In Richard Fulkerson`s “Four Philosophies of Composition” he creates 4 categories in which there are 4 ways to teach and evaluate writing. The four categories are formalist, expressionist, mimetic and rhetorical. The formalist category prioritizes grammar and “correctness”, focusing more on technical accuracy. Expressionist, my favorite, focuses on the personal voice of the writer and self discovery. Though this is my favorite it is hard to grade this type of writing. They don’t exactly have a rubric that fits the bill. Mimetic, which pays focus to logic reasoning and research. Gross, but an easier one to grade. Lastly, rhetorical, which prioritizes the audience and purpose, focusing on the ability to achieve an intended effect on readers. Also something hard to grade or measure.
I thought this was a great way to categorize writing. In my opinion I can see how grading expressionstic and rhetoric writing can be difficult, especially with lower grade levels, where you have to specifically justify grades by limiting them to a box on a rubric. Fulkerson argues that teachers mix these up by assigning one type and grading by another. I can see that as being a realistic issue being that, like I previously stated, grading is more rigid than some of the more fluid categories. This reading interested me the most this week simply because I have a gripe with how much time I am forced to spend on writing that falls into the category of formalist.
Fulkerson goes on in the second reading, “Composition Theory in the Eighties: Axiological Consensus and Paradigmatic Diversity”, where he examines writing in the 1980s. He argues that at that time the field put more value on the rhetorical approach. He also argued that there were things that remained fragmented in how to teach writing. I feel like we might be able to relate to that now in a sense. Students are writing for the audience and almost solely the audience, the teacher. Which, as we can see, is causing major issues and the students are lacking skills in the other categories. Now, we think we have some form of teaching students how to write, but again, whatever we are doing in lower level grades, is not working.
Fulkerson then goes on to look at the shift composition studies in “Composition at the Turn of the Twenty-First Century”. He argues that writing has become more “less unified and more contentious”. I think maybe I can agree with that on a college level, somewhat. In K-12 writing is still VERY MUCH UNIFIED. Fulkerson ultimately is questioning whether the divergence is good or bad for the discipline and I really don’t know the answer to that. I guess whatever mix we are doing is not working though.
James Berlin`s piece, Rhetoric and Ideology in the Writing Class” examines the relationship between rhetoric and ideology. He argues that there are 3 categories for rhetorical approaches in writing; cognitive, expressionistic and social- epistemology. I think the categories are fair and cover all bases. I agree with Berlin in the sense that writing instruction must acknowledge its ideological commitments, however, when do we start that? Are k-12 students writing this way?
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