Preparing to Teach Writing

Research, Theory, and Practice

James D. Williams

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781136180538
• Edition: 4
• Topic: Sprachen & Linguistik
• Subtopic: Kreatives Schreiben

Preparing to Teach Writing, Fourth Edition is a comprehensive survey of theories, research, and methods associated with teaching composition successfully at the middle, secondary, and college levels. Research and theory are examined with the aim of informing teaching. Practicing and prospective writing teachers need the information and strategies this text provides to be effective and well prepared for the many challenges they will face in the classroom.

Features

• Current—combines discussions and references to foundational studies that helped define the field of rhetoric and composition, with updated research, theories, and applications

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• Research based—thorough examination of relevant research in education, literacy, cognition, linguistics, and grammar

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• Steadfast adherence to best practices based on how students learn and on how to provide the most effective writing instruction
• A Companion Website provides sample assignments and student papers that can be analyzed using the research and theory presented in the text.
  

Part I
Research and Theory

1
Classical Foundations of Modern Writing Instruction

Defining Rhetoric

Writing teachers work closely with students, and we often become so focused on our daily responsibilities that we forget that what we do is embedded in a social and historical context. I believe that we cannot fully understand our work as writing teachers without some knowledge of the historical factors that shaped our profession. This chapter is intended to serve as a brief discussion of the rich tradition that informs our work, a tradition that is anchored in the ancient world of the Greeks and Romans.

As I hope to make clear, writing pedagogy emerged from the study and practice of rhetoric, an interesting term loaded with ambiguities. Consider: Speech that is insincere and doesn’t convey anything of substance we call “empty rhetoric.” Politicians who make appealing, but ultimately false, promises to voters in campaign speeches are said to use “political rhetoric” or “campaign rhetoric.” Books that purport to teach people how to write are also called “rhetorics,” and, at some colleges, composition courses are called “rhetoric courses.”

Given these various uses of rhetoric, it can be difficult to know what the word means, or even whether it means anything at all. The most well-known definition is Aristotle’s (c. 384–322 BC), from around 330 BC: Rhetoric is “an ability, in each [particular] case, to see the available means of persuasion” (Kennedy, 1991, p. 36). Foss and Griffin (1995) noted that as a result of this definition, rhetoric has long been linked to “the conscious intent to change others” (p. 2). Today, the focus on persuasion continues to be an important factor in any understanding of rhetoric, but modern perspectives have expanded considerably over the last several decades. For example, I recently asked a friend who teaches Advanced Placement English to define rhetoric, and she said it is “the art of making a piece of writing meaningful and effective.” I like her definition as a good starting point, but it seems incomplete. It ignores speaking, for example. A university colleague offered a much broader view some years ago when I visited his campus to give a lecture on contemporary rhetoric. After I presented a few historical definitions, he raised his hand and declared, “Well, it should be clear that rhetoric is everything.”

Greece and the Origins of Rhetoric

The view that rhetoric is everything has become popular even though its inclusiveness shifts the concept of rhetoric far beyond anything Aristotle and other historical figures imagined. For them, rhetoric was persuasive speech. Moreover, and arguably more important, it was intentional, associated with a specific state of mind that can be characterized as goal oriented. For those who followed, rhetoric became associated primarily with writing, the shift beginning in the 4th century AD. The oral emphasis diminished steadily over time, but intentionality did not until the modern period.

We can better understand the connection between rhetoric and writing by considering the origins of both. Before the development of writing, cultural traditions were preserved and communicated orally, commonly as poetry accompanied by music (Foley, 1991; Wiley, 2008). When and where writing emerged is uncertain. Numerous caves throughout Eastern Europe contain carved symbols, known as Vinca script, that have similar and repeating features that some scholars have classified as writing. These glyphs have been dated to around 5,000 BC (Griffen, 2007). Because we lack any means of matching the symbols to a known language—which would provide a translation manual—it is difficult to conclude that they represent writing rather than artwork. Consequently, there is greater consensus that the first writing appeared about 6,000 years ago in Mesopotamia (Aldred, 1984) or Egypt (Dreyer, 1998), and it appears to have been developed as a means of record keeping.

The advantages of literacy were so great that it spread quickly throughout the Mediterranean. Maisels (1990) argued that by around 2,300 BC, every household in the Middle East had “at least one person able to read, write, and calculate” (p. 121). Approximately 1,000 years later, however, widespread social upheaval brought about the collapse of civilizations throughout the region, and literacy was lost. As I’ve suggested elsewhere (Williams, 2009a), the Mediterranean peoples, plunged into a dark age, reverted to oral traditions following this loss and thereby managed to preserve and transmit their histories, morals, and social norms. Several hundred years passed before literacy began to reemerge, by which time orality was once again fully developed. Havelock (1963, 1986, 2005) contended that the philosopher Plato (c. 427–347 BC) lived during the transition period in which Greece was returning to a literate culture. If this analysis is correct—and many scholars believe it is—and if we consider that texts in the ancient world were read aloud, not silently, we can understand why Plato produced most of his work as dialogues and why he dismissed writing in Phaedrus as an impediment to memory.

The strength of the oral tradition is also evident in the word “rhetoric,” which is derived from rhêtor, a word used to describe a politician in ancient Greece who frequently made political speeches in governing assemblies. These speeches were intended to persuade audiences to support particular policies and issues under consideration. When the derivation appeared is a matter of debate. Some scholars have proposed that it occurred around 467 BC in the Greek city of Syracuse, attributing the term to the teacher Corax, who began offering classes on how to win legal cases (Enos, 1993; Kennedy, 1980). Cole (1991) and Schiappa (1999, 2003), on the other hand, argued that there is no evidence to support this claim. Indeed, their research found that the term rhetoric does not exist anywhere in classical Greek literature before Plato wrote his dialogue Gorgias around 385 BC. Given the long history of political and legal deliberations in the Greek city-states, Pendrick (1998) proposed that Plato’s use of the term rhetoric in Gorgias does not constitute the invention of the term but rather is merely a reference to an existing “discipline concerned with the techniques of persuasive speech” (p. 23). The debate remains unsettled.

Greek Education ¹

By around 400 BC, literacy throughout Greece and the Mediterranean was spreading rapidly, not only owing to the needs of an advancing society but also owing to the concomitant growth of education, upon which our own education system is largely based. As Marrou (1982) noted, at age 6, boys began studying with a grammaticus, or grammar teacher. Girls were taught at home. (Females, with the exception of those in Sparta and Lesbos, were significantly restricted so as to limit their contact with males who were not kin.) In these “grammar schools,” children learned the alphabet and went on to study reading, writing, music, and arithmetic. After finishing the elementary level, children entered the secondary level, graduating at around age 16 (Raaflaub, 1983). Young men in Athens then entered 2 years of compulsory military service, after which those with the financial means could go on to advanced studies, an option that became more practicable after Plato founded his Academy around 387 BC and the philosopher Isocrates (c. 436–338 BC) opened a competing school 3 years later.

As Greek society developed, there was a demand for better teachers, and a small group emerged, many from Ionia (what is present-day Turkey) to meet it. They were known as Sophists—from the Greek word for wisdom, sophia. Instruction emphasized poetry. The reason is that poetry had a far more important place in ancient societies than it has in our own. With its links to the oral tradition, poetry was a performative act central to daily life. Over time, the Sophists created the technical vocabulary necessary for describing language, giving us not only the concepts and language for nouns, verbs, prepositions, and so forth, but also producing the vocabulary necessary to analyze poetry. Ford (2002) illustrated the process, noting that throughout most of the 5th century BC, the word metron was used in the simple sense of “a unit of measure.” Toward the end of the 5th and then more frequently in the 4th century, as education and literacy expanded, we find metron being used to describe poetic meter. But this usage had not yet become the norm, as illustrated “by a scene of higher education in Aristophanes’ Clouds (first performed in 423 BC), where understanding such matters as ‘dactyls’ and ‘meters’… is beyond the ken of a yokel… who naturally takes metra as referring to bushels and pecks” (p. 18).

From Plato’s dialogues as well as the extant fragments of Sophistic writing, we see that the Sophists did not focus their poetry instruction on rhyme and meter. Throughout the Greek-speaking world, knowledge of poetry and the ability to produce poetry were associated with ideals of virtue (aretê)—both personal and civic. Instruction therefore aimed to instill in students poetry’s important lessons in virtue, honor, courage, duty, and sacrifice. Studying the Iliad and Odyssey, in other words, was believed to help students become better people.

Grammar was an important part of a child’s education, which should strike us as strange in a culture that was still largely oral. Although recent histories of education and rhetoric propose that concern over a perceived decline in language skills is a modern phenomenon (e.g., Fleming, 2011), they are incorrect. Greeks as a whole believed that their culture and language had been in decline since the Heroic Age of Homer’s great warriors: Achilles, Ajax, Odysseus. For evidence of this decline, they had only to look at the beautiful language of Homer’s epic poems and compare it to their own.

Another important goal of education, therefore, was to stem the linguistic decline. Greeks believed that the study of grammar would accomplish this goal. This is a pedagogy that teachers everywhere today are familiar with, although the modern aim is to improve students’ writing, whereas the ancient aim was to improve speech. Students studied Homer’s language, analyzing passages using the newly minted grammatical terminology to identify nouns, verbs, prepositions, etc. The idea was that this study would improve children’s language so that it resembled Homer’s. Taken literally, the result would be a society in which everyone spoke in verse, which seems a dubious outcome. On a more serious note, these epic poems were written between 800 and 700 BC, and Homer’s language was measurably different from the Greek spoken during the 4th century BC.

Quite simply, the pedagogy didn’t work. Steeping students in the Iliad and Odyssey did not turn them into virtuous young men or heroes, and grammar instruction did nothing to stop or even slow down changes to the Greek language, much less revert it to the language spoken during the Heroic Age. In Chapter Four, we will examine why grammar instruction failed then and fails today, but at this point, it is enough to note how little education has changed in this regard over the last 2,500 years.

Rhetoric in Greek Government and Law

Democracy in ancient Greece was direct, not representative, and all male citizens of a democratically governed city were allowed to take part in decisions. In such a system, speaking ability was very important. A dynamic speaker could exert significant influence on political decisions. Greek society, especially in Athens, was also very litigious. The leader Demosthenes (384–322 BC) reportedly was sued more than a hundred times. The courts were used as political weapons to subvert the authority and popularity of one leader after another. There were no lawyers, no state prosecutors; instead, citizen complainants and defendants had the burden of prosecution and defense, pleading their cases before juries that ranged in size from 500 to 1500 citizens. Although witness testimony was allowed, it was often suspect owing to the frequency of bribery. The weight of a case, therefore, rested on the speaking ability and persuasive force of the principals.

Sophists saw an opportunity and expanded their teaching to include rhetoric— basic instruction at the secondary level, advanced instruction at the postsecondary level for those who could afford it. Although Plato and Isocrates offered conflicting reports on fees (Plato claiming that they were high, Isocrates that they were low), they probably were at least beyond the reach of many men who nevertheless aspired to political influence or who anxiously faced a day in court. Some Sophists therefore enhanced their income as legal speech writers (logographoi), producing written set-pieces that could be adapted to individual cases. A defendant in court would study the written speech and trust to his memory when appearing before the jury.

Their work in the legal realm earned the Sophists, as a group, a questionable reputation. They were criticized for taking money and, through their teaching and speech writing, for successfully defending people who did not deserve to win in court. To the dismay of many Athenians, Sophists had the ability to make even ridiculous claims seem reasonable, turning traditional concepts of truth and justice upside down. Their facile cleverness seemed at odds with sophia.

Although various Sophists apparently sought to deflect these criticisms by claiming that in the course of their work they also taught students virtue, it seems that few critics were persuaded. Many Greeks came to believe that Sophists used rhetoric to obscure the truth rather than to discover it—and that they taught their students to do the same. This was the accusation Plato leveled against them repeatedly in his Socratic dialogues, and the Sophists, as well as rhetoric, were never able to free themselves entirely of the impression that they deceived, as well as pandered, to audiences. Even Aristotle, who certainly was not an enemy of rhetoric or Sophists, claimed in The Art of Rhetoric (Technê rhêtorikê) that Protagoras, and by implication all Sophists, made “the worse appear the better argument” (1402a).² Aristophanes’ play The Clouds provides an example of this charge in action. The main character, Strepsiades, has been driven into debt by his wastrel son. Hearing that Sophists teach students how to make the worse case seem the better, Strepsiades goes to the Thinkery, home of Socrates, the city’s most notorious Sophist, to learn how to cheat his creditors. Although Socrates readily provides instruction, Strepsiades proves to be a dull student and is expelled.

Aristotle on Rhetoric

Aristotle became a student at Plato’s Academy around 367 BC. Brilliant and innovative, he stayed on at the school as a teacher after completing his studies. George A. Kennedy (1991) suggested that Aristotle probably began offering classes on rhetoric in the late 350s BC (ironic, given Plato’s several broadsides against rhetoric and rhetoricians). If his assessment is correct, Aristotle would have immersed himself in the topic so as to provide his students with the training they needed to become leaders in a society that held public-speaking ability in high esteem.

When Plato died in 347 BC, Aristotle would have been...