I removed the section on audience from my Rubric, because I had no idea how to properly grade it. I mean… Okay, don’t use slang. Be respectful. Provide context. Great, you’ve got it… Now what?

…Audience is a weird thing for me in general. On one hand, it’s been a constant problem among my students. I have one student who relies very heavily on pop culture references, but assumes that the reader will obviously know what she’s talking about. How could you NOT know about Kylie and Tyga? They’re all over Instagram. Don’t you use Instagram, Mr. Lang?

…So, on that angle, yes. Audience is important. The idea of removing audience from writing (like Bartholomae and Elbow discuss) is risky.

Yet, I just recently helped a recent graduate with her first paper: a personal reflection written in APA. It was a very weird assignment; asking the student to be simultaneously professional and intimate. Like cuddling up to someone during a Job Interview.

I was able to figure out the instructor’s intent (drilling the student on APA via a low stakes paper), but she was so caught up in what she thought the “tone” for APA was supposed to be that she completely forgot her rhetorical purpose. The paper reeked of Engfish. She was trying to write about herself without actually being present. This perceived academic audience sucked the life out of her paper.

So what I ended up doing recently was to tell students to just… be themselves. But I’m really not sure how to approach this. Audience is important, but… Little confused.

After going through Peter Elbow’s “Being a Writer vs Being an Academic,” I find myself disliking the approach and distinction that Elbow highlights. While I can agree that not all writers wish to pursue traditional academic studies and that not all academics wish to write about everything, inserting this distinction into a freshman writing class seems a bit dangerous. Are not the students there to learn how to write in an academic setting? First year writing classes are, unless I’m mistaken, there to help students learn to the write the types of papers that their higher level classes’ professors expect them to write. Taking away the academic aspects of writing in the classroom would leave students vulnerable in their higher level classes. I do like his idea of putting his students’ papers in conversation with each other; however, I find that being in touch with others, be they scientists, academics, politicians, etc., to be a useful skill because that type of writing and research is prevalent throughout many jobs. Elbow mentions the “self-absorbed” writer being a positive thing, but advocating for a self-centered idea, while it has the possibility to urge students forward, ultimately does more harm than good when they leave that class, at least in my opinion. With all the above being said, I find myself thinking about the nature of the first year writing class and whether or not its purpose is to prepare students for academic writing or to teach them how to write, in the sense that Elbow uses.

In Bartholomae’s article, “Writing With Teachers” he discusses power in the classroom and authorship of students. He says, “There is no better way to investigate the transmission of power, tradition and authority than by asking students to do what academics do: work with the past, with key texts; working with other’s terms; struggling with the problems of quotation. . . where one version of a student’s relationship to the past is represented with commentary of his own” (66)? Although I don’t totally disagree with this statement, I think that advances in technology allow us to move beyond this method. Traditionally the best way to learn was to study and mimic the writing style of those who came before us. Those writers, who dominated literary canons were usually very similar to each other (education, class, race, and gender). These people held/hold power because of the consistent study (see value) of the work that they produced. Academics have always “work[ed] with the past, with key texts; work[ed]with other’s terms.” As time passed, institutions began to recognize the value in the work of people who sat on the other side of the those people. I think the best way to transmit power to students, especially those who aren’t “like” the “classics” is by introducing them to works by people like them. By recognizing the value of people like them through critical study of their texts, students see and experience how possible non-standard authorship is.

I mentioned technology earlier, and should probably note its relevance here  😉 There are so many incredible non-standard voices that are contributing to important conversations that it seems useful to share with the students, people like them who are contributing to “text.” Of course this means expanding the definition of “text” and maybe reading voices via Twitter (maybe). In class I mentioned digital conversations and its relation to the articles we’re reading, and my students were really excited about it. I used #TheAfricaTheMediaNeverShowsYou to encourage them to recognize the power in their voices. I’m not sure if it worked. I’m not sure if this is clear. Are you still there?