Composition: Creativity or Mechanics

In their essay on prewriting, Gordon Rohman and Albert Wlecke tackle the problem of writing instruction. Like nearly every modern essay read for this class so far, the theorists highlight the failure of freshman comp courses to produce competent writers by attacking the rigorous focus of writing instruction. Rather than recommending copious amounts of practice or workshoping, Rhoman and Wlecke make case for focusing on how writing students link concepts in order to produce effective writing.
The authors being by quoting Jerome Bruner’s explanation of expository and hypothetical learning: “[in the expository mode] decisions concerning the mode and pace and style of exposition are principally determined by the teacher….But in the hypothetical mode the teacher and the student are in a more cooperative position with respect to what in linguistics would be called ‘speaker’s decisions’.” By giving assignments with prescribed topics, forms, and styles, the traditional composition teacher is removing the student from his own writing. Rohman and Wlecke believe that the key to producing better writers is to allow them to engage in the process s of writing by making their own creative decisions. By allowing students to participate in the formation of their assignments, teachers are assisting them in acquiring the skills needed to become an effective writer.
The main skill acquired in this process is “concept transference”. Over time, the writer will learn to “discover within himself a pattern with which to organize his ideas…and permit him to describe a new situation my inferring that it is like and old one.” (218-219) As teachers, it is our job to guide our students and to encourage them to find these conceptual patterns organically.
The emphasis on the creative process rather than the mechanics of writing is interesting. Most of the other essays that we read focused on teaching students how to write rather then on how to form ideas. Knowing how to construct a paragraph or write a thesis statement is important, but how would a student form an argument if he did not know how to explore his topic. Now, most of us writers would love to spend entire courses exploring how we think about connections and how we discover in the writing process, but an argument can be made this is not an entirely practical approach. The theories that Rohman and Wlecke advance seem like a bit of a tall order for a composition course. It partially comes down to what you think the focus of a composition class should be. Should we teach students nondisciplinary skills such as grammar, style, and form and leave the actual idea formation to discipline specific courses? Or should the composition course teach critical thinking skills that will be reinforced by more upper level courses? These questions and the place of the composition course within the university system is highly debate by nearly all of the authors that we read. Unfortunately, each essay so far has come to slightly different conclusion.

I Work for Cicero

I had a very interesting conversation with my boss today. He called to ask how class was going, and we ended up talking about sophism. After last night's class, I wondered exactly how much I am guilty of sophism on a daily basis. As a collector, it is my job to win the argument. Every day I get on the phone and convince people to give me money. When I presented this to my boss, he had a different analysis of the situation. Quintilian believed that in order to become a successful orator, one has to have good intentions or ideas behind his argument. My boss argued that we are not sophists because we do have a goal. I argued that we are sophists because collecting money is probably not what Quintilian had in mind when he spoke of good men and good intentions.

As a part of our daily jobs, we do not make judgments about the situation of a client or a debtor. Our focus is clear and single minded. We need to quickly access the kind of person that we are speaking with and what the best way will be to influence that person, regardless of how we may feel or think about the debtor's situation.

When I train my team, I don't teach them emotion. I teach them technique. I teach them to analyze a caller's tone of voice, work choice, and responses to find the best way to win the argument, to find the best way to get the money. I teach them how to use the caller's reason for not paying to form their argument about why he should. Ultimately, we are successful if the caller responds to our argument. That is not to say that we are unethical or that we are not happy when the caller's best interest coincides with our client's, but our focus is primarily the art rather than the content.

Obviously, I am getting Cicero's theory tangled up in sophism, but the general idea stands. My boss argued that the fact that we have a goal clears us of any allegations of sophism and its negative connotations. I responded that it is not that simple. Our job as collection agents is predicated on the ability to divorce our emotions from the topic and create a practical argument, which I believe plants us in the sophist camp.