You have been assigned to a "mystery text" from Linda Flower's composition textbook, Problem Solving Strategies for College and Community. These sample texts come from different discourse communities, including academic discourse published in journals and student writing for courses as well as popular journalism and professional writing. Read your mystery text and decide: Is it an example of "academic discourse" or not? Was it written by a professor, a graduate student, an undergraduate, or a nonacademic writer? Make a note of at least three features of each text that you saw as "tip-offs."
In your response, please note whether this text fits your group's definition of academic discourse from last week's posting on Bartholomae's "Inventing the University." If not, does your group need to revise your definition in some way?
Post your response as a comment here; please remember to identify the text number in your posting.
After you have finished, compare your responses to those of other groups. Which features did you look for to evaluate these mystery texts? Do these features reveal important similarities or differences among our collective mental images of "academic discourse"? What is the focus of your image: words, rules, and local stylistic features, or rhetorical ones? Do these mystery texts let you speculate on different ways people in this particular discourse community--academic discourse--seem to use writing?
With these questions in mind, post a response to at least one other group's posting.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
13 comments:
Catherine, Susan
Mystery Text 1: Looking at a finished paper, a reader has no feel for what went on before. But for a writer, first drafts and throwaways are all a part of the final work. Revision for many writers can be a way to reevaluate their thinking.
This text seems to be a part of academic discourse. The language used is specialized, or written for a specific audience. The writer shows an understanding of the writing process. And from the language used we feel that the writer could be a professor or grad student with an understanding of the writing process. Another part of academic discourse is the invention of authority and this text shows that.
mystery text 5
We felt that this was academic discourse. We debated whether the author was a graduate or undergraduate student. Our concensus was that the writer is an undergraduate student.
3 features of this that led to this conclusion:
1) comparison to painters in his writing, he knew this style.
2) the writing isn't quite as polished as a more advanced writer would be. Repetition and run on sentences seem to be a problem
3)The writer is attempting to participate in a discource community, to use the established conventions.
Our definition of discourse would include this type of writing. There is an attempt by the writer to participate in the discourse community. He is trying to add to the knowledge base, his comment invites response from others.
Luke
Tara
Jake
published the above summary
Mystery Text #6
Jeanne and Katie
We believe that this is an example of "academic discourse" because this individual seems to be searching for knowledge and taking part in a discourse community. As we learned from Bartholomae, academic discourse can take form in journals, websites, or novels. Like these types of writing, this piece appears to be informal. It is not written in any formal jargon.
This piece was probably written by an undergraduate student because he/she is making good points but they could be better developed. It seems like this individual is trying mimic writers in this discourse community. Although the content seems good, there are a few grammatical errors and there are no formal terms or definitions.
Sydney, Kara, Lindsay
Mystery Text #2
Yes, this is academic discourse; probably just an undergraduate student responding to another’s research, not a professor presenting a new idea or argument. Some tips offs include the vocabulary such as, “Recent Research…” It sounds more like the authority of a student in an academic situation, not a theorist. The text sounds like paraphrased version of Perl’s argument on skilled and unskilled writers and does not include the writer’s own idea or opinion. The writing invokes a general educated audience, but not a specialized one on the topic of discourse and composition.
While the writer has an understanding of the theory and is presenting it as academic discourse, they do not include or contribute any of their own ideas. Mystery text two is academic discourse, but a lower level of it.
It appears that several students in this class used the same features we did to evaluate our mystery text. We looked at features such as specialized language, authorative position, and understanding of the writing process.
It seems like other groups had trouble determining whether or not their pieces were written by graduate/undergraduate students. Just because the ideas are there doesn't mean the piece was written by a graduate student. Alternatively, just because the writing style was poor doesn't mean it was written by an undergraduate.
Stephen, Crystal, & Meghann
We think it is an academic writing from a graduate student. The three tip-offs are: subject matter (revision), language ("power of revision", "establishments asserts"), and audienced implied is used to someone interested in Composition Theory.
We believe that it comes from a graduate student because it reads like a thesis. The use of "many students, however..." seemed unrefined in that it is inconclusive to an actual theory statement. Although the the language is colorful it reads as if we were about to hear a comparison verses a conclusion.
Maria, Bree, Safia
We believe that the mystery text that was given to us represents academic discourse because it fits the criteria of a type of academic discourse. Also, we believe that this is a grad-student summarizing his paper and reasoning of his method.
1) He had a process and method of writing that he utilized
2) He is furthering his knoweledge by doing research
3) He presents his own opinions however he is open to gaining more knoweledge on the topic
We think the audience is his peers, to inform them on his process of composing his paper.
In response to Luke's text...
We found similar traits in our text such as "the writing isn't quite as polished as a more advanced writer would be." We did not find "repetition and run on sentences" to be a problem in ours though, so maybe our writing was a little more advanced. It also seemed that our writer attempted to participate in a discource community, but it seemed more to be knowledge telling than actual orginial ideas.
By: Sydney, Kara, Lindsay
We read all the postings from the other groups. As far as we could tell, every group agrees that the sentences provided to us involved academic discourse. This prompted discussion in our group that perhaps academic discourse is best defined by what it is not, a "definition of exclusion," so to speak. We thought our sentence was written by an undergraduate student, only to find that the sentences of other groups showed less sophistication than our own.
Tara
Luke
Jake
We had similar ideas and thoughts about our mystery text that others did, in that the text had good points but it could of been developed better.
Safia
Maria
Bree
We are responding to Luke's Group:
Our group had the same debate as yours in that we questioned the level of academic discourse based off of language.
revision on original post:
Apparently, the group thought differently in that it was written from a teacher perspective because of the use of "establishment".
However, it was right in that we thought that it did question why research shows the difference in students don't revise when the "establishment" knows it is the only way to true learn writing.
Post a Comment