Wednesday, December 29, 2010

Composition Composites

You know what I'd find really handy, and I bet other folks would too?

A short monthly summary of one or two of the best articles in composition studies with a link to the original articles. I struggle with keeping up, not only in early modern stuff (and Shakespeare's an industry on its own), but keeping up with composition in addition is beyond me.

I'm not unwilling to learn. I recognize that my training in composition studies is some 20 years ago now, and that things are changing in the field, and that I should learn about the most important findings.

Are there newer, better techniques for brainstorming? I want to know.

Better ways to help students in responding to papers? I really want to know.

I wonder if there's a market out there? I mean, could I quit my job and spend my days reading journals, do summaries and a link, and somehow make a living at it without going crazy? (The last part would be as difficult as the making a living part, I bet, since there'd be minimal human contact, and I'm a fairly social person.)

3 comments:

  1. I would love something like that. For both composition and medievalness.

    Why *don't* we have such a thing? Doctors, lawyers, accountants, and actuaries all do.

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  2. Anonymous9:33 AM

    Fabulous idea, tho many of those great articles (in TETYC, or College English, or Pedagogy) are subsriber only links. I'll try to link, tho, since I do read those journals (often all at once during breaks, but still).

    Here is a blog that often has good advice/links:
    http://www.teachingcollegeenglish.com/

    There's another, Shitty First Drafts, but she hasn't been focused on pedagogy for a bit.

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  3. That's a cool idea, but I think there's so much scholarship coming out in composition and its related areas that it would be difficult to totally "keep up" enough and then there's the problem that figuring out what the "best" of the month or whatever would be implicitly political, based on one's ideas of what composition is and is not. (For example, is composition strictly about first-year writing? Is it focused on academic writing or is personal or experimental writing okay too, given that some use it in first-year writing?) This sounds like something I should do, but when would I have the time????

    Right now, I'm reading an article on contract grading in the writing classroom by Jane Danielewicz and Peter Elbow from Dec 2009's CCC. And I'm getting good ideas for my upcoming courses though my situation is markedly different from theirs.

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