Introduction to writing studies

CCC 58:4 / JUNE 2007

Douglas Downs and Elizabeth Wardle

Teaching about Writing, Righting Misconceptions: (Re)Envisioning “First-Year Composition” as “Introduction to Writing Studies”

In this article we propose, theorize, demonstrate, and report early results from a course that approaches first-year composition as Introduction to Writing Studies. This pedagogy explicitly recognizes theimpossibility of teaching a universal academic discourse and rejects that as a goal for first-year composition. It seeks instead to improve students’ understanding of writing, rhetoric, language, and literacy in a course that is topically oriented to reading and writing as scholarly inquiry and that encourages more realistic conceptions of writing.

F

irst-year composition (FYC) is usuallyasked to prepare students to write across the university; this request assumes the existence of a “universal educated discourse” (Russell, “Activity Theory”) that can be transferred from one writing situation to another. Yet more than twenty years of research and theory have repeatedly demonstrated that such a unified academic discourse does not exist and have seriously questioned what students canand do transfer from one context to another (Ackerman, Berkenkotter and Huckin, Carter, Diller and Oates, Kaufer and Young, MacDonald, Petraglia, Russell “Activity Theory”). However, for all practical purposes, writing studies as a field has
CCC 58:4 / JUNE 2007 552 Copyright © 2007 by the National Council of Teachers of English. All rights reserved.

DO WNS AND WARDLE / TEACHING ABOUT WRITINGlargely ignored the implications of this research and theory and continued to assure its publics (faculty, administrators, parents, industry) that FYC can do what nonspecialists have always assumed it can: teach, in one or two early courses, “college writing” as a set of basic, fundamental skills that will apply in other college courses and in business and public spheres after college1. Inmaking these unsupportable assurances to stakeholders, our field reinforces cultural When we continue to pursue the goal of misconceptions of writing instead of at- teaching students “how to write in college” tempting to educate students and publics in one or two semesters—despite the fact out of those misconceptions. When we that our own scholarship extensively calls continue to pursue the goal ofteaching stu- this possibility into question—we silently dents “how to write in college” in one or support the misconceptions that writing is two semesters—despite the fact that our not a real subject, that writing courses do not own scholarship extensively calls this posrequire expert instructors, and that rhetoric sibility into question—we silently support the misconceptions that writing is not aand composition are not genuine research real subject, that writing courses do not areas or legitimate intellectual pursuits. require expert instructors, and that rhetoric and composition are not genuine research areas or legitimate intellectual pursuits. We are, thus, complicit in reinforcing outsiders’ views of writing studies as a trivial, skill-teaching nondiscipline. Though we complain aboutpublic misconceptions of writing and of our discipline, our field has not seriously considered radically reimagining the mission of the very course where misconceptions are born and/or reinforced; we have not yet imagined moving first-year composition from teaching “how to write in college” to teaching about writing—from acting as if writing is a basic, universal skill to acting as if writingstudies is a discipline with content knowledge to which students should be introduced, thereby changing their understandings about writing and thus changing the ways they write. Here we champion such a radical move by proposing, theorizing, demonstrating, and reporting early results from an “Intro to Writing Studies” FYC pedagogy. This pedagogy explicitly recognizes the impossibility of teaching a...