answers to key questions. By teaching a problem‐driven model of the writing process, teachers send a message to the Skylers of the world that good writing is not a pretty package for disguising ignorance. Rather it is a way of discovering, making, and communicating meanings that are significant, interesting, and challenging.
Note
1 * From Miniature Guide to Critical Thinking Concepts and Tools by Richard Paul and Linda Elder, 2009, Dillon Beach, CA: Foundation for Critical Thinking Press, p. 2. www.criticalthinking.org. Used by permission.
3 Helping Writers Think Rhetorically
Some years ago John had the opportunity to participate in a statewide assessment of student writing in upper division courses across the curriculum. Researchers collected several hundred papers written by juniors and seniors from a wide range of disciplines at six public universities. The goal for this first‐stage project was descriptive: determining what kinds of papers students were being asked to write and classifying them by whatever categories seemed to emerge. What John and his fellow researchers discovered as they puzzled over many of the papers was that they should have asked for an assignment sheet to be attached to each paper.
John and his fellow researchers' confusion indicated that students were not thinking rhetorically about their purpose or the needs of their audience. Without the assignments, the researchers struggled to understand what many of the papers were doing. Students tended to write directly to the teacher, whose background knowledge the researchers didn't share. The researchers were plopped down in the middle of a conversation to which they hadn't been introduced. As outside readers, they needed papers with effective titles that identified the subject and promised some new or contestable perspective on the subject. They also needed introductions that explained the problem to be addressed, filled in needed background, and offered some kind of thesis statement or purpose statement to indicate the writer's intentions and to forecast the argument.
Clearly students across the disciplines were not being coached to transfer into their upper division writing the rhetorical knowledge introduced in first‐year composition. A goal of most first‐year composition programs is to show students how a writer's decisions are often functions of the writer's rhetorical situation—the writer's purpose, audience, and genre. Particularly, expert writers pose the following kinds of questions about their rhetorical context:
Who are my intended readers?
How much do my readers already know and care about my topic? What is their stance toward my topic?
What is my purpose for writing? What kind of change do I want to bring about in my readers' understanding of my topic? When my readers finish my paper, what do I want them to know, believe, or do?
What genre is most appropriate for my context? What are the features and constraints of this genre? What style, level of language, and document design does this genre require?
How is the genre shaped by the values and expectations of the community of readers and writers who make up the audience (the “discourse community”)?
Our goal in this chapter and the next is to suggest ways that disciplinary instructors can help students practice these rhetorical skills when they write papers in any field. In chapter 3, we introduce the concept of “rhetorical situation,” which includes “purpose,” “audience,” “genre,” and “discourse community.” In chapter 4 we expand on these concepts and provide ideas for designing formal assignments set within authentic rhetorical situations. Scholarship has shown that helping students situate their writing within a rhetorical context helps them transfer knowledge from one writing situation to another (Anson and Moore, 2017; Beaufort, 2007; Carroll, 2002; Carter, 2007). When students learn to wrestle with questions about purpose, audience, genre, and discourse community, they develop a conceptual view of writing that has lifelong usefulness in any communicative context.
Helping Students Think about Audience and Purpose
An important difference between novice and expert writers is that experts think about audience early in the writing process whereas novices don't (see Sommers's classic study, 1980). Closely related to audience is the concept of purpose. One way to think about purpose is through the writer's aim—such as to inform, explain, analyze, persuade, reflect, entertain, and so forth. But another useful way to understand purpose is to articulate the kind of change the writer hopes to bring about in the readers' view of the topic. Instructors can help students understand purpose in this way by having them do the following nutshell exercise while planning their papers:
Before reading what I write, my readers will think this way about my topic: ________________________________________________________
But after reading what I write, my readers will think this different way about my topic: __________________________________________________
Here are some examples:
Before reading my analysis essay, my readers will think that Beloved is a novel about the past injustices of slavery. But after reading my essay, my readers will see that Toni Morrison's novel confronts the past as a way of healing the racial climate of the present.
Before reading my science blog for kids, my readers will think that summer is hotter than winter because the earth is closer to the sun. But after reading my blog, they will see that summer is hotter than winter because the tilt of the earth's axis causes the “summer hemisphere” to receive more concentrated overhead sun rays and the “winter hemisphere” to receive more slanted, diffused sun rays.
Before reading my op‐ed piece, my readers will think that wind power is a viable alternative energy source for the Pacific Northwest. But after reading my op‐ed, my readers will see that wind power cannot provide this region with more than a small percentage of its electricity needs.
Before reading our experimental report, our readers will be agnostic about the comparative level of gender stereotyping in 1940s Mickey Mouse cartoons and recent SpongeBob SquarePants cartoons. After reading our report, readers will see that SpongeBob SquarePants cartoons have significantly less gender stereotyping.
Articulating purpose in this way is particularly valuable in settings calling for thesis‐governed prose. When the thesis pushes against an alternative view, it creates the kind of tension encouraged by Graff and Birkenstein's (2009) template “They say/I say.” Because the writer must support a contestable thesis against a background of what others say, readers can appreciate that something is at stake in the argument. Moreover, articulating purpose in terms of changing the audience's view is an