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Because Writing Is Never Just Writing
The number one phrase that makes me groan: "My students can't write."
Here are two illustrations of what I mean: One is a description of a concern raised at the 1962 CCCC; the other comes from an October 2016 issue of the Chronicle of Higher Education (Teller). Clearly, the idea has legs.
I'm betting we all have our own examples, too. Here's one from me: a faculty member from another department approached me at a reception with a variation on the phrase: "Why can't my students write? They've taken writing courses. Their writing just needs to be clear and concise. Why can't they do that?" This lament, this story that students "can't write," works from the premise that writing is "just writing." It's a thing that writers bang out. It is constituted of words that are clear, that mean the same thing to everyone, that are easily accessible and need only to be plugged into forms.
But as writing professionals-and this is the phrase that I use to refer to us writing instructors, consultants, tutors, students, administrators-we know that writing is so much more. It's a strategy that can be used for learning, a way of negotiating identities within and around specific contexts, a representation of ideas, a way of participating in ideologies, a strategy for movement. We build on these understandings as we work with writers every day in classrooms, writing centers, workplaces, community sites. We build on them as we work with faculty colleagues to use writing as a strategy for learning and exploration-even (especially) those who complain that students "can't write." All of these uses of writing make the point:
Writing is never just writing.
Our research, our teaching, our discussions of what we do and why we do it are suffused with illustrations of how writing is never just writing. I have a file of examples, images, and ideas like this one from students around the country. They are representations of existing concepts of writing studies or new ones, or habits of mind that writers have found especially significant.
These illustrations and examples come from the places and the people I know best, the focus of my work: faculty colleagues, graduate students teaching first-year...