Every time when I assigned a writing task to my Chinese college students, I would always be responded by their knotted brows, distorted faces written with agony.
Yes, as a teacher, I need to do my job, that is, I need to give writing tasks to my students and provide them more opportunities to practice it. And my poor students have to write, no matter how poor their English was, because I, their English teacher, asked them to; and they needed me, the reader, to give them feedback and to check how well they could write and what they were lacking of. They, themselves, also realized this need, the need to write, then why were they still so painful?
Bitzer mentioned that “rhetorical discourse comes into existence as a response to situation”, and that “a rhetorical situation must exist as a necessary condition of rhetorical discourse” (p.5-6). The driven power, or the situation for the students to write something rhetorical is very clear – my request and their need to improve their English. However, is this simple request adequate or strong enough to stimulate them to do some nice writing?
Why were they always reluctant to write in English? Is it because that they are not very good at English and that they are embarrassed by the mistakes they might make? But without practices, how could they be fluent in writing in English language? Are they ready? Have I prepared them to be ready for the topic I assigned?
According to Edbauer’s article about rhetorical ecology, “knowledge involved in writing depends on activities and communications shared in interaction not only among people but also interactions between people and various structures in the environment…” (p. 8) Have I provided them the opportunity to talk to their peers first to help generate the elements of their writing pieces? Time is changing. Did I assign them the topics that closely related to their social life and studies that they had more to say about? Have I given them the freedom to write for the audience other than me? Have I thought of allowing them to receive the feedback from and interact with other potential audiences?
Having thought of the above, I think I sort of understand my students a bit more…
Interesting questions. I, too, wonder about imagination and creativity--what is it? It would make a great dissertation subject if paired with a biological science inquiry or even a hard science--measuring that synapse, that spark. I do love to see that in students' eyes. It reminds me of Shelley Berc's Creativity Workshops that she and her husband taught all over the world. Though I never took one, they were immensely popular (were able to retire in Monterey recently)--I suppose people are on the search for their own imagination. I do know that imaginative/creative writing is referred to now, occasionally, as generative and the other kind (I presume, academic, realistic, journalistic) as derivative. For what that's worth.
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ReplyDeleteSorry for the 2nd post. It was a duplicate. I'm still a novice at this.
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