"I'm gonna express so hard." - John M.
Expressivism may be a better base for other kinds of writing, a way in that enables writing students to develop an emotional commitment to the act and performance. However, for as freeing as expressivism might be for some, given its perceived lack of arbitrary rules, it may be just as important to develop standards without being prescriptive.
I'm reminded of guiding ENG 112 last semester. For the first major, traditional writing assignment, I asked each student to put together a pecha kucha presentation. Despite the 20/20 constraints and the minimalism of presenting in this way, I stressed to students the freedom they had, offering personal narrative as one of many options. I attempted explaining to them that the PK could serve any number of ends for them, from how and why to what and where. In other words, I framed the PK as an expressive opportunity, but one that was part of the overall process of the larger, traditional writing assignment.
Given this frame, I shouldn't have been too surprised that some students simply turned in the script for their PK as the first draft of what was supposed to be a research essay. Either I didn't draw enough separation between the PK and the research essay as independent, but connected acts of writing or students just neglected to acknowledge it. Perhaps there was some confusion between ethos and persona, much like the kind Roger Cherry describes.
It's unfortunate that class this past week didn't get into much of that discussion, but I understand why. I wanted to make sure we gave enough time to the discussion of expressivism, even with a student-led facilitation about it. There were almost too many worthwhile comments made about expressivism, so I want to point to students' blogs as they contain similar thoughts (both in the original posts and in the subsequent comments, too).
the personal voice of a writer doesn't need to be labeled as romantic, just personal and I don't think that it discourages or excludes academic discourse. On Twitter, I asked why not both? Can we not have both personal voice as well as academic discourse in a paper?
The class being the official judge of the writing. Students are students for a reason. They are there to learn. I do not nessicarily agree with this.
I give you my best ink splattered pages and what do you give me in return? You give me a voice—a voice in my head that answers, that talks back but also one that questions.
Writing is a combination of a few different techniques and variables, much like completing a puzzle. What a teacher/professor needs to do is to find what the benefits and limitations of each theory of writing. The teacher should also know what genres of writing will benefit the most from the different theories and practices.
If we can find a way to weave the student’s own expressive thoughts in conjunction with his or her peers I think this can lead to “mastering new dialects…not abandoning the old, because our native tongue is always the means for understanding new ones
Consider the appeal of blogs, letters, journals/diaries and speeches. Such things are written from a personal point of view, usually in order to gain support for some cause or to deposit frustations or explain hopes and dreams. A little voice goes a long way, because in being comfortable with what one is writing, one may be able to construct a better argument.
After we've gotten the students to understand that their experience is helpful in writing, at some point if they're not strong in it already, we do have to get them ready to deal with specific audiences they might be writing to, and to be sure they're writing is technically correct as well.
Before we can address the writing process with students, I think we need to re-educate them on how to approach school. Because I think the writing process, as many have stated on their blogs, is something we sort discover on our own.
By helping students understand themselves they can exist in a community with more knowledge and in turn professors also learn a new perspective they may have never once been introduced to in the past.
As writing teachers, we need to be careful if/when asking for experiences that students haven't had, that expressivism can (should?) be a potential layer over process and/or chosen when deemed necessary. Prewriting's perhaps the most obvious point of inclusion for expressivism, but the week's readings also reveal some promise for the purposes of revision.
Still, I'm curious if our thoughtful reactions to expressivist notions will occur in relation to rhetoricla, feminist, and other theories we've yet to read about and discuss. Is each theory of teaching writing simply layered on process? Or is posing such a question, in which these theories are "just layers," unfair?
Also, is Sean Connery an expressivist? Evidence: