In “College Writing and Beyond A Framework for University Writing Instruction” Anne Beaufort suggests a new strategy for teaching writing at the university level. She emphasizes that learning the traditional way to write is useless to the life we live as adults. She stresses a more social approach to teaching writing, in different environments and for various purposes. She provides actual unit plans with details and assignments for each unit.
I found this reading to be 1 easy to follow and understand exactly what she’s talking about. It’s nice to have an academic reading that is not painful to digest (I might be biased because I can relate to her views). I find it hard to understand how teaching writing is not thought of in a social way. Writing and speaking go hand in hand. Teaching college students to write for their audience is the most important aspect of writing (in my opinion). If you can figure out how to write for your audience you can fluff things, research others and really put together good pieces. I appreciated how she took the time to create the units, with detailed assignments, to represent what she feels should be taught. I have never seen this before. It’s almost as if she’s not giving any room for someone to argue her points. Looking over the unit plans, I feel like she understands the way a classroom works. A lot of times when I am shown a sample or suggestive unit they appear too out of touch, like the person who is creating the plan has no clue how a classroom actually operates.
I teach middle school now so unfortunately these plans do not apply directly to me, yet. I guess ? I hope. Of course I can not help but think about my middle school students and notice that they DO NOT write from a social view at all. Part of me thinks it might still be a little too early for them to start writing like that full time because they are still learning but high school students definitely should have shifted their writing from “5 paragraph essay” writing to writing for life. I`m not sure how we, as a society, got to the point where we learn how to do something just to benefit us for the moment. It seems weird. Almost like working towards a goal that is not yours to begin with.
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