Students learn writing globally

KS: Talk about writing. This is something that we do without thinking when conferencing with our students. We do it because we want interaction with our students. The talk helps transfer what the student is thinking about doing and consequently putting on paper. It’s a no-brainer. Freedman and Katz tell us that the discourse “becomes part of the writing process itself.” This part of the writing process is an obvious element. I conference with students because it makes sense to me. Dialogue is the natural connection between student and teacher. Their “normal everyday conversation” is not so normal. As Sacks, Schegloff and Jefferson argue, the students define what is normal and if the teacher can not interpret what is deemed normal with the students, the dialogue is lost and the connection between the talk and composition is lost. Depending on the day and mood of the students, the tripartite conveyed to the students by the teacher can be lost by the direction the students take it. The analyzing of conversation, exchange of information and even the ethnography is an interesting combination of factors that I normally don’t connect with composition. The pragmatic theory makes sense since it’s the interpretation between student, teacher and composition that needs to be understood to make good reading. Any one can talk and project thoughts, but it’s the art of composition that should be cherished as good rather than the “abstract, artificial and bad connotation that it can be identified as having as its discourse.
LA is again deep and investigative. The idea of research is intriguing, but the deep qualitative research and experiments described in LA are less than inviting. I’m so jealous of those of you who know what they’re getting at because I read as though I’ll never figure out which experiment will work when and why.